Analysis

Douglas Sirk is a tough sell in a cynical age. Perhaps he would be in any. His plots are often shallow and seeped in wish-fulfilment; the performances are overwrought and slightly archaic; his sets, despite...

Horror sequels so often fall prey to the law of diminishing returns. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It has its work cut out for it, because not only is it the third instalment in the mainline series,...

“I always played older,” Olympia Dukakis once told the New York Times. “I think it was the voice.” From 40 years old, Dukakis was playing mothers of grown children and elder stateswomen - and...

In the realm of great storylines, “A formerly flamboyant hairdresser takes a long walk across a small town to style a dead woman's hair” certainly hits the jackpot. Throw in two contrasting legends in the...

With an outpouring of festival and critics awards over the last 12 months, it seemed almost certain that Kelly Reichardt’s stunning First Cow would garner a handful of Academy Awards nominations. But in a...

Feminist author Betty Friedan dismissed the critical and popular success of Silence of the Lambs by calling it a film about “the evisceration, the skinning alive of women.” On the surface, her disgust is...

The ending of another year is a time that lends itself to reflection. So let’s look back on the good old days, when going to the supermarket didn’t feel like a health hazard, when cinemas were open and...

Released less than a month before the UK entered lockdown, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a memory from the Before Times. Not only is it about so much of what has been taken from us this year, but the film...

Editor note - While Little Women was released on the 26th December 2019 in the UK, due to time constraints our group of writers did not get the chance to vote for it in last year's Top 20. For that reason, we...

One of the things that separates my very favourite films from those that are merely excellent is that they seem to fold in other mediums as they go. With its dense plotting and lovingly textured surroundings,...

Mermaids, one-eyed seagulls, and glimpses of sea monsters; Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse is anything but a mainstream horror. This undeniably weird film landed in the UK in the “normal” part of 2020,...

In a year so dominated by collective illness, loss, and pain, focusing on the tragedy of a single family for two hours can feel remarkably refreshing. Shannon Murphy’s debut feature Babyteeth is an intimate...

Throughout the delirious beats of its climax, Bacurau demands the viewer to both abandon and embrace their humanity. As the underdog marches to victory, the joy of cruel, uncensored death blends into...

Everyone should see 1917. Whatever your film taste, whatever your interest in World War One films in particular, 1917 bridges the divide. Winner of Best Film and Best Director at the 2020 Baftas (among many,...

Watch the opening sequence of Suspiria here: part 1 & part 2 A masterpiece of the genre, and certainly the most famous Italian example, Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) remains a uniquely haunting...