Dead Sexy: A Fortnightly Column on Erotic Thrillers Just like its ornithological counterpart The Goldfinch, Francis Lawrence’s Red Sparrow was a film pronounced dead on arrival. I didn’t have Letterboxd when Red Sparrow was released, nor was I yet au fait with the beast that is ‘film twitter’. I watched it at an empty screening […]Read More
The British film industry suffered a blow today with the news Sir Alan Parker’s passing at the age of 76 after a lengthy illness. Parker was born in Islington, North London to Elsie, a dressmaker, and William, a house painter. He started his career in the late 1960’s directing TV commercials before going on to […]Read More
Some people need absolute silence to be at peace or to work. Others opt for lo-fi beats, classical piano or white noise to help tune their wandering brains. Lately, however, I’ve discovered a section of YouTube that allows me to feel cosy, nostalgic and peaceful, filling dead silences with tingling ASMR noises and relaxing ambient […]Read More
Caitlin Moran’s outdated feminism of ‘big knickers and girl power’ falls flat in this rags-to-riches-and-back-again adaptation Like many, I was over the moon at the news that one of my favourite teenage novels, Caitlin Moran’s How to Build a Girl, was to be adapted into a film with the luminous Beanie Feldstein in the starring […]Read More
Dead Sexy: A Fortnightly Column on Erotic Thrillers Contrary to popular belief, I prefer erotic thriller maestro Adrian Lyne’s Lolita adaptation to the one made 35 years prior by Stanley Kubrick. But do either do Nabokov’s novel justice? Calling Lolita controversial feels like the understatement of the century. Many will know Lolita‘s famed storyline, but […]Read More
Dead Sexy: A Fortnightly Column on Erotic Thrillers The pleasure and pain of a striptease is structured around the anticipation of a reveal. Item by item, the dancer sheds their clothing until their body is bare: a vulnerable corporeality that titilates and disarms the watcher. Exotica, Atom Egoyan’s 1995 masterpiece, structures itself as such, gently […]Read More
Steph Green revisits this caper-filled comedy, which thrives in its own takedown of heteronormativity Dianne Wiest gazes at her bowl, unaware that it depicts men having sex with each other—albeit in the style of a Grecian ceramic. “What interesting china!” she exclaims. “It looks like young men playing leapfrog!” She isn’t yet aware that the […]Read More
Dead Sexy: A Fortnightly Column on Erotic Thrillers The depiction of twins in cinema is often horrifying—and no, I’m not talking about the 1988 movie starring Danny Devito and Arnold Schwarzenegger. “Come play with us,” whisper the Grady twins in The Shining, a ghostly apparition designed to terrify the young Danny Torrance. In Brian De […]Read More
Whether or not you know much about Shirley Jackson prior to watching Josephine Decker’s fiercely disorientating Shirley (I knew near-on nothing), the effects of it, with a little research on her life after viewing, are effectively the same. A woozy psychodrama with an air of moralistic seamlessness that keeps you guessing, the end result is […]Read More
Chilean director Pablo Larraín will direct a film about one “critical weekend” in the life of Princess Diana, with Kristen Stewart starring as Britain’s revered and reviled sweetheart. Titled ‘Spencer’, Steven Knight’s screenplay (Eastern Promises, Locke) will focus on the period in the Princess’ life in which she decided her life with husband Prince Charles […]Read More
Dead Sexy: A Fortnightly Column on Erotic Thrillers When two passenger airlines crashed into the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001, life changed irreversibly for Americans—and we don’t need reminding of the ongoing global impact that these attacks had too. But domestically, an estimated 422,000 New Yorkers suffered from PTSD. Along with the trauma of […]Read More
Soft blue shirts, ripe peaches, rustling sheet music, urgent kisses. When Call Me By Your Name was released in 2017, people fell in love with not just the story, but with the very fabric of the filmmaking. Eschewing the frigidity of Hollywood cinema and winning legions of fans perhaps not used to slower cinema, the […]Read More
Christina Newland’s essay collection She Found it at the Movies shines a light on a diverse set of voices to reclaim female desire, according to Film News Editor, Steph Green Women and their desirous response to cinema have been shut out of film criticism since the profession began. With the field monopolized by the pale, […]Read More
Film News Editor Steph Green provides a beginner’s guide to the banquet of World Cinema “I want to start watching more foreign-language films,” my friend recently said to me, “but I just don’t know where to start.” Not too long ago, I had a similar problem. Sure, there are the classics — the intimidating, canonical titans […]Read More
Although the 2020 edition of the Cannes Film Festival was already meant to have taken place last month with Spike Lee as head of the Jury, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has caused events to be postponed worldwide. Only now is the prestigious festival’s official selection being announced, without the usual fanfare of a busy press […]Read More
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