Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Pickpocket 1959

  ★★★★ Watched 28 Feb 2025

  Extraordinary and bracing existentialist tour de force that must have felt like an almighty punch in the face back in 1959. Yes, it's cinematically breathtaking - the pickpocketing sequencing are pure fluid cinema! -
  but it's also astonishingly nihilistic save a final note of humanity.

  Critics may not enjoy having so little emotion to latch onto, but with its brisk 75 minute running time, don't worry about that - just enjoy the ride. No one makes 'em like Bresson.

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  Grand Theft Hamlet 2024

  ★★★½ Watched 22 Feb 2025

  A simple conceit rather beautifully realised as two out-of-work actor friends grapple with unemployment during Covid and end up trying to stage Hamlet within the confines of GTA. I was not expecting it to be as moving and as sad as it is about loneliness and human connection and that, for me, was the film's great strength.

  It's a shaggy and occasionally rambling affair as they embark on their quest to pull together a ramshackle crew to pull of this…

Popular reviews

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  In Flames 2023

  ★★★½ Watched 03 Jun 2024

  Clever, beautifully made arthouse Pakistani feminist fable exploring male violence and the straitjacket of female life in a deeply patriarchal society. It's not a horror film per se but uses the tropes of the genre really effectively - unseen noises, the faces of the dead, the general sense of dread and claustrophobia.

  Held together by a breakout performance by Ramesha Nawal, the narratives starts off in pretty standard territory, but it slowly morphs into something more impressionistic and disturbing. I…

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  Timestalker 2024

  ★★★½ Watched 12 Oct 2024

  Alice Lowe is a great thing for the cinematic universe and the UK film industry, so I'd been looking forward to this. It didn't disappoint but it didn't quite win me over fully either.

  Lowe is a charmingly stubborn performer who loves to play deluded characters and she carries the film and its obvious budgetary limitations with great gusto, along with an excellent supporting cast. Less successful is a script that needed a few more genuine laughs and a tighter…