In my final review of The Wire I discuss how the core theme of season 5 - truth - plays out across several storylines.  From fake news to McNulty's fictional serial killer to the Clay Davis trial, I talk about how the abusive institutions that make up a city's control ...
Read more

China is without doubt a major player in Hollywood. Both private investment and state regulations and censorship have played a significant role in the American movie business in recent years. This week I examine the Chinese influence on Hollywood, both in terms of the shape of the industry and the ...
Read more

The Spook Who Sat by the Door tells the story of the first African-American to be recruited by the CIA. After becoming disillusioned with the Agency he quits and sets up a black power guerilla army that wages urban war across the United States. According to its writer Sam Greenlee ...
Read more

In part 3 of this subcriber-only review series I look at season three of The Wire. In this season the Barksdale storyline comes to a climax, while the city hall politics are added into the ever-expanding world of the show. I examine the Hamsterdam experiment, where one police major decides ...
Read more

In the second of my subscriber-only reviews of The Wire I look at season 2. Focusing on smuggling through the port of Baltimore this season explores how capitalism has evolved to a post-industrial phase dominated by service industries like sex and drugs, how investigating sex slavery is relegated behind lesser ...
Read more

The Founder is a 2016 biopic of Ray Kroc, the man who created McDonald’s. Or did he? In this episode I examine this ambiguous film, one of the best examples of cultural capitalism to come out of Hollywood in recent years. I explore how it avoids the negative consequences of ...
Read more

Wings (1927) was one of the first Hollywood films to benefit from full military support, was the first film to include sound effects on a film reel alongside the in-theater orchestra, and was the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was also the first film ...
Read more

Streaming content on-demand has changed the way people think about their relationship with entertainment, and drastically changed people's viewing habits and behaviour. So in this episode we take a look at Netflix (and other on-demand platforms), the merits and demerits of the streaming model, and ask whether this development will ...
Read more

The Last Supper is a 1990s black comedy where a group of ultra-liberal post-graduate students invite right-wingers over for debate, and kill them if they cannot change their minds. In this episode I analyse this film's political satire, the occult symbolism littered throughout the movie, and how the logical result ...
Read more

From racism and sexism to the military-industrial complex, the politics both within the Marvel Cinematic Universe and surrounding it here in the real world are a constant source of news stories and controversy. This week we look at how the world’s biggest film franchise is both the source and the ...
Read more

The book of Ecclesiastes tells us, ‘The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.’ Even the idea that there is nothing new is thousands of years old ...
Read more