Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Anastasia 1956

  ★★★ Watched 17 Mar 2025

  Very studiobound drama with some lavish sets and not much else. Being based on an unresolved true story (as noted in the opening text) it feels hidebound by carefully treading the is-she-isn’t-she tightrope.

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  Chimes at Midnight 1965

  ★★★★ Watched 15 Mar 2025

  I might have got a bit more out of Orson Welles’ rearrangement of several Shakepeare plays if I’d been a bit more familiar with the originals but it’s good anyway. Welles and Falstaff are basically the same person so it’s no wonder he always wanted to play him.( A pity he never got to play Henry VIII, incidentally, as he would have been the definitive one.)

Popular reviews

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  A Grand Day Out 1989

  ★★★★½ Rewatched 02 Jan 2025

  Wallace and Gromit’s first outing, looking for cheese on the moon, looks a bit leisurely and rough-hewn compared to their later adventures but it's an amazing achievement for a student film. It's easy to forget, though, that at the time this was just one of many great shorts that came out of the National Film and Television School around this time. Several of the graduates of that era went on to dominate the British animation industry for years to come and much of what's done today still follows in their wake. Someone should do a documentary about them.

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  The Devil Rides Out 1968

  ★★★★ Watched 23 Dec 2024 2

  In the summer of 2021 I was lucky enough to find a 21-disc box set of Hammer films in Sainsbury's for £18. It contained few of the big hitters and many I'd never heard of, but it turned out be full of new discoveries, of which this was one. I'd heard of it but never seen it.
  One the best Hammers, and possibly the best of its period, when Hammer in general was having trouble finding ways to shock and…