Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  The Brutalist 2024

  ★★½ Watched 28 Feb 2025

  It has its moments, but there is something immediately and irritatingly artificial about the whole endeavour. It never quite reaches the human, preferring instead to make broad strokes to get its message(s) across. Maybe the best work I've seen Felicity Jones do. The soundtrack is dreadful — unrepentantly maudlin.

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  The Mortal Storm 1940

  ★★★★ Watched 19 Feb 2025

  Sure, the dialogue is somewhat clumsy, loaded — it is a propaganda film after all — but there is real heart here. Borzage and Edwin B. Willis, the designer for The Wizard of Oz, have a wonderful eye for set design that elevates the gorgeous photography.

  I'll admit to welling up a little and the struggle shown here, the micropolitics of a sleepy alps town in the descent of fascism and the everyday courage and conviction to stand against that,…

Popular reviews

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  The Souvenir 2019

  ★ Watched 13 Nov 2019

  Truly insufferable. The Souviener isn't just the most boring movie of the year but potentially the most pretentious and out of touch.

  An upper-class study, displaying all the ignorance of rich Tory scum, wearing its privilege on its sleeve and doing nothing to really challenge or explore that within a wider context. Filmmaker and characters are living in another world.

  I'm not entirely sure who this film is made for, but it certainly isn't me.

  Didn't finish. Really bad. 🤷‍♂️

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  The Club 2015

  ★★★★ Watched 01 Mar 2017

  Pablo Larrain just doesn't give a fuck. The Club is an angry and pessimistic piece of work, unrelenting in its condemnation of abuse and corruption within the Catholic church. It's bold and it's fucking brilliant.

  The clubhouse is essentially a retirement home for 'condemned' priests, a place where the church can send their sinners to ensure that knowledge of their crimes is hidden from the public. There are a number of these clubs, these houses, where once holy men go…