• Sister Midnight

    March 12, 2025 - By 

    There’s a sequence at the beginning of Karan Kandhari’s BAFTA winning black comedy, Sister Midnight, in which the protagonist, Uma, wanders alone around her new Mumbai neighbourhood. It’s her wedding night, she’s just arrived, and her new husband in their arranged marriage has gone straight to sleep in the tiny one-room flat she now has to call home. Silently walking around the dark streets, she comes across a neon bandstand, empty and surrounded by the scattered debris of a festival: plastic cups, cigarette butts. Everyone has gone home. The party is well and truly over. Uma’s marital frustrations continue, as…

  • The Lighthouse

    January 31, 2020 - By 

    At the beginning of Robert Eggers’ The Lighthouse, Ephraim Winslow (Robert Pattinson) arrives on a remote island with his superior, Tom Wake (Willem Dafoe), to tend to the titular beacon. Their path, along steep craggy cliffs in howling winds, was difficult, but there will be no relief inside either. As Winslow bumps his head on the low ceiling of their shared upstairs quarters, Wake is already urinating into a chamber pot, farting and barking orders about Winslow’s duties.  Life on the island is hard. Winslow’s tasks are back-breaking and seemingly never-ending, everything but the more rewarding nursing the light itself – a…