In modern society, human beings learn to follow societal norms. Means of production and organizational schemes have forced people to live in urban spaces, educate themselves in formal institutions, and get their food from factories. Therefore, anyone who does not follow the norms defies the standard conventions. Nik Payne and …
Carry-On is the latest thriller from Netflix and stars Taron Egerton, Sofia Carson, and Jason Bateman. We’re well past the golden age of Die Hard knockoffs but the formula remains a very reliable one for making high-grade B-movies if you can assemble the right team to make it. Jaume Collet-Serra has …
2017’s The Greatest Showman is a musical drama whose popularity I struggle to understand. For all its huge setpieces and hyper-stylised choreography its narrative and thematic substance was cloying and often faux, with overwhelmingly bland songs – minus Rewrite the Stars – to boot. Director Michael Gracey at last returns …
Well, it seems that we need to say happy holidays to Netflix. Black Doves is the Christmas present you never knew you needed. Think…socks. An expensive, robust pair of socks that doesn’t have holes in them by March. They might not be what you asked for, might not have been …
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Christmas is a season to celebrate with family, exchange presents and eat delicious food, and then collapse on the sofa to lock into some festive entertainment. Holiday telly has become an important part of the festive tradition as beloved shows present special …
The line between a successful career and homelessness grows thinner every year. This, along with themes of familial strife, motherhood, and finding your sense of self, is present in Vivian Kerr’s directorial debut, Scrap. When Beth (Vivian Kerr) loses her job, she finds herself and her daughter Birdie (Julianna Layne) living …
The year I got divorced my job sent me to a career event for women in our line of work that purported to be a fundraiser for a domestic abuse charity. What it actually entailed was a group of wealthy women reassuring each other, with no sense of irony, that …
Director Alice Maio Mackay sits down to chat over zoom with Alise Chaffins about the comedy-horror film Satranic Panic. The Interview with Satranic Panic’s Alice Maio Mackay [Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.] Alise Chaffins: I was super excited to watch this, mostly just because of the …
Musical horror comedies have long been a place to explore gender-expansive themes. Obviously, one of the most famous is the 1975 cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but there have also been cases made for Little Shop of Horrors to be a trans allegory. Genre films are meant to push boundaries, so seeing …
On the 26th September 2021, screenwriter Russell Hainline posted on Twitter: “Just had the best idea for a Hallmark Christmas movie holy sh-t holy sh-t holy sh-t.” On the 13th November 2024, Netflix released the end result of this tweet: Hot Frosty. Mr. Hainline’s tweet made allusions to Hot Frosty …
Halina Reijn, the director behind 2022’s wildly entertaining Bodies Bodies Bodies, returns with Babygirl, an erotic drama starring Nicole Kidman. Kidman, now 57, has never shied away from taking on racy material, but her role as Romy, an aging CEO for a growing artificial intelligence company, is her most daring …
Nickel Boys, an adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Colson Whitehead, has attempted to meet the current moment by telling a story of horrendous racism and child abuse with neither racism nor violence in it. This is worse than the biographies of Harriet Tubman and Martin Luther King, Jr. …
After two monumental entries into the Star Wars trilogy, Return of the Jedi had a lot riding on it. Trying to stick the landing is always a high pressure job but with this final piece of the original trilogy, we are thankfully in luck. While it’s not as airtight of …
If anyone suspected that the success of George Lucas’s Star Wars was a fluke, then the 1980s Irvin Kershner-directed The Empire Strikes Back smothered these allegations. It maintains the imagination and splendour of the original while adding narrative twists and new character dimensions to the mix. But while it is, …
In 1977, blockbuster cinema changed forever with the release of George Lucas’s Star Wars. While Steven Spielberg’s Jaws spawned the term blockbuster, Star Wars came to define the genre with its humongous popularity, critical acclaim, and financial success, which was unlike anything cinemas had seen at that point. Nearly fifty …
The problem with The Problem with People is that it is so determined to be light-hearted in how it deals with an unpleasant aspect of human nature – our talent for conflict – that it is neither realistic enough nor cheerful enough. It works very hard both to provide enough …
2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – the final entry in the Star Wars sequel trilogy – had severe production hurdles from the start. The film was originally going to be helmed by Jurassic World director Colin Treverrow, who had managed to pen a full script with Derek Connolly …
Despite the critical acclaim of Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi, certain corners of the internet would have you believe that the film was “divisive.” While there were certainly some unhappy fans – they’ve been screaming from their parents’ basements since 2017 – the evidence of audience gathering surveys …
Thanks to streaming, the landscape of cinema has entirely changed. What once would have been a summer crime caper built for the cinema now goes to the small screen. Depending on how you view it, that can be both a benefit and a curse. The curse is that movies like …
Star Wars media has returned to the cultural forefront since the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015. A film trilogy and several television shows later, the franchise has become a norm within the entertainment media landscape. Unfortunately, such an extensive array of content has not had the …