REVIEWS

Author Steve Mosby has been a fixture of British crime fiction since 2003, writing numerous novels and winning the ‘CWA Dagger in the Library’ award in 2012 for his efforts. Yet, despite building a reputation under his own name, it was a new identity that brought his biggest success. Rebranded as Alex North, Mosby released ‘The Whisper Man’ in 2019, an international bestseller later translated into over thirty languages. It has now made the leap to screen. Directed by James

Anthony Bourdain was never just a chef. After years in the rough-and-tumble world of professional kitchens, his memoir ‘Kitchen Confidential’ made him an unlikely literary star, while the shows ‘No Reservations’ and ‘Parts Unknown’ transformed food and travel television. He wasn't interested in glossy hotels or ticking landmarks off a list; he wanted to sit down with people, eat what they ate and understand the places he visited on their own terms. Food was merely the way in.

Eldar Ryazanov had a remarkable ability to find romance in the most unromantic places. Throughout his career, he used comedy to explore loneliness, bureaucracy and the absurdity of social convention. ‘The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath’ turned an accidental trip to Leningrad into an unlikely love story, while ‘Office Romance’ found passion blooming amid the confines of a Moscow workplace. With ‘The Garage’, meanwhile, Ryazanov turned his attention more directly towards soc

Estonian cinema in the late 1960s existed in a state of transformation. In ‘New Waves, New Spaces: Estonian Experimental Cinema of the 1970s’, Eva Näripea cites literary critic Mart Velsker, arguing that the innovative spirit of the 60s was expressed most vividly between 1968 and 1972. Yet the same paper notes that many local critics place the birth of "true" Estonian New Wave about a decade later. Although Estonian cinema from this time remains relatively unfamiliar to int

In 1971, Stephen Frears made his directorial debut with 'Gumshoe', a well-received noir comedy that nevertheless failed to launch his feature film career. Frears spent the next decade honing his craft in television, directing episodes of 'Play for Today' and 'BBC2 Playhouse', along with several television films, including 1975's 'Three Men in a Boat'. He wouldn't return to cinemas until 1984’s 'The Hit'. It follows ex-gangster Willie Parker, who has spent the past decade li

William Shatner is the definition of a living legend. Ever since ‘Star Trek’ first burst onto screens in 1966, the man has been delighting audiences everywhere with his inimitable acting style, boundless self-confidence and effortless charisma. Whether commanding the USS Enterprise, battling gremlins in ‘The Twilight Zone’ or releasing surprisingly great albums, he's always done things his own way- for better and for worse. The 1988 TV movie ‘Broken Angel’ follows Shatner’s

Olivia Wilde's directing career has been anything but predictable. She burst onto the scene with the acclaimed ‘Booksmart’ in 2019, before the underwhelming ‘Don't Worry Darling’ became better known for its off-screen drama than its on-screen ambitions. Nevertheless, Wilde remains an intriguing filmmaker, continuing to explore different genres while taking creative risks. She returns to the director's chair with ‘The Invite’, an adaptation of Cesc Gay’s 2020 black comedy ‘Sen

The tale of Robin Hood has endured for centuries, with its titular kind-hearted bandit one of the most recognisable figures in English folklore. Over the years, the outlaw of Sherwood Forest has been reimagined countless times on screen, from the delightfully camp swashbuckling charm of Errol Flynn’s ‘The Adventures of Robin Hood’, to Kevin Costner’s bombastic ‘Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves’, and, inarguably the most beloved interpretation, Disney’s 1973 animated classic, ‘Ro

Throughout his career, J. M. Coetzee has shown an obsession with questions of colonialism, power and violence. From the brutal encounters of ‘Dusklands’ and ‘Age of Iron’, to the haunting isolation of ‘Life & Times of Michael K’, as well as the moral reckoning of post-apartheid South Africa in ‘Disgrace’, Coetzee has repeatedly examined the ethical consequences of oppression and the fragility of civilisation. His works rarely offer simple resolutions, instead challenging read

Few novels have cast as long a shadow over popular culture as Mary Shelley's ‘Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus’. Published in 1818, the Gothic classic has been endlessly reinterpreted, from James Whale's immortal Universal horror films and the later Peter Cushing-led Hammer series, to Kenneth Branagh's lavish adaptation starring Robert De Niro, as well as Guillermo del Toro's long-awaited 2025 interpretation. Yet the legacy of Frankenstein extends far beyond direct a

To call Homer's ‘Odyssey’ merely one of the greatest works of literature is to understate its significance. First composed in the 8th or 7th century BC, the epic has captivated audiences for nearly three millennia, inspiring countless retellings and shaping the course of Western storytelling. The study devoted to the ‘Odyssey’ and its companion epic, the ‘Iliad’, at the Library of Alexandria helped lay the foundations of textual criticism and classical scholarship. Few works

Anders Thomas Jensen is a singular voice in cinema. Managing to balance cynicism with compassion in a way few filmmakers can, his films concern themselves with misfits, eccentrics and society's castaways- lonely souls colliding in stories that are at once absurdly funny and unexpectedly moving. In a 2007 essay on Danish cinema, film historian David Bordwell stated “as there was the Lubitsch touch and the Wilder touch, we can now speak of the Jensen touch- a twinge of pathos a

From Peter Medak’s ‘The Ruling Class,’ to Stephen Frears’ ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ and Yorgos Lanthimos’ ‘The Favourite,’ cinema has long enjoyed taking aim at the aristocracy. Stripped of grandeur and etiquette, the toffs and blue bloods are revealed as petty, shallow and ridiculous. Across these films, aristocracy is shown to be a well-worn stage on which vanity and self-interest are endlessly performed in elaborate costume. Peter Glanz’s ‘Savage House’ is the latest to skewe

Kim Jee-woon is a cinematic shapeshifter. From the explosive kimchi western 'The Good, The Bad, The Weird,' to comedies like 'The Quiet Family' and 'The Foul King,' as well as the violent, hyper-stylish 'A Bittersweet Life' and 'I Saw the Devil,' he has refused to be pigeon-holed and consistently entertained. A genre-hopping madman, Kim approaches each project with a restless creativity, making his work impossible to predict and endlessly rewarding to watch. His 2023 featur

There truly is something special about a cinema- or at least, there used to be. In times gone by, the local movie house wasn’t just a place to watch films: it was a communal space where strangers sat shoulder to shoulder, becoming a temporary family in the dark. Entire towns gathered to feel the same heartbeat for a few fleeting hours; for that brief span, everybody- no matter how different- was on the same wavelength, transfixed by the magic-lantern glow of film. Cinemas

Corporate, male-CEO culture has long been fertile ground for cinema. Filmmakers have repeatedly returned to the boardroom as a stage for cruelty, ambition and the performance of masculinity. From the venomous mentorship of ‘Swimming with Sharks’ to the calculated misogyny of ‘In the Company of Men’ and the narcissistic violence of ‘American Psycho’, these stories expose a world where “locker-room talk” becomes corporate strategy, and emotional detachment is treated as a profe

There will never be another Dennis Hopper. Nowadays, in public at least, actors are generally squeaky-clean, cardboard cut-out, PR mouthpieces. Hopper was anything but. He was a true original, who gave some terrific performances. From the freewheeling Billy in ‘Easy Rider’, to ‘Apocalypse Now’s psychedelically warped photojournalist, and the gas-huffing nightmare Frank Booth of ‘Blue Velvet,’ Hopper left his mark on cinema, in films that will never be forgotten. 1981’s ‘Reb

Confucius once stated that “music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without”, and modern research bears that out. Scientists have shown that music can lift our mood, activating the brain’s reward pathways, lowering stress hormones, while creating a shared emotional space that feels both grounding and restorative. As Jean Paul Friedrich Richter said, it is “the moonlight in the gloomy night of life;” a salve for the soul. Few films understand this more

Action heroes dominated 1980s and 90s cinema marquees. Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis were at the top of their games, while Jackie Chan became an international icon. Superstars like Harrison Ford, Kurt Russell and Mel Gibson balanced action roles with major dramatic work, and even Steven Seagal was taken seriously (for a little while, anyway). Jean-Claude Van Damme was one such name in lights- the flexible Belgian dynamo who combined Willis’ charm with Chan’s acrob

When making a film about Jesus, someone somewhere is going to be offended. It comes with the territory. Mel Gibson’s ‘The Passion of the Christ’ ignited controversy for its graphic brutality and interpretation of the Passion narrative, while Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Last Temptation of Christ’ provoked outrage simply for imagining Jesus’ inner doubts and desires. Even just the idea of the Marxist, atheist (not to mention openly homosexual) Pier Paolo Pasolini directing a film ab