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Blow-Up (1966)
Michelangelo Antonioni sweeps us away by the tantalising prospect of conspiracy when fashion photographer Thomas accidentally captures a murder in Blow-Up, demonstrating the powerful tool of perception that is an artist’s eye, yet also questioning whether such intensive scrutiny may lead to elusive distortions of reality.
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The Wind (1928)
Through the violent hurricanes which ravage the Texan wastelands in The Wind, Victor Sjöström delivers a haunting metaphor for life’s mercurial turbulence, plunging one helpless ingénue into a howling, elemental chaos which harshly erodes our sanity.
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Last Tango in Paris (1972)
The anonymous affair which widower Paul and young actress Jeanne conduct makes for a warped power dynamic in Last Tango in Paris, and Bernardo Bertolucci is unafraid to plunge the crude depths of their precarious arrangement, prodding at raw, psychological wounds that explode with love, grief, and violent anger.
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The Cranes Are Flying (1957)
Mikhail Kalatozov’s dynamic camerawork does not spare us from the anguish of a nation subjected to unfathomable trauma in The Cranes Are Flying, distilled within one young woman who achingly perseveres through the grief, guilt, and loneliness of seeing loved ones fall to the carnage of war.
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Wicked (2024)
The splendid combination of musical and cinematic talents behind Wicked effectively claims its iconic cultural status within cinema as well as theatre, expanding this whimsical fable of friendship and prejudice to elaborate, epic proportions fitting of its grand narrative stakes.
