"I wish more people knew about this British biologist’s work. He is trying to get people to fully appreciate the role energy plays in the evolution of life on Earth (and, maybe, other places). Even if he turns out to be wrong about certain details, I suspect his ideas will be seen as an important contribution to our understanding of where we come from, and where are we going."

"Naked directed by Mike Leigh. Apart from the rape at the start, I love the main character so much. I never really pay attention to actors but this must be one of the greatest performances ever. I’ve really enjoyed watching Mike Leigh films this year. They’re very British and I’ve been away from home so long that it feels a bit like going home when I watch them."

"I watched this many moons ago and nothing beats hearing Denzel Washington talk in a British cockney accent. It was shot partly in Tower Hamlets – Wagner Street in Mile End, to be exact. The film is a good start if you want some understanding of Thatcherism and police brutality in Britain. I think of the film whenever I listen to Steel Pulse’s “Tribute to the Martyrs” or Skepta’s “Konnichiwa”."

"I went to a school like the one depicted in this film for a year of my life and that was enough—any longer and I too might have resorted to revolution! Even though this film is so specifically about boys in a British public school, it hits so many themes that are relatable to anyone: adolescence, lust, rage, and rebellion. Plus, the dream sequence in the café is so fun!"

"This is a movie to watch when you crave good old-fashioned Hollywood glamour. A young Mel Gibson practically sets the screen on fire with his flinty charisma, as a journalist in way over his head in 1960s Indonesia. With a revolutionary turn by the actress Linda Hunt as a male photographer, and Sigourney Weaver as a British correspondent toying with Gibson’s affections, this is a lustrously intelligent entertainment."

"Brian DePalma’s breakthrough thriller pays homage to several Hitchcock classics—Rear Window and Psycho, mostly—in a genuinely innovative manner, with jittery, counter-culture-ish New York wiseass humor rather than Hitch’s British wryness, an interesting set of mirror image antagonists in peculiar twins played by Margot Kidder (with a seductively odd French-Canadian accent), and nosy reporter Jennifer Salt. It has graphic shocks but also stretches of hallucinatory strangeness."

"I read this when my first boyfriend broke up with me and wept across three continents—weeping seems to be a theme today. The protagonist is one of those assholes who thinks he’s going to ‘save’ a sex worker (the politics are rough), but the obsession and abandonment shit is on point. Then I bragged to my college English teacher and he was like ‘oh, that’s a lesser British novel.’ Whoops!"