The Naked Gun (1988)

I couldn’t possibly give a better review than a paraphrase of Roger Ebert: First, you laugh at the joke; then, you laugh at yourself for laughing at something so stupid. Brilliant stuff. (7/10)

Death of a Unicorn (2025)

I was ambivalent enough about this film that i already wrote a whole post about it to explain my feelings. A utilitarian’s worst nightmare. (5/10)

A Real Pain (2024)

Poignant and funny in equal measure. The scene that really stuck out to me was near the end, in Krasnystaw, as our two Jewish-American main characters visit their late grandmother’s old home and place stones in remembrance… only to be chided by an angry neighbour, who has no idea about the tradition, but does know that the old woman living there now is infirm and might well trip. He says this, of course, in Polish, but the two leads don’t speak it, and need his son to translate for them.

The short-term tragedy of the Holocaust, the cruel annihilation of the six million, has been well-trodden in cinema, but this film gets to the heart of the long tragedy — the hole left in European culture by the hollowing out of its Jewish communities (the angry man who doesn’t know), and, equally, the alienation of the survivors from their own roots (the two travellers who need an interpreter for their own ancestral tongue). (9/10)

Sinners (2025)

If you need any convincing at all to watch this, i have five words: Vampire musicians in 1930s Mississippi.

A rare successful original blockbuster that must be protected at all costs. It takes a while to get to the vampires, but it puts that time to good use setting up its characters so you can, like, care about them and stuff. (A lost art.) (8/10)

Companion (2025)

“Did you jailbreak your sexbot??”

Companion is better than it has any right to be. It’s a schlocky premise, but it mines every last twist and turn it can get out of it, with snappy dialogue, a galloping pace, and a magnetic cast. It might not be the best movie ever, but it’s the best movie Companion could ever be. (8/10)

Zatōichi: The Blind Swordsman (2003)

This Tarantinoesque rip-roarer of a period action film has all you could ever ask for: yakuza gangs, cross-dressing geishas, card-counting, a celebratory ending tap-dance routine, and heaps of dodgy CGI blood. When i found out the director’s name was Beat Takeshi, my first thought was “surely it’s not that Takeshi”. Reader… it was that Takeshi. The guy with the castle. We love a man of many talents. (7/10)

Oblivion (2013)

The left image is the result of asking an image-generating machine-learning model to draw the prompt “still from a science fiction movie”. It was made by a soulless, unthinking machine, and represents, roughly, the average of every science fiction film in its dataset. It is utterly generic, because that’s what happens when you average out thousands of film stills into a grey smoothie.

The right image is from the Tom Cruise movie Oblivion. Do you see the issue here?

Oblivion is a film with no identity of its own, an empty bottle of milk drifting along a back street. It’s just entertaining enough to keep you watching, and no more. The only saving grace is that — for those of you keeping track — it includes a full Tom Cruise Triathlon; he runs, he gets on his motorbike, and he swims (in a skyscraper pool, but a swim is a swim). (5/10)

A Complete Unknown (2024)

If you’re going to make a generic music biopic, the least you could do is spice it up with some fantastical musical sequences, like Rocketman and Better Man. This “effort”, starring the unavoidable Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan, has none of that, instead falling into all the usual tired biopic tropes. Mr Dylan is not a character in this — he is a vessel that spouts platitutes and occasionally sings. At least the music was good? I guess? (2½/10)

🎮️ n++ (2015)

I buy, like, one video game a year, and this is 2025’s entry, a tough-as-nails momentum platformer that’s the third in a series based on a Flash game i have fond memories of. The noughties vibes are truly immaculate, not just in the futuristic æsthetics but the trancey EDM soundtrack as well. (8/10)

Thunderbolts* (2025)

I had sworn off Marvel after all the characters i cared about had their stories wrapped up with a bow, so, though i had heard through the grapevine that this was actually quite good, i was fully prepared to put on my clown makeup and order my “Fell For It Again Award” rosette if i tricked myself into watching two hours of super-slop for nothing.

Thankfully, it was great! My understanding is that all the characters here have shown up in MCU projects in the past, but the film does a great job at getting you up to speed with what their deal is that you never feel out of the loop. The action is on point, the comedy got some good laughs out of me, and the climax, thank fuck, eschews the usual “incomprehensible CGI battle against a giant laser beam” in favour of a more introspective talk-’em-up approach. Special commendations should go to the soundtrack, by Everything Everywhere All At Once’s Son Lux. Go watch it. (7½/10)