Love Letter

Trading Places (1983) is not a film often mentioned on many people’s list of favourite Christmas films. Though it may not have as many obvious festive touch-points as revered classics such as It’s a...

Sergio Leone is undoubtedly a master of his craft; in fact, such is his genius that one could approach any of his major works and find a film whose sheer magnificence is scarcely penetrated by whatever amount...

George Roy Hill’s 1973 classic The Sting is a film laced with cinematic heritage. Yet despite winning seven Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, the film has been eclipsed by another of Hill’s...

Taika Waititi's Boy is a cinematic gem for a number of reasons: it is well acted, brilliantly executed and aesthetically comprehensive, with well-balanced comedy and drama that has created one of the most...

One of my favourite things to do as a kid was to look at my great-grandmother’s collection of photographs. Unlike most people of her generation she didn’t keep them in neatly-sorted photo albums, but...

Considered – even by its many admirers – the huge splitter of opinions in Charlie Kaufman’s oeuvre, his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York is a sprawling, deranged masterpiece in which raw, naked...

I first saw Life of Pi in immersive, delicate and dreamlike 3-D, and left the cinema enraptured by the story I’d seen. The spectacle of the film offered adventure, emotion, allegorical insight, and stunning...

Tick, tock. Tick, tock. That click and whir of clocks is laced throughout TiMER (2009), whether it's in the jangling of its tinkly soundtrack or the details of its mise-en-scene. It's an appropriate "tick"...

Continuing the recent trend of articles about Spike Jonze on One Room With A View, here's a Love Letter dedicated to Being John Malkovich and why it's a work of genius that should be adored by everyone....

If John Waters, the self-proclaimed pope of trash and director of Pink Flamingos (1972) and Hairspray (1988), were to direct a family film for the holiday season, it would probably look a little like Grey...

Kicking off with Fester standing on top of the ghastly family home, howling at the moon, followed swiftly by Morticia’s classic 'Gomez, marvelous news: I’m going to have a baby. Right now', The Addams...

There has been a recent change within the discourse of film criticism: perhaps it is a symptom of the internet generation that allows everyone to have a voice, to be a critic; perhaps it is an attempt to push...

They were on a mission from God. No one stood a chance, let alone the entire representation of the Illinois Law Enforcement Community. Born out of a musical sketch on Saturday Night Live, The Blues Brothers...

A Knight’s Tale is the gleefully wrought tale of a poor thatcher’s son in the service of a knight, who promptly kicks the bucket three minutes before he is due to win big in a jousting tournament....

A few years ago I took a Film Studies course at university. One of the classes dealt with cinephilia – the love of film. At the beginning of the session, the lecturer asked an interesting question that...