“The decade after Ratatouille’s release saw the explosion of viral internet cooking channels, from Buzzfeed Tasty to Mob Kitchen, offering easy, comforting meals that promised emotional and physical sustenance for the harrowed millennial entering the rat race. The pandemic has only clarified the increasing significance of the film’s central themes - food, creativity, and democracy - to notions of humanity.”

“Overshadowed in the year of its release by another anti-war satire, M*A*S*H, Catch-22 offers a more sober statement of the message that defines America not by the glory of war, but by discomfort in it.”

“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.”