Favorite films

Recent reviews

• 

  The Three Sisters 1970

  ★★★★ Watched 17 Mar 2025

  Chekhov’s a bit formulaic and often doesn’t stage well today. This is a classic BBC Masterpiece Theatre production from the 70s with all the strengths that era boasted: great studio facilities with the cream of in-house BBC technical staff and British theatre. Like Chekhov,  now a lost bygone era only faintly remembered.

• 

  Appaloosa 2008

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 08 Mar 2025

  Already in my list of favourite best all-time Westerns

  boxd.it/rVTJo

Popular reviews

• 

  Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire 2023

  ★★★★★ Watched 24 Dec 2023 1

  It’s a Zack Snyder film. Like Cameron and Villeneuve, he’s one of the best directors at world-building.

• 

  The Brutalist 2024

  Watched 26 Jan 2025

  Puts a thin coat of varnish on some well worn Hollywood cliches, though the direction is as stolid as an artless concrete structure. Says absolutely nothing new or interesting about architecture, the struggle between creative genius and concessions of capital, the immigrant experience, or Holocaust survivors. Let alone the marginal black characters. Lots of pundits have been raving about the low budget, and it's impressive but a footnote at best. The 70mm VistaVision is also ludicrously over-hyped: anyone expecting Lawrence…