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 ...
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 ...
8th October 2020
Paines Plough’s plans to quench our thirst for theatre. All of us theatre enthusiasts have been starved of the joys of live performance. But theatre companies across the country have been striving to provide digital content to satisfy our appetites and a new theatre festival plans to do the same. Joint artistic directors of Paines ...
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 ...
1st October 2020
Founded at University of Glasgow, Walt Disco’s latest EP channels the hyper-pop of SOPHIE, androgyny of David Bowie and punk defiance of Scotland’s Postcard Records artists. Walt Disco are one of the most exciting bands to burst onto the Glasgow music scene in recent years. Their androgynous style coupled with a New Romantic-inspired sound sets ...
26th September 2020
Everything Everything’s fifth album RE-ANIMATOR is an innovative masterclass in millennial despair, soundtracking the age of fatbergs and internet trolls while remaining radio-friendly. The group ditch their detail-oriented studio finish for a live, flawed, and honest sound. There has been an increasing trend in recent years for alternative pop acts to drop their self-indulgent narratives ...
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 ...
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 ...
17th September 2020
We take a look at Dreamland, an album which seems like the perfect soundtrack for those stuck in the internet age, especially in this age of increasingly online society. “We have these curated versions of ourselves on the internet,” Glass Animals’ frontman Dave Bayley comments on Instagram, “Edited, cool, distilled versions of us.” The band’s ...
