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Easy enough to see this as a bit of a dry run for Anatomy of a Fall, given its aesthetic and thematic preoccupations, but this is plenty rewarding on its own: there’s a hell of a lot of charm in Triet’s exploration of sexual power dynamics and hypocrisies and stigmas in the context of a spiky quasi-rom-com, and Efira is absolutely magnetic at the centre of all the mess. It’s funny and frustrating legitimately, deservedly touching, in a way that seeks to locate optimism within the compromises and regrets of life instead of imposing an artificial happy ending that washes it all away. A potent little cocktail.

Watched on Saturday May 24, 2025.

Totally bummed to find that this is the first time one of these has felt like a chore to sit through since M:I–2, but whereas that had the orgiastic release of its unchained-Woo finale, this one is barely able to take a break from its endless self-mythologising to that above all else these are just supposed to be fun. Part of the problem, for me, is that McQ’s pragmatic and mercenary approach to writing has resulted in an obsessive need to not waste anything, under any circumstances, culminating in a ‘finale’ that is so fixated on squaring a circle of its own making that it gets lost in endless exposition and retconning and calling-back and character-arc-surmising (in a way that you can’t even enjoy like Rogue Nation’s insane ‘manifestation of destiny’ speech because it is so goddamn unrelenting). It gets to the point where it’s so narratively dulling that even the much-vaunted biplane set-piece—unconscionably impressive though it is—feels a little hollow, mobilising a remarkable feat of suicidal entertainment-impulse towards besting a shitty villain (sorry Morales) and a weary ‘to what end?’ response. The great, shining exception is the submarine sequence at the film’s midpoint, which capitalises perfectly on the promise of Dead Reckoning by utilising the possibilities of practical filmmaking to thrillingly inventive ends and offering a tonal/logistical curveball that’s quite unlike anything we’ve seen here before. It’s undoubtedly among the best things this series has ever done, but it also comes to define the problems with this purportedly concluding chapter by contrast: it’s just gotten too damn big for its own good, in of (apocalyptic) scope, longevity and perceived cultural footprint. It plays like a legacy sequel written in its own time, which pains me to say about a franchise that has brought me and so many others such joy over the years.

The entire spectrum of human existence in two and a half hours, beginning with formative death and ending with the next life. You can see this as many times as you like and it’s still startling and uncontainable, the eerie austerity of Kubrick’s images and the density of Clarke’s ideas on the intertwining of humanity and technology colliding in such a way that concrete meaning is always elided, true comprehension existing just on the other side of the infinite. It feels like all of the mysteries of the universe are contained within, Kubrick creating something existentially experiential and leaving you moved in a way you can’t ever fully grapple with. One of the most undeniable works in all of cinema.

A fascinating evolutionary step between the smart-arsed structuralist who wrote The Usual Suspects and the proficient technician who made Jack Reacher, with sprinklings of the consummate entertainment modulation that marks his Mission: Impossible tenure. The Way of the Gun feels post-Tarantino in its postmodern gangster posturing, but its focus on probing the slow bleed-out of this life of crime rather than refracting genre back in on itself suggests ingratiatingly lofty ambitions. The problem is that McQuarrie’s philosophical musings feel adolescent and hopped up on too much coffee, getting lost in ponderous bon mots at the expense of thematic substance to the point that narrative meaning is dwindled and any greater intention is rendered frustratingly opaque. It ends up being largely intolerable, save for the prevailing muscular craftsmanship that would go on to flourish when this director learned to just ease off a little. Wanted so badly (and thoroughly expected) to love this, but it’s so unable to get out of its own way that it becomes enervating.

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

Watched on Sunday May 18, 2025.

‘We’re entering savage new times.’

Much like the tumor-inducing broadcast signal emitted by Videodrome itself, Cronenberg’s (perhaps defining?) movie has that tactile, unquantifiably effective feeling of a genuinely evil object. Maybe it’s legitimate grottiness of James Woods’ performance (awful man, fantastic actor), maybe it’s the viscous, sinewy contortions of flesh as it meshes with tech, or maybe it’s the hallucinatory nature of a narrative designed to eradicate the distinction between waking life and dreaming, between reality and simulation (or simulacrum); either way, these elements swirl together to create a feverish descent into a cesspool of voracious id, puritanical superego and decaying meat sacks caught between the two. A truly evergreen encapsulation of our shameful existence within this hellish contemporary media landscape, and one that implicates you in a dirtiness so great you cannot wash yourself clean.

Watched on Saturday May 17, 2025.

A staging of Lysistrata rubs up against the internal lives of the women performing it until the two bleed together in gloriously acerbic flights of fancy. Zetterling’s frustration at an explicitly political work being treated as frivolous entertainment and not being engaged with on an intellectual level feeds into a that cuts rigorous polemic with a freewheeling sense of playfulness, shattering film language and narrative linearity into a series of varyingly absurdist vignettes designed to lampoon and directly confront the hypocrisies of gender imbalance. It’s an incredibly winning approach, both engaging and provocative, prodding at the fragility belied by chauvinism at the same time as spotlighting the beauty of the female gaze, resulting in a work that’s in conversation with itself, the viewer and the world that needs it.

‘I’ve just been informed that all of your children are missing. So…’

There’s a moment where Tomika’a parents visibly swell with pride during her vocal solo—literally no more than a second—and, I swear to god, few things out there are more guaranteed to immediately bring me to tears. Seriously, man, this is perfect, even in spite of its flaws (poor Sarah Silverman): some of the most charming child performances of all time, the ideal use of Jack Black, every singly thing Joan Cusack does—even the crappy sell-out song that the douchebag rival bang perform is catchy as fuck. Just a precision-engineered mood enhancer. Are you warm?

Very nice to see a new one of these again, even if there is a concrete ceiling on quality when it comes to execution. As with the fifth one (which is still, in my opinion, the high point), this really cooks when it has fun with the formula: the various fake-outs, the shrugged-off rug-pulls (dustbin into garbage truck) and the very idea of bloodlines in the first place. There’s an incredibly gratifying cheekiness to the elongated setups and a gleeful release that comes with a perfectly-timed payoff (i.e. the vending machine coil) — plus it’s just cool to see the great Tony Todd bow out with such gravitas. Ideal Friday night several-beers-in viewing with friends.

‘And that’s that.’

The darker, more intensely bitter cousin to GoodFellas: whereas that film is the seduction turning into the betrayal, Casino feels like the tail end of a week-long bender as you numbly try to sustain the high because you don’t want to face the coldness of the morning. There is no elation to be found in attaining status or glamour to be savoured in the lifestyle, just the constant struggle to stay afloat, feeding into a sense of untenable desperation that’s present across the board: the overwhelming stream of expository information, the weary unpredictability of the characters, the dirty, profoundly unsettling violence (the ultimate fate of Nicky and his brother has loomed horribly in my memory since I first/last saw this about 18 years ago). It’s exhausting by design but, in its portrait of a decaying crime world about to give way to the white collar hellscape that would follow, possessed of a nauseating majesty.

Never quite as unyieldingly hilarious as I , but when it hits, fuck, there’s nothing like it: Paul Rudd petulantly picking up the tray he just knocked over, Janeane Garofalo in the grips of pure panic, Paul Rudd put-out by the inconvenience of a child drowning on him, Michael Showalter gurning through a training montage, Paul Rudd pulling that stupid little smug face… Everyone here is so on the level it’s really quite insane, and, even though I’m not particularly familiar with summer camp culture/movies, there’s such an enveloping sense of demented inspiration to this that it ultimately doesn’t matter, whatever, I’m gonna go fondue some cheddar.

Quite a bit of chewy shoe leather here in between action beats but, shit, who really cares when Jackie Chan is willing to cling to the side of a speeding bus or fling himself off the top floor of a shopping mall or tie himself up in four different phone chords in pursuit of an elaborate laugh? He wrings every ounce of creative possibility from every environment he uses, retaining an insane level of precision to his choreography even as he’s undertaking feats that really probably should have killed him and his stunt team. One of cinema’s greatest wonders.

And lo, Tom Cruise bursts forth into the stratosphere through this unlikely coming-of-age comedy cum grotty satire of cutthroat capitalism. Swirling together adolescent sex/class/financial anxieties into an exploration of an economy rigged to expel anyone who doesn’t play the game and exploit anyone not hardened enough to understand its rules, Brickman’s film makes palatable some very thorny ideas through deft writing and incredibly winning performances. Entertaining as hell and largely uncompromising in equating social mobility with carnal gratification, with the unimpeachable Tangerine Dream score lifting the whole thing off the ground and making it feel like an unreal fever dream. Time of your life, huh, kid?

There’s no point in writing anything for these anymore because it’s always the same thing: unspecific fad-chasing humour, nondescript characterisations, empty platitudes expecting catharses that aren’t even remotely earned. In this case you also have the added insult of the genuine personality of the first one being smoothed out in favour of synthetic Disney-brand substance-replacement, as just about everything that was special about this is subsumed by the greater house playbook. It looks stunning, obviously, and the residual charm of the lead voice performances clings on to the few scraps of goodwill that remain, but it’s so focused on either desperately trying to replicate lightning in a bottle or laying down future franchise tracks that it barely has any interest in what’s happening in the moment. Really fucking depressing that this shit is just the default now.

Nothing even remotely surprising in here (when it’s not borrowing liberally from Shōgun it’s cleaving so close to the ‘Sunday afternoon dad pick’ template that you can comfortably call each narrative/character/action beat from the outset), but so consummately competent at every stage that it’s as hearty and comforting as a roast dinner. Well-staged battle sequences sprinkled amongst some gorgeous location work, the white saviour aspect mitigated by the sheer magnetism of Ken Wantanabe and the ropiness of the whole enterprise kept at bay by the irresistible intensity of Tom Cruise. Unlikely that I’ll actively seek this out again, but if I happen upon it there’s no chance I’m not seeing it through.

A TV movie melodrama by its very definition but, true to form, Prince-Bythewood underplays the emotions and works fascinating wrinkles into the characters to the point that it feels like a raw nerve more often than it does a commission to fill HBO’s schedule. Latham and Snipes are legitimately great, striking up a beautiful chemistry when they need to and fully breaking your heart when things go sour, embodying the kind of eroding, arrested development that an uneven relationship can keep you in. This is definitely a showcase for directing and acting more so than writing—which is the most schematic element here and occasionally feels geared towards the ad breaks—but that so much nuance and grace is able to breathe in this environment is a testament to that skill. Plus, Q-Tip!

Honestly irked me less than I thought it would, given what I expected from a Force Awakens-ed Alien movie: Álvarez’ penchant for tactility (in environments, in creature designs, in gloop) serves him well here, and the extent to which this works on its own is entirely down to his immersion in the grime of this world. The prevailing feeling after while, though, is one of general deflation—from the grotesque excavation of Ian Holm to the heinous recycling of old lines to the fact that every beat is a spin on a previous one—as you realise that this is the first time an Alien movie had nothing on its mind other than other Alien movies. For all their faults, the Ridley Scott prequels at least has their sights on the big questions of the universe, while Resurrection was so tonally off-kilter that it was emboldened to disappear down exceedingly daft blind alleys. The best Álvarez can hope for here is solid brand management and, though he does manage to work in some rougher textures and jittery set-pieces, that’s a resoundingly hollow victory in the context of a franchise defined by (often hubristic) ambition.

Slickly made, innocuously entertaining, so wanting for original ideas that it’s almost suffocating. Abrams is a fine shepherd of spectacle but his skill-set lies in pristine image-making that slavishly recreates the house style instead of any unified aesthetic geared towards actually moving you: it’s all so carefully crafted to visually and tonally evoke these epoch-shifting movies that it leaves itself no space to consider how they made their characters so indelibly affecting or how they earned their hard-won emotional payoffs. Elle Fanning is great and does some truly beautiful work with an underwritten role, but there’s only so much these actors can do given how hollow these story beats are. You can’t help but wish this was just a movie about kids making schlocky, quasi-Fulci horror movies while listening to ELO—these early scenes tap into the kind of formative ion that Abrams is trying to display in the macro, and at least offer an approximation of fingerprints on clay. Alas, the destination was always going to be a proto-Stranger Things greatest hits collection: untrustworthy authority figures, the suburbs uber attack, scary/misunderstood monsters. Totally fine, totally devoid of perspective.

Watched on Wednesday May 7, 2025.

An intensely probing debut from an endlessly curious filmmaker, using the central confessional conceit to burrow deep into contemporary mores and explore the tension between the selves we present and the selves that we truly are. But then it isn’t really as simple as these distinctions (demure/carnal, love/attraction), as Soderberg and his cast are intent on giving these characters a psychological depth that resists easy characterisation and problematizes preconceived notions around presentations of sex and the associations of various sexual appetites. Through all the deception and impotence and deferred longing, what Soderbergh is looking for is genuine connection: an actual human intimacy, so easily elided through sex and lies and videotapes. And it’s here that the film’s heady intellectualism is met with something tangibly emotional and shudderingly sensual, the cast doing a wonderful job of grounding Soderbergh’s thesis statement in something that feels like lived experience (MacDowell, Spader and San Giacomo genuinely make the writerly pontifications feel organic, while Gallagher only feels slightly lacking for being a more straightforward douchebag by comparison). Hypnotic stuff.

Grease was a sacred text in my household growing up, so I was raised with the implicit acceptance that there was no such thing as Grease 2. It’s a pretty fascinating watch now, as it’s split between the desperate fetishisation of its predecessor (returning bit-players, recycled character dynamics, slavish aesthetic fealty) and a desire to explore the difficulty of existing in its shadow (the ineffectuality of the T-birds, the general aimlessness of the narrative, the focus on identity crises and deceptions) in a way that kind of presages the paralysis from which most contemporary legacy sequels suffer. Taken as its own thing it’s a perfectly inoffensive, colourfully dreary mush that’s never able to get into gear due to the gaping void of charisma at its centre: even if you put the John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John elephants-in-the-room out of your head, there’s still no escaping the fact everyone here either barely s or is outright irritating. And with nobody to hang their hats on the songs feel arbitrary and unmotivated, lingering on like a fart that nobody wants to it to as performers either shuffle through them with a vague sense of embarrassment or just straight-up don’t bother performing at all (which happens! several times!). Was really hoping to be in the corner for this one but, honestly, I’ve forgotten most of it already.

As fun and sexy as everyone has said it is but what I dug most was how gleefully it dances towards the edge of inscrutability. It’s so clipped and precise in its mannerisms that you have to lean all the way in, and it’s thrilling to see a slinky bit of popcorn entertainment that demands you meet it on its level lest you get left behind. Another example of why Soderbergh is the best purveyor of what he calls the ‘Saturday night white wine thriller’ out there.

I love how this is not only totally unconcerned with any overt visual/narrative/tonal reverence towards what is perhaps the most beloved movie of all time but is in fact fully possessed of a distinct, hellish vision all of its own, presenting Oz not as a place of Technicolor splendour but as a decaying nightmare in which everything has tilted horribly off its axis (realised via some still-pretty-stunning puppet work and claymation). The difference is that this time we’re jolted back into the world via human cruelty (the threat of electroshock therapy) instead of an arbitrary act of nature (a tornado), so everything is tinged with a genuine malevolence that doesn’t immediately suggest that all will be okay in the end: the awful squeak of the Wheelers’ wheels, the legitimate horror imagery of the hall of severed heads, the cruel Nome King who would see his subjects turned to ash as long as it meant everything belonged to him. Hadn’t seen this since a fuzzy TV recording on a VHS as a kid, so happy to discover it’s still deeply unsettling in its machinations and hard-won in its emotions.

Watched on Friday May 2, 2025.

‘You really brought your A-game today, Beavis.’

Still feels like just barely enough to pad out the 80-minute runtime, but there is something immensely comforting in how immediately Judge and co. pick this up like a day hasn’t ed since 1998. Comfortably as funny as Do America and, even if they don’t really do much with the 2022 of it all, they at least avoid the low-hanging ‘bad faith engagement with the culture wars’ fruit that you could easily see a returning ‘90s comedy staple plumping for. Weirdly heartening.

Ridley Scott grounds the kind of sweaty neo-noir you’d more readily associate with his brother in a humid, grimy cityscape redolent of Blade Runner, bringing a hard-bitten sense of grandiosity to an honestly pretty middling potboiler. Douglas is at his most off-puttingly odious, so it’s down to the ing players to bring the flickers of energy in the moments where this cooks: Andy Garcia’s galvanising charisma, Ken Takakura’s shining stoicism, Kate Capshaw’s clipped (and really barely-utilised) quasi-femme fatale. Relatively low-impact, but assembled with enough artistry to keep you on the hook.

Watched on Tuesday April 29, 2025.

On the one hand it’s an undeniably fun bit of quasi-erotic trash, Douglas walking an unmatched line in sleaze, Close fighting valiantly to make Alex more than just a bundle of horny fragility and Lyne meeting them both at their level with an aesthetic that exudes sweaty anxiety. On the other hand it’s a reprehensibly cowardly piece of shit that’s so unwilling to make Douglas seriously stew in the consequences of his actions that it has to turn Close into an almost-literal monster so she can be easily vanquished and he can claim an unambiguous moral victory. You could read the final shot as reiterating the ironic facsimile of a stable family unit, but that doesn’t make the bad-faith manipulations of the final act any easier to swallow or temper the unsavoury, focus-grouped origins of Alex’s fate. I dunno. Three stars?

Damien Leone ups the production ante again by shooting this on 35mm anamorphic Panavision, which coats everything in a nice analogue fuzz but can’t hide the cheapness at the heart of this whole sorry endeavour: the shoe leather between splatter scenes is interminable as ever, dragging-out the lame-duck soap opera and giving the poor actors very little on which to subsist. But there are sprinklings throughout that give a glimpse of the bigger prize on which Leone has his eyes—like the presence of cheapo legend Clint Howard or gore maestro Tom Savini, the eye-rollingly/charmingly chintzy mythology and gleefully bad-taste beats such as a bomb in Santa’s grotto—and the full image of the kind of barrel-scraping ‘80s schlock he’s has clearly always been angling to make starts to come into focus. And then it all bursts into grotesque fruition with a final 30 minutes that’s some of the most repugnant, putrid spectacle I’ve ever seen, a truly incredible feat of mean-spirited beauty that keeps on topping itself until there’s nothing left but for the very gates of hell open up. This finale, much like Lauren LaVera’s performance, is at least as good as any of the ‘classics’ it’s drawing from, and is enough to reinstate your faith in Leone’s project just as it was starting to waver.

‘It ends when we’ve won.’

Not quite as undeniable as it once felt, thanks to the intervening years’ Mad Maxes and Mission: Impossibles, but still one of the most ruthlessly effective action movies of the 21st century, stringing together the most dizzyingly inventive set-pieces of the series (the Moroccan chase is the most bruising and impressive, but it’s the heart-in-mouth Waterloo sequence that casts the longest shadow) to create a feat of sustained, unstoppable movement. It helps that this is the leanest narratively, drawing on the fumes of the CIA’s desperation as they race to the end of this zero-sum game, giving this the feeling of something elemental: Bourne himself is all brute force, his adversaries mobilise an entire nation’s security apparatus in the interests of their own survival and everyone around them is potential collateral. It’s irably unsentimental, paying vague lip service to the idea of the enduring decency of the system but doing little to convince you of that and, in all likelihood, not really believing it itself.

More of a cartoon than I was initially expecting, and that’s even before you get introduced to Timothy Spall: the warm hues and popping colours of Dick Pope’s images, the highly stylised performances of the family unit, a sense of humour that is most definitely behavioural but also leaning towards traditional joke structures… It’s all very enveloping, though, looking at these people head-on instead of askance and presenting their foibles as relatable instead of the follies of caricatures, whether it’s the dad who was just about to fix the garden until [insert excuse here], the wayward daughter seemingly resentful of everything around her or the mum exuding extreme ‘what’re they like?’ energy. But then as we spend more time with them we start to feel the truth of their plights, and the personal setbacks (your doomed quasi-French restaurant or susceptibility to get-rich-quick schemes) and small victories (galvanising the family over your spoon-based broken ankle or finally being able to talk about your closet bulimia) start to take on a profound resonance and you realise you care deeply about these characters, far more than you previously realised. An absolute joy, with a barnstormer of a turn by Alison Stean.

Absolutely not the movie I thought it would be from its setup, taking the daffy logline and then fleeing from the ‘80s crime thriller of it all in favour of something more gentle and contemplative. So instead of a grizzled Harrison Ford coaxing a testimony out of a little Amish boy and then launching a crusade against the city’s corrupt police force you have a quiet exploration of communities, the conventions that govern them and the degree with which we rely on faith to prop these systems up, with Ford and McGillis creating a world of achingly sensual longing between them and Weir deriving a lot of power from everything he doesn’t say/show. This is a film that thrives in the breathing space, both visually and narratively, and it’s quite beautiful how successfully it trains you to savour something you didn't know you wanted.

Watched on Wednesday March 19, 2025.

Kept waiting for this to drop-off massively in a way that would justify its middling reputation but, nope, this is good, sexy fun all the way through: buoyant action, solid gags and two of the hottest people alive with a chemistry benefitting massively from the fact that they genuinely want to fuck each other. Angelina Jolie, you are welcome to try and kill me anytime you like.

I’m seeing double here… Four Kongs! 

I dunno, at least this is kind of having fun—insofar as having a zanier/stupider setup than its dull 1976 forebear—but a chintzy story about two 50ft ape lovers on the lam can only get you so far. Before long the sheer dead weight of this laden ‘adventure’ starts to pull you down, Guillermin unwilling/unable to generate any kind of heat between his leads, the action spectacle or the horny Kongs and making this whole silly affair far more of a chore than you’d think possible. Baffling as a sequel but even more so as an anti-event.

Peaks in the first 15 minutes, where Lara Croft punches a shark in the face and then rides it to the surface. After that it sinks into a procession of drab, boring set-pieces in nondescript locations, where people speak like they’re Bond villain soundboards, yell about Pandora’s Box and scowl at an orb. Feels like costs and corners were cut at every stage of development, resulting in a generic mush that’s so lightweight and tacky that even de Bont’s usual visual heft (the one mild saving grace of Speed 2 and The Haunting) feels hollowed-out and store-brand. Makes the first one look like a model of elegance (even if, ittedly, it doesn’t feature Lara Croft punching any sharks).

Watched on Tuesday April 22, 2025.

Everything I’ve been missing from capital-M Movies and was worried I’d never see in something of this scale again: genuinely thorny ideas, unapologetically brash melodrama, bold musical numbers, violence, sex, smoking. The confidence Coogler has in so patiently settling you into the wrinkles of time, place and character is spellbinding, trusting that the strength of his writing and the performances is substantial enough that the grindhouse gearshift is legitimately destabilising and, taken holistically, anguishing. It’s a perfect fusion of theme and form, bringing together the rich history of the blues, Carter’s gorgeous costumes and Arkapaw’s hazy impressions of the Mississippi Delta to capture the sense of pure Black expression longing to exist unmolested in a world that seeks to either quash or absorb/dilute it. You have moments of ecstatic celebration (like the justly-lauded centrepiece shot that sees time melt together) and elegiac melancholy (everything post-daybreak, including the stunning coda), as well as the radical (at least in something with this platform) idea that religion is ineffectual in truly protecting you from the horrors of the world because it is, in essence, another tool used to flatten you into the nebulous system of the oppressor. That a sexy blockbuster is willing to gamble its chips by chewing over such grandiose and challenging notions, without the guarantee of an easy dopamine-release solution (though seeing a bunch of Klan blown to pieces does help considerably), is a hell of thing, and it speaks to Coogler’s singular talent that he’s able to make it all sing so beautifully.

Suffers from being halfway between the intriguing character mystery of Identity and the unrelenting forward momentum of Ultimatum, rehashing a few too many beats and leaning into a couple of schlocky narrative contrivances that sit at odds with how po-facedly Greengrass frames everything. When this sinks into its groove, though, it’s as good as just about any of its contemporaries: the jerky action, whether it’s a high-wire footchase in Berlin or a viscerally crunchy destruction derby in Moscow, is so stunningly-realised that it transcends the headachey shakycam, which I’m honestly not quite as hostile towards as most seem to be (despite the damage it did over the next decade). There’s also a robust, often startling focus on the consequences of actions, whether it’s Maria being coldly dispatched in the opening reel, America’s international interventionism coming home to roost through the noose around Abbott’s neck or the film’s emotional crescendo residing in Bourne staring into the eyes of the woman he took everything from and accepting his culpability.

A pure, unmitigated joy, Tati building up the layers of his postwar village community with incremental character detail and quasi-Rube Goldberg setups and then sending in François to knock them all down. The extent to which so many of the payoffs and punchlines reside in the background or tossed-off glances or François lamenting ‘of all things!’ is a truly beautiful thing, and Tati’s gangly physicality is a never-ending source of wonderment. Simultaneously quaint and anxious, capturing a sense of the looming shadow of modernity/US influence but couching it all in a provincial joie de vivre that’s really quite infectious.

Kinetic, scrappy little DIY thriller that pulls itself up from Eurotrash anonymity in several crucial ways: a real tactility to everything from the locations to the tech, rooting the silly spy shenanigans in something understandably analogue; a truly insane rotating door of all-star character actors relishing the chance to chew on this jargon; a bunch of intimate, resourceful set-pieces that re-situate the focus from spectacle to physical/mental impact; and a genuinely magnetic Matt Damon, who is so compelling even reloading a shotgun that he makes a legitimate asset out of the character’s necessary blank-slate quality. Easy to see how this was such a shot-in-the-arm for the Hollywood action thriller.

Watched on Saturday April 19, 2025.

Interesting stuff in the fringes about transcending class through artistic expression and the uneasy relationship between talent and connections when it comes to success, but really this is just about Adrian Lyne mounting a bunch of ostentatious, thigh-obsessed dance numbers and Jennifer Beals setting the screen on fire. Nothing wrong with that!

A stargate is a pretty fun idea, if you ask me, and for at least the setup this looks like it’s going to be some good, honest schlock. Once things get underway, though, all possibilities of what this could have been evaporate and we’re left stranded in the barren wasteland of imagination that this is: a dull not-quite-action movie in a naff space-Ancient-Egypt, where Kurt Russel has been stripped of all his natural charm and you long for the relative thrills and craftsmanship of one of the million TV spinoffs. Nothing this insane should be this boring.

A really fucking good Naomi Scott performance, a judiciously mean-spirited sense of humour and some shockingly good gore rigs aren’t quite enough to sustain this through its diminishing returns, which had already kicked in by the end of the first one. The problem is that all of the horror beats are essentially the same, so our ‘fool me once’ instinct squashes any residual impact after the first big shock, leaving us with morsels of ironic cruelty and celebrity satire to subsist on for the ensuing two-hour psychological breakdown. An improvement over its predecessor in its discrete elements, fractionally less effective as a whole. Naomi Scott, though.

Absolutely nothing to add to this that hasn’t already been litigated and re-litigated a thousand times over the last 40 years: Landis trades in on a gross dereliction of duty (and ensuing travesty of justice) to bring a ghoulish quality his flat, intellectually-bankrupt provocations; Spielberg presages the kind of bullshit he would fully indulge in Hook with one of the worst 20-minute stretches to which he’s ever put his name; Dante neatly summarises the power of his anarchic skillset by seizing the expressive capabilities of the medium and wrestling an iconic B&W episode into the untethered rhythms of a legitimately unnerving live-action cartoon; Miller straps you into the sheer ferocious intensity of being trapped in a nightmare, giving a visceral jolt to perhaps the most recognisable image from the series. Half great, half abysmal, impossible to separate from its real-life tragedy.

Was way too young to appreciate this as a cultural moment when it came out but have always been fascinated by it as a curious Gen X relic. Am pretty unsurprisingly susceptible to its dumb lo-fi charm, even if it is stretched to breaking point at feature length. Funny little dudes, but the best joke is that something so proudly cheap and conceptually thin became such a phenomenon.

Your ranking, if you choose to accept it...

1. Mission: Impossible
2. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
3. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
4. Mission: Impossible III
5. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
6. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
7. Mission: Impossible II
8. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning

'Sir, Christopher McQuarrie's filmography is the living manifestation of destiny - and I have made it my ranking'

1. Mission: Impossible – Fallout
2. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation
3. Jack Reacher
4. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
5. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
6. The Way of the Gun

My running ranking of the movies Andy and I cover on Ramblin: An Amblin Podcast.

1. Back to the Future

   anchor.fm/ramblin-an-amblin-podcast/episodes/Back-to-the-Future-1985-et4ru1

2. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

   anchor.fm/ramblin-an-amblin-podcast/episodes/E-T--the-Extra-Terrestrial-1982-epaps2

3. Men in Black

   anchor.fm/ramblin-an-amblin-podcast/episodes/Men-in-Black-1997-e23k9i8

4. Jurassic Park

   anchor.fm/ramblin-an-amblin-podcast/episodes/Jurassic-Park-1993-e1jrctl

5. Minority Report

   anchor.fm/ramblin-an-amblin-podcast/episodes/Minority-Report-2002-e2dkbhj

6. The Bridges of Madison County

   anchor.fm/ramblin-an-amblin-podcast/episodes/The-Bridges-of-Madison-County-1995-e1smqjc

7. A.I. Artificial Intelligence

   podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/ramblin-an-amblin-podcast/episodes/A-I--Artificial-Intelligence-2001-e2bqllo

8. Gremlins

   anchor.fm/ramblin-an-amblin-podcast/episodes/Gremlins-1984-ept734

9. Who Framed Roger Rabbit

   anchor.fm/ramblin-an-amblin-podcast/episodes/Who-Framed-Roger-Rabbit-1988-e15aa6c

10. Letters from Iwo Jima

    creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/ramblin-an-amblin-podcast/episodes/Letters-from-Iwo-Jima-2006-e3150ua

...plus 55 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A ranking of everyone’s favourite dumb Rube Goldberg teen death franchise.

1. Final Destination 5
2. Final Destination Bloodlines
3. Final Destination 3
4. Final Destination 2
5. Final Destination
6. The Final Destination

When you rank upon a once-great animation house...

1. Pinocchio
2. The Hunchback of Notre Dame
3. Dumbo
4. The Emperor's New Groove
5. Beauty and the Beast
6. The Little Mermaid
7. Lilo & Stitch
8. Moana
9. Peter Pan
10. The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

...plus 48 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

All’s fair in love and ranking.

1. Love & Basketball
2. Beyond the Lights
3. The Woman King
4. The Old Guard
5. Disappearing Acts
6. The Secret Life of Bees

In space, no one can hear you rank the Alien franchise.

1. Alien
2. Aliens
3. Alien: Covenant
4. Alien³
5. Prometheus
6. Alien Resurrection
7. Alien: Romulus

"He's alive! I guess he must have been on a different ranking!"

1. Star Trek
2. Mission: Impossible III
3. Super 8
4. Star Wars: The Force Awakens
5. Star Trek Into Darkness
6. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

NOBODY GETS OFF THIS RANKING!

1. Speed
2. Twister
3. Speed 2: Cruise Control
4. The Haunting
5. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life

What a lovely ranking!

1. Mad Max: Fury Road
2. Mad Max 2
3. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
4. Three Thousand Years of Longing
5. Lorenzo's Oil
6. Mad Max
7. The Witches of Eastwick
8. Babe: Pig in the City
9. Happy Feet Two
10. Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

We're all gathered here today to celebrate the filmography of Bong Joon-ho, and this bounteous ranking.

1. The Host
2. Parasite
3. Memories of Murder
4. Mother
5. Snowpiercer
6. Okja
7. Mickey 17
8. Barking Dogs Never Bite

If my calculations are correct, when this ranking hits 88 miles per hour, you’re gonna see some serious shit.

1. Back to the Future
2. Who Framed Roger Rabbit
4. Back to the Future Part III
5. Back to the Future Part II
6. Used Cars
7. Romancing the Stone
8. Death Becomes Her
9. Cast Away
10. What Lies Beneath

...plus 12 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Rank the fuck on, Bridget!

1. Bridget Jones's Diary
2. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy
3. Bridget Jones's Baby
4. Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason

Who you gonna rank?

1. Ghostbusters
2. Ghostbusters II
3. Ghostbusters
4. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
5. Ghostbusters: Afterlife

The worst ranking in the world.

1. The Worst Person in the World
2. Oslo, August 31st
3. Reprise
4. Louder Than Bombs
5. Thelma

A running ranking of the 2024 UK cinema/streaming releases I was able to see.

1. I Saw the TV Glow
2. Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
3. Hundreds of Beavers
4. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
5. Challengers
6. Poor Things
7. Dune: Part Two
8. The Zone of Interest
9. All of Us Strangers
10. The Holdovers

...plus 43 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Now I have a Christmas movie list, ho ho ho.

• The Shop Around the Corner
• Holiday Inn
• Meet Me in St. Louis
• It's a Wonderful Life
• Miracle on 34th Street
• The Bishop's Wife
• White Christmas
• All That Heaven Allows
• The Apartment
• Blast of Silence

...plus 46 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

You got a ranking in me.

1. Toy Story 2
2. Toy Story
3. The Incredibles
4. Toy Story 3
5. Coco
6. Monsters, Inc.
7. WALL·E
8. Inside Out
9. Ratatouille
10. Finding Nemo

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

You ever rank with the devil in the pale moonlight?

1. Edward Scissorhands
2. Ed Wood
3. Pee-wee's Big Adventure
4. Beetlejuice
5. Batman Returns
6. Big Fish
7. Batman
8. Sleepy Hollow
9. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
10. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

...plus 10 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A ranking of all the times doors spookily opened and closed during the night.

1. Paranormal Activity 3
2. Paranormal Activity
3. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones
4. Paranormal Activity 2
5. Paranormal Activity 4
6. Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension
7. Paranormal Activity: Next of Kin

I see an M. Night Shyamalan ranking.

1. Unbreakable
2. The Sixth Sense
3. The Village
4. Knock at the Cabin
5. Trap
6. The Visit
7. Signs
8. Old
9. Split
10. Glass

...plus 6 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

If there’s one thing I love, it’s movies about shrinking people. Here are the big ones.

• The Incredible Shrinking Man
• Fantastic Voyage
• Innerspace
• Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
• Ant-Man
• Ant-Man and the Wasp

*Jude Law voice* 'I am ranking.'

1. Something's Gotta Give
2. The Parent Trap
3. It's Complicated
4. The Intern
5. What Women Want
6. The Holiday

'I wish I knew how to rank you.'

1. Brokeback Mountain
2. Sense and Sensibility
3. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
4. Eat Drink Man Woman
5. The Ice Storm
6. Lust, Caution
7. The Wedding Banquet
8. Ride with the Devil
9. Hulk
10. Life of Pi

...plus 4 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I'm going to find Wes Anderson's filmography and I'm going to rank it. I don't know how yet. Possibly with dynamite.

1. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
2. The Royal Tenenbaums
3. Moonrise Kingdom
4. Asteroid City
5. The Grand Budapest Hotel
6. Rushmore
7. Bottle Rocket
8. Fantastic Mr. Fox
9. The French Dispatch
10. The Darjeeling Limited

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Martha Marcy May Ranking

1. Martha Marcy May Marlene
2. The Nest
3. The Iron Claw

A running ranking of the 2023 UK releases I was able to see.

1. TÁR
2. The Fabelmans
3. Oppenheimer
4. Killers of the Flower Moon
5. Godzilla Minus One
6. Return to Seoul
7. Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.
8. Asteroid City
9. John Wick: Chapter 4
10. Rye Lane

...plus 38 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Ain’t them rankings saints.

1. The Green Knight
2. The Old Man & the Gun
3. A Ghost Story
4. Pete's Dragon
5. Ain't Them Bodies Saints
6. Peter Pan & Wendy

A ranking of all the MCU movies I saw until the point I had to give up for the sake of my health. (Also 30 is a nice round number and I have no interest in an Ant-Man movie where everything is the same size.)

1. The Avengers
2. Iron Man 3
3. Black Panther
4. Avengers: Endgame
5. Guardians of the Galaxy
6. Iron Man
7. Ant-Man and the Wasp
8. Spider-Man: Homecoming
9. Captain America: The First Avenger
10. Avengers: Infinity War

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

You didn’t save my life you ranked my filmography!

1. The Iron Giant
2. The Incredibles
3. Ratatouille
4. Incredibles 2
5. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
6. Tomorrowland

‘You make me wanna rank a better filmography.’

1. of Endearment
2. Broadcast News
3. As Good as It Gets
4. I'll Do Anything
5. How Do You Know
6. Spanglish

I’d rank that for a dollar!

1. Elle
2. RoboCop
3. Starship Troopers
4. Black Book
5. The 4th Man
6. Katie Tippel
7. Turkish Delight
8. Total Recall
9. Basic Instinct
10. Flesh + Blood

...plus 7 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

How much can you know about yourself if you’ve never ranked Fincher's filmography?

1. Zodiac
2. The Social Network
3. Se7en
4. Fight Club
5. Gone Girl
6. Panic Room
7. The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
8. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
9. Mank
10. The Killer

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

I want to play a ranking.

1. Saw
2. Saw VI
3. Saw II
4. Saw X
5. Spiral: From the Book of Saw
6. Jigsaw
7. Saw V
8. Saw IV
9. Saw III
10. Saw 3D

I got a real red ranking!

1. Best in Show
2. Waiting for Guffman
3. A Mighty Wind
4. For Your Consideration
5. Mascots
6. The Big Picture
7. Almost Heroes

.yhpargomlif s'naloN rehpotsirhC fo gniknar A

1. Memento

   Dead wife count: 1

2. Interstellar

   Dead wife count: 1

3. Oppenheimer

   Dead wife count: N/A (inappropriate for something based on real people)

4. The Dark Knight

   Dead wife count: 1 (ish)

5. The Prestige

   Dead wife count: 2

6. Inception

   Dead wife count: 1

7. Dunkirk

   Dead wife count: 0

8. Batman Begins

   Dead wife count: 1 (but also a dead husband)

9. Tenet

   Dead wife count: 0 (though the wife here is put through the wringer)

10. The Dark Knight Rises

    Dead wife count: 2 (ish)

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man ranking.

1. Spider-Man 2
2. Spider-Man
3. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
4. Spider-Man: Homecoming
5. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
6. Spider-Man 3
7. Spider-Man: Far From Home
8. Spider-Man: No Way Home
9. The Amazing Spider-Man
10. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

I want to rank Kathryn Bigelow’s filmography so bad it’s like acid in my mouth.

1. Strange Days
2. Point Break
3. Zero Dark Thirty
4. The Hurt Locker
5. Near Dark
6. K-19: The Widowmaker
7. The Loveless
8. Blue Steel
9. Detroit
10. The Weight of Water

'Look up 'ranking' in the dictionary, you know what you'll find?'
'A picture of this list?'
'No. The definition of the word 'ranking', which this fucking is.'

1. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
2. The Nice Guys
3. Iron Man 3
4. The Predator

I’m thinking I’m RANKING.

1. John Wick: Chapter 2
2. John Wick
3. John Wick: Chapter 4
4. John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum

Do you like ranking movies?

1. Scream
2. Scream 2
3. Scream 3
4. Scream 4
5. Scream
6. Scream VI

A ranking of the movies DC made during their decade-long existential crisis, before I decided I no longer need to do this to myself.

1. The Batman
2. Shazam!
3. Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
4. Wonder Woman
5. The Suicide Squad
6. Joker
7. Aquaman
8. Wonder Woman 1984
9. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
10. Man of Steel

...plus 2 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

You know what happens to the X-Men movies when they get struck by ranking? The same thing as everything else.

1. X2
2. Logan
3. X-Men
4. The Wolverine
5. X-Men: Days of Future Past
6. X-Men: First Class
7. Deadpool 2
8. X-Men: The Last Stand
9. Deadpool
10. Dark Phoenix

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Movies to shoot the breeze with.

• Adventureland
• Almost Famous
• Back to the Future Part III
• The Big Lebowski
• Big Trouble in Little China
• Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
• Dazed and Confused
• Dumb and Dumber
• Everybody Wants Some!!
• Free Fire

...plus 23 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

My running ranking of 2022’s UK releases (that I’ve been able to see. I’m only human).

1. Memoria
2. Red Rocket
3. The Banshees of Inisherin
4. The Worst Person in the World
5. Fire of Love
6. Avatar: The Way of Water
7. Flee
8. RRR
9. Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy
10. The Souvenir: Part II

...plus 60 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

They mostly rank at night. Mostly.

1. Aliens
2. Titanic
3. The Terminator
4. Terminator 2: Judgment Day
5. Avatar: The Way of Water
6. The Abyss
7. Avatar
8. True Lies
9. Aliens of the Deep
10. Ghosts of the Abyss

...plus 1 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Hell is a teenage ranking.

1. Jennifer's Body
2. The Invitation
3. Girlfight
4. Æon Flux
5. Destroyer

The night he came ranking.

1. Halloween
2. Halloween III: Season of the Witch
3. Halloween II
4. Halloween H20: 20 Years Later
5. Halloween Ends
6. Halloween
7. Halloween
8. Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers
9. Halloween II
10. Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Holy cinematic-iteration-ranking, Batman!

1. The Dark Knight
2. Batman Returns
3. Batman Begins
4. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm
5. The Batman
6. Batman
7. Batman
8. The Lego Batman Movie
9. The Dark Knight Rises
10. Batman & Robin

...plus 3 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

If it bleeds, we can rank it.

1. Predator
2. Prey
3. Predators
4. Predator 2
5. The Predator