Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Better Man 2024

  ★½ Watched 24 Mar 2025

  Aggressively not for me. The CGI monkey of it all comes off more as a gimmick than anything refreshingly new, papering over the cracks of yet another colour-by-numbers musical biopic. Robbie Williams is clearly very desperate to be known, especially to non-British audiences, but defies being understood. Nothing of depth or nuance is given, only glossy set piece numbers played over illusions of complexity. As a result the tone is flat as a pancake with very little in terms of…

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  Black Bag 2025

  ★★★★ Watched 22 Mar 2025

  Soderbergh completely in his Soderbag, Koepp with his tightest screenplay in decades, a cast led by Fassbender and Blanchett perfectly equipped to perform the verbal action they’re charged with, and all tied up neatly at around 90 minutes. Not only is this antithetical to almost every other release this year, it harkens back to the perfect adult thriller of yesteryear that flows with a suave and self-determined ease, unbothered by marketing agendas or projections to live up to. The tone…

Popular reviews

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  Gladiator II 2024

  ★★ Watched 27 Nov 2024

  It’s hard to emphasise how much of a letdown this film is, even if my expectations were at rock bottom since its announcement. Attaching the title and legacy of Gladiator was an albatross around the neck.

  Like so much of late-period Ridley, Gladiator II is awkwardly split down the middle in its tone: deathly-serious stoic pretence and utterly batshit frivolous cheese that verges on parody. All the while this is essentially a rerun, a cheap knockoff. The story is unchanged,…

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  Trap 2024

  ★½ Watched 10 Aug 2024 1

  Am I allergic to fun? Maybe, if fun means sitting through a bland fictional concert film with Josh Hartnett occasionally frowning. Glaringly obvious plot, dialogue/behaviour as if written by nonhuman life forms, and almost solely a vehicle for M. Night’s daughter to cosplay as a generic popstar for literally half the screen time. Zero tension, zero enjoyment. Shyamalan might actually be the greatest elevator pitch writer-director of all time; the one sentence concept is amazing, but the magic disappears as he keeps talking.