How Star Wars changed the film industry
Few movie franchises have ever been as successful as Star Wars. Over its lifespan, it has reportedly generated worldwide box office revenue of more than $10 billion.
Our 20 most anticipated films of 2022
With a number of projects delayed due to the pandemic, 2022 looks set to be another bumper year for established directors and emerging talents alike. Here are just a handful of films we’re desperate to watch (or, in some cases, rewatch) in the new year.
Film Review: Titane
★★★★☆ Titane may only be her second feature, but French director Julia Ducournau has already asserted herself as among the strangest and most exciting filmmakers working in genre cinema. Her follow up to 2016’s Raw exceeds even that film in its unhinged capacity to disturb and enthral. In short, Titane is a triumph.
Film Review: The Matrix Resurrections
★★★★☆ The franchise reboot we never knew we needed, Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix Resurrections is a wonderfully strange and baffling film, less of a fourth entry in an ongoing saga and more a personal reflection on the original trilogy.
“Keep them playing”: Seven essential casino movies
The strong colours and sparkling lights found in the glamourous world of the casino is ideal for cinematic dramatisation. The casino has long been a source of inspiration for various forms of entertainment.
The best of 2021: Our films of the year
“This can’t last. This misery can’t last.” A strange epitaph to begin an end of year list, perhaps, but these words – spoken by the aptly-named Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter – neatly summarise a year that for many of us has at once seemed interminable and all too transitory.
Film Review: Spider-Man: No Way Home
★★★★☆ While not quite hitting the highs of the similarly-themed animated offering Into the Spider-Verse, Jon Watts’ Spider-Man: No Way Home is still a thoroughly entertaining, web-slinging adventure.
The best docu-series on Netflix
Although Netflix is primarily viewed as a source of entertainment, you can also learn from it. The platform offers plenty of remarkable educational shows that deliver quality content. Whenever you have some free time to Netflix, why not choose something that will help you get smarter?
Film Review: Lamb
★★★★☆ Though it is inhabited by folkloric creatures, Lamb ultimately reveals itself as a human drama that uses generic conventions as a way of examining the destructive nature of trauma.
Film Review: There Is No Evil
★★★★★ Winner of the Golden Bear at last year’s Berlin Film Festival and banned in its home country of Iran, Mohammad Rasoulof’s eighth film as director intensely scrutinises Iran’s use of the death penalty through the lens of four separate episodes.
Film Review: Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn
★★★★☆ The tragicomic absurdity of cultural morality is the target of prolific Romanian filmmaker Radu Jude’s latest feature, the bawdy social satire – and 2021 Golden Bear winner – Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn.
Film Review: The First Wave
★★★★☆ Within the first five minutes of Matthew Heineman’s The First Wave, an elderly man is told “I love you, baby” by his wife via a jittery FaceTime call, goes into arrest, is brought back by a team of medics and then, suddenly, flatlines. It’s March 2020, and this same story will play out with alarming regularity.