When is someone’s sentence truly over? The punishment often matches the crime, but what happens when the crime is so distasteful that any judicial ruling pales in comparison to what the world has in store when the accused is released? It’s a weighty, thorny topic, and nigh-on impossible to reckon […]
Pop Culture
Matapanki (Slamdance 2026) North American Premiere
In its setup, director Diego “Mapache” Fuentes’s Matapanki struck me as a Chilean version of Josh Trank’s Chronicle: a young man acquires superhero-like powers and soon becomes unable to control his newfound abilities. What Matapanki adds to this story, however, is a really nifty concoction of political satire matched with […]
Tony Odyssey (Slamdance 2026) World Premiere (REVIEW)
Brazilian cinema is having one of its occasional moments on the world stage, thanks to films like The Secret Agent and I’m Still Here breaking the usual containment unit of Best International Feature and being nominated in major categories at American awards shows. Even a synopsis of those films will […]
Doctor Who A-Z #108: The Horns of Nimon (1979-80)
I’ve seen good Doctor Who during this project, and I’ve seen bad Doctor Who too. But so-bad-it’s-good Doctor Who is trickier to pin down. It’s not just that the likes of The Dominators and The Space Museum are so-bad-they-annoyed-me, it’s more to do with an essential incompatibility between so-bad-it’s-good appreciation […]
Outside the Blue Box: The Divine Comedy (1989- )
The process of producing a television show as complex as Doctor Who is no mean feat. Once the scripts are written, the locations scouted, the sets built and the tea bags purchased, the actors begin their job of bringing the stories to life. Another aspect of production, arguably one of […]
Doctor Who A-Z #107: Nightmare of Eden (1979)
By 1979, Doctor Who had gone about as far into outer space as it ever would. Season Seventeen, which this is a part of, has only one story set on Earth; the season before it has half as much as that. In its opening scenes, Nightmare of Eden seems to […]
Doctor Who A-Z #106: The Creature from the Pit (1979)
The Creature from the Pit is the kind of story title that points so clearly towards a particular tone, a series as iconoclastic as Doctor Who is duty-bound to undermine it. Much as the revival series’ Mummy on the Orient Express turned out rather more grave than its tongue-in-cheek moniker, […]
Manchester Film Weekender: Adabana, Strangers in Kyoto, and Kaneko’s Commissary (JFT 2026)
Beginning in 2004, the Japan Foundation Touring Film Programme has brought the best of Japanese cinema – both new and classic – to audiences across the United Kingdom. This year’s lineup, which includes a handful of UK premieres, goes by the title of Knowing Me, Knowing You: The True Self […]
Doctor Who A-Z #105: City of Death (1979)
Early in the first episode of City of Death, Romana asks the Doctor where they’re going. “Do you mean philosophically or geographically?”, he replies. It’s one of an overwhelming number of great lines in the script by “David Agnew” (essentially, Douglas Adams doing a page-one rewrite on a David Fisher […]
Doctor Who A-Z #104: Destiny of the Daleks (1979)
Mark Gatiss once said that when Doctor Who works for eight-year-olds, it works for everyone. Looking at Season Seventeen, it’s easy to see why Tom Baker’s clowning hit the mark with that age group, but there’s also plenty of humour targeted at other age groups. Students would have enjoyed the […]