21st October 2020
Why is Nolan’s portrayal of female characters so consistently terrible? A central criticism of Christopher Nolan’s films regards his representation of women, which consistently takes the form of a male character’s dead wife, thus perpetuating the “stuffed into the fridge” trope. This is such a virulent feature in TV and film that it has created ...
19th October 2020
An energetic trailer and promising premise lead to disappointment in the cinema. My first film review for this paper was going to be a momentous event. I walked to The Everyman with buoyant optimism, to watch a film that had the look of a Scottish classic. Schemers is based on a true story, set in ...
19th October 2020
A nuanced and urgent portrait of the lives of gay men in the early 1970s. Based on Mart Crowley’s disruptive 1968 play of the same name, Joe Mantello’s The Boys in the Band transports his acclaimed 2018 Broadway revival to the small screen for Netflix. Released before the gay liberation movement gained traction, Crowley’s play ...
12th October 2020
The first entry in our Food on Film series, covering the significance of food on-screen. Few filmmakers have proven as able to spin their cinematic obsessions into masterpieces as Quentin Tarantino has. His ideas about violence in modern society will give film fanatics plenty to chatter about for decades to come; those of baser interests ...
10th October 2020
Aaron Sorkin’s latest is an impeccably acted but disappointingly liberal legal drama that plays like a blockbuster. No one writes like Aaron Sorkin. Say what you will about his style — overblown, masturbatory, whatever — it takes a particular skill to write so recognisably that you can be parodied on late-night television. For The Trial ...
6th October 2020
Sherlock Holmes for the Stranger Things generation. Enola Holmes splashes onto our Netflix screens already running — or rather, cycling, in a nod to its lead actor’s most famous role. Millie Bobby Brown’s stylish petticoat-laden protagonist fills us in quickly on her life while she rushes through the picturesque English countryside to meet her idolised ...
22nd September 2020
A strong debut feature worth wearing a mask for. Returning to the cinema for the first time since March, one is unavoidably drawn to the question: is this the right film to return to cinemas to see? Happily, Claire Oakley’s debut film Make Up overcame this extra test. Bafta winner Molly Windsor leads what initially ...
22nd September 2020
After a historic Emmy night, Ronan Long discusses Zendaya as a star on the rise. This year’s Emmy awards faced significant pressure; an experiment into a return to unusual-business-as-usual in the arts and culture awards circuit. With many surprising voting choices by the Television Academy, Zendaya’s win arguably represented the biggest upset, setting a new ...
19th September 2020
Emily Menger-Davis discusses how Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You revolutionises on-screen depiction of sexual assault. Content/trigger warning: this article contains discussion of sexual assault and rape. Sexual assault has long been used in the narrative arts as a symbol of the ultimate violation of a female character by a male one. In literature and ...
18th September 2020
How obvious is Sally Rooney’s Marxism in Normal People? Sally Rooney’s Normal People is not just a story of love, but a story of the effect living within a contemporary capitalist society has on two young people. The novel highlights the social and economic inequalities of the classist system in which we live. Irish novelist ...
