8 Lessons Learned from the 2019 BBFC Annual Report

The blog is rated 15 for strong sex references and drug references.

On Thursday, the BBFC dropped their 2019 Annual Report, which for film classification nerds, is also known as 'Most Complained about Films to the BBFC Day'. I spent Friday evening poring through the report, looking for clues and new information, and psycho-analysing every adjective used in the report. In short, I was in heaven.

Here were eight prominent things I noticed from reading it:

01. Emma knows her BBFC…

Tale as old as time… that the first point I make every year when discussing the BBFC annual report, is not an observation, but rather, a shameless display of braggadocio. The three most complained about films in 2019 were Joker, The Favourite and John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, and I'd predicted all three of these in my prognostication blog.

You love to sea it

As I discussed in April, working from home, and the various video-conferences I partake in on a daily basis has made me more conscious of the film posters I had on the wall facing the camera. I had bought a Parasite film poster from Geeky Illustrator to join the Shawshank Redemption one I already had.

The Shawshank Redemption poster was on the wall opposite the Parasite one, and I realised it made sense to put the two side by side, seeing as they were from the same artist. And then in late May, I purchased a Finding Nemo poster to flank the Parasite poster on the other side (from another artist).

What I now have is a very colourful display of three films to face my Webcam for when I'm in a meeting, that perfectly represents three facets of my love of cinema: Disney, foreign film and character-driven dramas!

Guarding them all is my boy Gary Cahill, because, obvs.

Restaurant review: SANTA MARIA (Fitzrovia)

Earlier in the lockdown, I'd tried my hand at making a pizza from scratch. It was a solid effort given my complete lack of experience in the department, but it wasn't a patch on the pizzas from Santa Maria, a restaurant which I had had the good fortune to visit at the tail end of 2019.

Santa Maria is a small restaurant, whose aim is to bring the charm and flavour of Napoli to London. The staff are very welcoming - when I asked about what types of cheese I could add to my pizza, the waiter actually took the time to give me a thoughtful, detailed, response. This is a far cry from the eye rolls that I am usually met with in most central London restaurants when I ask the waiters for help ordering.

The recommendations he made were astute as well:

Second-guessing which films got the BBFC the most complaints in 2019

This blog is rated 15 for strong sex references and descriptions of violence.

After years of releasing their annual reports every July, 2018's BBFC annual report was instead released in late May. As I really love testing my BBFC senses on a yearly basis, to see how good I am at reading the general public's perception of what BBFC ratings for films ought to be, I thought I'd guess which films got them the most complaints in 2019!

Note, when I refer to a '2019 release', this actually means any film that came out in cinemas in the UK in 2019. So The Favourite, although a 2018 film by American release dates (and eligible for the 2019 Oscars and BAFTAs for that precise reason), didn't hit UK cinemas until January 2019, and is thus a 'UK 2019 release'. 

My guesses:

01. Joker

OOTD: Repping my favourite and least favourite films of 2019

In this aesthetic, I'm pairing a Parasite T-shirt (my favourite film of 2019 and one of my favourite movies of all time; I was so buzzing to be proved wrong, and see it win Best Film and Best Director at the Oscars over CoD: WW1!) with a floral headband a la Florence Pugh in Midsommar. I despised Midsommar - it was all kinds of toxic indulgent garbage, but I will concede that floral garlands are a very pretty look.

T-shirt: RedBubble (bought online)

Floral headband: Accessorize

Earcuff: Etsy (bought online)

The result is a casual yet girly and very cine-literate outfit! Of course, a flower headband is only a miniature version of the full-on garland that Dani wore in Midsommar. But I did recently find a larger garland that was truer to the look:

Excuse my gross make-up-less face there. My face without make-up deserves a 15 rating.

It might be harder to square wearing this to work on Dressdown Fridays, though!

10 Most Attractive Men in a 2019 Film

2018's list, in case you wanted to get a flavour for Emsy's taste in Hollywood hunks!

10. Lakeith Stanfield, Knives Out (new entrant)

10 Most Attractive Women in a 2019 Film

Hey readers, hope you're all well and not going stir-crazy due to the lockdown!

I've decided to make lemonade out of lemons, and use this mandated stay-at-home period to spend more time blogging, something which I have done embarrassingly little of in 2020.

Thus, what better way to get back into it than by compiling one of this blog's yearly staples: most attractive women in a 20XX film?

Here is 2018's list, and as has become my habit, I will record next to each lady whether she was present in the previous year's list, or if she is a recent obsession!

10. Lili Reinhart, Hustlers (new entrant)

Golden Globe 2020 Predictions

I've been sadly rather neglectful of my blog of late (I'm been extremely busy at work!), but one thing I  will always find time for, no matter what, is movie awards prognostication. The Golden Globes take place tomorrow evening, and I absolutely love blindly guessing!

Last year, the Golden Globes had a surprising amount of clout, as their rewarding Glen Close best actress (and not Lady Gaga as I'd predicted), meant the Best Actress Oscar was between Close and Olivia Colman. Furthermore, they gave Best Film, Musical or Comedy to Green Book, which went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture. This meant that, in the landscape of 2019's Best Picture, the Golden Globes fared better than the BAFTAs as an Academy Award weathervane.

So without further ado, Emma's guesses!

Best Film, Drama: The Irishman

Book review: CONFESSIONS OF AN ACTUARIAL TUTOR (John Lee)

As part of my job, I have to sit actuarial exams in tandem to working. I sat CM1 and CS1 in April, and CS2 in September (the M stands for Maths and S stands for Statistics). I have had the good fortune of having passed all three exams I sat this year (hence the rather extravagant Christmas present I got myself), but luck was only a small factor in why I was successful. John Lee, who’s expert tutelage I received for the two Statistics modules, played a huge part.

That's not him btw.

His new book, Confessions of an Actuarial Tutor, is a compendium of amusing things that happened to him in his ~20 years of teaching actuarial students. For anyone who’s ever met John, he writes as he speaks: a mixture of gallows humour, self-deprecatory banter, nerdy mathematical jokes and a sprinkle of that unique John Lee eccentricity.

Happiness is the same price as red bottoms.

In a happy sequel to me getting my Gal Gadot piercing, I passed the exam I sat in my September sitting. As I've developed a tendency to treat myself for exam passes (and the substantial toil I put myself through to pass them), I also got myself something for being successful this time. 

Except, whereas a cartilage piercing only costs £30, I levelled up substantially this time, with £495 Louboutins:

Those red soles ❤️

For my next exam pass, I won't be splurging on something quite as extravagant (I'll probably get another ear piercing!), but I just had to get these heels this time. 

I've heard Louboutins, or 'red bottoms', name-dropped in many of my favourite hip-hop or pop songs (whether it be from Iggy Azalea, Cardi B, J-Lo, Ariana Grande or Lizzo), so there's always been a cachet around them. 

My two personal favourite references to Loubies in music is Ariana Grande trilling 'happiness is the same price as red bottoms' in 7 Things, and Jennifer Lopez (who I will be rooting for to win Best Supporting Actress next year for her fierce performance in Hustlers)'s song Louboutins.

And now I finally have a pair of red bottoms to call my own. ❤️

TV review: ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK season 7 (Netflix)

this review contains spoilers for the final season of OITNB. I've left it quite long after the show dropped before posting this review, in the hope that fans of the show have caught up by now!


The final season of OITNB had a lot of loose plot strands to tie up, including Taystee being given a life sentence for a murder she didn't commit; how Piper acclimatises to life on the outside, whilst her wife Alex is still incarcerated; and Daya being the prison's chief drug pusher, whilst her mother supplies the drugs and her boyfriend, the Head Guard, sneaks them in.

This is a lot to juggle as it is, but OITNB's scope has never been anything less than ambitious, and in keeping with topical issues, the prison has freed up space to house detainees who are on the precipice of being deported. Two of said detainees include Maritza and Blanca, inmates who had been released in previous seasons.

Nice dinner I had last week with work.

As part of a client dinner, my Company prepared this gorgeous and delicious meal last week. It tasted and looked brilliant, so I thought it would be rude not to share pictures of all the courses!

Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams exhibit at the V&A

My friend Joy invited me to the Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams exhibit at the Victoria & Albert museum, and it was an afternoon very well spent! The gowns were absolutely to die for, and it would be amiss of me not to share some of the sumptuous photos I took!

The gown wore by Ziyi Zhang at the Live for Life premiere... stunning!

My Gal Gadot piercing

As part of my job, I have to sit professional exams in order to become a qualified actuary. My first sitting for these exams were this April, where I sat two. I was fairly confident that I'd passed Statistics but almost certain that I failed Maths.

So, imagine my euphoria come results day in early July, when I saw my name on the pass list for both exams that I sat! An exam pass is so much more satisfying when you've made peace with yourself that you were going to fail it!

As a treat to myself for all that hard work I put into those passes (I was knee-deep in revision notes all the way through April; I didn't even know certain football matches had happened), I got the top of my ear pierced, as photographed below:

Given how passionate I am about films and film star culture, it should come as no surprise to you that I was inspired to get this cartilage piercing, after seeing it on Gal Gadot:

I'm not so vain and deluded that I consider myself remotely in even the same league as Ms. Gadot, but at least now I have something in common with my own pick for the most gorgeous woman in a 2016 film!

Restaurant review: MAI SUSHI (Kings Cross)

Eat Tokyo is my favourite Japanese restaurant in London. Their dishes are marvellous, so reasonably priced, and their meals are both flavourful and healthy. Because of this, I've dined there over ten times, and it's become my go-to Japanese place when I don't feel like researching other places.

Concerned that Eat Tokyo was becoming my favourite due to my own laziness and inertia, I decided to scope out its competition. As part of my job, I have tutorials for professional actuarial qualifications in Kings Cross, and I saw that Mai Sushi, which has a very salubrious TripAdvisor rank of being a top 1,300 restaurant in over 19,000 in London, was located in the vicinity of where my classes were. Thus, I decided it would be rude not to go there for lunch one day.

To start, I had veggie tempura. It was nice, but for £6.50, the structural integrity of it could have been more precise, robust (John Wick Chapter 2 reference, ehehe). You get roughly the same quantity of food for the same price at Eat Tokyo, and the one at Eat Tokyo is much more satisfying.

There were a few sushi boats on the menu at Mai Sushi. On one of my countless revisits to Eat Tokyo, I had actually tried a boat once, pictured in the centre below:

There's something about a whole lot of sushi, all laid out together, that I just can't resist, and the quality of the salmon at Eat Tokyo is unparalleled.

Written in black and white

This blog is rated 12A for infrequent strong language.

Last week, in preparation for watching Octavia Spencer get her Gone Girl on in Ma, I watched Black or White. The film itself was extremely forgettable, with aspirations of Oscar glory but not enough quality to realise those dreams, but the thing that did stick out about the film, to me, was this line:

The BBFC have stated in previous podcasts that the 'MF word' is considered a 15-rated term. It's why Eat Pray Love, a PG-rated film in every other sense, was 15.

Bar review: ADVENTURE BAR (Clapham High Street)

Having visited and reviewed the Adventure Bar in Covent Garden, I postulated whether the chain's venues outside of central London were better than the flagship one. The fact that DUSK (a terrific app that allows you have a free drink a night) featured Adventure Bar when I happened to be at Clapham Junction, meant I could put this hypothesis to the test.

OOTD: My 'Gareth Southgate x City of Stars' look

This look was partly inspired by Gareth Southgate rocking a waistcoat during the World Cup. Although I don't have a waistcoat, I do own this rather fetching sleeveless sweater, which I've paired with a black starry blouse. Thus, due to my compulsive desire to enforce a film reference on everything, this is my Gareth Southgate x City of Stars outfit.

Point of interest, the last time I mixed Gareth Southgate with 'City of Stars', I covered the song, called 'Dear Gareth Southgate'.

Shirt: Warehouse

Sweater vest: Alba Moda

Trousers: John Lewis

Glasses: Red or Dead

OOTD: new haircut

With the sun finally hitting the UK, I decided my long hair of previous was getting too unmanageable, and thus, in trimming it, I've gone from Alicia Vikander in The Light Between Oceans length to Jessica Chastain in Miss Sloane length! And, in keeping consistent with the Chastain look, I've duly painted my nails black, like Liz Sloane had!

Dress: Marietta dress from Hobbs

Earrings: Amazon

Glasses: Red or Dead

The Marietta dress is now  the third dress from Hobbs I own (the other two: un et deux). Their dresses are perfect for the kind of aesthetic I'm going for at work: elegant and demure.

I find clothes definitely help with the 'fake it 'til you make it' mentality, by which I mean, even if I'm in a sub-optimal mood, if I'm at least sharply dressed at work, I feel better about myself. This then helps to improve my frame of mind, and how I carry out my work.

Mark Twain absolutely nailed it when he said 'clothes make the man'.

OOTD: Okay ladies, now let's get in formation

Top: Primark

Earrings: Aldo

Glasses: Red or Dead

The larger-than-life hoops earrings are a homage to Taraji P. Henson as 'Cookie' in Empire. The next film Taraji's appearing in is the female reboot of  What Women Want, Want Men Want, and I will hopefully be seeing that soon! 

As a point of BBFC nerdiness, I find it interesting that the original Mel Gibson film was a PG-13/12A, yet the reboot is embracing the crude adult humour, and has gotten an R and 15, and even a 16 in Ireland. I'm guessing the film's producers have targeted the grown up audience following the success of Girls' Trip. If What Men Want is half as lulzy as Girls Trip, it will be a trip to the cinema well made!