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Repulsion (1965)
At the core of Repulsion’s surreal, psychological horror, Roman Polanski centres a woman with an inexplicable revulsion towards men, eerily surrounding her repressed trauma with psychosexual symbols while she desperately tries to contain the resulting damage to her mind, home, and whoever dares to cross the threshold into either.
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Il Bidone (1955)
Rocky is the path to redemption in Il Bidone’s modern parable of morality and corruption, but so too is it spiritually purifying, as Federico Fellini strips back the lies of a professional swindler to uncover the grace that lies dormant in even the most dishonest man.
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49th Parallel (1941)
It takes a communal sense of justice, democracy, and moral fortitude among the everyday civilians of 49th Parallel to not only pick off the six Nazi fugitives who have been stranded in Canada, but also to thoroughly undermine the hateful ideology which they represent, as Michael Powell’s wartime fable spurs the western world to make…
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Challengers (2024)
Tennis may be a relationship according to the grand metaphor of Challengers, though by exploring the complicated entanglement of love, lust, and loathing between three rivals, Luca Guadagnino uncovers an even more sensual desire for intimate connection that can only be found in the midst of heated competition.
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Civil War (2024)
It is necessary for any photojournalist to maintain a level of remote objectivity in the face of visceral trauma, and yet as Alex Garland sets media crew on a gruelling odyssey across a dystopian, divided America in Civil War, it seems that the camera lens is but a fragile filter keeping them from total psychological…
