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
Teen romantic comedies have been a staple of cinema for years, often credited to have been birthed in 1982 with Amy Heckerling’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Following this came a flurry of teen based rom-coms from the now iconic director John Hughes, giving voice to a generation overlooked in mainstream film. It is a […]Read More
Remember last Christmas? That’s Christmas 2019, not the godawful Emilia Clarke/George Michael tie-up literally nobody asked for. Well, last Christmas, director Sam Mendes released 1917, a film seemingly purpose-built to fill yards of column inches and storm into first place on the list of ‘your dad’s favourite war films’. It’s now Summer 2020 and 1917 […]Read More
For all it's whip-crack quotable dialogue, and raging masculinity, at it's heart, "Glengarry Glen Ross" is a story of blue-collar hope.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
As the COVID-19 pandemic has limited theatrical releases, the careful reopening of theaters could be a new opportunity for audiences to embrace more off-beat films.Read More
Daniel Craig had an unenviable task in 2006 when he first donned the tuxedo and took the mantle of 007. Pierce Brosnan’s 6-year stint had ended in the critically mauled 2002 film Die Another Day and many were asking if Bond was relevant in the 21st Century, with Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne films reinventing the […]Read More
Aimee Seddon discusses why 365 dni is one of the most problematic films of 2020Read More
Dennis Gansel's 2008 film 'Die Welle' suggests that fascism is still on the rise and needs to be stopped. 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
The first ten pages of a film are of fundamental importance – Jack Roberts explores what Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite does with this all-important slither of time. In February 2020, Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite made history by becoming the first non-English language film to with Best Picture at the Academy Awards, alongside its already established list of […]Read More
