Originally published on 20/11/21 for the UCL Film & TV Society Journal On what it means to be garbage. The city, as a network of people, is a structural contrast to any other biome, in that the exchange of commodities and connections serves to create further entanglements, rather

Originally published on 16/11/21 on Letterboxd On entanglements. I've never been particularly captivated by Scott's skill as a formalist but his dour, unfeeling Late Style perfectly complements McCarthy's script here. There are no flourishes, no beauty, no tricks up anyone's

Originally published on 10/11/21 on Letterboxd There's a palpable haze to everything in this, like a half-remembered dream. That is, of course, the central conceit of Craven's final film: that memory is made up of bits and pieces which you can't put

Originally published on 08/11/21 on Letterboxd A denunciation of Hollywood more brutal than the deaths in the film itself. As with the breezy summertime slasher that is the 2nd one, Craven's concerns here are very much rooted in the concept of artifice, but what renders it

Originally published on 22/12/21 for the UCL Film & TV Society Journal A mirror image of many of the traits he writes for his characters, Paul Schrader has grown along with his films. Nearly every film he’s ever directed is fundamentally based on the parable of God’

Originally published on 07/11/21 on Letterboxd On the sequel as both shallow recreation and heightened tactility. So much of this film occurs through some some sort of lens; glass panes, video grain, theatre curtains. Where the first film was concerned with the knife ripping through the facade that

Originally published on 01/10/21 for the London East Asian Film Festival's Young Film Critics' Programme The cavern of a theatre hall, lit only by the faint glow of celluloid, exists as a temporal anomaly, separated from the often suffocating hands of time. Genesis, decay and

Originally published on 19/09/21 on Letterboxd Simultaneously horrifying and soothing. The family unit has always been a focal point for much of Shyamalan's filmography (take the ways in which the protagonists' families bind them to facades of normalcy in The Village and Unbreakable), but it&

Originally published on 12/09/21 for Instep Unfinished, unrefined, disordered, perhaps even rushed: all these phrases could accurately describe Kanye West’s latest album, Donda. To no one’s surprise, this project is not without its baggage; notwithstanding Marilyn Manson’s contributions and the highly theatrical listening parties, Donda

Originally published on 08/07/21 for Instep Kanye West is undeniably one of the defining multidisciplinary artists of the 21st century in just about every respect. From his politically-loaded lyricism to his development of entire characters and personas for his albums like the Graduation bear, he’s been ahead

Originally published on 10/10/2020 on Letterboxd. Respectability and what constitutes it in the realm of film has, for much of the American mainstream, been dominated by notions of “subtlety” and rather limited conceptions of what “deep” films are. Films nominated for Academy Awards are typically biopics, self-serious “character

Originally published on 27/09/2020 on Letterboxd In a career punctuated by undeniable commercial and critical successes such as Heat, but also more divisive features that would be regarded by most as commercial failures and critical bombs, Michael Mann has always revolved around the periphery of mainstream acclaim rather

Originally published on 17/10/19 for the Daily Times When filmmaker and actor Todd Phillips’ ‘Joker’ was first announced in late 2017, the notion of the film’s existence seemed a puzzling one; a feature-length film dedicated to an antagonist depicted in live-action on five separate occasions; Cesar Romero

Originally published on 25/09/19 for The Express Tribune Since the release of Stanley Kubrick’s seminal sci-fi opus 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968, the studio-mandated space-bound epic has been a staple of yearly theatrical releases. They occupy a spectrum ranging from Andrei Tarkovsky’s existential art film

Originally published on 12/09/2019 for the Daily Times. In an era where cinematic adaptations of comic books and graphic novels starring spandex-clad übermenschen are released like clockwork, with barely, if any, consideration for thematic undertones, and attention to aspects of filmmaking. The state of their source material shows

Originally published on 03/09/2019 With the ever-escalating turbulence of social change and democratic reforms that have now become a staple of the 21st Century, it can be easy to forget that propagating ideology that runs opposite to the aims of the establishment and criticising its methods, was once

Originally published on 01/09/2019 for the Daily Times In an era where the very essence of American cinema seems to be encroached upon by the machinations of gluttonous media corporations, and original productions seem to be a dying breed with the perpetual barrage of soulless studio-mandated creations featuring

Originally published on 29/08/2019 for the Daily Times In 1955, the Vietnam War began with the United States and its allies’ entry into the country; the seemingly perpetual conflict between the American army and the Viet Cong resulted in the death of 415,000 civilians in the Republic