Sam Jones

Sam Jones Patron

Top 4 are my most rewatched films.
I only rate feature-length narrative films.

Favorite films

  • The Interview
  • The Departed
  • The Grand Budapest Hotel
  • The Killer

Recent activity

All
  • Love & Mercy

    ★★★★

  • In the Mood for Love

    ★★★½

  • Mickey 17

    ★★½

  • Black Bag

    ★★★½

Recent reviews

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  • Adolescence

    Adolescence

    As a rule of thumb, I don't assign television shows and miniseries ratings on Letterboxd (in order to differentiate narrative feature films from all other types of media that I log on this site, like TV shows, documentaries, short films, etc). But if I did rate television shows, this excellent miniseries would be given a near-perfect score. From Philip Barantini – the young maestro director behind one of the best films of 2021, Boiling Point – comes the four-episode, 228-minute…

  • The Incredible Hulk

    The Incredible Hulk

    ★★★

    Was excited to revisit this one following the release this year of Captain America: Brave New World which is, for all intents and purposes, bizarrely a quasi-sequel to this actively retconned, widely forgotten and critically maligned second entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. My opinion of this movie has improved on the rewatch — I was especially taken with the way this film shows The Hulk as a truly monstrous force of nature, and the fight scenes are satisfyingly brutal and violent — in sharp contrast to the short-lived and ultimately disappointing Red Hulk crash out in Captain America 4.

Popular reviews

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  • Super Mario Bros.

    Super Mario Bros.

    ★★½

    It might not have been absolutely necessary to watch this live-action Mario movie in anticipation of this year’s animated version, but I have no regrets about my decision. Not as bad as I expected, though at the same time unquestionably mediocre, Super Mario Bros has absolutely no resemblance to the storyline or world of the original Mario video games. Instead, it’s a wild hallucinogenic romp through parallel dimensions of humans descended from dinosaurs, goomba patrolmen with shrivelled reptilian heads, and a…

  • Official Secrets

    Official Secrets

    ★★★½

    I think the reason this movie worked so well for me is because of how effortlessly it switches between genres. The first section is a superb whistleblower/conspiracy drama, and then it switches again into a great journalism movie, then into a paranoid thriller, and finally into a courtroom drama. The film's genre fluidity — as well as the depth and calibre of performances, from Keira Knightley, Matt Smith, Rhys Ifans, and Ralph Fiennes, among a great number of versatile smaller names — make Gavin Hood's Official Secrets one of the better examples of a political film based on a true story.