Major Oscar contenders are not unfamiliar with backlash. Anything hyped up that much is inevitably going to inspire some pushback. However, recently these pushbacks have been more politically charged. La La Land received much criticism for a lack of black characters despite prominently featuring jazz music (although, as a privileged white man, the fact that the film wasn't actually that great bothered me more). Now, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - the latest film from In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths director Martin McDonagh - has been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar and is already receiving several think pieces regarding its allegedly thorny racial politics.  Of course, we're living in divisive times. It's becoming increasingly difficult to see anyone who disagrees with you as anything more than a political enemy and increasingly easy to label them libtards/Nazis and punch them in the face. We're constantly seeing cries for nuance from both si...

Up until this point, Aaron Sorkin has exclusively been a writer. Responsible for creating iconic TV shows such as  The West Wing and The Newsroom , as well as recently penning the screenplays for  The Social Network and  Steve Jobs , Sorkin's dense, witty and rapid-fire style is successful with critics and audiences alike. However, Molly's Game marks Sorkin's first time in the director's chair. Unlike The Social Network and Steve Jobs , where Sorkin's writing was filtered through directors David Fincher and Danny Boyle respectively, this is purely his vision . Is it any good, or is it just an indulgent attempt to cram as many words into 140 minutes as possible? There is no doubt that Molly's Game is an Aaron Sorkin film. Dialogue is the centre of attention and for good reason: it's excellent. Of course, it isn't exactly naturalistic. Every line sounds like one that you come up with an hour after a conversation and wish you'd said instead. Howe...

The real world of 2017 was like the messier, uglier sequel to 2016. That year left us with an ominous array of terrible decisions, and 2017 consisted of everyone flailing about in unsuccessful attempts to deal with the consequences. By the end of the year, we were pretty much right where we started, just significantly more tired and miserable. Fortunately, beyond the number of high profile people in the industry that have turned out to be abhorrent sexual criminals, the entertainment of 2017 has been excellent. My current favourite band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard released five whole albums of consistently fantastic quality, Stranger Things season two was predictably marvellous and we finally got a female Doctor to look forward to in 2018. Then, there were the films. There were a handful of things I didn’t get to see ( Get Out , The Death of Stalin , Call Me by Your Name ) that could have made this list. However, there was still a bucketload of brilliance that I did se...