Popular reviews

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  Review by russman ★★★★

  That's not how rock-paper-scissors works

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  Review by Timcop ★★★★½ 2

  Imagine if Buñuel started a film and Peckinpah finished it. This would probably be that.

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  Review by Sally Jane Black 2

  Given that I just watched a harrowing denouncement of militarism, patriotism, and the death penalty, it's a bit weird to find myself laughing through a violent, pitched battle at a boarding school. But here I am. While this is pretty clearly an indictment of a sort of school I will never experience (thank god), what struck me most about this film was actually the way they captured the teenage experience. Frustration, rebellion, camaraderie, prurience, and angst play out in both realistic and surreal moments, culminating in that violent exchange of automatic gunfire that is horrifyingly satisfying in context.

  The beating scene is also worth mentioning for a couple of reasons. One is that it is one of those scenes that…

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  Review by Baz ★★★★

  Lindsay Anderson's If.... could quite possibly be the unofficial prequel to Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange

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  Review by issy 🥝 3

  this film is so confusing and yet my biggest ??? is why the fuck was that guy lay in a cabinet drawer

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  Review by 👽 Zara 👽 ★★★★ 1

  what kind of fucked up boarding school is this jesus christ

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  Review by Simon Ramshaw ★★★★

  "War is the last possible creative act." - Mick Travis

  You know those films that you think you're really going to hate because the term 'new wave' has been labelled on them, but actually end up liking them a lot, despite their pretentiousness and casual weirdness? Well, If.... is the perfect example of this.

  It really is as revolutionary as it sets out to be. Casting a huge middle finger at religion, the military and boarding school hierarchies, If.... is a scatter-shot, angst-ridden beast of a film that makes as little sense as any David Lynch. Packed with surreal imagery that completely destroys any narrative structure, it isn't afraid to alienate the audience. But this is the type of film…

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  Review by forelavy ★★★★½ 1

  dead poets society (1989) found dead in a ditch. literally dead

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  Review by Robin 8

  Are you into Malcom McDowell or are you normal?

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  Review by Paul Elliott ★★★★½

  Lindsay Anderson, director of This Sporting Life and one of the essential filmmakers of the British New Wave, turns his attention to the English public school system for his film if..., and falls back on his first-hand experience to craft a movie which strides a prudent divide between realism and surrealism. It features the screen debut of Malcolm McDowell as Michael Arnold "Mick" Travis, a character who went on to appear in a further two Anderson movies, O Lucky Man! (1973) and Britannia Hospital (1982).

  The surrealist sequences of the movie, which frequently eventuate to be nearer to life than perhaps immediately assumed, has correspondences to Travis’s developing cognitive freedoms; where disposition and exteriority encroach upon one another. It went on to achieve the Palme d'Or at the 22nd Cannes Film Festival, and it characterises the educational system as an intimidating and discouraging environment, populated with violent seniors to condescending educators.

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  Review by eely 🌻 ★★

  what, and i mean this with the utmost respect, the fuck

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  Review by 🇵🇱 Steve G 🐝 ★★★★½

  It struck me on this viewing of If...., and it only took me about 20 minutes to realise this, that nobody in any film I've ever watched was more perfect for a role than Malcolm McDowell was for Mick Travis.

  It gets forgotten sometimes in the swirl of lesser roles that have dominated the latter half of his career, but he really was (and almost certainly still is) a quite extraordinary actor. His performance here is absolutely inch perfect in everything he does. I'm sure there was a lot of stuff that I missed in If.... when he was on screen but I didn't want to look anywhere else because every mannerism and expression and even the smallest of actions…