Author: Alex Wood

Spoiler warnings up to episode eight are to be expected from this – you have been warned! It was the sight of Oberyn Martell’s obliterated form that ended the eighth episode of the season that perhaps best sums up the current state of affairs in Westeros. The introduction of the fan favourite, played with comfortable […]

The Guardians of the Galaxy Perhaps the biggest gamble for the Marvel Cinematic Universe hits screens this Summer with the Guardians of the Galaxy – the first foray into true space adventure for a relatively grounded and earth-bound franchise (Thor: The Dark World being perhaps an exception). We here at OxStu are a little bit […]

I had serious doubts about this film from the second I sat down to watch it. From the outset it’s clear that this film is going to follow the same line that the first film did with very little variation, but stick with it because directors Lord and Miller will show you how good sequels […]

  The television counts down to blast-off, the audience sits riveted, clasping their drinks, their children, and their strange outdated perspectives as the world turns to watch mankind meet the moon. The mid-season finale of Mad Men’s seventh series brings death, puberty, old friends, separation, progression, and most importantly madness, as Weiner turns to his […]

  Jimmy’s Hall is a film that comes with quite a bit of baggage. Ken Loach’s producer Rebecca O’Brien made a call back in August that this would be his last film, though Loach himself has since suggested there might be more in him yet. More recently, Loach used a press conference at the Cannes […]

  Imagine you have a beast with three heads trying to write a film script for a Western. One head wants to go down the classic sentimental adventure route of cowboys and Indians. The second wishes to make a gross-out, sex-laden slapstick spectacle. The final one has hopes of making a lofty social and political […]

  Maleficent is Disney’s latest attempt at a live action reboot, retelling the 1969 classic Sleeping Beauty. This adaption focuses on the story’s antagonist, Maleficent, portraying her as the misunderstood villain. We are first introduced to her as a beautiful and sweet little faerie, but Maleficent grows up to be betrayed by Stefan, the man […]

A nation united in reconstruction after a devastating natural disaster provides the backdrop to the true story of an aeronautical engineer blindly pursuing his dreams of flight as his fiancé battles a life threatening disease in “The Wind Rises,” the latest and reportedly final work of master animator and film-maker Hayao Miyazaki. This latest film […]

The excitement of seeing old favourites will take over just a little bit (Storm is back! Storm is back!) but the latest release in the X-Men franchise is bold, punchy and brilliant all by itself. Days of Future Past has no simple plotline, and the film plays out across two moments in time. The first […]

It’s ‘the most exciting night of the year in British Television’ if you believe the voice-over, but there’s always something a bit unfulfilling about watching the BAFTAs on TV. It feels like you’ve opted for the free demo version of the real thing. You get those thirty second clips of shows that leave seasoned telly […]

It’s been ten days of triumphs and upsets at the 67th annual Cannes Film Festival as world cinema’s auteurs, film stars and rising talents converged on the Croisette, eager for success and recognition. However, whilst it’ll certainly have been a busy fortnight for all involved by the time the festival draws to a close, a […]

The term “food porn” for Chef is a apt description, and not just because it has a VAST amount of, well, prolonged “food porn” for the audience to sink their teeth into. Indeed, they fixate on food being prepared like Sex and the City does on shopping montages, but a movie lacking meaty content to […]

For the past month or so, being a HIMYM fan in the UK has been painful. Unlike many of my friends, I’ve stuck with E4’s scheduling instead of finding the American airing of the show, and by some miracle I still do not know how it all ends. Holding onto the surprise has been tricky, […]

In perfect Grey’s Anatomy style, thetenth season of the still highly popular American TV series based in Shuttle, begins with huge drama: Heather, Dr. Shepherd’s favourite intern, dies due to being electrocuted while looking for Dr. Webber. The latter is found unconscious on the floor and requires all of his colleagues’ efforts before coming back […]

Tuesday night saw the fifth season of Glee go out not quite with a bang, but not with a whimper either. It’s been a season of stops and starts, spanning almost eight months in total, with the major reason for this being the sudden death of Cory Monteith shortly before filming started. The third episode […]

  As a girl who went to the first available showing of Star Wars III aged ten and dressed as a Jedi, it’s safe to say that I was pretty excited about the release of the line-up for Episode VII. However the line-up has been a bit of a surprise, and I don’t really know […]

  Director Albert Dupontel has created a monster. A half-crazed, laugh-inducing, moderately blood-stained monster of a movie that will possess you for a near hour and a half. Weird and completely wonderful, 9 Month Stretch is a film with no limits and no pause button. It’s total subtitled genius. After a drunken New Year’s Eve […]

  The third instalment of Phoenix Picturehouse’s series of French previews, in collaboration with Rendez-vous with French Film, Bright Days Ahead (Les Beaux Jours) is a coming-of-old-age tale, in which Caroline, a recently retired dentist (Fanny Ardant) finds romance with a man half her age. Discovering that her newly found freedom is in fact developing […]

Albert Dupontel, standing in front of an audience who have just watched his newest film, can be described as two things. Modest certainly, shaking his head at compliments given by the man introducing him. Also unassumingly funny, taking his jacket off mid-way through the talk with the unabashed confession ‘sorry, I’m sweating a lot’. It […]