Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Blood Simple 1984

  ★★★★ Rewatched 16 Mar 2025

  I'm not sure I've seen a film with quite so much use of Chekhov's gun. The Coen Brothers first feature - and also Frances Mcdormand's - has a low budget vibe. But already showing the Coen's signature combination of dark humour and suspenseful action.

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  Mickey 17 2025

  ★★ Watched 11 Mar 2025

  While his films in Korean show great finesse, and subtle humour into which the social commentary is skillfully woven, I am sorry to say that his latest creation is quite the opposite. Crass, clumsy, inconsequential. Displaying the same exaggerated, forced 'comedy' that marred Okja (but here it isn't just a mild irritation on an otherwise charming film - it dominates. Bludgeoning us into submission). From Ruffalo's superficial quasi-Trump impersonation, to the gratuitously expletive dialogue, through Robert Pattinson's anaemic double lead.…

Popular reviews

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  Red Joan 2018

  ★★ Watched 29 Apr 2019

  As ever, Judi Dench steals the show. A shame she was given so little opportunity to do so in a film that is really just a stringing together of historical flashbacks. It may have the attention to detail of a BBC period drama, but sacrifices depth for a superficial melange of mawkish romance and pseudo-docudrama. While the young characters in the past are too busy making hormone-filled eyes at one another to bring any real feeling of engagement, it is left to the present-day elderly lady (Dench) to inject any sense of danger and passion into the story.

  I give this film D2.

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  Casshern 2004

  ★★★★ Watched 17 Jan 2021

  I had a perfectly written review for this, but Letterboxd crashed and I lost it. But anyway, in summary, Casshern is incomprehensible, but aesthetically astounding. A crazed visual tour of art history, from Renaissance to manga, Final Fantasy and countless heavy metal album covers. In fact it often feels more like a music video, in which at any moment you expect them to burst into song. But they never do. If it had anything close to an inteligible plot, it would be utterly brilliant. As it is, it is a beautiful, wild, confusing ride.

  D4*

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