Sunday 9th November 2025

Film

‘Fright’s Out!’ at the Ultimate Picture Palace: ‘Dracula’s Daughter’

To call Dracula’s Daughter (1936) campy would be an understatement. In many ways it felt like a ridiculous version of Cat People (1942). At one point, examining the body...

Cillian Murphy does it again

Since his generation-defining performance in Oppenheimer (2023) two years ago, Cillian Murphy has shown...

Spike Lee’s lackluster remake: Highest 2 Lowest

There is no reason why a remake should remain inferior to its source material;...

The Librarians (2025) at the Bodleian: reviewed

Kim A. Snyder’s The Librarians (2025) draws the audience into a pernicious web of...

Student Short Film Review: “unlucky.”

“unlucky.”, by Thalia Kent-Egan, is a film that, in the span of 20 minutes or so, and in the confines of a single room,...

Review: 1917

When Lance Corporal Blake (Dean Charles-Chapman) selects his friend of who knows how long, Lance Corporal Schofield (George MacKay), to assist him on a...

ON FILMS AND FIRST LOVES

Romance feels a certain way; but it also looks a certain way. And the certain way that romance looks is, to my mind, filmic....

Review: The Personal History of David Copperfield

With his take on The Personal History of David Copperfield, Armando Iannucci seems to relish the opportunity to draw out the inherent absurdism and...

Hopes for a Future Cinema: Less Lonely Women, More Little Women

Cinema, just like all other industries, follows a trend. And right now, this trend is unmistakably associated with women – with celebrities wearing “Time’s...

TOP TEN BEST FILMS FOR VALENTINE’S DAY

Maybe you are the kind of person who avoids participating in even a card exchange when February 14th rolls around each year in a...

‘Just keep my martini cool’: Why On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969) is the Epitome of Valentine’s Day Viewing

Like indigestion or crippling heartbreak, Valentine’s Day is always just around the corner. I realise this because Wish.com has started targeting my Facebook feed...

Review: Taylor Swift’s ‘Miss Americana’

Taylor Swift’s last album, Reputation, was an unapologetically  aggressive response to the ‘drama’ that she had endured during nearly a decade in the...

The music of Little Women

For the characters in Greta Gerwig’s recent film adaptation of Little Women (2019), music is an essential part of their lives. Beth (the third...

Heimat: a cinematic odyssey through 20th century German life

The controversy surrounding Taika Waititi’s recently Oscar nominated satire on Nazi Germany, JoJo Rabbit, demonstrates that dramatic portrayals of Hitler and the era of the Third...

Cinema Self-Care: A Therapeutic Guide to Nora Ephron Films

Even when I am most in need of time to myself, I still crave company. Nora Ephron’s characters, from jolly, larger than life Julia...

Review: JoJo Rabbit

Based on Christine Leunens’ Caging Skies, Jojo Rabbit is a very different kind of war film to Sam Mendes’ 1917, advertised just moments before....

Review: The Rise of Skywalker

Space Operatic Dullness by Mattie Donovan, “The Critic” When this new trilogy of Star Wars films began back in 2015, there was a charming sense of...

ROYALTY IN FILM

“Uneasy is the head that wears a crown”, wrote Shakespeare, who seemed compulsively committed to documenting the simultaneous lure and burden of monarchy more...

Review: Little Women

“Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as...

Review: The Gentlemen

Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen has been described – somewhat euphemistically by critics – as a ‘guns and gangsters’ film. It has been perceived as...

Review: Frozen 2

It’s not every day that Disney releases a sequel to a ‘Princess’ film. I approached Frozen 2 already resigned to the fact that this...

MUST SEE: Cossacks of the Kuban

On the 12th and 13th of January 2020 Oxford’s Ultimate Picture Palace will show the classic Soviet musical Cossacks of the Kuban (1949) as...

Review: Doctor Who’s New Year’s Day Episode, “Spyfall”

On New Year’s Day, exactly ten years after David Tennant’s beloved Tenth Doctor regenerated into Matt Smith, Doctor Who returned with the first instalment...

Review: Marriage Story

“Everything’s like everything in a relationship, don’t you find that?” This is the question Nicole (Scarlett Johansson) asks at the start of Marriage Story....

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