When The People Speak: Deliberative Democracy and Public Consultation
By Luke Gittos The upcoming general election will see the political class fighting for the attention of voters who appear to have given up on…
Review Samples
Reviewing is a separate art form in terms of writing. It takes on a different tone, format, and style compared to academic writing. Look at our review samples to get better acquainted with review writing.
Letter from an Unknown Woman
By Timandra Harkness It is a glorious film, but you could not make it now. And that is not just my opinion. My preview screening…
My Name is Khan
By Cheryl Hudson My Name is Khan broke global box office records as the largest grossing Bollywood movie worldwide in its opening weekend, including in…
Undertow
By Valentine Rossetti It is very rare to find a film where the sentiment stays with you for days after, but Undertow, the first feature-length…
Hamlet
By Matt Trueman Rory Kinnear’s Hamlet is a marked man; most definitely ‘the observed of all observers’. The Elsinore he inhabits is a surveillance state.…
The Education of a British-Protected Child, by Chinua Achebe
By Jo Caird 2008 was the 50-year anniversary of the publication of Things Fall Apart, the book that is widely regarded as the first African…
Alice in Wonderland, directed by Tim Burton
By Dolan Cummings Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland sees Lewis Carroll’s Alice returning to ‘Underland’ at the age of 19, falling down a hole in…
Mouchette, directed by Robert Bresson
By Dan Schneider Right on the heels of his great 1966 film, Au Hasard Balthazar, French film director Robert Bresson embarked on another exploration of…
3,096 Days by Natascha Kampusch
By Austin Williams The agonising and ultimately redemptive tale of the trapped Chilean miners captured the world’s hearts and headlines. At the time of writing,…
The Pregnant Widow by Martin Amis
By Wes Brown Martin Amis burst onto the seventies literary circuit, an ‘enfant terrible’, only twenty-four and yet apparently fully-formed—The Rachel Papers (1973), Dead Babies…
Ilustrado, by Miguel Syjuco
By Mike Jakeman Ilustrado, winner of the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize and the debut novel by a young Filipino writer, Miguel Syjuco, begins with…
Angel Time: The Songs Of The Seraphim, by Anne Rice
By Alicia Rudd From its initial façade, the latest novel by international best-selling author Anne Rice carries the attractive promise of being a ‘dark gothic…
And This is True
By Chris Sims ‘Time passes, and little by little everything that we have spoken in falsehood becomes true,’ writes Proust in Remembrance of Things Past.…
Tosca, ENO, Coliseum, London
By Sarah Boyes Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) is a notoriously popular composer. Popular, in terms of sheer numbers of admirers during his lifetime and enduring resonance…
Romeo and Juliet, Rose Theatre, London
By Miriam Gillinson A white mist unfurls onstage. Two armies filter forward—it is hard to make them out through the fog—and begin to mime a…
Up in the Air
By Dennis Hayes Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air is one of those rare films that deals with contemporary working life. It focuses on the…
The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest
By Angelica Michelis The final part of Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy starts exactly where the second volume has finished: Lisbeth Salander, the plucky and unusual heroine…
Harry Brown
By Mark Carrigan This film tells the story of Harry Brown, a pensioner living on a decaying housing estate in South London. Formerly a marine,…
The Ghost Writer
By Mark Carrigan Given the likelihood that its director Roman Polanski may never make another film, it is difficult not to approach The Ghost Writer…
Harlan County, USA
By Dan Schneider Barbara Kopple is one of those filmmakers who can do just about any film well. And so much so that when she…