Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Black Bag 2025

  ★★★★ Watched 16 Mar 2025

  A well-written and beautifully plotted spy story, gorgeously designed and directed, full of great performances. And at 90 mins, delicious. Loved the references to Harry Palmer cooking in his kitchen in Ipcress File. I think of a better spy film in quite a while.

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  Bright Road 1953

  ★★★ Watched 15 Mar 2025

  Short and very sweet tale of a young teacher trying to help one of her students who struggles at school. Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte (in his first film) as the principal. The star is Philip Hepburn as C.T., the troubled student. He’s so charming and charismatic. Without him the film would not work anywhere near as well. Caught on TCM.

Popular reviews

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  They Called Him Mostly Harmless 2024

  ★★★ Watched 11 Feb 2024

  Not once have I thought “I could solve an unsolved mystery over Facebook” but that’s on me.

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  The Color Purple 2023

  ★★★ Watched 29 Dec 2023

  I didn’t care for the production surrounding an excellent set of performances. It felt cheap, artificial and the editing was weird (why the cut between the final phrase of “I am here”?). The arrangements and orchestrations also hurt the material. It regularly felt like a very special Lifetime event movie instead of the blockbuster it should have been. Someone airlift those performances out of this movie please.