Category: Uncategorized
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The Worst Person in the World review
Describing a film as universal feels like a bit of a cop-out as well as potentially damning it with faint praise. But in the case of The Worst Person in the World and its status as a romcom, which often feels like the most fanciful cinematic genre, its realism and relatability is what makes it…
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Red Rocket review
Director Sean Baker describes the basis of Red Rocket as a character study of a “suitcase pimp”; an obscure, adult industry related term for a man who scrounges off female talent. It’s derogatory, conveyed by the way it is spat out condemningly at the film’s central character during his moment of reckoning, and Red Rocket…
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2022 Oscar Nominations
Seth Rogen caused a bit of a stir last week when he questioned whether people outside the film industry should be invested in the Oscars, saying “no other industry expects everyone to care about what awards they shower upon themselves”. Logically, Rogen is right; the Oscars are ultimately an elitist, closed-off Hollywood ego-massager whose opinion…
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Nightmare Alley review
Considering Guillermo del Toro’s penchant for gothic strangeness and periodic fantasy, it seems slightly left-field that his follow-up to 2017 Best Picture winner The Shape of Water is a 1940s neo-noir thriller centred around the mania of carnivals. Fortunately, though not exactly surprisingly, Nightmare Alley is much too good to be confined by genre limitations.…
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The Lost Daughter review
There’s a scene very early on in The Lost Daughter where Olivia Coleman’s Leda goes to pick from an appetising-looking bowl of fruit, only to find that it has all gone rotten. To some extent, this moment is symptomatic of the holiday that she is embarking on, whereby something that appears idyllic and aesthetically pleasing…
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Titane review
Julia Ducournau’s engrossing follow-up to her 2016 debut Raw is another instance of the talented French director utilising the shock of surface to examine human identity and its complexities. The film is archly Cronenbergian, interweaving striking body-horror and auto-erotica together, yet there is an intoxicating originality in how Ducournau offsets these genre conventions against gender…
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Best of 2021 – The Green Knight
Having studied and greatly enjoyed the text during 1st year English, I was excited to see how the indie-centric combination of David Lowry and A24 would go about tackling this mystical poem. The Green Knight is an enthralling, visually stunning morality tale that gets right to the heart of the source material; subtly probing whether…
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Star to watch – Florence Pugh
Florence Pugh is currently at the stage of her career where she falls neatly between being a rising star and an established icon of Hollywood. However with every film, she edges closer to the latter. Some performers’ bankability is based upon a consistency of performance-type; Tom Hanks being a prime example as the everyman American,…
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Hot Fuzz Freshers Flick
Few films are better suited to a night of boozing and potentially awkward bonding than Hot Fuzz. Whether you’re a movie buff or think that Fast and Furious is actually about family, this hilarious buddy cop/murder-mystery thriller ticks all the boxes. Simon Pegg’s displacement, arriving in an unfamiliar place with nothing but a Japanese Peace…
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Unconventional Romances – Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
The premise of a couple erasing each other from their memories seems an inauspicious way to examine a romantic relationship, but this is precisely what makes Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind such an absolute treat of a film. We encounter Joel (Jim Carrey) and Clem’s (Kate Winslet) shared experiences as they reflect on them,…
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