397. Mulholland Dr.
Puzzling audiences ever since it premiered at Cannes in 2001, David Lynch’s dark masterpiece seems to address the abuse of women in the film industry.
Puzzling audiences ever since it premiered at Cannes in 2001, David Lynch’s dark masterpiece seems to address the abuse of women in the film industry.
With this modernist masterpiece, Michelangelo Antonioni told a story that abandoned its initial plot. Booed at Cannes, it paved the way for a new cinematic form.
Of the four adaptations of Octave Mirbeau’s controversial novel, Luis Buñuel’s version is by far the most faithful… and radical.
Writing, producing, directing and starring in his own films Jacques Tati was a true auteur, influencing the likes of David Lynch, Tim Burton and Wes Anderson.
As the title to Edward Yang’s masterpiece indicates, Yi Yi is a series of doubles; narrative, thematic, visual and aural, that deliver a subtle family portrait.
William Shakespeare, Sigmund Freud, Ingmar Bergman and John Cassavetes are just some of the disparate influences on view in Thomas Vinterberg’s masterpiece.
This film lasts seventeen minutes, features mutilation, insects and dismemberment. Yet it is one of the most influential ever made.
Long thought to be a satire on bourgeoise marriage, Luis Buñuel’s masterpiece is really a study of the traumas suffered by a sexual assault victim.
Reviled and banned upon its release, then feared lost forever, Jean Renoir’s masterpiece stands today as a victory for liberalism.
What makes for a great opening? Character? Conflict? Poetry? Hopefully, more than something we’re supposed to just look at.
Despite being labelled fascist and an insult to Britain, if… won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1969. Almost half a century later, it still retains much of its power.
Once dismissed as The King of Kitsch, this masterpiece proved Pedro Almodovar was really a laureate of liberalism.
If the dream sequence is a crutch for many dull thrillers, horrors and mysteries, what makes a good one? One that challenges and stretches cinematic language.
The world is so noisy, we unconsciously filter out all that we don’t want to hear. Much of film sound operates in the same way.
Is Krzysztof Kieslowski’s trilogy only about liberty, equality and fraternity? Look again and you’ll find it also addresses fate, coincidence and co-existence.
Like many other cult classics, the French thriller Diva was almost still born. Rejected by the French critics and public, it only got a second lease of life in the US.
Guillermo del Toro says he is “in love with monsters.” In Pan’s Labyrinth, set in the Spanish Civil War, he uses them to navigate history and the world.
David Lynch’s shocking and mesmerising look at suburbia’s underbelly also showed he could turn popular music into a nightmare.
Emily Brontë’s novel has been filmed over 25 times. Is there a line between radical interpretation and reckless desecration?
One of the most original screenplays to ever emerge from Hollywood, this seriously funny comedy ponders the very meaning of our existence.
How well did Philip Kaufman succeed in adapting Milan Kundera’s ‘unfilmable’ philosophical love story?
Repulsion was Roman Polanski’s first film he made after defecting from communist Poland. Its depiction of mental disintegration is also his first masterpiece.
It took Jonathan Glazer over ten years to bring Under the Skin to the screen, but with that long gestation he might just have delivered the film of the decade.
This video-essay on Christopher Nolan’s Inception examines the themes of time and memory which serve as twin anchors to the film’s plot. These elements are also central to surrealism and the way it depicts dreams.
Copyright © 2025 Steven Benedict. Icons by Wefunction. Designed by CMS installed by PixelApes