There’s a scene in A History of Violence where Tom Stall (Viggo Mortensen) comforts his daughter in the aftershocks of a nightmare, he tells her, “There’s no such thing as monsters”. It’s a tender yet quietly unsettling moment - whilst Tom may not be lying to her, we can’t help but sense he isn’t telling her the whole truth. It perfectly foreshadows a story which seems simple, but hides a much more complicated view of humanity.

Classic noir, which thrived in the 1940s and 1950s, was born from pulp crime novels and a generally-felt suspicion and dissatisfaction with how law and order was maintained. In American noir, we see a bleak, sensual and expressionist reflection of societal upheaval that was more interested in shades of grey than crisp black-and-white. Decades on, filmmakers who came of age during noir’s heyday began to update their favourite hardboiled stories – think the psychologically and visually ambitious worlds of Thief,…

Against red, blue, purple, a piercing neon green, she wears: a gold and black panelled top, ballooned sleeves and flowing trousers; a bikini; a red jumpsuit; a feathered top; and, a black leather trouser suit, punctuated with a kick and a gunshot. ‘She’s super bad,’ repeats the sweet, climbing tenor of Willie Hutch. The opening credits of Jack Hill’s Foxy Brown (1974) announces Foxy (Pam Grier) as a true force within the numerous, shifting spaces she occupies, while declaring her…

Weekend: Sunday 28 April, 7:30pm

In this era of modern filmmaking more films are becoming more profitable than original. Perhaps this is mainly due to the progressive technological growth that is continuing to shape and develop the films we see on our screens, but nevertheless originality is something we crave when going to the cinema. As part of Glasgow Film Festival’s 20th Anniversary edition retrospective season, Young Frankenstein is a film that was beyond its years. It’s humorous, unconventional, yet full of heart.

Any cinephile worth their salt knows of Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece The Godfather (1972) and its sequel, The Godfather Part II (1974). Both are often heralded as the greatest films to be shown on the silver screen; both achieving Best Picture at their respective Academy Awards and the former earning the silver slot on the American Film Institute ranked list of greatest films. Beloved by so many, they were an easy target for Greta Gerwig’s billion-dollar box office behemoth Barbie…

For almost a decade, Greta Garbo was the Queen of Hollywood. Poached from Sweden by Louis B. Mayer of MGM Studios and brought to America amid intense hype, she dominated silent cinema before successfully making the leap to talkies and becoming one of the biggest earners in the business. By 1939, however, her star-status was waning. Following a few flops, she was one of the many actors to be infamously deemed ‘box office poison’ by independent theatre owners. Legendary for…

Hollywood has always loved a star-studded literary adaptation. William Wyler’s ultra-romantic 1939 reworking of Emily Brontë’s terrifyingly powerful novel still sweeps audiences away 85 years later, remaining faithful in spirit yet smartly adapting to on-screen storytelling. 

All we can ever do in our work is write our own biography.' - Dorothy Arzner