I’m Lloyd. I love film and music. It makes me feel alive.

To me, music and sound is half of the film but criticism and commentary is either too in-depth and detailed or overly simplified. Often, it isn’t spoken about enough.

If I ask you to consider your favourite soundtrack, you might hear it. Then you might remember the feeling of that film.

Beyond music in films, sound design is something that can create feelings and sensations in a hidden way. Like the terrifying sounds of bombs landing or planes flying towards us (see Dunkirk).

This is the space I explore. I write regular film reviews and longer features on cinema that nearly always have a focus on sound. I go beyond typical reactions and tell stories about how your favourite music came to life in a movie.

You’ll receive weekly articles that will discuss, critique and celebrate your favourite soundtrack and highlight how sound in film is half the story. And how that is all designed to make you feel a certain way when you’re watching.

What can you expect by subscribing to AuralFrame?

Here are some samples of my writing and a good place to start:

1. A review: every week of new and older films. 800 words.

2. A feature: twice a month that explores craft and sound. 1-2k words.

3. A deeper dive into sound: once a month. Roughly 4k words.

4. Curated cinema: a shorter and curated round-up of cinema, with recommendations. 300-500 words.

David Lynch: "Films are 50 percent visual and 50 percent sound. Sometimes sound even overplays the visual."

What my readers say.

I think the soundtrack from Juno is very underrated. What soundtrack doesn’t get enough love, in your opinion?

Welcome to The Film Programme.

A scrapbook of thoughts, feelings, imagery and sounds from the month in cinema.

Film of the month: Nobody Knows (2004). Dir. Hirokazu Koreeda.

A sad but compelling story. The camera gave it a claustrophobic feel and I was begging for space (praise). Great performance by Yûya Yagira as a twelve-year-old boy called Akira who looks after himself and siblings after their mother abandons the family. If you’ve ever eaten cornflakes with water, this one’s for you.

Disappointments: Before I watched the latest Spider-Man flick, I read that Tom Holland (a big Tottenham fan) said he’d trade an Oscar win if it meant Spurs could win the league. I love you, and Tottenham, Tom. But there’s two things in your statement that aren’t happening anytime soon.

Moneyball: 35 films over the month including 9 rewatches, 3 animated and 5 documentaries. Picking up reviews again ahead of the London Film Festival. Excited. (My Letterboxd link if you’re on there).

I loved this “Cell Therapy” moment in Moonlight (2016). A southern hip-hop masterpiece by Goodie Mob that lands perfectly with the scene. Lots to love about this film, not just the sound, and that wandering camera is a dream throughout.

Alexandre Desplat never disappoints. This playful piece from Little Women also reminds me of a sound from The Pursuit of Happyness.

I rewatched the Searching for Sugar Man documentary and fell in love with Rodriguez’s sound and story. When I last watched it, there was no connection for me. I dunno, sometimes we’re at moments in our life where things just land. When the student is ready, the teacher appears and all that. This performance is…well…just watch it and decide for yourself.

Sambizanga (1972). Dir. Sarah Maldoror.

Sarah Maldoror, a pioneer of African cinema. I was also unfamiliar with the context of the Angolan war of independence with Portugal. There is an authentic atmosphere to the film. Sure, sometimes the acting feels just a tad unnatural but there is a realism to everything seen.

Beneath the warmth of the camera and the melodic sounds, Elisa Andrade’s performance as a determined and impassioned wife who is trying to locate her imprisoned husband is very powerful. There is no available soundtrack (that I can find anyway) but here’s a version of a track that sounds against the above image in the film.

There’s a real meaning to this film, and the song.

I’m enjoying Dario’s () series on becoming a better film critic. It’s cheaper than a pint and worth any film writer’s time. I am in awe of the energy and flow he brings to these recordings but I’m fascinated when he occasionally pauses to take water onboard. Like a boxer sweating in between rounds, a small cotton towel wrapped around his neck, and a confidence about what’s to come next.

What I liked about Rachel’s piece is not only the energy in the writing and learning about her experiences, but the post-reflection afterwards. The permission to let the words flow.

Watched Lauren’s trailer for SWATHE and loved it. Check it out yourselves.

Lloyd.

The Dog Stars begins with a whiff of intrigue, as if something compelling is about to happen over its forthcoming two hours. Hig (Jacob Elordi), accompanied by his loyal dog, is making preparations to fly out of an abandoned airfield in the Colorado mountains. A place more of refuge than home. The camera patiently circles his weathered plane, a 1956 yellow Cessna, inspecting the wings before paying close attention to its worn tyres. Something interesting seems like it’s building and as Hig prepares to take off, switching on the plane’s GPS systems, the camera pauses for just a split second longer than it has up to now as “Garmin” is displayed on screen. This distraction pops that bubble of curiosity and any mystery dissolves. This feeling lingers throughout Ridley Scott’s latest film.

Based on Peter Heller’s dystopian novel and led by Mark Smith’s writing (The Revenant, 2015), it is set in a post-apocalyptic world where a virus wiped out humanity, sharing similar themes with I Am Legend (2007). Here, what is spoken on screen is excessive in exposition and entangles the characters as the story unfolds. In one scene Hig’s hypervigilant and alpha-friend, Bangley (Josh Brolin), explains his problematic atherosclerosis (his words) that affected him before the virus and how sugary drinks aggravated the condition; as we see Coca-Cola signs on screen and a bottle neatly placed for the camera. Within the first twenty or so minutes, Sprite and Jim Beam will have their moments too.

Hig himself is relaxed, sometimes a little too much for someone in his predicament, as is Cima (Margaret Qualley) who he later meets after ditching the plane in the mountains. The virus has made Cima a widow and whilst she’s written to be intelligent (a medic before the outbreak) and with survival instincts, as she fires at intruders with a rifle, the story reduces her. For all of her complexities, the camera at times voyeuristically lingers on her body.

The film exaggerates its characters’ traits too much, reducing any nuance that makes their interactions believable. Hig is too naive in the setting, Bangley too rigid in his role as protector and the reapers - tribal roaming scavengers who are the enemy in this new world - are one-dimensional. Because everyone is stretched outwardly in their caricatures it can become almost comedic when they try to meaningfully interact. Even Cima’s rough and ready father, Pops (Guy Pearce), seems to do little else than mirror Bangley, just in a different setting. It’s easy to overly critique individual performances but when, collectively, the themes and characters don’t land it’s fair to look elsewhere in the film’s crafting.

Maybe Scott is commentating on what lockdowns did to our collective psychologies, magnifying our extreme reactions and withdrawal to internal sanctuaries. Or maybe he isn’t doing this at all. But latter scenes with the eerie Darlene (Allison Janney), in a place that appears stuck in the 50s, look like an observation on how the rich and powerful would respond to such a scenario. The placement of Dean Martin’s “Memories Are Made of This” reinforces this perspective and the peculiar world these themes unfold in has a faint scent of Eddington (2025).

This entanglement of the story extends to its score. Harry Gregson-Williams too often relies on gushing sentimentality of country sounds when Hig is on screen (amplifying, again, his caricature), as if trying to ignite a low-level male weepiness. In defence of the composer, one scene is standout. As Bangley is attacked in the night by reapers, an ensuing fight is scored with multiphonics (a technique that allows instruments to play multiple notes at once), which creates an unnerving sound and captures an atmosphere of invasion. Paired with the night-vision effects on screen, this is by far one of the best moments of the film.

Other memorable aspects of the film are the visuals of Hig’s plane cruising through the sky. Erik Messerschmidt (Oscar-winning cinematographer with Mank, 2020) makes the plane feel like a character itself, a bird floating in the sky or an extension of Hig’s freedom as he turns off the engine and lets the plane glide. These images of low-level fog, deep blue waters and the scenery of mountains are stunning.

Although, these fleeting moments don’t distract from the bumpy turbulence of Scott’s story and direction. For all of the visuals there is something off and a coherence missing that was detectable in Gladiator II (2024) and Napoleon (2023). Maybe Joaquin Phoenix’s performance saved parts of the latter, but that isn’t happening here. Still, Scott has differed in one direction. Those previous films were both around two and a half hours. At under two hours, The Dog Stars might just about be manageable.

Other film reviews you might be interested in.

As the characters run off into the sunset at the end of Coyote vs. ACME, postscripts are displayed that serve as an epilogue for what happens next. I won’t spoil this, or any part of the film, but the comedic tone of these credits is silly and plays on what you’d expect to see after watching a deep and serious documentary. It’s a humorous way to finish and in keeping with the playful and entertaining tone from the previous 103 minutes.

I can’t think of another animation film that gets close to the experience of watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). That movie relied solely on painstaking 2D hand drawing, and in Coyote vs. ACME director Dave Green uses a hybrid approach with 3D computer animation. With the exception of one scene where the digital effects are overbearing, the results are impressive.

Credit to Samy Burch’s writing in balancing the deployment of numerous Looney Tunes characters, building the story around Coyote and Road Runner whilst dropping others throughout the film with their own unique motifs, from Daffy Duck painting in a psychiatric centre to an ominous detective-looking bunny hiding away at a local carrot festival. The verbose Foghorn Leghorn, as the owner of ACME, also plays a key role as his company is taken to court by Wile E. Coyote for selling defective products (surely the only reason he can’t catch Road Runner). The person representing Coyote, Kevin (Will Forte), looks like a shoo-in from Better Call Saul in some multiverse as a lowly and unconfident attorney from Albuquerque. We also see a cute Tweety Bird in an enforcer role, acting for ACME’s attorney Buddy Crane (John Cena). My personal highlight of the film sees their exchange after a failed attempt to catch Road Runner, as Crane mocks Tweety’s pronunciation in a hilarious back and forth moment: “You tawt you taw?!”

Burch’s writing always gives just enough plot to move forward. I kept expecting the story to turn, reinforce some preachy message and lose its way. It refuses to do this. The film is full of thrills and everyone in the cinema was laughing throughout the screening. I took my youngest daughter to watch this and I’ll be honest: we’ve seen quite a few animation films over the years and some of these can drag, or I have a feeling that I can’t be bothered to rewatch later on. Not this. I’m excited to view it again. It’s intended to be fun and always focusses on that.

If I had one complaint it’s that Coyote, in keeping with his cartoon, doesn’t speak. This requires Kevin to do a lot of interpretation and sometimes this is labouring to watch. But Coyote becomes a loveable character, and early on we are treated to some nostalgic flashback clips of old cartoons where the two main characters are in their eternal chase.

The story of the film was originally published by The New Yorker in 1990 and here the film’s ironic tagline reads: The Movie ACME Doesn’t Want You To See. Ironic because Warner Bros. shelved it in 2023 and planned to use it as a tax write-off. Green clearly syphoned some determination and resilience from Coyote, as did angry Looney Tunes fans, resulting in the movie being sold to Ketchup Entertainment. Maybe the courtroom drama and the way characters stand up against large corporates has taken on a new meaning. It’ll be interesting to observe how many people turn up to the cinema and watch it though, given some of the other big films released right now.

With that context, if you want to enjoy an animation film that’ll make you laugh just as much as, say, The Lego Movie (2014), this is a movie that will reward you for sitting back in a comfy cinema seat. It captured my imagination more than Space Jam (1996) and it’s certainly the best Looney Tunes-related film I’ve watched (although Who Framed Roger Rabbit is still the benchmark). Take the kids and if you don’t have them, take a niece or nephew. Go yourself. It’s the best animation film I’ve watched so far this year.

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I’ve been afforded the chance to visit a number of places through work, but I have a strained relationship with this type of travel. Too much time has been fatigued with polite talk in bars and obligatory team-outings, and I sense I’m not the only one who would appreciate solitude and enjoy exploring a new place on my own terms. A few years ago, whilst working in the friendly and quiet Polish city of Wrocław, I noticed a special subtitled screening of Wojciech Has’ first feature film, The Noose (Pętla in Polish). Here I was, in a city where parts of the film were shot and a local art-house cinema screening it. I abandoned my usual idleness and people-pleasing tendencies and got myself a ticket.

Following the death of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, a slow easing across the bloc led to an increase in freedom of speech. Cinema before that point had been heavily censored but Polish filmmakers suddenly had a degree of freedom to represent Poles with reconsidered eyes. Has’ film follows Kuba, an alcoholic, who just needs to see the day through to 6pm, so he can receive treatment for his disease. Under a communist regime, chronically drunk behaviours that portrayed the working class as unproductive were censored and, with this context in mind, Kuba’s despair and hopelessness seem emblematic.

The film begins with a close-up of his suffocatingly loud phone, which won’t stop ringing. When he learns it can’t be unplugged, it serves as one of many symbols from the director that poison any moment of solitude for Kuba; he can’t escape many things, most notably himself. Has sets up Kuba’s claustrophobic apartment with mirrors, as if he’s living in a psychological maze, and other objects that replicate this feeling. A necklace he won’t let go of, sculptures of his artistry and glass frames smashed on the floor, as if trodden on during the drunken dead hours of night. All of these represent a perpetual cycle of addiction that can’t be escaped. Even the neighbour repairing his beaten and bruised coat offers a glance of judgement about the routine of it all. I wonder if Has knew this type of pain himself, because he never lets Kuba get away from these spirals of weakness.

Maybe in the past Kuba decided to get clean on a Monday morning, but the cage his beast lives in is fragile. Has doesn’t invite speculation about how Kuba’s life story created this condition, the story is focussed on this one day. The people he encounters have no sympathy for him either; they’ve seen him dressed in these clothes before, they know he’ll end up at a bar and they’ll no doubt see him being dragged home. Another loop of shame and desperation.

Tadeusz Baird’s composition, like the film, is subtle but intense. A violin sounds Kuba’s self-pity, and a slow thundering thump of a drum increases the dread of what’s to come as the camera creeps towards his face. His tired eyes matching the energy of the score. Billy Wilder’s The Lost Weekend (1945) was celebrated for its use of a theremin, and its intent to heighten psychological torment with the electronic sound. But, to me, that film (and its sound) is like a comic book compared to the brutality of The Noose. Has lets silences breathe and the quiet moments of night terrors or withdrawal are self-explanatory.

Gustaw Holoubek plays Kuba with painful realism and his face seems to sweat droplets of vodka-infused ethanol, his eyes communicate anxiety as they dart left, then right. Holoubek’s performance is never exaggerated and alongside the eyes, it’s his posture that stands out. In one bar scene Has positions the camera so Kuba’s trembling hands are seen, as are his attempts to bury shame as he tries to control them, turning away to hide as a barmaid observes him with apparent judgement.

When Kuba does decide to reprieve his torture with a drink it’s his arms that become more casual, his gaze softer. The liquid sword of sharp-looking vodka sinks into his veins as the alcohol transfers through blood vessels and upwards to the brain. Kuba’s hands stop. Facial muscles relax and the world is no longer a worry. Vodka will let you forget for a while but that old familiar sting won’t go away. What goes up must come down. A stranger he meets at the bar could well be a drunken ghost from his future - another artist whose hands can no longer stay still to play the saxophone - foretelling what pain awaits Kuba later in life.

As Kuba leaves the bar, he’s again confronted with tokens of a metaphorical prison, through narrow cobbled streets and looming buildings that make everything and everyone unavoidable. How much longer can he live with this self-destruction? How tight do the individual threads of the noose need to be in order to free him from the shadows that the director has covered him with, as an ominous threat? Has doesn’t shy away from the brutalities of alcoholism.

When he arrives home he’s presented again with those symbols of a groundhog day, as his coat is sent to be repaired, his girlfriend desperately disappointed and glass frames trodden on once more. This nightmare might have to start again tomorrow. Kuba can see a large mural of a woman outside his window, a hint that his true love was once someone from another time and place. Like the lady he spoke with at a café, the only point in the film where Has decides to show a hint of old and lost love, with flowers centred between them.

The bleakness of post-war Poland, a minimalist sound and use of framing to heighten entrapment remind me of the Oscar-winning film Ida (2013). During one memorable moment Kuba speaks to another drunkard about being a “little Pole”. The theatre I was in had been still throughout and everybody seemed gripped by the film. Kuba’s words seemed deep and poignant to me, but the audience burst out laughing. This momentary display was thrilling to observe.

I’ve since been told that this ironic and self-deprecating humour is part of the Polish character. But once the laughter settled, Kuba’s story continued and the desperation persisted on screen. Near the end of the film Has’ camera focusses on a trivial piece of furniture as a small wooden chair emerges from the chaos of his apartment. Everyone was quiet when the credits rolled.

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April 17, 2025: Meeting Yann Tiersen

My sister and I were last in line. There’s a creative edge to Bristol’s Rough Trade in the evening. It’s dark and the floor is sticky from craft ales and vodka shots. With rows of neatly placed vinyl, I imagine the nomads who fill HMV’s local store wander here as dusk falls. We’d been watching Yann Tiersen perform live for the last couple of hours in the naive hope that he’d treat us to the French sounds of his accordion or piano, as we got high on the Amélie (2001) score. 24 years had passed since the film’s release but it seemed that, for this artist, that was then and this was now.

Based on rigid and stiff-swaying postures of others in the cosy stage area - a cramped and dark room with a small podium - we weren’t the only ones who came hunting for a taste of Parisian nostalgia. We would all end the night disappointed.

Tiersen patiently sipped his drink for most of the set (I surmised from its cloudy and amber tones, it must be a local IPA from the bar) as he performed his new album; composed whilst sailing past Ireland, Scotland and further up the North Sea to the Faroe Islands. His demeanour wasn’t stormy, but he had a breeze about him that never seemed to settle. As I sat with my sibling, beer in hand, she retrieved her CD to remind me of the title: The Liquid Hour. I’d left my copy at home but she wanted hers to be signed and - thinking about our impending encounter - I knew I wouldn’t have the courage to tell Tiersen the album in question was “alright, actually”.

As I drank up and we ambled to queue, I felt a tinge of disappointment. I adored the film and once had an over-sized poster of Amélie in my study as a reminder of feelings it would leave me with. Amélie made it cool to be quirky and eccentric. I’d felt seen and alive every time I watched it. Whenever I travelled to Paris I stayed near Montmartre, cherished the views of the city from the Sacré-Cœur and drank in the movie’s famous Café des Deux Moulins (a now tired and drab spot that’s a two minute walk to the Moulin Rouge). I was a giddy touriste.

Little did I know that, in the coming minutes, Tiersen would perform an encore for an unassuming couple. Without wasting words, let’s just say these two were fans of the film, as posters, DVDs and other items of fandom were dumped on the counter for the artist to sign. The composer’s patience finally betrayed him, as if these items had looted the fragments of any artistic identity that remained.

My role as voyeur intensified. Tiersen manoeuvred himself closer to the poster of Amélie and drew a small black moustache between the top of her lip and bottom of her nose. Colloquially, this was a “Hitler moustache”. The couple looked confused. Ending a brief silence, with a smirk deflating the creases on his forehead, he clarified this stance: “I only sign these posters, this way”. My sister glanced at me before he finished. “This is a racist movie”.

That interaction with a composer from one of cinema’s most appreciated soundtracks, as well as one of my personal favourite films, sparked my intrigue. This is the story of Amélie and her composer.

The reaction

“Let him return the money!”, were the words of the self-identified right-wing lawyer Charles Consigny, a regular commentator on popular TV and radio shows in France.

This was in late 2025 and his scathing assessment of Tiersen’s recent comments on the film, during an interview with Libération (a daily national newspaper in France) in October, was followed up by a generalised criticism on the culture of cinema in Paris:

“In the cinema, you are obliged to show your belonging to a party. The small Parisian cultural world works like this. So right now, if there is not one in two characters who is trans or racialized... you are no longer part of the group.”

Barbara Lefebvre, another regular commentator on the current affairs debate programme - Les Grandes Gueules, where Consigny made his remarks - went further with her condemnation of the musician:

“I hope he donated all the money he earned (from the Amélie soundtrack) to help migrants! You have to be consistent in life. Let him return the money to SACEM”. The Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music (SACEM) is the body in France that collects payments on behalf of artists, distributing these to songwriters and composers.

The host of the radio show, Olivier Truchot, defended the work of Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s direction of Amélie: “He didn’t want to make a documentary”. And responding to some of Tiersen’s views of the movie: “It’s a film that holds up but is not intended to be realistic. Jean-Pierre Jeunet proposes an approach to an imaginary Paris close to comics”.

Tiersen earns an estimated $36,900 a month from Spotify streaming. Across his catalogue, the Amélie soundtrack has received approximately 1.16 billion Spotify plays, against about 130 million for Cascade Street (1996), his most popular standalone album. Figures are provided by Chartmasters and Kworb data. The latter source covers Spotify only.

Adoration: Why Amélie still loved 25 years later.

Amélie has received plenty of adoration for its feeling of a postcard Parisian life, and how a shy and unassuming woman battles with herself in pursuit of love. Sensory stories within a story. The quiet cracking of a crème brûlée. The soothing feeling of a hand sinking into a basket of grains at a quiet market. Thoughtful collection of smooth pebbles so, when they’re gently thrown, they skip ever-so-effortlessly over water.

A romantic who notices life’s little moments. Turning her head to peek behind and gaze at people’s smiles at the cinema. The green, yellow and reds: splashed throughout the city’s scenes, and extra vivid and visible in the safe imaginative sanctuary of her apartment. The place where shyness dreams and fantasies come alive, as paintings of dogs converse with pigs disguised as lamps. A mind that will forever stay young, one that remembers crocodile friends and suicidal fish from her formative years.

The unique and sacred heart whose therapeutic deeds for oblivious locals are invisible and sincere. Gripping a blind man by the arm and marching him down the street as she narrates with fervour and glorious detail. His face beams. He is alive. Acts of generosity that fracture a middle-aged man’s ego and reunites him with his childhood, and an estranged family. Age brings pessimism and scorn to some, but she finds a way to dissolve their atrophy of joy: the garden gnome travels the world. She plays cupid and fires arrows where they’re in desperate need. Yet, what she sees in others is with compassion and devoid of judgement.

Amélie doesn’t need (or want) to change. Loneliness is not the word, but the Glass Man is right; she “is in the middle of it, yet she seems outside it all”. But there is no pity-party. No tears rolling down her cheeks. She understands who she is. Accepts. A quiet confidence that extends a determination to defend others. The grocer is a bully. Payback is righteous.

The Eiffel Tower and Sacré-Cœur. The metro. All French. Like the accordion that is in peaceful agreement with the piano, and elevates everything on screen. Music mirrors her experience, as if it’s yet another thing she imagines. As if the pace and rhythm to each scene is her melodic interpretation. Sometimes anxious, sometimes magical. Mostly still, contemplative. Peaceful. All in harmony.

Adore, from 10th century France. From the Old French aorer “to adore, worship, praise”. Amélie worships life’s little moments. Audiences cherish her story. Many still adore Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s 2001 film.

The Amélie soundtrack

Amélie’s opening credits begin with charming images of Montmartre, as the bassy accent of the narrator tells her origin story. On the amber tinted screen is a cobble-stoned road as a small vintage-looking car enters (indecipherable to the untrained eye, but imagined as a Citroën) and a quiet announcement of an accordion slowly rises. The next few shots tease the Eiffel Tower in the distance as the camera looks upwards to the perfect image of the Sacré-Cœur in the background. Strings have been added and the first track from the film’s soundtrack - “J’y suis jamais allé” - plays. It has a French folk feel to it, and the accordion offers a high-energy carnival feel with a xylophone decorating the scene with magical dust.

The second part of Amélie’s backstory is less theatrical, and we meet the young girl for the first time. The lighting is tinted green as a montage of what appears like home video footage plays against a softer sound, giving a contemplative impression. Maybe even melancholic, as piano notes from “La Dispute” tinkle.

The narrator has left us. We’re being invited to take in the young girl’s solitude and the birth of her imagination, as she makes faces from fingers and wears small hanging cherries over her ears. The scene finishes with the sound of a bicycle left spinning, a creative stamp from Tiersen, and the movie begins. The opening credits are roughly three minutes, but in that time everything about Tiersen’s composition, and the feelings it evokes, are portrayed.

This mix of a spirited sound and mystique with a yearning and lonely feel, sprinkled with quirky experimental samples, typifies Tiersen’s catalogue up to that point and was surely why the director sensed he was the right composer for the film. The artist had already released three albums and was in the process of creating his fourth by the time that Jeunet contacted him. The director spoke about his musical choice a few months after the film’s release:

“I had something else in mind and then one day a production assistant drove me somewhere and put on a CD I didn’t know, which I found absolutely superb. It was a piece by Yann Tiersen. By that evening, I owned all his records! I met him and right away, we got along very well. Over the course of two weeks, he composed nineteen pieces for us! In addition to that, he allowed us to take anything we wanted from his other records. The hard part was making a selection, because all his tracks worked with the film’s images!”

Tiersen reflected on this experience a year after the film’s release:

“He (Jeunet) started to search for material from my previous albums, then I added some new tracks. Sometimes he replaced tracks he chose from my old albums with new ones”.

This, partly, explains how the soundtrack was created in such speedy time. The two tracks used in the film’s opening credits (”J’y suis jamais allé” & “La Dispute” ), for example, already existed on two of his earlier albums. Half of the album’s music was repurposed from his catalogue, with the remaining tracks newly composed.

In earlier albums, he’d been sampling with all of the sounds that make up the score: synths, an accordion, wind instruments, toy pianos, harpsichords, violins and even recorded the sound of a typewriter, saucepans and the aforementioned bicycle wheels.

This cocktail of creative enquiry, heard by the ears when listening to the soundtrack, is one of the reasons why it convinces us of something that sometimes can’t be fully expressed. It blends Parisian romance, melancholy and reverie. The entire soundtrack is splendid but certain tracks are still resonating the most with audiences: “Comptine d’un autre été: L’Après-midi”, a beautiful piano piece that captures a wistful and yearning sadness.

There are a few versions of the impressive “La Valse d’Amélie”. In the piano version, Tiersen begins with soft touches of the keys - as if Amélie’s introversion begins to withdraw her from realising the things she imagines - but the rhythm and intensity increases, with spirit and renewed confidence. Another variation of this track uses a toy piano along with a violin. Like the character, it’s playful and imaginative. Track three’s version plays with a prominent accordion, as if we’re bouncing up and down with Amélie whilst circling on a carousel. It instantly changes the mood; a lifting and energetic feel that evokes the final scenes of the film as Amélie and her new lover Nino ride together on a motorbike, breaking the fourth wall as they make silly faces at the camera.

To be honest, there are simply too many great pieces of music to describe, but they all linger around the sounds and sensations of those opening credits. Note also, that the full soundtrack, with all twenty tracks, doesn’t live on streaming platforms. If you ever needed an excuse to purchase a CD or vinyl, Tiersen’s Amélie might just be it.

But, it’s still unclear why Tiersen is prickly about the sound of the music, and the film in general. Some years after the film’s release he would hint at friction with Jeunet, and the director’s desire to change some of the score’s names which he argued were “nothing to do with the music”. These early seeds of discontent would eventually grow into his rotten view of the film. If Amélie’s music is sweet and delicious for audiences, the taste is bitter with her composer.

Les critiques

To begin to understand Tiersen’s hostility with the film, it helps to appreciate his roots in Brittany. His comments are scattered over time (this quote below is from 2014) but it’s as if he has been trying to find the words for his feelings:

“Technically and legally I’m French but from where I come from, the culture is really different compared to France”.

His roots are Celtic and it’s no surprise that his later albums involved tours around Cornish and Welsh regions, in search of ancestral inspiration. The Britons migrated to France in the 5th and 6th centuries after the decline of Roman rule in Britain. If Amélie’s soundtrack has an accordion feel in some of its tracks, it’s from these roots. Tiersen’s impressive earlier album Cascade Street characterises this ancient and ethereal sound.

“The Parisian folklore and the ‘Frenchness’ of the movie was really far from my music,” he later explained to The Independent. “There has always been a context where it’s naïve, but also dark and linked to death. Even something like the accordion for me felt more Celtic, and nothing to do with that film. For a while after I didn’t play the accordion at all, because I thought it was disgusting.”

Those words, shared in 2019, captured what seemed to be regret around his affiliation with the film; “It had more of a negative impact instead of positive”.

He continues.

“The first time I saw the movie was in the cinema - I didn’t want to go to the premiere - and I remember it felt really personal, and weird. If I was asked to do it again, now I would say no.”

“I did soundtracks by mistake or by chance, and after Amélie I just did two (Good Bye, Lenin! and Tabarly). For me, composing music isn’t too serious, it’s really organic and instinctive, and it doesn’t fit with soundtracks when you’re working with a director who says things like ‘I’d like the music to be orange’ and other stupid things like that. It makes me crazy.”

But we have to go back to the 2014 interview, once more, to sense dissonance in his words. An artist who is continuously experimenting with his music, but someone who appears in a self-imposed prison by a film that was shot in a place alien to his life in Brittany.

“I am happy with it, it’s a good film to have my music featured in but on the other hand, it is really far from what my music is about right now. I am also really far from the Parisian scene and though I am proud of it, I’m also a bit embarrassed because Paris is almost a concentrate of what I really hate; I hate Paris and people always think about it when listening to that soundtrack so, it’s strange to be associated with that since it’s far from me”.

Back in early 2010, Tiersen aimed his irritation towards Amélie fans who were attending his concerts.

“Maybe it’s rude but I don’t want them at my gigs.”

Maybe his deeper thoughts about the film were shared in private, but it wasn’t until his 2025 interview with Libération - which caused radio debaters, like the responses heard earlier in Les Grandes Gueules to vehemently react - that his perspective seemed to calcify:

“I lived in Paris, and it was not Paris.

What I like about this city is its mix, its cosmopolitanism.

Fantasize about a white Paris, even in the early 2000s, where the only employee is Jamel Debbouze (who plays the character, Lucien)...

It’s racist.

It has always bothered me.”

1998

France won their first World Cup in 1998, playing out a 3-0 win against Brazil in Paris. Zinedine Zidane, whose Algerian parents moved to the country in the 1950s, scored two headed goals. The French squad demonstrated the beauty of multiculturalism: players born in New Caledonia and Senegal; sons of immigrants from Martinique; representatives of the French Basque-regions; others who had Polish-Armenian and Spanish-Portuguese heritage. The president at the time, Jacques Chirac, called this moment a “beautiful image of France and its humanity”.

Another player who started the final that evening was born on the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe, moving to Paris at the age of nine. His name was Lilian Thuram and he would become an ardent campaigner against racism, eventually setting up his own foundation in 2008. He would later reflect on these times as progression in disguise. Indeed, right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen attempted to politicise the World Cup win to suit his own ambitions, saying it was “a bit artificial to bring players from abroad and call it the French team”.

Three years earlier La Haine (1995) was released. A gritty and unpolished film showed the brutality of a poor immigrant neighbourhood in Paris, following the lives of three friends across a day and night. Each character represents the collective issues that were affecting minorities in the suburbs: an Arab (Saïd), a Jew (Vinz), a black man (Hubert). The movie felt authentic in showing the social conditions they were exposed to, capturing a sense of realism that leaves a sobering impression. The director, Mathieu Kassovitz, would go on to play Nino in Amélie and it’s hard not to sense a connected thread in both movies. If La Haine gave voice to a hostile tension brewing in the city, then France’s 1998 win was the elixir. A moment to celebrate progression and collective unity.

Three years after the World Cup win, Amélie was released. To timestamp the movie and orientate the watcher, Princess Diana’s tragic death in 1997 is reported on TV which leads to Amélie eventually finding a hidden box of childhood souvenirs.

All of this is context. And the context of the film, when these circumstances are considered is interesting. La Haine would show three youths, of different ethnic backgrounds but all French, as victims to police brutality, exposed to the destitution of the suburbs. If this was an authentic snapshot of Paris then these youths, imagined in real life, could’ve felt recognised and empowered by the diverse World Cup-winning squad.

With this context should we consider the criticisms aimed at Jeunet’s Amélie, that digitally removing graffiti and cleaning the city to achieve his filtered vision of Paris didn’t represent the Parisians Kaganski was talking about?

As Thuram would put it later, when discussing the team’s affectionate slogan of “black, blanc, beur” (black, white and Arab) after their success: “it wasn’t only a reference to the football team, it was about all of society”.

The World Cup trophy seems to hold these two films together. The left hand extending back in time to La Haine in 1995, the right hand stretched out to 2001 with the French team, and their story of multiculturalism, glowing in the middle. Amélie’s romantic and edited Paris, full of warmth and colour against La Haine’s sobering black and white story. The players, fans and politicians in the middle, searching for a sense of themselves in both films.

August 2026

Whilst I didn’t have a CD signed when I met Tiersen in Bristol he did scribble on my cast, freshly set after breaking an arm during a football game. He had a relaxed demeanour and politely asked me how the injury happened. One thing that has become apparent when researching Tiersen is how thorny he can come across in written words compared to his softly spoken and considered English. His need for creative freedom is clear, both in his words and his catalogue, and it’s a shame he doesn’t want to make any film scores in the future because we won’t be hearing tracks like “Summer 78 (1)” from Good Bye, Lenin! and its soft melancholic piano. Maybe what Amélie feels like to him is an artistic prison; he’s destined to be forever linked to the film. Whether he wants this or not.

I approached this article with honesty in my research and wanted to pursue Tiersen’s perspective, and broader context, when he made those comments in Bristol. His accusations of racism would publicly arrive months after our encounter and I have little doubt he had been grumbling to fans for some time. What also struck me was how many interview articles over the years include the film’s name in the title, yet discussions about the film are, in reality, minimal. Perhaps he knows publicity for his tours requires a begrudging deal with his creative devil. Or maybe journalists are restricted to one question about you-know-who. I watched one of his recent interviews online which corroborated his delicate and artistic nature, but it was laughable how the host apologised about even the thought of asking a question about Amélie, holding their hands up with an air of defensive anxiety. Nonetheless, the show’s title still read “Yann Tiersen: Beyond the Amélie soundtrack”.

What is clear, to me, is the dissonance that Tiersen is living with in relation to the film. He speaks with authenticity about living his life with intent when he says “Music for me is a way to be true to myself”. His website includes Spotify links for all of his albums and film soundtracks, with the exception of Amélie. Yet, the movie’s score sits on his Spotify page.

On the criticisms from him, and elsewhere, I wondered: would Amélie get made today? I believe so, but I think it would receive a lot more scrutiny for its apparent lack of diversity and the post-editing that gave Paris its magical-realism would invite further interrogation. But to defend Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the director had already spent a lot of his earlier works in animation, which he studied. So making changes, upgrading the prettiness of Paris; this was easy to him. Then consider he was collecting stories and quirks seen in the film throughout his life and didn’t randomly conjure up his story. The film was intended to be a small personal project, something he had been planning for years. Jeunet’s context and narrative is lost in the current discussions on the film.

I wondered what Audrey Tautou would’ve thought, had she known about her face being modified on posters. But it’s clear to me that the film is not racist and I’m still reflecting now on Tiersen’s troubled relationship with this project.

For now, I will continue to enjoy his catalogue and the stories his music tells. The Liquid Hour really is psychedelic and represents its inspiration during a solitary night at sea near Belfast. And the beautiful “Summer Nursery Rhyme, No.3” from Cascade Street has a childlike character that could easily have been used on Amélie.

I think Tiersen has more to share creatively and I believe his story with Amélie has another chapter to come.

If you enjoyed this, check out my other articles on cinema and sound:

Body snatching from graveyards was so common, the wealthy and elite could afford for their privileged corpses to be buried deeper into the ground or build protective mausoleums to make it difficult for thieves to steal the flesh, which were used to train doctors. You can notice this in some UK graveyards today: large spikes, iron cages and protective features often surround Victorian cemeteries and it wasn’t until the UK government introduced the Anatomy Act that things started to settle down.

When I taught anatomy and physiology, I always started with stories like this. Once the imagination was captured, I would then introduce the young adults to the gothic works of Gunther von Hagens and one of his many anatomical videos to show how the human machine worked. My teacher-training, undertaken in the recession-hit 2008, would really not have recommended such an approach. Rather, its reliance on antiquated approaches to how people learn focussed heavily on learning styles. It was thought, with great simplicity on reflection, that each of us learns in different ways: visually through videos or demonstrations; auditory by explanation or podcasts; kinaesthetically or otherwise known as learning by “doing” something. Whilst I didn’t subscribe to such notions, I observed that the approach was having a positive effect, probably in spite of these theories.

Today, it’s widely accepted that the real way to learn is, well: messy. Thinking about thinking, otherwise known as metacognition, is where the fun lies. For it to work, other things need to be considered as well such as how much information the brain can handle at a given time (cognitive load) or how accurate someone can monitor their progress. A lot of this experience involves a degree of self-awareness and gut feeling. So, when my students were trying to understand which bones the biceps femoris attached itself to, some of the exercises I asked them to do might’ve helped alongside a heavy dose of Socratic questioning (and even the rhetorical use of this Greek-infused technique often negates real comprehension. A story for another day).

The notion of metacognition is something I’ve been thinking when it comes to films. I’ve watched 165 movies at this exact time during the first draft of this reflective piece, as my metacarpals push down the various letters of the computer’s keyboard. If I were to be honest with myself, I’ve hit a phase I experienced at the beginning of the year. A feeling of ticking a box; of moving too fast and consuming rather than appreciating; of not letting art circle in my mind until I land upon an appreciation of what I’ve experienced. Like the continuation of eating rich food, it can soon stop being fun. I’ve had some moments this year where friends have casually asked what I’ve watched recently and a peculiar paralysis has come over me where I spit out certain films, check my Letterboxd account, and then produce a monologue of little value because my recollection is as hazy as a mild hangover. I would often advise my pupils (and later my daughters) that cramming revision doesn’t work because whilst the short-term memory will cling on tightly to new information, without the processing time, dedicated thought and sleep: it’ll soon fade away. It’s all well and good watching the IMDb top 250 in 100 days, but what was learnt, experienced or cherished? This saturation point on consuming films is mirrored by a ravenous ego that walks on a tightrope between authenticity and validation in my writing.

A few times this year, the dreamy phases of sleep have voiced me with aptly-timed guidance. When I’ve been pushing hard on a deadline to publish, over-thinking engagement and trying to promote my articles, it has bordered on the not-so-fun. It’s hard for me to articulate the moments where my subconscious communicates to me - such is the mystic beauty of these liminal states - but it was along the lines of: be yourself. Simple to read but powerful, for me, to hear. To thine own self be true.

My writing wears two different hats. Firstly, film reviews, which I treat as a sort of short-term writing retreat. I’ll watch a new film in the cinema, head to a coffee shop afterwards and proceed to write everything that comes to mind. For anybody who’s used morning pages from The Artist’s Way, it’s a similar approach where I touch-type a beautiful mess. I don’t care if I forget key details, wildly misspell words and if a random thought, insecurity or idea comes to my mind: that is getting typed out as well. I like the flexibility that my writing tool, Roam Research, provides and I’m able to break the writing into bullet points and start dragging them into sentences. Once I can see key themes building, this is usually a hint of my personal angle or perspective. The tool also gives me the freedom to easily drag sentences and paragraphs to different places to help flow. After this, I’ll usually try and sleep on an article or at least have space from it by exercising or walking. My overly-needy ego is screaming at me to hit publish.

A solid planner, I can get as rigid as they come, so I’ll often try and practice my own, personal, metacognition and experiment with different approaches to the piece. I’ve enjoyed taking reviews of films from places like Sight and Sound (I mean, the name of my publication AuralFrame is a bit of a rip-off really, but I don’t think the BFI’s magazine does a lot with sound. To be honest, I don’t see many publications doing this) and putting them into my scrapbook, taking time to see how their skilled writers have attacked a similar review. It’s a sin to read someone else’s views before I’ve published something because I know my ego will want to mimic something or my creative processes will be reduced. Only when I’ve published my own work do I love to read and engage with others. A brief deviation: I’m noticing a few - with a tone that has a scent of uppity preachiness - describing Substack film reviews as pure discourse for the sake of merely producing content. I think such a general viewpoint is unfair on the many talented film reviewers on the platform. Writing about a popular film isn’t a crime and this type of thinking doesn’t reflect the individual catalogues and broader focusses of many writers.

Which leads me to numbers. Psychologically speaking, my adult state has no tangible goals for my Substack. It has no numbers attached to the amount of subscribers I want by a defined time, or the amount of views I’d love to receive for each article. This is not to say my sensitive and needy shadow doesn’t peruse (and sometimes obsess) with the dashboard, and promote articles. Sure, that’s fun and writing notes has become part of my engagement strategy. It’s also a fun way to shit-post, reflect on films when I don’t want to write (or edit) in detail and just be generally a bit weird on my terms. There’s a beast in me that will focus on metrics and lose something of myself, if I let it, but my actual goal is to write what feels good to me and, in my own way, to try different things. I’ve also learnt I don’t want to post at a certain time, on a certain day, on certain films because it’s not in my flow. On top of that, regardless of what people are telling you otherwise I don’t think anyone really cares that much about such things. I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think about this for the many writers whose words I subscribe to. If anything, I’m usually a few weeks behind most people’s posts because of my saved backlog and I enjoy it that way.

To come back to my own metacognition, right now numbers do nothing helpful for my creativity. If I just count the number of words written in a piece or how many films I’ve watched in a week then I know this will lead me to the wrong behaviours; a scar that I carry from a previous life. Outside of the writing day experience I describe from my film reviews, the thing I enjoy most is feature writing. I have about seven or so features in various states of draft right now. It would probably make sense to stick with one, draft it out, edit and then publish in a methodical way. How it’s turning out is rather different; they are roughly in the same place of progress. I enjoy that with features I can naturally take my time to let the angle really come out, to re-watch a film two or three times to test my thinking, to engage on a deeper level. Everything might slow down with outputs, but there’s a lot still going on elsewhere. If film reviews feel like they have a half-life measured in hours, a good feature has years.

For the remaining half of the annum I wish to continue with my film reviews and features. I don’t want to change anything about my feature writing, even if I don’t publish everything I want to. Selfishly, I’m growing behind the scenes. For my film reviews, I am flirting with trying different challenges like not reviewing popular films until a few months after its release, or at least diversifying the review approach. Part of my critical-parent-rigidity is setting myself targets and creating frameworks. I prefer to be free.

This intermission, and pause in my publication over the last few weeks, has been the result of an unwelcome back spasm. To continue with my anatomical parlance, L3 and L4 of my lumbar spine are agitating the surrounding muscles that make an event of putting on socks; but it’s been helpful to make me pause, observe and think about the direction of my writing. My ego is well aware that Substack’s algorithm is punishing me for this change in gear as it did something similar in April, when I was injured after various half-marathon events. I wonder if life will go on?

Successful metacognition - to learn and grow - is part-built around the ability to reflect. I left teaching in 2014, but a lot of the skills I learnt during that time still remain. I did not plan to reflect in such a way here, this is just where I have landed. But to reflect again on the number of films we watch, the words we write and the posts we publish; I am reminded of the importance of thinking about what it all means and a quote from my studies:

Ten years without reflection is just one year repeated ten times.

I think there’s something worth considering in that.

Check out some of my other in-depth pieces:

Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day (2026) releases in the context of American government publishing hundreds of files on UFOs and UAPs (an awkwardly pronounced acronym: Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena). The film plays on this anxious curiosity with a sense of realism because whilst his previous sci-fi works could be viewed as fantasy, we could now begin to imagine that a story such as this might be more than just make-believe. But rather than spending time on exploring if aliens really do exist, Spielberg interrogates the hidden and paranoid powers who control information through a cybersecurity lens, and the impact of these truths on humanity and established world order.

When a major release happens and discourse takes over, it’s easy to get lost in hyperbolic thinking and verbose phrases, as if excitement reduces oxygen supply to the brain and giddiness takes over the keyboard. But, without over-inflating, Emily Blunt is remarkable as Margaret (an intuitive Kansas weather presenter) as we’re introduced to her during one particularly peculiar morning, which culminates in her speaking a sort of babble during a live TV performance before collapsing. Blunt’s garbled sounds that overtake Margaret’s speech were recorded with sound editor Gary Rydstrom (reassuringly without AI), and we soon learn only one other person is able to understand this alien dialect, Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor, as an anxious and reluctant hero).

Blunt’s character conjures up memories of Roy Neary from Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), but where Richard Dreyfuss’ character in that story seemed to jar and become entangled with the director’s childhood trauma, Margaret has a jazz-like quality to her; someone who can effortlessly flow, is easy to follow and never overplayed. Blunt has rhythm and a command of her emotional dials, moving up as she shows excitement or becomes enthralled (like scenes with her perplexed husband, Wyatt Russell, who brings a colourful humour) but can easily shift to anxious and neck-pulsating panic, namely in a moment with Kellner as they escape agents of Wardex (the non-government agency that is entrusted to protect against alien disclosures). If Margaret’s world is full of energy and vivid red colours, Kellner’s story is dark and grey like the clothes on his back and his empty hideout house as he evades the agency he works for with the help of his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), after stealing protected files from their database.

Kellner’s scenes show the conspiracy angle and Jane’s unwitting apprehension serves as a mirror for the audience, as she slowly learns about these new lifeforms before the camera nauseously spins around and encrypted footage reveals itself. Spielberg, as always, lets shots linger throughout and tense moments of build-up raise anxieties. As the story unfolds and their worlds merge, Margaret and Kellner are pulled together by some unknown outer force as visuals blend and Margaret’s beaming red dress is replaced with a bright yellow jumper that is largely covered by a grey coat. A visible sign the characters are closer than they think.

Disclosure Day explores a lot of themes, not just alien encounters. David Koepp’s script probes religious faith, and what discovery of new lifeforms could do for people’s fundamental views on life. Its conspiratory tone also deals with the handling of truth and questions of who controls this information, with Wardex and their leader Noah (Colin Firth almost convinces in his evil role) mirroring many cyber-intelligence agencies. Under the auspices of Noah, the agency reverse engineers alien technology that enables a sort of hypnotic transportation as we see when Noah tries to mind-control Jane to locate Kellner’s whereabouts, although the human brain can’t fully cope with the technology; a nod to similar concepts from Forbidden Planet (1956). There are a few plots with Noah that don’t always land, like his aggravation at Kellner’s defection from the agency, but overall the Wardex narrative elevates a sense of realism.

Communication is another topic in the story, from Margaret blurting out spontaneous Russian dialogue or her telepathically understanding people she encounters on her journey. Kellner’s ability to comprehend her alien dialect resonates with Spielberg’s earlier sci-fi films and Arrival (2016), where other similar themes of empathy and state paranoia drive actions. And John Williams’ score builds emotion throughout, from rising tension as Kellner and Margaret evade Wardex forces to a sentimental sound reminiscent of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) as we learn about non-human contact, culminating in the paranoid anxiety of the final scenes as the truth is revealed. As the music plays near the end, a news reporter (an impressive cameo from Courtney Grace) portrays what it could be like to witness these disclosures whilst having to process everything in the moment. Grace balances emotion, fear and shock with due diligence as a mirror for anyone seeing this news for the first time. It’s a small moment in the film, but critical to the feeling of the finale.

It’s not without flaws, which is not unsurprising given the depth it covers, but Colman Domingo’s character as a rebellious leader from Wardex and guide for Kellner and Margaret feels underdeveloped, although Domingo’s calm and nurturing performance works well on-screen. The film explores various binary oppositions: freedom vs control when deciding who gets to tell the truth and what those consequences could be; order vs chaos once these truths are known, with symbolic visuals of the cross and questions of faith providing balance to the story. Disclosure Day will provoke thought and conversation about how close we are to realising we’re not alone as a species, and in the context of the recently released government files, the film feels like an important artefact in this conversation, whose reputation as an accurate portrayal of such an event could be elevated or diminished by details in future tranches of published files. But maybe Spielberg asks a personal question of the viewer as the director invites anxiety, fear, paranoia and wonderment over a few hours: what would happen to your emotions and beliefs, if a disclosure day happened tomorrow?

Check out some of the year’s other highly anticipated releases:

If Barbie and Ken dolls could translate into the charming cinematic success of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023), it’s no surprise the bigwigs at Mattel have sought to capitalise on another historically successful duo from their collection, He-Man and Skeletor, in Masters of the Universe (2026). The original film, Masters of the Universe (1987), was released after interest in the action figure toys grew and children of the 80s shouted out the energetic catchphrase “By the Power of Grayskull...I have the power!” with He-Man in their palms. The thinking goes: if it worked for Barbie and Ken, then why not unbox the dusty franchise and tap into the riches of nostalgia.

Frank Langella’s overly theatrical delivery and spooky looks as the iconic villain Skeletor in the 80s film was the standout performance in an otherwise campy movie, but Skeletor (Jared Leto) here parallels the dramatic tone of Emperor Ming in Flash Gordon (1980). And Leto himself is unrecognisable as he’s all but drowned out by the overused CGI, which is used throughout the entirety of the film to build the fantasy world. He-Man, going by the name Adam (Nicholas Galitzine), ends up escaping from his home planet Eternia and lives on Earth after his regal home is destroyed and his parents are left for dead by Skeletor. In these early scenes we’re introduced to young Adam’s combat training partner and friend Teela (Camila Mendes) and her nurturing father Duncan (Idris Elba), whose courage turns into cowardice after losing a crucial battle in an attempt to defend his king.

We cut to Adam as an obsessed adult on Earth in his quest to find the lost Sword of Power, and scenes here are unapologetically playful with humour as he explains his backstory to friends and romantic dates, whilst also getting in trouble in a dull job as a soul-sucking human resources officer for his fixation on these magical blades. An awkward but amusing interaction with his conflict-avoidant boss (whilst Adam sips his cup of “daily grind”) plays against a drab-looking office and bland outfits, introduces Adam’s interest in wellness and his amiability that will later clash with the machismo tone of Eternia’s other heroes. There’s even a fleeting interaction with Dolph Lundgren, in a nod to Gary Goddard’s original film, as a bulky-looking Adam tries to pump dumbbells in the gym.

The fixation with a magical sword, a heavy pursuit of revenge after being estranged from parents and the physical (plus wardrobe) transformation feel like a stripped-back version of Conan the Barbarian (1982), but this movie lacks the darker fantasy and ambience of that story. That’s not forgetting the reptilian statues in Skeletor’s sinister Snake Mountain. Yet, once Adam is found by the valiant Teela and is transported back to Eternia, the campy and self-deprecating tone means the film struggles to find a balance between the coming-of-age moments and fun vibes.

Where the story does lose a lot of power is the loose exploration of modern-day masculinity as Adam prefers to talk things through with Skeletor, rather than fight, as it tangles itself in finding a balance between the macho lore of He-Man and today’s perspectives on masculinity. And a confusing scene near the end of the film tries deadpan sarcasm as a means to poke fun at the names of characters like Fisto, Ram Man and how Adam even invented the He-Man name. That approach is surely borrowed from Barbie, but it succeeded in that film because the characters and themes are widely known; it’s a big leap of faith to ask newer audiences to know the names of numerous (and maybe too many) characters in this franchise, whilst also being aware of the self-mockery.

What audiences will appreciate are the energetic fight scenes that lead Adam towards a showdown with Skeletor, as his confidence and self-belief increase with his ever-growing power. The final battle has a slow-motion and pivoting camera that gives the feel of a computer game and high-energy guitar shredding from Brian May, who’s collaborated here with composer Daniel Pemberton (Project Hail Mary). But whilst the film will undoubtedly appeal to its relatively niche target audience, it will be interesting to see if a broader moviegoers would be attracted to Travis Knight’s Masters of the Universe when Backrooms (2026) and Obsession (2026) are capturing imaginations in cinemas. Or to put it bluntly, if they even care.

If you’re interested in Masters of the Universe then I’d recommend checking out , who has a number of deep-dive articles on the franchise.

Mortal Cinema

Masters of the Universe a Marketing Misfire?

It’s become apparent to me recently that several critical types whom I consider my peers, and “about” my age, don’t understand why a big epic, mega-budget Masters of the Universe movie exists. And it makes me wonder once again about the perception of time at different ages…

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3 months ago · 6 likes · 9 comments · Luke Y. Thompson

Kane Parsons, who writes and directs the Jungian shadowed horror Backrooms, is no stranger to filmmaking despite the youthful looks of the twenty-year-old YouTuber. His short video, The Backrooms (Found Footage), has an impressive 80m views and seemingly convinced executives at A24 of his potential to turn this into a longer feature, whilst tapping into a large audience of younger eyes.

2026 feels like a breakthrough year for YouTubers turned directors with Curry Barker’s Obsession (2026) and Mark Fischbach’s Iron Lung (2026) showing cinematic craft can be translated to the big screen. Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a bitter middle-aged man with a growing drinking problem, has resorted to sleeping in the furniture store he manages after separating from his wife. His therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve), sells the kind of self-help audio tapes that drove Tony Robbins’ career in the 90s - this story is set in 1990 - but wears a melancholic mask that suggests she has her own unresolved demons.

Parsons impresses with his use of symbolism both before and after Clark discovers a hidden supernatural backroom in the basement of the store. Mary’s blouse and Clark’s tie, as well as dated therapy chairs, are filled with mismatched patterns that hint at a chaos in their minds which could unravel or maybe their lives might be quietly spinning out of control. The backrooms themselves are an impressive creepypasta construction: a 30,000 square foot maze of sickly jaundiced yellow walls, isolation and a kind of metaphorical psyche seen in The Shining (1980).

The exploration of liminal spaces and psychological aspects of the story are similar to Kurosawa’s Pulse (2001), which menacingly foretold loneliness and isolation once the internet would mature. The psychodynamics of getting lost in our own minds, of going deeper into our own shadow are interesting questions that Backrooms explores. And the use of handheld cameras raises the disorientating and shaky horror, as do jump scares, as Mary’s curiosity leads her to the in-between space after she suspects Clark is in trouble. Ejiofor, though, seems the most limited by a story that doesn’t let his character develop beyond bitterness and self-loathing, but Reinsve impresses with her usual portrayal of angst that is seen in Sentimental Value (2025) and The Worst Person in the World (2021). Here she demonstrates a broader range of performance as we see through her facial expressions and hear in the sounds of her terrified breath when she’s in the backrooms, which all serve to raise the tension on screen.

Parsons’ approach to sound works best when natural noises amplify the unease through the buzzing of lights or when the handheld camera is dropped, which further disorientates the viewer. Early on in the film, the music samples synths that are akin to what’s heard in the score from Obsession (2026), but those sounds doesn’t represent the atmosphere of this movie. Another film that deals with liminal spaces, Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), was brilliant in dealing with distorted sounds of a train as characters pass through interstitial spaces, and whilst Backrooms doesn’t need to be on par with that movie, its overall approach to sound seems uncertain of itself at times. Parsons (as well as co-composer, Edo Van Breemen) could’ve relied more on the audio distortion that is used later in the film, as well as focussing on transitional sounds as Mary and Clark move between the furniture store and the backrooms; a focus that Kurosawa and Tarkovsky paid more attention to in their films.

We learn early on that Clark’s comedic appearance on infomercial TV ads as a pirate is a shaming humiliation for a man who identifies himself as an architect, but his helpless and frustrated sense of self is clearly affecting his shadowed psyche in disturbingly detrimental ways. The beastly unravelling of this part of the story in the depths of the backrooms, and how quickly we observe the monster during a scene in a Lynchian room, culminates in a loss of momentum in the story. The escalation up until that point is excellent in its uneasy and eerie tone - with well-placed humour along the way - but once the big reveal lands, dread and horror are lost and the remaining part of the film, save for one interesting scene, feels bland.

Mary’s character development could also have been better thought-through and some of the decisions she makes - like going out of her way to visit a client who had terminated a professional relationship - don’t seem congruent with the real world. But, despite some of the flaws in the story and minor grumbles about aspects of the sound, this is an impressive directorial debut from Parsons in a psychological horror that tells a tale of what happens when unresolved fears, anxieties and dark memories are left to fester over time.

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The opening of Paolo Sorrentino’s latest film, La Grazia, points to the sky as the camera focuses on three military jets that fly by to leave a loitering cloud of red, white and green from il tricolore. As the smoke slowly fades, a number of duties an Italian president must perform are listed on screen. On their own, these responsibilities appear monotonous and hint to a story that is dry and boring. What makes La Grazia interesting is the balance of visuals, its philosophical script and the energy in the music. These themes juxtapose against each other remarkably well. As those jets fly by and the commitments are listed, “Surf Rider”, a piece of infectious dance music by Il Est Vilaine, gives the first hint that the score’s quirky feel could itself be another character in the film.

Sorrentino has taken the unusual step of dispensing with the need for a composer, relying on his own Spotify playlists to satisfy his sense of energy the story required. A first hint the film’s topic could be slightly quirky. The director’s usual charge, Toni Servillo, plays an ageing Italian president nearing retirement. Nicknamed “Hard Concrete” by those around him for both his appearance and unsentimental approach as a leader, he has to decide to approve a euthanasia bill whilst also granting a number of pardons that come with various conflicting interests. As his idiosyncrasies unravel, it’s his growing fondness for hip-hop and pop music that opens Servillo’s character to the viewer with the soundtrack serving as a motif for his softening perspectives. Servillo’s performance relies heavily on limited expressions and posture; he seems to be able to emit the exact emotion required from each of his forty-plus facial muscles.

The president, a widower, has flashbacks that reinforce the emotion of a character that appears, at face value, as stiff and unnerving. Ludovica Ferrario’s production design heightens his isolation and loneliness with grand palatial sets as well as adding an emotional distance between him and his daughter (Anna Ferzetti), who seems to have caught her father’s stoic tendencies. The burden of getting decisions correct is both a gift and a curse for a president that seems to be fascinated by the notion of feeling lighter and free. One subplot focuses on an Italian astronaut in outer space as a way for the president to access and make sense of his feelings. In making Servillo’s character so resolute, Sorrentino needs a lot of subtext to tell this story and for the pensive observer this will work. Nothing is rushed but Sorrentino just about manages to ensure the film doesn’t linger.

And Sorrentino weaves humour into the story throughout. One memorable scene sees the president wait for a government figure from Portugal to walk what seems no more than ten metres from his armoured limousine to the Italian presidential building, as a sudden storm seems to make the main character reflect on his age. The scene is slowed down as we see the old man trying to walk, whilst desperately gripping his hat tightly. It’s as if age has made a basic walk become a marathon. The humour and deadpan observation displayed by Servillo work brilliantly as “Surf Rider” plays again. Moments like these make the scenes feel funny, alive and more contemplative.

We learn early on that Il Presidente is tormented by his wife’s affair which slowly chisels away at his stony expressions, thus humanising him more to the viewer, and blends into the plot as he moves back and forth with the pardons he’s been asked to grant. The topic of euthanasia is also an interesting choice for a Catholic country like Italy. But these stories seem to move in different directions and don’t always take centre stage, despite how they’re being set up.

There’s no big finale, rather a rippling wave, and that’s where the film could feel flat for some. It doesn’t have the eccentricity of the director’s Oscar-winning The Great Beauty, but this film feels more focused on its philosophical questioning. One thing is certain with all of Sorrentino’s work: he knows how to capture the stunning visual beauty of Italy.

Meet Bear. Age unknown. Maybe mid-20s. Fed up with his loneliness and the way things are going he decides to finally tell his friend, Nikki, he’s madly in love with her. She’s already told him about a book she’s writing; a love story without romance. The trouble is Bear’s romantically impotent and fails to understand the difference between the two, an important detail as Obsession unfolds. Cowardice prevents him from following through with his plans, so he’ll need to find another way to satisfy his desires. And, yes. His conscience will come into play.

Resembling the appearance and awkward on-screen presence of a young Joaquin Phoenix, Bear (Michael Johnston) demonstrates the horrors of an entitled predator whilst maintaining the aura of that shy and unassuming friend. Former YouTuber, Curry Barker, directs Obsession with everything a horror fan would want. Blood, gore, tension, twists. And some ever-so-disturbing feline sandwiches.

Patient early pacing allows the characters’ worldviews to develop and we see Nikki (Inde Navarrette) as a good-natured soul, handing money to a homeless person and chatting with Bear about her creative dreams. Rock Burwell’s impressive synth-driven score creates an 80s-style atmosphere that quietly simmers, but is ready to boil with anxiety at the right time. When Bear soon discovers he can have any wish come true - through a retro-looking box called a One Wish Willow - his entitlement is realised in exchange for Nikki’s sense of self. Bear’s desires and timidness are dressed in ownership. Nikki becomes both victim and weapon.

In a world where the manosphere’s voice is becoming louder, where female objectification is increasing and sex can be viewed by some men as a conquest, Barker’s story feels like nuanced commentary. Bear is not a typical figure you’d imagine from - say - Louis Theroux’s recent documentary on the male problem, but a quieter and more lurking figure. His one wish is that Nikki will love him more than anything else and the results turn out to be a horror for all involved.

There’s nothing borrowed or blue about this story as a possessed Nikki duct-tapes the front door, and codependence manifests itself in the image of toxic love. A lazy trope for her character’s obsessive tendencies would be that infamous label of a bunny boiler. Laziness is not recognising Barker’s intention to show us that Bear’s the creep. Bear’s the weirdo. The moments where Nikki’s real personality momentarily jolts out her possessed spirit and displays a few seconds of panic on her face, remind us her body is his possession.

Navarrette’s performance as a forced codependent girlfriend with comedic timing and expressions will undoubtedly earn well-deserved praise. Her eerie movements, as she stares at Bear from the corner of their darkened bedroom, and the jolty posturing that makes her look like a creepy Sims character are memorable. Dim lighting helps in these scenes, where we only need to recognise movements or when tone of voice does the heavy lifting, but other moments where Nikki responds with a shrug or facial expression are unclear.

The plot is not without its shortcomings as not everything makes sense. Biggest of them all is the utility of the wishing device. If others had access to these devices - which is the case based on Bear’s internet research - then would the world look different if everyone could have their wishes fulfilled? Less important, but equally distracting for the mind of a pedant: how can a local music shop keep the economics working with so many staff? Such things, and other shortcomings, can be put aside when learning that the budget was less than $1m. There is a lot of good here.

Barker is clearly a talent. His script is a story of how abuse can unfold through personal entitlement, objectification and how subtle testing of personal boundaries can escalate. In an early part of Nikki’s transformation (or captivity), Johnston’s sly demeanour confirms to us that Bear’s finally realised his wishes have come true; the beloved is under a spell. A quick cut (out of sync with most of the film) jumps to the couple having sex in bed. He’s more than pushed past the “no”. Later, when the real and distraught Nikki communicates during sleep and begs Bear to kill her, he turns the dialogue into self-pity and loathing about him. His conscience comes into play when it’s convenient for his ego. This is both the sinister brilliance and horror of Obsession.

But be careful what you wish for. Nikki’s love soon becomes nightmarish. A scene with his concerned friend Sarah (Megan Lawless) sees Bear escape his house and Barker holds the palpable tension before Nikki smashes through the window of Sarah’s car. The sound design as Sarah’s face is brutally demolished with a brick is visceral. And even though Obsession ends with a good twist, it’s this car scene that provides the story’s irony. As she starts to make her feelings for him known and Bear appears to realise he might be attracted to Sarah. It’s comfort, calling late.

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The sculpture was commissioned by the club’s chairman and Michael’s friend, Mohamed Al-Fayed. Over the past few years the late former owner of Harrods has faced posthumous allegations of sexual abuse and assault from hundreds of his former employees. Michael certainly knew how to pick his company.

You can’t see this statue any more. It had a few homes but following the release of Leaving Neverland in 2019, where sexual abuse allegations were made against Jackson, it was quietly dismantled.

Why should we care about this story and other shady details that seemed to gravitate towards Jackson; we’re here to watch Michael. Still, it’s hard for us to reflect on the film without being distracted by such things. We’re human, after all.

However, it’s this use of the we that’s most menacing. We is passive. It’s loose and easily escaped. It doesn’t hold us to account. What about: why should I care? Or, what should you think about such things? Look, Lloyd, I go to the movies to be entertained. Stop being so bloody serious for once. Not my circus, not my monkeys (even the CGI one).

Michael is less a film and more a dystopian future where Spotify has an AI button to create a movie based on a playlist. One where artists - or their opportunistic estates - can control narratives. Chapter one of Jackson’s life is forced down our throats: that’s just who he was. He was different. I wonder if small details like his lack of eye contact as a child or asking his adult brothers to play Twister were a pitiable attempt to somehow justify why a grown man - who was 44 years of age at the time of admitting this - would openly confess to sharing his bed with children. That’s just how they are.

I’m not the only one wrestling with the movie. Spare a thought for Colman Domingo. A talented Oscar-nominated actor whose portfolio has many memorable performances. Sing Sing comes to mind. Here, Domingo turns heel as Michael’s tyrannical father, overselling every scene like an ageing WWE star and taking the back-breaking punishment for the mediocrity around him. All to keep the show going. Michael is a story of remember when and has no interest in interrogating any of the uncomfortable aspects of Michael Jackson’s character. All Jekyll and no Hyde.

It’s not my aim to engage in any form of self-righteousness either. The music is punchy, high-voltage and massive. Whether I want to or not, my legs tap as Thriller and Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ play. Nevertheless, there’s a dissonant wave present when the songs boom out of the speakers - invisible to the eye but clear in the heart - that is anti-immersive. This sensation presents itself more when listening to his music because the film itself is nothing. A confused dream that doesn’t ask anything at all. It wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t try to hide any of the wrongs that Jackson’s was accused of. It’s trying to make fools of us all.

I have a hunch I’m not the only one who experiences this cognitive dissonance after watching Michael or listening to his music again. A raft of film reviews are also flip-flopping around the topic which can be paraphrased into: the movie doesn’t cover the other stuff so we’ll save for another time. Or my favourite of them all: I can separate the art from the artist. I’m unsure if this is some sort of pseudo-intellectual stance or a mechanism to shut down thought.

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Reading commentary, criticism, and general discourse has felt like an experiment on biases, rationalisation and defence mechanisms. All, I think, to continue enjoying art without feeling any internal moral conflict. But, again, I argue that even a small thought or feeling is itself enough to distract from the experience. Michael Jackson made people giddy. Giddy enough to let their children share bedrooms with the man. Giddy enough for some to engage in voluntary amnesia.

Maybe I should just stop with this frippery. I’m ever so sure, should there be a second movie, it will tackle these accusations head-on. I should just get on with it and stop being so sensitive. Stop overthinking. These are the kind of statements I’ve heard from people throughout my life. Even so, I’m content at being held in this restrictive tension from dissonance. I wouldn’t be so triggered if Michael at least tried to be anything other than a milking of the cash cow.

Let me repeat, I still listened to Bad on the way home from the cinema. So did a lot of people based on the record numbers of streams the artist is now publishing. Even Janet Jackson (whose absence from the film screamed there’s absolutely nothing to see here, folks) has seen all-time high numbers.

The most pertinent comment - or maybe normalisation and dismissal - on the film is how we witness Michael’s abuse from his father. He didn’t have a childhood. Two truths can exist but any justification, however soft, needs to be carefully considered. It’s merely a coincidence that during Michael’s release, King Charles’ visit with Donald Trump didn’t include any public discussions about his brother’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. Meanwhile, we also have a picture of Epstein with Michael Jackson. Did Peter Pan and Captain Hook become mates?

I know, I know. A picture doesn’t tell us anything other than they had a picture together. It’s not really good for the brand though, is it? The sad reality is that victims of abuse know all too well that this is how it goes. Complicity can exist in silence. My mind jumps to one of the film’s most cringeworthy quotes from Michael, as he refuses to attend a TV interview (something he avoided throughout his career): I want to be mysterious. No shit. Maybe everyone knew the family secrets.

But there’s no coup de grâce here.

Just an acknowledgement that my dissonance exists.

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One of many criticisms thrown at Simon McQuoid’s Mortal Kombat (2021) was aimed at the film’s clunky story that was - to be kind - confusing in its approach. Despite over 100 characters the franchise has introduced since its release, the director still made the peculiar decision to introduce a new fighter, Cole Young. For admirers of the original computer-game series, and Paul W.S. Anderson’s 1995 Mortal Kombat, it felt closer to later versions of the game rather than leaning into nostalgia. It played to a niche within a niche.

Mortal Kombat II moves closer to its original fan-pleasing roots with Ed Boon - one of the co-creators of the original game (and the voice of Scorpion’s iconic “Get over here!” tagline) - involved in the production of the film. McQuoid has clearly listened to the feedback. The writing team from the first instalment have been deemed surplus to requirements and replaced with Jeremy Slater, who had the unenviable task of dealing with large plot holes whilst delivering a screenplay that clearly needs to serve an audience watching the series for the first time.

In particular, Cole Young (Lewis Tan) is now a bit-part fighter, despite being one of the main protagonists in the 2021 version. His lineage story to Scorpion (one of the game’s most iconic fighters) and intended for the audience to connect with Cole, is the major casualty of the new script. The need to remedy poor writing leads to a rushed first act that still feels wonky. This isn’t a fatal blow for the viewer but much of the undoing is unavoidable.

The introduction of Johnny Cage (Karl Urban) - one of Mortal Kombat’s superstars - is hurried but Cage’s character progression as a washed-up 80s actor works well, with his transformation unfolding in a dusty setting that looks conspicuously like something from Mad Max. But the biggest win is the introduction of Kitana (Adeline Rudolph) as a fighter who’s been adopted by Outworld’s powerful leader, Shao Kahn (Martyn Ford). Kitana is the first character in McQuoid’s series with an emotional connection that’s formed with the audience beyond mere clichés and schlocky lines (although the pugnacious character, Kano - played again by Josh Lawson - continues to offer laughs with his quips).

The story is far from perfect but this version is a big upgrade. Presumably, Boon’s influence has helped the story get to a place where the Mortal Kombat tournament - required to save Earthrealm from Outworld - can take place with some modicum of jeopardy.

Once the tournament finally begins, there’s a clear aim to stay true to the Mortal Kombat II game with fights contested in arenas like dungeons swimming with green acid pools and Raiden’s Temple, a venue built for the thunder god. The fighting action is entertaining and well-choreographed with impressive finishing moves (sufficient blood, guts and gore are used), all playing against techno music and dramatic sound design that is similar to the game. Yet, the various attempts to add subplots to the fights are shallow. A contest between Liu Kang (Ludi Lin) and Kung Lao (Max Huang) flirts with emotional intensity between close friends but the story hasn’t earned the right for audiences to accept the feeling.

Mortal Kombat II provides the necessary elements to please the current fanbase, whilst dealing a nostalgia punch for those who grew up with the computer game in the 90s. The story tees up a potential third instalment and with a reboot of Street Fighter being released later in the year, there is clearly an appetite for fighting-game reboots. Any conversation about a third movie needs to focus on staying closer to the game’s identity. Yet it’s hard to imagine general viewers getting overexcited about this release, especially if the first instalment required mercy.

The Verve were one of the UK’s most iconic bands and achieved global success with their 1997 album “Urban Hymns”. Their lead singer, Richard Ashcroft (now a revered solo artist), is one of the most talented artists of his generation and The Verve’s songs have been widely used in films.

Rather than recommend obvious choices from certain teen-flicks that end with “Bittersweet Symphony” or Richard Ashcroft’s track from The Beach, this post is to showcase, highlight and celebrate the band’s music in alternative films.

Movies without blockbuster budgets but big hearts.

The Doom Generation (1995)

Gregg Araki’s wild film sarcastically toys with the viewer right from the outset as “This is a heterosexual movie“ drops on the opening card.

Many of the scenes are hilarious, grotesque and disturbing in their own special way. Araki wrote, directed and produced the film but his impressive editing - paired with an exaggerated colour palette - is striking. No more so than in the final and gruesome scene as “The Star-Spangled Banner” is played against horrifying strobe lights and everything feels a bit American History X.

Jordan White (James Duval) and Amy Blue (Rose McGowan), a young and sexually confused couple who quickly pick up Xavier Red (Johnathon Schaech), road-trip on a sexually violent journey of discovery. Note the surnames of the characters, as Araki asks what the USA might mean for society’s outsiders. Jordan’s surname represents his innocence and gentle nature but is that enough to survive in this doomed generation?

Araki’s personal music collection drives the score and each track is a commentary on the themes of the film: alienation, anger and nihilism. The Verve’s melancholic debut album A Storm in Heaven sits like a stop-gap between a dated grunge scene and the early UK indie era that was slowly finding its own voice post The Stone Roses era. The Doom Generation can drift but The Verve’s “Already There” speaks to its dreamy feel. If David Lynch released a CD single, this might be a B-side.

It’s not perfect but it is certainly memorable. The late, great, Roger Ebert gave it zero stars which should be enough to spark any cinephile’s curiosity.

Bird (2024)

Andrea Arnold’s coming of age film, Bird, has been quietly earning respect since its release in 2024. Deservedly so. Nykiya Adams’ performance as a young and angry Bailey captures the energy of a lost soul. She’s in love with nature and Arnold’s mobile phone footage from Bailey’s perspective - recorded close-ups of ponies and butterflies - is an alternative approach that works well. Bailey meets Bird (Franz Rogowski) and her anger seems to dissipate the more she interacts with him. Rogowski’s performance is a mixture of fantasy and quirk. His posture and mannerisms tell a story in themselves but it’s clear that his gift of loving-kindness is the nurturing support that Bailey needs for her young wings.

Bird does an excellent job of commenting on poverty and opportunity in the UK. Barry Keoghan’s standout performance to date as Bug (Bailey’s father) is a thoughtful way of questioning society’s assumptions of what is deemed good and bad. Keoghan withdrew from a role in Gladiator II so he could play Bug: a man roughly 28 and with two adolescent children from different mothers. Arnold’s film invites us to make a judgement on Bug early on but, as the story unfolds, it’s clear that first looks and impressions don’t mean everything.

In one heartwarming scene, after Bug comforts his son Hunter (Jason Buda), all three characters ride on their dad’s electric scooter as The Verve’s “Lucky Man” plays. Arnold uses this music as part of the story and the characters interact with Bug’s song choice as it sounds from his portable speaker. Music is used well throughout, as Bug rehearses the lyrics from Blur’s “The Universal” for his wedding performance, it seems “the future has been sold” has more than one meaning.

All of the films in this list are great on their own terms, but if you had to select one, then Bird is the recommended starting point.

Nowhere (1997)

You can infer from the premise of this post that Gregg Araki has a fondness for three things: good music. Wild stories. Keanu Reeves James Duval.

All three feature in the third and final instalment of his teenage apocalypse trilogy (The Doom Generation was the second after Totally F****ed Up). This film feels like his most accessible and continues with his themes of shock, queer cinema and nihilism.

As Duval’s character contemplates the meaning of life whilst he and his girlfriend are getting it on, The Verve’s “Grey Skies” plays. Taken from their 1995 album A Northern Soul, it captures Araki’s vibe in a film that seems to laugh and mock Hollywood. It’s like a nightmare version of Beverly Hills 90210 where alienation takes on different meanings.

Nowhere might be more accessible than The Doom Generation, but the latter feels more alive.

The Acid House (1998)

When Trainspotting (1996) was released in the US, a portion of Begbie’s (Robert Carlyle) Scottish accent was dubbed so viewers could understand what was being said. In that case, dear readers, it might be worth having subtitles turned on for The Acid House. This is a film Variety said “makes Trainspotting look like a mild-mannered youth comedy”.

Irvine Welsh follows up with his writing from Danny Boyle’s 1996 film with three short stories in The Acid House. In the first story, a man (Stephen McCole) is turned into a fly by a pint-drinking God (Maurice Roëves); the second part has a reprobate (Gary McCormack) intruding on his neighbour; and finally an acid trip that leads to a Hibs-ultra (Ewen Bremner) swapping places with a newborn baby. For that last short story, think Look Who’s Talking Now but with a strong Scottish accent and a penchant for swearing.

Oh, and it’s all washed down with lots of Carlsberg Special Brew and a sprinkling of Martin Clunes.

“In between life and death where there’s nothing left”

The stories are a stilted social commentary from Welsh and The Verve’s “On Your Own” drops as the credits roll. It’s taken from their critically acclaimed A Northern Soul album and reflects the sentiments the film is trying to portray: independence, loneliness and the painful truths of the human condition that the stories explore in their own explicit way.

The film doesn’t always succeed in what it’s trying to achieve and can feel forced at times; in the first story a police officer assaults an inmate whilst commentating on the role of being a shareholder for a newly privatised business. But the short stories keep the film focussed and are creative, to say the least.

BONUS FILM: The Boy Who Commits a Murder (2016)

There are big-budget films that feature songs by The Verve that could’ve easily been selected, like Marley & Me or the infamous Cruel Intentions but the focus here is indie and alternative films. This 45-minute film from Matthew Senior is about a troubled boy and self-harm. The acting isn’t the best at times, but considering the budget was roughly a few thousand pounds, it shows a lot of creativity.

“My friend and me. Looking through her red box of memories.”

It’s shot with a darkened vignette frame - looking like an old screen - and finishes with an acoustic performance of “Sonnet” from the band’s iconic Urban Hymns album. The twist at the end of the film is also neat.

The film was originally released on Amazon Prime but can now viewed below.

Which film will you watch first?

Thanks for reading and if you liked the blend of music and film, then you might enjoy some of my other posts below.

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Project Hail Mary is at its most entertaining when school-teacher-turned-astronaut Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) has first contact with an alien called Rocky (named by Ryland for its bouldery appearance and voiced by James Ortiz). As the pair go through a playful discovery journey, Rocky imitates his companion’s phrases. “Fist my bump” is a chuckling mispronunciation of a fist-bump and one of many comical moments between the pair. We learn that Astrophage cells are dimming the sun’s energy and could result in millions of people on Earth dying as the planet cools. Both characters are on a mission to save their respective civilisations in the latest film adaptation from Andy Weir (the author who also wrote The Martian).

Both Rocky and Ryland demonstrate gaps in scientific understanding, which promotes the forging of their relationship and trust in each other as they conceive of new ways to solve their astronomic conundrum. The dialogue never nerds out with physics or loses the audience with detailed science, but the directors (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller) appear to ask the viewer to invest emotionally in Rocky in a way audiences did with E.T. Their overconfidence here is a limiting factor as the film progresses beyond the second act. Although their bond is charming and Rocky’s phraseologies like “Grace. Rocky. Save. Stars” are cute moments, they certainly don’t have the same lasting impression as “E.T. Phone. Home”. Elliott and E.T’s bond felt much more telepathic.

The story avoids what could’ve been a mundane linear approach by moving back and forth between two storylines (sticking with Weir’s approach in the book), so we meet a dazed and confused Ryland (with Gosling’s untamed long hair and beard giving him a heavy metal look) waking up on the spacecraft and cutting to scenes with him before he accepts the mission. The editing keeps a rhythm and flow to the story, especially in the first act. The impressive fading and cutting between these two stories give a kind of anti-gravity feel and for a few seconds early on in the film it’s a challenge to know if Ryland - seen through tilted shots - is in space or still on Earth.

Gosling’s charisma is at the heart of this story and his performance is arguably one of his best comedic roles to date. Even when the film stutters, his performance is always enjoyable. By balancing sarcasm and his natural charm, he continually delivers memorable moments. Considering he spends most of the time with an alien that has no facial features, this is no mean feat.

The film’s score plays over montages and a mixture of needle-drops that are hit and miss. The Beatles’ “Two of Us” near the ending of the story works well as a commentary for what comes next in the scene but many of the other tracks don’t sit right or work like “Starman” or ABBA’s “Waterloo” did in The Martian. It’s no surprise that Project Hail Mary borrows much from that film - including the protagonist talking into a camera as a way of commentary - but The Martian found a better way to continually balance humour and jeopardy. This movie majors in the comedy, and does it well.

Lord and Miller’s adaptation wants to deliver a knockout experience, but a disjointed finale is out of sync with many of the plot points that come before it. In Ryland’s flashback scenes to Earth, Sandra Hüller plays an authoritative and withdrawn government figure leading the mission who interacts with Ryland more than anyone else. Her actions are clinical and focussed on saving the human race, yet the story asks us to invest in her sentimentality as the film concludes. Likewise, there are many other moments at this stage that feel rushed. For all of the cute moments between Ryland and Rocky, as well as nods to various other sci-fi films, this is where it lets itself down. But whilst it isn’t always perfect, Project Hail Mary is a charming film and Ryan Gosling is a tour de force.

For Frankenstein film fanatics, The Bride! could seem like a continuation of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein which ended with The Creature wandering into the abyss for all of eternity. But it’s not. Maggie Gyllenhaal places her monster, known as Frank (Christian Bale), in 1930s Chicago as he searches for a cure to his loneliness. The latest cinematic adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel is tonally different from del Toro’s film. The Bride! has its women front and centre.

The film is analogous to James Whale’s 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein, with Bale’s stitches and flat-top square haircut evoking Boris Karloff’s appearance whilst Jessie Buckley’s electrified frizzled hair nods to Elsa Lanchester’s, who played the dual role of Mary Shelley and the monster’s mate. Buckley goes one further here in playing an additional character, Ida, who provokes mafiosi and is killed before becoming The Bride.

Frank finds and convinces Dr. Euphronius (Annette Bening) to cure his loneliness by making him a companion and they soon dig up Ida from her grave and revive her. The Bride is alive. Upon awakening, she spits out black chemicals that stain her skin, giving her a distinctive and symbolic look.

There are some nicely shot and choreographed dance scenes captured by cinematographer Lawrence Sher, as the pair boogie to “Puttin’ on the Ritz” before being hunted by a detective (Peter Sarsgaard) and his (more proficient) assistant (Penélope Cruz) in what can seem like a Bonnie and Clyde chase in the second part of the film. An early rave scene - with captivating strobe lighting - sets the tone for both characters when Frank reluctantly summons up his monstrous energy to dispose of men groping The Bride. Hildur Guðnadóttir’s vibrant score works well with the direction of the film as it carefully swerves in different directions, occasionally losing its footing.

Sher and Guðnadóttir both worked on Joker (2019) and given the many references to Batman projects (Bale, Gyllenhaal and Sarsgaard all in roles featuring the caped crusader), Buckley’s character is comparable to a female version of the Joker. She jolts between two roles: The Bride and Mary Shelley, with the author continually prodding her to summon a darker side. But here, Buckley could’ve gone deeper with her macabre to make this a more notable performance, given the mood of the movie.

The director’s modern take on the story, which hovers between black and white as well as full colour imagery, indulges itself with many references to Shelley. Rather than establishing Shelley’s influence from the start and making clear that The Bride is possessed, these scenes disrupt the flow of the story. But the 1935 film only had The Bride appearing for roughly three minutes and she was subsequently killed off by the monster for rejecting him. Gyllenhaal addresses this and then some by showing the marginalisation of women as well as a world where they soon rise up as The Bride sparks a revolution when she and Frank escape capture.

Cruz’s role as a smart assistant who is really the key detective, doing the real work for the subservient and passive Sarsgaard, works best when the audience is left to see the prejudices the character is exposed to, rather than the occasional stilted dialogue. The only decent male appears to be Frank and his early faux pas, where he assumes Dr. Euphronius to be a man, sets the tone for both Frank and the film. Bale doesn’t disappoint in showing Frank’s humane side with his performance but the centre stage is always with Buckley. Frank also turns out to be somewhat of a cinephile, and like most of them, that fact might also be his final undoing. But even for his gentleness he’s still keeping secrets from The Bride that haunt him in the final act.

It doesn’t always land, yet it’s interesting to hear Shelley’s perspective and the approach contrasts with del Toro’s 2025 Frankenstein. For all of his espoused love of the 1818 novel, the director still decided to end his film with a quote by Lord Byron. A male director quoting a male poet, when the basis of the film was built on a classic text from a woman, was not lost on many. Gyllenhaal’s approach is loud and clear. The Bride! is about Shelley and what Gyllenhaal thought the author’s take on Frankenstein’s companion might be.

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To understand 18th century misogyny it’s helpful to know an author by the name of Samuel Johnson. His dictionaries standardised language, shaping meaning and in turn influencing the behaviour of the masses. Johnson once said a woman’s preaching “is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well...”. When watching Mona Fastvold’s latest film The Testament of Ann Lee, a story of a woman born in that century who proclaims to be the female Christ, it’s helpful to have this historic lens.

It’s part musical and a loose biography of Ann Lee (Amanda Seyfried). Part because the film doesn’t belt out songs like Seyfried’s Les Misérables or Mamma Mia!, and loose because of the sparse information on Lee’s story meaning much of Fastvold’s take is speculative. The reason being her religious group believed sexual intercourse was the root of all evil and celibacy was the only way to live a sin free life. The Shakers, who chant hymns and divinely shake themselves during worship, had over 5,000 members at their height but today only a handful exist.

Sex doesn’t bring much joy to Ann; losing four babies and being the object of her controlling husband’s (Christopher Abbott as Abraham) masochistic pursuits in the bedroom. There are glitching moments when the lead’s Mancunian accent drifts towards tones of the Yorkshire Dales or the Irish coast, but overall Seyfried embodies her awakened character with conviction through picturesque flashbacks that are helped by impressive editing during her spiritual epiphanies. Like Ida, there’s always a sense that the unspoken is weighing on the characters but whilst both films are connected by religion it’s sex – or the lack of it – that carries the energy of this story.

An impressive soundtrack by Oscar-winning composer Daniel Blumberg (The Brutalist) captures the swirling tension that a life of celibacy never seems to release. The sound has a strong tempo and works well against hymns as characters scream, dance and chant as they worship. As Lee and her disciples set out on a utopian life in America, her displaced husband and companions seem to question: is this worth it?

Fastvold produced the film with her partner Brady Corbet (director of The Brutalist) and tries to let the story talk for itself, which doesn’t always work. Scenes set against the backdrop of the American Revolutionary War (shot in Hungary) look stunning, juxtaposed against life in Manchester that is lived in dark, restrictive rooms, as light begs to shine through the windows. But the character development, or lack of, creates vague moments that confuse more than clarify.

Abraham threatens to tell people that Lee is illiterate and another scene suggests her brother might be gay. Both examples do nothing to serve a story that can linger too long at times. The end result of this lack of development is that the film doesn’t build enough tension for the final scenes to have the emotional impact it seeks.

The Testament of Ann Lee is a captivating film, and Seyfried is brilliant in the role of Ann. But it does wander, although the soundtrack is always there to recapture attention.

At these moments, the curious viewer asks: why this topic and why now? Is this woman brave or delusional? And, if words were doing harm to women in the 18th century through Johnson’s dictionaries, it’s hard not to reflect on today’s online misogyny that seems to serve social media engagement before protecting against hate, harassment and abuse. Fastvold’s film is non-judgemental, leaving viewers to decide for themselves.

I love how Trainspotting launches with the pounding drums of Iggy Pop’s Lust for Life and never seems to part with its rowdy, boisterous and degenerate tone. Yet, as Renton rolls over the car bonnet and laughs in the face of the driver, the pedant in me couldn’t help but notice something off; Renton is wearing maroon Adidas trainers. Sambas, to be precise. Our narrator and guide through the story is an ardent Hibernian F.C. fan. The glitch here is any self-respecting Hibs supporter wouldn’t be seen dead in the colours of arch-rivals, Hearts.

That was insightful.

The trouble with retrospective anniversary mementos is most things have already been worn out. You probably know David Bowie helped to unlock the release of anthemic needle drops by Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, or that Danny Boyle’s approach is a pastiche of Goodfellas with its narration and violence.

Rather than pad out this critique with tidbits of memorabilia, I want to ask if Trainspotting’s portrayal of addiction still holds true today.

Irvine Welsh’s original novel was set between the early to mid-80s but Boyle used music as a nice way to move characters through an unspecified timeline. Iggy Pop represented the scag-squad being stuck in the punk era (mid-80s), before embracing Underworld’s rave inspired scene (early-90s) and then used Britpop’s energy through Pulp and Blur (early to mid-90s).

The film and its source music are a sociopolitical backdrop for Margaret Thatcher’s reign as Prime Minister, which helped fire the starter gun for increased unemployment and economic hardship in the types of places we see in the film. Trainspotting succeeds in displaying this hopelessness passed on from one generation to the next and sets an important context for why the characters make their decisions.

Renton is addicted to heroin but his parents are just as addicted to watching TV. There’s so little opportunity available to the characters and the only way to escape is to numb the pain. Even the infamous “choose life“ monologue is nihilism in action; why bother to try and participate in society when you can’t win? Goodfellas finished with Henry’s speech about becoming an average Joe, a schmuck, and Trainspotting begins with it. Society against the state.

It’s not intended to be a pro-drugs film but Boyle’s approach heightens everything and the editing creates a rhythm that works with every piece of music. Vivid greens and reds in Swanney’s drug den or Lou Reed’s Perfect Day playing against Renton’s overdose as he appears to sink into a coffin give a hyper-real take on the story. The film doesn’t lose itself at all; if anything it juxtaposes perceptions against realities throughout.

The film does speak broadly to addiction and holds a mirror up to the audience. Begbie never hides his disgust at Spud, Renton and Sick Boy’s drug use, but the irony is he clearly has an alcohol addiction: a commentary on how society judges drug addicts - heroin users in particular - versus alcoholics.

Boyle wanted the film to be a subjective viewing experience, and not to separate the perpetrators or drug culture. It couldn’t be everything though, and a criticism of Trainspotting today is the focus on pride over pity. It shows (or maybe celebrates) the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure and focusses on the consequences of severe drug addiction, but it rarely pauses to show the addictive journey and uses dark humour to handle these questions.

Let me be clear; the morbid comedy works. Anyone who’s ever experienced IBS will undoubtedly find Renton’s relief at finding the (worst) toilet (in Scotland) - just in time - traumatically funny. Or how the film starts with Renton telling Swanney he’s finished with heroin in a tragically amusing sequence which culminates with the protagonist having one more hit.

I love Renton’s frantic withdrawal scene where he finally gets clean as Underworld anxiously sweats through the speakers. Watching the film 30 years on, I just can’t help thinking if editing choices elsewhere (Boyle has spoken about drugs in movies being a bit of a turn-off) could’ve given a deeper, quieter insight into addiction. The film’s turning point arrives when Sick Boy’s baby dies but it’s a turning point mainly for the audience - the horror - and Renton’s first response is to selfishly escape by getting high.

With these points in mind, there’s a couple of deleted scenes that capture my attention. In the first, Renton visits Swanney in hospital where he reveals an amputated leg (watching it today conjures up memories of Requiem for a Dream) and he jests with the idea of going to Thailand to have some “fun“. Renton has a disturbed expression and it’s a significant moment because he can’t immediately seek out refuge through a syringe. The other, subtler, deleted scene sees Renton give money to a beggar before the group hop on a coach to London and as he walks by, the homeless man raises his face, revealing himself as Swanney. These deleted scenes express a sombre reality that comes with addiction. An antidote to the debauchery.

Look, I’m not bashing Trainspotting at all. I love the film but I’m asking questions about what could be done differently versus what should. This is not an apology either. These were opportunities to heighten the story in a different way and show the human side of addiction. These scenes didn’t need to come with pity or pathos. I wasn’t a fan of T2 Trainspotting due to its sentimental “remember when“ tone but Spud’s recovery journey and artistic awakening were quietly powerful.

Clearly, the avoidance of pity in the first film was a creative choice and a reflection of Cool Britannia’s energy and unapologetic attitude but other recent Scottish films like The Outrun explored society’s relationship with addiction in a slower and humanistic way. Then we have gems like Aftersun, set in the mid-90s time period of Trainspotting, that show a different portrayal of masculinity and it’s not a stretch to say Calum (Aftersun’s lead character) and Renton are victims of the same socioeconomic contexts.

This is all to say that films age with us; I believe we should be asking questions about what our favourite pictures were trying to achieve, the voices that were missed at the time and other perspectives that life has taught us since our first watch.

My conclusion? I forget how many times I’ve watched Trainspotting but it always delivers on its high-energy fun and it certainly still holds its place in cinema 30 years after its release.

I choose probing the films we love. I choose asking why? And I choose playing Born Slippy as loud as I can when the credits roll on Trainspotting.

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The finale to Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis (2022) plays footage of the weary singer performing “Unchained Melody” with a soulful power that reveals the brutal impact over 1,000 concerts had on Presley. Watching Elvis perform the song, not long before his death, tells its own lonesome story and the images leave a lingering sense of sadness. EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert doesn’t hit this emotional height but is an absorbing musical experience as Luhrmann imagines what it could’ve been like to hear The King during his early Vegas years.

EPiC’s enchanting approach features unseen footage the director gathered from filming Elvis (2022) and keeps the focus purely on the singer for the entirety of the film. Songs like Burning Love begin with rising anticipation as the high-energy sound booms around your ears. Like all great music concerts, there’s rarely time to catch a breath.

Elvis’ formative journey is whizzed through so we can focus on his Vegas years and, through his own narration, he’s front and centre. His mesmerising performances give the impression you’re sat in the audience witnessing it all unfold live, close enough to see every droplet of The King’s sweat running down his face. Footage skips seamlessly between rehearsals and various live performances, showcasing impressive editing from Jonathan Redmond. Rehearsals give a mischievous and playful view of Elvis, full of zeal and determined to provide audiences with a unique experience for every show he performs.

As Never Been to Spain plays and the lyrics “I’ve never been to England...I’ve only been to Vegas” are sung, there are moments of melancholy through Elvis’ narration and brief interviews as he shares his ambition to perform in Japan, Britain and wider Europe. But we know what he doesn’t. Thanks to the heavy hand of Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’ dreams won’t be fulfilled. Moments of nostalgia during his performance of Always On My Mind dart between Elvis on stage and shots of his baby daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, but nothing ever lingers as we quickly move to another song and part of his story. The focus is always on the show and keeps EPiC feeling like a concert.

The Beatles: Get Back’s eight-hour length felt a barrier for any non-fan to watch yet showed wonderful creative moments like the birth of Get Back, a song that we see Elvis perform here. But EPiC sometimes doesn’t linger long enough before moving on. Elvis’ interview clips and narration cover a range of topics without giving us more insight. The director clearly wants a little less conversation and a little more action, suggesting there wasn’t quite enough in the new material to make this an exploratory and more in-depth feature.

Luhrmann’s previous standout works like Romeo + Juliet and The Great Gatsby are stories with the music front and centre. His approach always leaves a lasting melodic impression and this latest project, a mix of biopic and concert recording, takes his approach to a new and creative space. It’s intended to be seen on the big screen - ideally in IMAX - and rather than being a cinematic masterpiece, it succeeds its aim of being an immersive and entertaining experience.

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