Pillion is the feature-directorial debut from Harry Lighton and an adaptation of Adam Mars-Jones’ 2020 novel Box Hill. The film opens in a very British pub in Bromley, where we meet Colin (Harry Melling) singing in a 1950s-style quartet with his dad and brother. As the camera slowly pans around the room, we spot Ray […]
Read More Pillion Review: A Dom Com ★★★★Can a single time travel film truly make someone laugh, smile, panic and even tear up even after forty years since its release? Hollywood has reached a point where in the name of cinema, filmmakers are using the concept of ‘nostalgia’ in the hope of saving movie theatres, believing it would bring back audiences to […]
Read More Forty years later: Why Back to the Future still remains irreplaceableEmerging filmmaker Iain Forbes brings a striking new voice to the short-film landscape with After Dark, a brooding and imaginative work that blurs the line between the intimate and the uncanny. Known for his meticulous visual style and instinctive feel for human vulnerability, Forbes crafts films that linger long after the final frame. With After […]
Read More Iain Forbes on his Oscar-Qualifying Short Film- After Dark and his Career so farFor 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.
Read More Bond of Today: How Has The Franchise Endured for Sixty Years?Mild spoiler warning. Picture this: one of your favourite directors (Lynne Ramsay) announces a new film starring two of your favourite actors (Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson). You’re ecstatic. You watch it, and it not only meets—but exceeds—your expectations. A match made in cinematic heaven. Adding to the anticipation, one of the producers is none […]
Read More Die My Love (2025) Review. A Mother’s Descent into Madness ★★★★⯨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.
Read More Soot, Steel & Spirits: Tradition and Modernity in Spirited Away (2001) and Princess Mononoke (1997)At a time where the viewership of non-commercial cinema seems to be falling, Paul Thomas Anderson reminds us of how social, political and historical context can completely reshape a film’s meaning and perspective. In an era when politics seems to be going back, Anderson makes a daring attempt to give us One Battle After Another, […]
Read More One Battle After Another: Loved By Critics, But Loses CommerciallyI recently sat down with filmmaker and online-trailblazer Jack Howard — the British YouTube personality who first rose to prominence through his comedy duo Jack & Dean (whose channel amassed over 73 million views). After honing his craft in sketches and commercials, Jack has now made a bold leap into the festival circuit with his […]
Read More Jack Howard on his new Oscar- Qualifying short film- The Second Time AroundHorror 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 […]
Read More The Anatomy of Body Horror: Why It Scares UsThe news that Daniel Day-Lewis had come out of retirement to co-write and star in a film directed by his son, Ronan Day-Lewis, immediately caught my attention. Before seeing the film, I attended Daniel’s Screen Talk at the London Film Festival, hosted by Mark Kermode. At one point, Daniel asked if he could tell a […]
Read More Anemone (2025) Review- An Absent Father Haunted by His Past ★★★★⯨