Unlike the other adaptations of classic novels we've seen recently, Autumn de Wilde's new adaptation of Emma closely follows the plot of the novel. While I know several people who prefer more faithful adaptations of this kind, I often find that in the absence of anything new I am more likely to compare the film unfavourably to the pictures in my head, and in this case I certainly felt that Knightley was entirely wrong: blond instead of dark, scruffy instead of suave, and he looked far too close to Emma in age (though that may just be a sign that I have reached the age where everyone under the age of 40 just looks like a Young Person). That aside, though, it is an incredibly beautiful film; Anya Taylor-Joy's Emma looks like a Botticelli angel and has just the right mix of awfulness and charm, and the sets and costumes are gorgeous. Bill Nighy is fabulous as Mr Woodhouse, and while Miranda Hart is much too tall for Miss Bates she's so perfect in every other way that I'm happy to overlook that. Certainly worth seeing, though I think I preferred both Little Women and The Personal History of David Copperfield.

We booked our tickets for Bong Joon-ho's Parasite before the Oscars last weekend, which was probably just as well as the small screen at the Picturehouse was completely packed. I don't think I know enough about films to say whether it was absolutely the best film of the year, but it's very good. Part black comedy, part thriller, part social commentary, it tells the story of the Kim family, who live in a semi-basement in the slums of Seoul, scraping a living on cash-in-hand jobs and using other people's wifi to connect to the outside world, as they inveigle their way into jobs in the home of the wealthy Parks. It's funny, thought-provoking and original, and definitely worth watching.

For someone with a degree in English literature, I have read very little Dickens (A Christmas Carol, obviously; A Tale of Two Cities; Great Expectations; Bleak House) and apart from a passionate admiration for Sydney Carton's heroic redemption which means I still know quite a lot of that final chapter by heart, I've never been a huge fan. This meant that, while I knew the names of a lot of the characters in David Copperfield, in the way the names of Dickens characters so often do seem terribly familiar despite being entirely divorced from context, I went into Armando Ianucci's new film version with absolutely no idea of the actual plot of the novel. (Checking Wikipedia, this may have been a good thing, as it appears that Ianucci has done a lot of adapting, conflating two separate school episodes into one, reordering events and changing the fates of some characters.)

The film stars Dev Patel as David Copperfield, heading an admirably diverse cast which also includes Peter Capaldi, Hugh Laurie and Tilda Swinton. Condensing the novel down to under two hours means the plot rattles along at a cracking pace, and while it also means that there's no time for the huge cast of characters to become anything but caricatures, well, this is Dickens, so they probably wouldn't have managed it even if this had been an epic TV series rather than a film. Visually, it's rather lovely in a Tourist Board kind of way, all sunshine and rolling green fields and very clean CGI historical streets. I felt that it did rather underplay the episodes of misery and deprivation in David's life and came across as much more of a cheerful romp than any kind of social commentary, but it was an enjoyable way to spend a couple of hours escaping reality on a January evening.