“Certain art forms are built to flaunt suffering. They tend to come out of a certain cultural context, too- the English churned out plenty of saucy plays and satirical operas, the Americans had their pre-code screwball comedies, but they left serious exhibitions of swooning misery to the Continent, who honed it through possibly the most sadistic form of beauty out there: ballet.”

"Ï sjënd dë mætbals ïnto späcë," tweeted the 'Swëdish Eløn Müsk' parody account in 2018. "Ï døn’t pjay de täxes." It's hard to explain, but somehow 'Playmobil arthouse' director Robert Eggers' A-list edgelord take on the tale of Hamlet- muddled up with a hefty slug of Norse mythology and noughties sexploitation- has achieved a similar aesthetic effect."

"In this Easter season, people are quick to forget that perhaps the supreme expression of the Holy Spirit- Bach's St Matthew Passion- was created by a fanatical German who ran a musical sweatshop, where he beat his family so savagely that ink remains splattered over the pages of his canon over two centuries later.
The Audition- a potboiler about a repressed violin teacher in a Berlin conservatory- is thus a homecoming of sorts."

"For parents looking to terrify and educate children in equal measure, this adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline is surely a good, if unpredictable, starting point. Rebellious and sceptical when she needs to be- in the name of self-preservation- Coraline marked the first in a wave of family 'dramas' where the villain is not some supernatural threat but generational trauma."

“The barrage of ‘shocking’ or provocative plot elements- porn, drugs, grooming, the Trump election- clash with a sly, building detachment in the viewer, as Baker wordlessly establishes industrial Texas as a primal, bizarre underworld. Shots recall the Wild West or post-apocalyptic disaster zones- at least until an obese woman rolls past on a mobility scooter.”

“Comparing chubby, bespectacled Mei to twelve-year-old Matilda in Luc Besson’s Leon, it’s clear that writer-director Domee Shi has reclaimed the glorious horror of tweendom for the girls who live it.“

“Like a middle-aged man clinging to a loveless marriage, The Batman tries to spice up grim reality with a dazzling array of costumes, gadgets, and open-minded younger women. Though enjoyable, these desperate measures also point to an unfixable shift in the superhero-audience relationship, where the patriotic Ubermensch of yore finds himself dominated by the unwashed masses.”

"Imagine a time where your every move is surveilled, tracked, dished up to a bevy of advertisers slinging the latest lifestyle gizmo tailored to your specific need. The Truman Show envisioned all this and more- yet it still had the optimism to envision a world where individuality actually mattered."