“A major question for Iannucci and his audience relates to the ethical standing of the laughter provoked by its depiction of Stalinism. Jokes come not only from Iannucci’s trademark profane wisecrackers- “out of my way, you fannies”, “you’re not even a person, you’re a testicle”- and slapstick humour, but from ridicule of the bureaucratic cowardice of the Soviet ruling class.”

“The cacophony of cultural icons suggests a disruption of the order inherent in earlier American societies, from the Manifest Destiny of the country’s expansion to the Christianity of the postwar period; in Blue Velvet, the illusion of a reliable order that had sustained earlier generations has collapsed.”

“Whilst Goldman and director Rob Reiner softened the novel’s more shocking elements, the film retains a keen interest in the primal, uncivilised impulses to which, it suggests, modern people are more than capable of reverting under the right conditions. Paul and Annie’s relationship charts an unsettling course from benevolent mother-son territory to a taboo-trampling, chintzy Oedipal spectacular.”

“Elf probably chimes more than ever with millennials and Gen Z’s who can now relate all too strongly to its dismay about the ever-expanding grimness of corporate America, to which, the film implores, personal relationships and individual joy must not be sacrificed.”

“The New York Times compared the recalcitrant Trump, refusing to concede defeat and surrounded by a thinning flock of enablers, to Desmond at her end, when “the dream she had clung to so desperately enfolded her.” Wilder’s film plays on the change over two decades in a technology which in 1910 seemed endlessly fresh and benevolent; one hundred years later, social media has taken the place of the silent film, but the song remains the same.”

“Grave of the Fireflies is an unflinching survey of how innocence and imagination- in a word, the nostalgic, pure-hearted escapism with which Studio Ghibli is synonymous- cannot protect the innocent from suffering.”

“A world of sweaty, lissom bodies grinding indiscriminately against each other on jam-packed beaches is a distant memory; Spring Breakers has taken on the tone of a memorial to a lost way of life.”

“For all his failures- as an actor, and as an individual unable to move past a byegone era- Withnail has remained a weirdly intriguing, witty and touching point of reference for generations of young, reckless viewers, even as they age out of relating to him.”