So many insane fucking things happen in this film, i almost forgot that the opening credits sequence is TimothĂŠe Chalametâs sperm racing to inseminate Odessa AâZionâs egg, which then turns into a ping-pong ball, which he hits. Everything about Marty Supreme further confirms that Mr Chalamet is our generationâs only true movie star. 9/10
Watched over Discord voice chat with a friend, which i suspect is the ideal way to do it. Eric Freeman, who plays our main character Ricky, makes some⌠how should i put it⌠inspired acting choices every time he opens his mouth â this is a man whose eyebrows have a mind of their own.
My only real complaint is that i just wish there was more killing. Over half of the film is taken up by a clip show of the previous entry in the series, and though Rickyâs rampage is iconic enough to make up for it (Say it with me: GARBAGE DAY!!!!), i canât help feeling thereâs a lot of missed potential. 7i/101
Oh, for fuckâs sake. Look â thereâs a lot to like about this. Jacob Elordiâs turn as Adam Frankenstein is fantastic. But itâs overstuffed with so, so much pointless melodrama and bombast â and coming from a director who claims to hate CGI, it sure did look like the bloody Polar Express every time there was a fight scene! 5/10
Paul Verhoeven is single-handedly holding up the entirety of Dutch cinema with just his pinky finger, and we must all thank him for it, otherwise there would be no respite from the endless Hilversumslop. 7/10
Easily the most brutal film in the series, and none of the worst kills are even done by zombies! Ralph Fiennes gives it his all, with a fantastic record collection to match. Jack OâConnell is one to watch, too â the look on his face when he starts thinking wait, shit, is this guy Satan? is pure cinemaâ˘. 8/10
Iâm still not sure if this is a searing societal critique or a sad, puerile tantrum. I donât know if anyoneâs sure. Still, iâve got to give it a positive rating just for the insanity of the animation on display. 6/10
I was going to watch internationally acclaimed Korean thriller No Other Choice. Unfortunately, i was late to the screening, so i decided to watch a movie about an evil monkey instead.
And you know what? Itâs a damn good movie about an evil monkey! Itâs clearly not the best film ever, but itâs the best version of itself it could be. The decision to use a guy in a practical suit (with some CG touchups) for the titular chimp paid off massively. I just wish Noam Chomsky was here to see it.26½/10
Everyone who was a member of the Academy in 2018 should be slapped in the face until it bleeds for not nominating Toni Collette for Best Actress. My stomach was doing ollies and backflips all the way through â the family argument is more terrifying than anything supernatural could ever be. 10/10
What i find interesting about this is that itâs, like⌠a 1920s-nostalgia picture? Which is a concept thatâs almost incomprehensible today. Maybe thatâs why the big show-stopping number has fuck-all to do with anything else â but itâs hard to care when itâs that bloody good! 8/10
I tried writing a review of this, but when i looked back at the page, it was just âThey donât make âem like they used toâ over and over again? Strange. To paraphrase Vespasian: I think iâm becoming a Dad.
Reading up on the production afterwards, itâs incredible that this is as great as it is. It seems so meticulously planned out, and then it turns out they were just making it up as they went along. Harrison Ford fucked his knee during the train stunt and he just had to have a limp for the rest of the film because they were shooting chronologically. Incredible. 8/10
Largely fails to rise above standard biopic mediocrity, but there are some surprisingly interesting choices being made â setting it at one particular moment in Bruce Springsteenâs career helps ward away the standard mile-a-minute âthis is the entire life story of Blorbo Glumpâ biopic pacing, the incidental music is shockingly good given the type of film this is, and, of course, Stephen Graham is there. 5Âź/10
I liked this overall â good, campy fun â and would recommend you go see it, since it doesnât seem to be getting much love at the box office. ButâŚ
Itâs often said that streaming services like Netflix mandate that the dialogue in their shows be written for slowpokes who are watching while scrolling through TikToks on their phone, and this was the first time i got the sense that was going on. Joe Keeryâs character is a talkative (if charismatic) little bastard, and he often speaks like heâs trying to put the audio describer out of a job, pointing out the blatantly obvious and repeating information weâve heard a jillion times before. You just wish Liam Neeson would tell him to shut up. 6/10
I think my copy just had uniquely crappy picture quality, but every frame of this looks like someoneâs last known photo. There is no good in this movieâs world. There doesnât seem to be much at all, really. Just unrelenting chaos and torture. So, you know, god forgive a family love each other and have a shared hobby đď¸ 8/10
I canât lie â this is the first western iâve actually liked, rather than just going âoh, yeah, i can see the craft.â I love that the two leads just bicker like an old married couple the entire time. Itâs amazing what Robert Redford can do with just one look at the camera. (8/10)
Watched at the Tyneside for its thirtieth anniversary. As someone who had only previously known 007 via the gritty Craig-era films⌠James Bond is kind of a menace to society in this? Somebody, please call him into HR.
No complaints, though â the goofy, quippy (but self-serious!) action here is much more my speed than Mr Craigâs dour grimacing. Weâre introduced to Pierce Brosnan (who is generationally sexy in this, incidentally) by him ambushing someone upside-down in a toilet, for heavenâs sake!
After some deliberation, i⌠think i like Ăric Serraâs score? His brand of trip-hop weirdness lends itself better to sci-fi like The Fifth Element, but itâs what makes GoldenEyeGoldenEye, warts and all. (8/10)
The first time i watched this it was with a VR headset strapped to my face, lying in bed, and i thought it was just as good as, if not better than, the first one. Then i watched them back-to-back and that illusion shattered. Still, there are some wonderful special-effects setpieces that have to be seen to be believed. (6/10)
I found Scream exscreamly underwhelming, but i canât give it a bad rating in good faith â itâs a classic example of the âSeinfeld is unfunnyâ effect, where an innovative work is copied so often that when you go back and watch it, youâre like, âthatâs it?â Our modern media landscape is so meta that Scream doesnât even register as particularly self-referential. âŚAlso, i was on my phone for a lot of it. Sorry. (N/A/10)
Fuck you, i liked it. I went to see a Tron movie because i wanted some pretty sci-fi action with a banging score that shakes the Imax screen, but terrible characters and an uninteresting plot, and i got exactly that. What were the rest of you expecting? (6/10)
A competent, if compressed, adaptation which features surprisingly little of Christopher Lee for how key the role is to his reputation as an actor. (6½/10)
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr Beale, and i wonât have it! Is that clear?
You think youâve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!
You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems: one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature! And you⌠will⌠atone! (Am i getting through to you, Mr Beale?)
You get up on your little twenty-one-inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no âAmericaâ. There is no âdemocracyâ. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear-programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the priceâcost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business.
The world is a business, Mr Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which thereâs no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided. All anxieties tranquillised. All boredom amused.
And i have chosen you, Mr Beale, to preach this evangel.
You could make a list of the Top Ten Movie Rants, have them all be from this film, and nobody would have any reason to complain. Possibly the best-scripted film iâve ever watched. Iâm as mad as hell, and iâm not going to take it anymore! (10/10)
Another home run from Lanthimos and Stone. Jerskin Fendrixâs rousing score successfully found its way into my top five played songs of the year, according to Youtube Music, and i only bloody watched this film in November!
Itâs also remarkable how Jesse Plemons is slowly metamorphosing into Philip Seymour Hoffman as he ages. (9/10)
An exceedingly rewarding rewatch â i picked up on so many little things i didnât notice in the cinema. The war for my official âbest film of the yearâ is now squarely between this, Bugonia, and (depending on a rewatch) Caught Stealing. (9/10)
Edgar Wrightâs heart-pumping, kinetic action suddenly turns flaccid in the third act, but overall, i still quite liked this! Glen Powellâs a real star. (6½/10)
Tighter plotting than its two predecessors unfortunately leaves little room to get attached to any of our wacky side characters. Itâs an interesting conceit, and thereâs stuff to like, but on the whole, Wake Up Dead Man is stiff, devoid of life. (5/10)
A strange, sad film that plays like a Truman Show for the age of social-media mobs. Nic Cage has a way of elevating anything heâs in, from the lowest shlock to the highest art. (8/10)
Merry Christmas, you filthy animals! I hadnât watched the original in some time, and was surprised at how much darker in tone it was â itâs a legitimate horror film at times!
Watching both back to back has given me a new appreciation for Gremlins 2. The best part of the original is the bar scene, and G2 is nothing but the bar scene, for an hour and a half straight. Pure cinema. (11/10)
Trainspotting is about how life is short and you shouldnât ruin it with drugs. Human Traffic is about how life is short and you should thus do as many drugs as possible so you can squeeze all the enjoyment you can out of it.
Itâs a damned shame that director Justin Kerrigan never did much afterwards, because thereâs such style packed into Human Trafficâs hundred minutes. The film is deeply indebted to Danny Boyle, and iâd have loved to see how his style developed in its own independent direction afterwards. Alas, he seems to have been tied up in a protracted legal battle with the filmâs producer, and has only made one film since. Mr Kerrigan, if youâre reading this: Please try again? Please? (8/10)
For years, i have terrorised family movie night with weird crap, and my sins have finally come back to haunt me. Iâm never forgiving my stepdad for making me watch sasquatches fucking. I will say, thereâs something to this absurdist environmentalist assembly of grunting Bigfoots, but i donât know how much! (âľâ/10)
An odd commonality with many of todayâs films is that, because either their production companies have gone default or nobody really cares about them any more, you can watch them for free on Youtube in varying degrees of quality right now. Videos have been linked where applicable.
Every baffling product thatâs come out of Silicon Valley in the past ten years can be explained by this film. Theyâve all seen it, and they all desperately want to make it real.
The Humane AI Pin? Joaquin Phoenix carries around a little camera doodad in his pocket that he talks to instead of using a screen. Windows Recall? Scarlett Johansson helps organise his computer. People grieving the loss of their AI girlfriends? You know it. Itâs a marvel they havenât tried to abolish our keyboards yet.
Itâs generally a strange experience watching Her in 2025, because it was right on the money about so many things that it now barely registers as science fiction. Mr Phoenix and Ms Johanssonâs robosexual relationship is meant to be beautiful, and it is Ââ the most tender sex scene of the twenty-first century occurs entirely through voice â but you have to work to quiet that little voice in your head going âlol, this loser fell in love with ChatGPT.â (8/10)
Weapons takes the Silence of the Lambs approach to horror, being more of a nerve-wracking thriller with some spooky bits in it than a traditional âhorror movieâ, and is all the better for it. Satisfying as that ending was, it still seemed to be missing a little extra oomph to me. (7/10)
My word, how had i never seen this before? Seeing nineteen-forties Britain in Technicolor would be worth the price of admission alone, but everything about this tale of heaven and earth is so touching, even when it suddenly decides to be about BritishâAmerican postwar relations. An all-time classic. (10/10) (Watch now!)
Possibly the best werewolf movie weâre ever going to get? They do some brilliant stuff with whatâs clearly quite a low budget. âI hope i give you the shitsâ is going in the movie one-liner hall of fame. (6/10) (Watch now!)
From the director of Gremlins comes a nice little film where John Goodman plays a William Castleâtype gimmick-horror director trying to promote his new B-movie in the shadow of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A wonderful watch, if a bit slow to get going â every second we see of Mant!, the fictional creature feature, is hilarious. (7/10) (Watch now!)
Great intro, good-but-messy everything else. Itâs weird seeing a depiction of Ukraine in pop culture before it all got coloured by the war. Nic Cage delivers as always. (6/10)
âAnd what would a note say, Dan? âCat dead, details laterâ?â
Oh, this is glorious. Itâs cheap and crummy, but in the best way possible. Every actor knows exactly the sort of film theyâre in and delivers a performance to match. The special effects alternate between brilliant and hilarious. Watch it with your friends if at all possible! (7/10) (Watch now!)
These were the last two films i saw at the cinema, and they tread similar ground, so i thought iâd talk about them together.
âWeâre in enough trouble with HaShem as it is without driving on Shabbas.â
The only other Darren Aronofsky film iâd seen before was Ď, and while my understanding is that the two are outliers in his filmography, Caught Stealing makes a great spiritual sequel, a stylish, high-octane, downward-spiralling crime caper squeezing every last drop of cosmopolitan flavour from its New York setting. Austin Butler is magnetic, and Matt Smith kills it in his role as the instigating punk, but the real star of the show is surely Tonic, the acting cat. Possible best-of-the-year material. (9/10)
âIf you donât give me the rendezvous point, i swear to God i will hunt you down and stick a loaded fucking hot piece of dynamite right up your fucking asshole.â
Of the two, One Battle After Another has been the better-received, rapturously applauded from all around as The Film Of The Year, a Very Important All-Timer Film with lots to say about The Issues. And while it is great, i canât help but think⌠calm down? Itâs not the Second Coming.
Leonardo DiCaprioâs excellence was already pre-assumed, but Benicio del Toroâs Sensei Sergio is surely the coolest guy of the twenty-twenties. Everyone else does nothing but larp, larp, larp about how cool and revolutionary they are (or how bvsed and rvdpvlled they are, in the antagonistsâ case), but heâs out there quietly putting in the work to protect his little community without needing to brag about him. How can you not love a man with a secret ladder with a carpet that unrolls to hide the entrance? (8/10)
As comic relief, heâs great, and should obviously be played by Tim Robinson in the inevitable event of a remake. As a person, fuuuuuck this guy. A life is hanging in the balance and you just want to watch some Yankee cricket? You fold under pressure, rather than actually reĂŤvaluating your beliefs? Kill yourself, my man.
Detestable for the same reason as Angry Man #7. A doormat with no opinions of his own whose soul is carried away with the current. But at least heâs affable.
The kind of man who turns on Fox News, sees his son send a post-ironic femboy meme in the family group chat, and immediately decides every transgender person should be rounded up. Not a dyed-in-the-wool bigot like Angry Man #10, but no nicer to be around. All we can do is pray that someone turns on the parental controls on his TV and switches him over to MSNBC.
He treats the case as frivolously as Angry Man #7, but you know what? I canât help but like him. He just wants to show off his cereal box slogans and play noughts and crosses.
The most mysterious Angry Man. Heâs of the same ethnicity as the descendant, and he knows how switch-blades work, but otherwise⌠who knows? What mysteries lie in his past? Weâll never find out, but he seems like a cool dude.
âYou know, i would have voted for FDR a fifth time if i could.â The greatest bleeding-heart liberal in cinematic history. His heroism made a tear come out of my eye that then turned into a dove of peace and flew away. But just as admirable as those who lead the charge are those who can admit their faults â which leads us toâŚ
Hell yes. Unlike Angry Men #3 and #10, #4 doesnât vote âguiltyâ because of prejudice. He sincerely believes that the boy did it, and, once every argument is dismantled, he quietly accedes and admits defeat rather than loudly crashing out. Also spends the most time aura-farming out of any of the Angry Men.
The coolest old man in the universe. The Paddington Bear of the 12AMCU, able to disarm anyone with a hard stare. Somehow the only person in the room who knows how glasses work. 10/10 Angry Man-ing.
Last time on âStuff i watched recentlyâ, i covered four thriller films. Today, weâre back to our normal farrago of assorted genres â and i must warn you, itâs been quite a while since iâve seen some of these, starting withâŚ
The first act of this presumably final entry in the Tom Cruise Tries to Kill Himself series consists of a clumsy, torpid recap of every attempted Cruisicide so far, interspersed with clips from past films1 and people talking up Tom Cruise as The Most Important Boy In The World. But, as soon as Tramell Tillmanâs beautiful visage shines upon the Imax screen, weâre shocked back to life, and the ensuing setpiece â a palm-sweating scamper aboard a collapsing nuclear submarine â may well be the best, tensest, and invigoratingest this franchise has ever brought us. (7/10)
Wes Craven dares to ask the unaskable: What if, in Halloween, Jamie Lee Curtis wasnât a complete imbecile who canât even hold onto a knife for more than five seconds? Nancy Thompson enters into the pantheon of sensible horror protagonists by doing everything right, up to and including hiding a second instant coffee maker underneath her bed.
The special effects are the star of the show here, from spandex walls to bottomless tubs, lifting up some shonky performances (Johnny Depp acts circles around everyone else in every scene heâs in) and a truly abysmal ending. With a premise like that, itâs not hard to see why it became such a sensation. (6/10)
âEvery species can smell its own extinction. The last ones left wonât have a pretty time with it. In ten years, maybe less, the human race will just be a bedtime story for their children. A myth, nothing more.â
John Carpenter knocks it out of the park again in this bizarre, prescient downwards spiral of metafictional cosmic horror. In an era of deepfakes, diffusion, and dripped-out popes, it can seem as though fiction and reality are merging. What happens when we as a society can no longer tell the difference? If you believe In the Mouth of Madness⌠itâs not going to be pretty. (10/10)
âHello, Alex. Itâs Danny. The studio wants to make another 28 Days Later sequel. Any ideas?â
âHm⌠What if we made it a touching coming-of-age story about coming to terms with the inevitability of death in a working-class North Eastern family?â
âWhat?â
âWe can make it about Brexit too if youâd like. An island of strangers, and all that.â
ââŚâ
ââŚâ
ââŚIâll get Young Fathers on the line.â
âGood, good. Youâve still got that pink Motorola Razr you shot the first one on, right?â
âAfraid not. Iâll have to use an iPhone instead.â
The town crier came up to me and shouted, âHear ye, hear ye! Superhero movies are good again!â So i gave James Gunnâs Superman a shot, and what do you know? He was right.
Mr Gunn kicks off his newborn cinematic universe by cannonballing straight into the deep end. The Superman experience is akin to starting a long-running comic at issue #387, in the best way possible. Superman has already been doing his thing for three years. Lex Luthor has a pocket dimension and Vladjamin Putinyahu has promised him his own personal settlement in Gazkraine.2 Mr Terrific is there. Whoâs Mr Terrific? The greatest character ever, thatâs who. Absolute cinema. (8/10)
I forgot my Itch.io password in the move over from Windows to Linux, so the recent Steam sale was my first time in ages playing the GOAT platformer. Iâm proud to say i finally beat The Farewell (and got the moon berry) legit. Fuck that comb room. (10/10)
Yeesh. I wanted to like this â âautistic robotsâ is a favourite trope of mine â but my sense of humour and its just did not get along. A great example of how every show on Apple TV+ just looks fake. (3/10)
There was a moment when i thought this was going to deliver the most singularly insane twist ending in cinematic history. It didnât. So what weâre left with is a miserable film about horrible fundamentalists kidnapping horrible college students and going up against a horrible ATF agent. Kill me now. (2/10)
What a palate cleanser! Danny Boyleâs first film gives him the template heâd perfect with Trainspotting soon after. Thumping techno tunes, a perfect mix of comedy and tragedy, and Ewan McGregorâs boyish face. (Plus, an incongruously spacious sitcom apartment.) You simply must see this, if only for the novelty of Christopher Eccleston with a full head of hair. (9/10)
The vibes are immaculate; the story not so much. This is a lean two-hour-long 6/10 thatâs begging to become a plump and juicy two-and-a-half-hour 9/10.
That said, when the Four are heading to space in their sleek pulp-futuristic retro rocket ship, and the Human Torch gets smitten with the Silver Surfer⌠thereâs a lot i can overlook. A good half of these points are just down to swish art direction and a triumphant score: (6½/10)
Last weekend i found myself with an unexpected glut of downtime, and i figured iâd put it to good use by crossing four films, all thrillers, off my âto-watchâ list. I went into most of them essentially blind: for two out of the four, i had no idea what the premise even was, and for one of the remaining two i guessed incorrectly. Without further ado â hereâs what i thought of each.
What i âknewâ going in: Nic Cage tracks down the creators of a child porno.
The celluloid macguffin is, blissfully(?), merely a teenage snuff film rather than a full-on porno â for the best, given they occasionally show snippets of the thing and i doubt Joel Schumacher wanted to be put on a list.
Regardless: Mr Cage is our greatest living actor, and, this being the nineties, he goes âfull Cageâ in a gloriously grimy thriller that sinks him into the depths of Los Angelesâ erotic underworld. Also featured is a disconcertingly young Joaquin Phoenix1 and Peter Stormare as a comically evil crossbow-wielding porno director. The third act gets pretty over-the-top, at times nearing John Wick territory. But thatâs fine by me: i like over-the-top! Itâs better for a film to go out with a bang than to die with a whimper.
When this came out, it was slammed by reviewers, and it still only sits at a six out of ten on all the major movie-buff websites. I hesitate to invoke the word âunderratedâ, so often misused, but⌠come on. The only assumption i can make is that it that the critics still held a grudge against Mr Schumacher over Batman and Robin, and that, four years after Showgirls, Eight Millimeterâs frank sexuality was still considered too much. Bah.2 They wouldnât know kino if it hit them in the face. (8/10)
What i âknewâ going in: I thought it was going to be about a really, really old man.
Itâs not. Iâm willing to say Frailty, a directorial effort by Bill Paxton (of all people) ostensibly starring Matthew McConaughey, is good, even if it is mostly told through flashbacks (and, ergo, a child actor doing much of Mr McConaugheyâs heavy lifting). But the twist veers things so sharply and so suddenly into a supernatural direction that the audience deserves a bit more time to take in the ramifications. And since for most of the film the viewer has been focussing not only on a child actor, but the wrong child actor, by the end of it i still felt i didnât really know Mr McConaugheyâs character â which is a problem when weâre talking about our alleged protagonist! (5½/10)
What i knew going in: Stephen King adaptation about a crazy fan who traps the author of her favourite book in her bed and demands he write Glup Shitto back in.
This is the only one i had a solid grasp on going in, since itâs hard to avoid learning about by osmosis. Great in concept, great in performance, great in script⌠but i could never quite shake off the fact that i was watching a psychological horror film from the director of The Princess Bride. (7/10)
What i âknewâ going in: Denis Villeneuve. Jake Gyllenhaal. Hugh Jackman. Iâm in.
Probably the best thing iâve watched all year. Itâs a punishing watch, but, my god, the talent on display from all cylinders is like nothing else. Behind the camera you have Denis Villeneuve, right in the middle of his transition from QuĂŠbĂŠcois dramas to Hollywood blockbusters, and Roger Deakins, the legendary cinematographer who shot Fargo and No Country for Old Men.3 In front, you have a powerhouse ensemble cast of actors who could all easily carry a film by themselves. Hugh Jackman! Jake Gyllenhaal! Viola Davis! Paul Dano! David Dastmalchian!4 A masterpiece through and through â i hope we might some day get to see the original NC-17 cut, censors be damned. (10/10)
I couldnât 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)
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 grandmotherâs 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 donât 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 â the hole left in European culture by the hollowing out of its Jewish communities (the angry man who doesnât 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)
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 is better than it has any right to be. Itâs 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 itâs the best movie Companion could ever be. (8/10)
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 directorâs name was Beat Takeshi, my first thought was âsurely itâs not that Takeshiâ. Reader⌠it was that Takeshi. The guy with the castle. We love a man of many talents. (7/10)
The left image is the result of asking an image-generating machine-learning model to draw the prompt âstill from a science fiction movieâ. 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 thatâs 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. Itâs just entertaining enough to keep you watching, and no more. The only saving grace is that â for those of you keeping track â 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)
If youâre 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 âeffortâ, starring the unavoidable TimothĂŠe 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 â he is a vessel that spouts platitutes and occasionally sings. At least the music was good? I guess? (2½/10)
I buy, like, one video game a year, and this is 2025âs entry, a tough-as-nails momentum platformer thatâs 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 ĂŚsthetics but the trancey EDM soundtrack as well. (8/10)
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 âFell For It Again Awardâ 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 âincomprehensible CGI battle against a giant laser beamâ in favour of a more introspective talk-âem-up approach. Special commendations should go to the soundtrack, by Everything Everywhere All At Onceâs Son Lux. Go watch it. (7½/10)
Pictured: what the main characters would have done if they were not pro-cancer
Yesterday i went to the cinema to go watch Death of a Unicorn, A24âs new one-horned horror-comedy-thing. I could have reviewed it in prose, but iâve elected to leave my thoughts in bullet-point form, as thereâs a lot good, a lot bad, and not much conjoining the two in my mind.
The good
I appreciate that this movie is wholly unapologetic about being about a unicorn. No tongue in cheek, just, yep, thatâs a mythical unicorn, weâre fucking rolling with it.
The design of the titular beast is also great, majestic but capable of being a horror monster when it needs to be. The decision to keep the legendary unicornâs beard rather than shave it off (as has become common under the influence of My Little Pony) is commendable.
Richard E. Grant and Will Poulter are great in it, and are the only ones who seem to have understood the assignment in terms of going buck-wild with their performances.
The bad
The well of âfilms that are satires about the faux-progressive 2020s nouveau riche and how theyâre all stupid dum-dumsâ has run well and truly dry â that this is a film literally about beating a dead horse doesnât help. It could have at least had the dignity to come out before Glass Onion dealt the finishing blow.
For a film that was marketed as a ridiculous, bonkers horror-comedy in the vein of Evil Dead II, itâs not actually that funny. I chuckled a few times but⌠thatâs it, really; it never veers off that cliff into complete insanity like i was hoping it would.
The portrayal of the visions given by the unicorn was boring as shit. Infinite ways you could show the sight of the transcendental, and you pick CGI nebulĂŚ and stars? What is this, Guardians of the Galaxy?
[peter_griffin_godfather.webm] I did not care for Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega. Their performances are nothing. Their characters are nothing. They insist upon themselves.
The neutral observation
The fatal flaw is that the evil plan made a little too much sense. Like â actually, yeah, youâre right! I think once youâve established that (a) the unicornâs blood cures cancer and (b) the unicorn can heal itself, you do, in fact, have a utilitarian obligation to bring this stuff to market. Maybe not with the methods the evil pharma family use, but still.
What a great flick! My beef with Tarantino is that you can often tell that, just behind the camera, heâs jacking off at the thought of how clever he is and how many obscure seventies TV shows he knows, and while thatâs still true here, the electric pairing of Pam Grier and Robert Forster washes all those eye-rolling feelings down until youâre left with the aftertaste of nothing but a good-ass crime thriller. 8/10 â my Tarantino power ranking goes something like Inglourious Basterds > this > Pulp Fiction > Django Unchained >>> Reservoir Dogs.
Spoorloos (The Vanishing)
This grim Dutch crime thriller is consistently mentioned alongside Paul Verhoeven as proof that âsee? Dutch cinema isnât all badâ, which is something you could almost convince me of if it werenât for every top-five listâs inclusion of a film about an evil lift.
Anyway, while Spoorloos does occasionally veer uncomfortably close to âTV movie of the weekâ territory, itâs carried by its villain, an exemplar of the banality of evil. He does what he does because heâs experienced being a hero, and heâs just curious what it feels like to be a villain â and thatâs what makes him fucking terrifying. Check this out if you get the chance. 7/10.
The Monkey
Osgood Perkins returns right soon with another horror endeavour, this time a gory comedy about an evil cuddly monkey. The Monkey doesnât reach the highs of fear and tension that Longlegs does, but neither does it completely bottle the ending, so letâs call it a draw, shall we? 6ž/10.
Quiz Show
I put this on on a lazy afternoon. I was suitably entertained. I remember nothing from it. A platonically perfect 5/10.
The Mist (rewatch)
The Twelve Angry Men of horror puts modern (well, 2000s) American society up against a mirror and examines how people would really react to a mass calamity in a way that hits different in the post-covid era, where everyoneâs brain has had time to cook in the sun. Plus: the cruelest twist ending in cinematic history. 8/10.
The Blues Brothers
Dan Aykroyd is an actual crazy person and thatâs why The Blues Brothers works. This is two-and-a-half hours of overindulgent insanity, the cinematic equivalent of a five-year-old playing with their toys, and i wouldnât want it any other way. I nearly had an asthma attack laughing so hard. 10/10.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
Warm. Fuzzy. Inessential. Itâs weird seeing Adam Scott with a beard. 6/10.
Severance (season 2 finale)
The back half of Severanceâs sophomore season fell victim to some shonky pacing decisions, placing two self-contained, slow-paced bottle episodes right before the final two, messing up the flow we were in and negating the chance for an epic Season 1-style three-episode ramp-up, but nonetheless, the double-length finale successfully sticks the landing. The camcorder conversation, where Markâs innie and outie finally âmeetâ, may as well be what the whole show has been building up to, and it just keeps going from there. Every company needs a Choreography and Merriment department. 9/10.
Flow
The first part of a feline double feature, about an adorable black kitty who goes on a maritime journey after the world is inundated by a mysterious flood. The gimmick (if you can call it that) is that the film is told without a single line of dialogue â just animal noises and a backing of beautiful C418-esque music composed by the filmâs director.
Itâs a beautiful, serene, lovely experience â all animated in good olâ open-source Blender, no less! It got me to really feel things for these animals â it was a good idea to dial the anthropomorphism down to, like, 10%, rather than 75%. Theyâre intelligent enough to steer a boat, but thatâs about it. The kibby bats around a lemurâs tail and hates dogs. 9/10.
FelidĂŚ
The second part of the double feature: FelidĂŚ1, a 1994 German film about⌠okay. Okay. Look. Bear with me here. The idea is that itâs a film noir except everybody is a cartoon housecat. And for the first twenty minutes or so, i was thinking, okay, thatâs a nice idea, but i donât know if it has much more than that idea? And then it goes full-tilt into Crazytown. This movie contains, in no particular order:
Cat buttholes
Cat sex
Cat homophobia
Cat eugenics
Cats speaking Latin
Cats reading German
Cats using a computer
Cat murder
So much gory cat murder
An electroshock cat cult
Genetically engineered lab cats
A cat psychopomp who takes care of the cat dead in his cat catacombs
A dream sequence involving a giant evil Gregor Mendel commanding a literal sea of dead cats
And itâs all done in the animation style of an eighties-nineties-type Disney film (with some budgetary concessions and dodgy lip-synch, because, hey, nobodyâs actually going to watch this). It reminded me, weirdly enough, of an old Garfield cartoon i watched as a kid â the one where he had nine lives, specifically that segment where he was an escaped lab cat. I have only the haziest memory of it, but damned if it (and the annoying-ass little girl in the Garf-den of Eden) didnât stick with meâŚ
I donât know who the fuck the audience for this is other than furries and sicko Europeans, but i fucking love that it exists. Iâm gonna be thinking about it forever, whether i want to or not. All hail Claudandus? 9/10.
Iâll elaborate properly on getting around to the bimensal stuff-i-watched-recently post, but for now, you should absolutely go and watch Flow and FelidĂŚ right now. Two films about cats: one beautiful and serene, one weird and deranged. Go do it. Theyâre great.
Iâll confess iâm skipping past a lot of Christmas films for this recap, because iâd seen most of them before and those memories are blanketed in a thick fog of advocaat and chocolate. Nevertheless: hereâs â if not all â most of the things iâve watched over the past couple of months.
Perhaps iâm being unfair to a film thatâs a rounding error away from a century old, but this was nightmarish in the literal sense. A terrifying parade of disconnected events where things just happen without rhyme or reason. By the end of it, i just wanted to wake up. (2/10)
âIf there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery. And therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope who doubts.â
Perfectly hits that Twelve Angry Men nerve in my brain. What i love about this, apart from the truly devious vape hits, is that rather than some grandiose, ancient, mysterious cabal, the Catholic Church is treated as exactly what it is: the worldâs oldest bureaucracy.1 (10/10)
âI have seen things in this world that would make Isaac Newton crawl back into his mother's womb!â
Iâm playing a dangerous game here, because i watched this on the first of January, 2025 â meaning that, once again, thereâs a good chance that my âfavourite film of 2025â will have come out in 2024. Not that iâm complaining.
Robert Eggers hits it out of the park again in this incredible adaptation of an adaptation of Dracula. Visually, itâs immaculate, drenched in chiaroscuro, the Count himself heralded by a sudden desaturation to bluish silver. The actors bring their A-game all around: Nicholas Hoult, perpetually an up-and-comer, seems finally to be breaking out, and having long forgotten the trailers, the midway appearance of Willem Dafoe was a most welcome surprise. Plus, despite owing her career to a surname, Lily-Rose Depp brings it all to a role that in a lesser actorâs hands could have been yet another generic traumatised wife.
I have such a loveâhate relationship with Terry Gilliam. His films are so inventive, so wonderful, in theory, everything i love. But theyâre always coated in this layer of grime and ugliness that brings them down for me. Here, he finally puts it to good use, building a horrifyingly relatable surreal dystopia thatâll make any Brit whoâs ever had to deal with the welfare system cry-laugh in how true it all is. Have you got a 27B/6? Iâm a bit of a stickler for paperwork⌠(8/10)
Talk about wasted potential. Heretic starts out brilliant â two Mormon missionaries are trapped in the house of a Reddit atheist, played marvellously by Hugh Grant, who knows how to make every conversation drip with tension. If it was just two hours of uncomfortable theological arguments, iâd be strapped in.
But, nope! The third act starts, they go into his eeeeevil basement, and thereâs a creeeepy emaciated woman talking in cryptic breathy half-sentences!!! Are you scared yet??? (4/10)
I forgot i saw this and had to quickly retract the blog post and edit it back in, which says just about all you need to know. Itâs pretty good, and the monkey gimmickâs fun, but iâm not itching to rewatch it any time soon. (5ž/10)
We are so fucking back. Ben Stiller and company havenât missed a single step in the three-year-long gap. Iâm tearing my hair out trying to figure out the mysteries over here!
The main message i got from this was reinforcement that the mediĂŚval era is, indeed, the least interesting (to me) of the three broad ages of history. Still, thereâs stuff to like here: Sean Connery is always great, and there are so many weird-ass little guys in the monastery that you have to begrudgingly love the energy. (5/10)
âI wasn't really paying attention⌠I was too busy thinking how i would gas everyone in the room.â
Behold, the antiâSchindlerâs List: a quiet family drama where the head of the family just so happens to be the KZ-Kommandant of Auschwitz.
The magicâs in the sound. We never get to see what goes on behind the walls of the camp, but the implication is enough. Stacks of smoke. The noise of industry. Yelling of orders. Screams of pain. Itâs enough to make anyone throw up. The musicâs no respite: John Williams this ainât; what little there is is harsh, discordant, pained.
Sandra HĂźller is incredible as the commandantâs wife, a woman who cares much more about the stability of their marriage and financial security than anything her husband might be doing for a living. Thereâs a chilling conversation where her and her friends, gathered round for tea, chat idly about the clothes of liquidated Jews they won at auction.
Still, itâs a little disjointed; some fragments and branches never quite meet back up with the main trunk of the film. Itâs a hard thing to rate⌠but letâs say (7/10).
Thereâs been a terrible glitch in the system. See, last year, i designated Avatar: The Way of Water â a film which by all possible standards was released in 2022 â as my favourite film of 2023. I figured that this was alright, since i had first seen it in January of â23, during its original release, and it was unlikely to happen again in 2024.
It happened again in 2024.1 Even more egregiously, it was, to my knowledge, long after the film in questionâs original 2023 run; my local arthouse cinema just happened to be showing it. Alright then, i thought â iâll make a new category for my favourite film of last last year, and give the actual award to the second place.
The second place was also a 2023 film â but, in my defence, one which didnât see a British release until 2024. Itâs not until you get to the bronze-medal spot that you get an undisputable, certifiable 2024 release.
As such, not wanting to deprive any of the three of recognition, i, acting in my role as the governor of the Satyrsâ Forestâs Board of Archons (est. time immemorial, number of members: 1), have elected to split the award three ways. Please try to enjoy each movie equally.
I caught up with Justine Trietâs Anatomy of a Fall in late March, in what must have been a repertory showing at the Tyneside Cinema, and on paper, this should in no way be my film of the year. Iâm a maximalist at heart: i think, generally, that more is more, and the best art is that which stops just short of total sensory abuse. So whatâs this quiet legal drama2 about an accident in the French Alps doing on here?
Autobiographical reasons, mostly. I worry about disclosing too much, but i saw so much of myself in the character of Daniel â a shy, mildly disabled kid torn between two cultures who has to deal with the sudden absence of his father â that by the end i was sobbing and sobbing and sobbing and i didnât even know why.
If you believe the hubbub, this is a mystery film. Whoâs really responsible for the dadâs death? Was it Sandra HĂźller? Did he kill himself? But Ms Triet has an answer, one that sheâs sworn not to reveal for decades â and, if we all saw the same film, i think i know what it is. It was an accident. Always, we see these deliberate shots of the dogâs ball precariously on the stairs, or the son nearly slipping off of snowy ground. The prosecutor even says as much: accidents happen, but they donât make for a flashy story. So, as humans, we make up intrigue where none exists â because itâs easier to accept evil than that the universe is sometimes a cruel and arbitrary thing.
Poor Things! Released in 2023 in the U.S., but took until January of 2024 to arrive on this side of the pond. Last year already had a whole awards cycle with it in contention, everyone knows about it, so iâll be brief. This film would give the average puritanical zoomer a heart attack with the amount of fucking in it, the average puritanical boomer a heart attack at about the point where Emma Stone joins the communist party, and the average modern sadsack a heart attack with how wonderfully optimistic Ms Stoneâs character is despite the dour circumstances of her creation. Quality flick.
Finally, we come to the only awardee unambiguously released in 2024, and the goopiest film of the year: The Substance. If last year Avatar was a warm bath for the senses, then this is a kick to the face. From the moment the pounding techno score kicks in, every little smack and crinkle of sound is perfectly calibrated to be disgusting in the best possible way, even if itâs just Dennis Quaid eating a bowl of shrimp. Every shot is cranked up to eleven, like you just guzzled down ten Potions of Swiftness and forgot to turn off Quake Pro. Itâs fucking glorious.
At some point, you think, ah, okay, iâve got a handle on the idea here. The movie then slaps you right on the cheek and reminds you that this is The Substance, bitch, and we are going to take this to its logical conclusion whether you like it or not. Weâre making it even goopier. Even grosser. Even weirder. And youâre going to either like it or throw up in your popcorn bucket and we donât care which.
I watched a lot of great old films for the first time last year. Some Like It Hot is a fantastic queer comedy thatâs aged far more gracefully than it has any right to (a bit like Dick van Dyke). Schindlerâs List3 is a masterpiece that should, by all rights, be this yearâs recipient â but iâd be hard-pressed to say i âenjoyedâ it, per se. Thatâs a one-and-done watch.
So, being the certified world #1 Gremlins 2 enjoyer that i am, it falls to 1986âs Little Shop of Horrors to take the crown. I just love this little slice of musical puppet madness. Steve Martin proves that the D in BDSM stands for âdentistâ.
Oh, Ryan Gosling. I put my trust in you, and this is how you repay me? The Fall Guy had everything teed up for a hole-in-one and whacked itself in the face with a golf club instead.
The problem is in the edit. Dialogue scenes go overlong. Every shot lingers just a second or so too long. The jokes (in this comedy film) are atrocious â but they could have been salvaged with a tighter edit! The setpieces are fun and Mr Gosling is as magnetic as always; the ingredients are there, but itâs just too scattershot to make it work.
I am convinced that Charli XCXâs Brat, where hyperpop grows up and gets a job, is music from the future that only wound up back in 2024 via some horrible spatiotemporal accident that killed two scientists and irradiated the entire Australian Capital Territory. Best song: âSympathy Is a Knifeâ.
I found out about the Levellers after a Discord acquaintance put the lyrics to âSell Outâ, off the album Levelling the Land, as their status. I then off-handedly played said song to my mother at a family get-together, who, unbeknownst to me, was a Levellers super-fan in her youth, and informed me that they were going to be in Newcastle this summer and would you like a ticket?
Some months later, and i can comfortably say that yes, they may all be geriatric now, but by the Gods, can they still play. (Iâm very glad i found a nice balcony to stand on, because the pit looked like an earthquake was hitting it!) It was a much younger crowd than iâd anticipated, too â lots of old crusty punks, but a decent number of teens and twentysomethings, so the kids (iâm including myself in this) are all right. Best song: âSell Outâ.
Well it can hardly be anything other than the game that got me off my arse to make a whole dedicated page for it, no? Sonic Robo Blast 2, the longest-developed and most storied Sonic fan game in a community positively choked with them, successfully reactivated the dormant fan neurons in my brain that hadnât been used since i was twelve. (#SilvazeForLife.)
The controls take some getting used to (if youâre a mouse-and-keyboard type of guy, i suggest in the strongest of terms that you should go into the options and set the control scheme to âManualâ) if youâre used to how other 3DSonic games control, but you can hardly blame them given that when they started making it Adventure wasnât even out yet in North America. Once that wee hurdleâs over with, youâre in for a proper joyous adventure.
Oh, and since itâs open source, the modding support is excellent to boot, with tonnes of level packs, tweaks, and nearly every playable character4 from the games you could care to name. So what are you waiting for? Go and download it today!
âFake newsâ was the defining term of the twenty-tens, and the introduction of easily accessible generative machine-learning tools has only sped up the slop production line. Itâs a rough landscape out there â as they say, the truth is paywalled, but the lies are free.
This yearâs winner turns the whole tripe-conomy on its head by going more retro than you could possibly imagine. Enter Tidings.potato.horse Ââ a self-described âmediĂŚval content farmâ, where four robot bards sum up the weekâs news in absurd lyrical form. Iâm always on the hunt for people doing interesting things with generative ML, so much of it being just plain tacky or a cheap imitation of humanity, and this hits the spot, because no human except a proper mark would ever put in the effort to do this. (Moreover, a human would probably raise some ethical qualms at around the fourth stanza on mass slaughter in Gaza.) So come on up, ye bards, and grasp your award with all six-and-a-half fingers.
As a card-carrying transhumanist, i long for the day when we defeat aging â and though weâre not there quite yet, the field of longevity is abuzz with both scientists doing their best, and⌠uh⌠other people. Ordinary Thingsâ âHow to Live Foreverâ takes an empathetic look at the other people, like the meme-infamous Bryan Johnson, and sees what theyâre all about, from clinics on private Caribbean islands to limited-edition paperback manifestos.
Language generally trends in the direction of politeness and euphemism. We replace the impolite with something less direct, which then becomes generally accepted, which then becomes impolite, and the cycle starts all over. This is how we got from idiot to mentally retarded to special needs to SEND.
Every so often, though, something opposite will happen: a magical dysphemism, where, the realm of polite speech not being enough, someone will reach into the taboo for description. Such is the case with 2024âs word of the year:
rawdog
verb. To have sex without a condom, or, latterly, to undertake something without the usual comforts and conveniences.
The most prominent new usage of rawdog has been in the case of rawdogging flights: no books, no films, no games; just you, the window, and the back of the seat. One might also rawdog an illness by forgoing medication, or rawdog a hike by going ultra-light. Itâs a tremendously useful addition to English vocabulary, and one i expect will stick around for many years to come.
I recently moved from Northumberland to County Durham, and, in the process, had to reload my mental map of all the nice places and interesting things to do, to which Birkheads Secret Gardens has been a most wonderful addition. After decades of mining and intensive farming, two gardeners bought this wee plot of land and have transformed it into fourteen luscious themed gardens overlooking the Durham countryside. I never got around to writing a full post on the place (my procrastination having got the better of me), but i hope this award is hearty enough a recommendation to make up for it.
Though things, as always, kept on ticking in the background, 2024 lacked big bombastic breakthroughs in science like 2022âs fusion ignition or 2023âs semaglutide revolution. The good news of the year was quieter, overtaken by the political shouting of the busiest electoral calendar in world history.
One item on the docket that slipped under the global radar was an important milestone on Britainâs route to net zero. With coal already dipping to a mere intermittent blip on the National Gridâs supply, it was time for the last supplier to close, and in late September, Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station officially shut its doors, ending 142 years of coal power in the UK. We still have a ways to go, but slowly, surely, this green and pleasant land is getting greener.
Watched as a double feature for the Halloweâen season â Evil Dead 2 is as funny as ever, and all you need to know about Army of Darkness is that itâs a film where a stop-motion skeleton explodes, and if that doesnât sell you, itâs not for you. (I did find myself wishing iâd watched the theatrical cut, rather than the directorâs cut â the studio-mandated happy ending has so many iconic bits i didnât realise i was missing!) (7/10)
In honour of Megalopolis2, Tyneside Cinema were doing a season of films with dizzying ambitions and variable results, from Southland Tales to Synecdoche. I jumped at the chance to finally see my favourite film on the big screen â and, yep, still a certified 11/10 masterpiece.
Steven Spielberg did not technically direct this, but come on now, we all know this is as spiritually Spielberg as it gets. Some fun stuff, especially the motley crew of paranormal investigators, but itâs weighed down by the jarring tonal mish-mash and a glued-on fourth act where they seem to have suddenly realised they forgot a â0â in their special effects budget. (5½/10)
I knew absolutely nowt about this going in, so when Robin Williams showed up, it took some time for me to mentally adjust to the combination of his zaniness, Jeff Bridgesâ shock-jock sleaze, and the trademark layer of Gilliam grime coating it all. All of it comes together beautifully in a surprisingly good-hearted fantasy tale of big-city redemption. (8/10)
I had bought the tickets and everything for Clint Eastwoodâs final film â but it was the day after the U.S. election, and fifteen minutes in, i thought, cripes, do i really want to be sitting through a drama about the dysfunction of the American legal system right now? (N/A/10)
Thereâs nothing i love more than a big, ambitious, messy film, and this hits all three. You can see the joins between the Kubrickian rigour and Spielbergian spectacle, but i donât care. Viva the mess.
Haley Joel Osment is incredible in this. You can totally see why Kubrick thought no child actor could ever pull off the script.
All the tech has this glorious early-noughties Orionâs Arm-style shimmer and sheen to it, and let me tell you, i live for that shit. (9/10)
This is some kind of primordial film, one that youâd find washed up at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, and six months later, radiocarbon dating would show it to be older than civilisation itself. (Very glad i had subtitles â those old-timey wickie accents donât mess about.)
Also, Robert Pattinson is really, really hot in this. No man has ever been this Fucked Up. (10/10)
I didnât know Hollywood still had it in it to pull out all the stops for a big, colourful show-stopping musical like this. Ariana Grande stole the show, but the goat stole my heart. (9/10)
Alex Garlandâs Annihilation is nominally a horror film.1 Team of scientists goes into an evil forest, gets picked off one by one with cool body horror effects, blonde final girl makes it out and is irreversibly traumatised, movie ends, many such cases.2 But iâve never seen it that way.
Might i just be a contrarian? Certainly, the biosphere our characters enter is cruel, but i think itâs a useful exercise to consider the situation from its perspective. The government is on their Gods-know-how-manyth expedition into the Shimmer at this point, and up until now, itâs all been military men. Cripes, if i were a sentient self-regulating ecosystem and all these feds started probing around my internals because they want to kill me, iâd develop an immune response too.
The world beyond the Shimmer is beautiful beyond description. It is a place where the sky glistens in iridescent3 waves, where every sort of plant grows from every sort of bush and beast, and where death is just one step in a beautiful cycle of life and rebirth.4 It blurs the line between not just the species but kingdoms of life â flora, fauna, and funga all mingling and merging together equally under one roof. Barring the terrifying humanâbear hybrids, thatâs a world iâd like to live in.
Plus, it seems willing to learn. In the ending âfightâ (cue the noise), allegorical for the obvious as the visuals may be, the alien throws not a single punch. Itâs learning by doing, mimicking every move Lena makes, enough to turn into a rudimentary facsimile of her â and even after its destruction, the ending glimmer in her and her husbandâs eyes makes clear a part of the Shimmerâs essence is here to say. I say thatâs for the better.
P.S. Hereâs some stuff iâve been listening to recently (sorted from âbleep bloopâ to âstrum strumâ):
I reviewed this one in full back in August, so go check that out if you want more detail. A stylish sequel (sevenquel?) that makes the world of Alien more believable than ever and introduces some great new talent. (7/10)
Seeing Christopher Lloyd in this was like seeing Jeff Goldblum in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Like, hey, youâre not meant to be famous yet!
Itâs one of those films thatâs been talked about so much that i have very little new to add, but i will say that i wasnât expecting this to be as funny as it was.1(7/10)
Ugh. Once the plot gets moving two thirds of the way through itâs pretty good, but that first hour is ĂŚsthetically revolting in the most perplexing way. The Spanish countryside has never looked so grimy and clammy. I hate all of these people. (3½/10)
I didnât know Steven Spielberg had the capacity to be so⌠cryptic? I love how the film builds up the mystery of whatâs going on, with an ending that leaves you wondering in both senses of the word. Contactâs better, yeah, but Contact wouldnât exist without Close Encounters as a base to work off. (9/10)
Douglas Trumbull, 2001âs special-effects man, gets into directing with this sickeningly seventies environmentalist sci-fi fable. Thereâs a lot to like here, but i canât help the feeling that this would have worked a lot better if youâd cut it up into five twenty-minute TV episodes and had Tom Baker show up midway through. (5/10)
Went to the cinema for this, for⌠some reason? Tim Burton is back, baby, having finally freed himself from Disneyâs offputting computer-generated tendrils, and while Beetlejuice²: Beetlejuice Harder is ultimately inessential, itâs a fun legasequel thatâs better than anyone was reasonably expecting, keeping up the same manic energy as the original. Michael Keaton, Catherine OâHara, and Winona Ryder havenât missed a step since 1988. Willem Dafoe is great too, though like most of the new cast, his character doesnât have much to do in the story, which struggles to commit to any of its three plot threads.
Also, the lead girl falls in love with a socially awkward zoomer who listens to Sigur RĂłs, which means thereâs still a chance for me. So thatâs⌠thatâs good. Thatâs reassuring. (6/10)
Come on. Itâs Casablanca. What do you want me to say? Every five minutes thereâs a line that made me point at the screen like Leonardo DiCaprio. âWeâll always have Paris.â(10/10)
Unnerving to see Dev Patel before his ongoing âsexiest man aliveâ era, but you can never go wrong with Danny Boyle, whose kinetic, saturated style elevates a simple feel-good rags-to-riches story. (6/10)
I cannot fucking believe i roped my mum into coming to the cinema with me.2 Greatest decision of my life. Her fucking face!
The Substance is the goopiest [sic] movie iâve ever seen, and thatâs ignoring all the body horror. Demi Moore digs through wet rubbish to pick up a sticky USB drive and splatters eggs everywhere. Dennis Quaid eats a bowl of shrimp that makes the worldâs most viscerally disgusting noise. Margaret Qualleyâs teeth fall out.3
My one complaint is i wish it had gone further. Everyone on the internet thinks it went too far. No. They are fools. That blood-sprayed audience should have started melting into The Thing, and we all know that deep inside our hearts. (9½/10)
Long live the new flesh! A film starring a Betamaxussy and a man who exists exclusively through semi-sentient VHS tapes. So many ideas, so little time (the Cronenberg special). Watching this is like trying to remember a nightmare you just woke up from.
Iâm filing this in the same folder as Rear Window, a film with a surprising amount to say about an internet that it couldnât have reasonably foreseen. What are we if not, like Brian OâBlivion4, ghosts of all our past transmissions? Is the online avatar not the new flesh? Existenz tackles the internet more head-on, but suffers from the fact that David Cronenberg doesnât know what a video game is. Videodrome is unburdened by the future facts, and so can say whatever it wants. (10/10)
Francis Ford Coppolaâs final fart is why Hollywood canât have nice things, an incomprehensible schmaltzy mess about how Adam Driver is a Very Special Boy who is always right. I donât know where the money went â everything looks like Spy Kids. What an embarrassing way to go out. (2/10)
Francis Ford Coppola shoots for the moon and misses with Megalopolis, his long-gestating passion project that shows why studio interference isnât always the worst thing. Sometimes you need someone in the room to say ânoâ. Every creative decision made here is baffling: Adam Driverâs character can stop time, and this never comes up. Our main character can stop time, and this does not play a role in the filmâs story! His political rival leaks a video of him having sex with an underage pop star, and within about five minutes, it turns out it was fake and she was 23 anyway, so that plotlineâs resolved and never comes back up. Every conflict is like this. I donât know whatâs going on. (4/10)
Francis Ford Coppolaâs Megalopolis: A Fable defies your puny human notions of âgoodâ or âbadâ in an ambitious sci-fi drama thatâs like if Hillary Clinton wrote a Neil Breen film.5 You can neatly split the cast into âknew what kind of movie they were inâ and âdidnâtâ. Shia LeBeouf knew â he chews the scenery with every line as if the sets were made of cotton candy. Aubrey Plaza knew, because thereâs no way not to know what kind of movie youâre in when your character is called âWow Platinumâ and makes Mr LeBeouf give her head. Adam Driver probably knew? He can get pretty hammy, but heâs kind of trying to keep a straight face. Nathalie Emmanuel didnât know â sheâs the female lead, but her performance is so wooden i was genuinely shocked to find out she wasnât a nepotism hire. Giancarlo Esposito is insulated enough from the properly weird stuff that i donât think he knew. (6/10)
Francis Ford Coppolaâs Francis Ford Coppolaâs Megalopolis: A Fable is so sincere i canât help but love it. Itâs a man who built his fame on films about the criminal underworld and the hell of war going: âI refuse to let this be my legacyâ. Megalopolis is about a man with a vision for a better future and the power to make it happen. (His vision for a better future mostly involves those moving walkways they have at airports. I never said it was perfect.) And, yeah, itâs a little undercooked. Yeah, itâs as subtle as a brick.6 But itâs the film the man wanted to make, and itâs a film that proudly stands against the cynical doom and gloom that has infested popular culture since the nineties. I canât help but respect that. (8/10)
âWhaddaya think of this boner i got?â âJon Voight, 2024 (10/10)
