The Evolution of Marvel’s Women
Wrack your brains for somewhere the DC Extended Universe has beaten its rival, Marvel, and you will probably land on Wonder Woman. As well as reintroducing female-led superhero movies after Elektra in 2005, it...
The Changing Face of AI in Anime and its Western Remakes
"I am who?” Tima, the child robot of Rintaro's Metropolis (2001), asks just before she plunges from the edge of a high-rise tower and Metropolis collapses around her. She is parroting the first words ever...
Into Heaven’s Mouth: Remembering Alfonso Cuarón’s Y Tu Mamá También
If we include the about-to-be-released Roma, Alfonso Cuarón has only directed eight feature films across a near 30-year career. The reason for this relative slimness of output is likely to have many factors...
Widows’ Best Shot and How it Takes Over the Film
Any conversation about the director Steve McQueen will involve his long shots. It’s impossible to think of Hunger without remembering Michael Fassbender and Liam Cunningham just chatting for 17 minutes, in...
The Emotional Cinematography of A Single Man
Tom Ford’s directorial debut A Single Man (2009) is based on Christopher Isherwood’s 1964 novella of the same name, but has its own unique style. Drawing both from personal experience and his professional...
Lost in Translation and the Lonely City
Before its release back in 2003, no one quite knew what to expect from Lost in Translation, an indie romantic comedy set in Japan, starring Bill Murray and a then largely unknown 17-year-old Scarlett...
50 Years of Night of the Living Dead
You’re trapped in a secluded farmhouse, surrounded by a growing horde of the ravenous undead. Do you hole up in the secure but inescapable cellar? Or do you stay above ground and try to fortify the...
At The Movies With Clarence And Alabama: True Romance Turns 25
True Romance turns 25 today. A quarter-century after that love letter to sex, violence, and Elvis Presley hit screens (and bombed), we have to ask ourselves: we’re all pretty much over Quentin Tarantino,...
Why Melissa McCarthy is the Best Screen Comedian of the Decade
With The Happytime Murders out this week and Melissa McCarthy’s previous release, Life of the Party, still managing to draw in crowds ready for a guaranteed laugh with the girls, it looks like her magical...
Why The Shallows Isn’t Really About A Shark
The plot of 2016 movie The Shallows is pretty easy and quick to sum up: it's Blake Lively versus a shark. This excellent, taut thriller sees her surfer, Nancy, get attacked and injured by a great white - then...
The Heist Film: A History
As a common sub-genre of crime films, the heist is going through a renaissance. In recent years, we have moved from the likes of The Bank Job, a film where Jason Statham does exactly what the title says on the...
Exploring the City and the Self in Jeune Femme
Whether you're a Francophile or not, we’ve all seen and experienced at least one version of the streets of Paris. In 1951’s An American in Paris, Vincente Minnelli turned the Parisian streets into an...
Annihilation and the Terror of the Uncanny
Even if you saw Annihilation when it first hit Netflix a month ago, you probably haven’t been able to forget its most powerful scenes. Ostensibly a sci-fi mystery about a meteorite and the strange shimmering...
Tiny Rebels – Wes Anderson’s Quiet Revolution
Wes Anderson is the most polite filmmaker in punk rock, but that’s probably what makes him the most effective, too. Notorious for his meticulousness and specificity, the Texan philosophy graduate’s...
Remembering Morvern Callar: A Forgotten Gem of British Cinema
You Were Never Really Here, only Lynne Ramsay’s fourth feature film as director, comes nearly 20 years after the sensation of her debut release, Ratcatcher (1999). That trickle of productivity has its...