Filmmaker Retrospective: The Suspense Cinema of Henri-Georges Clouzot

Diabolique

Famously called “the French Hitchcock”, Henri-Georges Clouzot did have a lot in common with the English director. Most of their films were acclaimed suspense thrillers, and they were very demanding with their actors, often resorting to physical violence. Besides, both had a thing for blonds. Clouzot’s films, however, were darker, showing the evil in everyday […]

The 20 Most Hauntingly Beautiful Black and White Movies

the-night-of-the-hunter-love-hate

The term “hauntingly beautiful” refers to a more poeticized aesthetic where there is an unusual intermingling of light and dark, both literally and subjectively. Black and white films have the potential to perfectly capture this marriage of binaries, offering both subtle and blatant juxtapositions in which polar opposites coexist perfectly with one another. These films […]

The 20 Most Controversial Documentaries of All Time

Blackfish

From the very beginning, documentary film and controversy were bound together. The first recognised full-length documentary, Nanook of the North, was Robert Flaherty’s record of a ‘real-life’ Inuit family, but even that early documentation of reality was built on deception, and artifice. Frederick Wiseman, whose films are considered the epitome of realism in documentary-making, has […]