Sunday 24th August 2025

Film

Just like the movies: An American’s notes on her Oxford year

Oxford occupies a mystical, almost fantastical place within the American psyche – so much so that when I told my peers I’d be studying abroad, they had me promise...

Netflix’s city of dreaming Americans: My Oxford Year, reviewed

If not taken too seriously, Netflix’s new movie My Oxford Year is a surprisingly...

Lacking Latin: Ceremonial mistakes in My Oxford Year

My Oxford Year, a new Netflix rom-com, has received considerable attention. Yet as a...

What can office workers learn from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty?

"The character Walter Mitty was first brought to life in James Thurber’s short story The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, published in a 1939 issue of The New Yorker."

Monos: More Than Just A Colombian Story

Landes has managed to create a raw film about humanity that goes far beyond the context of the Colombian conflict

Tenet review: Can visual spectacle make up for missing humanity?

After three postponements and millions of dollars’ worth of Covid-induced extra marketing, the much-anticipated action-thriller film, Tenet, has finally greeted a global audience, giving...

Have I heard that somewhere before?: i’m thinking of ending things and a crisis of originality

Kaufman is confronted with the impossibility of forming a new idea in a world where everything has been thought before, by someone else

Cinematic activism: Wind River and the #MMIW campaign

The power of film lies in its ability to force you to view a situation from another perspective

Approaching sexual assault on screen: The triumph of I May Destroy You

Coel reminds us that sexual assault is not always staring down at us from a bathroom stall. Sexual assault can be quiet, even subtle. Sexual assault can live hidden, unnamed in memories for years.

Comfort Films Medley – Chocolat, Call Me by Your Name, Ferris Bueller

During the summer vacation, countless people wish they could ‘pull a Donna Sheridan’ and escape to the Greek island from Mamma Mia! For me,...

Glutton for Horror

Mild Spoilers for Spirited Away and Pan’s Labyrinth Of all the sins, gluttony is the only one we truly commit against ourselves, where the implications...

Taking the old over the new: The importance of re-watching

It’s like the difference between working on a puzzle with or without knowing what it should look like when complete

Surrealism on film: Fellini and ‘Juliet of the Spirits’

Everyone’s going a bit crazy these days. I, for one, am happy to admit that the last few months have been quite bizarre, and...

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....

Follow us