A Few Favourites: Coming of Age films

Coming back 'atcha with another post in my imaginatively named 'A Few Favourites' series. This time it's all about the Coming of Age films, once again this isn't a list of my top all time favourites, I'm a bit too fickle to make definitive film lists... these are just a few I'd recommend you check out if you haven't already or you're kinda new to the genre and you want something to wet your appetite. I felt inspired to write this post after re-watching The Breakfast Club a couple of weeks back and going to see an enjoyable indie coming of age film called King Jack at the cinema last week.

A Quick Definition:  a coming-of-age story is a genre of literature and film that focuses on the growth of a protagonist from youth to adulthood ("coming of age"). Coming-of-age stories tend to emphasize dialogue or internal monologue over action, and are often set in the past.

Dead Poets Society

This film was one of those films that reminded me just how wonderful cinema can be when I watched it for the first time a couple of months back and how much a film can move you and fill you with both joy and sadness. John Keating (Robin Williams) is the new English teacher in an all boy boarding school, he has a great passion for literature and decides to use unorthodox methods to get his class to share in his enthusiasm. As his methods begin to work and the boys begin to think for themselves opposition from his conservative colleagues grows. Robin Williams is absolutely perfect in this role, he just exudes warmth and passion and I often found myself thinking 'I wish I had a teacher like him at school' whilst I was watching the story unfold. The film perfectly depicts how enriching the right approach to education can be and how much students can also grow as free thinking individuals if given the nurturing guidance to do so. If you haven't seen it I urge you to watch it, it's one of those films that will move you and remind you just how important literature is and how we need to  treasure and celebrate it, especially in our schooling systems now more than ever as we are in a time where funding for the arts is sadly being cut in schools across the UK.

"No matter what anyone tells you, words and ideas can change the world. "

The Virgin Suicides

Firstly let me say the book that this film is based on is beautiful, I really need to re read it. The film is almost as a good, that's not a slight at the film at all, the book is just that marginally bit better. It's a film set in 70's suburban American and centres around the life and the untimely death of the 5 young Lisbon sisters. Directed by Sophia Copella who also directed my favourite film- Lost in Translation, the film explores the themes of infatuation, sex, identity and belonging. From the get go we the audience are aware of how the story will end because well, it's in the title, so the film isn't really about what ultimately happens to them it's more about the mystery that surrounds them and a group of boys who are infatuated by them trying to piece their story together and figure out why they took their lives. 

Blue is the Warmest Colour

This is one of the most moving and raw portrayals of love I have ever seen in a film, I 100% believed in the 2 leads - Emma and Adele. The story follows Adele a teen coming to terms with her sexuality and her blossoming love with Emma and then the complications that follow. Its a film thats not afraid to be bold and explicit, I can't imagine a film like this being made in Hollywood, it would probably end up watered down and censored which would take away from the realism and the honest approach the film takes to sexuality and same sex relationships. There are scenes in it where I genuinely felt like I was watching a real couple go through struggles and I was just a fly on the wall watching a couple in emotional turmoil. I challenge anyone to watch this and not be moved.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I really had my doubts about this one, I LOVED the book when I was younger and I wasn't sure it would really translate well on screen. The book is written in diary/letter form which worked really well to get a honest insight into Charlie's head and so I was dubious without this if I would feel the same connection to the character. The story explores some really dark themes without sensationalizing them as you might sometimes expect in a Hollywood teen movie. The casting is perfect and the soundtrack is brilliant, I'm always a sucker for a good film soundtrack. The film has a lot of heart and whilst it does deal with some really heavy issues at the centre of it its a film about friendship and self discovery. It's a film about surviving high school that's made with such sincerity that I think it would appeal to people of all ages, anyone that has ever felt a little lost growing up (I imagine thats most of us at some point) can relate to one or all of the characters is some way. Even though there is a romantic storyline within it I appreciate that the film chooses to focus more on the importance of friendships and how friends are ultimately the people that shape us the most during adolescence. 

Sam: Why do I and everyone I love pick people who treat us like we're nothing?

Charlie: We accept the love we think we deserve.

I'd love to hear any of your recommendations so pop me any suggestions you might have below or let me know if you've watched any of the above, I always love hearing other peoples opinions on films I've enjoyed. 

3 Budget Beauty Tips

Sometimes I just want to write about something really frivolous, today is one of those days. I'm a sucker for buying beauty products, yeah my make up looks pretty much the same whatever I get but I find it enjoyable hoarding the stuff anyway. Especially lipstick, I can justify lipsticks a bit more because they take no skill to apply, where as eye shadows ahhh not so much. I own lots of eyeshadows but I will forever be clueless about how to do anything half decent with them, a smoky eye and me are just never meant to be </3 </3 </3 Does anyone else miss Myspace broken hearts? The OG emoji. Those broken hearts are all the feels </3. Anyway, back to make up... I was browsing the net today putting an order in for some make up and then I thought 'this stuff is good maybe its worth sharing' so here I am writing about some of my favourite budget beauty products and places to shop for good quality bargains. This may also be a post I'm writing so I can feel ok about just having spent half an hour browsing new lipsticks to buy. So here are 3 tips of sort, on ways to feed the beauty addiction without breaking the bank.

1) Look Online

There are so many good places to get a good deal online. I particularly like shopping on Fragrance Direct, which of course sells perfume but also lots of beauty products. They have Essie polishes for just £2.99 and OPI for £3.49. Then there's lipsticks from the likes of Rimmel and Maybelline usually around the £2 mark, as well as plenty of face and eye products from all the usual brands you'd find in your local Boots or Superdrug. In addition to this there's also a few bits of Bobbi Brown and Mac, some of the discounts on these products are just a couple of £s here and there but they do have some MAC shadows for £7.90 which is a fair bit cheaper. If you're after hair products they stock brands like Tigi and for perfumes they pretty much have all of the ones you can buy at the perfume counters of a department store. 

If you're wondering how to pick items out if you can't see the real product colours, I wouldn't go by the colour charts they give, they're usually a bit off..  if you like the look of a colour then look at the name of it, most of the items will also have a shade name and if you pop that into Google with the brand name too you'll usually find some one out there that's swatched that particular shade for their blog. That's the great thing about the amount of beauty content on the internet now, nothing has to be completely blind bought.

Another good place to look is the special offers section on allbeauty.com they're another discount beauty site, usually not quite as cheap as fragrance direct but they carry a lot of slightly higher range skincare like Clarins or Clinique, click here to check it out.

2) Look In Non Beauty Shops

Naturally when you're looking for beauty products you're likely to just pop into shops like Boots or Superdrug but sometimes it's worth checking out the smaller beauty sections in stores like Wilko that primarily stock homeware or household goods. The Essence stand in Wilko is a dream for those on the look out for budget beauty items that all come under the £5 mark. Their long lasting lipsticks are smooth and opaque and for £2.30 you really can't complain. I also love their lipliners, they have good wear and they apply evenly if you've prepped your lips well with a good balm beforehand. If you're looking to do that whole 90's Kylie Jenner lip colour 06 Satin Mauve lip liner is perfect for it and its only £1! A final recommendation from me is their XXXL nude lipgloss in 06 Soft Almond, this is a really flattering brownish nude, super comfortable on the lips and gives quite a good colour payoff for a gloss, this ones a steal too at £2. I'm definitely going to try more from the range, their liquid lipsticks look intriguing and I'd be curious to see how well their face products wear for such a low price point. If you don't have a store near you the Essence range is also available here via the Wilko website. Just as a side note f you do pop into Wilko some of their brushes are pretty great, the range with the orange handles, they're soft and again, well priced.

3) Try Out Smaller Brands

I've discovered a few lesser known brands recently that have amazing products that are ideal if you want to keep your beauty products at a budget price points and you're bored of buying from the same affordable brands at Boots, such as Collection or Seventeen. 

If you're a complete beauty blogger junkie you may already consider these to be fairly well known because their praises have been sung across many blogs but in case you've missed them I'll mention a few favourites I've discovered and I've just placed an order to try more from.

L.A Girl is available here at BeautyBay.com. I'm not sure if they sell in stores in England but I've never seen them around. I discovered them through a beauty YouTubers and I've really enjoyed a couple of the products I've purchased. Their liquid lipsticks are great, they call them the 'matte flat finish pigment gloss' and they dry down to a very matte finish with great staying power. I have the shade Dreamy (a perfect 60's style peachy nude) and Fleur (on me it's quite a true peach, a little darker than most peach lipsticks) I love both and I think these might be a new addiction. I will say though they are quite drying so be prepared for that but I love the retro matte look that gives and I don't find them to be drying to an uncomfortable point. These come in at £4.99 really reasonable for a liquid lipstick, which often seem to be pricier than normal lipsticks I guess due to the long wear claims. Their lipliners are great too, theyre retractable so no annoying sharpening required, they're creamy so don't drag across the lips if you like to fill the whole lip in with the colour like I do and they only cost £2.49. Unfortunately I can't get their pro concealer to work on me, which is a product I've seen a few people rave about, it's a little thick and I find it hard to blend but I always like to try and make a product work so that I don't waste it so we'll see. I haven't tried loads from L.A girl but for just the lip products alone I'd say it's worth putting in an order.

Another brand who's products I bought on BeautyBay.com at the same time as L.A girl is Morphe Brushes. I bought a few of their brushes which ranged from around £5-£12 and they are such great quality, on the same par as something like MAC in terms of softness, I can't tell you how long they will last as I've not had them too long but they seem to be holding up really well. Just like MAC they have such a wide range of types of brushes for any need, definitely worth checking out. I also bought an eyeshadow palette from them this 35 pan matte one, which consists mostly of neutral colours and is so useful. You get such a range of colours for your money and when you think about how much individual eye shadows from brands that are well priced like Loreal cost, which many of us probably won't even get through, it makes sense to pick up a palette like this for just under £16 with all of the colours I'll probably ever need in one place. They're mostly all very soft and easy to blend, even for someone as cack-handed as me, not quite on a urban decay palette level but for half of the price your getting something pretty damn good.

So there are 3 of my tips and budget product recommendations, I hope I've not been too much of an enabler ahem and if I have at least these beauty buys aren't going to set you back too much! Now I'm currently lusting after more lipsticks I don't need but will some how justify to myself, dammit.

Acne and Giving Up Dairy

I'll admit, I feel slightly apprehensive about writing this one because I know once I've hit that publish button and it's out there on the internet I'll feel obliged to stick to this, even if nobody reads it. The problem is I don't want to do it. I freaking love cheese and milk, I know a lot of people that find the idea of drinking milk a bit gross but I'll drink glass after glass after glass, until the cows come home (ok....I couldn't help it...terrible, I know..). Cheese is also a big part of my life, SRSLY. So you might have guessed from the title and this little introduction, I'm giving up dairy. I'm not saying for forever but for the next few months I plan to at least try my best. This may not seem like a hard feat for some but for a girl who often finds herself thinking 'I can't wait to get home and have some cheese and hot sauce' this is going to be tricky. FYI Enocoda hot sauce is the bomb diggity and belongs on everything.

So why am I giving it up? Well over the past year my skin seems to be returning to it old spot ridden self and I'm not happy with it at all. I've always had acne, since I started getting spots when I was about 13 I've had it and ever since then I can't say I've ever had a day where I've not had at least a few pimples on my face. For the majority of that time my face was covered in more than just a few pimples, I had full blown painful acne some of it cystic. It was unpleasant and really effected my confidence badly and for years all the doctors did was give me the same useless anti biotics over and over and the same harsh creams that burnt my skin and bleached my pjama tops (never a good sign!). Then a few years ago in my early 20's I finally asked for a referral to a dermatologist. I won't go too much into the ins and outs of it but I ended up going on roaccutaine after reading lots online about it. The side effects were horrible, really unpleasant (cracked lips and flaky snake skin mmm) but I knew they were just temporary and after a few months or however long I was on it (I think it was more like 6 but my memory is terrible with these things) my skin became the clearest it had ever been. It was definitely not what many people would deem as clear skin but for me a girl who'd always had a face covered in spots just having a few and some red scarring made me feel a whole load better.

Fast forward a few years and my acne has really begun to flare up badly again. My skin is especially problematic because any spot I have will result in a red mark left on my skin and they don't seem to fade at all or if they do it's at a ridiculously slow rate, as there are marks on my cheeks from years ago that are still visible. Some of these buggers won't even cover up with war paint style concealer, they are THAT stubborn. I'm working on finding ways to fade these, this includes wearing facial sunscreen everyday and not just one contained in a moisturiser. I only ever thought to do this in the Summer months but it turns out at all times of the year UVA and UVB rays can do damage to the skin, I guess this should have been obvious to me it's not like the sun just disappears all together... but yeah exposure to these rays will prolong my scarring from fading, so like Baz Luhrmann famously reminded us 'Wear Sunscreen'.

Now for a while I'd been reading about the possible connection between consuming dairy products and problematic skin. The NHS website does not support this claim but I have gone on to read countless other articles on the good old interweb that have lead me to believe there could be some truth in this diaryaintsogoodforyoskin thang.

Click on any of these if you'd like to read more here here and here

I'm not saying dairy will have caused my acne full stop, not at all, I know it would be a problem either way but I am at least a bit curious to see if giving it up makes a positive difference to my skin, like it has for so many other peoples who's stories I have read about online. I figure what have I got to lose? APART FROM LOTS OF BEAUTIFUL CHEESE. I'll just have to suck that one up, won't I.After all I've tried sorting out the problem with cosmetic products and now I want to look at what I'm actually putting into my body and the kind of effect that could be possibly having on my skin. If I'm doing this I should probably address also cutting down on sugar, I don't have a lot of it but I could certainly make sure eating a sweet treat becomes just that, a treat, every now and then. At least I will always have peanut butter, peanut butter will never leave me, we're in it for the long haul.

Here's to hoping I see some results soon and if not at least it will be a good way to see how disciplined I can be with my diet, my guess for far is that this is going to be a struggle, when it comes to food my belly takes over my brain. To keep myself semi on track though I've taken a few before photos and I plan on taking photos throughout this process so I can log any changes I see and work out if there's a big enough correlation between the two and to just generally keep me on track. It's almost like science. Almost.

5 Films to look forward to in 2016

In no particular order, here are some of the films I'm looking forward to seeing in 2016.

1) Jason Bourne

Now I know this series has been done to death but I loved the original trilogy, I have to admit I've never watched the reboot (y'know the one without Matt Damon) but now that Damon is back on board I'm looking forward to seeing what a new Bourne film could bring. I'm hoping they manage to inject a new lease of life into the franchise and with the names they have on board it's looking likely. Alicia Vikander is set to star in the film, who's performance in The Danish Girl really caught my attention. Paul Greengrass who directed the other Bourne films is once again directing and Co writing with Damon and Julia Stiles and Tommy Lee Jones are also among the star studded cast. I've always really enjoyed Paul Greengrass' style of direction, the shaky camera and the sense of realism and urgency in his films creates so much tension. I challenge anyone to watch Captain Phillips and not feel in the teeniest bit on edge. I've heard his style described as 'docu realist' which I feel sums it up perfectly. His influence on action thriller films since the Bourne films were released is clear to see, just go and watch any of the latest Bond films.

Release date: 29th July


2) Alice Through the Looking Glass

This one's a funny choice, I didn't actually like Tim Burton's re imagining of Alice in Wonderland, in fact I found it very disappointing, this follow up however has a new director so may in turn be a very different sequel. I love the books and the Disney adaptation, which kind of has elements of both books, so I look forward to anything to do with the stories in the hope that I'll enjoy it just as much. I'm still looking forward to seeing this film despite the first because Through the Looking Glass has some great characters (humpty dumpty, the unicorn..) and I'd like to see them brought to life on the big screen. Often it's only 'In Wonderland' that people choose to adapt for television or film.

Release date: 27th May

3) The Witch

A good horror film is hard to come by. I often skip on horror films nowadays because of this. Genres such as Thriller or Drama feel as though they have a constant stream of good inventive films to check out, however looking for a something that's not just your usual cheap jump scare affair can be much more difficult. Despite the short comings of many modern horror films, The Witch looks very promising. Set in 1630 in New England it tells the story of a family who's newborn son goes missing whilst being watched by their eldest daughter, who is then suspected of witchcraft. The film follows the family into a descent of suspicion and paranoia as they suspect the involvement of Withcraft and become prey to a force of evil. The film won the Directing award at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival and looks set to be one to look out for upon release.

Release: 11th March



4) Silence

Martin Scorsese has been quoted as saying he only has a couple of films left he wants to make and if that's true this may be one of his final films. That alone is enough reason to anticipate this release. Scorsese has directed some of my favourite films (The Departed, Taxi Driver...) and I look forward to any film he comes out with because he has cemented himself in my mind already as one of the greatest directors alive. Silence is based on a novel of the same name written by Shusaku Endo about two Catholic priests who face a violent persecution when they travel to Japan to spread the message of Christianity and meet their mentor. Scorsese has been reportedly working on the project since 1991.

I couldn't find a release date or a trailer for this one yet so I'm guessing it will be out much later on than the rest.


5) Suicide Squad

I'm not huge on comic books at all but I do like Batman a lot and the villains of the Batman DC universe. The film has a big names cast, notably Jared Leto as the Joker, who looks perfect for the role. This one has received a lot of hype and the expectations seems to have been set very high, so we'll see how it lives up to it but the trailer certainly makes it look fun!

The premise : A secret government agency recruits imprisoned super villains to execute dangerous black ops missions in exchange for clemency.

Release date: 5th August

There we have it, 5 films I'm looking forward to this year, quite a mixed bag. What are 5 of yours?

My favourite places on the internet

I thought for this post I'd share some of my favourite places to visit on the web- blogs, sites, videos. The last post I made was a bit downbeat and I feel like spreading some positivity and maybe you'll find something you enjoy in the list.

Ted Talks is a website I visit if I want to learn about something new or feel inspired. They are basically short videos most no longer than 15 minutes covering a massive range of topics. Their bio states that their mission is to 'spread ideas' which is basically the essence of it. A lot of the speeches are very motivational too, I recently watched one about letting go of regret that I found really insightful. The range of people they have doing the talks are brilliant too, people from all walks of life, there's basically something for everyone. I'm pretty sure you can find their videos on Youtube as well as just through their own site.

Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo's film reviews are next on my list. I don't always listen to the full pod-cast which you can find here, sometimes I like to put that on if I'm doing other things and I'll just have that playing in the background but for when I just want to see a specific review I go to their Youtube channel here. The pod-cast is good though because it has interviews with actors/directors and listeners emails read out, as opposed to just solely reviews. I just find their dynamic quite entertaining and Kermode knows so much about cinema that I always find myself discovering other films I would never have known about through his reviews. Not that I always agree though, I mean he liked Twilight so..... but then again, maybe that shows that he he is confident in his own opinion enough that he can say that? Yeah, I dunno.

I think I'll throw a blog in here now. This girl Charly is hands down my favourite blogger, if I could write anything like she does I would be one happy bunny. I can't actually believe she's only 20. She writes about a number of topics- men, friends, fashion, mental health and everything she writes she writes with such openness and honesty that's rare to find on the internet. I admire the fact that she hasn't succumb to the usual style of writing nowadays where there is pressure for everything to be super concise bitesize reads.I think often people are worried that their readers might get bored unless they can put their point across into a few neatly packages paragraphs.This post about her experience with Bipolar is worthy of anyone's time.

Next upppp, a Youtuber. Anthony Fantano 'the needledrop' is just great. I watch most of his videos even when I know It's an album I'll probably never check out, like Kermode his wealth of knowledge alone makes it worth watching. Then on top of that the dude is funny. 

I've discovered some artists I now LOVE through him like FKA Twigs when she released her first album and he gave it glowing reviews. This is him reviewing her latest EP. He also has a mostly trolling 2nd channel thats funny if your into dumb shit like I am look it up- thatistheplan.

I'll leave it here for now, there's more bloggers etc that I'd love to include so I'll probably revisit this and do a round 2 soon. That's it for now, I hope you enjoyed the list! x

January Blues

So, I only have two previous blog posts, both written in Summer of last year but today I feel the urge to write again with the possibility of blogging on the regular from now on. I don't want to box myself into one category blog wise right now so I'm just going to write whatever I fancy I guess, from the frivolous to the more personal shit. I hesitate to use the word 'deep' there because I often find that word thrown around too much whenever anyone tries to talk about feelings, which creates this awkward barrier of 'wait I shouldn't speak about this or that because so and so might think I'm being too serious or heavy going'. When in actual fact it would do us all the world of good if we didn't worry about opening up to other people with the fear of being stigmatized as too serious or difficult. Woops, already started on a mini rant.

 I guess by now you've gathered that I'm about to talk about feelings and all that complicated crap that goes on in my brain. I've not been feeling great recently, I'm on a waiting list to go back to CBT and I have a major case of January Blues. At the end of last year I was feeling slightly optimistic about the start of the year, I had a last minute trip to Amsterdam booked for the first week of January and I was looking forward to the idea of leaving some of the bad parts of 2015 behind me and moving into a new year. Well January is drawing to a close now and I feel determined to find some good in the month, despite my over all low mood, maybe it will be therapeutic for me to get it written down and maybe (hopefully) it will be of interest to you.


I saw some of the beautiful Derbyshire countryside.

First of all mid January I went to Dovedale (can we have a moment to appreciate how darn cute that name is), it was a lovely sunny winters day and my dogs absolutely loved exploring somewhere different to our local parks. I love walking somewhere quiet when the sun is setting and I always feel more peaceful anywhere where there's water. I'm pretty sure that's a thing and I'm not just an oddball, watching water move is relaxing right?

Next up, a couple of days back me and my parents went to Lathkill Dale to walk my dogs for my Dad's birthday. Here's a few of Lathkill, the weather wasn't so great but the scenery was equally as charming.

It's definitely made me want to venture out into the outdoors more and explore more of the Peak District. Usually when I go on walks I don't go much further than what Manchester/Cheshire has to offer. Just being somewhere with no people around and so much natural beauty was calming too, I'm not going to say it made all my worries go away but it helped mute everything a little.

I de cluttered.

I'm not going to include photos for this one, I feel like no one wants to see a pile of my unwanted things in packages ready to be sent off. It's also maybe not the most exciting 'highlight' of my month but it is something that I can draw positives from. I have a pretty small box room so junk piles up quickly and without really realizing it I'd become quite the hoarder, especially with clothes. I'd hang onto it and think 'one day i might wear that', knowing full well that by that point I'd either hate it or I'd never fit into again unless I decided to cut down on my cheese obsession and get serious about exercise. So I decided I'd either give bags of it away to charity or sell the barely worn/never worn items. Now I know I might sound dramatic here but honestly getting rid of a bunch of stuff that never gets used makes you feel pretty good, knowing that its gone to a better home and also being able to pocket a little bit of money on the side for it. It turns out de cluttering your stuff does ~kinda~ help de-clutter your mind. I need to remember to keep doing this one.


I went to the Van Gogh gallery and it made me want to be creative and shit.

This isn't the point where I tell you I'm now going to rent out studio space and become an artist. I can't paint or draw a thing. Seriously, not even a basic doodle. I do like to go to galleries though and admire art from a I~know~nothing~about~why~this~is~good~but~that~looks~cool stance and the Van Gogh gallery in Amsterdam was spectacular. His work is so varied- portraits, self portraits, landscapes. Some of them are very dark and moody and then others like 'the pink peach tree' are on the very other end of the spectrum. I was just in awe of how much he painted in such a short amount of time and quite inspired to learn he only learnt to paint at 27. It's not often you learn about one the 'greats' picking up their skill as late on as that. Obviously I'm not now saying that I'm about to become an incredible artist or creative driving force but I would like to try my hand at something in the arts whether that be to relearn the piano (I stopped when I was 14) or just learn to draw something basic or write something creative or go to a class. Anything really, even if its just something small, I feel like I should at least give it a go and try and get any creative juices I might potentially have flowing. That sentence looks weirder typed out than it did in my head but we'll stick with it.

There we have it, January blues with a slightly positive twist? I didn't want to just write a super 'this is how you feel good' unrealistic post because sometimes you can't just snap out of it with a Buzzfeed '10 ways to feel happy' article and you can just search for the good in a sea of not so good feels. Maybe there will be a 'Fantastic/Feel good in February' post or something next month hmmm....you never know.

A few Favourites: Psychological Thrillers

I'd really like to start writing a few posts about different genres of films I love and some of my top picks in each, film is a big passion of mine so I want to share that passion with anyone who wants to listen or in your case read.. So to start this off I thought I'd go with Thrillers.

Thrillers are awesome. I revel in the suspense, the guessing games and the type of plot revelations that make you want to rewind back immediately in an attempt to pick out any subtle clues you may have missed at first glance. 

Psychological thrillers are a sub genre of Thrillers that focus heavily on (you might have guessed it) the psychological motives of its characters, as you can imagine then there are some really dark and twisted films under this umbrella and often films of this nature will additionally fall under the title of 'Psychological Horrors'.

Below are a few I would highly recommend you giving a go if you haven't,  the first one in particular is considered a classic of its genre. Avid film fans will no doubt have watched these all before but for any newbies to the genre I'd recommend giving any of these a whirl if your looking for something gripping to watch.

Silence of the Lambs

This is my most recently watched psychological thriller and its already made the cut as a favourite. I think that shows how much its impressed me; I watched it just a week ago and I already want to go in for a second viewing There are so many reasons to love this film- the casting, having 2 incredibly warped serial killer minds at the focal point of the story (Hannibal and Buffalo Bill), the dialogue which is sharp and often creepy. However, none of these are the reason why I love this film so much. For me, what makes it work so well is the dynamic between the protagonist Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) and Hannibal (Anthony Hopkins); the interaction between the characters and way in which these two sterling actors shape each others performance is brilliant. This is a classic not to be missed. 

Plus, this song is awesome and is the accompanying music to the strangest part of the film for me- serial killer Buffalo Bill, dressed as a woman and prancing around in front of a mirror uttering the words "would you fuck me? i'd fuck me".

Memento

I couldn't not mention this film, for a while when I was about 14 I think this was my favourite. If your unfamiliar with the premise- Guy Pearce puts in a superb performance as a man suffering from an acute memory loss, trying to track down the murderer of his wife by developing his own bizarre system of remembering potential clues. The story line follows a non linear narrative , its split into two, one moving forward the other backwards whilst alternating with one another. It's not as complicated to follow as its sounds and this method works beautifully as a parallel to the foggy disjointed mind of the films unreliable protagonist. For me, this is up there with Christopher Nolans best.

The Talented Mr Ripley

This ones worth checking out for the beautiful Italian scenery alone. Ascetics aside it's a film that seems to bring out the best in all its leads- Jude Law and Matt Damon really prove their A lister worth in this complex and elegant adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel. Matt Damon plays the psychotic Tom Ripley and puts in a superbly unsettling performance as a man who lusts after a a better life and a new identity. His wish is granted when hes sent from New York to Italy by a rich shipping tycoon to retrieve his extravagant playboy of a son Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law) and bring him back to America. Ripley instantly becomes enamoured with the lavish lifestyle and deeply infatuated with Dickie himself. The film is a fascinating character study devilling into themes of identity and lust as we watch Ripley fall deeper and deeper into his web of lies. Some may find this film slightly over long and I may have to agree that it could be cut down a tad towards the end but over all I love the pacing. Superb performances and slick cinematography secure this film firmly on my list of favourite psychological thrillers, check it out if you haven't already.

That's it for now, this is by no means a top 3 for me, just a few of my favourites and I'm sure I'll be revisiting this sub genre to share a few more in the near future. If you've made it this far I'd love any recommendations too, new or old.