Sunday 30th November 2025

Film

Can movie violence ever be fun?

“Because it's so much fun, Jan!” This was Quentin Tarantino’s answer when an interviewer asked him to justify on-screen violence. Few would disagree. From the thousands who flocked to...

One of the most urgent films of the year: ‘Urchin’ review

There are few films which have the power to change how you interact day-to-day...

The performance of watching: Cinema in the Letterboxd age

While watching Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (2025) a few weeks ago,...

Film festivals should be more pretentious, actually!

Film festivals often get a bad rep. We’ve all heard the stereotype before: they...

A No Spoiler Review of Mrs America

To be honest, I didn’t originally want to watch Mrs America. I have studied the history of 1970s American feminism so hearing that Phyllis...

Setting the Scene: When location becomes character

I can remember the first time I watched The Revenant in an empty screening at my local cinema. It was during the height of...

“But where are the bonnets?”: Little Women and historically inaccurate costumes

In case you didn’t know, Little Women (2019) won Best Costume Design at the most recent Oscars and there are a good number of...

Comfort Films – Stand By Me

"Immature boyishness and naivety are never glamorised..."

Unclichéd and unabashed: LGBTQ+ storytelling at its best

Many a list of the ‘Top 10 LGBT films’ can be found online. Undoubtedly, another handful of these lists have popped up during pride...

Reviving my Childhood – Avatar: The Last Airbender

The year was 2005 and at the time, it was just another Nickelodeon show I’d force my sister to sit through with me. But it quickly became more than that,

‘The time to change is now’: Women behind the camera

We need to make a career as a female filmmaker seem possible, and to put pressure on the industry to give more women a chance

Musicals in movies: The interplay between reality and fantasy

Musical movies, juxtaposed with and exposed by realism, make me feel more. They make everything hurt more when you watch them fall apart, but they make the highs even higher.

Comfort Films: Catching Fire

The end of Hilary term was chaotic – just a few days ago I’d been worrying about essays and pre-ing with friends, fully immersed...

Fresh old stuff that hurts in the right places

New period drama forces us to rethink what we want from history.

Comfort Films: A Good Year

A charming British Rom-Com set in the idyllic Provence countryside, what more could you want? Sign me up, sign yourself up, sign everyone up....

‘Normal People’ of Oxford

Those who have not yet seen the BBC Three series Normal People might be forgiven for wondering what the fuss is about. The 12-part...

The Muse in Film: Winona Ryder and Tim Burton

When Winona Ryder first met Tim Burton, they talked like old friends about movies and music for over half an hour before realising that...

Possessed by Muses

“There is also a third kind of madness, which is possession by the Muses, enters into a delicate and virgin soul, and there inspiring...

The fourth wall: Looking beyond the lens

Beautiful, sprightly music plays as the two protagonists of Pierrot Le Fou (1965), Ferdinand and Marianne, cruise around in the countryside in a stolen...

Comfort Films: The Secret Garden

It is fascinating to me that nostalgia, coined in the 17th century, was originally treated as a physical disease. Nostalgia was used to describe...

Finality in film: The sense of an ending

For me, it is always endings, not beginnings, which leave the most lasting impression: the ends of novels, films, historical epochs – even lives....

Percy Jackson and The Failed Adaptation

If you think you received scathing feedback in your tutorials, you should check out Rick Riordan’s emails to Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The...

Comfort Films: How to Train Your Dragon

I was not expecting to be on a plane, flying back to Australia. Libraries closed, online teaching, “unprecedented times” (etc. etc. etc.) — I...

Indie cinema’s uncertain future

If nothing else, the chaos provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic has been indiscriminate. Very few industries have been spared by its impact, whether that...

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