REVIEWS

There have been many films about teachers dealing with unruly pupils. From François Truffaut’s ‘The 400 Blows’ to Christophe Barratier’s ‘The Chorus’ and Michael Hoffman’s ‘The Emperor’s Club’, cinema has frequently explored the trials and tribulations of trying to keep a troublesome student in line. Few, however, have taken things quite so far as kidnapping the little sod and locking him in the basement. Jonatan Etzler’s ‘Bad Apples’ does just that. A dark comedy, it centr

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

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

Samara Weaving’s rise has been a bloody one. After making her name on Australian television, she gradually carved out a place for herself in genre cinema, appearing in projects like ‘Ash vs Evil Dead’, ‘The Babysitter’, and ‘Mayhem’, where she demonstrated a knack for mixing comedy with carnage. 2019’s ‘Ready or Not’ took things a step further, putting her firmly on the map as a formidable horror lead. Yet Weaving has never been content to stay in one lane, moving between com

Sometimes, a director's greatest success becomes their biggest burden; a benchmark every subsequent work is forced to confront. Although he arguably made better films later in his career, Orson Welles spent a lifetime living in the shadow of ‘Citizen Kane.’ Steven Spielberg's ‘Disclosure Day’ was inevitably measured against his earlier science-fiction classics (and found wanting), while M. Night Shyamalan’s work has rarely been allowed to escape comparisons to ‘The Sixth Sens

The legendary Gary Cooper's career came in waves. After spending the 1930s and '40s as one of Hollywood's biggest stars, his fortunes dipped, before 1952’s ‘High Noon’ revived his career in spectacular fashion. Alas, the resurgence proved temporary; by the end of the decade, he was left disillusioned. In 1960, Cooper lamented "Nothing I've done lately, the past eight years or so, has been especially worthwhile... Some of the pictures I've made recently I'm genuinely ashamed o

For a time, Richard Burton was practically a God. However, after reaching the height of his film career in the mid-1960s, his fortunes began to decline. A series of commercial disappointments and changing audience tastes diminished his standing as one of Hollywood's leading stars. Although still capable of delivering powerful performances, his career never fully regained the momentum of its earlier peak. It was during this period of professional uncertainty that Burton took

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

Uwe Boll is a one-of-a-kind filmmaker: the rat-king of cinema. With over 30 feature films spanning decades, Boll has built one of the most singular filmographies in modern times- one defined not only by critical disdain, but by sheer persistence. His career is a collision of controversy, exploitation and defiance, a body of work that seems almost designed to provoke. A paragon of bad taste, Boll shows no indication of stopping anytime soon. The 2026 feature ‘Citizen Vigilan

The ‘Evil Dead’ series refuses to die. It began in 1979 with Sam Raimi's short film ‘Within the Woods’, a proof-of-concept that evolved into 1981's ‘The Evil Dead’. Buoyed by enthusiastic support from the likes of Stephen King, Raimi returned with 1987's darkly comic, splatstick masterpiece ‘Evil Dead II’, continuing hero Ash Williams' battle against the demonic deadites. ‘Army of Darkness’ followed in 1993 and, despite its reputation today as a cult classic, its modest box o

Ruth Ware has built a career on fast-paced, twist-laden mysteries prioritising momentum over sustained thematic depth. Her novels are designed to be accessible and compulsively readable, built around propulsive plotting rather than anything more conceptually ambitious. It’s a formula that has proven commercially successful, and though they may lack profundity, her popularity suggests she knows how to keep readers turning the pages, if not necessarily thinking beyond them. B

A liminal space is a strange, disquieting place- eerily distorted, uncannily familiar; just plain wrong. Few creations have weaponised that feeling as effectively as the Backrooms phenomenon- a piece of internet horror fiction built around the idea of an endless, maze-like area one can accidentally “fall into,” a parallel reality made up of empty, repeating rooms. What began as a single image posted online evolved into a vast mythology centred on an endless maze of yellow wal

“Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it” is an aphorism as old as time itself, that storytellers have spent decades exploring. In Penny Marshall’s ‘Big,’ a kid makes a wish to be taller and wakes up as a thirty-year-old Tom Hanks (whether that’s a dream or a nightmare is up to you), while in something like W.W. Jacob’s ‘The Monkey’s Paw,’ a granted wish is basically a guarantee of suffering to come. ‘Obsession’ is the latest film to explore the idea of

John Boorman’s ‘Deliverance’ has had an enormous impact on cinema. Ever since its release, films have been haunted by the idea that a short detour into the wilderness can unravel the entire fabric of civilisation; that far from the city, strangers become prey. From ‘Southern Comfort’ to ‘Wolf Creek,’ filmmakers have often returned to the primal fear of the rural unknown, showing that Boorman’s film carved a cinematic wound that will never heal. Fabrice Du Welz’s ‘Calvaire’

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

Sometimes an actor’s entire career pivots on a single film. Bruce Willis transformed from the wise-cracking charmer of ‘Moonlighting’ into a full-blown action icon with ‘Die Hard’, while Liam Neeson unexpectedly carved out a second life as a tough-as-nails leading man after ‘Taken.’ Although she made ‘Æon Flux,’ years before, Charlize Theron stunned audiences as the badass Furiosa in ‘Mad Max: Fury Road,’ and Bob Odenkirk rewrote expectations with ‘Nobody’, revealing a steely

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

Stories of isolation and survival have long served as mirrors for the societies that produce them. First published in 1719, Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’ set the template for the lone castaway wrestling with both nature and self. Later works, from J. M. Barrie’s ‘The Admirable Crichton’ to William Golding’s ‘Lord of the Flies’, used the desert-island scenario to interrogate class, authority and the ease with which social order gives way to brutality. By the late 20th centu