Bond of Today: How Has The Franchise Endured for Sixty Years?

For over sixty years, James Bond has been killing, seducing, drinking, and quipping on cinema screens to the delight of generations of viewers who have enjoyed watching him do so. […] It is the intention of this essay to analyse how the Bond franchise has adapted in a post 9/11 world whilst retaining its core identity.

Give “Stick It” (2006) its Flowers

Nostalgia is an inescapable force. In 2020s pop culture, the fastest way for artists to stir up a little excitement around a new release is to reference a classic teen movie from the 90s-2000s. Think Ariana Grande’s “Thank U Next”. Fans were frothing at the mouth to see her take on Mean Girls, 13 Going […]

Soot, Steel & Spirits: Tradition and Modernity in Spirited Away (2001) and Princess Mononoke (1997)

Studio Ghibli has contributed towards making some of the greatest animated films of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, two of which are Princess Mononoke (1997) and Spirited Away (2001). Through examining the attitudes towards tradition and modernity found in both these films, it can be argued that they serve as critiques on how Western practice, such as mass industrialisation and consumerism, have led to the neglect of the country’s cultural roots in modern day Japan.

The Anatomy of Body Horror: Why It Scares Us

Horror is perhaps the most versatile movie genre there is. It ranges from supernatural hauntings to slashers to cosmic horror. But to me, the scariest subgenre of them all is the one that hits closest to home—literally. I’m talking about body horror: the moment our flesh stops being ours and the human body becomes the […]

Bumping the Lamp- an essay on animation

[The sky above a stone circle darkens as an ancient wizard begins reciting a magical spell. With each word, the stone circle springs more and more into life.] Beothaich an cearcall tha na clachan seo air cruthachadh.Tha faid an oir ochd deug puing ochd coig meatair.Tha am farsaingeachd fichead‘s a ochd puing dhà seachd meatair […]

Twenty-one years later, how does Edgar Wright remain one of the most influential auteur directors in modern cinema?

In the film industry today, when we have a look at the filmmakers who are also auteurs in the industry, names such as Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee and Wes Anderson ring people’s attention. Now what is the difference between a normal director and an auteur director, you may ask? A director of a […]

Evoking Childhood Memories and Imagination through Franchise Fatigue

Last summer, we were flooded by so many releases, from the live-action How to Train Your Dragon to the newest release in the Jurassic Park franchise, Jurassic World: Rebirth. Some people would criticize that these movies are merely a scheme from the studio to mine gold, digging cash even more for their benefits from a […]

I Love L.A. (2025) Review- What’s not to love?

“We need another Sex and the City!” “We need more complex female characters!” the people shriek into the void. Yet whenever Hollywood decides to indulge our demands, we spit it right back out. “No, this is not the same!” After taking a backseat to drama for a significant period, 2025 has been a strong year […]

Exploring the constructions of gender in the films of Andrea Arnold

“One of the aspects that makes Arnold an auteur is through her interest in her young female characters and how they grow, make mistakes and their sexuality.” -Taylor When looking at the creative and artistic industry it has always been male dominated. As Virginia Woolf said about poetry “I would venture to guess that Anon, […]

Comparing the different adaptations of The Beguiled

“What have you done to me, you vengeful bitches?” An adaptation is “the action or process of altering, amending or modifying something, esp. something that has been created for a particular purpose, so that it is suitable for a new use” (Etherington-Wright & Doughty, 2017). One of the main forms of adaptation is that of […]