Monday 13th October 2025

Culture

Spike Lee’s lackluster remake: Highest 2 Lowest

There is no reason why a remake should remain inferior to its source material; even less so when it’s a ‘reinterpretation’ by an auteur as opposed to a cynical...

One book, 500 years of art: The History of Art in One Sentence

★★★★☆ Former Wadhamite Verity Babbs has created a practical guide to the history of art...

The Librarians (2025) at the Bodleian: reviewed

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

Be brave, Oxford: Let’s put creativity back in the creative arts

Welcome back, Oxford. While you were away preparing for the next academic year, or...

An Enemy of the People review: ‘Tragic but thought provoking’

Ibsen has re-entered the drama scene with the current production of his classic play An Enemy of the People at the Duke of York...

Cherwell Introduces: Menu3

Joining me this week, are four members of Menu3: Nicole 2nd year biochemist/lead singer, Jude 2nd year chemist/bass player, Dan music student/drummer, and Marcus...

“Extremely vulnerable”: Review of The Sun King

It is difficult to imagine the stiflingly intimate space of the Burton Taylor transformed into a wide beach overlooking the expanse of the sea:...

Bruegel to Rubens at the Ashmolean review: ‘Intimate and eye-opening’

"It was a pleasure to return to Oxford during the vacation to visit the Ashmolean’s new exhibition, which showcases some of the best drawings of the great Flemish artists of the 16th and 17th centuries."

Bust?: Saving the Economy, Democracy and our Sanity by Robert Peston and Kishan Koria- Review

"So long as we have an economic system geared towards the accumulation of wealth rather than the acquisition of it, inequalities will continue to widen"

The Oxford Revue: A Room with Revue

'a simple and clever production which ranks as one of the most enjoyable shows I've seen all year'

All Of Us Strangers Review – A Haunting Exploration of Love in all its Forms

"In All Of Us Strangers, writer-director Andrew Haigh leads us by the hand into a dreamlike, introspective world. "

Ode to a Nearly Beloved

"As though through tracing paper, I etch your features onto faces of strangers I’ll never know."

‘Bittersweet, immersive and profoundly moving’ – Perfect Days Review

"I don’t think I’ve ever felt so ‘in the moment’ while watching a film as I did with Perfect Days"

Book recommendations from the editors’ desk

"It’s rare that I find non-fiction to be such a page-turner, but Tara Westover’s autobiography was just that."

Hollywood vs. AI – Is this the end?

"the question on everyone’s lips is: is this the end? The end of special effects teams? The end of video creation? The end of filmmaking?"

Poor Things – Review

Includes some spoilers Poor Things takes place in a world only Yorgos Lanthimos could create. Like the rest of his oeuvre, the film is full...

Greg Heffley: A Hero of Our Time

Few modern comic heroes align with our distinctive age – an age which Dickens’s famous opening, ‘It was the best of times, it was...

Pink Tulips

"I want our story to be one of fields of flowers and quiet sunsets. I do not wish for violence."

Tangerine

"Picking apart the peel of the ripest fruit, prying open its flesh."

The Saintly Lives of Students

"There, there(‘s) a graveyard in the college where drunk students in funeral suits smile through tombstone teeth."

Diffidence

"non est, ut putas, virtus, pater, timere vitam, sed malis ingentibus obstare nec se vertere ac retro dare."

The Roaring Twenties

"The Roaring Twenties (1939), freshly remastered this year in 4K, is the last and greatest gangster film of the 1930s."

To fall in love in just ‘One Day’: Review

"One Day, like Normal People, has touched me in a way that very few other programmes have."

The man of the moment: Review of Keir Starmer: The Biography by Tom Baldwin

"Baldwin does his best to humanise Starmer and to deflate the view of him as “Mr Boring”."

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