Film – Page 2 – A Young(ish) Perspective

FEATURE: Lynn Seymour- A Trailblazer Remembered

Published on March 9, 2026March 9, 2026 by sarasioufi1Leave a comment

The event established a thoughtful tone for a week of theatre, film, music and discussion.

On International Women’s Day, the Women’s Voices Arts & Culture Festival opened its programme at the Playhouse Theatre with an evening dedicated to the formidable legacy of Lynn Seymour, a dancer whose dramatic intensity helped reshape narrative ballet in the twentieth century. Positioned at the start of a multi-disciplinary festival celebrating women’s artistic voices, the event established a thoughtful tone for a week of theatre, film, music and discussion.

Seymour, who rose to prominence with The Royal Ballet, built her reputation on performances that prioritised emotional truth over classical composure. A key collaborator of Kenneth MacMillan, she helped usher ballet toward a more psychologically searching form of storytelling. Her interpretations in works such as Romeo and Juliet and Mayerling suggested that beneath the elegant architecture of classical technique lies something more volatile: contradiction, vulnerability and desire.

The evening opened with excerpts from the BBC documentary Lynn Seymour: In a Class of Her Own, filmed at a pivotal moment in Seymour’s life. Shot around the time she was confronting the aftermath of a serious injury at forty, the film captures an artist reflecting on the fragility of the body on which her entire craft depends. Rather than presenting a triumphant portrait, the documentary offers something more revealing: a dancer negotiating uncertainty, resilience and the realities of longevity in an art form that often equates youth with permanence.

Providing context for the programme was Naomi Sorkin, who introduced the evening and situated Seymour’s career within the wider themes of the festival. Her remarks drew attention not only to Seymour’s artistic achievements but also to the broader history of women whose contributions have shaped performance culture, often beyond the spotlight.

Interwoven with the archival material was a live performance by Ellie Young. Young’s interpretation functioned as a bridge between past and present, translating Seymour’s expressive legacy into contemporary movement. The choreography unfolded alongside a beautifully restrained live piano accompaniment, whose delicate phrasing created an intimate dialogue between music and movement.

Across the wider Women’s Voices Arts & Culture Festival, the programme moves fluidly between forms. Theatre sits alongside musical and literary evenings, while conversations with writers and filmmakers examine the craft and politics of storytelling. The festival places women’s creative voices at its centre, allowing different disciplines to speak to one another across the week. Against this broader context, the tribute to Seymour carried particular resonance. The programme quietly demonstrated that her legacy is not preserved in archives alone, but in the way dancers continue to approach character, risk and emotional precision.

The Women’s Voices Arts and Culture Festival runs until the 14th March at the Playground Theatre, London. Tickets here.

FEATURE: The Beguiled at BFI IMAX

Published on February 25, 2026February 24, 2026 by clemencxLeave a comment

Seen on the vast screen at BFI IMAX as part of Emerald Fennell’s February programme “Love Stories,” The Beguiled plays like a quiet act of sabotage. In a season built around romances that strain, distort and even brutalise the genre, programmed to accompany Fennell’s new take on Wuthering Heights, Sofia Coppola’s Civil War chamber piece feels deceptively demure. It is, in fact, one of the cruellest ‘love stories’ in the line-up.

A wounded Union soldier is taken in by a secluded Southern girls’ seminary during the Civil War. Coppola treats this intrusion less as thriller mechanics and more as tonal disturbance. The school is a cloistered feminine ecosystem governed by ritual, repression and a careful performance of gentility. Into it steps Corporal McBurney (Colin Farrell), who quickly recalibrates from grateful patient to opportunistic charmer, sensing the loneliness in the house and adjusting himself to fit it. His presence exposes not only desire, but the fragility of the codes that bind these women together.

Coppola’s version is also a pointed departure from Siegel’s The Beguiled,, which leaned into lurid melodrama and largely aligned the audience with the male interloper. Here, the gaze shifts decisively. The camera lingers not on battlefield bravado but on suppressed longing and social performance, the careful stitching of dresses, the ritual of shared meals, the charged silence of piano lessons. What once played as Southern Gothic hysteria becomes, in Coppola’s hands, a study in manners as armour.

Nicole Kidman’s Martha maintains a brittle authority, her composure suggesting both moral rectitude and tightly buried longing. Kirsten Dunst gives Edwina a tremor of romantic yearning that feels almost adolescent, as though she has been waiting for a story to happen to her. Elle Fanning’s Alicia, by contrast, is impulsive and knowingly provocative, less interested in fantasy than in experimentation. None of them are reduced to archetype; each negotiates attraction as strategy. Coppola refuses to cast the women as either hysterics or saints, instead examining how desire circulates within constraint, how isolation intensifies need and how quickly affection can curdle into calculation when options are limited. The film’s tension lies not in whether violence will erupt, but in how long civility can contain it.

Projected at IMAX scale, Coppola’s minimalism becomes monumental. Philippe Le Sourd’s diffused cinematography floods the screen with pale fabrics, soft candlelight and creeping greenery, turning the house into a sealed world that seems curiously detached from the brutality of the Confederacy it quietly serves. The outside war barely registers; the real battleground is interior. The camera lingers on gestures, an offered book, a hand brushing fabric, a pause held a fraction too long, so that romance begins to look less like mutual awakening and more like a contest over leverage.

Yet the film’s refinement is also what makes it uneasy viewing in 2026. Cullinan’s novel includes an enslaved Black character and engages more directly with racial violence, but Coppola removes those elements almost entirely, narrowing the story to a rarefied, overwhelmingly white female enclave. In doing so, she softens the historical reality in favour of aesthetic control, a move consistent with her fascination with insulated white girlhood and beautiful confinement. It is also a criticism currently circling Emerald Fennell’s new adaptation of Wuthering Heights. In sanding down racial and social context, these films risk preserving the intensity of romance while sidelining the people most marginalised by the worlds they depict.

As part of Fennell’s “Love Stories,” The Beguiled feels newly pointed. If Wuthering Heights has long been accused of mistaking cruelty for passion, Coppola coolly probes the same confusion while also smoothing away context so the central dynamic can play as warped romance. Is longing inherently ennobling, or is it simply another appetite, capable of manipulation and self-deception?

Nearly a decade on, The Beguiled endures because of these contradictions. Its omissions of overt moralising and of racial context create a deliberate vacuum of backstory, leaving us with no cathartic escape, only the image of gates closing, order restored, and a love story that feels less transcendent than quietly, deliberately contained.

Emerald Fennell curates “Love Stories” is at BFI IMAX throughout February. For tickets and listing, please visit here. “Wuthering Heights” opens at BFI IMAX from 13 February. For tickets and listing, please visit here.

IN CONVERSATION WITH: Rhianna Dhillon

Published on February 18, 2026February 17, 2026 by ayoungishperspective1Leave a comment

We sat down for an exclusive interview with Rhianna Dhillon who presents a new monthly series for BFI Player celebrating female friendship and chosen family through the Galentine’s Day collection, featuring films like Frances Ha and Daisies. She will also curate a BFI Flare collection on March 9th, honouring 40 years of the London LGBTQIA+ Film Festival with highlights including Weekend, Beach Rats, and Young Soul Rebels.

View the Galentine’s Day collection here

What drew you to frame your first BFI Player collections around female friendship and queer cinema, and what conversations were you hoping to spark with those themes?

I try to theme my curations around something relevant that is happening each month, so for January, I picked the idea of “Fresh Starts”, as we’re all thinking about resolutions and a new year. For February, I loved the idea of doing something a bit “anti-valentine” and Galentine’s Day (February 13th) seemed the perfect opportunity to celebrate films about female friendships – I always enjoy seeing parallels between me and my friends and characters on screen, whether it’s bickering, getting ready for a night out or just generally being a bit over-familiar – and I hope that audiences also love seeing themselves reflected in this way! The BFI Flare Film Festival takes place in March, so there didn’t seem a better moment to talk about some of my all time favourite LGBTQIA+ films from BFI Player.

When curating films about female friendship for Galentine’s Day, what qualities or emotional truths were you looking for that you feel are often overlooked on screen?

I think I was especially mining films for their portrayals of how weird and unhinged women can be when they’re together – the safe space where they can be completely off the wall, share their darkest truths and challenge each other. With Frances Ha, I talk about how it uses almost romantic tropes to show how deep the bonds of female friendships can run. In Julie and Celeste Go Boating, I love the obsessive nature of the characters – like them, I often find myself drawn to gregarious, outgoing women and it really taps into that desire for excitement in your friendships as much as in your love life.

How do you approach balancing well-known classics with underrated gems when building a collection meant to represent the breadth of queer cinema?

I don’t deliberately think too much about that balance, I just look for threads which work for the topics I’ve chosen – I think the spectrum of the films on offer speaks more to the versatility of BFI Player – because they have a bit of everything. There are lots of titles that audiences may know the name of but have never actually watched, so hopefully, by highlighting those films alongside more well known ones, audiences will have fun exploring something new. It’s also a great chance to look deeper at the back catalogue of a director or actor you love. If you’re a big fan of Harris Dickinson, check out Beach Rats! If you loved All of Us Strangers, make sure to watch Andrew Haigh’s Weekend!

In your view, how has the representation of chosen family in film evolved over the past few decades, particularly within LGBTQIA+ storytelling?

I love the films that are about the safe spaces that queer communities exist within – maybe that’s become more and more prevalent in recent years – The term “chosen family” is only about 35 years old and LGBTQIA stories have been told on screen for a lot longer, but I think the difference now is that queer stories are starting to have the joyful endings that films about straight love often have. Perhaps in the past, there was more of an emphasis on trauma and shame but it definitely feels like there’s a shift as audiences’ understanding and acceptance has evolved – filmmaking is of course part of this understanding, which is why festivals like BFI Flare are so important in showcasing different stories.

As a critic stepping into a curatorial role, how does selecting films for an audience differ from writing about them after the fact?

These curations and the video essays that go alongside them have been so much fun because it’s a completely different slant on film criticism – instead of a written or verbal review, the films themselves can do so much off the talking for me in the video essay, so I can show audiences exactly what I mean, or break down a scene within a film to demonstrate what it is that I love so much.

As most of these films aren’t brand new releases, I’m also getting the benefit of understanding a film’s impact on the social and cultural landscape so it’s not just about whether or not a film is worth seeing which is essentially what I’m doing when I review – it’s understanding how the theme has evolved since its release, and asking how it fits in with other films in the same genre that either came before it, or since.

With BFI Flare celebrating 40 years, what do you think its legacy tells us about the cultural power of film festivals in shaping visibility and inclusion?

Film festivals like BFI Flare are so vital for amplifying voices who may struggle to tell their stories elsewhere. In a world where filmmakers can still be arrested for films about minorities, queer filmmaking can feel like a political act but BFI Flare allows for the full spectrum of human experience on the big screen – love, heartbreak, grief and joy. It truly is a celebration and it’s so important for festivals like this to exist so that queer stories have the space to breathe. I also love that BFI Flare has always felt like such an inclusive, exciting, vibrant festival, where it feels like you can discover movies that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

REVIEW: “Wuthering Heights” At BFI IMAX

Published on February 17, 2026February 20, 2026 by ayoungishperspective1Leave a comment

A self-assured and stylish adaptation that knows exactly what it’s doing

The most talked-about film since Wicked, Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights has generated both hype and controversy. Casting choices, storyline cuts and amped-up sex appeal have led to much speculation around how this film will compare to the original classic novel by Emily Brontë.

Playing at BFI Southbank in their IMAX cinema, the UK’s largest screen, this is the ultimate way to watch an adaptation of what is being advertised as ‘the greatest love story of all time’. A completely immersive experience, this cinema is a key part of London’s thriving cultural landscape.

Writer-director Emerald Fennell subverts expectations from the get-go, reminding her audience of the violence and hardship of the period. Moments of horror undercut the lust, creating a dynamic film that’s impossible to look away from. Loosely following the most major plot points of Wuthering Heights, the story of Cathy and Heathcliff plays out, a destructive and intense tale of love, betrayal and vengeance.

Jacob Elordi is an alluringly rugged Heathcliff, his emotions always bubbling beneath the surface but so often going unvoiced. By contrast, Margot Robbie is the highly-strung Cathy who notoriously loves to cry. While both are cruel and toxic characters, their chemistry is undeniable and their love scenes, while discretely shot, are hot enough to set fire to the Yorkshire moors.

The supporting actors give equally stellar performances, a sadistic Nelly played by a steadfast Hong Chau, who undergoes one too many slights by Cathy and lets her inclination for vengeance overtake her better judgement. Alison Oliver brings a welcomed lightness to the screen, with excellent comic timing making the naive Isabella just as exciting to watch as Robbie’s Cathy.

The film is bookended by scenes with young Cathy (Charlotte Mellington) and Heathcliff (Owen Cooper), who make a striking pair. Their authentic and touching performances not only frame the narrative but also create context for the increasingly erratic behaviours of their adult counterparts.

Despite the strong performances of the acting ensemble, the real main character of this movie is the design. Production designer Suzie Davies creates a mesmerising set, both at Wuthering Heights and the neighbouring Thrushcross Grange. From the ‘skin room’ and hand fireplace, to the red velvet fur staircase, this perfectly preserved palace is a total feast for the eyes. Costumes by Jacqueline Durran are equally as opulent, playing with the period rather than staying stoically loyal to it.

This is not a faithful adaptation of the text, but it is a highly pleasurable one. Whether you’re expecting lush cinematography, steamy love scenes or to join the chorus of cinema goers weeping as the credits roll, you will find what you’re looking for in “Wuthering Heights”. See the film at BFI IMAX until February 22, 2026.

FEATURE: Crash – part of BFI’s Love Stories season

Published on February 10, 2026 by ayoungishperspective1Leave a comment

As part of the BFI IMAX’s ‘Love Stories’ season running throughout February, Crash is presented under the curatorial eye of Emerald Fennell, ahead of the release of her forthcoming Wuthering Heights. In her programme notes, Fennell makes a compelling case for love stories that rupture convention and render love freakish, gory, cruel, and strange. It’s a sharp and thoughtful framing, and one that initially made me hopeful for David Cronenberg’s notorious 1996 film Crash.

The usual critiques of Crash are well-worn: that it is immoral, disgusting and shameful. I don’t dislike the film for these reasons. Despite my negative response, I believe films like this should exist. I’m not averse to gory, sexually explicit or subversive cinema — quite the opposite. I’m drawn to work that stares down transgression and explores desire as irrational and dangerous, without offering easy moral positions.

But where films like David Lynch’s Blue Velvet feel like nightmares, Crash feels like a medical report. Nightmares ensnare us emotionally; they disturb us because they are felt in the body.

Crash, by contrast, adopts a tone of clinical detachment, observing its characters as though under a microscope. This emotional flatness is often defended as the point of the film, but a point still needs to be interrogated, not merely asserted. Watching Crash is like eating a meal intentionally stripped of flavour: you can do it, but what’s the point? To prove that food — or cinema — can be dull and meaningless? Creating a sense of apathy can serve a film’s message, but art that strips itself of affect risks stripping itself of meaning altogether. Deadening the viewer does not automatically constitute insight. Either intentionally or ironically, the film reproduces the dull and hopeless condition it portends.

The film is often read as a vision of post-erotic desire: what happens when sex is emptied of intimacy and feeling, reduced to procedure and compulsion. I find this idea interesting in theory, but unconvincing in execution. Crash does not meaningfully explore how or why desire might arrive at this state; it simply declares that it has and it is not pretty. The characters feel less like the inevitable endpoint of modernity and more like people in acute psychological distress, yet the film wants us to view this condition as universal. In theory, the psychology of desire, fear, repression and longing is one of the richest subjects art has ever grappled with. Here, interiority – inner life, motivation, feeling – is treated as obsolete. This doesn’t feel radical; it feels impoverished. Saying “what if nothing had meaning?” is not, in itself, an interesting premise — it simply collapses into nihilism.

The film’s metaphors linking the human body and technology are similarly thin. These ideas have been explored since the Industrial Revolution and rendered with far greater imagination by cinema itself — most notably in the German Expressionist films of the 1920s. Newer technology does not make them newly compelling. Here, the metaphors feel didactic rather than revelatory, as though stating an idea were enough to justify it.

Which brings me to Crash’s placement within the Wuthering Heights season — a decision I find confusing. I haven’t yet seen Fennell’s adaptation, but the novel is one of my all-time favourites, and its emotional register could not feel further from Crash. Wuthering Heights is feral and poetic, brimming with feeling; its sex and desire are primordial, rooted in landscape and time itself. Even at its most cruel and inhuman, it remains profoundly human. Its bleakness has weight because it is felt.As a companion piece, Crash feels fundamentally antithetical. If the pairing is intended to chart love or desire under pressure, then Crash offers not a troubling provocation but a hollow one. It’s like framing the statement “all art is meaningless” and hanging it in a gallery: you haven’t made a compelling argument, you’ve simply added another empty object to the room. Crash left me unmoved — drained of the very thing that makes obsession, desire, and cinema worth grappling with in the first place.

REVIEW: Manipulate Festival: Animated Documentary Shorts

Published on February 9, 2026February 9, 2026 by Tamsin DunlopLeave a comment

“A joyful, serious, and skilful showcase of international animators“

Manipulate Festival takes to the Edinburgh Filmhouse for the very first time at tonight’s screening of eight animated documentary shorts. Animation and documentary don’t immediately overlap in any mental Venn diagrams; lazy assumptions take animation to be whimsical and creative, documentary always serious and formulaic.

But ahead of the screening, Artistic Director and CEO Dawn Taylor explains to the audience why these art forms are so integral to one another: animation allows for the representation of things too unsafe or even impossible to film. It can recreate moments otherwise lost to memory, it can take the viewer into places never thought possible, and – above all, really – it can make the complex and overwhelming accessible and understandable.

The eight films curated for tonight’s showcase are all highly varied in tone and content: we begin with ‘My Dead Dad’s Porno Tapes’ which is about, well, director Charlie Tyrell’s dead dad’s porno tapes. But not really: it’s about grief and taboo and intergenerational trauma and reticence and anger. It is exceptionally moving and exceptionally funny – as will emerge as a theme of tonight’s documentaries, it takes the insurmountable (death and everything in its wake) and focuses on the seemingly irrelevant mundane (a 2008 Radiohead concert, Hot n Horny Harlots on VHS).

It’s also true of the screening’s most overtly political films, such as ‘Our Uniform’ (a beautiful and textured exploration of being a girl in Iran – but mostly their school uniforms) and ‘I Died in Irpin’ (the horrendous story of fleeing Ukraine from Russian bombs – but mostly about regretting your ex-boyfriend). There’s something almost deceptively soothing about the animated mode; it’s misleadingly easy to watch, distractingly gorgeous to look at. It draws you in and sucks up your attention, until you’re left astounded by the weightiness of what you’ve just learned – educational entertainment, at its very best.

Animals and their tendency to get tied up in culture are another theme. ‘Percebes’ follows the journey of shellfish in Portugal’s Algarve, which seemingly has the same tourism complex as Edinburgh: they need them, they hate them (‘We can’t enjoy when the city is alive, because we’re working’, says a fishmonger). ‘Veni Vidi Non Vici’ is another Portuguese offering, focussing on the tradition of bullfighting and the tricky ethics of balancing tradition with modern morality. ‘The Harbourmaster’ is perhaps the emotionally lightest of the night, animating the life and forcible death of a chain-smoking, troublemaking Norwegian swan – like a Scandi Bojack Horseman.

The most affecting film of the lot is indisputably ‘Inside, the Valley Sings’ (Natasza Cetner and Nathan Fagan), an almost unbearably vivid insight into the interior lives of American prisoners held in solitary confinement. Banging their heads against the wall, directing movies on a brick wall, fantasising of their children’s voices. It is a gut punch and it is a masterful piece of animation; the hand drawn faces of the incarcerated contrasted become imprinted in your mind. One particularly powerful moment comes from Frank de Palma, a man who spent 22 years in solitary confinement. There were no mirrors in his cell, and he tells of seeing his 58 year old face for the first time since he was in his 30s, ‘I cried – I had gotten old.’

Manipulate Festival’s Animated Documentary Shorts screening was a wonderful display of international talent, highlighting the very best of how animation can educate, move, and firmly press itself into the deepest corners of an audiences’ brain (much like fingers in stop motion clay).

This screening was a one-time event shown at the Edinburgh Filmhouse on the 7th of February as part of the Manipulate Festival which is running in venues across Scotland from the 4th to the 10th of February.

FEATURE: Re-reading The Handmaiden’s Love, Performance, and the Politics of Adaptation

Published on February 2, 2026February 3, 2026 by Ke MengLeave a comment

Selected by Emerald Fennell as part of her Love Stories programme at BFI IMAX, Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden arrives already framed as an exemplary but disruptive romance. It is a positioning that feels both apt and slightly provocative. Adapted from Sarah Waters’s Fingersmith, Park’s film is lush and attentive to female desire, with its priorities diverge tellingly from the source: less a thriller of reversals than a meditation on love, and the performance of love.

Park relocates the story to Japanese-occupied Korea in the 1930s. There, Japanese culture is presented as formalised, ceremonial, and performative, while Korean identity is coded as earthy, grassroot, and somewhat rebellious. While on Waters’s novel, illiteracy primarily articulates the power-dynamic between classes, The Handmaiden refracts it as colonial hierarchies. Gender politics, too, are sharpened through adaptation. The destruction of the library in The Handmaiden stands as the film’s most explicit feminist intervention.

This comes at a cost. Park’s film is less invested in mystery than Waters’s novel, whose pleasures lie in narrative misdirection, delayed revelations, and the destabilising act of retelling itself. In The Handmaiden, the reversals still arrive, but they no longer feel like epistemic shocks in structural suspense. but simply serve as steps toward romantic alignment.

This emphasis on romance also shapes the film’s erotic register. The sex scenes are meticulously composed, often striking, with some traits of the self-conscious, slightly self-orientalised elegance between Kim Min-hee and Kim Tae-ri that overplays their chemistry. In the meantime, the figure of the Count (Ha Jung-woo) further illustrates Park’s reading of (unrequited) desire. Unlike Waters’s Gentleman, whose interest is sheerly wealth-driven, the Count openly craves Hideko. This adaptation aligns with the film’s investment in overt passion.

The Handmaiden is a film of remarkable craft, one that reimagines Fingersmith, a masterpiece of narrative trickery, through the lenses of colonial history and cinematic performativity, into a sensual romance. If Waters’s novel asks who gets to write the story, Park’s adaptation is more interested in who gets to perform it, and how. As part of a programme interrogating love under pressure, The Handmaiden makes sense: it is a love story forged through constraint, artifice, and resistance. In the meantime, its smooth surfaces and emphatic gestures also invite scrutiny: what it reveals, what it hides, what has been appropriated for the sake of performance and what ultimately is missing.

FEATURE: Many Good Men

Published on January 22, 2026January 23, 2026 by Tamsin DunlopLeave a comment

‘Gen Z are rightfully front and centre in this essential exploration of the internet’s darkest corners.’

In the wake of Netflix’s Adolescence, a spate of high profile misogynistic killings, and also the last few millennia of humankind, misogyny has been a hot topic. The newest data shows young men to be especially at risk of online misogynistic radicalisation: the combined forces of algorithms, loneliness, and poor mental health combining to ensure maximum damage at maximum profit (that is, for the Tates and Musks and Fuenteses of the world).

Many Good Men is a participant-led digital forum theatre project aiming to tackle this rise in adolescent misogyny. Supported in part by the Scottish Government and Zero Tolerance Scotland, Civic Digits’ founder and artistic director Clare Duffy has created a forum for young people to express their thoughts and fears surrounding a broad range of interlinking topics: online radicalisation, masculinity, pornography, and the misogyny that underlies it all.

Many Good Men begins the same way every time: there’s been an incel shooting in Edinburgh (specifically, the JD Sports on Princes Street) and two footballers are trying to find out more about the perpetrator and the cynical forces that led him there. Young participants from local schools and football clubs create him a backstory, considering the many ways he could’ve been left vulnerable to radicalisation: frequent themes include a lack of familial support, mental health issues, and (naturally) unfettered internet access. In tonight’s documentary screening at CodeBase, we watch participants as they create a character fighting with his father over the exquisite shame of having missed three penalties in a single game. Next, he’s pouring scolding liquid over his mother as he wails, “I don’t like hot chocolate, mummy!” – Gen Z’s understanding of the tragic childishness of incel culture is completely apparent.

In further discussions, participants appear half-sincere and half-bemused as they earnestly try and describe exactly what a ‘chad’ is. It is a key facet of incel culture and Gen Z humour that both are inescapably ironic. There is such a fine line, or perhaps even no line, between a mocking tirade against Staceys, foids, and beta males and a genuine pronouncement of extreme misogyny – several participants say that they presumed Andrew Tate was a comedy persona upon first encountering his content. As such, it’s particularly impressive that Civic Digits have managed to utilise young people’s cringe censors for good. In the documentary, we see the participants laughing and cringing – whether out of nerves or embarrassment – as they act out the role of incel intervenor, probing the characters on what the real root of their issues is (probably not women). But still they perform, well and meaningfully, with an underlying seriousness that makes clear the pervasiveness of this phenomenon: the young girls involved in the project in particular demonstrate a striking familiarity with the manosphere and its growing influence in schools.

Following the screening, a panel of young people discuss their involvement in the project, fielding audience questions spanning from neurodivergency to capitalism with an impressive clarity. The audience of teachers, parents, and educators are clearly receptive to such first-hand accounts of adolescent life in 2026: Many Good Men is a brave and necessary exploration of the many dark forces targeting the next generation today, platforming the voices of those most at risk and of most importance.

REVIEW: The Moonwalkers: A Journey with Tom Hanks

Published on December 19, 2025December 18, 2025 by justinemsjonesLeave a comment

“Travel through the past, present, and future in an incredible celebration of space history.”

If you have ever been gripped by the fascination of space and what lies beyond our planet, you have likely been enamoured by the story of humans reaching the Moon. Arguably one of the greatest achievements of humankind is having gone beyond our atmosphere and successfully landed and explored the Moon. The Moonwalkers: A Journey with Tom Hanks gives space enthusiasts and the generally curious the opportunity to reflect on the mission people have gone on to achieve this incredible goal.

Created by Tom Hanks and Christopher Riley, The Moonwalkers takes audiences on a voyage through the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 70s. The mediums blend through Hanks recounting stories from his life and love for space, factual information on the colossal events that led to the Moon landing and interviews with future Artemis crew members, all of which come together to deliver a well curated and compelling tale about the hope to reach beyond.

Hanks is the perfect narrator for this story. He has truly swapped the cowboy boots for those of a space enthusiast and hearing his perception of the Moon landing through the eyes of his teenage self was a joy to hear.

What accompanies the beautiful narration are the equally impressive 360-degree projections and surround audio technology. Through NASA photography, the audience is completely immersed in space. The Moon images are crystal clear, it almost feels like you’re there yourself. The humanity communicated through the pictures is an element of this experience that leaves you feeling alive, knowing the once impossible was indeed possible. Particular highlights include the showcase of some of the 10,000 images taken during the Apollo missions. The ode to the fallen astronauts is a harrowing moment, delivered such a thoughtful and intentional way. By honouring the bravery of those who made the Moon landing possible while looking toward the Artemis generation, The Moonwalkers reminds us that progress is not finite – it is ongoing.

The piece is held up by the spectacular, contemplative original score by Anne Niktin. Far more than a supporting element, the music acts as an emotional guide throughout the experience, shaping the rhythm and tone of each chapter. Captivating through clever transitions between different genres, from jazz to contemporary melodies, it stands out in its own right.

It is impossible to leave without a renewed sense of faith in human curiosity and collaboration. The Moonwalkers: A Journey with Tom Hanks is a delight to witness. There are few ways better to spend 50 minutes immersed in adventure, awe and optimism. Visit Aviva Studios in Manchester to experience this masterpiece until 11th January 2026 or Lightroom in London until 8th March 2026. Tickets are available here.

REVIEW: Home Alone

Published on December 15, 2025December 15, 2025 by Miles Morgan1 Comment

“A joyous, resonant, and beautifully executed event; the perfect way to begin the Christmas season.”

Watching ‘Home Alone’ with a live orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall transforms a beloved Christmas classic into an unforgettable cinematic celebration. The grandeur of the Hall, combined with the warmth of John Williams’ iconic score performed live, elevates the film far beyond the nostalgia of yearly rewatching.

From the moment the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra began the overture, it was clear that this was not simply a screening – it was a festive event in its own right. Williams’ music is so central to the movie’s charm and it emerges with astonishing clarity when performed by a full ensemble. Nuances that often sit quietly in the background burst into focus. Delicate strings that underscore Kevin’s wonder, the playful woodwinds during his mischievous traps, and the sweeping choral moments that infuse the film with emotional weight.

The synchronization between the musicians and the screen was impeccable. Action cues landed perfectly with the chaos on screen, and comedic beats felt sharper and more vivid thanks to the live accompaniment. The orchestra added depth and dynamism, making familiar scenes such as the frantic airport dash to Kevin’s final showdown with the Wet Bandits feel unexpectedly fresh.

The Royal Albert Hall itself contributes significantly to the experience. Its acoustics lend a richness to the score that feels almost cinematic in its own right, and the festive atmosphere in the venue, from the decorated foyers to the excited patrons filling the seats, amplifies the seasonal spirit. It strikes a successful balance between high-calibre musical performance and joyful, accessible entertainment.

Perhaps the most powerful moment comes near the film’s climax, when the choir’s voices swell during ‘Somewhere in My Memory.’ Hearing this live in a space as resonant as the Royal Albert Hall is genuinely moving. It is a reminder of how expertly the film blends humour, heart and music and why so many people rewatch it year after year.

‘Home Alone in Concert’ is more than a nostalgic novelty. It is a reminder of the enduring impact of a great score, and of how live performance can breathe new life into a classic. Whether you are a lifelong fan of the movie or introducing it to younger viewers for the first time, this is a festive experience that delights across generations.