Film

Right now, you believe you are reading this review in Cherwell. This is your reality. Yet in the world of the Matrix films, that could not be further from the truth.

Despite the shocking nature of Titane’s body horror, what lingers with you on viewing are the tender moments, the value of human compassion and the overwhelming sense that it is a tale of love and of family. An ode to Cronenberg's Crash (1996) it may be, yet Titane takes the strange premise that there is a connection between sexuality and cars, and crafts it into a work that explores an extreme form of love without words. Ducournau asks: how far are we willing to go to achieve a meaningful (familial) connection, to love somebody, and where might this kind of love take us? We learn of Alexia/Adrien’s daddy issues early on, and see the character start to deal with them as she learns to bond with Vincent in a fatherly way, as opposed to dealing with her trauma through sex and violence. Vincent, on the other hand, uses Alexia/Adrien to fill the gap left by his missing son, beginning to resolve an issue he had never been able to get over (interestingly set up against the cold attitude of his estranged wife). They bond through increasingly tender moments of intimacy, and through a shared love for dancing, culminating at the climax of the piece - in a finale Ducournau curiously describes as ‘a very happy ending’, though I would personally describe it as biblical, and a little insane.

Mulholland Drive is a film as mysterious and sinister as the workings of Hollywood. Do not be put off if you cannot quite figure out what exactly feels so off about it all the time

Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those articles about how superhero blockbusters are awful compared to classic movies. No, I’m here to explore the weird commonality between Ingmar Bergman’s The Magic Flute and modern blockbusters. Linking these different approaches to film will be a strange journey, but at its end lies an intriguing idea: that reality and fiction may be one and the same.

This is the time of year for promises we may not keep. And we’ve got plenty of movie-related resolutions, whether it’s something we always wanted to see but have never found time for, or a new aspect of film that we want to get into.

The well-established mix of humour and honesty that Sex Education brings to these themes is a refreshing approach, and enables an exploration of a huge variety of sensitive issues regarding sexuality, as well as more light-hearted everyday adolescent dramas.

The Green Knight is a medieval movie for the Internet age. I don’t mean that the titular Green Knight appears to King Arthur’s court...

CW: sexual assault. For musical theatre purists and sceptics alike, Steven Spielberg’s reboot of West Side Story remains a hard sell. According to the naysayers,...

CW: Body image When I learnt that a new Barbie film is coming out in 2023, my first reaction was excitement. The batch of...

"Yet the message carried in this little soap opera bubble is nonetheless heartening: that the queer community is supportive and inclusive, and that for the very vulnerable, it’s often more loving and nourishing than the institutions and relatives that have failed to accept them."

No Time to Die has emerged from all of its production chaos triumphant, dusting itself off and adjusting its shirt cuffs with all the effortless sophistication of its protagonist.

Is the cinematic experience in danger of decline?

The device of the camera itself is one which creates an uneven power dynamic between the viewer and the camera’s subject.

“I’m a superhero,” cries Polka-Dot Man in the third act of the film. “I’m not just a superhero movie,” screams The Suicide Squad for the entire 2h12m runtime. James Gunn’s movie perfectly captures the essence of his source material, while also challenging  the conventions of Marvel/DC films. Gunn  has done this in a year that has seen Zack Snyder’s Justice League released while demands continue for #ReleaseTheAyerCut, but he has risen above these controversies and put his stamp on the project. And so, The Suicide Squad comes as an entertaining breath of fresh air.  

CW: sexual assault and rape, suicide “Every week, I go to a club, and every week, I act like I’m too drunk to stand. And...

Melding literary mystique with a sugary, hyper-digital aesthetic, Bravo plays within a territory of cinema yet to be charted.

Summer of Soul, which seamlessly interweaves original festival footage with contemporary interviews and news footage from the time, is truly brilliant. To say that the film merely shows the absolute talent of many of these performers would be an incredible understatement – the film positively resurrects them.

Watching Too Hot to Handle, you would think that we were living in the Victorian era rather than the sexually liberated society that many of us recognise.

“No pare, sigue, sigue” (a Spanish aphorism which translates as “don’t stop, keep going, keep going”) is a particularly catchy recurring motif from the...

'The truth is that travelling to different time periods might even give us a better awareness of the idiosyncrasies of our own era – an era which, for all its shortcomings, could well be the golden age of the television series as we know it.'