The Blair Witch Project at 20 Katy Moon July 12, 2019 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia In 1997, actors Heather Donaghue, Mike Williams, and Josh Leonard ventured into the woods of Burkittsville, Maryland to film a fake documentary about the legend of the Blair Witch. Two years later, their...
A Love Letter to… Hellboy Katy Moon April 9, 2019 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia Pairing the director who calls monsters “the patron saints of our blissful imperfection”, and a comic series about a cat-loving, cigar-smoking demon was a match made in heaven. Though Marvel and DC have...
Why 10 Things I Hate About You is the Greatest Shakespeare Adaptation Carmen Paddock March 29, 2019 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia Twenty years ago Heath Ledger danced his way down some bleachers and into film legend with an enthusiastic rendition of ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’. Its lack of vocal finesse coupled with a total...
A Most Excellent Adventure: 30 Years of Bill and Ted Katy Moon February 15, 2019 Features, Love Letter San Dimas, 1988. Bill S. Preston, Esq. (Alex Winters) and Ted "Theodore" Logan (Keanu Reeves) don’t know it yet, but they’re destined for greatness. Their band Wyld Stallyns may be awful now, but by...
An Ode to Mary Poppins’ Element of Fun Calum Baker December 22, 2018 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia By the end of Mary Poppins, it's easy to mistake its warmth for simplicity. As moving as it is, it's basic as all hell: two hours and 20 minutes just build up to George Banks learning a lesson and embracing...
A Love Letter To… You’ve Got Mail Katy Moon December 18, 2018 Features, Love Letter Today, it may be a truth universally acknowledged that the internet is Dark and Full of Terrors – but it wasn’t always this way. 20 years ago, Nora Ephron beckoned audiences into a beautiful fantasy world,...
Peter O’Toole: The Human Heart of an Epic Henry Gatrell December 14, 2018 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia Lawrence of Arabia is often remembered for its immense scale, staggeringly large and well-coordinated set pieces, and other such enormities – like the 258-day shooting time. But a less-often mentioned aspect...
The Best Robin Hood Movie Turned 80 This Year Rory Steabler November 19, 2018 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia The story of Robin Hood is a story of remakes. The character has evolved in countless ways since his origins in (maybe) 14th-century folk ballads. Familiar elements of the legend – Maid Marian, the Sheriff...
The Thing – Horror Cinema’s Greatest Remake Katy Moon November 13, 2018 Analysis, Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia, One Off Creating horror remakes is often a thankless job. Taking familiar intellectual properties with built-in audience recognition and repackaging them with a little more sex or violence than the originals were...
Halloween: The Perfect Slasher Turns 40 Katy Moon October 17, 2018 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia Like the great Michael Myers himself, you can never really kill a horror franchise. This month, 40 years after the original slashed its way onto movie screens and into our hearts, Halloween returns. Pointedly...
What’s the Meta? How The Cabin in the Woods Subverted Horror James Andrews October 11, 2018 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia Screenwriter extraordinaire Drew Goddard (Cloverfield, World War Z, The Martian) is back with his second feature as a director, Bad Times at the El Royale. His latest finds a group of strangers unravelling a...
Rushmore and How the Teen Movie Grew Up Rhys Handley October 8, 2018 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia Rushmore is 20 years old. Even with a two-decade legacy that reaches into cinema’s hallowed history to map out its future, Wes Anderson’s singular screwball tale of love, betrayal and extracurricular...
Still Creating Musical Fusion: School of Rock Turns 15 Ellena Zellhuber-McMillan October 3, 2018 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia When it came out in 2003, School of Rock was deemed a "sleeper hit". Though it was obviously intriguing enough to investors, it does sound pretty unremarkable: washed-up musician tries to teach preppy kids how...
My Summer of Love: Pawel Pawlikowski’s Finest Hour Patrick Nabarro August 30, 2018 Features, Love Letter Pawel Pawlikowski, winner of the Best Director award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for Cold War, has become one of the world’s top contemporary auteurs almost by stealth. He’s not a filmmaker who...
A Love Letter To… The Muppets (2011) Sian Brett August 24, 2018 Features, Love Letter, Nostalgia For many a comedy fan, The Muppets was the start of a lifelong love of entertainment. Playing the music, lighting the lights, celebrity guest stars aplenty, and a gang of Muppets to offer guaranteed laughs...