Sunday 29th June 2025

Film

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."

I’m Still Here: An exploration of memories

"I’m Still Here follows a mother and her family as they deal with the disappearance of the father at the hands of a military dictatorship."

The Oxford Cinema & Café: A profile

"The opening of The Oxford Cinema & Café marks a new chapter in Oxford’s cinema scene: a move further towards independent cinema."

The Case for Reincarnated Romances

"Reincarnation romance films are sometimes silly, mostly melodramatic, but always overlooked as a subgenre."

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...

Cleverly Captured Vulnerability in ‘Normal People’

When I first read Normal People, it was the unwavering emotional rigour of the prose that got to me. Rooney has this matter-of-fact way...

Eyes Wide Open: How Stanley Kubrick saw humanity

Deep in idyllic Hertfordshire, in the last quarter of the last century, there lived an uncompromising genius. The director Stanley Kubrick was a recluse...

A Phenomenology of Lost Cinemas

Every time I frantically peruse my notes, I find the keystone unlocking the bliss of unbridled writing flow by way of recalling. I remind...

Cinema: The venue transcending the visual

Maybe if I had known, I’d have stopped to take a picture. I’d have kept that ticket. Maybe if I'd known, I would have...

Mastering the group-watch with cheap horror flicks

The credits start to roll once the house is completely overwhelmed by fire. The monster is somewhere inside, and it’s already been defeated. This...

The Star Wars Prequels: Too Easily Dismissed?

These days, with nowhere to go and no-one to see, movie-watching is as good a way as any to pass the time: suddenly a...

STOP USING MAX RICHTER’S “ON THE NATURE OF DAYLIGHT” IN EVERYTHING

Our favorite songs are fecund pleasures, increasing in affectivity and growing with us over time, like a reliable friendship. But, if you dilute the...

“I am together”: Love and loneliness in the work of Wim Wenders

In the quasi-apocalyptic gloom of these days, we desperately seek ways to pass the time, to numb our loneliness, to move on. The German...

Why Tiger King is the antithesis, not the antidote, to the Coronavirus

There are under 3500 tigers remaining in the wild globally. There are anywhere between 5000-10,000 tigers currently in captivity in the United States. This...

Comfort Films: What We Do in the Shadows

Niche is one way to describe a dark comedy about a group of vampires muddling through day-to-day life in Wellington suburbia. However, Taika Waititi...

Review: Corpus Christi

Once in a while you want to remain in your seat after the closing credits appear - you find yourself unable to simply get...

Review: Portrait of a Lady on Fire

It’s strange to talk about love in a film review. It seems to be the object of universal pursuit, or rather, more frequently, the...

An Introduction to K-dramas

On the 9th of February 2020, history was made at the Oscars when Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite became the first ever non-English film to win...

Review: I Lost My Body

I Lost My Body (in French, J’ai perdu mon corps) tackles issues of love, loss and maturity, all through a series of flashbacks in...

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