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Oliver Arditi

Writing all the things.

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Category: Films

So bad it’s… bad

We were on holiday in Northumberland, near Hadrian’s Wall, visiting lots of Roman archaeological sites, so we thought we’d watch … More

Centurion, Dominic West, Michael Fassbender

A dream

I’ve known the story of Gawain and the Green Knight for a long time, initially from Roger Lancelyn Green’s King … More

David Lowery, Dev Patel, Sarita Chowdhury, Sean Harris, The Green Knight

Judging hope

Martin Compston is best known for appearing in the entertainingly silly police fantasy Line of Duty, but his first acting … More

Ken Loach, Martin Compston, Sweet Sixteen

Keeping faith

Frank Herbert’s Dune has been a part of my life for many years—I started reading it for the first time … More

Denis Villeneuve, Dune, Frank Herbert

Not quite

Martin Scorsese has something of a reputation as a film maker who does movies about criminals in New York, but … More

Cameron Diaz, Daniel Day Lewis, Gangs of New York, Leonardo di Caprio, Martin Scorsese

Vivid conviction

Martin Scorsese enjoys making films about criminals. He likes representing their lives and their culture, and he often collaborates with … More

Alec Baldwin, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Scorsese, Martin Sheen, Matt Damon

Rhyming cinema

One thing I’ve had reinforced through watching the Rudolph Maté directed Robert Mitchum vehicle Second Chance (1953), is the total … More

Linda Darnell, Robert Mitchum, Rudolph Maté, Second Chance

Surface is depth

Orlando is a very complex and sophisticated film based on a very complex and sophisticated book which I haven’t read. … More

Billy Zane, Orlando, Quentin Crisp, Sally Potter, Tilda Swinton, Virginia Woolf

No conflict

The American economy has had its ups and downs—in the 1970s manufacturing crashed so badly that several large cities were … More

Bob Wells, Chloé Zhao, David Strathairn, Frances McDormand, Joshua James Richards, Ludovico Einaudi, Nomadland, Rubber Tramp Rendevous, Seven Days Walking

Still hidden

Hidden Figures tells the long untold story of the black women who worked as mathematicians at NASA in the 1950s … More

Dorothy Vaughan, Hidden Figures, Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, Theodore Melfi

Menacing angles

Certain times in certain places almost produce stories by themselves. Post Second World War Vienna was one such, a city … More

Anton Karas, Carol Reed, Graham Greene, Orson Welles, Robert Krasker, The Third Man

Doing it every day

Watching the second film in our self-selected route through Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series, I had in my mind the … More

John Boyega, Red White and Blue, Small Axe, Steve McQueen

Excavating justice

I don’t come from Suffolk, but I’ve lived here the vast majority of my adult life, and I have family … More

Basil Brown, Carey Mulligan, Charlie Haylock, Edith Pretty, Ralph Fiennes, Simon Stone, Sutton Hoo, The Dig

Getting off the train

One of the books that has made the greatest impact on me is Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun. … More

Bong Joon Ho, Jacques Lob, Jean-Marc Rochette, Snowpiercer

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