Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Tetsuo: The Iron Man 1989

  ★★★★ Rewatched 27 Feb 2025

  First time I saw it, thought it was amazing but hard to fully grasp. Filled with awe at the spectacle, imagination, craziness, relentless of it. Second time it feels grosser, I see more evil dead influence, more grotesquery, repulsiveness, more of the DIY ethos in the budget, which just makes the nastiness more repellent, but there's also a thread about a sad lonely monster struggling with his new body in there too. Less strange than first thought, more of a…

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  Tetsuo II: Body Hammer 1992

  ★★★ Watched 23 Feb 2025

  not as special as the first one. something got lost in the move from no budget to low budget. still crazy, just less shocking or visceral as it got a bit slicker. some genuinely impressive effects, and surprisingly emotional sequences, but a lot of bonkers wtf stuff in between that was entertaining and never got boring, but somehow never had much impact either. braindead mayhem can be fun, but this just seemed like a shlocky low budget 90s sci fi. for a film this wordless, it could do with more emotional heft in the narrative.

Popular reviews

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  Treading Water 2024

  ★★★★ Watched 12 Oct 2024

  one of the best british films ive seen in the last few years. and one of the best films about OCD, that treats it seriously, and not as something silly or something that everyone apparently has. yes its not happy and uplifting, it can be desperately sad/tragic, but its not misery porn, or rigidly, pornographically gritty, its british social realism done as it should be. there is still humour here, there is romance, there is light, warmth, even amongst all…

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  Tokyo Pop 1988

  ★★½ Watched 14 Apr 2024

  a case for restorations to be made a more democratic process as i am not sure anyone was dying for this to find a new audience. an easy watch, it has some cool footage of 80s tokyo, some too short footage of some genuinely cool bands at the time, and a few half interesting things to say about being a fish out of water (that 80s sub genre), about being a gaijin in japan (and about a gaijins difficulty being…

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