HeadStuff

I remember the day La La Land hit cinemas, ten years ago now. I was twelve, and a raging hater of musicals. I opted to not go see it on the big screen, and that still keeps me up at night. I eventually watched it years later, and I adored it. I am now a proud musical enjoyer. Musicals have always been a divisive genre for people, along with other ‘low brow’ genres like rom-coms, or admittedly, chick flicks – or films where the target audience is women.

When the film critic Sarah Cullen heard that I was scheduled to attend the preview of The Death of Robin Hood, she joked that it looked and sounded like a re-run of Logan (2017) – also starring Hugh Jackman – albeit without the earlier protagonist’s metal claws. She wasn’t far off.

Every review I have written thus far of Louise Weard’s Castration Movie Anthology references a different ultimate length the film will have. Recently I watched Hazel Norwood’s fantastic first part of the Castration Movie Documentary. It’s cute to hear them describing the film as 7 hours, rather than the epic it has become (indeed including tertiary creativity like the documentary). Currently the film is planned to feature five long features with (deep breath) Castration Movie Anthology iii.

Capsized, Lindsey Ryan’s feature directorial debut, made its world premiere on August 15th at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, as part of the In Competition strand. Utilising its hazy, dream-like tint, Capsized is utterly stunning. Depicting the dynamic of a dysfunctional yet lovable family, the filmfollows a family vacation that spirals into a turbulent journey as they collectively grapple with lost homes, fractured identities, and the grip of a troubled patriarch.

The time has come, with the shortening of evenings and the sense that class is nearly back in session for the country’s students, for Electric Picnic. The biggest (but not necessarily the best) festival is here and we’ve done up a guide to help you get the most out of it – if you managed to get a ticket (which sold out while the 2025 iteration was still ongoing). One of the mistakes a lot of people make is to never explore outside of the main arena, and maybe the Rave in The Woods.

In I Want Your Sex (2026) Olivia Wilde recreates Norma Desmond as a toxic girl-boss with a BDSM fetish, manipulating her new, humdrum gallery assistant (Cooper Hoffman) into becoming, in his words, a “sex slave” with feelings.

Electric Picnic 2026 sold out while 2025’s edition was ongoing! With Gorillaz, Fontaines D.C. and Lewis Capaldi topping the bill across the weekend, the big shows are unlikely to struggle for attention. But the festival has always been about more than its biggest stages. From hidden techno bunkers and forest raves to opera, comedy, wrestling, traditional music and wellness spaces, there is plenty happening once you wander away from the main arena.

In the discourse cycle a complaint about Jane Schoenbrun’s sophomore film I Saw The TV Glow was that for a film touted as being about transness, it never explicitly used the word “trans”. An odd complaint, in my opinion, for a film about lacking the words to describe the feeling of gender incongruity. Nevertheless Schoenbrun’s third film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma explicitly makes the queerness front and centre a part of the text, rather than more allegorical. And damn is it horny.

Extra Geography made its UK premiere at Edinburgh International Film Festival, as part of the Out of Competition strand. Molly Manners’ feature directorial debut is an unmistakably British coming-of-age drama. It features breakout performances from Galaxie Clear and Marni Duggan as the two leads, Flic and Minna. Sole authorship doesn’t go to Molly Manners, however, as the script is written by Miriam Battye (Succession) and adapted from the short story of the same name by Rose Tremain.

“Every time I look in the mirror, I’m someone different, repulsive.” Seth Brundle For nearly sixty-years, David Cronenberg has made the Body Horror movie into an art form. He as a filmmaker has taken this subgenre and successfully engineered it into watchable and thought provoking projects. At the same time, the aesthetic of the form remains intact, and the grotesque is done purposely and not just for effect.