Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  U-571 2000

  ★★★½ Watched 04 Feb 2023

  Actually quite compelling, if you overlook the vast liberties taken with history and physics, and the suite of carelessly-contrived plot devices, and the conclusion that leans towards the trite. McConaughey gives an impassioned and credible performance, and the photography is very well done.

  Also worth noting is the quality of the production design, and particularly the interior of the U-571... helped, I'm sure, by the fact that U-571's production designer just happened to also have been Das Boot's art director.

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  Escape to Victory 1981

  ★★★½ Watched 31 Dec 2022

  It's interesting that see that the plot does touch a few times on the Nazis using the game as a nice bit of sportswashing... but in order to do so the film kinda ends up sportswashing the Nazis itself anyway, because the central conceit of the plot relies on relations between the POWs and the German administration being cordial enough to support the idea of having a friendly football match at all.

  That said, the performances are uniformly good and…

Popular reviews

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  The Enforcer 1976

  ★★ Watched 26 Dec 2022

  Magnum Force, to its credit, made something approaching a tacit apology for some of the more discomfortingly-authoritarian vibes of the original film. It would probably then be reasonable to think that The Enforcer might walk a similar line - "the system is often frustrating but it's the least bad of all the ones we've tried", etc etc - but... no. It makes a pathetic and grovelling U-turn instead, and doubles-down on it by liberally sprinkling the script with anti-progressive tropes.…

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  Battle of the Bulge 1965

  ★★ Watched 11 Dec 2022

  Wow, I had no idea that south-east Belgium looked so much like central Spain!

  Seriously though it's not only wildly inaccurate but also plagued by silly acting, sillier fake accents, and woeful continuity.