Actress Elizabeth “Betty” Gilpin (GLOW, The Hunt) has written a memoir about her time in the troubled teen industry called ‘Stolen,’ which I only learnt about yesterday. This morning I purchased the audiobook and listened to the entire thing. At 15, Elizabeth was an honour student, a state ranked swimmer, and a rising soccer star, but…
Legally Blonde at 20
Legally Blonde was released in the US on July 13th, 2001, and in the UK on October 26th, 2001. Even after 20 years, Legally Blonde’s feminist legacy still perseveres in empowering women by dismantling the blonde stereotype through a strong female character. In 2017, Reese Witherspoon told the Wall Street Journal, “At least once a week I have…
Book Review: The Husbands
“It will get done. But the part that he leaves out is that he’ll have nothing to do with the doing.” Nora is a wife, mother, and lawyer who is fed up of her well-meaning but completely oblivious husband, Hayden, not helping her out more with childcare and housework. Nora’s lifechanges when the couple’s house hunting…
Book Review: The Divines
“With the emotional power of Normal People and the reflective haze of The Girls, a magnetic novel that moves between present-day Los Angeles and a British boarding school in the 1990s, exploring the destructive relationships between teenage girls.” I was really excited about this book, especially due to the above description, but it was nothing like that. Ellie Eaton…
What is the Real Message Behind ‘I Care A Lot’?
Contains Spoilers for I Care A Lot. J. Blakeson’s third feature film, I Care a Lot, follows the life and crimes of Marla Grayson (Rosamund Pike) — a sociopathic con artist who makes her living ripping off old people. It’s an intriguing focus for a film, but one that makes us ask “what’s the real message…
Review: Happiest Season
Christmas is a time for love, family, warmth… and this Letterboxd list of Christmas films featuring heterosexual couples wearing red and green. While the list plays for laughs, it highlights how manufactured straight Christmas films are and how inundated audiences have become with them. LGBT stories that take place over the holidays are few and far between,…
LFF Review: Wildfire
In memory of Nika McGuigan. Set on the fractious Irish border, Cathy Brady establishes the tone of her feature-length debut, Wildfire, by opening with archival footage of the conflict and terrorism linked to The Troubles, and more recently, the divide caused by Brexit. The social and political unrest simmers in the background of the film’s main story,…
LFF Review: A Love Story
In Jennifer Sheridan’s original debut feature, Rose: A Love Story, husband Sam (screenwriter Matt Stokoe) and wife Rose (Sophie Rundle) live a secluded life together in England’s snowy woods. Sam spends his days in the freezing cold gathering wood, setting rabbit traps, and looking after them both, whereas Rose stays inside writing novels, on a typewriter…
Review: The Haunting of Bly Manor
Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House, based on Shirley Jackson’s novel of the same name, was an absolute masterclass in emotive storytelling, story adaptation, and filmmaking. This time, Flanagan continues to reinvent great stories of the past as the second installment of The Haunting explores Henry James’ “The Turn of the Screw”. The Haunting of Bly…
Review: Ratched
We were first introduced to the terrifying and tyrannical Nurse Mildred Ratched in Ken Kesey’s book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — but her character was brought to life by Louise Fletcher in Miloš Forman’s film adaptation, which earned her the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1976. Nurse Ratched manipulated her patients in…