“The movie lives and dies in the perspective of a beleaguered Asian mom. Evelyn is utterly powerless, in a way which neatly encapsulates, and answers, the whole minefield of issues around representation: she’s not powerless because she’s a 60 year old Asian woman. She just happens to be the only powerless version of that 60 year old Asian woman. With no ability to even engage with the multiverse, let alone inflict violence on it, Evelyn must patch up her shattered worldview and identity through other means.”

"Takes on Top Gun's 'legacy sequel' have largely revolved around its core engines of nostalgia and nationalism, incarnated in Tom Cruise: one of the 'last true movie stars', doggedly refusing to shuffle out of the cockpit. Critics moan that the villains buttressing such 'Murricana triumphalism have failed to change with the times- but from another perspective, its roaring box office success speaks to a new, internationalist era of 'muscular masculinity".

“How do I love thee, Megan Fox? Let me count the ways. Car-sponging, barely legal pinup; dutiful housewife to a staggeringly mediocre, craggy husband; and lately, bisexual, Facetuned Taurus Insta baddie. In sum: poster child of the timeless, shapeshifting powers of woman in a timelessly gross world. 'I'm not killing people,' goes her character's most celebrated line in Diablo Kody's sleeper cult hit. 'I'm killing boys'. Hell yeah you are.”

“They were the best years of our lives. They called them the swinging sixties. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were rulers of pop music, Carnaby Street ruled the fashion world... and me and my brother ruled London. We were fucking untouchable.”

"School of Rock promised a Coleridgian Xanadu to its Gen Z audience: a mid-aughts utopia of gender equality, body positivity, and the shimmering oasis of a viable career in the creative sector. These prospects may have dimmed in intervening decades, but the sincerity and conviction of Jack Black's missive shine through. 'I'm not a Satanic sex god anymore,' says his character's brother, music teacher Ned Schneebly. 'I'm a working stiff, and that's cool.' The unbridled 'stick it to the man' energy of School of Rock reminds us that ‘wannabe corporate sellouts’ are, in fact, not cool, and that now more than ever is time to 'stick it to the man'; a time when the housing bubble reminds us that ‘the legend of the rent is way hardcore.’

Did Lashana Lynch in 007 ignore a bunch of sad fat Etonians to preserve the world from the wreckage of 007’s emotional biohazard? I don’t think so; and equally, I will not be held liable to moderating the emotional constipation of the latest meta-Hollywood wankpiece about white jihad.

“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.”