Letterboxd — Your life in film

probably the most reactionary spider-man story i’ve ever seen, even counting this week’s amazing #26. i disobeyed every impulse guiding me away from watching this, against my better judgement, and was thoroughly disappointed. i didn’t think it was possible for anything under the sun to cheapen my opinion of the first spider-verse but this more than did it. only the depth of my respect for the audio/visual craft (which i won’t waste any more space elaborating on) that went into…

let's do things a little different, eh? for all the praise the animation gets, there's surprisingly little investigation into what it's in service of. animation doesn't exist in a vacuum and the dazzling spectacle it can wrap you in doesn't have value-neutral meaning. the emotional currents the waves of brightly coloured, swift and fluid animation ride on aren't all they're cracked up to be under scrunity. here are a few reasons why.

for a film about a multiverse, it contains…

It seems a little lazy they use footage from the concert in Japan. I don't mind seeing some of the same performance again because that was a great concert film, but that's not live from Italy! The first song is footage from Japan, but then she magically speaks to an Italian audience (in Italian). Then for the rest we're in Italy. The setlist is identical to Who's That Girl - Live in Japan, so at best this concert film can…

The Arrow Challenge: 92/100
1955 Ranked

The first of a few films that have been made about the Great Brink’s Robbery in 1950 Boston - most notably, William Friedkin’s The Brink’s Job - Six Bridges to Cross tracks the development of a criminal. Sal Mineo makes his film debut as young Jerry Florea, who will grow into Tony Curtis. A petty thief who runs a gang and takes his bond with these boys very seriously, Jerry forges a bond with…

A hauntingly beautiful take on a coming of age story. The story of a boy's first love has been portrayed ad nauseum since essentially the inception of cinema, with men predominantly behind the camera as the creators of films and sexuality and desire being hugely important to cinema from the very beginning, ever since 1896's The Kiss. Providing a fresh take on the subject of burgeoning teenage boy sexuality is no easy task in a media landscape where we have…

After a sublimely ballsy opening, this flick hits all of the nihilistic beats one expects from your standard poliziotteschi fare. Sociopathic cops, jarring English musical cues, amorality on- and offscreen, a sheen of grime—unfortunately, its pacing is about as clunky as its title, although just as ludicrously badass. There is enough to keep you entertained and intrigued, plus, the dynamic between the two leads is a pleasant intermingling of hardly veiled homoeroticism and humorous insanity. But it sure does take its…

"Jetta, this movie SUCKS!" (Amy, ten minutes into the screening)

The Manhattan Project #4

I gotta agree with my learned colleague; what we have here is a film that failed to fully communicate any of its potentially interesting ideas. Sean Bagley's cinematography is appealing enough, but this is no American Perfekt road trip since I never bought into Jacob Elordi's inconsistent performance as a sociopathic serial killer - net negative that he looks like any random model you'd see advertised…

"It took such a strange path for me to get to you."

The Manhattan Project #5

I'm proud to be the first person to review this wonderful little Brazilian film! Unlike He Went That Way, which I think I might've gone into with the wrong mindset since we fought through rush hour traffic to just barely make the screening, A Strange Path followed a pleasant dinner at Rosa Mexicana with two more friends added to our lovely group, Frank and…

“We're all on the same conveyer belt, Nate. Some of us fall off a bit sooner than the rest, but... we're all heading for the same destination.”

As short form horror film-making goes, nothing has satisfied me much more than this outstanding episode of the Cabinet of Curiosities series. Its rock solid foundation is the deep warmth and authenticity of the relationship between Sheriff Craven (Glyn Turman) and Dr Carl Winters (F. Murray Abraham) which is set up so elegantly…

“I got it wrong again. Fuck this franchise!“

Yep, it’s getting to that point.

My enthusiasm for this franchise (as Mindy’s obligatory self-referential monologue so keenly identifies this film as part of) was badly (though not surprisingly) shaken by the misfire that was Scream V. But I found my hope revived by the strongly positive reception to this latest instalment. More fool me. 

What are you guys smoking? This is even worse than its predecessor. What exactly works in this…