Fifty Shades Darker (2017)
Fifty Shades Darker sands off the sharp edges that made its predecessor an interesting – if not precisely good – film.
Not a girl, not (yet) a woman: Dakota Johnson and Hollywood femininity
As Penelope in A Bigger Splash, Dakota Johnson is enigmatic yet authentic, knowing yet naïve; a daughter, a lover, a seductress, and a child all at once. The role allows Johnson to undercut the cliches of Hollywood femininity: innocent child, sexualised nymph, or idealised mother. In projects like A Bigger Splash, television sitcom Ben and Kate…
Beauty Behind the Madness: The Weeknd and the Changing Shape of Pop Persona
When House of Balloons dropped in 2011, The Weeknd didn’t seem like your typical popstar. Rather than a carefully orchestrated PR campaign, here was an immaculately produced mixtape that was fully formed, less a rough-edged debut than an assertive statement, something imbued with purpose yet cloaked beneath impenetrable anonymity. House of Balloons – and, to…
Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)
A movie about sex – kinky sex – is in cinemas, and as a film critic, and therefore a noted arbiter of good taste (bear with me), I’m expected to regard this adaptation of a smutty bestseller with derision or, at best, suspicion. But let’s take a different tack, shall we? Why not approach the…
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