MIDNIGHTS: A REVIEW

sincere anecdote of her experience with love, fame, and friendships. The chorus “I hosted parties and starved my body” mirrors her struggle with unrealistic beauty standards in previous years; “Just to know that my dreams aren’t rare” is a universal experience of confronting the crude reality. The song ends optimistically as she concludes that “everything you lose is a step you take” and “you’ve got no reason to be afraid”, encouraging her listeners to embrace all uncertainties in life.

Indeed, if I were to summarise this album in a word, I would choose: “life”. Exposing her insecurities, celebrating her vibrant romance, and reflecting on her gains and losses, Swift tears down the crumpled beige papers in her diary and gives them life. ‘Midnights’ is exquisite but earthly, fragile but explosive, and bitter - but leaves you with an immeasurable amount of strength.

TRUE LOVE!

A wedding, a moving-in scene, a baby! All indicators that our hearts have been pursuaded in the right direction. There are two romcoms that we have deemed exempt from this final step; the first 500 days of summer (the film is essentially an anti-romcom with all the attributes of a romcom), and Clueless (Cher’s love interest is her exstepbrother... just a bit TOO close to incest for our liking.)

THE NON-NEGOTIABLE INGREDIENTS:

SOUNDTRACK CHEMISTRY SIDEKICK

The songs immediatelythattransport you to your fav romcom are iconic by definition. Whether Zooey deschanel telling Joseph Gordon-Levitt ‘I love the smiths!” (500 days of summer), or Heath serenadingLedger Julia stiles with ‘I can’t take my eyes off of you’ (10 things I hate about you), a song often says what words alone can’t. Scan this spotify code to see a few of our fav soundtrack tunes!

+ 5 ROMCOMS TO MAKE NEXT VALENTINE’S DAY TOLERABLE

GABBY PINCHEN

ABOUT TIME (2013)

Charm? Check. Time travel which makes very little sense? Check. Life lessons with Bill Nighy? Triple check. This film takes you on the story of Tim who, after his 21st birthday, inherits the power to travel back in time, to change and relive his past actions. Director Richard Curtis once again creates an endearing and heartfelt story while simultaneously interweaving it with British awkwardness, and you’ll likely end the film feeling slightly more optimistic about the world then you did at the start.

Nobody wants to watch a film where the leading couple look like they would rather be pulling teeth than leaning in for the first kiss. Without chemistry, Romcoms are simply coms (and lets be real, they’re rarely funny enough just to be coms).

Romcoms are often defined by their leading actors and actresses, but sometimes the unsung heroes of the films are their sidekick characters. Whether comic relief (Spike, Notting Hill), or the trusted confidante who helps the protagonist navigate through love’s twists and turns (Michelle, How to lose a guy in 10 days), they bring out the best (and worst) in our main characters, which makes for some memorable moments.

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (1989)

No place does a rom com like New York. This film is about two friends and their ‘will they/ won’t they?’ relationship (spoiler alert - they will) and is filled with many quotable lines. It’s a classic of the genre and rightfully so (although a slight warning is needed: this film will give you unrealistically high expectations for New Year’s Eve when it finally comes back around).

CRAZY RICH ASIANS (2018)

This film made me want a £40 million wedding (I’m still weighing up the pros and cons, bankruptcy is the main one). But seriously, not only is it beautiful to look at with some incredible staging and superbly-designed scenes; it’s also funny, tender, and uplifting.

‘CRA’ follows the protagonist Rachel, meeting the family of her boyfriend Nick (whose mother is the iconic Michelle Yeoh, hero to all and, fingers crossed, soon-to-be Oscar winner).

27 DRESSES (2008)

This film has 41% on Rotten Tomatoes - but frankly their opinions are all wrong. The film centres around Jane who is stuck as a ‘perennial bridesmaid’ and struggles to balance her sense of responsibility with fulfilling her own needs. It’s sweet and energetic, and Katherine Heigl and James Marsden sing karaoke and dance on a bar to Bennie and the Jets, so I really don’t see what people are complaining about.

HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS (2003)

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What’s that? ‘A guy makes a bet saying he’ll make a woman fall in love with him and she makes another bet saying she’ll get the guy to leave her within 10 calendar days?’ You had me at hello.

(PS. Jerry Maguire is not on this list, sorry. If that’s your thing, go for it).

JAPAN’S ECONOMY: LEGACIES, CHALLENGES, INFLUENCES.

JOYCE YU

From the regional cuisine and a vast array of shopping opportunities, to its beautiful mountainous landscape and rich cultural heritage, Japan - an island country in East Asia - appeals deeply to tourists of all ages and interests. However, alongside these attractive elements of the country are a series of ongoing issues in Japanese society; of particular concern is Japan’s stagnant economy caused by a combination of social and cultural factors, which adversely affects Japan itself as well as the rest of the world.

In the years following WWII, Japan experienced an ‘economic miracle’ and emerged as the world’s second largest economy after the US by the early 1970s. Today Japan remains a global leader in the automotive, robotics, and electronics industries, with products from car brands such as Toyota, Honda, and Lexus, and with multinational corporations like Canon, Panasonic, and Sony, their reach extending from office to household use. Yet since the 1990s, there has been an economic stagnation in Japan. From 1991 to 2003, the Japanese economy grew only 1.14% annually, far behind other industrialised nations. This was initially due to overheated economic activity, ending the economic miracle. More recently, the Great Recession (2008), Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami (2011), Fukushima Nuclear Disaster (2011), and the recession brought by the COVID-19 pandemic successively took a toll on the Japanese economy. To make matters worse, rising interest rates elsewhere in the world have led to the yen

(currency of Japan) lessening in value for international investors, since the low interest rates in Japan mean buying yen yields investors lower returns than investing in another country’s financial market. Japan is the largest creditor country in the world. It also has more public debt than any other developed country. Should the Bank of Japan decide to continually raise its interest rates as other countries continue to raise theirs, investors will start to worry that Japan will not be able to repay its debts. This could potentially lead to not only Japan’s, but also the global economy to become drastically destabilized.