Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  It Happened Tomorrow 1944

  ★★★★½ Watched 18 Mar 2025

  This type of perfectly interlocking high-concept farce is one of my favourite types of fiction - although it has sadly been missing from film for most of my lifetime (and unlike other genres it can't be carried over to TV easily, because it requires such a carefully constructed narrative)

  In this case the farce has an existential element too, although played for laughs, in the man who accidentally reads his own time and place of death.

  And so, the two…

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  His Girl Friday 1940

  ★★★½ Watched 18 Mar 2025

  People believe, baselessly, that new films are faster paced than old films. We've all seen some interminable war film from the 1950s that lends some truth to that, but on the other hand the brilliance of 'His Girl Friday' is that the actors are delivering dialogue at a speed and precision that is pretty much at the limit of human comprehsion. Sure, it's one of the many cases of a Hollywood studio film that takes place entirely within a few…

Popular reviews

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  Scenes with Beans 1976

  Watched 21 Sep 2021 1

  A classic of the bean genre

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  Licorice Pizza 2021

  ★★★★½ Watched 04 Jan 2022

  So good it makes it unbearable to consider the current state of both art-house and blockbuster cinema - the kind of mid-budget movie that we have got so few of this year (and most of them have been 'House of Gucci' tier at best)

  This is a return to the PTA I really loved. I think 'Phantom Thread', 'The Master' and 'Thete Will be Blood' are all excellent but in the formalism and period respectability of those films I did…

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