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This is a hard watch for me, I just can’t cope with watching this poor kid slowly grow more insane through the horrific treatment everyone gives her. It was a struggle for me before I had a daughter and it’s even more so now.

I understand Darren Aronofsky wanted to make this and The Wrestler as one single film and I totally get the dichotomy here. Randy the Ram is a guy whose destruction is entirely self inflicted, the film gives him ample opportunities to make things right for himself, but Nina Sayers being a young woman in competitive arts is being manipulated and gaslit by everyone around her.

Her own mother is a controlling monster resentful she gave up on her own dreams of becoming the main event ballerina (I don’t know what the real title is, headliner maybe?), her coach is a sex pest and a pretentious French douchebag using the art and the authenticity of the performance as an excuse for his Weinstein behaviour, and on top of that she has a new starter who through having lived a much less sheltered life has a massive advantage over her and may or may not be a predatory gaslighter looking to take her spot.

Aronofsky maintains a similar aggressive shooting style and intensity to Requiem for a Dream, the sound design making even stuff like fingernails being cut uncomfortable.

Obviously Natalie Portmans performance is the stuff of legend now, and its every bit as good as anything she’s done. Beyond her acting it’s the weight loss which practically turned her into a skeleton and the grotesque manner in which she’s given physical therapy is sickening.

The one bit of relief I got out of the whole thing was Sebastian Stans brief appearance where he displayed absolutely zero game. Just like me.

Final Reckoning had a huge mountain to climb since it's the second part of a two and a half hour movie of sheer unending tension and intensity while building to a huge climax. Then Dead Reckoning somewhat underperformed and I feel like McQuarrie, Cruise and Paramount definitely tinkered with what was going to be more of a part 2 film and made this feel more of a stand alone in it's first hour.

The problem there is the first hour simultaneously throws a lot at the screen while, also not trusting audiences to know what this iconic multi billion dollar franchise is referencing so it's extremely full on with both exposition dumping, twists, information reveals and flashbacks to multiple previous films.

But what a good friend of mine, Ben pointed out is that the first hour of the film feels like the infodump The Entity gives to Ethan in the coffin is being given to the audience for the entire time the Entity is in charge. I think it was a very risky move that will alienate a lot of potential fans but I applaud it.

I love how Chris McQuarrie changes up the game with every film, he's always changing key crew to not make the films feel too similar to each other, but I was hoping this being a part 2 of Dead Reckoning, whcih I consider my favourite of the series, it would echo that film's John McTiernan x Brian De Palma aesthetic, but I'm actually pretty pleased with the more grandiose scale McQuarrie went with here.

There's a turning point in the film where it goes from the Entity in charge, to Ethan Hunt coming up with a resolution and executing his plan of attack where it turns into this massive scale film unlike anything the franchise has done. There's an extended sequence underwater which is absolutely astonishing, both on a visual scale and with the tension of the isolation, the need to execute the plan exactly and the limited oxygen supply.

The other sequence is the bi-plane chase which is fucking madness. It's completely shot practically and we can see Cruise's face getting blown away from the g-force. It's a huge action sequence that's interspersed with a insane tense sequence that involves defusing a bomb and hacking the Entity. I did not expect how the plane chase ended and fucking had me laughing my ass off. That this is in the third hour of the film and I'm completely and fully engaged is a testament to what a master McQuarrie is.

So this is the end presumably. I think this is a perfect send off point, it mirrors Cruise's journey perfectly well in that nothing will every quench his thirst for adventure, but it's probably time to reset, while the promise is there that we'll see an 80 year old Cruise surfing a enger jet again some day. There's probably no higher scale they can go with the franchise without needing to completely change genres and taking away the espionage aspects and at that point it ceases being Mission: Impossible. So it's best to end on an excellent high note, with one of cinema's great action heroes standing triumphant.

I cannot begin to thank Tom Cruise enough for what he's done with this series. I watched the first one at 8 years old, I saw Ghost Protocol in IMAX and was wowed. This franchise has been an action fans dream, huge stories, massive elaborate stunts, iconic characters and just the highest caliber of production possible.

Thank you for everything Tom. Mission: Accomplished.

A real nothing burger of a film that’s anchored by four very charismatic leads. The general gist of the movie is some real boomer mid life crisis shit but it doesn’t feel like the characters have some insane sense of entitlement (despite playing guys bored of their lives married to hot women in big spacious suburban houses) so it’s ultimately pretty inoffensive.

I did enjoy watching this cast interact. They feel like a team of actors who legitimately enjoyed working together and had a sense of camaraderie. So they really elevate some uninteresting and dull material.

Ray Liotta makes a late appearance as a great villain who does his rage out shtick and constantly beats on his crony played by Kevin Durand. In fact it’s probably my favourite gag in the film when Durand says some non sequitur or accidental sex pun and Liotta spends a moment confused before busting Durand in the chops.

A pretty solid Will Farrell comedy that’s easy to fire up on Tubi on a Monday night after a shit day of work and shit down my brain for 90 minutes. 

Farrells manchild shtick was still good at this point and hadn’t gotten stale yet, but kudos to him for being able to recognise what doesn’t work anymore, slow down his output and mix up the kinds of characters he plays. I groaning at the Land of the Lost trailer but then a year later being mega hyped for The Other Guys. 

There’s not a lot to this, the premise is so thin that there’s an entire act of the film dedicated to Farrell getting a crippling coffee addiction that barely affects the story, I presume to pad over Robert Duvall’s limited screen time as the “antagonist” of sorts. I will say seeing a child Josh Hutcherson was unsettling knowing he’ll grow up to get shot in the face by The Beekeeper.

Probably the thing that sticks out the most is Mike Ditka as himself being Farrells assistant coach. I’m Australian so I don’t know a single thing about his background in the NFL and as a sports commentator, but the man’s got screen presence for days. He’s a big fella with big meaty bear hands and immaculately slicked back hair and a dirty moustache the guy should’ve been the angry police captain in every cop movie ever blasting away goons with a comically large shotgun that looks tiny in his hands.

Still to this day my favourite of the Coen brothers ts, normally I find them so deliberate, quirky and dense that I need a couple of viewings to unpack everything they’re doing and I completely vibe with it, but Big Lebowski has been entirely on my wavelength from the moment I first saw them piss on the Dudes rug.

I think it helped that while they make a lot of movies about idiots, Dude is an idiot just like me. He’s dumb in an endearing, affable kind of way and it makes him easy to want to see succeed. 

Even better he’s got Walter who is an even bigger more lovable idiot, that’s an amalgamation of every favourite coworker I’ve ever had. The performances are pitch perfect from the whole cast but John Goodman runs away with the whole thing because he loses his shit at the drop of a hat.

The script is razor sharp both in dialogue and how well the “confusing” story is told. It’s extremely straightforward but because it’s really low stakes and ultimately rather pointless it’s hard to follow for the characters. The execution is incredible because it’s essentially wasting everyone’s time but it’s fucking hilarious while doing it.

I wasn’t sure how this would play given I’ve completely outgrown Matthew Vaughn and think he’s a full blown hack with some odious politics and then of course source material writer Neil Gaiman has also been exposed as a profoundly evil piece of shit. So the film’s pedigree is quite problematic now.

But the film overcomes the behind the camera presences thanks to an earnest desire to be the modern day Princess Bride, it’s a very charming and quaint film. It plays with fairy tale cliches in a cute way and balances being a family film with some stuff for the grown ups without being anything inappropriate. 

Charlie Cox and Claire Danes have a wonderful chemistry as the stock fairytale “Prince” and “Princess” on a magical adventure. Michelle Pfeiffer is the MVP as the “wicked witch” archetype, Robert De Niro has a very loveable role as the Dread Pirate Roberts who is secretly the nicest guy ever equivalent.

I feel like the movie’s strength is taking the familiar and doing it well while making it feel modern, it strikes a nice balance. It’s a very wholesome feeling film but still under the radar enough not to have been co-opted by the nice core fascists like they did for Everything Everywhere All At Once and Ted Lasso.

A perfectly acceptable, very safe and unmemorable Disney family friendly blockbuster. This was my second viewing of the film and I’ve already forgotten it again but I had a good time thanks to how well the performances carried it. 

Jay Baruchel was able to handle the nerdy millennial loser but a lot better than others at the time and made for a more likeable nerd as a result. Alfred Molina is having such a great time as the snobby villain who talks down to those he deems inferior, which is literally everyone. 

And then there’s Nic Cage who plays an immortal sorcerer, which is probably the least acting he needs to do, he manages to keep his weirdness at the perfect levels for this PG family film and still be inherently likeable. 

I do appreciate Disney trying to make blockbusters with a sense of classical adventure to capitalise on the success of Pirates of the Caribbean, and it’s a shame they pretty much all flopped because even something as middling as this has an earnestness that’s missing from today. I feel like something even as simple as setting it 100 years prior or made it more of a global adventure would’ve given it more personality.

Watched on Thursday May 15, 2025.

Manages to be great sequel to the very underrated first film, while eschewing the 70's slow burn approach of the first for a more punchy 90's buddy action movie. There's a few directions this takes that feel a bit out there compared to the more grounded first film but the more breezier tone helps smooth things over.

Firstly the group home in the original is now practically Watch Dogs in live action but the hackers are all children with disability. There's also a twist in the vein of Affleck and Bernthal's characters being brothers in the first, but that one was pretty well foreshadowed while this one comes out of absolutely nowhere and fucking floored me.

Thankfully the movie does such a good job coasting on how fun it is to follow the main pairing of Affleck and Bernthal and with the extra bonus of underrated actress Cynthia Addai Robinson's character having to put up their childishness. This is the first movie I'm pretty sure I've seen Bernthal have more than a 5 minute cameo in since the first ant and it's so good to see him just dominate the screen. His incredulous reactions to some of Affleck's quirks and a very terrified Robinson are absolutely hilarious and he gets a freeze frame that had me rolling.

Affleck himself is a little more loose here, I think he triples down on the neurodivergence so he comes off a splaying C3PO at times but he's having a good time.

Gavin O'Connor amps up the action to a pretty spectacular degree, it basically turns into the third act of Way of the Gun here with Affleck and Bernthal blasting their way through Mexico. Much like the first film being good enough to stand on it's own, I'm happy for it to be a two parter, but if they make a third I'm there straight away.

I probably don’t do Pixar movies as much as I should, I’ve probably seen about a third of them if that and I’ve enjoyed them all. I mean it’s kind of awesome to get a wholesome family film about sentient toys that’s inspired by films directed by the likes of John Sturges and Don Siegel, although sadly we live in a world where middle aged man babies watch Toy Story 3 and consider that reason enough not to need to watch Escape from Alcatraz and The Great Escape. Hi movie bob 👋 

I enjoyed the “real time” aspect of the film, rather than put the gang in another fun adventure where Andy’s still a kid, Lee Unkrich and Michael Arndt take the opportunity to craft a lovely and compelling tale of obsolescence and needing to find a place of belonging. Of course it helps that it’s a fun adventure flick with fun characters!

My daughter watched the first one pretty religiously for a time and then went straight to being obsessed with the fourth which I still haven’t actually made time to check out in a single sitting. Her immediately wanting to hit play on 3 again obviously shows how much it resonated with her. I will say as perfect a conclusion as 3 is, it’s ultimately such a good generational story that of course it makes sense for these guys to have more adventures. We’re not Woody and Buzz and the gang, we’re Andy now able to watch real The Great Escape instead of the Pixar version and one day our kids will be Bonnie and they’ll move on too, but our kid’s kids will need them around.

A very sharp and witty dramedy about a spin doctor from big tobacco, it's a quick breezy watch with really exciting dialogue and a large ensemble full of top tier actors doing A level work. This is an amazing showcase of Aaron Eckharts brilliance as an actor, as much as I got no problem with anyone doing DTV action films I'll never figure out why he never became one of the all time prestigious actors.

He's surrounded by everyone matching him on his level. It's funny to me Katie Holmes presumably got fired from The Dark Knight for giving a bad performance in Batman Begins while delivering some serious fierceness here. JK Simmons is always gold as a foul mouthed asshole boss, someone should make a movie with him doing his bit but for like a childrens hospital or a charity.

Thankfully I've only ever been a casual smoker in my much younger years, but I've lost people to chronic smoking, I would hope people don't do it and for all the smokers out there please quit while you're ahead.

Jason Reitman is a really good writer and director, he can tell these adult dramas with a blistering pace while making these shitty people fascinating to watch. But I've noticed throughout his career he has a habit of trying to humanise these corpos, lobbyist spokesmen, professional redundancy givers and Lorne Michaels, like he's a real middle management loyalist, not really my idea of what I look for in my adult dramas. I'll definitely need to check out Tully and Juno some day, I feel like those subject matters are perfect for his sensibilities.

Not bad for one of those comedies that's obviously been made to give its cast a tropical working vacation, it's much better than the likes of Couples Retreat and latter era Sandler because of Ivan Reitmans sturdy direction and Harrison Ford's charisma.

Ford and Anne Heche have a good bickering couple chemistry together and when it sticks with them it's pretty enjoyable. David Schwimmer back in his beach resort being Ross less so I'm not sure why they didn't just create some different reason to have Heche get stranded and just give all that extra time to Temuerra Morrison's band of pirates rather than just shoe horn them into the last act.

I guess there's the novelty of seeing Han Solo causing Boba Fett to go out like a clown again but everything else about the film is of very basic competence that doesn't really leave much of an impression. But it's a fun way to waste some time on a Saturday night that doesn't require too much effort.

Alfonso Cuaron’s third film definitely isn’t the masterpiece of latter works but it shows he’s a filmmaker with a very lush visual palette and very stylish flair. Taking Charles Dickens classic novel, moving it to contemporary 90’s New York and shooting it in a very European style that reminded me of similar romantic dramas like The Big Blue, Three Colours and Wings of Desire. It’s not something I ever thought I’d find myself into but definitely enjoy vibes based euro flavoured romance movies. 

In addition to Cuarons excellent panache for film making it’s anchored by some very good performances, Ethan Hawke is good as the naive artist who is probably a little too optimistic about life, Gwenyth Paltrow is very deft in her touch as Estella, the character has some elements that make her unlikeable for the purpose of the narrative but Paltrow handles it so well that I never got irritated with her presence. Ultimately Hawke and Paltrow characters are too young to inhabit the world they do, neither with any parenting and have to figure it out themselves and I think it’s conveyed super well.

I really don’t know the actual source story really well beyond the South Park episode that proved America was a land of illiteracy, so I’m not sure if Hawkes character is an artist in the story but I’m exactly sure what the films purpose of the “art” looking pretty much like something my daughter would doodle in a napkin.

Grade A Cannon group nonsense, this is supposedly a sequel to Franco Nero starrer Enter the Ninja with Sho Kosugi either reprising his role or playing an entirely new character I’m not sure which. I haven’t seen that movie but I have seen what might be the funniest kill in any movie ever with a guy recieving a superficial ninja star wound to the chest that was somehow deadly enough to make him simply give up on life. 

This one doesn’t have a specific moment that stupidly good but it’s not without its own nuggets of gold. Firstly it starts with a little kid taking shuriken right to the face which I would say sets the tone for how mean spirited it would get and certainly doesn’t let up, but is juxtaposed with the sheer hilarity of Sho Kosugi vs the Village People in a very R rated fight scene. 

Despite being a starring vehicle for Sho I would actually say 9 year old Kane Kosugi comes off as the bigger star doing all his own fight scenes and stunt work in the film having fights with schoolyard bullies, big henchmen and an team switching blonde bimbo. He’d grow up to have an epic show down with Scott Adkins in a ninja movie of all things but I would consider him very under utilised.

The movies entertainment value fluctuates depending on whether a fight is happening on screen or not but I’ll definitely give it big ups for dedicating its third act to a big showdown between good ninja and bad ninja and managing to get the right balance of actually brilliant fight choreography and ridiculous nonsensical ninja bullshit, including the villainous ninja having presumably taken hours to set up dummies of himself all over the location prior to the climactic fight.

Surprisingly From Hell is probably the definitive Hollywood take on Jack the Ripper, it needs a fair amount of squinting but it does do a pretty ok job condensing the real events into a two hour film. Even when divorced from historical accuracy it’s actually a beautifully stylish American Giallo. 

It’s just unfortunately a fucking terrible adaptation of one of Alan Moore’s greatest works. So while I really do enjoy it and watch it every few years I can’t ever really embrace it because Moore’s graphic novels is one of my favourite pieces of literature I’ve ever read. I hope one day someone decides to tackle the comic for a TV miniseries but until then I would probably recommend David Fincher’s Zodiac as a more true to the spirit of the comic’s examination of a time and place and the obsessive rabbit holes investigators fall into.

But that shouldn’t matter to the film and on its own accord it’s a gorgeous film. Its capturing of Victorian era London, with blood red skies, towering gothic architecture and urban blight makes it feel like seeing what 1800’s Gotham City would look like in live action.

The ing cast is full of unique looking people who would look right at home in the time period although Depp and Graham don’t quite fit in. It’s not like their accents are egregious or anything but they and Grahams weird ass dye job stick out.

Despite being 2 hours I think it probably feels like it’s too short. Not even because it’s an adaptation of a behemoth of a book but it’s definitely covering too much ground with the killings, the Masonic conspiracy, the cops investigating and the how the presence of the Ripper is causing class and racial tensions to boil over. I feel like even some of the deleted scenes in the special edition DVD I’ve owned since 2003 would’ve massively helped by being reinserted.

One day there’ll be a great Hollywood production of the Jack the Ripper murders, or a proper TV miniseries of From Hell but for now I’m pretty content to keep revisiting this every few years to get my Ripper fix.

2010 Restoration:

My first time seeing this, my first viewing of the film was the 2001 cut which ran 20 minutes shorter. I think I watched it in 2005 so it’s been 20 years and thousands of beers so I can’t place the differences. I feel like either the garden for the rich kids or the interlude with the Tower of Babel might’ve not been present in the 2001 edition. 

In any case it still slaps and it’s got the juice as I’m sure Fritz Lang would be happy to hear and totally understand what I’m talking about. It’s still ambitious and for a movie of this magnitude takes these large and wild swings that even by today’s standards are pretty far out there. I can’t think of anyone maximalist and insane enough to stop their film half way to inset a flashback of the biblical Tower of Babel being constructed to create a visual metaphor for working class slavery under capitalism at this budget level outside of George Miller, the Wachowskis and Zack Snyder. Given Metropolis initially polarising reaction and reappraisal over the decades those directors are pretty apt comparisons.

It’s still so visually striking, the world of Metroplis such an overpowering and haunting place. It’s a fascinating place to explore, with its towering grey high rises, industrial Hell scapes and the straight up gothic horror of Rotwangs lab. 

I can’t speak on performances in a silent film since I’ve only seen like… five of them? But it sticks out to me that Alfred Abel feels like a guy who could have stepped onto this set from 2025, he doesn’t feel like a silent film over actor at all. Brigitte Helm is as mesmerising to behold in 2025 as she was to the hordes of horny rich guys sweating bullets to her dance routine.

For such a revolutionary and influential film I kind of love that it’s chosen one trope is simply the film asking for workers to get a union delegate. It might be quaint but it’s pretty damn spot on.

Prefacing this with my enjoyment of the film being hampered by an obnoxious row of irritating fuckwits behind me who didn’t shut the fuck up throughout the whole movie. 

But it’s a testament to the movie despite how shit the experience was I was able to really see the brilliance unfolding in front of me. I believe this is a film that will be discussed and dissected for all eternity and it’s definitely a movie with a lot to say. I made a joke about the film being about how Bluesky was once a haven for people to be able to enjoy the arts they loved without being hounded by racists and Nazis, only for someone to let in the white liberals who ended up ruining everything. 

That may not be too far off however, the KKK are present in the periphery of the film but they’re not the vampires that attack the juke t, those vampires are actually pretty all in on their worldview not being evil at all. They want to homogenise the Black (and Asian) culture they’re consuming and create a monoculture mush that doesn’t have a real identity or humanity.

The movie definitely feels like an event, it takes a good solid hour to create the world and characters that inhabit it. Some extremely effective film making even helps establish minor characters that factor into the storytelling while not necessarily being involved in the film directly. It also helps do an amazing job of capturing every inter character relationship and inform why they’d make whatever choice they do.

Ryan Coogler’s decision to shoot it in a certain way has paid dividends as it really creates an amazing sense of geography. Not to mention the use of 70mm and the 1930’s period setting combine to create a very classical feeling film like it’s David Lean’s From Dusk Till Dawn. 

Michael B. Jordan is undoubtedly going to go down in history as a proper S tier megastar. Everything about his presence and charisma and his obvious mind for the arts is astronomical. To think this is only off the back of the Creed trilogy and Black Panther, so this is merely the beginning of his journey and he’s only going to achieve more amazing heights. His remake of The Thomas Crown Affair will also be yet another banger I’m there for it.

Ryan Coogler too, his journey is kind of paralleling Christopher Nolan’s as this guy who is directing these commercially mega successful films while doing it by uncompromisingly being himself. It’s kind of a shame that while Nolan had free rein on Batman he’s stuck in the confines of the MCU with CIA apologia and PS2 cut scene final fights. There’s a stylistic and thematically beautiful scene that happens before the vampire carnage that will go down as a legendary moment in cinema and I think it’s the exact moment in history we’ll look back on Ryan Coogler becoming the Titan of film making he’s destined to be.

I suppose now that I'm an adult with kids, bills and a job with huge responsibilities I should probably have watched a Robert Altman movie that isn't Popeye. The Player's as good a place to start as any for people like me who aren't completely across his filmography, it's ostensibly a blackmail thriller-comedy but it's more of a meta peak behind the Hollywood curtain.

On one hand in the cold light of 2025 this just feels like the characters are reading film twitter posts out loud, the curtain has been drawn wide open for a long time now. On the other goes to show Altman was being pretty upfront about everything as this 1992 release feels like it could be an episode of The Studio. I generally hate movies about movies because it's a world full of pretentious and smug people and spending two hours with them isn't for me.

I very happy to have properly now experienced that Robert Altman naturalistic style, conversations become very chaotic and real and it can go from intentionally hard to follow mumbling to sudden bursts of iconic quotes.

My favourite bit I would say is the subplot with Habeus Corpus, a very pretentious sounding drama that's pitched by a douchey writer played by Richard E. Grant who wants it bleak, with zero star power about a woman who is wrongfully executed. The pay off being we see a screening of the film the woman is played by Julia Roberts and then all of a sudden motherfuckin' Bruce Willis shows up and starts blasting the gas chamber with a shotgun to rescue her and the writer now thinks it's a brilliant ending.

It sums up how far deep in the rabbit hole of Hollywood bullshit these people are and how many potential classics are affected by this layer of artifice in between the people making them. Not Habeus Corpus of course, every movie is made better with a shotgun toting Bruce Willis.

Watched on Thursday April 24, 2025.

Sheer PM entertainment cheesetastic madness, this is a movie that opens up by recreating a real life bank heist from 1997 and somehow it comes off as an even more coked out recreation of the opening of Predator 2. It's a shame these movies barely even have any kind of cult status because the sheer volume and quality of both the fight and especially vehicle stunt work puts a lot of todays movies to shame.

This is fairly historically significant for a movie that I'm only the 600th person to log onto Letterboxd, the consistent and amazing vehicular stunt work on this film was spearheaded by Spiro Razatos who is the... driving (eh? eh comrades?) force behind a lot of the stunt work for the Fast & The Furious franchise and the MCU today, meanwhile the fights are done by Chad Stahelski who has revolutionised screen fighting. We even get a brief fight between Gary Daniels and Chad Stahelski which to action nerds would carry a lot of significance.

There's not much else to talk about this film beyond the action, it's so fucking action packed that the revenge plot of the movie doesn't even start until like an hour in and then there's only 30 minutes of movie left. But that's what made PM Entertainment special. It's a shame Gary Daniels wasn't able to transition into bigger films or even do a TV show once this era of DTV shlock got taken over by money launderers.

I'd completely forgotten how quickly this followed after Land of the Dead came out, it probably doesn't help that I rewatch Land on occasion but I found this one exceptionally dull. In my younger days I used to find Day of the Dead boring, but I grew to love that one, whereas checking out Diary again all these years later doesn't do much for me at all. 

I absolutely respect George A. Romero for sticking to his guns and going back to a nuts and bolts indie production after the size of Land even if I preferred the former and I appreciated what he wanted to say about current youtube era voyeurism, with film nerds even keeping the camera rolling at their own detriment. 

I kind of love that instead of getting a bunch of film students the cast is filled out with Canadian character actors I recognise from pretty much every SyFy show I've watched and then randomly one side character is Tatiana Maslany. I feel like the film would've been much worse off with inexperienced school kids even if it would've been more authentic to Romero's vision. 

Ultimately the film just isn't very interesting, it's 90 minutes but I was pretty bored again throughout the runtime, there's some moments where Romero's humour creeps in and I think it needed way more of it. There's a great satirical gag where an actress who was making a bad horror movie at the start of the film starts doing the whole thing where she runs away, trips, her shirt rips open, all the usual stuff while very slowly being chased by a zombie which had me laughing because instead of being scary she's getting irritated no one is helping her but again, the film doesn't do enough with the commodification of digital film making.

Mrs Doubtfire is 2 hours of the camera sitting on Robin Williams as he pulls the most ridiculous comedic scenes out of his ass while dressed as an elderly English woman and it's a testament to his legendary skill that it's heralded as a comedy classic. Probably the thing that impresses me most about the situation is that it aged pretty well and it's still funny as fuck.

I was pretty exhausted so I definitely felt the 2 hour plus runtime, I don't think the movie needed to be that long as it's such a good film to unwind with but then again every scene holds up well and is funny so I couldn't say there's anything superfluous.

I kind of love that the "step father" character isn't really a bad guy, he's a bit smarmy because he's a millionaire and while he doesn't like kids, he's pretty upfront about wanting to be a good father figure to the three children. He's more of an antagonist because it's a story told through Williams POV, I know I'd probably want to murder some guy who would presumably take my kids away no matter how mild mannered he was, I can't act worth a shit so I wouldn't have the luxury of doing a Mrs Doubtfire. Ending on the divorce going ahead but everyone ensuring to the right thing by their kids instead of putting their resentment first is pretty healthy and a good note.

Yet another 2000’s studio comedy that holds up really well. It captures the style of comedy of the era and got a lot of good belly laughs out of me. Everything with Jim Carrey and his sons had me absolutely howling, it’s genuinely great racial humour without being racist. 

The movie as a whole does a good job I think of skirting the fine line of good taste and then jumping over that line at the exact right time. There’s some great gags that made me laugh like an idiot like Carreys sons making a bet about shoving an egg up a guys ass and the reveal of what happened instead. The dildo reveal is another one. 

Carrey puts his overacting best into the dual roles of Charlie and Hank. The fact that Charlie is very easily likeable while Hanks a fucking dick who is entertaining to watch it a great testament to Carreys comedy chops. 

This is a definite upper tier Farrelly Brothers comedy to me. It doesn’t reach the masterpiece heights of Dumb & Dumber but it’s a pretty good effort. I don’t think I’ve actually seen anything of theirs they made after this outside of Dumb & Dumber To which I hated but from my understanding this might’ve been their last comedy classic.

I think this holds up pretty well given the absolute dearth of this kind of comedy these days. They’re generally confined to streaming and aimed at the twitter generation so the humour is quite different. This was a real quick attempt to cash in on the success of The Hangover and does pretty well in capturing their own version of that cast’s dynamic, I’d even go as far as to say Rob Corddry is a much funnier chaotic weirdo than Zach Gallifianakis’ Allan in those films.

It’s definitely very dated in a lot of its humour being so misogynistic and homophobic. I get that the brunt of it is Corddry’s character who is acknowledged by the film as an asshole for behaving like that and the more strait laced characters do often call him out on it.

As a kind of love letter to the 80’s it’s great because the 80’s are just there for aesthetics mostly, it doesn’t get caught up in the blind reverence aimed at the entitled Gen Xers who have now made Bluesky uninhabitable as other stuff like this might. 

I like that they managed to get some 80’s staples like John Cusack, Chevy Chase and Crispin Glover without just having them play the hits. Cusack holds the cast together well as the straight man, Chase is in and out as the kooky repair man and Glover has a very iconic recurring gag.

Pretty good comedy overall, nothing that revolutionised the genre but I would take in an instant if they brought back this kind of comedy.

Despite having seen the sequel multiple times, there's nothing that could've actually prepared me for how unpredictable and intense this movie would be. If it wasn't just logistically impossible I'd have sworn that William Friedkin just shoved Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider into the NYPD while there was a major drug deal going down and just filmed the chaos. It was just fucking unyielding for its entire runtime.

This is one of the all time great New York movies, it captures the gloomy helplessness of the place in the 70's every bit as well as Taxi Driver. It feels filthy and cold and everyone looks like they don't have much in the way of a hopeful future.

Hackman and Scheider are an absolutely electric duo, they're a pair of gruff hard edged assholes, Scheider is the more normal one of the two, but he puts no effort into reigning in what a fucking nutcase Hackman's Popeye Doyle is. Despite being one of the early iterations of the psychotic rogue cop archetype, Friedkin doesn't glamourise it in the slightest, Doyle fucks up a lot, he's responsible for the death of a cop by the time the film starts and the film ends on a huge down note because of how reckless he is.

I'm so over the moon with this movie, I loved it, absolutely loved it. But right now Sorcerer still remains my favourite Friedkin t with French Connection sitting in a close runner up alongside The Exorcist, To Live & Die in LA and Cruising. The sequel is a good movie, but having seen this now, perhaps a little unnecessary. I actually think that watching it helped this movie catch me off guard, whereas perhaps my expectations going in might've been much higher otherwise is kind of amazing.

Not as awful a movie as its reputation suggests, but hardly the level of movie that belongs alongside the previous handful of De Palma movies like Carlito’s Way, Mission Impossible and yes Snake Eyes. I do like that it functions as a solid dry run for the likes of Prometheus, Interstellar and The Martian although again not of a level of those five star films.

I seeing this in cinemas in fairly close proximity to Red Planet, I think that one is way more fun but this is an overall way more well crafted film. So they’re both pretty even to me. I think honestly this might be the only De Palma movie that doesn’t feel like a masterclass in film pacing, it definitely drags a little instead of prepping the audiences for adventure or finding a more interesting way to introduce the characters it just dumps us in the middle of a barbecue with every major character that takes way too long get going.

But of course even in a lesser De Palma there’s plenty of superbly crafted thrills. A sandstorm that wipes out a chunk of the early cast with a huge reveal that I’d forgotten is a good way to recover from the tedium of the first act and then the main characters having to evacuate their doomed ship and find a way to land on Mars is fantastic too, especially since id semi forgotten it takes out a major cast member (the actor getting a pretty low listing in the opening credits half reminded me).

It doesn’t quite hit as hard as something like Prometheus or Arrival when it comes to recreating the secrets of the universe, perhaps because I rewatch the former all the time but also because it teases a much more interesting epilogue than the ending we’re left with.

Overall a pretty interesting curio but one that’s been done much better since.

One of those films where I can respect as a towering cinematic accomplishment while still feeling how dated it is on certain aspects as a 70 year old film that itself was set decades prior. I definitely liked it more than I didn’t but a lot of it left a sour taste in my mouth. 

I’m not sure if there’s intended to be some kind of Taming of the Shrew deal here because I couldn’t really read it that way. Maureen O’Hara’s character switches between fiery and no nonsense, refusing to take undue bullshit to being a misery inducing fucking asshole at the slightest provocation , which the film seems to agree she needs to chill the fuck out it spends its entire second half “fixing” her by way of fucking domestic abuse. It’s simply not something I can let slide as of the time. 

But I think I’m over simplifying something that is definitely presented in a much more complex manner in the film, O’Hara ties her identity into material worth as ingrained to her by hundreds of year of Irish tradition. But I just simply can’t reconcile myself from the cold light of 2025.

The rest of the film i can say is definitely just colossal in its visual beauty and storytelling. Despite on the surface being a romantic comedy, the real meat of the film is in how John Wayne’s character yearns for the rose tinted innocence of his childhood memories having been consumed by the guilt of his recent past. 

I suppose then falling head over heels in love with Maureen O’Hara’s character and pushing him to once again have to hurt someone is fate’s way of not allowing him to escape the consequences of his past actions. The fact that this theme is able to be given a resonant conclusion by way of a ridiculous They Live style comedic brawl which includes a ZAZ style repetitive gag where Wayne and Vic McLaglen have increasingly large buckets of water thrown on them until Wayne gets dunked by something the size of a horse trough.

John Ford and Winton C. Hotch do something absolutely amazing with their presentation of the idyllic Irish countryside. Extreme care is taken in every single frame to paint it as an almost paradisal alien world, the lush greens having such a calming effect to suit the peace Wayne’s character desperately seeks. How the light and camera capture Maureen O’Hara is something to behold, a beauty that’s mesmerising. A shot of Wayne holding O’Hara in the midst of the dilapidated ruins of his ancestral home as a heavy wind storm blows might be one of the most striking images ever caught on film.

Maybe the film has the advantage of me never having seen the 1955 original, or perhaps the that I’ve only seen a certain amount of Coen brother films but I genuinely don’t get the hate, this movie is good! Yeah it’s probably a little beneath their unending and unique abilities but I like this movie and it hasn’t fallen at all in my estimation.

It’s anchored well by Tom Hanks doing a dry run for his more deranged turns in Cloud Atlas, his Professor Dorr is almost a man out of time, feeling like someone who comes from the time of his favourite author Edgar Allan Poe, between the super deep South baptist community feeling like it’s still in the 1960’s and both JK Simmons and Tzi Ma’s characters dressing like they’re from a Rudyard Kipling novel I keep forgetting it’s set in contemporary times until Marlon Wayans shows up as the inside man for the heist.

The fun is watching all these extremely disparate characters interact under the unique lens of a Coen Brothers story so each of them have a very deliberate way of speaking and it makes for some very odd and very funny scenes. The Black and Asian of the crew have very stereotypical roles but they’re done well at least, I won’t claim to say I’d have watched these guys in a riff on the Oceans films but constantly botching heists or whatever but for the runtime of the film I enjoy their company.

Irma Hall gets to react against all these morons as a very devout Christian widow and she handles the straight woman role brilliantly. She’s so good it makes it entirely fine these fuckwits completely botch everything and get away with nothing.

One of the great comedies that stands up 20 years later and on repeat viewings. I think the key is both the random stupidity of the film isn’t at the expense of the audience’s intelligence and the fact it could work as a straight up sports movie if they stripped away all the overtly comedic elements.

It’s a breezy, fun as fuck and super quick movie that’s pretty consistent on the laughs. It’s a shame director Rawson Marshall Thurber is now a streaming slop hack making boring and sauceless action movies when his comedy chops are so damn good. I would even call the dodgeball sequences more thrilling than anything stupid shit in Red Notice.

The cast are all pitch perfect in their characters, there’s a good assortment of straight men, dumbasses, one liner deliverers, assholes and losers. Any given comedy beat has a good variety of different comedy archetypes it doesn’t wear out it’s repetitive gags of dodgeballs hitting people in the face and nuts either thanks to some great sound design and selling from the cast.

Sam Mendes second film is an excellent classical gangster film, it’s surprisingly way more simple than I ed it but it’s so superbly crafted that I’m always surprised when the film starts going into its final act, I keep expecting the story to take on a larger scale but it instead wraps everything up brilliantly.

Calling it simple is not a derogatory criticism in any way shape or form. Simple is great when it’s being done with the immaculate and high level craftsmanship, obviously it’s a gorgeous looking movie but Mendes direction and the performances imbue the film with so much humanity. It takes great care in letting the central relationship be meaningful and the characters sympathetic.

It’s a story about fatherhood and being a son, the film shows that Hanks’ mob enforcer Michael Sullivan doesn’t truly become a father until he takes his son Michael Jr with him on the run. The added layer of tragedy is that this situation was avoidable but Paul Newman was a father who acted out of unconditional love to protect his son at great cost and it finally boiled over into the events of the film. 

Conrad Hall’s cinematography makes the film incredibly immersive and adds a timeless quality to the film like it could’ve been made alongside The Godfather or Once Upon a Time in America. He can be proud of this as a final effort, I believe he even broke down in tears in his final day of shooting because he believed he’d finally gotten his perfect shot with Newman late in the film. He was right.

This is a hard movie to talk about considering the subject matter, which is fucking hilarious considering it’s a stupid comedy starring Johnny Knoxville and not fucking Mysterious Skin or Shoah. 

It certainly walks a very thin line between ableism and sincere representation. It never makes people with disability the subject of ridicule which is great and there’s a few genuinely solid laughs to be had at the expense of the neurotypical/able bodied characters.

Despite being questionable as absolute fuck it does come and go pretty quickly and doesn’t drag. Knoxville does a good job pretending to have a disability without it being mean spirited and keeps a level of sympathy to his character.

I think casting Brian Cox as Knoxvilles shady uncle who comes up with the idea to fix the special olympics is a master stroke because he’s one of the best actors ever and he keeps a good balance, while also having played so many loveable scumbags that there’s a familiarity in place.

So overall it’s a good comedy, one thats inoffensive as it can be given the subject matter but at the same time because it’s playing things so safe it also kind of just evaporates from the conscious pretty much once the credits roll. Maybe they should’ve just made a film with a different subject matter where they could get mean and nasty instead, or at least something that can skewer subjects that actually deserve it.

The Good German had the potential to hit like crack back when it was coming out, I was around 18 or so and was hitting the part in my cinephile journey where I was going through the 40’s classics like Citizen Kane, Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon and Rififi so hearing Steven Soderbergh was making a throwback with George Clooney had me hyped.

It doesn’t entirely work, it definitely feels more like an exercise in style. The plot is fine but nothing overly involving, if it had been released in the 1940’s it probably wouldve come and gone and at most be sitting on Tubi right now. Then again I suppose that’s what’s happened to this film.

It doesn’t help that there’s no central relationship, Cate Blanchett is a pitch black stone cold WWII survivor who is impossible to read leaving Clooney to carry the film as a character. Tobey Maguire does have a small role as an absolutely scummy piece of shit and he’s clearly having a really fun time but he leaves the film after 20 minutes or so.

Overall it does get more right than wrong, I still think it’s a good movie and an overall worthwhile attempt. I would be thrilled if Soderbergh wanted to try this again especially with something akin to Black Bag. He’d be my first and foremost choice to try and make an authentic Orson Welles/Michael Curtiz movie.

I went into this relatively blind not expecting at all what an uncomfortable experience it was. I was expecting something more akin to a period drama presumably dealing with the War of the Roses or something and got a an extremely heavy and daunting gothic horror movie.

Sean Connery keeps things as light as he can on his end, treating his role as a Franciscan era Sherlock Holmes, which I imagine was also intentional in the source text as he's from Baskerville and at one point says "It's elementary" to his sidekick. But despite Connery and the central mystery and the killer's motive being overall rather Dan Brown-ish it's a pretty gruelling film.

Jean-Jaques Annaud certainly put the production design, cinematography and art direction teams through the ringer to create this monastery that could very well double for an interior somewhere in hell itself. It's claustrophobic, dirty, without any sense of internal geography by design making it feel like a never ending trap, it;s also a visual masterclass with every part of the frame looking like a lavish Caravaggio painting.

Another part of the generally unpleasant vibes of the film is how miserable and gross the ing cast all are, the movie takes every effort to make them look hideous and unhygienic. By comparison there's a young actor named Urs Althaus, a Swiss born Black man, with a clean as hell fade and perfect white teeth, who at the time was a GQ model as well and just an overall very sexy man who stuck out which I found amusing but unfortunately the poor bastard is the first on screen victim so I couldn't distract myself from the misery by pretending he was a time traveller from 1994 south central LA.

I watched this movie with my mates as it had been ed on Dailymotion, but I would love to revisit it with a proper crisp transfer as I can imagine I haven't gotten the full experience of the film's visual detail. It's a story with a lot of moving parts that warrant further exploration beyond the central mystery. Despite how arduous it is, I would very much watch it again.

A Working Man definitely falls short of the awesomeness of Jason Statham and David Ayer's first collaboration The Beekeeper, it feels more like a Statham t from the 2010's before he started working with top tier A list talent behind the camera and major studios. So that is to say it's still pretty good, but it could've used another in the editing suite as it doesn't have the propulsion that The Beekeeper does.

Part of me thinks this was made out of Statham's obligation to Stallone with Ayer in tow because he wanted another solid commercial hit to ensure himself in the good graces of Hollywood. Not to keep harping on the differences with The Beekeeper, but Russian mob human trafficking is a pretty dime a dozen action movie story whereas the former struck a pretty raw nerve with the frustrations people have in today's world.

But all that aside it's a good meat and potatoes Statham actioner with Ayer's aesthetic helping give it a little extra pizzazz. This is based off a novel by famed Batman writer Chuck Dixon and I can't help but see the resemblance to that early 90's era Gotham City, neon lights barely concealing the urban decay and a fucking moon that looks like its about to collide with the Earth.

The various mobs and gangs Statham has to cut through all practically resemble Batman villains, including one mobster, a short guy with a top hat and a cigarette holder is 100% the Penguin, for anyone curious to see what Jason Statham vs Oswald Cobblepot would look like this movie answers it.

One thing I would like from the next Statham and Ayer collaboration because there's no way they're just finishing at two is a stronger central antagonist. Both films do the thing where they set up a badass who looks like he's going to give the Stath a hard time only to get massacred pretty handily. Give Statham his own Paulie Van Hoven.

I can’t believe how good we had it in 1998 that this movie came and went as a disposable thriller. It’s a shame because today this would be an oasis in a barren desert not dissimilar to how refreshing Black Bag proved to be. But I’m happy to report I’ve always been a fan of this film and can’t help but get sucked into its mystery every time.

It’s a single location Rashomon story anchored by a coked out corrupt cop played by Nic Cage in full Cage form. Brian De Palma is doing his thing brilliantly here, his mastery of the camera and playing with the capabilities of surveillance and technology both in their limitations and their over reach to find the truth.

Nic Cage gets to go through the ringer here, as a dirty cop who thinks the case he finds himself on will make him, as it goes along it becomes something of a redemption story and that if he is to solve it, justice will come at a severe personal cost.

De Palma’s direction is absolute magic, a great opening 20 minute fake oner that throws insane amounts of information and then gets retold from multiple perspectives. It’s an amazing feat that would require some insane mastery to pull off but that’s the kind of shit De Palma could crank out on an off day.

This holds up as such fun fucking movie, it’s an absolute high school classic for my generation, it had a bunch of 13 year olds describing what their perfect Eleanor car would be. 

It has all the ingredients of a fun 2000’s Bruckheimer Touchstone Pictures collaboration, charming, likeable characters with great camaraderie and quotable actually funny dialogue instead of Whedonistic sarcasm and plenty of action.

Dominic Sena does a good job capturing the Tony Scott/Michael Bay aesthetic of heavily saturated oranges, blues and greens while also keeping the camera work a little more toned down. Sena certainly doesn’t have their sauce as a year later he’d try to do this again with Swordfish and squat fuck it and even this I wouldn’t really put on par with Armageddon or Enemy of the State.

I’m not a car guy but I love how cinematic cars can be and I’m glad this doesn’t get caught up in jerking itself off over car parts like some of the Fast & Furious movies do. In fact I’d put this a million times better than the first Fast & Furious movie and out of the two it’s definitely this one id make a 10 film saga. Hell even my boys Hobbs and Shaw would be much better foils for Nic fucking Cage.

Speaking of the best actor to ever do it, this isn’t one of his most iconic roles, Memphis is mostly just the straight man but Cage gets a couple of eccentricities to not make the protagonist overly bland. I definitely would’ve watched the further adventures of Memphis Raines (and the whole crew really). 

Christopher Eccelston doesn’t make for much of a villain, he’s just a generic bad guy with a British accent. Given the fact that the crew overall probably had too many characters and so a lot of them don’t get much to do I’d have sent Vinnie Jones over to the villain side lay on his well spoken eloquent bruiser shtick to add some flavour to the villainy.

A pretty... ok... debut for the Spierig Brothers who would go onto much bigger and better things with their follow up efforts. I liking this much more when I first saw it, but it hasn't much held up to a repeat viewing but it's still a fairly charming little film. This might be one of the rare occasions were Aussie humour mostly doesn't feel so cringe when it's on screen but there is a few moments especially with the cops where it's pretty annoying.

The film mixes really good practical effects with awful CGI worse than current era MCU but it's aided by the Z movie vibe it's trying to go for. There's some very blatant influences here Sam Raimi, George A Romero, Don Coscarrelli are a few and it's kind of student filmy, but thankfully the Spierigs are able to implement those way smoother in their future films and become really capable hands I was able to become a fan of. Sometimes a bit of trial and error goes a long way.

I never liked this movie as a kid, but lately it seems to have achieved some kind of reappraisal. I can’t see what people like about it, I still think it sucks. Charles Grodin and especially Martin Short give it their all but I don’t think the material works.

Fair fucks to them for trying by having 40 year old Martin Short play a 10 year old boy and making no attempt to conceal his age, that’s brilliant. But his shtick just gets too draining towards the second half, it feels like they want to go from Dennis the Menace to something much darker but never actually pull the trigger so I’m just left with watching an annoying little shit.

For me this kind of story was done a lot better in Step Brothers, especially since they had more license to get more mean spirited and not as irritating.

The Thin Red Line is such a hard film to write about, it’s not really enough to go into the film as a meditation on how destructive the world’s war mongering civilisations are in comparison to the beauty of the natural world. That nature is only destructive to beget more beauty in the world while these people are killing each other over a stretch of land whose strategic usefulness in a war is rendered dubious at best when considering the higher up who chooses to try and take it is clearly losing control of his mental faculties.

As to be expected with Terrence Malick it’s a very soulful film and everyone in the film, American or Japanese (or Greek in Elias Koteas’ case) is imbued with tremendous humanity. The permanent and destructive act of killing someone is treated by most characters as something contrary to the beautiful world surrounding them although it also shows how easily these people become desensitised to killing despite their better natures. 

This movie has one of the all time great casts and I’d be overjoyed at seeing more of the footage that features larger roles for Adrien Brody, John Travolta and George Clooney among others. 

The scenery porn is as good as I ed it’s almost always a shame the guns start going off and that’s something I never say about movies. The mind blowing thing is Malick just sees this shit on the day and decides to point his camera that way while in any given moment there’s several high tier actors doing their thing.

Unstoppable, not to be confused with the far superior final film of the GOAT Tony Scott (and I think maybe a dodgy DTV movie with Wesley Snipes but my memory is hazy), is a very solid sports drama the kind that’s been done a million times before and since the release of this there’s probably a million more on the way soon.

Not that I’m complaining or anything, I enjoyed myself with the film and I feel like it did its job. In a film full of motivational speeches and people overcoming hardship and the odds it’s good that the performances were all really well done. 

JLo did a fantastic job playing a real person and with out it feeling like glamorous celebrity playing a facsimile of a normal person, she was clearly very committed and crafted an incredibly sympathetic character. 

Jharrel Jerome’s star continues to rise, going from the kid sidekick in Mr Mercedes to his daunting and no doubt punishing roles in When They See Us and now Unstoppable. 

There’s a nice cadre of actors fleshing out the other major roles, Michael Pena and Don Cheadle both play coaches who help Jerome on his journey and it’s nice to see Cheadle in a real movie again. This is the first non marvel t I think I’ve seen him in since Flight. 

Bobby Cannavale plays an absolute fucking piece of shit and I hope that guy is dead in real life. Mykelti Williamson gets a nice small role as Jerome’s likeable boss and I’m glad Artists Equity continue to give these fat paydays to guys who have fallen by the wayside.

At a shade over two hours the film does drag a fair bit but ultimately this being a true story, the information being presented is needed and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hooked during the third act.

This is the directorial debut of famed and prolific editor William Goldenberg, he certainly knows to keep the movie moving and the wrestling sequences were really good, especially in showing various ways Jerome’s character has to wrestle with one leg. But there’s definitely a sense that it’s a film made by an editor, in that it’s almost shot like a daytime TV movie with very basic and static cinematography.

A great film, but one that I fully haven't gotten my head around after a single viewing. What it did do however was really speak to me as someone who lived in Greece for a few years in the early 90's and really put in perspective the isolation of someone who was a bit of an outsider being a kid who was born in Australia, to see the lives of these people in 80's Berlin which in some shots is virtually indistinguishable from the places in Greece I spent time in with a similar isolation really hit me pretty hard.

The way this portrays the angels non judgmentally watching over everyone, without much in the way of context as to the hows and whys of their existence (Unless I'm mistaken there's no reference to God or heaven or anything like that), is actually incredibly captivating. Even without the romantic through line of Damiel's desire to become human and fall in love with Marion the trapeze artist, it's just so captivating.

But of course the romance is beautiful and moving, there's something absolutely awesome about the main angel being in this 80's Nick Cave concert with this glamour that's he's head over heels for, but it's Bruno Ganz going from looking like angel Johnny Cash to a dorky middle aged man. There's a subplot with Peter Falk playing himself that added a very warm presence and texture to an already heartfelt film, I did not expect them to go where they did with that but I loved it.

This is my first Wim Wenders t and I'm glad I've broken that threshold in my life, I'm not at all in a bad place, but there's a value this film has for the smallest, loneliest people that's truly uplifting and almost like a conversation he had with my that I never knew I needed.

Peter Pan still holds a sense of that classical Disney animation magic and sense of adventure with real stakes and an emotional core about coming to with adolescence. It’s not subtle about it but considering it’s a kids movie it’s not supposed to be.

I hadn’t seen this in 30 odd years and didn’t it beat for beat, on Disney Plus there’s a warning about dated cultural depictions which I brushed off as probably Captain Hook smoking durries or something and certainly not the depiction of indigenous Americans in the movie which made my jaw drop on the floor. There’s just no defending it, surely even by 1953 this was not on.

Thankfully other aspects make that section of the film easier to swallow. Captain Hook and Shmee are all timer Disney villains, Hook is the straight up kind of asshole villain that still shows up in action movies today.

The animation doesn’t reach the heights of other stuff from the Nine Old Men days, my daughter has been watching these religiously and this is the first time I’ve had a chance to sit down with her since she was in her Little Mermaid obsession, but the bits and bobs I’ve been catching from Snow White and Cinderella especially have been pretty mind blowing. Still, it’s a fun adventure film and it looks gorgeous in its own right.

I always vibe with Broken Lizards brand of comedy, I don’t know why since the weed guys I know IRL are all the biggest and most unfunny losers on the planet, but these guys managed to translate their sense of humour into movies that don’t really have mass appeal but manage to get me every time.

Club Dread does a really good job skewering 80’s slasher movies while still making sure to play out like a pretty good 80’s slasher movie. It plays on the misogynistic tropes of both slasher and sex comedies from the time but treats its female leads very well.

Bill Paxton tags in for Brian Cox as the highly regarded actor who plays the troupe’s authority figure and he’s clearly having the time of his life. I’ll always consider Bill one of the great losses when it comes to celebrities ing before their time. 

Jay Chandreshakhar actually does a damn good job with the horror elements, I realise now that what maybe elevates Broken Lizard comedies is that they’re actually solid entries in the genre they’re skewering. I can’t say there any particularly effective scares but there’s some good horror movie gore and the film actually does a good job keeping the killer and their motives unpredictable until the end.

The Darjeeling Limited is Wes Anderson's wonderful way of calling for siblings to come together in the face of parental neglect. It's a very sweet natured story that wants it's characters to thrive and be better, done in Anderon's usual idiosyncratic way. Going on a spiritual journey to move on from their past, it shows that it's ok to ruminate on things from the past, maybe that's the best way to get closure and letting go.

The film is super quick but makes for a great hang out time and the characters are easy people to spend time with and definitely very subdued with the Andersonisms that one might associate with his films. They have their faults but they genuinely want to be better even if they don't know it. Adrien Brody stands out as the most "normal" one of the brothers, there's a certain sad aspect to his journey near the end that hits hard given his wife is expecting their first child.

Given it's quick runtime the film only actually spends about half it's runtime on the titular train and I probably could've spent the whole time in there, Anderson makes brilliant use of the small space in his usual very picturesque style and excellent ability to place actors inside those frames.

Black Bag was my first Soderbergh t in a cinema since Logan Lucky and it feels like finding an oasis in a desert. This is a cool, slick companion piece to Haywire (just picture Fassbender somehow survived and took on a more investigative position) and dare I say exponentially better than an already great spy film without any of the action. 

The story is very clever and as only Soderbergh can deftly answers all the questions he sets up at the start of the film. Its extremely short runtime means the film doesn’t have time to meander or set up too many red herrings, it’s very procedural in how Fassbender does his job while having to avoid getting himself in trouble because he needs to investigate his wife as discreetly as possible. 

It’s a tight and engaging mystery about finding a traitor within a spy agency with the central hook setting it apart from other similar films being that the primary suspect is the protagonists wife. This makes the movie a Reacher style power fantasy but exclusively for wife guys, like me. 

The movie takes a lot of pride in how hard it refutes the typical spy concept of having to fuck their brains out for king and country. Fassbender and Blanchett are absolutely committed to each other and it’s such a unique spin, there’s never any temptation otherwise despite being played off against each other they never once act without putting the others well-being first. 

In point of fact the first thing we learn about Fassbender’s character is how much he detests cheaters and there’s a hilarious visual metaphor when he starts to have doubts about his wife’s innocence.

I hope this should satiate the desire for Michael Fassbender to play James Bond, but to me it actually did a great job giving me a teaser showing me Fass as Grant Morrison’s 70’s spy style Bruce Wayne, black turtleneck and all. Despite both having very restrained and dry performances the chemistry between Fassbender and Blanchett is amazing and hot. 

It also does well as a sneak peak at what Pierce Brosnans Bond would be like 20 years into a stint as M. Rege-Jean Page gives a very movie star performance and there’s no way he doesn’t explode sooner than later. Tom Burke played a completely different role than he did as Praetorian Jack so I was very surprised he could be such a bitch ass. 

I’m always happy to see Naomie Harris in something and it’s nice that she gets to play a role that’s a complete subversion of her role as Moneypenny. Having similar jobs of keeping spies in check while doing it in a much more morally complex manner. 

This is instantly one of my top level Soderbergh ts and one I’ll definitely come back to a fair amount. It’s breezy and fun and such a great movie for married couples that I already can’t wait to show it to my wife.

Tony Scott’s take on time travel is somehow also his version of Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo and in all honesty way fucking better too. Both movies deal with a cop who becomes obsessed with the beauty of a victim and are confronted with seeing her alive in the second half of the film. 

The difference is Hitchcock made it weird and gross whereas Tony Scott infused his massive dick energy and made it cool and awesome. The movie gets a little bogged down with technical exposition but Tony being the fucking GOAT that he is gets Paula Pattons inherent beauty to do a lot of heavy lifting to make the emotional core of the movie work.

Denzel is great here as always, I love that for this silly Scott/Bruckheimer time travel movie he definitely took time crafting his character and making ATF Agent Doug Carlin feel like a very meticulous high caliber investigator whose probably solved a lot of high profile cases.

On the flip side there’s also Jim Caviezel as a psychotic ultra right wing fucknut domestic terrorist. I suppose they didn’t even tell him they were filming and just followed him around with a camera. 

I love, love how this movie treats its time travel. A close friend of mine once described it as akin to editing a movie and I can absolutely see it, with the characters looking into the past (recorded footage) and being able to manipulate the image how they want.

This would be Scott’s third last film and it’s nice he managed to get one last genuinely really damn good collaboration in with both Jerry Bruckheimer and Val Kilmer in before we’d lose him.

This was clearly intended to fill the void left behind by Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes films but somewhere along the line (definitely including the script stage given who wrote it) they forgot to add any sauce into the recipe and so this bland and forgettable movie got made. 

Its biggest sin isn’t the Max Landis-isms one would expect to see in something like this, it’s definitely not a millennial redditor jacking off to how well he’s read through TV Tropes, it’s just that it’s so fucking boring. It’s not Victor Frankenstein and Igor on some Victorian (or Edwardian?) era steampunk adventure it’s just a really uninteresting stripped down version of Shelley’s story without anything to actually say.

There’s actually a chance they have to do something with the story and make it something of a grand tragedy but it’s kind of brushed over at the end and the monster only has like 3 minutes of screen time.

There’s a different antagonist in Andrew Scott’s police inspector but he doesn’t make much of an impression and it’s a waste of his talents.

James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe are really good in their roles, I wish they’d been given good material to work with. There’s a scene of McAvoys Frankenstein fixing Radcliffe’s Igor’s hunch back that’s funny in a gross out way and the movie sets up Igor as being able to picture medical problems as drawings seen in medical publications at the time which it doesn’t do near enough with.

The rest of the movie is just an exercise in attempting to launch a franchise I guess? I don’t know if that was the intent but this whole thing feels like a TV pilot more than a movie.

I have to appreciate the absolute balls and skills of Steven Soderbergh to remake an Andrei Tarkovsky film slash its 3 hour runtime by half, make it way easier to follow and still manage to do a pretty damn great job. 

Soderbergh makes sure to curate every frame to an inch of its life, the entire film is brilliantly shot and conveys the very internalised emotional turmoil of the characters extremely well. It’s an extremely understated film but I’m never bored at all, I’m positive I’ve watched this a lot of times but last night I’ve realised it’s been since before 2012 since I last saw it because the space station orbiting Solaris is called the Prometheus and I jumped out of my couch.

It’s a small, quiet film that really ruminates on dealing with loss, guilt and finding some personal redemption, it’s really straight forward stuff and not as dense and impenetrable as I imagine the Tarkovsky film is but it’s genuinely well done human drama. 

The four central performances are great, George Clooney is fucking fantastic in these darker more pensive roles which he doesn’t do quite as often. Natascha McElhone ads a very unique otherworldly quality with her intense features which helps the nature of the role. I’ve only seen her in Ronin and Solaris when it comes to leading roles and she’s really stuck out to me as an excellent actress based off those two films alone.

Viola Davis has an almost Alien movie presence here as the pragmatic and hard edged scientist trying not to lose herself in the battle between the hard facts and Solaris emotionally placating people. Jeremy Davies gives a very oddball performance that wouldn’t usually be in this tone of film but it helps create a sense of unreality. 

I’m very happy to have revisited this again but fuck me this desperately needs a current gen home video release.

Unless I’m wrong Tango & Cash was the final theatrical release of the 1980’s and I think it does an amazing job bringing the decade to a close from an action movie standpoint, it’s such a quintessentially 80’s cheesefest, complete with violence, stupid one liners, an awesome Harold Faltemeyer score and gratuitous nudity. 

Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell is one of the all time heavy duty buddy pairings and probably as good as any two action movie legends to team up and bring the 80’s to a close. They’re a fucking great team too, both are bringing 1000 megawatt star power tothe film and they’re genuinely so electric they have better sexual chemistry than actual romantic couples. 

It might be forgotten in the pantheon of 80’s buddy cop movies obviously 48 Hours and Lethal Weapon are the go to, but I think its influence is being strongly felt. To me Hobbs and Shaw feel like the modern extension of Tango and Cash, Shaw is more posh while Hobbs is the cowboy lawman who bangs the other’s sister. 

But much more everlasting that i don’t think gets brought up enough is how much this forms Michael Bay’s DNA. The toxic masculinity feeding into an unbreakable brotherly bond between two sociopathic macho assholes and just generally how blasé the movie is tonally while still being cut fast as hell and over the top. 

I loved the 80’s, it’s my favourite decade from a pop culture standpoint, which sucks because I share that view with some very sad miopic and entitled Gen Xers who want their childhoods encased in amber and have to violently react to their IP slop showing any semblance of evolution. 

They don’t make them like Empire Strikes Back anymore and that’s perfectly fine because the Star Wars prequels needed to revolutionise digital cinema and VFX push forward, Empire’s not going anywhere. They don’t make them like Aliens anymore and that’s fine because Prometheus needed to tackle man’s relationship with mortality and religion. I’m sure Christopher Reeve’s Superman and Michael Keaton’s Batman would’ve made for a great team up but it would not have been a 3 hour epic that takes the mythic resonance of these characters and litigates them in an America ruled by Lex Luthors.

And again, the 80’s aren’t going anywhere there’s an entire decade worth of iconography that will live on forever nothing can take it away. We should just collectively take comfort knowing it ended on Sylvester Stallone and Kurt Russell giving each other a ridiculous high five one a cheesy as fuck freeze frame while the most 80’s synth Feltemeyer score played and that’s exactly how it should’ve ended.

Lethal Weapon may have perfected the formula of the buddy cop action film but because 48 Hours beat them to the punch by about 5 years it has its own unique energy that isn’t really been replicated to this day. 

Even the comedy has a hard and sinister edge to it. There’s the infamous scene of Eddie Murphy pretending to be a cop in a redneck bar and instead of the obvious humour it feels like something raw and angry. The comedic interplay between Nick Nolte and Murphy isn’t cutesy or charming either, Nolte is a deliberate piece of shit to Murphy throughout the film and only softens up on him because they get in a drunken brawl.

Walter Hill shoots it in his gorgeously gritty 80’s style, there’s a night time neon noir look that he achieves which doesn’t feel like it’s over powering the scene, the neon lights act as background colour to give the frame a comic book vibe. Of course he’s no stranger to hard edged and very bloody shoot outs either.

It’s no surprise this movie launched Eddie Murphy’s career, there’s nothing here to suggest this is Murphy’s first time in film. Theres not a hint of greenness to him and despite being 22 feels like the Eddie Murphy who would be a huge star years later.

• Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
• Black Bag
• Sinners
• Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning
• The ant²
• A Working Man
• The Monkey
• Flight Risk

Inspired by Dillon H.'s list (letterboxd.sitesdebloques.org/007filmreviwer/list/director-zack-snyder-ranked/#comment-
I will update and complete the list as I go along. The man has long been one of the upper tier of mine, he has the chance to become my all time favourite. He's a gigantic nerd, and a weeb, but also one of the true humanists of cinema.

I avoid having short films on my Letterboxd, but Snow Steam Iron is amazing. You should be able to find it on youtube. www.youtube.com/watch?v=eta6duszRLc

May 2025 Update: Rebel Moon is the directors cuts.

• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
• Watchmen
• Man of Steel
• Zack Snyder's Justice League
• 300
• Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver
• Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire
• Army of the Dead
• Sucker Punch
• Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole

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

• Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
• The Empire Strikes Back
• Star Wars
• Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace
• Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
• Return of the Jedi
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
• Star Wars: The Last Jedi
• Solo: A Star Wars Story
• Star Wars: The Force Awakens

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

Two Part Films

• Back to the Future Part II
• Back to the Future Part III
• The Matrix Reloaded
• The Matrix Revolutions
• Kill Bill: Vol. 1
• Kill Bill: Vol. 2
• Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
• Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
• Che: Part One
• Che: Part Two

...plus 32 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Terminator 2 twice.
Predator twice.

• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• The Crow
• Terminator 2: Judgment Day
• Akira
• Highlander
• The Outsiders
• Excalibur
• Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
• Casablanca
• Thelma & Louise

...plus 22 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Carlito's Way
• Conan the Barbarian
• Crimson Peak
• Demolition Man
• Dune
• The Good, the Bad, the Weird
• The Lighthouse
• Major Dundee
• El Mariachi
• Desperado

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

• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
• Star Wars
• Army of Thieves
• Army of the Dead
• Prey
• Predator 2
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
• Mad Max: Fury Road

• Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Saving Private Ryan
• Schindler's List
• Munich
• Catch Me If You Can
• Jurassic Park
• Jaws
• The Adventures of Tintin
• Ready Player One

...plus 13 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

• Blade Runner

  2019

• Blade Runner: Black Out 2022

  2022

• Blade Runner: Black Lotus
• 2036: Nexus Dawn

  2036

• 2048: Nowhere to Run

  2048

• Blade Runner 2049

  2049

• Prometheus

  2093 - 2094

• Alien: Covenant

  2104

• Alien

  2122

• Alien: Romulus

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

• Snatch
• Wrath of Man
• Guy Ritchie's The Covenant
• Sherlock Holmes
• Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows
• The Gentlemen
• The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
• Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
• King Arthur: Legend of the Sword
• The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

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

1. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
2. The Incredible Hulk
3. Iron Man 3
4. Thor: Ragnarok
5. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever
6. Guardians of the Galaxy
7. Moon Knight
8. Black Panther
9. Doctor Strange
10. Loki

...plus 11 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

This decade so far has been home to some excellent large budget major studio films that feel as though every single dollar of their budget is on screen. Seamlessly integrated CGI used to enhance the world and scope instead of feeling like a perfunctory crutch because there’s an obligation to be a tent pole, but still fused with lots of old school film making techniques.

The stories given length and breathing room, used by the film makers to give us some perspective on a great many things about our own world, environmental issues, aging, unity against adversity, fate, corporate overreach. Some of these are true stories made in the way these kinds of movies would get made in the 50’s, 60’s or 70’s from the likes of David Lean. World building done to enhance the texture of the space the characters on screen inhabit, to give them a real and palpable history, rather than just to set up an endless serving of slop for the content pipeline. 

Most importantly these all feel entirely film maker driven. Most of these are indeed franchise or IP films, but the creators where allowed to put their heart and soul into them, and every crew member put every fibre of their talent into the film.

Notes:

Zack Snyder's Justice League has a lot of wonky and unfinished VFX, but I was happy to let it make the cut because of the exigent circumstances.

Ridley Scott's The Last Duel was close to making this list, but I decided against it, despite how lavish it is with a $100 million budget, it's ultimately a very small scale story.

Much to my surprise Marvel almost made it on the list twice with Eternals and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, I quite liked both, but there's some obvious Fiege and Iger influence that hobbles them. Both are worth a shot.

• Tenet
• Zack Snyder's Justice League
• Dune
• No Time to Die
• The Matrix Resurrections
• The Batman
• The Northman
• Top Gun: Maverick
• Avatar: The Way of Water
• John Wick: Chapter 4

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

• The Creator
• John Wick: Chapter 4
• Godzilla Minus One
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
• The Killer
• Oppenheimer
• Guy Ritchie's The Covenant
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
• Creed III

...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Gimmie suggestions below

• Lethal Weapon
• Die Hard
• Die Hard 2
• Batman Returns
• The Long Kiss Goodnight
• Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
• Krampus
• Fatman
• Silent Night

1. 2001: A Space Odyssey
2. The Abyss
3. Ad Astra
4. Ali
5. Alien
6. Aliens
7. Avatar
8. Avatar: The Way of Water
9. Batman
10. Batman: Mask of the Phantasm

...plus 87 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

First time viewings of movies released before 2000 this year.

• Wild at Heart
• Easy Rider
• The Man from Snowy River
• Presumed Innocent
• The Deep
• The Searchers
• Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
• The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
• Child's Play
• Stagecoach

...plus 44 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

A 10 film saga which tells Joseph Campbells Hero’s Journey through three generations of family , the father Anakin, his son Kal El and his grandson Neo.

• Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace
• Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
• Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith
• Man of Steel
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
• Zack Snyder's Justice League
• The Matrix
• The Matrix Reloaded
• The Matrix Revolutions
• The Matrix Resurrections

Michael Bay is awesome. If you disagree you have no soul.

• The Rock
• Pain & Gain
• 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
• Ambulance
• Bad Boys II
• Armageddon
• Bad Boys
• Transformers: The Last Knight
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon
• 6 Underground

...plus 5 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

1. Blade II
2. Hellboy
3. Hellboy II: The Golden Army
4. Pan's Labyrinth
5. The Shape of Water
6. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
7. The Devil's Backbone
8. Nightmare Alley
9. Cronos
10. Mimic

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

In preperation for Daddy Matt Reeves.

• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

  Ultimate Edition

• Batman Returns
• Batman
• Joker
• Zack Snyder's Justice League
• The Batman
• Batman Begins
• The Dark Knight Rises
• The Dark Knight
• Batman Forever

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

• Predator
• Prey
• Predator 2
• Predators
• The Predator

Ridley Scott is without a doubt my favourite director. As of this writing, before the release of All the Money in The World, he's made 25 films (Including the aforementioned), I've seen 22 of them and liked them all to varying degrees. He's probably the director with the most films I'd give 5 stars on his resume. I'll update this list as I clock them into Letterboxd.

• Blade Runner
• Alien
• Kingdom of Heaven
• Prometheus
• The Last Duel
• Alien: Covenant
• Hannibal
• Legend
• House of Gucci
• Thelma & Louise

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

• Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)
• Da 5 Bloods
• The Invisible Man
• The Way Back
• The Gentlemen
• Wonder Woman 1984
• Tenet
• Underwater
• Bad Boys for Life

Sucks I had to update this list for the final time. RIP the superior Marvel cinematic universe.

• Logan
• X-Men: Days of Future Past
• X-Men: First Class
• Deadpool 2
• The Wolverine
• Deadpool
• X2
• X-Men
• X-Men: Apocalypse
• The New Mutants

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

• The Conjuring
• The Conjuring 2
• Annabelle: Creation
• Annabelle Comes Home
• The Nun
• The Curse of La Llorona
• Annabelle

Very roughly ranked. 4 star movies and above.

• Ad Astra
• The Irishman
• Joker
• John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum
• Doctor Sleep
• Color Out of Space
• Godzilla: King of the Monsters
• It Chapter Two
• Angel Has Fallen
• Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood

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

• Mandy
• First Man
• Creed II
• Deadpool 2
• Mission: Impossible – Fallout
• Bird Box
• Ready Player One
• Upgrade
• Hotel Artemis
• Den of Thieves

...plus 66 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

inspired by the year long controversy surrounding the fuckery done to Justice League, here's a list of recent films I've been made aware are victims of studio fuckery, but I'm also aware there's a workable superior cut that can be released. So there's movies like say Trank's Fantastic Four and Assassin's Creed where I was never able to get the info on which *could* be victims of butchery, but I simply don't have a concrete idea.

• Sucker Punch

  There's still an even longer, more cohesive version of the film on shelves.

• Suicide Squad

  An entirely different cut exists that by all s is a legitimately decent film.

• Silence

  Missing 90 minutes of footage.

• Live by Night

  Was a 3 hour plus film originally.

• Justice League

  Duh. Fuck Joss Whedon and Geoff Johns.

• The Predator

  This movie was nerfed hard by reshoots and editing room hackery.

• Venom

  The original cut was an R rated body horror movie.

• Aquaman

  Apparently it's missing a solid 20 minutes or so of footage. Hopefully we get it on the blu ray.

Fuck Joss Whedon.

• Alien³
• Iron Man 3
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice