Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  September 5 2024

  ★★★★ Added

  Director Tim Fehlbaum’s ‘September 5’ is an exceptional thriller, documenting ABC Sport’s live coverage of the 1972 Munich Olympic terror attacks.

  All long, smoke-filled corridors, it’s a historical chamber-piece drama designed to entertain, that in so doing questions the morality of reporting & making ‘entertainment’ of real world events.

  With the attacks & response the result of endlessly layering political beliefs & inherited traumas, from both World Wars, The Holocaust, & conflict in the Middle East, the piece almost becomes a synecdoche of 20th…

• 

  The Monkey 2025

  ★★★ Added

  Monkey as metaphor for inherited trauma. Also, Monkey as literal wind-up killer Monkey.

  Osgood Perkins’ adaptation of Stephen King’s short story has such a beguiling structure & off-kilter tone, it’s hard not to be taken in by it. I certainly found it more effective than his last effort, 2024’s overhyped & self-important ‘Longlegs’.

  ‘The Monkey’ effectively straddles the line between comedy & gore-fest, familial drama & bonkers hi-concept horror, whilst being underpinned by deterministic & non-deterministic schools of philosophical thought.

  Basically, it monkeys around, but it’s also got some depth. It both has its banana & it eats it. 

  …Monkey.

Popular reviews

• 

  Jingle All the Way 1996

  ★★★ Added

  As a kid, I would watch this Capitalist Christmas Classic every night from December 1st to December 24th. My festive monomania still lives on in family mythology - 'Do you remember when Matt would watch 'Jingle All The Way' every night in December? What a nutter.'

  Critically, objectively, it's worth 3 stars. In my heart, it's up there with the greatest works by Kubrick, Fellini, Scorsese, & Kurosawa - 5 stars, a masterpiece.

  'Put the motherf'ing cookie down, now. 'Jingle All The Way' is on.'

• 

  We Live in Time 2024

  ★★★ Watched 07 Jan 2025 3

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.