Author: Beth Lambert

It’s hard not to feel depressingly boring when you interview Mary Harron. She’s incredibly rock’n’roll, wearing leather trousers at 50 which I can’t pull off at 20, and confidently moves from talking about her childhood spent on film sets (her first step-mother was scouted by Stanley Kubrick) to Christian Bale’s “bionic” ability to sweat on command. 

Oxford is in Vicky Jewson’s blood. Born in the John Radcliffe Hospital, she has lived in or around the city for most of her life. For her first film, Lady Godiva, the streets of Oxford doubled for Coventry. Her second, Born of War, uses Oxford more explicitly. A local girl, who struggles to fit in […]

Summer term in Oxford can be a mixed bag. While the weather picks up, many huddle in the library, faced with the impending doom of exams. But whether you need a break from the books or a refuge from an unexpected shower, the cinema is a place of escape. This Trinity there is an abundance […]

Neill Blomkamp’s roots as a visual effects artist have always been clear in his directorial work. His aliens and robots have a distinct fluidity, and his dusty aesthetic complements the dangerous, criminal atmosphere that pervades each film. In Chappie, however, the inclination towards visuals is a curse. The film gives the impression that Blomkamp was […]

Expectations were high when Marvel announced its first live-action television series, but every new episode reveals the greater depths of mediocrity that the show can sink to. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D follows the fictional peacekeeping and spy agency of the Marvel universe, and as one of the characters so eloquently puts it: “it means we’re the […]

Russell T Davies’ shows are like buses; you wait ages for a new one and then three turn up at once. The television maestro behind Queer As Folk and Doctor Who has had a quiet few years off; his last television credit was way back in 2011, and since then his partner’s severe illness has […]

5. Emma Watson, My Week with Marilyn (2011) Watson had just famously cut her hair into a short and chic style, so what were the makers of this film to do when she was supposed to play a character from the 1950s? Stick a ludicrously frumpy and ill-fitting barnet on her, of course. 

It may not be quite as abhorrent as his film, but ‘comedian’ Leigh Francis’s latest use of his perma-tanned, insultingly unfunny Keith Lemon character is about as low as TV comedy can go. Spoofing celebrities and other programmes in a frenetic 30 minutes, it tries to invoke the pace and timing of older, similar shows. […]

It’s a film about a drummer. That’s the easiest way to sum up Whiplash. A film about a drummer. It’s hard to sell a film on that premise, and the easiest way to do so is to not make the film about drumming at all. True, you do see a sweaty Miles Teller (playing protagonist […]

  Once the default mode for the Hollywood action film, westerns went almost completely out of favour in the 1970s, and nobody has been interested since. (And no, films like No Country for Old Men don’t count – we’re talking good ol’ westerns here, films set in a bygone era of the American frontiers.) But […]

Kingsman: The Secret Service bears all the marks of the kind of film only Matthew Vaughn could have directed. Indeed, it seems he was almost fated to do so. Vaughn has confessed that, pre-Casino Royale, he came remarkably close to being tasked with the rebooting of the James Bond franchise, though things didn’t pan out. […]

War  has been a staple of the cinema since its very earliest days. Indeed, it was with the controversial war film, The Birth of a Nation (1915), that D. W. Griffith pioneered the basic cinematic vocabulary that established the first set of parameters for all future filmmakers.

Given the hype surrounding the release of Fifty Shades of Grey, I was surprised to find myself in a near-empty cinema on the date of its release. This is particularly perplexing given that according to the ticket-selling site Fandango, Fifty Shades of Grey is the fastest selling R-rated title in the site’s history. Perhaps we’re […]

Foxcatcher, a depiction of the troubled relationship between millionaire John DuPont and Olympic winners Dave and Mark Schultz (Mark Ruffalo and Channing Tatum respectively) has been doing the rounds recently, being critically lauded as a perfect depiction of DuPont’s near-obsessive involvement in wrestling. It has been seen through a multitude of thematic lenses, ranging from […]

Made in Chelsea: London’s answer to The Hills and the ‘classier’ version of The Only Way is Essex. We were all taken in by the glitz and the glam of London’s ‘elite’ when the show first debuted back in 2011, but the question is, why are we still watching it? The show is infamous for […]

Australia has one of the most fertile independent film industries in the world, but not even Australians go to see most of what it produces, and they almost never make it to Britain. Here are the top three that are well worth seeking out. 3 Lantana Adapted from his own play by the still-undervalued playwright […]

It is two years now since the Twilight franchise gave its last feeble kick and then disintegrated into a pile of ash. The glittering vampire is dead. Long live the traditional vampire. Most of us breathed a collective sigh of relief when Breaking Dawn – Part II finally died out in cinemas. At last it […]

  3 Salaam-e-Ishq: A Tribute to Love A romantic drama film released in 2007, Salaam-e-Ishq is the unofficial remake of the British film, Love Actually. It is directed by Nikhil Advani, the same man who directed the critically acclaimed and financially successful, Kal Ho Naa Ho. However, unlike the aforementioned film, Salaam-e-Ishq was said by […]

It is easy to see how Greg Brenman stays true to his maxim of being nice to everyone he meets. Warm, confident and possessing a dry sense of humour, he speaks easily and eloquently about his work as Producer on massive successes like Billy Elliot, Peaky Blinders and Ripper Street, to the audience at the […]