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Penguin Bloom (2020)
Penguin Bloom’s bland adaptation of one paralysed athlete’s companionship with an injured magpie is far more a sentimental tribute than a cinematic portrait, edging towards inspiration through its overworked animal metaphor, yet never quite taking flight.
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Beau Travail (1999)
Claire Denis crafts a hypnotic meditation on masculinity, repression, and colonial alienation in Beau Travail, tracing one soldier’s obsessive jealousy within the French Foreign Legion, and rendering the human body a vessel of both discipline and desire.
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Equinox Flower (1958)
Yasujirō Ozu’s foray into colour cinematography aligns beautifully with the eloquent optimism of Equinox Flower, tracing one seemingly progressive businessman’s resistance to his daughter’s marriage, and confronting his hypocrisy with gentle humour.
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One Battle After Another (2025)
There is a radical passion to Paul Thomas Anderson’s storytelling in One Battle After Another which matches the unruly spirit of the characters themselves, hurtling revolutionary chaos and reactionary absurdity towards impact on a dizzying rollercoaster, and sending one washed-up activist on a desperate mission to save the only family he has left.
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Tokyo Twilight (1957)
The domestic melodrama of Tokyo Twilight is so morose by Yasujirō Ozu’s standards, its darkness seeps into virtually every corner of his meticulous, homely interiors, unearthing guilty secrets within a family shattered by silence, grief, and regret.
