It seems Joel never had any other plans than film. As a youngster, he saved up for a Super 8 so that he and Ethan could remake the films they enjoyed on the television. Joel went on to study film at university, while Ethan’s path was slightly less direct, choosing a Philosophy degree instead. This combination goes some way to explaining the philosophical ponderings that pepper the brother’s films.

The stories the Coens concoct are convoluted, with a whole host of unusual and memorable characters. Like many famous directors, they have a regular cohort of actors – Frances McDormand, George Clooney, Tim Blake Nelson, and Josh Brolin all have more than one Coen Brothers film under their belt.

The brothers’ body of work is so varied it’s hard to offer suggestions for similar directors. Their comedies could be likened to Wes Anderson or Martin McDonagh, their historical sagas could be by Paul Thomas Anderson, and their deft handling of the crime genre could see them listed among the greats. The fact that they are able to jump so effectively from genre to genre has increased their chances of being both commercially and critically successful. Having broken down the Coen’s vast and varied filmography, here is The Film Magazine’s guide on Where to Start With The Coen Brothers.

1. Fargo (1996)

Fargo Review

Fargo is frequently listed as the best Coen Brothers film, so it is an extremely good place to start.

The film’s focus is on Jerry Lundegaard (William H Macy), a car salesman whose bad decisions drive the plot. It’s easy to think because Jerry is the protagonist, he is the good guy, but Jerry should go down in history as one of cinema’s greatest villains.

Fargo concentrates on greed and want as Jerry’s deep dissatisfaction with his lot is punished. Crime and punishment is a theme that the Coen Brothers will return to in their subsequent films, continuing their years’ long love affair with the crime genre.

Part of the Coen’s strength is their ability to make their characters’ stupidity believable. Gallows humour takes hold as desperation drives Jerry, but there is nothing cartoonish here. While it may be ridiculous, Jerry’s actions are nothing but sinister.

Frances McDormand’s incredible Oscar-winning portrayal of Marge Gunderson, the chipper police chief investigating the kidnap of Jerry’s wife, allows for the themes of power and order to be explored.

2. No Country for Old Men (2007)

No Country for Old Men is an adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel of the same name. It is one of those rare films with the accolade of being better than the book it’s based on.

Set in Texas, the Coen brothers – back working with Fargo’s cinematographer Roger Deakins – return to a similarly bleak and expansive landscape. Here, they replace the ice and snow of Fargo with wide open skies, shifting sand and disorientating heat shimmers.

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is a working class man who discovers a large amount of money in the desert. Javier Bardem earned an Oscar as the deranged Anton Chigurh, a hitman in pursuit of the money. Tommy Lee Jones is outstanding as Sheriff Bell trying to untangle the webs the other two men are creating.

All those themes commonly associated with a Coen Brothers movie come into play; power, borders, transience, duality, chaos, inevitability and greed. Unlike in Fargo, the protagonist Llewelyn is not a villain, even if some of his decisions are terrible. Llewelyn doesn’t need to be a villain, with Anton doing such a good job.

No Country for Old Men steps away from the Coen Brothers’ darkly humorous style and is a much more serious endeavour. It still blurs genres though. Is it a Western? A Crime-noir? A literary look into the plight of working-class men in landscapes not built for them? Or all of the above?

3. Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Hail, Caesar! was not so critically revered as Fargo and No Country for Old Men, and it did not smash the box office in quite the same way. However, it was far from a flop and arguably underrated. Hail, Caesar! is an accessible, less challengingly funny gateway into what the Coens have to offer. It still utilises their trademark ability to take a million seemingly unrelated tangents and weave them expertly together, but lacks some of the darker themes that may have put some viewers off delving into their more serious work.

Like Fargo, Hail, Caesar! began with a kernel of truth. It is a fictional tale about the real Hollywood fixer, Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin). A fixer was someone hired by movie studios to cover up scandals their actors could not help but embroil themselves in. Like when unmarried actresses get pregnant (this is the 50s remember).

When the studio’s star, Baird Whitlock (George Clooney) is drugged and kidnapped during the filming of the eponymous Roman epic, ‘Hail Caesar’, it is up to Eddie to fix it. While many of the Coen’s films are bleak or bittersweet, there is always a seed of hope planted. Hail, Caesar! is the opposite, a hopeful comedy with a seed of something more ominous lurking just off the screen.

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The interesting thing about the Coen Brothers’ work is that it is not confined by genre. Their projects include book adaptations, historical sagas, crime noirs, romantic comedies, and westerns. From The Big Lebowski (1998) to Intolerable Cruelty (2003), there is something for everyone.

As eclectic as their stories seem to be, there are recurrent themes woven throughout their work. One common theme that spans their films is Americanness, often looked at through a filter of quirk and marginalisation. The portrayal of working-class men also plays a huge role (much more than women), as does power and morality. Their ability to find dark humour in the gloomiest of settings also sets them apart from their peers.

Sparking his passion as a filmmaker at a young age, Raimi was making a slew of Super 8 short films with his friends as a teenager, releasing his very first feature film It’s Murder! (1977) at only eighteen years old. By the time 1981 rolled around and Raimi was twenty-two, he cemented himself as an exciting up and coming director with The Evil Dead, establishing his legacy in the annals of horror history. Over twenty years later, the director was a certified A-list filmmaker in Hollywood, directing some of the most influential superhero movies of all time and proving himself as one of the best and most recognisable directors in the industry.

Though Raimi still directs here and there, his work has slowed down considerably, releasing only two features since 2009. Thankfully, Raimi primarily spends his time lending his name to up and coming directors as a producer, playing a major role in the release of new and exciting movies like 30 Days of Night, Don’t Breathe, Crawl and 65. 

Raimi may no longer bless us with his own directed films as often as he once did, but the excitement that presides over a film whenever it has his name attached only goes to show what a true force he is in the world of filmmaking. Regardless of the story, genre or company he is directing for, it is always clear that it is a Sam Raimi picture. Having broken down Raimi’s vast and varied filmography, here is The Film Magazine’s guide on Where to Start With Sam Raimi.

Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn (1987)

When it comes to the story of The Evil Dead, there really are three separate places you could start. Firstly, there is the proof-of-concept short film Within the Woods that Raimi directed in order to entice investors into producing a feature film. Then came The Evil Dead, the bloody horror flick that introduced Raimi, Bruce Campbell and company to the world and really kicked off their careers. Lastly, there is Evil Dead II, which is truly the best place to begin with the work of Sam Raimi. Though technically a sequel, it is for all intents and purposes a remake, reintroducing fans of The Evil Dead to its wacky and individualistic world, all the while introducing first-time viewers to the story by rewriting and presenting it all in the first 10 minutes.

For the uninitiated, the Evil Dead 2 follows Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) as he and some friends go to spend a few nights in a cabin in the woods. After discovering and playing an audio tape of recitations from a book of ancient texts, it unleashes a number of demons which possess and torment both him and his friends. A tale as old as time, really. 

Though it may be the third telling of this same story, it really is the ultimate version of The Evil Dead. Raimi clearly tightens up the screws and masters his passion project, taking the issues of the first movie being laughably camp and silly and using them to its advantage, in the process creating the entire basis of what makes the series and the character of Ash Williams so memorable and iconic. 

Filled to the brim with characteristically witty one liners and memorable moments (such as Ash’s famous catchphrase, “Groovy!”), Evil Dead 2 exhibits Sam Raimi going Full Raimi, allowing his balls to the wall style to take us on a campy horror adventure for the ages.

There may be more accessible watches for first time viewers of the director’s work but if you want a fully fledged introduction to Sam Raimi, Evil Dead 2 is perfect.

A Simple Plan (1998)

A Simple Plan is up there as one of the most underrated films of all time and certainly the most underrated of Raimi’s often praised career. Though he is most notably known for his horror or superhero flicks, Sam Raimi has made a handful of genre films, covering westerns, sports dramas and neo-noirs, as is the case with A Simple Plan.

Set in rural Minnesota, the story follows three hunters – brothers Hank (Bill Paxton) and Jacob Mitchell (Billy Bob Thornton), and Lou (Brent Briscoe) – who discover a crashed plane containing over four million dollars in cash. What follows is a tale reminiscent of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” as we watch these three men and their bond unfold as they struggle to keep the money a secret from local authorities and as each of their inner demons come to the fore.

It is perhaps Raimi’s most stripped back film as far as his flashy style goes, but this still feels like a Sam Raimi picture as he expertly navigates us through the lives of the three lead characters and the unbearable weight of guilt that they all feel. This is brought to the forefront by three magnificent performances, the best of which is Billy Bob Thornton’s turn as Jacob, a shy, sensitive and innocent character whose devastating backstory not only steals the show in a beautifully written scene between he and Bill Paxton, but works as the backbone of the entire film and allows for many of the events to transpire in the way that they do.

A Simple Plan may not be Sam Raimi’s most accomplished film, but it very well may be his masterpiece. It is certainly one that is must-see for anyone who wishes to get into the director’s work.

Spider-Man (2002)

Though Sam Raimi has proven himself to be a master of the sequel with both Evil Dead 2 and Spider-Man 2 (and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, if that’s your bag), it is the first Spidey movie that really proved the director could be a major player in Hollywood and one which works as the most accessible entry point to the legend’s career.

Following the origin story of Peter Parker’s transformation into Spider-Man – bit by a radioactive spider, given superhuman powers, and now learning that with great power comes great responsibility – it may be a story that we all know by now, but Raimi’s take on the tale is irresistible. Despite his background in horror, the director’s over the top and campy style lends itself incredibly well to ripping pages out of comic books and putting them on the big screen. Not only does he capture the comic book feel that the movie requires, but he delivers to us the most perfect portrayal of Peter Parker ever put to screen in the form of Tobey Maguire. Raimi and Maguire worked together to capture the right balance of nerdy, sappy and courageous needed for the iconic part.

Though the director may have put together some excellent fight choreography, captured a wonderful lead performance, and crafted some of the most visually pleasing montages known to man (Parker coming up with costume ideas will never disappoint), it is the more sincere moments that bring to light the true filmmaking strengths behind Spider-Man. Moments such as Uncle Ben delivering iconic life lessons to Peter, Aunt May’s grief over the death of her husband, and Peter’s love for MJ. We may go into these flicks for the big action set pieces, but Raimi understands that this is a human story and one that deserves to be told with love and respect. Superhero fatigue may be setting in right now, but Raimi’s Spider-Man will never grow old. It is a perfect starting point for anyone who wishes to watch any of the director’s films.

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Though Sam Raimi could easily be distinguished as a director of horror or superhero movies, and his contributions to both deserve to be respected, his filmography is just as unique as his style, allowing him to stand out as a true master of the craft in his own right. From campy horror films to blockbuster comic book adaptations, from sports dramas to neo-noir thrillers, Raimi’s direction behind the camera can always be felt.

Becoming known for his portrayal of Count Dracula in the 1927 Broadway adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel, Lugosi found himself in a slew of Universal’s monster movies (and Hammer’s The Mystery of the Marie Celeste, only their second film, and their oldest surviving), often alongside Boris Karloff, Glenn Strange, and Lon Chaney Jr. By the late 1930s, he had begun to develop health issues as a result of his wounds sustained during the war. Leading roles declined, his efforts to get out of a typecast role never truly happened. He struggled to perform without morphine and, when coupled with his alcoholism, the work began to dry up. His final appearance was in the much-panned Plan 9 From Outer Space, posthumously. He passed on August 16th 1956, having gone upstairs for a nap and never woken up. He’d married five times, had one son, and was buried in Los Angeles at the age of 73.

Lugosi was a giant of the screen, and remains so to this day. Once seen and heard, never forgotten, much like Vincent Price or Christopher Lee would be in later years. His is a presence that transcends the films he starred in, goes beyond his horror staples, and is still adored by millions to this day. If you’re wondering where to start with Bela Lugosi, here are some suggestions for you.

1. Dracula (1931)

The role that brought Bela Lugosi to the United States remains his most iconic, important, and influential.

When Carl Laemmle Jr of Universal took on Dracula to develop their first talking horror picture, it was Lugosi they asked to reprise his role after trying for several other actors. Stepping back into the Count’s shoes wouldn’t be too strange; the film was based on the stage play adaptation he had starred in, and Edward Van Sloan (who had played Van Helsing on stage alongside Lugosi) also returned to face off against his nemesis.

With his thick, stilted English, Lugosi’s Dracula is a vast departure from the novel, where it is stressed that the Count tried as much as possible to speak fluent English (a take that Christopher Lee would adopt when Hammer Films made their version in 1958). Yet despite this, it is Lugosi’s voice we think of when we think of the character, and of vampires in general. When we act out Dracula as kids, or grown-up kids, we all do Lugosi’s accent. His floating mannerisms, almost gliding across the floor with his cloak spread out like bat’s wings, bring the audience into his world. His piercing stare holds you captive. Anyone else pronouncing some of Dracula’s lines would have failed to make quite the impression on the public consciousness. “Listen to them. Children of the Night. What music they make.” Would it sound as menacing, as chilling, in any other voice than Lugosi’s? Others have tried, and they have all failed.

His opening remark in the film – “I am… Dracula” – came to define his entire career. When he passed away, his family decided to bury him in his Dracula cloak. The vampire made him famous, but it shadowed his entire life and legacy. His performance might not have had any blood or fangs, but the vampire fed on him throughout. This character, if nothing else, will ensure he lives forever, but it doomed its hero in other ways, being both a blessing and a curse. If that isn’t a potent-enough metaphor in the film industry, nothing is.

2. White Zombie (1932)

The very next year, Lugosi would unwillingly play his role in cementing another legendary monster on the screen: the zombie. Back in those days, zombies were still very much a tradition of voodooism, an import on the slave ships from African nations, now often depicted in places such as Haiti (see Wes Craven’s The Serpent and The Rainbow from 1988 for a more violent depiction), and it would take films like 1967’s Plague of the Zombies (which itself was inspired by the vampires of Richard Matheson’s novel “I Am Legend”) to give Romero the impetus to really define the modern zombie in 68’s Night of the Living Dead. In 1932, however, zombies were still a fairly new concept to western audiences. They were people brought back to life by magic to do the summoner’s will, and in this case, it’s Lugosi wanting them to turn the mills and work as slave labour.

Often regarded as the first feature-length zombie film, White Zombie plays very simply as an allegory for black slavery. A white aristocrat forces black men to work the land for the profit of the landowner. And the film is, for better or for worse, not remembered for much other than Lugosi’s powerful, mesmerising stare. There hasn’t been a pair of eyes quite like them since, transfixing the viewer without trying very hard. When he puts in the malice, it shows.

Up in his castle, Lugosi’s Murder Legendre (yes, that’s really the character’s name) is a scheming, plotting spider of a man, twisting the love of the central characters for each other into murder. He is the whisperer in the ear, not too far removed from Ann Radcliffe’s evil monk Schedoni in her classic gothic novel “The Italian” (1795). He might not have liked being typecast into sinister, evil characters, but when he really put his heart and soul into it, he outshone everyone and everything around him. Some of the other acting isn’t great in White Zombie, but its air of malice is achieved by some decent directing and Lugosi’s impossible presence.

3. Ninotchka (1939)

Lugosi was cast as so many sinister villains in horror and science fiction (his role in the influential 1939 serial ‘The Phantom Creeps’ is one of his best) that it is unfortunate he didn’t get the chance to spread his wings further. Despite fourth billing in the end credits of Ninotchka, a romantic comedy following Greta Garbo’s Comrade Ninotchka as she falls in love with Melvyn Douglas in Paris against her loyalties to communist Russia, Lugosi only appears in one scene near the end, and only for three minutes or so. There are other characters that appear pretty much throughout the entirety of the film that are underneath Lugosi’s name. In Ninotchka, he was on the very verge of breaking out from his typecast role and into the mainstream.

With only a few moments of screentime, it is clear to see what Lugosi could have been if he had been given the chance to properly go for it. That is not to say that his roles in films such as Son of Frankenstein and The Wolf Man aren’t great, but in three minutes he brings class, presence, and power to a simple scene. His Commissar Razinin is relaxed yet stern, completely in control of the scene. His eyes still hold menace, his stance still holds power. Hollywood star Greta Garbo trembles before him. Even this small glimpse of him as something other than a horror bit-part shows what a talented actor he was.

This was his chance, a break that never came to be. Despite the film receiving four Oscar nominations (Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Original Story, and Best Screenplay), it did nothing for his career. Under a decade later he was reprising his role as Dracula in Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, a fun spoof by Universal of their own films. One wonders what might have happened to Lugosi’s career if more people had taken notice of this scene-stealer and stretched it out over an entire film, or even a string of them. Horror was grateful to have him, but for the rest of the world it’s a tragedy they never got him.

Van Sant worked his way up the ranks of filmmaking by acting as a production assistant to producer Ken Shapiro before creating his first film Alice in Hollywood, a feature that was never released. In these early days, he began to observe the cultures around him, with one of his favourite people-watching posts being downtown Hollywood where the surroundings differed far from the neighbouring Beverly Hills. Inspired by the marginalised communities that populated the area, Van Sant once again returned to the director’s chair, making Mala Noche (1986), a love story entwined with themes of immigration and urban poverty. While the film remains primarily unrecognised against Van Sant’s mighty filmography, Mala Noche is where Van Sant’s distinct style began.

Following Van Sant’s introduction to film festivals and premieres, big-name studios such as Universal Pictures began to take note of the upcoming creator. The kinship eventually sizzled out after Van Sant pitched a handful of unsuccessful ideas, yet ironically the rejected pitches would become cinematic staples, including Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991). Fast forward to the immensely successful release of both of these films, Van Sant began to rub shoulders with the mainstream market, making beloved films such as Good Will Hunting (1997), Elephant (2003), Milk (2008), and Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018). 

Despite his career flourishing and his work expanding to the masses, not once has his quintessential methodology changed; every single one of his films is confrontational, exploring drug use, mental illness, gun violence, hate crime and suicide with a relentlessly heavy hand. To help navigate his dense filmography is The Film Magazine’s official guide on Where to Start with Gus Van Sant. 

1. My Own Private Idaho (1991)

The early days of Gus Van Sant’s career saw him create a film steeped in allegories concerning the everlasting polarisation of society. It is about the outsider looking in, the inherent conflicts that consistently arise concerning class and queer love. 

My Own Private Idaho follows best friends Mike (River Phoenix) and Scott (Keanu Reeves) as they venture to find Mike’s distant mother. Van Sant ingrains the aesthetics with a level of intimacy that contrasts and compliments the vast landscapes that the film traverses, with the centrality always adhering to the bond between Mike and Scott no matter the boundless road movie scenery. They never become swallowed by the detailed landscapes they travel across; instead, Van Sant locates focus on the incredibly emotional voyage that the two young men go on. 

Van Sant consistently infuses elements of individuality into his work, with My Own Private Idaho being no exception. The film is loosely based on the Shakespearean tales “Henry IV, Part I” and “Henry IV, Part II”, whose origins circulated in the late 1500s. These tragedies explored familial expectations and battles between freedom and self-expression, as seen in My Own Private Idaho; however, Van Sant’s gust of modernity coupled with the film’s dream-like quality amplifies the harsh truths that come with brooding introspection unlike ever before.

2. Good Will Hunting (1997)

5 Moments in Good Will Hunting That Will Give You Chills

Good Will Hunting has a place on nearly every list defining cinematic classics, and rightfully so.

Gus Van Sant takes us on a journey of self-discovery, as we see Will Hunting (Matt Damon), a janitor at MIT, form an unlikely but life-affirming friendship with psychology professor Sean Maguire (Robin Williams). 

The film is brimming with some of the most moving scenes in film history, whether that be lectures from Maguire or moments of heartfelt anger outbursts from Will as he struggles with his own fears of progression. Whilst Van Sant’s fantastic directing beautifully captures the sincerity of the narrative, the most impressive factor is how the director allows the film to speak for itself.

There is a purposeful lack of whimsy within the camera work, forgoing eccentricity in favour of letting the earnest dialogue take over, encouraging us to sit and become utterly engrossed in the profound venture that the characters go on. 

3. Elephant (2003)

Gus Van Sant has never one to shy away from the brutal truths of reality, Elephant being the filmmaker’s telling of a topic that has never seemed more relevant: a mass shooting.

Elephant follows a group of students, unaware that a mass shooting will soon occur. The film is partially based on the Columbine High School Massacre of 1999, taking heed of the tragedy and forming a film that does not sensationalise or create a spectacle but instead uses bleak monotony to root the narrative as a realist piece. The film acts as a challenge, not one that dares us to carry on watching as a play of twisted entertainment, but in the way that Van Sant portrays the acts of violence as authentic.

Rather than conjure a script with adolescent dialogue written by middle-aged writers, Van Sant created an ongoing script that formed concurrently to the filmmaking, where improvisation was encouraged. The result is a film that plays out with an uncomfortable level of validity.

Elephant’s execution was warmly received by critics and moviegoers alike, with much of the critical reception favouring the unforgiving way the narrative unfolded. Van Sant’s cold take on a matter so close to the hearts of many eventually won him the Palme d’Or at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, outperforming the likes of Dogville, Swimming Pool and Mystic River.

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Gus Van Sant yields a specific power with the camera, with every one of his films encroaching upon the real and infecting the screen with a potent ferocity that fails to quit. From sweeping melodramas to gut-wrenchingly confrontational slices of life, Gus Van Sant’s filmography is both rare and more than worthwhile to explore. 

Over 35 years, Wong has shown a fascination with themes of time, love and human connection, exploring them with visual pizzazz, temporally-shifting storytelling and fascinatingly complex characters. His love stories sweep you along and pull at your heartstrings, but they are rarely straightforward, My Blueberry Nights being the closest he has ever come to a rom-com and the darker, more contentious tale of romance Happy Together being a rare and therefore provocative East Asian queer relationship film. 

Frequently collaborating with charismatic performers like Tony Leung (Ashes of Time, Chungking Express, Happy Together, In the Mood for Love, 2046 and The Grandmaster), Maggie Cheung (Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time, In the Mood for Love and 2046) and Leslie Cheung (Days of Being Wild, Ashes of Time and Happy Together), and talented craftspeople like his loyal director of photography Christopher Doyle (with whom he has partnered on seven films including Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love), Wong has built many a strong and long-running creative partnership over his career.

Few directors are as inextricably associated with one city, but Wong’s filmography is inseparable from his home of Hong Kong, its ever-moving people and the drastic changes to its political and cultural landscape over the decades. Though he is well-respected as among the greatest filmmakers of his generation worldwide, it is no wonder that the accolades he has received from the Hong Kong Film Awards vastly outnumbers those from other bodies. 

With ten films made over four different decades and – for the English-speaking world at least – lots of titles that don’t tell you an awful lot about what you’re about to watch, Wong Kar-Wai can seem like a difficult sell, but he is a filmmaker very easy to fall in love with if you get over that hurdle. Are you a romantic, a thinker, or just someone who appreciates good-looking and aloof people captured beautifully on camera? Wong Kar-Wai is the director for you.

Any of Wong’s films from his first decade in the business would be fine entry points, but a larger spread over multiple decades might be more fruitful, so here is The Film Magazine’s guide on Where to Start with Wong Kar-Wai.

1. Chungking Express (1994)

Two parallel stories are told of melancholic police officers in love with unattainable women in a bustling mid-90s Hong Kong.

Chungking Express was Wong Kar-Wai’s attempt at self-therapy after his draining and not entirely successful experience making Ashes of Time (1994). Making a smaller, looser and more personal story was just the thing he needed to refocus and find his footing again.

People in Wong’s movies are a dramatic lot. Cop 223 (Takeshi Kaneshiro) is still reeling from a recent breakup. He processes his pain by running to sweat out all his tears and by buying and eating a tin of pineapple due to expire on the one month anniversary of his heartbreak, becoming momentarily distracted by a mysterious drug trafficker (Brigitte Lin) on the run. Cop 663 (Tony Leung) is, on the other hand, in a state of deep depression after his flight attendant girlfriend left him and continues to frequent the snack bar they visited throughout their relationship. The shy Faye (Faye Wong), a new employee at said snack bar, begins to sneak into Cop 663’s apartment and improve his life in small but crucial ways.

This film probably best sums up Wong’s unmistakable and compelling visual style. Wong worked with Australian expatriate cinematographer Christopher Doyle seven times over two decades and it is perhaps this film that best showcases their aesthetic. The dynamic, hypnotic cinematography that blurs people, light and their environment together stands in for the sensory overload of life in a city that never sleeps and for the director’s frequent preoccupation with time misbehaving when we fall in and out of love.

The project began as a scrapbook of ideas for anthology love stories, and those that didn’t make the cut or were prohibitively expensive to film eventually became the basis for the likewise Hong Kong-made Fallen Angels (1995) and Wong’s only English-language (and overall least successful) project to date, My Blueberry Nights (2007).

Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and James Gunn are considered the kings of movie needle-drops, but Wong Kar-Wai is well-versed in the art as well, at picking just the right track for the moment to intensify emotions. Few who have seen Chungking Express will not be thinking of Faye Wong bopping along at the snack bar whenever “California Dreaming” plays, nor will they be able to get her Cantonese cover version of The Cranberries’ “Dreams” out of their head for a long time.

Wong’s protagonists are complicated creatures, developed over the course of filming and through the on-the-day interactions between scene partners. Cop 223/He Qiwu is probably the most well-developed and also probably the least interesting character here, while we know next to nothing about the Woman in the Blonde Wig but she is still mesmerising. Cop 663 is a sad-sack and Faye is in no uncertain terms a stalker, and yet we are invested in them getting together. Wong has never been one for neat resolutions in his storytelling, working things out on the fly and preferring to leave us and his characters on a hopeful ellipsis, and what a cliffhanger worthy of the soap operas he began his career writing he leaves us with here.

2. In the Mood for Love (2000)

A story about two neighbours in a cramped apartment block in separate unhappy marriages to cheating spouses, meant for each other from first sight but fighting to keep their desires at bay for the sake of propriety.

Unattainable love stories are always the hardest-hitting and In the Mood for Love is truly one of the great bittersweet romances of the modern age. 

Wong isn’t out to explain or even rationalise love and the things we do for and because of it, simply stating quite rightly in dialogue that “Feelings can creep up just like that”.

At least one of our protagonists, secretary Mrs Chan (Maggie Chung) or aspiring writer Mr Chow (Tony Leung), are in every scene in the film. The other parties in these marriages, Mr Chan and Mrs Chow, are always kept offscreen. The latter are transitory, unknowable figures only fleetingly heard and more often than not only talked about in their absence by their nosy neighbours and increasingly despairing other halves. This is not their story. We still get a sense of them by the negative space their absence leaves and from the inhabitants of the neighbouring apartments gossiping, and this all adds to the lived-in richness of this film world. 

This is a film of little details, from the costume design to physical tics and micro-expressions determinable on the faces of our central pairing, everything matters. As Mrs Chan puts it, “You notice things if you pay attention”. The somewhat rundown apartment block the majority of the film’s scenes take place in and around becomes another living, breathing character in itself.

In the Mood for Love is one of Wong’s less visually flashy films, but it’s a classically handsome one with immaculate cinematography shot through with searing desaturated colours. You could probably write a feature on each scene’s most dominant colour and what it symbolises. You’d have a very strong case to argue that Chung and Leung are the best-looking and sexiest couple in the history of romance cinema, and it’s all done through stolen glances, almost touching, and discussing what might happen between them. It also doesn’t hurt that both look great in early 60s fashion and spend a lot of time brooding in dramatic rainfall.

The film is also a great example of Wong’s preferred loose, semi-improvisational way of crafting a film. The playful manner in which Mrs Chan and Mr Chow imagine and act out how their spouse’s relationship started out, and how they toy with beginning their own extramarital relationship to redress the balance, would work wonderfully on stage and lets both actors show off their considerable range.

Wong clearly did not want to let this particular pair go after a much-truncated 1 hour 40 minutes final runtime, making a sequel half a decade later, 2046, which picked up Mr Chow’s life years later as he processes his regret over letting the love of his life slip away through writing an increasingly convoluted sci-fi story.

3. The Grandmaster (2013)

A heavily fictionalised historical action film inspired by the life of the famed martial artist Ip Man (Tony Leung), telling specifically of his rivalry with the masters of segregated North and South regional styles of kung-fu in China and with particular emphasis on his time as an impoverished teacher in post-war Hong Kong.

Wong Kar-Wai processes the trauma of his country’s past in an incredibly poetic way, the impact of a quote being carried with this portrayal of Ip Man and how his life is upended by the horrors of war: “If life has four sessions, we went from spring straight to winter”.

The Grandmaster is far from perfect, being both more abstract than a lot of martial arts fans might enjoy and so fantastical it makes the already OTT Ip Man series starring Donnie Yen look like a documentary in comparison. But it does show WKW’s range as an artist, even working loosely in a genre he tends to avoid.

This is a high melodrama with dreamlike, balletic fight scenes only one man could capture with such painterly style. Wong began writing and directing romances in order to stand out from his successful countrymen who had, for the most part, made exclusively action cinema. Indifferent though he may have been to the kinds of films people like John Woo had made such massive hits in Hong Kong, Wong shows that between this and Ashes of Time he does have a talent for a certain kind of action film; the most beautiful, evocative action films around. 

More important than the floaty, wuxia-inflected fights is the many years-spanning forbidden love affair. Leung’s Ip Man is devoted to his wife and children and is torn from them far before time by foreign occupation and post-war chaos (interestingly the same thing happened to Wong and his brothers, forcibly separated from each other by an ocean when the China/Hong Kong border closed). His real kindred spirit is another formidable martial artist, Gong Ruo Mei (House of Flying Daggers‘ Zhang Ziyi), the daughter of the Northern grandmaster. As stunning as the Ip Man vs Everyone fight in the rain that opens the film is, or Gong’s duel to the death with her father’s murderer veiled in coal smoke from a train is, it’s the playful, poised “precision” fight between two equals, two soulmates, midway through the film that stays with you and makes both characters’ eventual arcs so vivid.

While not as critically acclaimed as Wong’s earlier work in the West, The Grandmaster went on to become his biggest box office hit by some distance and it received a record-breaking 12 prizes at the Hong Kong Film Awards. Even if it cares little for accurately portraying the man who would eventually train Bruce Lee, its spirit and philosophy is one that any devotee of martial arts would appreciate.  

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Fans of romance, existentialism and hypnotic visuals could hardly find a more worthwhile auteur’s career to get stuck into than Wong Kar-Wai’s. If you enjoyed the 3 recommendations above, then Fallen Angels makes for a fine companion piece to Chungking Express, 2046 uses In the Mood for Love as the launch point for a far stranger story, and Happy Together is up there with the master’s very best. 

Lumet began directing off-Broadway theater in his early 20s and, by 1950, he had moved into television. His first feature film,12 Angry Men, was released in 1957 to critical acclaim and, despite being a disappointment at the domestic box office, established him as a director particularly skilled in the art of adaptation. A good chunk of his films originated on the stage or were adapted from novels.

Lumet focused much of his attention on gritty crime thrillers and political dramas, exploring themes of corruption, social injustice, and the disillusion of the American Dream. Many of his protagonists were anti-heroes, rebelling against the law and systematic oppression, driven not by morality but by passion and heart. He seemed most at home among the savage beauty of New York City and in intimate, character-driven stories.

Lumet’s background in acting made him “an actor’s director”, and his experience in television taught him efficiency, saving money and delivering his films on time. Over the span of four decades (between 1957 and 1997), Lumet directed 39 movies. On average, that’s one movie per year. Between his debut and 2007’s swansong Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, Lumet was nominated for five Academy Awards. And, though he never won, he did receive an Honorary Academy Award in 2005 for his life’s work and dedication to the craft of filmmaking.

With such a long and storied career, it is certainly difficult to know where to begin. Here at The Film Magazine, we have created this guide to help navigate through Lumet’s dense filmography, highlighting three entry points that best showcase his style and artistry. This is Where to Start with Sidney Lumet.

1. 12 Angry Men (1957)

The beginning, it turns out, is a very good place to start.

Sidney Lumet’s 1957 feature debut, 12 Angry Men, is based on the 1954 teleplay of the same name by Reginald Rose, initially staged as a CBS live production and later rewritten as a stage play in 1955. The film stars Henry Fonda as one of 12 jurors who are tasked with deciding whether a young man on trial for allegedly murdering his father is found innocent or guilty. When Fonda’s character is the only one to declare the boy innocent, the men are forced to re-examine the evidence and confront their own prejudices.

12 Angry Men is the kind of story that Lumet explored numerous times over the course of his career. While the director’s 1973 adaptation Serpico explores the corruption within law enforcement, 12 Angry Men instead deals with the institution of Law and Order itself, eventually exposing it for the imperfect system that it is. Lumet was always at his best when examining the pillars of our society that we are told to put our faith in, often bringing to light how these pillars fall short of delivering true justice, especially to those in marginalized communities.

The film takes place almost exclusively inside a small deliberation room during a blistering summer’s evening. Lumet’s skill in blocking his actors, something he was able to master during his time in theater and television, is vital to the film’s success. In less capable hands, it’s easy to imagine how scenes with a dozen people might feel messy and confused, but with Lumet, every frame is intricately arranged, every movement so precisely choreographed. 12 Angry Men is fluid and natural, but visually interesting enough to keep us engaged without ever changing locations. In addition, the film contains some of the best acting ever seen on screen – there isn’t a single weak link in the cast.

As with all of Lumet’s films that deal with themes of societal rot and the mistrust of authority, as well as racism and prejudice, 12 Angry Men feels downright modern and is as relevant today as it was decades ago. It was nominated for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay at the 30th Academy Awards and is often ranked among the ten best courtrooms dramas ever made.

2. Murder on the Orient Express (1974)

Murder on the Orient Express is a pallet cleanser of sorts for those unfamiliar with Sidney Lumet’s more hard-hitting work, and it highlights the artist’s range as a filmmaker. In this 1974 whodunit, adapted from Agatha Christie’s popular mystery novel of the same name, Lumet trades in urban decay for lush European countryside. A stylish period piece, Murder on the Orient Express feels like a call back to early classics of the 30s and 40s, especially given the casting of Golden Era icons Ingrid Bergman and Lauren Bacall.

The movie stars Albert Finney as Hercule Poirot, Christie’s most famous Belgian Detective, who, in 1935, boards a train bound for London at the last minute thanks to his old friend and director of the company, Signor Bianchi (Marti Balsam). What starts out as a seemingly uneventful train ride devolves into chaos when one of the passengers is found dead in his compartment. Poirot must piece together the events of that evening and, through his interrogation of each passenger on board, uncover a plot far more complicated than he could even imagine.

With Murder on the Orient Express, we once again find ourselves in close quarters, but unlike with 12 Angry Men, Lumet uses the cramped compartments and train cars to create a deliberate sense of claustrophobia. Each frame is organized chaos. People bump into each other, constantly battling against the walls and furniture of the train’s confined space. It’s a deeply entertaining ride and its runtime goes by in a flash.

There’s a whimsical quality to the film, with its lavish costume pieces and soft edges of light glimpsed through the train car windows. But being that it is a Sidney Lumet film, there is a rotten core found underneath it all.

It’s an obvious inspiration for Rian Johnson’s recent, wildly successful mystery, Knives Out. And, as with that movie, turns the very idea of justice on its head. Here, finding and arresting the murderer isn’t as important as discovering why the crime was committed in the first place. Through the performances he captures, Lumet reveals the lengths people are willing to go to when the justice system fails them. In the end, you may find yourself hoping for a different outcome than you were expecting.

3. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Based on a real-life bank robbery that took place only three years before the film was made, Dog Day Afternoon tells the story of Sonny Wortzik (Al Pacino), who intends to rob a bank in Brooklyn along with his partner Sal Naturile (John Cazale), in order to get the cash for his wife’s (Chris Sarandon) sex change operation. But, when Sonny discovers that the bank deposit was recently picked up and the vault is empty, he and Sal find themselves in a hostage situation that leads to deadly consequences.

Dog Day Afternoon is a pretty radical film, even by today’s standards. It’s a film about anarchy and it is unapologetically queer. The cops, along with the FBI, are regularly portrayed as incompetent and trigger happy, while the media sensationalizes the entire situation, giving voice to rampant bigotry and homophobia that still persists today. Through humanizing a character like Sonny, while never sugar coating his personal failings and flaws, Lumet asks us to empathize with a man who turns into a criminal not because he’s a bad person but because he feels as though he has nowhere else to turn.

The film is split into two parts and there is a deliberate tonal shift at the halfway mark. The first part of the film is kinetic, everyone always in motion. It’s deeply funny at times and leans into the absurdity of the situation. It’s a slow burn and Lumet passes the point of no return before we realize it. The last half of the film grows darker with every minute as we race head first towards a drastic conclusion.

One of Lumet’s talents as a director is his understanding of acting, his ability to get the most out of his cast and guide them in the right direction. Dog Day Afternoon is arguably one of star Al Pacino’s best ever roles, and that’s partly because Lumet recognizes what Pacino does best and uses that to his advantage.

While there are some obviously outdated elements in the film that come across as transphobic in retrospect, it’s worth noting how much care Lumet put into trying to avoid clichés, making sure his queer characters were portrayed with dignity and humanity. Having a huge star like Al Pacino play a man who is at odds with the stereotypical macho man of the time period was huge and is rightly recognized as a milestone in the history of queer cinema.

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Sidney Lumet knew how to tell stories about those who exist on the outskirts of society. Those who are othered, who feel like they don’t belong. His characters were often flawed and rebellious and weren’t afraid to question authority. His unmatched work ethic, along with the support he offered his actors, made him a singular artist with a distinguishable style and flair, and his loss is one that continues to be felt. But, as Lumet himself said, “Good style, to me, is unseen style. It is style that is felt.”

Fulci’s talents originate from his early days as an art critic, writing for the likes of Gazzetta delle Arti, interacting with the creative industries and forming a valuable reputation in the field. Fulci would then enrol in film school, working on documentaries before acclaimed filmmaker Stefano Vanzina, known as Steno, noticed Fulci’s spark and hired him as an assistant director on multiple Italian comedies. As he grew within the Italian film market, Fulci made a giant leap from lighthearted comedies to hard-hitting giallo horrors with Una sull’altra (1969), followed by A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971), the latter of which saw Fulci arrested with animal cruelty charges due to the simulated violence being so graphic. 

The filmmaker’s path to giallo was forged, creating a lifelong dedication to the hyper-stylised slasher subgenre of Italian horror, with the likes of Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972), Zombi 2 (1979), The Black Cat (1981), The Beyond (1981), The House by the Cemetary (1981), The New York Ripper (1982), and Murder Rock (1984) lining the peripherals of his auteurship with dark visions of extravagant violence and expressive narratives. 

The great Lucio Fulci was a filmmaking force, achieving immense cinematic success through his numerous films, many of which are definitive classics. Upon breaking down Fulci’s dense filmography, here is The Film Magazine’s guide on Where to Start With Lucio Fulci. 

1. Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972) 

Lucio Fulci’s breakout hit, Don’t Torture a Duckling, internalises every aspect of the filmmaker’s signature style to produce a flourishing display of repression, culpability and immoralities. 

Giallo films are often plastered with compliments regarding the lavish mise-en-scène and elaborate cinematography, and whilst classic giallo’s such as Don’t Torture a Duckling exercise these essential qualities, Fulci also implements an immensely dynamic storyline that propels the narrative to be on the same terrain as the immense visual practicalities. The whodunit aspect is layered with connotations regarding the extremities of religion, particularly with the film’s antagonist being revealed as a man of God, one of whom feels he has the power to kill in order to prevent eventual sins. 

The critique on moral avengers hiding in plain sight alongside complex and extensive plots is an essential detail throughout Fulci’s work. Originating from within the confines of Don’t Torture a Duckling is Fulci’s inclusion of fantasy amidst a bleak and serious backdrop, equating reality with surrealism and forming a trippy experience akin to an utterly eerie nightmare. 

2. Zombi 2 (1979)

Despite the name, Zombi 2 is, in fact, a sequel to George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978), which was released under the title Zombi in Italy. The history of Dawn of the Dead in Italy is somewhat unorthodox, with the film being re-edited by Dario Argento, replacing Romero as the original editor, and the prog-rock band Goblin re-scoring the film. To continue the success of the rejuvenated Zombi, Fulci was brought in to direct its sequel, which resulted in a horror that is a visual feast for the eyes. 

Zombi 2 features a plethora of signature Fulci features, with the film’s heavy gore and gnarly violence becoming a staple part of his post-Zombi career. One particularly infamous scene shows a woman hiding from the undead creature, slamming a door behind her and slicing off the Zombie’s trapped decaying fingers. The orchestral score heightens, and the Zombie smashes his arm through the door frame, grabbing her head and forcing her eye into a sharp splinter from the panel, causing streams of gushing blood and fluid to erupt and fill the frame with images of one of the most unnerving instances of pain one could conjure. 

The torturous scene is painfully slow, leaving us shivering in anticipation and quivering in dread over the eventual eye-gouging that is entirely unavoidable. The gory close-up is classic Fulci, with nearly every one of his horrors following Zombi 2 enacting extreme violence in an unbearably confrontational manner. 

3. City of the Living Dead (1980)

The success of Zombi 2 saw Fulci become a highly sought-after director, with every studio desperate to get their hands on his artistic flair. Joining Fulci in the writers’ room for his next undead-focused feature was Dardano Sacchetti, a fellow member of the Giallo Hall of Fame. The pair took inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft’s works. They adapted a script brimming with visceral antics, repulsive kills, and an off-kilter charm that combines typical zombie frights with a surreal Lovecraftian sensibility.

Unlike the instant successes of Don’t Torture a Duckling and Zombi 2, City of the Living Dead was met with a contentious reaction from critics and audiences alike. Many reviews bashed the supposed nonsensicality of the plot, with Fulci placing shock and terror at the forefront, forgoing his usual brooding mystery-based stories. Whilst City of the Living Dead does take creative liberties, the beauty and allure of the film occur at the hands of the absurd plot twists and out-of-context violence. The world within City of the Living Dead is frighteningly bizarre and bathed in the uncanny, inflicting a constant sense of alarm and uncertainty.

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When discussing the hefty subject of horror cinema, it would be criminal not to give a nod of appreciation to the one and only Lucio Fulci, with many of his films not only contributing to the genre but also acting as staples that have gone on to define classic horror. Unabashed gore and astonishingly monstrous deeds define what Fulci’s filmography is all about. This auteur was one who was all for performative stories that take us on chaotic journeys of slaughter and savageness, and, despite the dissonance, he always guaranteed a thoroughly entertaining time.

Quentin Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1963, and spent most of his youth in the Hollywood heartland… or just south of it in Torrance, Los Angeles County, California. He consumed cinema voraciously and cites numerous renowned filmmakers as influences on his work, such as Jean-Luc Godard, Sergio Leone, John Woo, and Brian De Palma. When asked in an interview whether he went to film school, Tarantino reportedly responded, ‘No, I went to films.’ This fact is evident in the abundance of cinematic and pop culture references that pervade the auteur’s body of work, which relies heavily on pastiche to pay homage to his favourite genres, from action and revenge movies to westerns, crime thrillers, Blaxploitation, and martial arts films. His auteurist style is also notable for his use of extreme violence and gore, non-linear narrative structures, and dark humour.

The acclaimed director has earned a devoted cult following and dozens of awards, including seven Academy Awards and the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. However, he is not without his controversies and detractors. Over the years, he has engaged in public altercations with other members of the entertainment industry, including David Letterman and Spike Lee, the latter of whom has denounced Tarantino for his depiction of Black history and culture and his overuse of racial slurs (though his work has been supported by others, including Samuel L. Jackson). More recently, the director has faced criticism for his ties to film producer Harvey Weinstein. In a 2017 interview with Jodi Kantor at The New York Times, Tarantino expressed regret over his working relationship with the convicted sex offender, saying, ‘I knew enough to do more than I did.’ Despite these concerns, he has directed some of the most acclaimed films in the past 30 years and has worked with eminent stars like Jackson, Uma Thurman, Kurt Russell, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

One of Tarantino’s most publicized quirks is that he plans to direct only 10 films in his career and, according to Borys Kit at The Hollywood Reporter, sources say the filmmaker’s final work, The Movie Critic, is currently in pre-production. Though his filmography may be comparatively short, each film is carefully crafted, making this recommendation difficult to pin down. All of his movies could have made it somewhere on this list, but here at The Film Magazine we have curated three entry points that embody the auteur’s exceptional style, guiding you on Where to Start with Quentin Tarantino.

1. Pulp Fiction (1994)

Hot off the success of his first feature film, Reservoir Dogs, in 1992, Quentin Tarantino embarked on an ambitious new script, a narrative with a non-linear structure based on the popular pulp magazines and B-movie genres of the 1940s and 1950s.

Pulp Fiction follows two major storylines: the first involves hitmen Vincent Vega (John Travolta) and Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) who commit crimes and enact violence for their boss Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames); the second follows boxer Butch Coolidge (Bruce Willis), who Wallace bribes to throw a fight. The impressive ensemble cast is rounded out by Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, and Christopher Walken.

The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, winning the coveted Palme d’Or and garnering largely positive reviews for its originality, self-reflexivity, and almost blasphemous treatment of the Hollywood narrative formula. 1994 was a strong year for cinema, which saw the release of critically acclaimed and popular films like Forrest Gump, The Lion King, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. In contrast with these beautiful but classic films, Tarantino’s sophomore picture obliterates the traditional storytelling format familiar to mainstream audiences at the time. The film demonstrates the filmmaker’s unique talent for creating something that feels familiar due to its homage to pop culture and media, and yet is completely new and has never been done before.

The film’s indelible legacy and influence are undeniable. Some of the most lasting images in cinematic history are scenes from Pulp Fiction, like Vincent and Mia’s dance at a ‘50s-inspired restaurant, and the film is the embodiment of Tarantino’s bloody, indelicate auteurist style. Many critics and theorists have also identified Pulp Fiction as the pinnacle of postmodernism with its display of irreverence, parody, irony, moral relativism, deconstruction, and pastiche. According to Larry Fitzmaurice at Vulture, the memorable dance scene was inspired by Disney’s The Aristocats and the spontaneous dance in Godard’s Bande à part. Jules’s famous monologue paraphrasing the Bible verse Ezekiel 25:17 makes us question the morality and (in)justice of violence. And thanks to Travolta’s Vincent, we now know how to order a ‘Royale with cheese’ at a Parisian McDonald’s.

2. Kill Bill: Volumes 1 & 2 (2003-2004)

Even more violent than the previous film, Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2 are a bloody love letter to the tropes and styles of martial arts and samurai films. We recommend considering these films as one since the saga was originally written as one long feature and Miramax advised Tarantino to release the films in two parts.

Together, the Kill Bill films follow ex-assassin ‘the Bride’ (Uma Thurman) as she seeks revenge on her former boss, Bill (David Carradine), and his band of assassins who massacred her wedding. On her quest to find and kill Bill, she travels across the United States to Japan and back again, meeting and fighting her enemies: Vernita Green (Vivica A. Fox), O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu), Budd (Michael Madsen), and Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah). The films are a stunning display of Quentin Tarantino’s mastery of technique and style, but they are not for the squeamish or faint of heart.

Just like his earlier films, Kill Bill has received universal acclaim. Critics argue that while the two films might lack some depth in the story, they more than make up for it with their masterful skill and intentional homage to spaghetti westerns, slasher horrors, and East Asian swordplay films. Volume 1 is unique for its anime-inspired scene, directed by Kazuto Nakazawa, which provides O-Ren Ishii’s backstory, and in a bid for legitimacy within martial arts cinema Tarantino contracted the skills of fight choreographer Yuen Woo-Ping, a Hong Kong cinema alum who also worked on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and The Matrix. The final fight scene in Volume 1 is particularly notable for its thoughtful design in a two-storey Tokyo restaurant complete with a glass floor and blue lighting glowing through shoji walls, mobile camerawork, and practical effects that contrast the crimson fountains of blood with the yellow of the Bride’s Bruce Lee-inspired jumpsuit.

It’s worth considering where Tarantino lands on the line between cultural appreciation and appropriation. Since his tongue-in-cheek wit is frequently applied to his genre parody and pastiche, it could appear that he almost makes fun of the sometimes campy tropes found in martial arts films, specifically in the training montage with kung fu master, Pai Mei (Gordon Liu), in Volume 2. However, the director pulls from a long history of cultural exchange between Eastern and Western cinema. Akira Kurosawa famously based his film Yojimbo on American film noir and westerns, which then inspired Sergio Leone’s Clint Eastwood vehicle, For a Fistful of Dollars. Tarantino is the poster boy for finding inspiration in an expansive array of different genres and global cinemas and has been vocal about his admiration for East Asian directors like the Hong Kong-based Shaw Brothers. It’s important to review his work critically, but it seems safe to say that his intentions in making Kill Bill were genuine.

3. Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019)

This award-winning tribute to the glamour, chaos, and tragedy of 1960s Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino’s most recent film and his ninth entry into his limited oeuvre. Like some of his other films before it, namely Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Django Unchained (2012), Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood is a revenge-fuelled revisionist history film based on real events and people. Fictional TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), try to salvage the former’s failing acting career in a rapidly changing industry full of fresh talent and hippies. The two friends’ lives intersect with a number of fascinating historical figures, including Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), Roman Polanski (Rafał Zawierucha), Bruce Lee (Mike Moh), Steve McQueen (Damian Lewis), and the heinous Manson Family. In this retelling of the Tate murders, however, the young mother and burgeoning actress survives, and our heroes get their happy ending.

The film, which Tarantino referred to as his ‘Magnum Opus’ during its early stages, fits that description as his most comprehensive work that fully embodies his auteurist style and worldview. Beyond the dozens of historical recreations of famous movie stars and infamous events, the film’s title itself is an homage to Sergio Leone’s westerns Once Upon a Time in the West and Once Upon a Time in America. Tarantino parodies western tropes and turns hippie-era Hollywood into its own Wild West where Dalton and Booth can save the day as modern cowboy heroes. The film is also peppered with real archival footage of numerous films, including The Great Escape and The Wrecking Crew, starring Tate. Eagle-eyed fans and critics have even noticed references to Tarantino’s own movies like Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds, making this his most self-reflexive film yet. And of course, there’s his trademark violent excess, which he reserves until the finale to exact revenge on the Manson Family murderers, ‘Tex’ (Austin Butler), ‘Katie’ (Madisen Beaty), ‘Sadie’ (Mikey Madison), and ‘Flowerchild’ (Maya Hawke).

Critics and audiences were split on the divisive ending and the subject matter more generally. While the film still garnered wide acclaim, as well as eight Oscar nominations and two wins for Best Supporting Actor and Best Production Design, some felt that the setting was exploitative and, according to Caspar Salmon at The Guardian, unnecessarily ‘gruesome.’ Johnny Brayson at Bustle reported that Tate’s sister, Debra, was initially against the idea of the film, but after meeting with Tarantino revealed that she was happy with the script. In the end, revenge-fuelled revisionism comes with the director’s territory. It’s an integral part of his style and worldview and, no matter how violent, he’s always aligned against the morally repugnant and evil villains of history.

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Quentin Tarantino is not for everybody. The qualities that many audiences find exhilarating, unapologetic, and creative are too severe, bloody, and offensive for others. Both sides are right. As Hollywood becomes more sensitive to its treatment of people and stories on and offscreen, a director who plays by his own rules and often breaks them is starting to appear out of place. But it’s this risk-taking, confident, dissident attitude that has made him a force to be reckoned with in an often formulaic industry. His technique and style are of an irrefutably high quality and his passion for cinema is infectious. Tarantino’s postmodernist pastiche, self-reflexivity, and even stylized violence rewards film buffs whose tastes are as broad and varied as his own. And thus he remains one of the most interesting and innovative directors of our time.

Haneke has often expressed his cinematic motivations as reflecting the horrors that can hide amidst the most humdrum of circumstances. Haneke’s scope of work travels back to the late 1980s with his debut feature, The Seventh Continent (1989), which follows a seemingly ordinary family over three years before bleakly disrupting the mundane narrative with a shocking, fatal finale. This mingling of dullness with terror would become a distinct emblem within his next feature, Benny’s Video (1992), another recital of death against commonplace domestication.

Thereafter, Haneke developed this sense of indirect insidiousness to accommodate narratives rich in social commentary, particularly surrounding colonisation, war, and increased violence within mainstream media. This aspect of societal and cultural motivations is admirable, but without Haneke’s distinct ‘style’, his work would be all ‘substance’. Haneke’s efforts to develop film form can only be described as cinematically beguiling. Many of his films, such as The Piano Teacher (2001) and Happy End (2017), are immersed with stunning cinematography and moving scores to transfix the viewer and create an alarming yet inviting world. Paying close attention to Michael Haneke’s filmography highlights his multifaceted portfolio in which every entry is as meaningful as it is hypnotic.

Haneke’s tenacious grip on unravelling family dynamics and corrosion of the self has made him a regular winner at the Cannes Film Festival and César Awards. With such acclaim and admiration adorning his dense cinema catalogue, breaking down his work can be quite a task. In honour of this distinguished filmmaker, here is The Film Magazine’s guide on Where to Start with Michael Haneke.

1. Funny Games (1997)

Funny Games and the Victimisation of the Audience

The Schober family take to their lake house for their annual summer getaway, only for two men, Paul (Arno Frisch) and Peter (Frank Giering), to appear unannounced and unwelcome. The unexpected encounter soon takes a deadly turn as the pair decide they want to play a game.

Funny Games puts Michael Haneke’s rigorous approach to creating cinematic tension into practice. The entire runtime is an exercise devoted to testing the borders of film and reality, and employing brutal savagery to invoke harsh discussions of complicity and the role of spectatorship. Invoking Funny Games‘ lesson in austerity is Haneke’s use of progressive camera work, including Peter and Paul’s continuous breaking of the fourth wall. Disrupting the narrative by forcing sudden conversations between a character and the viewer is a widespread but uncommon device to pull the curtain of fantasy back on the on-screen cruelty. The interrupting fourth-wall segment allows the killer duo to speak to their audience, forcing the viewer to not simply watch the violence with a cloak of invisibility but instead join in, participate, and engage not with the victims but with the villains.

Michael Haneke understands cinema’s power, its hold over its viewer, how the moving image can be utterly ensnaring. Further suspending the barriers of screen and reality is a scene involving Peter being shot point blank, a presumed fatal blow to the chest. However, in the most bizarre sequence of events, Paul picks up a TV remote. He rewinds time, with Haneke maintaining a stagnant long shot of the characters performing their actions in reverse, bringing Peter back to life. It is an astonishing segment that instigates the dense theology that Funny Games espouses – Peter and Paul (acting as violent mediators) are in control, and the viewer has to watch idly as Haneke toys with the urge to watch a self-proclaimed hopeless and pointless piece of cinema.

Moreover, with the self-referential, metafictional tones in the film’s peripheral, Haneke sets out to critique the human condition, and the strange catharsis spectators crave from nihilistic, loathsome media.

2. Caché (2005)

Just as Funny Games and its later shot-by-shot remake of the same name (2007) highlight, Michael Haneke’s stylistic sensibilities are rife with transcending the borders of fiction and infusing dark analogies.

Caché grapples with an incredibly contentious topic that incites a deep-seated feeling of uneasiness and sorrow, with the film combining the affairs of a voyeuristic lens to highlight lingering postcolonialism. The film opens with an establishing shot of a wealthy Parisian townhouse, the camera does not move, nor does any significant event happen. That is until the frame jumps, and dialogue interrupts the silence. This segment is of a videotape played on the TV of the couple, Georges (Daniel Auteuil) and Anne (Juliette Binoche). Someone has been filming their daily routine and sinisterly sends it to the confused couple with no apparent rhyme or reason.

Haneke enrols the camera as an ogling character that takes on an omnipresent role of an anonymous figure that continuously torments the family with these unexplained videos, forcing them to recount their every move. This unidentifiable presence behind the camera slowly tortures Georges and Anne by arousing sheer dread and doubt. What makes this film a quintessential entry into Haneke’s oeuvre is the unshakeable secondary narrative that lies beneath the mysterious videotapes: Caché slowly reveals that Georges is not an innocent bystander as these tapes tie into a dark past.

The second act reveals that when Georges was a child, his parents fostered Majid (Maurice Bénichou), an orphan left homeless at the hands of The Algerian War. At the hands of jealousy, Georges conjured a malicious lie that banished this orphan from the house and pushed him out of the comfort of a family home and into a troubled, lonely care system. As the film reconnects Georges with Majid, a sense of repressed guilt is figuratively exhumed via the tapes; they are a corporeal manifestation that what may be hiding in the past still has a tenacious grip in the present.

Caché stands out across all of Haneke’s twelve feature films due to the burgeoning realism that protrudes from the screen and forces the viewer to look at their possibilities of guilt and how sins of the past are ever-present. It is an incredibly compelling film that still bears a hurtful truth eighteen years after its release.

3. Amour (2012)

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Michael Haneke’s Amour is often described as one of the filmmaker’s finest explorations into the fragility of life and the subtle everyday decisions that significantly affect one’s whole existence. Amour is not just heartbreaking in its portrayal of death but also so gut-wrenching and cruel that it trespasses the boundaries of fiction and teeters on the brutal, realistic truths that can come from losing a loved one.

Amour follows Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant), a retired music teacher struggling through the motions after his beloved wife Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) suffers a stroke. Anne’s incident has left her paralysed on one side of her body, barely able to talk, and a ghost in place of who she once was. Amour holds a tender yet startling mirror up to the viewer that leans towards sympathy whilst also provoking a reaction of fear. Throughout Haneke’s daring, frightening, and dramatic films, Amour is the most alarming.

The touching nature of the film is overtly confronting and raises questions of life, death, and the meaning of it all. And it is within this heartfelt exposition that Amour also unveils some of Haneke’s most visually stunning work.

Haneke has never been one for lavish, extravagant angles. Instead, he opts for the subtle lens, with Amour being no exception; and in this film’s case, a fixed lens has never looked more beautiful. The ‘still’ camera denounces buoyancy to reflect the melancholic atmosphere that encapsulates Georges and Anne’s sedentary lifestyles. Funny Games and Caché utilise an intense gaze to reflect the on-screen chaos. In contrast, Amour employs a certain air of stiffness that coerces complete focus on the sheer emotionality of the script and performances.

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Michael Haneke is a master in cultivating vile displays of atrocity against a mediocre background, as seen in Funny Games, Cache, and Amour’s predecessor, The White Ribbon (2009). Whilst Haneke showcases life through these confined paradigms, Amour proves that the director does step out of his typical filmmaking style and still has the gumption to explore alternative themes and styles in the mature stages of his career.

Whilst Amour is not entirely estranged from Haneke’s traditional methods, the film highlights a certain emotional sensitivity that Haneke has never displayed so brazenly across all of his work.

Cronenberg’s allegiance to the creative industry is burrowed within his veins, with his mother being a musician and his father being a writer/editor. His first instances of being fascinated by the craft were through watching Un Chien Andalou (1912), Vampyr (1932), and Performance (1970) at an early age, as well as reading the entire catalogue of EC horror comics. The passion that Cronenberg gained developed into a burgeoning desire to create monumental films himself. 

When David Cronenberg was at university, he was introduced to filmmaking, making Transfer (1966) and From the Drain (1966), two short 16mm films whose eerie charisma combines with grainy realism to create grim terrains and ‘unique’ characters. Cronenberg’s tenacious touch with lucid realities was always evident, even in the early days. 

This is when he took the leap to becoming a full-time filmmaker, forging abnormal works that would change the course of experimental cinema and lay the ground for eccentricity to thrive. His third film, Shivers (1975), paved the way for his iconic body horror status to seep into his filmic modus operandi, resulting in studios commissioning further gnarly works including Rabid (1975), The Brood (1979), and Scanners (1981). The late 1970s to early 1980s saw the wrath of Cronenberg’s unorthodox cinema, dripping in idiosyncratic worlds, become a core part of genre cinema.

This monumental director has taught filmmakers to embrace the uncommon and explore the peculiar, encouraging cinemagoers the world over to pursue their passion of making films even when their filmic visions do not suit the blockbuster climate of their time. This advantageous filmmaker is an icon within his field, with his surname even becoming an adjective to explain twisted body horror films. In honour of this quintessential director, The Film Magazine explores exactly Where to Start with David Cronenberg.

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1. The Fly (1986)

The Fly defines what Cronenbergian horror stands for. It’s a morbidly absurd piece of cinema that leaves a damning mark on the viewer’s filmic sanity, with the grotesque but glorious practical effects and the film’s roots of psychological disarray establishing a more than memorable, truly stellar offering. 

Jeff Goldblum portrays Seth, a scientist who slowly transforms into a human sized fly after a science experiment goes wrong. The Fly takes a rather archetypal premise of humans interfering with ‘alien’ technology and completely desecrates it, ripping apart the borders of predictability to create a film of visual excellence. Seth’s metamorphosis into a winged insect is nothing less than nightmare fuel; even the sternest of viewers is challenged in their attempt to maintain composure amidst all of the fantastic gore and lurid body horror that aided in creating Cronenberg’s masterly reputation. 

Cronenberg worked closely with Chris Walas and Stephan Dupris from the effects team, to engulf Seth with pus-ridden, gaping wounds, decaying swallowed flesh, and oil-soaked hair. Essentially, the ambitious scientist had mutated into a gigantic vermin-like beast who had been stripped of both moral and physical dignity. These effects were done all by hand. One particular scene in the final act shows Seth at his worst. In the original DVD extras for The Fly, it was revealed that Goldblum was briefly replaced by a giant puppet that had to be ventriloquised by invisible string and metal rigs, meaning that every single movement took hours to film. 

2. Crash (1996)

As most of his filmography establishes, David Cronenberg works with contentious matters to both confront and perplex the spectator. If anyone were to not feel completely emotionally obliterated after a Cronenberg screening, then something must have gone wrong. To phrase it lightly, Crash is the most daring entry amongst Cronenberg’s twenty-two feature films. 

Crash explores the world of symphorophiliacs (those who seek titillation from disaster, often automobile incidents) through the narrative of a film producer (James Spader) who, after surviving a near-fatal car accident, becomes involved in a dangerously erotic community. The film is a feast for the senses. It displays such intensity amidst a colloquially immoral landscape, leading each of us to become voyeurs in events that are far from ordinary; it’s an escapist, delusionally hedonistic piece of cinema. 

The film’s message has a deliberate lack of subtly, with Cronenberg emphasising the strange allure of horror, the odd appeal of witnessing something that general audiences deem taboo and forbidden. In its most primal form, Cronenberg soaks every frame in shock value to inflict a nihilistic, macabre commentary on ultimate liberation. 

Crash received an almighty torrent of backlash upon its initial release. The hysteria from censors and the public ruminated the video nasty panic back into the media in the mid-1990s, with Westminster Council banning the film from being screened anywhere in central London due to the media’s smear campaigns against the film. This hybrid horror and erotic thriller drove the mainstream media to their cinematic borders, intruding on the boundaries of ‘the norm’. And if there is one lesson to take away from the canon of Cronenberg’s work, it’s that he is a defiant director who aims to shed light on the unutterable. 

3. Crimes of the Future (2022)

David Cronenberg’s career stretches across five decades. And, amongst those years, his auteurship has adapted and evolved. When comparing The Brood (1979) with eXistenZ (1999), a film twenty years its senior, Cronenberg’s methodology certainly differs, with his early filmmaking days in the 1970s surrounding the significance of body invasion rather than the threat of modern tech narratives that advanced in the late 1990s. However, one aspect that has not differed in the slightest throughout his entire filmography is the matter of effect. 

Cronenberg’s latest feature, and Palme d’Or contender, Crimes of the Future, was based on an independent film he made in 1970, chronicling a terrifying future where live surgeries are performed as art. Starring an outstanding line-up including Kristen Stewart, Viggo Mortensen, and Léa Seydoux, Crimes of the Future is a film that can not only be described as disturbingly horrifying, but rather beautiful. 

Crimes of the Future sheds a harsh light on human evolution, with Cronenberg enacting visceral imagery such as ripped flesh and bruised body modifications to highlight how pain is crucial to the makeup of humanity. The film makes clear that the participants in these live surgeries lack pain. Their receptors are barren, leading to the exploitation of their own numbing powers. However, whilst the dystopian society lives vicariously through the dedication to art and bodily freedom, a rooted understanding of compassion and body autonomy is lost. Crimes of the Future diligently commends the hysteria, panic, and pain that comes from being alive. It may not feel soothing to the soul at first, but without the exhausting agonies that come with being alive, there is nothing to strive for. 

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David Cronenberg’s message is extremely abhorrent and cruel, even painful in its display of misanthropy. But this is precisely why Cronenberg has maintained a tight hold on audiences for decades. His work is confronting, unpleasant, and far from calm. And more importantly, his filmography is unforgettable.