Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  The Holdovers 2023

  ★★★★ Watched 12 Nov 2023 2

  An eminently likeable film, sweet and warm and hilarious. That said, what I like about Payne is his willingness to turn his characters into complete dirtbags. Giamatti's Hunham goes so far past the realm of good-natured curmudgeon and almost seems utterly irredeemable, and the vitriolic relationship between him and Angus leads both of them to discover their shittiest selves. Which is why it's so impressive that they remain completely loveable the entire time anyway, their hatred and angst always so…

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  Squid Game 2021

  ★★★ Watched 24 Nov 2023

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  It's been a rough couple of years for me and television, as my growing discontent with the binge-model miniseries spiralled out into a full on apathy to literally any new show that received any amount of hype. It's why I actively chose to ignore Squid Game, despite it probably being the most talked-about television series ever made. I was so sick to death of the miniseries format, of seeing stories that should have been told in two hours spun out…

Popular reviews

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  The Banshees of Inisherin 2022

  ★★ Watched 27 Oct 2022 2

  Not nearly as offensive as Three Billboards..., but also nowhere near as interesting. McDonagh's latest was about the easiest sell to me imaginable. Friendships that seem to end arbitrarily, and the anxiety that existing ones could, is one of those themes that's insanely potent and yet hugely under-explored culturally and artistically.

  To be blunt, I just didn't believe what was presented here. It made no sense to me that Gleeson and Farrell would have been best friends prior to the…

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  Chernobyl 2019

  ★ Watched 10 Jan 2020 4

  For a show so concerned with the importance of The Truth, it's almost funny just how aggressively and relentlessly this fabricates one of our most awful tragedies in order to service its smug, glib, Washington Post liberal armchair finger-wagging. Almost.

  Even leaving aside the maelstrom of awful political point-scoring this reduces the Chernobyl disaster to, it's a leaden, poorly paced procedural drama with a faceless cast that squanders some of my favourite actors in the world (Jared Harris! Emily Watson!…