Signature Entertainment
Out of Darkness attempts at historical accuracy are a welcome surprise, and what’s more, it is fun to watch.
Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in It Happened One Night.
Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy Stock Photo
It Happened One Night is one of only three films to nab the Oscar “big five”, winning prizes for best actor, actress, adapted screenplay, director and picture.
Camilo Arancibia in The Settlers.
Quijote Films
As The Settlers reminds us, films have often played a crucial role in helping establish and disseminate colonial mythologies.
Scene from The Zone of Interest, directed by Jonathan Glazer.
Madman Films
In The Zone of Interest, Martin Amis represents our familiar world from a radically unfamiliar angle.
Oliver’s sexuality is shown rather than explicitly stated in Saltburn.
Amazon Studios
In recent years, TV shows have started to explicitly state a character’s sexuality. But bisexual characters rarely have such moments in film.
Bradley Cooper as composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein in ‘Maestro.’
(Netflix)
Mahler’s inventive modernism and highly expressive writing communicated emotions shaped by his fascinating late-19th century life.
The cast of The Color Purple.
Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
There is a stark contrast in box office figures between musical films that market themselves as ‘musicals’ and those that don’t.
A24
A harrowing portrayal of banal evil, a nuanced look at black fiction, a historically accurate TV series, a story about the power of love and a seriously cute exhibition.
Director Ava DuVernay filming in India.
Black Bear
I come from a Dalit background and I research Dalit representation in film. So I know first hand Origin’s importance to Dalit people.
Bob Marley performs at a ‘Viva Zimbabwe’ independence celebration in April 1980.
William F. Campbell/Getty Images
How did a musician whose songs were suffused with messages of anti-capitalism and anti-imperialism become so commercialized?
Dune Part Two is eagerly awaited, even if all the best actors were killed off in part one.
Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Though 2024 once again proffers a mind-numbing number of sequels, thankfully there seem to be fewer superhero films than usual on the cards.
Christian Friedel as Höss.
Courtesy of A24
The film depicts the everyday life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his family – yet, industrialised, genocidal violence moves along, continuously, in the background.
The End We Start From stars Jodie Comer as ‘Woman’, the lead character who gives birth to her baby as extreme floods hit London.
This powerful new eco drama suggests “cli-fi” could play a crucial role in climate communication.
Producer-director Norman Jewison, left, demonstrates how he wants an actor to wash the feet of Jesus, portrayed by Ted Neeley, during filming of the movie version of the rock musical, ‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ in October 1972.
(AP Photo, File)
A tension between cult, critical and popular appeal is part of Norman Jewison’s most prominent legacy.
Greta Lee in a scene from ‘Past Lives.’
(Jon Pack/A24 via AP)
‘Past Lives’ is a beautiful story of childhood crushes, and the sorrow and agony that ensues when one party sends another party away to move to another stage of his or her life.
Norman Jewison (left) and Lynne St. David-Jewison arrive on the red carpet at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Jewison had a trailblazing commitment to the development of film in Canada, seen both in his founding of the Canadian Film Centre and when he visited us at the Windsor International Film Festival.
Part of the poster for the new Mean Girls movie.
Everett Collection Inc/Alamy Stock Photo
The problem with the Mean Girls musical film is that it is a pastiche of a pastiche.
Courtesy of MGM and Amazon Studios
Saltburn’s soundtrack showcases an infectious iPod-shuffle of pot-luck noughties pop.
The Ghost Reader.
Recovering Women’s Contributions to Media Studies is a new book which looks at the contributions of women in the media.
ClassicStock / Alamy
Mae D Huettig, Romana Javitz and Shirley Graham DuBois were instrumental in their respective media fields but very few of us will be aware of their individual contributions.
Searchlight Pictures
Poor Things accurately depicts girls’ early sexual feelings and shows us some more positive ways of understanding girlhood sexual desire.