There is an old Chinese proverb: “Three may keep a secret, so long as two are dead”, Paolo Sorrentino’s sophomore feature film, The Consequences of Love, presents its own spin on this truism: “When two people know a secret, it’s no longer a secret.” Total isolation of the truth is the only way to keep the truth concealed and this sense of isolation extends into various facets of Sorrentino’s film - characters, visuals and narrative.

Paolo Sorrentino's The Consequences of Love is a flawed yet highly distinctive modern gangster film, boasting stunning photography, unusual pacing and a nuanced central performance from Toni Servillo.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson.

Structure is often considered to be of vital importance to the process of creating a narrative. Structure has been meticulously examined and explored in relation to drama for thousands of years. Famously the process began with Aristotle’s Poetics, the oldest surviving analysis of dramatic principles and effectively the birth place of critical theory in relation to literature and theatre, critical theory which would eventually be applied to cinema.

Actor turned writer director Mia Hansen-Løve’s second feature film Father of My Children (Le père de mes enfants) is an excellent example of a two-act film.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson.

Four young men living in the titular Gravesend, New York, are caught up in multiple murders and petty crime on a Saturday night and slowly begin turning against each other. The films tagline summarises the film as: “4 Kids, 3 Bodies, 2 fights, 1 Night, No Shit”, although arguably all of the numerical values are inaccurate except the “1 Night” this punchy summary does capture the flavour of Salvatore Stabile’s directorial debut quite well.

Salvatore Stabile's directed Gravesend (1997) a low budget American Indie while he was still a teenager. This impressive and violent drama shows immense promise in the same ways as the early works of Martin Scorsese.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson.

When sound was first introduced to cinema the nature of the medium changed radically. One need not look any further than Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly’s Singin’ in the Rain (1952) to get a sense of how the industry changed (as portrayed by the industry itself of course!).

Jamshed Usmonov's third feature film To Get to Heaven First You Have to Die (Bihisht faqat baroi murdagon) released in 2008 is excellent example of quiet cinema and a great introduction to central Asian cinema.

Written and presented by Mike Dawson.

It’s well known that the USA dominates the medium of cinema across the globe, perhaps the only nation on earth that takes notable exception to this fact is India, which produces, on average, more films per year than Hollywood and has a dedicated domestic market (if a somewhat significantly smaller international market).

Is Don McKellar's end-of-the-world-movie Last Night (1998) a uniquely Canadian drama? Or does the film present a more universal theme and message?

Written and presented by Mike Dawson.