Favorite films

Recent reviews

• 

  Saw IV 2007

  ★★★ Watched 30 Nov 2023

  The opening and ending sequences are genuinely exciting, audacious and fully tapped into that Saw Juice. Tobin Bell is reliably great and there are some solid ideas throughout, but IV too often seems like there isn't a firm hand at the wheel, the absence of Wan, Whannell and Shawnee Smith definitely felt. Darren Lynn Bousman's inconsistent direction allows too many terrible non-Bell performances through (simply have no idea what Scott Patterson is trying to do here; Betsy Russell the definition…

• 

  Nickelodeon 1976

  ★★★★ Watched 18 Aug 2023

  (B&W Director's Cut)

  Funny, sprawling and surprisingly thorny. I could watch Ryan O'Neal do slapstick pratfalls and be endlessly flustered for days.

Popular reviews

• 

  Four Adventures of Reinette and Mirabelle 1987

  ★★★★ Watched 05 Jan 2021

  And they were roommates.

• 

  Livid 2011

  ★★★★ Watched 05 Oct 2020

  A beautiful, ornate little thing that delicately sits alongside something so much bigger, glimpses of a sprawling mythos are offered and practically discarded because what matters most are the two girls at the film's centre.

  I imagine back in 2011 this must've seemed completely inexplicable as Maury and Bustillo's next move after Inside (still the only New French Extremity I have any time for), but I love their boldness here, particularly the almost dialogue-free final act. Devastated we never got to see their Hellraiser remake.

Following