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Now that is how you open a movie!!! Now that is how you finish a movie!!! Now that is how you movie!!!!!
I am in awe of Jackie Chan. There’s some people who were just born to do what they do, the absolute best in their field; I’m talking Michael Phelps, Lionel Messi, Tiger Woods etc. My examples are all athletes because that lends itself more to objectivity than art does, but not when it comes to Jackie Chan because he is the absolute zenith of this style of cinema. He has mastered the perfect marriage of action and comedy, a physical performer so in a league of his own he sures even Chaplin and Keaton. I have always loved Jackie Chan, his films were a staple in my house growing up, and I’ve always been in love with his fight sequences. Not enough can be said about the physicality and the humour, with his perfect use of props, but I’m not sure he gets enough credit for how real he makes it all feel. The blows in a Jackie Chan fight scene, despite the iconic exaggerated sound effects, really feel like they’re landing, the kicks, the punches, the flips, the slams. A huge part of that is because so much of it is real, the stunt choreography in Police Story is mind-blowing, no film has ever featured more panes of smashed glass than this. Real dedicated artists put their bodies on the line for entertainment and we’ve never given them enough credit for that, never is that more evident than in the blooper reels of these films, which essentially end up being a montage of Jackie Chan being carted off to hospital or Jackie Chan coming across as the most goofy, charming guy ever.
Police Story is a perfect action-comedy, with big set pieces that left me mouth agape, genuine laugh-out-loud gags, and a surprising amount of moments that go beyond with something to say about bureaucracy and the state of the law, featuring a touching final message that sometimes police brutality is okay.
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I am quite frustrated at my inability to love Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters because I cannot understand what is keeping this distance from me and the film. A visually stunning piece of art, Mishima takes every complaint I have against biopics and their insufferably boring and repetitive formula, subverts them, and tells a perfect story of a man’s life, his art, and their collision into an explosion that lights up the sky for an instant before disappearing.
But no matter how much I respect the beautiful visuals, the set design and incredible score, the fascinating way Paul Schrader structured and told his story of Yukio Mishima, something didn’t quite click with me on this first viewing, and I’m not sure the heinous hayfever attack I had halfway through is entirely to blame. This feeling of distance between me and Mishima demands a rewatch, either to explain it or to remove it. I hope it removes it because I want to love this film and I can’t put my finger on why I didn’t.
Raw as hell. Never has a film better understood the cinematic language of blood and the startling image of red upon white.
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Listen I didn’t watch this entire thing, I just caught a bit of it whilst my mum had it on in the front room, but I needed to get out of my system how asssssss the little of it I saw is. I cannot watch these films anymore, this stuff just sucks.
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Just fucking gutting. There’s something so confronting about that first time we ever see Laura Palmer alive, a tracking shot of her walking down the street, sun shining, on her way to school. What a terribly tragic film about a terribly tragic character. David Lynch will forever be missed.
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Oh to be Tony Leung running a toy aeroplane across my hot girlfriend’s naked body.
I thought I handled break ups badly, but I’ve never reached the point where I’m talking to a giant Garfield telling him he’s let himself go. I’ve also never swooned before in my life until I saw Tony Leung in his little outfit leaning against the wall ready to ask Faye out. This might be a Tony Leung review. He gets 10/10. I love you Wong Kar-Wai. I might just fall in love with this movie upon a rewatch.
There’s nothing more beautiful than the sky upon the horizon in a Michael Mann film.
After a certain amount of films watched, in my experience anyway, it becomes more difficult to pick favourites, and especially hard to change them. La La Land has been my favourite film ever since I got into film and I don’t think that has changed. Ryan Gosling was my favourite actor, however in the last year or so, many Jimmy Stewart films later, I’ve started to consider him my favourite. But I’ve never really had a favourite director. I’d have probably said Denis Villenueve or Damian Chazelle if you’d asked me a couple years ago, but just last week I found myself ruminating on who I would currently say is my favourite. I tend to go through phases instead, certain filmmakers catch my attention when I’m in the mood for what they offer and I’ll become obsessed with a few of their movies and then the cycle will repeat. I’m also never sure if I’ve seen enough of a director’s filmography to actually consider them my favourite. Can David Lynch be my favourite director if I’ve only seen 4 David Lynch films? Can Kurosawa, when I’ve only seen 3 of his and I don't even love Seven Samurai? Of course, this is all just me overthinking it and your favourite can be whoever you feel like and no one else really cares that much anyway. But I care. And if you asked me right now, in this very moment, I’d struggle to answer with another name than Michael Mann. It isn’t just that his films haven’t missed with me yet. It isn’t just because the credits for Manhunter are still playing on my tv screen. It’s because his films seem to tap into a feeling I understand in my soul that I’ve never been able to put into words. Mann puts images to this inexplicable aching feeling, that is captured in looks across the rolling waves of the sea, or in the feeling of standing on a balcony in the open breeze, or staring out of a window as it is splattered with rain.
These images, along with the gorgeous hues of the skyline, the darkness of city streets illuminated by neon, and Mann’s impeccable Dude’s Rock music choices, just understand this part of me that I myself do not. I belong to these films and to a community of people who also feel this loneliness, that I’m not sure is of the individual but of people in general. I don’t know, I just love Michael Mann’s movies and, until someone else comes along and sets me off on a new obsession, this is my guy.
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The way Tramell Tillman says ‘oh’ when Ethan tells him the decompression chamber was never part of his plan.
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James Spader you kinky little freak, it’s such a shame that you went bald. You looked amazing in those jeans too x
A film that did not feel like it belonged to the 80s at all. As it began, I originally thought Sex, Lies, and Videotape was about one sexually repressed person surrounded by multiple people free and comfortable with sex, but as it went on I realised it’s really a film about four people with a broken relationship to sex and sexual expression. Probably one of the most accurately titled films ever too, it really is just sex, lies, and videotapes.
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THIS SHOULD’VE BEEN MEEEE!!!!!
It’s crazy how beautiful cinema can be, the way that two young, horny Mexican teenagers celebrating being cum brothers is able to bring such a genuine smile to my face and warmth to my heart. An ode to the fleeting nature of youth and its relationship to sex, adventure, and friendship, but also a love letter to Mexico, or more accurately the people of Mexico and the land itself, Y Tu Mamá También is a beautiful and honest coming of age road trip movie and I cannot believe Hollywood producers watched it and decided Alfonso Cuarón was the right man to direct the next Harry Potter film. And they were right.
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Never subscribed to any of the criticisms around recent Wes Anderson work, but feels like they’re all appropriate here. Obviously looks great and is quite funny, plus I think any film which features a basketball scene with Bryan Cranston & Tom Hanks is worth a watch, but yeah, a real lack of heart and anything or anyone to latch onto here. Constant stream of lines and gags that wash over you.
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A flawed masterpiece is still a masterpiece. None of you understand what Ethan Hunt means to me. None of you.
The first hour or so of this movie is sloppy as all hell, a nostalgia clip-show franchise circlejerk of exposition that did almost have me getting a little worried for my favourite film series. But the thing is, I trusted Ethan Hunt one last time. And thank fuck I did because everything in the back half of this film is some of the best that the Mission: Impossible franchise has to offer. Final Reckoning features two of the most insane set pieces not just in the series but in all of action cinema, with a finale so mind-meltingly insane, so genuinely nail-bitingly tense and stupid that it is downright ludicrous and left me swearing that I hate Tom Cruise in the car ride home for putting me through it.
Seemingly the final two entries in Cruise’s defining role, the Reckoning saga is a bit of a Frankenstein of Covid production hell, budgetary issues, delays and rewrites and pushed back release dates and it does show in both films. Killing Ilsa Foust might be the worse decision in the franchise, with her absence only highlighting how I feel next to nothing for the litany of characters introduced or brought back across the final two films. So many elements and emotions the story tries so hard to push to the forefront do not work at all, yet I am so deeply connected to the films’ central protagonist that I do not care. It’s fascinating how Ethan Hunt was morphed and changed from an action spy hero to the physical manifestation of destiny across the latter half of the M:I films, becoming less a character that Tom Cruise plays and more a stand-in for Cruise himself. Our last true movie star, repeatedly giving everything he has and more for our entertainment, as Hunt gives everything he has and more to keep the world safe. I really cannot emphasise enough how fucking mental that final act is. Tom Cruise I hate you. I love you. What are you doing on that plane Tom? Get the fuck down, you are only human!
This is the greatest franchise in film and I love it with my whole heart, imperfections and all.
Fuck man, I know I’m not treading new ground here but the Needle In The Hay scene in this is hands down the best thing Wes Anderson’s ever done. And if it isn’t that, it’s when Margot arrives by way of the Green Line Bus. I fucking bawled at both.
I love pretty much everything Wes Anderson does, I love his newer releases and I don’t buy into the whole “they’re lacking heart and humanity” argument because I think they’re packed with it. But I have to it they don’t have it like Tenenbaums. I laughed, I cried, I laughed and cried again over and over. This felt a lot less like ‘Wes Anderson making a Wes Anderson film’ and more like ‘Wes Anderson making a film’. I could make an entire list of every line that made me laugh out loud in this, and an equally long list of lines that made me feel so deeply, so catastrophically. Instead, I’m just going to make a quick list of some things I loved and that stand out in my mind at 4am the morning after watching:
]]>1. That one shot where Ben Stiller is a foot shorter than everyone else.
2. “I’m sorry to hear about your mother. Terribly attractive woman.”
3. Every time Owen Wilson and Luke Wilson were in a scene together and you have to pretend that those two are not siblings.
4. Every single thing Gene Hackman does at any moment. RIP.
5. “I’ve had a rough year dad.”
6. Chas and his sons wearing matching black tracksuits to the funeral.
7. Gwyneth Paltrow’s fur coat.
A movie about how a single night with Tom Cruise will turn you into the man you always wanted to be.
I wish I was capable of just doing the single line, funny Letterboxd review more often but I just can’t for Collateral. This film fucking moved me, Michael Mann just makes films for me, I swear to god. The way he shoots city scapes, neon lights and shiny, reflective metal and glass, dark shadows against the orange hues of the horizon, I just don’t think anyone makes more beautiful films shot on digital. I love the sincerity in the music choices, absolute time capsules of the mid 2000s, so earnest and loud and gregarious, they really make me emotional. This film is an all timer purely for Tom Cruise delivering the line “Yo homie, that my briefcase?”. I fucking love Tom Cruise.
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This film must hit so much harder if you’re old. It’s kinda like A Christmas Carol but, even though everyone keeps saying he is, Scrooge actually isn’t that mean or rude or evil? Like the first 30 minutes of this film really push that Isak is a bit of a prick but, for the most part, he’s never anything but nice and sweet.
But yeah, this is a pretty great lament on aging, grief, regrets, not getting to marry your hot cousin, the universal life experiences.
All you have to do to make someone anti-Zionist is put a camera on a Zionist and let them talk
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Harry Dean Stanton has such an interesting face, he’s truly captivating to just look at in this movie. Travis has one of the most textured visages ever put to film, Stanton’s performance is layered and reserved but Travis’ pain is etched onto his weathered face and held in his eyes, which tell so much of the story.
The open roads of the Western frontier, once such a symbol of unbound possibilities and opportunity, become a man’s walk into the empty horizon, heading nowhere, unable to outrun his past and its pain.
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This review may contain spoilers.
“How can a jury disregard what it’s already heard?”
“They can’t, Lieutenant. They can’t.”
Jimmy Stewart pours a beer for a fucking dog, what more convincing do you need?
And it’s in Stewart’s casting as humble country lawyer Paul Biegler that I believe this film hides its true mastery. Throughout Anatomy Of A Murder’s 2 hr 40 runtime, we see the theatre that is the American judicial system, the performance and the pantomime, not concerned in the truth or legality of a matter, even less in the morality of it, just the ultimate aim to sway 12 people into thinking that a scenario did or did not happen in a certain way.
We see the prosecution use dirty, underhanded tactics to try manipulate the jury, we grow frustrated at their lines of questioning and angry at their tricks. And then we cheer when our protagonist… uses dirty, underhanded tactics to manipulate the jury and uses inappropriate lines of questioning and plays tricks? Stewart’s charm and his charisma, along with Biegler’s positioning as our main character, initially blind you to what’s happening. We want him to win. His client may have committed murder, but I’m sure the majority of us agree with why he did it and commend him for it. Except, we know he’s guilty. And we know that he’s lying about being insane and we know that Biegler knows that he is lying about being insane. It puts us an audience in a strange, introspective position because what is the courtroom really for? Legality? Morality? Justice? Or is it just a place for lawyers to verbally joust and shoot barbs at one another, with the ultimate aim of being told “you argued better than he did”?
Anatomy Of A Murder features a wicked sharp screenplay. The courtroom scenes are one great line after another, with a fantastic rhythm to the pacing that sees its 160 minutes fly by. All the performances do the great screenplay justice, and here’s my customary shoutout to Jimmy Stewart for being the absolute best to ever do it. There’s just something about those 50s legal dramas, Anatomy Of A Murder would make a great double feature with 12 Angry Men, throw in Anatomy Of A Fall for a bit of fun and 50 Cent, and you’ve got a great triple threat.
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Watched on Saturday April 19, 2025.
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Yeah, Sinners is an immediate classic that is going to stick with me for a long time. I’m already itching to be back in the cinema, with a packed crowd watching this thing again. I always liked Ryan Coogler’s movies but I didn’t realise he was that guy. Ryan Coogler is that guy. He’s done a good job with the Rocky IP and worked well within the confines of the MCU, but get this man a pen and let him write his own original ideas because this tense, sprawling, bloody epic is the type of thing I want to see selling out movie theatres.
Sinners is electrifying cinema, a jolt to the art form that both reminds you why you love film in the first place and reinvigorates that love. It cements the triple threat of Coogler, Ludwig Göransson, and Michael B. Jordan as three of the absolute best in their fields right now. And Miles Caton? Yeah that guy should be everywhere, a ridiculous talent. Just an awesome, awe-inspiring movie that drips with sweat, sex, blood, and the sweet, sweet blues. There is a scene that felt like a genuine moment of ascension, as if I was levitating. It’s the type of scene that draws an intake of breath that holds, before being taken away completely.
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“Do you dance?”
“I dance.”
I’m writing this review immediately after my first viewing of Miami Vice and perhaps I should wait because I know in my soul that this film is just going to get better and better in my mind the longer I sit on it, but I just have to get things out there right now because every thought is snowballing.
First of all, I didn’t know digital photography could look like that. I’m not sure that it has ever looked better than this, 19 years on. The neon hues of the sky, the melancholic blues of the ocean waves, the deep shadows and the rich colours, and the texture of every image - the texture. Blood splattered on the lens refracts the light into a kaleidoscope of red violence and I’m wondering how this was ever considered anything but a masterpiece.
Except I totally understand why. For the first 30 minutes, I was enjoying myself but I wouldn’t say I loved it and I wouldn’t say I exactly knew what was going on. This feels like an entirely individual type of cinema, with its own way of moving and breathing. Miami Vice is one of the fastest films I’ve ever watched, it zips by like a Ferrari down the I-95, supers will introduce a location and we’re immediately leaving, cut and we’re somewhere new and we’re leaving again. It takes some getting used to, you miss a line of dialogue? You’re a little confused on the plot or what was just said? Doesn’t matter. It never did. Forget about that, you can feel what Mann wants you to feel in the shots, in the composition, in the music and the thunder in the background, a storm that is always threatening to break but never does.
Miami Vice might be considered a vibes film because the plot takes a backseat to the feeling you get when two characters in a speedboat are racing off to the horizon together. It’s not about an undercover drug operation, it’s about Colin Farrell’s puppy dog eyes staring out at the ocean waves, it’s about neon lights and a city haze, it’s the wind billowing through Colin Farrell’s magnificent hair, and Naomi Harris’ hands running down Jamie Foxx’s ridiculously sculpted back. It’s starting the film in the middle of a club with Linkin Park & Jay-Z’s Numb ripping through the party, a nihilistic scream surrounded by dancing and celebration. Miami Vice reverberates with a low hum, a dull ache that echoes louder as the film goes on and crescendoes in its dichotomy of two ill-fated loves, before Sunny walks back to work, gate unchanged as if nothing ever happened. Miami Vice offers a world full of people living a life with no future, for who time is luck and time is always finite.
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My god this was fucking hot. Sleek, sexy, Soderbergh was in his (black) bag when we made this. If only my ex felt as strongly about monogamy as George & Katheryn.
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As good as documentary filmmaking can get, Hoop Dreams shows the incredible power of how a tiny camera can capture the full scope of life. A true deconstruction of The American Dream and its myth of how anyone anywhere can achieve anything with hard work and talent.
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Watched on Friday April 11, 2025.
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There are many films that become pop culture sensations, engrained in our society to the point those who haven’t even seen them understand the references. Then there are films that are so iconic you don’t even know something is a reference anymore because the film itself is burrowed deep into the subconscious of our collective psyche. And then there’s The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. The cinematic language of Sergio Leone’s magnum opus is heard in nearly every film released since. It is a monolithic pillar in the pantheon of Western cinema, and by Western I don’t mean the genre. It stands shoulder to shoulder with films like The Godfather and Citizen Kane, a near peerless example of what can be achieved when image and sound are put together.
There’s no real place to start with The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly but Ennio Moricone’s score. To put it simply - this is the greatest film score of all time. Never has a film’s music been more pivotal to the experience than in Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns. That statement includes musicals. Moricone’s music is alive, it is a character all in itself and it steals the show. The finale of this film, the best to ever be put to the silver screen, hinges on the swell of the music and those piercing trumpets as they echo through the American frontier. Ennio Moricone was one of the finest composers to ever live and this is undoubtedly his greatest work.
The eponymous trio, Clint Eastwood’s Blondie (The Good), Lee Van Cleef’s Angel Eyes (The Bad), and Eli Wallach’s Tuco (The Ugly) are a perfect encapsulation of the Dollars Trilogy’s themes and ideas. A tale of greed, violence, companionship, the blurred lines of morality, told through a race to find buried gold amongst the sprawling hills of the Old West (or Spain), amongst the backdrop of the American Civil War. A complete deconstruction of American cinema’s romanticism of cowboys and outlaws, all three leads are conniving, vindictive murderers, who backstab and betray each other every chance they get until all three are stood in a circle, guns holstered, eyes shifting left and right, fingers twitching as they reach for the Smith & Wesson. The Man with No Name is the personification of cool, Eastwood plays with him an aura so powerful even his shadow gave me goosebumps. I love Van Cleef in these movies, his sinister smile and dark eyes make him the perfect Man In Black. Eli Wallach as Tuco does much of the film’s heavy lifting however. Tuco is comedic relief that also carries much of the film’s heart, his on-again-off-again bromance with Blondie is never not dynamite, his loneliness and his greed clash to result in this ball of pure chaos amongst the ever calm Good and Bad.
This is Sergio Leone at his creative peak. The previous Dollars films were test drives, ideas to play and experiment with. It just so happens that Leone’s test drives still amount to two of the best Westerns of all time. But The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly is the Western. This is the Western personified, repurposed, repackaged, revitalised, it is an entire genre redefined in Leone’s image. Every decision made in this film is perfect. Every shot, every cut, every sound, every line, it is masterful. Quintin Tarantino himself has called this “the best-directed film of all time” and “the greatest achievement in the history of cinema”. Love him or hate him, he knows a thing or two about this kind of stuff. I don’t know that I can make an argument to disagree with him and I certainly don’t want to.
Watching The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly on the big screen tonight was a cinematic experience I will not forget. To hear that euphoric score in booming surround sound, to see that final show down projected onto a 50ft wide screen, a packed audience sat with bated breath, it is the closest possible thing to cinematic perfection. If you cannot tell, I consider this film an all time favourite and an essential piece of celluloid canon and I will cherish this viewing deeply.
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You know that feeling when you’re starting to fall in love with a movie? When you start realising this is going to become a film you revisit over and over throughout the years, loving it even more each time you do? Yeah, I had that feeling rewatching Inherent Vice tonight.
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I’m sat in the cinema writing this review in the break between my double-bill of For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly and I am beyond giddy to see Sergio Leone’s magnum opus, a film I considered one of my all time favourites the first and only time I watched it, on the big screen. Its predecessor though? Similarly spectacular.
Every introduction in this classic Western is incredible. Starting with the film’s opening shot, to the first chords of Ennio Morricone’s masterful score, Lee Van Cleef as Col. Mortimer and culminating with Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name, which had me positively giggling with excitement. The word aura had a real surge in popularity in 2024, I’m guilty in its overuse myself but Clint Eastwood? In the Dollars Trilogy? That is aura personified.
This feels like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly lite, you can see Leone putting things into place and trying and testing the waters for what he would master a year later, but perhaps that is doing this film a disservice because it stands on its own two feet as an excellent Western. It’s got everything you want, the shootings, the bandits, the outlaws, the wide shots of a duel, and the extreme close ups of holstered pistols framing an enemy in the background, twitching fingers edging ever closer. Awesome movie that gave me that certified ‘I love movies’ feeling.
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#2 of my PTA marathon before One Battle After Another and this really felt like Anderson saying “look at my 13 inch penis” but his 13 inch penis is his filmmaking. Making this at 27 years old is just ridiculous.
I’m not the first to say it, but this felt very Scorsese, bookended by very clear homages to Goodfellas and Raging Bull. The writing is very distinctly PTA though. He has a way of weaving in incredibly devastating scenes purely built through subtext, that almost come out of nowhere and disappear just as fast. Despite these scenes being fleeting, the tragedy of them lingers and leaves such lasting impressions. That is because the true mastery of Boogie Nights is that the side characters feel so alive and impactful, so fleshed out and real. Amber, Buck, Rollergirl, Jack, Reed, Scotty, Little Bill they all get so much as the camera es by in long tracking shots through the wild, coke-fuelled parties.
It’s crazy to see that Mark Wahlberg can actually act. He, along with everyone else, is really good in this movie. Julianne Moore and Phillip Seymour Hoffman (obviously) are standouts. What a world it would’ve been for Dirk Diggler to have been played by Leonardo DiCaprio though, I’m very excited to finally see the PTA & Leo team up in September.
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Before One Battle After Another releases this September, I’ve decided to fill all my gaps in Paul Thomas Anderson’s filmography. I decided to start this with perhaps his most divisive film, the 2014 adaptation of Pynchon’s Inherent Vice.
And I just fucking loved it. These past couple years, PTA has really clicked for me. From the emergence of Phantom Thread as one my all time favourites, a rewatch of Punch-Drunk Love that connected so much better than the first, and now Inherent Vice, I can finally feel like a real cinephile. I always appreciated the PTA films I’d seen, and recognised them as true masterworks, but The Master, Licorice Pizza, Punch-Drunk Love, and Phantom Thread all failed to connect with me initially. There Will Be Blood was his only film that I truly loved on my first watch, but now Inherent Vice s that list and I am so excited to watch the films of his I haven’t yet seen and to rewatch all the others that I didn’t love the first time round.
Sticking to the actual film at hand, man Inherent Vice is just such an easy watch, even at 2 and a half hours long. It doesn’t fly by, it floats by, carried along by the haze of 1970s LA and whatever fumes Doc was puffing out. Don’t get me wrong, I got a little lost, I got a little confused, but just hanging out with these characters is so much fun. Every new one that gets introduced is better than the last, Joaquin Phoenix as Doc is so fantastic, the script is hilarious. This is a true vibes movie directed by one of cinema’s masters and it just makes me so excited to watch more films, particularly PTA films. I cannot wait for One Battle After Another.
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I am so susceptible to propaganda, god damn I love that shit. I am a marketers dream, viva la revolución!
The long takes and camerawork in this film are mind blowing and that shot really is the most impressive I have ever seen in my life. Soy Cuba is worth seeing for it alone.
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Never has the seat next to me felt so empty.
Very cute, very pretty. A great one for the kids and the animal lovers.
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This guy’s life fucking sucks
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What befalls others today, may be your own fate tomorrow
A masterpiece in every sense of the word and a film that doesn’t even remotely falter in the face of insurmountable hype. Is Harakiri the greatest film of all time? It’s certainly got a case. Harakiri is the type of film you watch that reminds you exactly why you love films. I left the cinema excited about the art form, desperate to watch more and more.
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Imagine having a tough day at work and going home to find out your wife is cheating on you with Billy Ray Cyrus. And then Billy Ray Cyrus beats you up and Billy Ray Cyrus throws you out of your own home. And your wife is screaming at you to never come back and she’s stood next to Billy Ray Cyrus, who she cheated on you with. Billy Ray Cyrus. And then Billy Ray Cyrus goes on to have a daughter and Mulholland Drive inspires the creation of Hannah Montana. David Lynch you cosmic genius.
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Rewatch just solidifies this as one of my all time favourites. Awesome movie. Somehow makes me incredibly thankful to not be a woman in this world but also jealous of the bond Thelma and Louise share, which feels like it could only be between two women. It’s really powerful stuff and a beautiful film about sisterhood and liberation.
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I’ve certainly got my qualms with some of the storytelling in Cinema Paradiso but it is so charming and so heartwarming that it doesn’t quite matter by the end. I’m not sure I liked how much old Toto looked like Colin Firth though, that put me off.
Honestly, it didn’t quite hammer home on the wonder and power of cinema as much as I was led to believe, instead being more focused on the adorable relationship between a child and a projectionist, but it still does make you think about how important this beautiful and wonderful medium can be.
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Watched a lot of this in 2x speed for the dissertation, sorry. Cute.
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Watched for my dissertation. Cute, mid Pixar, I hate their human designs but they still do emotional moments real well.
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There are films that feel like an entire life on screen, i.e Malcolm X and there are slice of life films, a quick dip into a few days of some peoples’ lives. And then there’s Jeanne Dielman 23 quasi de Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles which feels like I’ve just watched an entire life onscreen in the entirety of someone’s three days. Jeanne’s quiet, lonely routine is depicted in painstaking detail by a static camera, offering an unflinching and painfully boring insight into the suffocating nature of the patriarchy and of capitalism that confronts the very question of ‘is this all there is to life?’ head on.
The composition, framing, mise en scene and editing are miraculous in Jeanne Dielman. I feel I know the inside of Jeanne’s apartment as well as my own at this point, where everything goes, what it’s for, what time of the day Jeanne is in the bathroom, in the bedroom, in the kitchen, in the living room. Shots hold for minutes as Jeanne goes about her chores, you’re lulled into her daily routine so powerfully that you snap forward the very second something changes. A window left opened, a button undone, a fork dropped, they all become cracks in reality as an entire life begins to unravel at the seams with the absurdity of living life in this way.
The power in this film is the ability to make you cry watching a lady sit still in a chair, looking ahead at nothing for minutes. The power of cinema is held in a new camera angle inside Jeanne’s tiny kitchen that made me gasp. It’s the moment I began to think how oppressive the silence in this film was exactly 2 seconds before a character asks to put the radio on. Everything in this film is by design and it’s perhaps one of the most effective films I’ve ever seen in regards to achieving every single thing it set out to. In this way, perhaps it is the greatest film ever made. I highly doubt I’ll be rewatching it though.
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Astounding how even on a 5th, 6th, 7th etc rewatch this is just as amazing as ever. Probably the best of the 2010s. Definitely the best choice for Best Picture ever. Very excited for Mickey 17 this Friday!
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Another one to add to the list of ‘films Zach watched as a teenager that he didn’t like because he was stupid’. It’s becoming quite a long list now.
Shocker, turns out every critic and every filmmaker and anyone who knows anything about films was right - Vertigo is great. I originally saw Hitchcock’s greatest when I was 17/18 and I vividly hating the second half especially, because Scottie was so unlikeable and irredeemably so. I had not yet unlocked that part of your brain that lets you know ‘main character ≠ good’, clearly. At least teenage me understood though that Scottie’s behaviour was, in fact, not good. Interestingly, for a film I first watched 7 years ago now (Jesus Christ we’re all going to die so soon), and one that I did not pay my full attention to at all, I was very struck by how much visually and tonally had stuck with me. There are films that I loved that did not stick with me after a couple days of finishing them, yet this film I hated had managed to route itself so deep in my mind with shots, music, and entire scenes being so familiar.
I think at this point calling Jimmy Stewart my favourite ‘classical film actor’ is underselling it, this guy is hands down my favourite actor of all time. I love every performance he gives and I love every film I’ve seen him in. He’s amazing in Vertigo.
So much of Vertigo is still so visible in every film since its release, it’s a pillar of the art form and it echoes throughout everything that walks in its footprints but one element I feel we’ve really lost since this golden age is making people beautiful onscreen. We have so many beautiful people in films and we always will, but we seem to have lost the ability to make them beautiful. It feels like in the last 20 years we traded in elegance and grace, mesmerising, awe inspiring beauty for being hot and being sexy. Don’t get me wrong, I like hot and sexy and there is absolutely a place for it in cinema, but can we please get more of whatever the hell Hitchcock was doing every time he put a camera on a blonde woman?
Anyway, great film, so much to say but why would anyone listen to me say it when so many smarter and better at this have said it all before a hundred times over. It is laughable how little it has to do with Vertigo though, Scottie doesn’t even have the condition - he’s just scared of heights. Me too, brother. Me too.
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A second watch pretty much confirms everything I felt on the first viewing - this is a masterpiece. I think the second half is much stronger on a rewatch too, a really devastating deconstruction of the myth of The American Dream and a damning indictment of American assimilation.
Adrien Brody, Guy Pierce, the score, cinematography and the direction are all flawless 10/10 no notes. I’m not sure 4 hours in the cinema has ever gone by faster than this viewing, honestly.
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A misogynistic, tyrannical lawman who beats bounty hunters in order to keep the peace. An old crack shot who no longer has the stomach for shooting people but will cheat on his wife. A near-sighted hotshot who dreams of being a ruthless cowboy that can’t kill without crying. A reformed killer who murdered anything that walked or crawled at one point reaching back for the bottle and for his rifle.
Who are your heroes and who are your villains?Unforgiven is a deconstruction of the Old West by the man who came to personify the Old West. Clint Eastwood tears down the myth of American heroes and gunslingers, morality decided by whoever’s at the wrong end of a barrel. Unforgiven features some of the most brutal killings in the western genre, but not through blood and gore and excitement, it’s actually rather tame in that regard, but through how unglamorous it all is. Through the grit of it all, through the grim reality of outlaws and bandits and ruthlessness as judge, jury and executioner.
I chose to watch Unforgiven tonight because Gene Hackman ed away today and he is truly exceptional in this film. Any time Lil Bill is onscreen is time you spend not blinking, hanging on every word because Gene Hackman was one of the all time greatest. In a cast of all timer’s his performance is nearly peerless.
Nearly peerless because Clint Eastwood, man. He is the Western. I have never sat up faster in my life than when William Munny took a sip of that whiskey and locked the fuck in. Very interestingly for a film that subverts its genre for so long in regards to shootouts and action and the epic cowboy face offs, the finale to Unforgiven, on the surface at least, seems to give into the trappings of its genre just a little. But the genius of Eastwood’s direction and the script is that it really isn’t some heroic stand or epic face off, it is senseless violence in a long line of senseless violence. But it is so awesome.
Unforgiven almost feels like a swan song of the Western genre, one final ride off into the sunset with the face of the entire movement laying it to rest, pistols, ponchos, cowboy hats and all.
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There is a famous Hadith which states that The Prophet Muhammad proclaimed:
A time will come in Hell when not a single man would be left in it. Its doors and windows will rattle to the blowing wind.
Pope Francis has reechoed this proclamation, saying he hopes that Hell is empty and I think it’s a beautiful sentiment. When watching No Other Land, I can’t help but disagree and hope that the fires of Hell burn twice as hot as they say, for there is real evil in this world.
The indignation of it all. The inhumanity. It is impossible to leave the theatre without a lump in your throat and a fire in your belly, a rage to see the whole system burn down. Knowing life has only gotten worse for the Palestinian people since all of this footage was filmed and I am sat watching in my cushy chair, in my fancy cinema, about to go home to my nice flat. By what right? According to the Israeli settlers and IDF soldiers, they have a legal right to bulldoze the village homes of Masafer Yatta, to force the men, women, and children out of their ancestral homes and to cast them out into nothingness. That is their legal right according to an Israeli court ruling on Palestinian land. They do not just say it is their right, you hear it in their voice and you see it on their face and that level of evil, caught in clear HD in the 21st century is quite confronting. To believe you are superior, to believe your life is worth more, to believe these living, breathing, humans are beneath you, it is horrific to watch and terrifying to see. Basel, his father, his neighbours, Yuval, these real people are a testament to the human spirit and fighting for what is right.
If you slap a man in the face every single day, do not be surprised when he punches you in yours. The atrocities in Gaza, the horrors of October 7th, the tens of thousands of lives lost in the last 18 months are unconscionable, but more importantly, are all the consequence of a settler colonial state committing genocide right in front of our eyes. Palestinians, Gazans, Hamas, citizens of the West Bank, any and all that that are branded as terrorists or dangerous by Israeli rhetoric are anything but - do not be mistaken, these are freedom fighters. These are brave, inspiring people. Those who live under tyranny and oppression will learn to hate their oppressors and those whose land it actually is will fight forever. The small ray of hope this film provides is that Israel can never win because no matter what they say it is not their land. It is the Palestinians’ homes and there is no other land they will leave for. And they will keep fighting and one day justice will prevail.
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I just got to see that shot of Winona Ryder running down the stairs on the Big Screen. Never kill yourself.
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It can often be self-aggrandising but the truth is that art really matters. Sing Sing is a testament to its therapeutic and liberating nature, art as humanity and escapism, as self expression and personal growth. The United States prison system is terrifying, rotten to the very foundations and totally antithetical to its supposed intent. The very real Rehabilitation Through the Arts program is a shining light amongst the suffocating darkness, offering real reform through love and acceptance and expression.
Absolutely astounding how badly A24 has fumbled this awards campaign because Sing Sing should be appearing everywhere. Clarence Maclin is an absolute force of nature and Colman Domingo continues to be one of the best actors working.
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Unlike most crime mysteries, The Vanishing (or Spoorloos in its native Dutch) is not interested in the who or even the why of its mystery abduction, instead enticing the audience with the what. We know pretty early on who is responsible for Saskia’s disappearance, but the film chooses to craft a narrative of obsession from the perspective of Rex, her boyfriend, and his inability to let it go and his need to know what happened.
The Vanishing is slow, quiet, and almost innocuous in its presentation for the majority of its runtime, yet all reviews are seemingly unable to describe the film without calling it chilling, or depressing, or heavy. The film’s true horror is in its restraint, in what it leaves offscreen, in what you don’t know, what you’ll never know and never see, those moments left for your imagination to run wild. We all know what happened, maybe not the grim details but the outcome and yet, just like Rex, we have this undying desire to know every little thing that might’ve happened and thus are doomed to the same fate. It’s a horrific final 10 minutes.
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“If you are truly wild at heart, you'll fight for your dreams."
I just love that the most prevailing thread through the work of one of cinema’s most esoteric auteurs is that love is all that matters.
I react to seeing Twin Peak actors turn up in David Lynch films like MCU fans do with that portal scene in Endgame. Some incredible kicks from Nicholas Cage in this film alongside absolute top tier Cage delivery. Willem Dafoe calls Nic Cage “Mr. Big Round Balls” at one point. Come on, of course I loved this movie. Really funny and really sincere without either ever compromising the other.
As if it’s been one month already, RIP David Lynch.
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I tried to write a serious review for this but no combination of any words I know can capture the feeling of actually watching it. Borderline masochistic of me to have gone alone to the cinema on the eve of Valentine’s Day but I’m still happy I did because Portrait Of A Lady On Fire is a perfect movie. Visually stunning, achingly beautiful in its subtlety, masterfully acted, exquisitely paced and any other laudatory adverb-ly directed. 2019 was one of the best years for film ever and Portrait Of A Lady On Fire just might be the best of them all.
Sophie is a top 5 Cutie Patootie of all time, Céline Sciamma was clearly still in love with Adéle Haenel when she made this, I’m still crying, Orpheus turned around because he loved Eurydice, this movie is a masterpiece.
“J’ai senti dans la solitude la liberté dont vous parliez.
Mais j’ai aussi senti que vous me manquiez”
I’ve got a cold right now, sore throat, blocked nose, the type that makes it a little difficult to breathe. That makes it all the more rude then, that Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung decided to steal my breath away every time they were on screen because they’re so fucking hot. You do not want to know what I am willing to do to be one of the cigarettes Tony Leung smokes in this movie… I’d do a lot.
A quintessential pillar of Real Yearner Cinema, In The Mood For Love tells the story of two neighbours, Mr Chow and Mrs Chan, who find out that their spouses are cheating on them with each other, and their own burgeoning relationship that is sparked by this revelation. Wong Kar-Wai’s masterpiece is more concerned with longing, however, and memories’ relationship to time and place than it is with the more salacious elements a story like that might entail. There are no grand karmic exposés, no monologues expressing the characters’ feelings, there is no sex. In fact there is not even a kiss shared. Instead, In The Mood For Love offers just a whisper atop a mountain, encased in stone and cast into eternity so as to not escape upon the breeze. Love, as it exists in this film, is in stolen glances and twitches of a finger, in ing one another on a staircase not built for two or a head rested on a shoulder. Yet it is a love so fierce and so palpable that it seeps into the frame, staining the floors and the curtains a deep red.
Perhaps the most enduring quality of In The Mood For Love is that it’s one of the most visually beautiful films ever made. Colour in film is often described as exploding off the screen, it pops out from the celluloid and into our eyes, but In The Mood For Love feels different. It is as if the colours have soaked inwards, the frames steeped in reds and blues and yellows and greens, into the very fabric of the images themselves. They are deep, vibrant and textured in a way I’m not sure I’ve seen in cinema before. It is a gorgeous movie and that extends to the way it sounds as well. The limited score is breathtaking, when the main theme plays and the slow motion hits, that is as close to cinematic sex as you can get.
The camera is an ever present, unwanted observer, peering through windows and around corners, spying on the most intimate of moments between two people who are trying to submerge their pain alongside the feelings they share for one another. The cinematography works in harmony with the masterful set design to recreate overcrowded 1960s Hong Kong. Tight hallways, packed apartments, everyone constantly framed within a frame, Mr Chow and Mrs Chan are consistently boxed in, restricted, trapped. Both of these elements, the production design and cinematography, capture this suppression and repression, both the environment and the two would-be lovers dooming their romance before it could ever begin.
Torrential rain thunders against an empty street, the dim light of a nearby lamppost illuminating the cascading droplets. Cigarette smoke slowly coiling up towards a ceiling. In The Mood For Love is not a story about an almost-affair but the memory of one. Sights, sounds, smells, taste and touch all trigger these memories we long thought cast to the sands of time. This is how our memories interact with the world around us, forever intertwined with our senses. The finite and infinite knit together into one unharmonious tapestry that is our life. There is irony then that these memories are something we can see but not touch. And everything we see is blurry and indistinct.
It is a restless moment. She has kept her head lowered, to give him a chance to come closer. But he could not, for lack of courage. She turns and walks away.
]]>1-4 feel like a decent order, the rest is a bloodbath and I don’t want to think about it
- La La Land
- Phantom Thread
- It's a Wonderful Life
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
- Taste of Cherry
- 12 Angry Men
- The Handmaiden
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- Do the Right Thing
- Whiplash
...plus 15 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>All films released in 2024 (in the UK) that I saw, ranked.
- Challengers
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- Dune: Part Two
- The Iron Claw
- The Zone of Interest
- Megalopolis
- Anora
- La Chimera
- All of Us Strangers
- Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>Official list of the greatest movies ever
]]>Subjective list of favourite (not best) films of the 2010s.
Must have been released in the US after January 1st, 2010. Only 1 film per franchise, i.e Marvel.
This was both incredibly difficult and awful to do.
I have not and never will be able to see every film that came out this decade so many deserving films may not be on here. Sorry.
- La La Land
My favourite film of all time, no other film would ever be number 1.
- The Handmaiden
One of the best screenplays in a film with a perfect score and cinematography. 2nd favourite film of all time and yet not even the best of the year.
- Parasite
An absolute masterpiece in every sense of the word and deserving of every Oscar it won. Still somehow only my second favourite Korean film...
- Whiplash
Arguably the best directorial debut of all time, somehow even topped by his second film.
- Mad Max: Fury Road
A perfect action movie.
- The Social Network
The best David Fincher film.
- Prisoners
The 2010s belong to Dennis Villenueve and in a decade of flawless films, Prisoners happens to be my favourite of his.
- Arrival
Arrival gets better and better every time I watch it and even more better every time I think about it.
- Her
Joaquin Phoenix's diversity is unparalleled. A perfect love-story and sci-fi combination.
- Paddington 2
The happiest and most wholesome film ever made without a doubt.
...plus 90 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
]]>This is a list, in order of favourite (not currently because it takes forever and I'm lazy), of every film that I saw in 2019 that I had not seen before.
I apologise for some of the controversial opinions; stupid dumb films I enjoyed will be above films considered some of the best of all time but it's my list so...
Short films will be listed at the bottom, not comparing them to feature length films but they make it a round 200.
This list took me about 5 hours to complete because I added 199 and could not find what film was missing. Thanks x
- The Handmaiden
- Portrait of a Lady on Fire
- Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father
- Marriage Story
- In Bruges
- Parasite
- Paddington 2
- Brokeback Mountain
- Inside Llewyn Davis
- Avengers: Endgame
...plus 190 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.
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