Long-time readers of this blog will know I have an "inside baseball" obsession with film classification. I’m fascinated by film classification, especially BBFC ratings, why films are rated what they are, and decisions that were the source of contention. For me, the release of the BBFC’s annual report is like Christmas; the ultimate chance to indulge my inner film nerd.
Back when I was doing my PhD, and then when I had started my job in Finance, I went on a generational run of reading and summarizing my key takeaways from the Annual Reports from 2016 to 2019. But then my job got very busy, and my actuarial exams got more difficult, forcing my niche hobby onto the back burner, leaving the 2020 through 2024 reports unchronicled.
Being on maternity leave, I can now right some of those wrongs, and thus, for the first time in six years, have the time to pore over the 2025 Annual Report, and tell you what I found interesting! Below are nine things that I learned from reading the 2025 annual report.
1. Complaints for non-standard reasons I
The section of the Annual Report that attracts most attention from BBFC nerds, is the complaints section, because this reveals the temperature of the British public, not just in regards to their pressure points in terms of film content, but broader societal issues as well.
My love of films is one of the things which define me, so I was ecstatic when my colleagues got me this 100 Movies Bucket List poster, which now sits proudly on my door.
At the start, all the 100 movies are covered with grey foil-type material, and you scratch off the foil using your fingernails or a coin, if you’ve seen the film, as I have duly done.
In assessing this poster, I looked at two main areas, design, and choice of film.
I tried to write a review of Dunkirk without using the vernacular 'twink', or slagging off Cokehead Delevingne. Did I succeed? Read on to find out...
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The evacuation of 400,000 British men from Northern France during World War II is depicted from three viewpoints: that of the Allied soldiers on the beach, the civilians who bought them back to Britain in their personal boats, and the pilots caught trying to protect the soldiers from German attack overhead. Three time scales are employed in the film; we follow the soldiers for a week, the civilians for one day and the pilots for an hour, as their arcs converge to one pivotal moment.
Dunkirk 2: The Frenchman Rises - where Tommy goes back for Gibson, rescues him, and the two celebrate being evacuated by going to a LA Dodgers game. Absolutely love that Barnard is wearing Ray-bans in this photo!
Over the Easter weekend, when I wasn't watching my club lose miserably to Spurs, I was making the most of the poll function on Instagram, to investigate one of life's most important, unanswered questions:
I think Christopher Nolan is partial to actors and actresses with brown hair, but I'm not sure... Incidentally, I think 'Ariadne', Page's character, is the only well-written female in a Chris Nolan film. (This is partly why Dunkirk was so good; there were no women in it for him to invent just to kill off).
So, the BAFTAs were on Sunday, and such were the uninspired, bland, going with the crowd wins, that I really didn't feel motivated to do a debrief post, because it would consist almost entirely of me whining (and, as Jennifer Lawrence's essay on how underpaid she was for American Hustle demonstrates, complaining is never a good look).
But, some time has elapsed (to quote Frozen, 'it's funny how some distance, makes everything seem small'), thus, I will share my thoughts on the ceremony and what it means for the Oscar race (spoiler alert: nothing. We've become predictors rather than influencers).
I was ecstatic for Brit Daniel Kaluuya, who won the Rising Star Award. This prize is voted for by the British public and essentially weathervane of who the audience likes best. Given that cinemagoers are the people who make film stars who they are, it's not a bad prize to win.
The BAFTAs are tonight, and even though the film awards body of my home nation embarrassed me horrifically on nomination day, by naming flavour-of-the-month Margot Robbie instead of Isabelle Huppert, and even though the BAFTA ceremony last year was almost unwatchable with the incessant didactic about the political climate (worst offenders were Ken Loach, Kenneth Lonergan, Curzon twat and Emma Stone), I will of course be watching this year.
I love movie stars, movies, gorgeous outfits, and seeing how good I am at predicting the guessing game (going by last year's BAFTA predictions, not too well!), so it’s worth braving celebrities thinking they have a right to tell us what to think for!
Below be my guesses and second guesses for each category!
This was my reaction when I saw BAFTA nominated Margot Robbie over Isabelle Huppert. Joke.
I’m at a much better position now than I was this time last year in terms of proportion of Oscar-nominated films viewed, and there are a fair few categories where I’ve seen all the nominees!
I sadly don’t have the time to analyse every category before Oscar night, but I will attempt the odd category, starting with Best Original Score.
My personal rankings, from least favourite to favourite, and a mark out of five, as I did with Best Supporting Actor last year.
05. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri – Carter Burwell
Although I love Carter Burwell’s swooning scores usually (I maintain he deserved the win in 2016 for his romantic score for Carol and even his Twilight music is very underrated), his erratic, tonally jarring composition on Three Billboards encapsulates all of the film’s problems when whiplashing from devastating tragedy to LOL comedy in a matter of seconds.
I’ve recently been losing a lot
of time down the rabbit hole that is TV tropes, which outlines common
storytelling devices, arcs and techniques employed in film and TV. It doesn’t
just dissect the plot of films but the cast and credits as well, and one of
their pages, ‘And Starring’, offered some food for thought.
On Tuesday, I woke up to the blandest bunch of BAFTA nominations ever. Each year, the British Academy – which have recently morphed into a glorified Oscar prognosticating body – find new ways to disappoint me, but this year, there were extenuating factors which meant that they did so with more panache than ever.
Last year saw an unprecedented sweep of seven wins for the insufferable Blah Blah Bland, really testifying people's perception of the Golden Globes as being 'starf_ckers'. This year, none of the films in contention are about how great Hollywood is (although The Disaster Artist does portray the film-making process with jovial teasing), so I foresee the wealth being spread out more evenly.
Predictions:
Movies
Best Motion Picture - Drama: "The Shape of Water"
Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy: "Lady Bird"
Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama: Sally Hawkins, "The Shape of Water"
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama:Gary Oldman, "Darkest Hour"
Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy: Saoirse Ronan, "Lady Bird"
Best Director: Christopher Nolan, "Dunkirk"
Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy: James Franco, "The Disaster Artist"
Best Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture: Allison Janney, "I, Tonya"
Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture: Christopher Plummer, "All the Money in the World"
Best Original Score in a Motion Picture: "Dunkirk"
Best Screenplay in a Motion Picture: "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"
Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language: "First They Killed My Father"
Best Animated Film: "Coco" Best song: Mighty River, "Mudbound"
I don't usually predict the TV categories, but this year, me and my brother decided to do a competition to see who could get the most right out of the two combined sections!
TV
Best TV series - Drama: "The Handmaid's Tale"
Best performance by Actress in a TV series - Drama : Elisabeth Moss, "The Handmaid's Tale"
Best performance by an Actor in a TV Series - Drama: Sterling K. Brown, "This is Us"
Best TV series - Musical or Comedy: "Will & Grace"
Best performance by an Actor in a TV series - Musical or Comedy : Aziz Ansari "Master of None"
Best performance by an Actress in a TV series - Musical or Comedy: Rachel Brosnahan, "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"
Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: "Big Little Lies"
Best Performance by an Actor in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: Geoffrey Rush, "Genius"
Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television: Jessica Lange, "Feud: Bette and Joan"
Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television : Alexander Skarsgard, "Big Little Lies"
Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role in a Series, Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television : Laura Dern, "Big Little Lies"
Bonus prediction: Emma Stone, Casey Affleck, Meryl Streep and the whole gaggle of intolerable Hollyweird hypocrites will find any opportunity to self-congrulate for choosing to wear black outfits, like that undoes all their complicity when the moguls who were at the peak of their harassing powers by working with them and singing their praises. And of course, in a classic case of 'methinks the lady doth protest too much', the stars will drone on to anyone who listens about how they 'had no idea' about it when it was happening when really they did but turned a blind eye because they wanted roles and awards recognition.
Dunkirk has released its third For Your Consideration advert, and, just like last time, I noticed an omission in who they were campaigning for. Except unlike in Harry Styles' case, this snub is for one of the best, if not the best element of the film, and thus, totally unacceptable:
They've asked for consideration in all categories and outlined the ones that are most relevant to Dunkirk. Yet there's no mention of Hans Zimmer's incredible score!! Given that the music in the film was so tension-amplifying, that the BBFC even mentioned it in their extended information, that really is quite the oversight.
The only possible explanation is that Warner Brothers thought the score was so good, it didn't need highlighting; the quality spoke for itself. Which it does. After all, Zimmer's collaborations with two other single-word-titled Christopher Nolan movies, Inception and Interstellar, were both nominated in the Best Original Score category at the Oscars, and both those films had less Best Picture momentum than Dunkirkhas.
But, still, it would have been nice to pinpoint it anyway, just to be on the safe side.
Being beady-eyed when it comes to nerdy film things, I also noticed that whoever made the ad has rejigged the order of two of the actors:
To jog your memory, this was the order of actors in the previous FYC:
The poster creator obviously didn't like this film that much, then!
In case that shade was a little too nuanced, here's a list of actors who WB are campaigning for:
It's of trifling importance as bar Mark Rylance, none of the cast really have a shot at an Oscar nomination (and even for Rylance, with no show at the Golden Globes, SAGs or even the London Film Critics' Circle, that's an uphill battle), but I couldn't help thinking that Warner Brothers are shading Harry Styles somewhat by not listing him here.
I wasn't bowled over or anything by Harry Styles in Dunkirk (he did what he had to do, no more, no less, but was definitely more successful transitioning into acting than his former beardgirlfriend Cara Delevingne), but given he got to act 'angry' and Christopher Nolan used both of his PG-13-mandated allowances of the f-word on Styles, it seems somewhat amiss not to at list him here. It certainly couldn't hurt, IMO, and bar Rylance, who was the standout performer, the gulf in acting quality between Styles and the rest of his co-stars certainly wasn't that palpable.
So it's a bit harsh for Warner Brothers to be tacitly saying 'young Fionn Whitehead is worth the adspace... but you? Nah.'
As a side note, back when Dunkirk first hit UK cinemas in July, I was tickled by this e-mail we got from the Odeon:
Interesting that here, they've focused on the two Peaky Blinders and Inception/Dark Knight Rises actors, Cillian Murphy and Tom Hardy (who British audiences would more likely to be familiar with), thesp Kenneth Branagh and of course, the pretty boy Styles himself, yet omitted Oscar-winner Mark Rylance as a result.
It reminded me of what Nolan said about casting Styles in his movie, 'I saw thousands of young men, but Harry just had something that the rest didn't.'
I believe that 'something' in question is the ability to draw in randy teenage girls by their droves. ;)
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I saw this pun in The Sun, and I kind of loved it:
The awards season is officially underway! I was on holiday in NYC when the Golden Globe nominations dropped on Monday and didn’t have time to do a reaction post, so here be my rather delayed Good, Bads and Uglies on the nominations.
Good
- Dunkirk and Christopher Nolan being nominated. Dunkirk is currently my choice for best of 2017 (having not seen the vast majority of the Oscar heavyweights as they’re released later), and the only 9/10 I’ve awarded a 2017 film.
For me, the score can make or break a film. A good film can be elevated into the realms of greatness by a standout score, and even a poor film can be rescued from being a total disaster if it has some nice music.
Hans Zimmer is a composer who has an impeccable handle on what it means to write music for films. His soundtracks always suit the style, tone and theme of the films they are in. The pieces are easy on the ears and catchy, but they aren’t so carried away with pomp that they draw attention away from the film. Rather, they capture the essence of the story.
That Harry Styles movie,Dunkirk got its BBFC rating today, and as with Christopher Nolan's last six feature-length films, it's a 12A:
What stood out for me is that the short insight, for the four things in the film that render it 12A-worthy, each feature a different adjective:
- sustained threat (as was used in the short insight for Nolan's The Dark Knight, still by far the most complained about movie in recent years to the BBFC)
Leo in The Revenant-inspired earrings: Dorothy Perkins
Glasses: Twiggy for Aurora
The chaplaincy at my brother's college.
pretty Christmas tree.
From afar, the college has a touch of Wayne manor about it. Bruce Wayne's manor from the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, obviously, not the Snyder bastardisation.
We went on a ferry from Woolwich on our way back to cross the Thames back to Bromley, haha.
And, true to form, me and Tom had a proper sibling catch-up over our go-to junk food!
I didn't see Batman v Superman when it first came out in the cinemas in March, as it was released the same week as Zootopia. Whilst dithering as to which to invest my time in, I noticed Zootopia got rave reviews and BvS got woeful ones. I watched Zootopia, as was the right decision; it's still my third favourite film of the year.
That should have been it, but, misguidedly, with my girlcrush on Gal Gadot, the cast featuring Amy Adams and Jesse Eisenberg and me wanting to know if it really was as bad as everyone said, I finally sat down and watched it with my brother last night.
Here be ten thoughts I had during the film:
1. The bath scene was embarrassingly forced and unerotic, and so unhygienic!!! I mean, understand trying to convey passion and the heat of the moment, and would have been cool with Cavill getting in the bath with Adams when he was fully clothed.
But getting in the bath with his dirty shoes on, when she was naked in the bath? That's just bad sanitation. Gross.
2. Zack Snyder is a talentless hack who cannot direct to save his life. Mark Kermode's review of Snyder's Sucker Punch, where he repeats the director's name in a hyperactive voice, is the funniest thing ever, but honestly, I can totally see Snyder directing BvS in such a high-pitched voice, no structure to his vision at all, and worse, no-one bothering to step in and reign him in, so the end product is just whatever Zack feels like bunging into a movie, namely, SUPERHERO FIGHT! THEN BATH SCENE! THEN JESSE EISENBERG BEING TWITCHY! THEN ANOTHER SUPERHERO FIGHT!
3. Jesse, honey.... So 2016 might be the first I bestow an actor the dubious honour of appearing in both my 'favourite performances of the year' (Eisenberg's bittersweet performance as Bobby in Cafe Society is still comfortably my favourite performance this year, for how much I recognised myself in his role), as well as 'worst performances of the year', where Eisenberg's hilariously bad Lex Luthor currently has him ranked second behind Blahra Delevingne in Suicide Squad, ofc.
He's not helped by a portentous script that has him evoking Greek mythology all the time and Snyder's direction which is completely devoid of nuance, but Eisenberg doing a half-assed Mark Zuckerberg impression and punctuating it by being a jumpy caricature in an attempt to create an unsettling villain was epic fail, on so many levels.
4. All of the action scenes were way too long, did not grab the audience's attention and just played like messy, loud, over-CGI'd nightmares.
5. Affleck was decent as Batman. I can't say I like the guy on account of him in real life basically being like the character he played in Gone Girl (he cheated on nice Jennifer Garner, the cad), but his delivery of laughable lines of dialogue in the self-important script were basically as good as you can expect from any actor. His rapport with Jeremy Irons (playing Alfred) was quite nice too.
6. The most eye-catching turn in the film was easily Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman; impeccable casting and BvS's main saving grace.
A 5'10'' former Miss Israel-winning model with long flowing locks, lips to rival Margot Robbie's in terms of juiciness and an athlete's physique, Gal definitely looks the part, but she also injected Diana with an inscrutable quality which suited the character well. Gal is the perfect age to play a character who's tough and world-worn, but at the same time retains a certain vulnerability, and the fact that she was relatively unknown when cast means that the actress doesn't bring baggage to the role, baggage that most other actors in the film did (with Affleck, I'll always think Nick, with Eisenberg, I always think Zuckerberg, with Irons, I always think the paedo from Lolita, etc).
And she sports a range of slinky dresses and arm bangles.... hawt.
You know when I said I was trying to lose weight? The goal is basically to be slim enough to rock an arm bangle like Diana, haha.
7. One of the few moments during BvS when I sat up and took notice of what was going on was when I spotted this photo:
That's handsome Chris Pine!! The inclusion of this photo played as a nice tease for next year's Wonder Woman, which despite how bad BvS was, I will definitely be seeing... come hell or high water. 😎
8. I watched the extended cut of this film, and it was too bloody long. 3 hours of my life I shall never get back. Again, all Zack Snyder's fault, for his inability to trim the fat, to give exposition and backstory in a more streamlined manner, and for lingering on scenes which didn't contribute to the story at all, but was clearly only there so he could trouser as much money as possible from the production companies.
9. Hans Zimmer's score for this film, which he collaborated with Junkie XL on, isn't a patch on his scores for the Christopher Nolan Batman movies. Whilst the score wasn't distractingly bad like the direction, it was also quite forgettable and generic action movie-sounding.
The only exception to this was the track, 'Is She With You?' which played in several variations throughout the film and then was properly blasted in a pretty epic manner when Diana finally made her entrance. It's the track that's used in the Wonder Woman trailer; apropos that the most interesting character gets the most interesting theme.
10. The BBFC have gotten quite a few complaints this year about Batman v Superman's 12A certificate, especially as the extended cut was also a 12A, when that version was rated R in the States. Meh, I think R is an overreaction. There was one grisly prison scene, but most of the violence was off-frame, so I think the BBFC actually got this one right. Mind you, violence tends to make more of an impression on me when I'm, you know, invested in the plot, which I definitely wasn't in this case...
Overall, I give Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice a 3/10 mainly because Gal Gadot was fierce and Amy Adams was completely credible as Lois Lane.
I won't be watching Justice League tho, and personally feel Zack Snyder should not be allowed near a major franchise for the rest of his life.
