Watched on a big screen a few days back. The only Mann I had not seen in a cinema. Holy fucking shit. The abstract establishing shots, best exemplified by the opening with the buzz of synths as your eyes try to work out what you’re looking at. The use of architecture. Peterson's soulfulness. Noonan's anguish. Farina smirking. The flights of poetic fantasy, which Mann avoided after this except for that celebrated moment in the Insider.Rarely is procedural material quite so gripping as the whole sequence with the note in Lecktor’s cell. You can feel Mann’s love for it."Have you ever seen blood in the moonlight, Will. It appears quite black." Spinotti.Just incredible.

Pretty bad, almost perfectly archetypal example of the wave of Italian Conan knockoffs that replaced spaghetti westerns as an important genre in that country's cinema in the early '80s. This has the usual plot including tropes like the Evil megalomaniacal emperor (Dakar, sharing most of his scenes with a pair of tarantulas he chats away to), the massacre of the village to give the hero a mission of revenge, the training to be a badass and the episodic middle section where he encounters a few side-quests here including a tribe of amazons (among them the spectacular Sabrina Siani, the main

This kind of thing needs a better hit rate for gags than this manages - there is probably a bit too much effort put into the silly plot and characters, but teh cast are very game, some of the sight gags are great, and there are big laughs here. Mostly jokes about class, sex and quite a few "Don't call me Shirley" type lines.

The representation is problematic by modern standards (as some of the more annoying reviews on here ably demonstrate) but this is a pretty sturdy Oscar Bait historical war movie. It has a nicely epic feel with a clutch of great performances (Freeman, Braugher, Elwes) and a miscast Broderick somehow making it work even in scenes with the electric charisma of young Denzel, who is astonishing here. The big battle scenes when they come are spectacular and bruising, teh climax manages to be both a celebration of heroism and an elegy to teh waste of war. Lovely cinematography, score. Zwick never

The representation is problematic by modern standards (as some of the more annoying reviews on here ably demonstrate) but this is a pretty sturdy Oscar Bait historical war movie. It has a nicely epic feel with a clutch of great performances (Freeman, Braugher, Elwes) and a miscast Broderick somehow making it work even in scenes with the electric charisma of young Denzel, who is astonishing here. The big battle scenes when they come are spectacular and bruising, teh climax manages to be both a celebration of heroism and an elegy to teh waste of war. Lovely cinematography, score. Zwick never

National treasure. He would take that and turn it into a 20 minute gag with a meta query on the meaning of the term national treasure, a few allusions to just-obscure-enough pop culture, a funny accent and/or voice he gave to the person saying "National treasure", a genius set up and call back you never see coming, and a diss to a celebrated UK comedian of stage or screen. And I would love every minute. The only negative is that watching him now makes me feel very old because I used to watch Lee and Herring in the 1990s. Oof.

National treasure. He would take that and turn it into a 20 minute gag with a meta query on the meaning of the term national treasure, a few allusions to just-obscure-enough pop culture, a funny accent and/or voice he gave to the person saying "National treasure", a genius set up and call back you never see coming, and a diss to a celebrated UK comedian of stage or screen. And I would love every minute. The only negative is that watching him now makes me feel very old because I used to watch Lee and Herring in the 1990s. Oof.

I really loved this in 1997, and rewatching it I remembered how different it feels from most Clancy/Bond action espionage thrillers of that era: it has huge stakes (stolen nukes) but keeps its focus intimate and low-key, following Kidman's in-at-the-deep-end academic and Clooney's none-more-smug military attache as they chase the weapons across Europe and back to the USA. The issue with it is that their characters are a bit vague (Kidman, who does well to give her some pluck amidst all her reacting) and a collection of actorly tics (Clooney, his ever ER habit on display) tied to a conceited

Director Owen understands that talking heads in a documentary are generally incredibly boring, and he also avoids the modern doc tropes of continual done footage. Instead, he seems to have taken more of a Ken Burns approach, with a polyphonic oral history and a kaleidoscope of archive footage crisscrossing between the lives of three young men from the pits of Ayrshire who would define (arguably) the three biggest football clubs in Britain far into the 21st century. The material is rich: the social changes of the '60s and '70s, a sudden burst of colour in the match footage, the growth

YouTube video by Glen Campbell - Topic

This plays like somebody gave Na Hong-jin the assignment: make a Michael Bay movie, but do it your way. So it is a frankly batshit Korean monster movie with so much to love amidst the extreme oddness of much of it. The beautiful wide angle vistas and streets flying by at speed during the many white-knuckle chases are ace, and it manages to make a good half dozen of those sequences genuinely tense and gripping. The way it continually undercuts the idea of heroism: its protagonists are all bumbling idiots, resolutely human, refreshingly without an emotional arc between them. The

This beautiful fantasy short was screened before the Empire Strikes Back in cinemas in 1980. It was written and directed by Roger Christian (who would go on to have a strange journeyman career), who was art director on Star Wars and Alien. That visual acumen is evident in the look he and legendary DP Roger Pratt give this: twilight and autumnal, it gives the Scottish locations a bleak beauty that emphasises the ideas of a knight returning from the Crusades to find his homeland desolate and ruined by invaders and plague. The rhythms are steady and patient, the textures sharp

Patrick McGoohan is such a perfect bit of casting for Iago that it is a bit spooky. In this movie, which takes Othello and puts it in the single-set of a London Jazz party in an unfeasibly huge and cool warehouse loft, he plays Jazz drummer Johnny Cousin. Surrounded by beautiful and talented people who trade riffs verbally and musically and seem very laissez faire and free and easy, his hyper-intense twitchiness just barely hidden behind a jovial exterior gives him the vibe of a shark in a gold fish bowl. That is to say, he is incredible here, making

Putting aside the bonkers historical rewriting and Gibson's subsequent behaviour and cancellation, this remains a stirring piece of popular epic filmmaking of a type since gone extinct. What was original about it at the time was the way Gibson combined a very accessible audience-first sensibility (working in loads of gags and character beats, regular action scenes and broad archetypal characters) with a historical story of kings and rebellions, battles and politics. That means that for a tale of a martyred rebel leader and his doomed campaign for Scottish independence, it plays like a rollicking romantic adventure. The battle scenes are

Fulci's astonishing visual genius is a fascinating thing, mixed up as it is with his fucked-up sensibility, which makes him depict faces melting due to acid (in close-up) or people's heads being eaten alive by tarantulas (in close-up) and his occasional flagrant disregard for the norms of coherent storytelling, which absolutely works here, as the surreal horror of the hellgate bleeds slowly into the world and reality starts to break down. From the sepia opening scene, through the many awkward dialogue exchanges and surging, unexplained plot points, this is a richly imagined Italian cosmic horror. The performances are all over

This is one of those movies where the star's life and (subsequent) death shadow its reputation. McQueen suffered respiratory issues on set and was soon after diagnosed with the lung cancer that killed him. The fact that the movie is so crepuscular and death-haunted only adds to its feel as a sort of thwarted epitaph. Thwarted because it is caught between being any one of a few different types of western. There is an early passage where McQueen's legendary tracker/scout/killer is working for an association of Ranchers dealing with cattle rustlers that is pure '70s revisionist western. Beautiful Alonso landscape

A horror rollercoaster with no substance whatsoever, this is a ton of fun from start to finish. The first half hour or so promises more; but once the monsters start coming out of the dark, Creggar commits, and the movie rides a wave of youtuber-gags-and-gamer-easter-eggs to the climax. That's no bad thing; whereas Backrooms or Obsession both suggest they have deeper thematic concerns but don't ultimately have much to say, this movie just wants to keep you scared, with the odd moment of levity thrown in. Creggar knows how to mount suspense, how to orchestrate carnage, how to set up

Ayer gets that the survival or otherwise of the dog is a crucial point for many audience-members, so he spoils that in the first 30 seconds of the movie. The dog survives. Phew. There is nothing new here. But this is a beautifully executed survival adventure; tense and gripping, beautiful and moving. Pitt lends it some movie star weight but Odin is the real star, and he is a great movie dog. Their chemistry is the make or break element, and their bond carries the second and third acts. Brad Pitt and a dog vs Alaska, basically. Alaska means grizzlies,

The sort of abstract genre pop art post-modernism that Cattet and Forzani specialise in is an acquired taste. It rejects emotional engagement in favour of an intellectual and sensual focus - the images are lush and beautiful, the references are numerous and often deployed with wit and imagination, the narratives are in quotation marks. Like all their movies, this feels like a Fulci or Bava tribute, directed by Paolo Sorrentino. This one is about an elderly spy (Fabio Testi, and it is a pleasure just to see that dude) living in a Cote D'azur hotel getting drawn into the disappearance

At this point in the spaghetti cycle, films were parodic or self-referential as the genre started to die. But this is a straight-faced movie, as old-fashioned a western tale as you'll see in Euro-Westerns. The plot is a trifle generic (hero released from prison, arrives in a small town run by criminals determined to fulfil a promise he made, comes into violent conflict with said criminals) and it is more efficient than anything else, telling its story with economy but little style. Robert Woods is a good lead, handsome and flinty, and the likes of Wang and Berger are fine

This is a low-budget miracle of political horror, using a Monkey's Paw-style zombie tale to comment on the Vietnam War and US Imperialism. Andy returns to his family in anywheresville, America, seemingly changed by his experience (the opening scene is his death). The Army thinks he was killed, and his placid, blank-eyed stare and refusal to engage with anything supports that notion, only his parents and sister are too happy to see him...at first. But then he begins to erupt into rage, strangling the family dog one-handed, and the police are looking for a soldier who tore out the throat

Once upon a time, UK TV was capable of producing something like this, a bonkers three hour sci-fi film about the battle for the future of the planet earth between a good angel and a bad angel, who may also be aliens. That makes it sound conventional genre material, but visionary writer David Rudkin (Penda's Fen) has no interest in that. Instead this is an oblique, poetic epic with plenty of tangents and detours, barely a hint of exposition but numerous allusions to mythology, cinema (Hitchcock's Vertigo), classical music and religion. Hywel Bennett is a fine lead as Gideon Harlax

I hadn't seen this since that initial 2019 cinematic screening, when it played well as a communal experience with a huge audience who had (probably) seen all of the previous MCU movies and needed this final chapter.That feels like a different world, frankly. Pre-pandemic, pre-Palestine genocide, pre-Ukraine, pre-AI, pre-BLM, pre-Trump's second election, pre-Reform.Now I look at this as that movie that I see cut up on my social media into little shorts and clips...and it feels uncannily like it was made for just that purpose. Beats. Easter eggs. Fan service. Some fine actors doing their best. Some awful CGI.That sense from many of these movies subsequently that none of these people were in the same room for so many scenes. And by now its status as the final chapter has been obliterated by TV shows, more movies, more TV shows, cartoons...and one more big movie on the horizon, which (apparently) takes the literal last shot of this story and the emotional climax for one of the biggest characters and runs it into the ground. Because there's money to be made.I still dig how goofy it sporadically is.

Chabrol is the Nouvelle Vague director I have seen the least of and struggle with the most, but this is a fine and singular achievement. Starting off in a very observational mode, it depicts a wedding in a small Dordogne town, and focuses eventually on the meet-not-quite-cute between a butcher, returned home after a long spell in the army, and the Headmistress of the primary school as they chat and some attraction is suggested. At the same time, Chabrol seems barely interested in them, fully painting in the details of the other people and the social world that surrounds them.

The low-budget cleverness of this is obvious; Vigalondo exploiting his limited locations and small cast to tighten his plot mechanics on every time loop the story creates. When I saw this in a cinema in 2007 that was the impressive thing; it does something like Primer, only with more thriller vibes and a bit less head-scratching (Vigalondo's acknowledged inspiration is Chrono-Cops, a brilliant 2000AD story by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons that plays with the ideas of different versions of yourself co-existing in a timeline). The mood and atmosphere, the way Vigalondo orchestrates tension while never letting his pace sag,

A really nicely shot, beautifully scored (Michael Nyman!) British short film adapting a Lord Dunsany story. It has folk horror vibes without any actual horror beats except for the early lingering shots of a genuinely unpleasant rotting corpse swinging from a gallows. That same corpse is a Highwayman - we see some of his deeds in elliptical flashbacks - and three of his friends have agreed to transfer his bones to an actual graveyard. That process is the story, and, a little shonky rhythm and a few missteps apart, it is diverting and tonally sustained throughout.

Though not quite as bold a sequel to a Friedkin smash hit as Boorman's Exorcist II, Frankenheimer has gone out of his way to make this different from the original. It's a fish out of water story, only the fish is a monumentally angry Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) sent to Marseille to catch the French Drug Smuggler who so brilliantly eluded him last time (Fernando Rey). Hackman is so assured and confident is it fairly impressive: you never catch him acting, through all his characters travails in this movie. Structurally, this is fascinatingly unorthodox. Popeye arrives in France, annoys the

This is a complicated experience. It feels like what should in theory be a strong partnership between the great writer Thomas McGuane and director Penn doesn't quite work as well in practice. McGuane's scenes of characters in conversation are frequently inspired - Nicholson loved American writers as friends and collaborators, and you can virtually feel how much he enjoys shooting the shit with Harry Dean Stanton, Randy Quaid and Frederic Forrest, all of whom are fantastic here - but he's less sure-handed with the suspense aspects of the western genre. Fair enough if this was a gentle comedy Western, but

This is a nice little time capsule of the famed (among comic fans of a certain age) Marvel Bullpen in the late '60s and early '70s, made by students with the co-operation of Herb Trimpe, at that time bringing a Kirby-influenced style to the Incredible Hulk (discussed by fans here) and later to draw pretty much every character across the Marvel line. Trimpe is a handsome dweebish guy who expounds upon whatever crosses his mind: commuting, his failed marriage, the relationship of fans and comic creators. His life in a town outside New York necessitates a long train ride into

There is really nothing else like this movie; a uniquely '80s slice of urban black comedy hell (recalling After Hours) spliced into a beautifully tense time-is-running-out thriller. And yet the real wonder of DeJarnett's work here (why did he not have a long and sparkling movie career?) is the way the romantic comedy-drama of the opening fifteen minutes, where a Tangerine Dream score and the poetry of the imagery suggests a serious intent absent from most such movies, slides into an apocalyptic movie in a scene lasting about five minutes. That control of tone is stunning and showcased a few

Sarnoski refashions the mythic poem of the ending of the Robin Hood story into a film of two very distinct halves. The first half is a brutal, horrifically visceral and violent story of Robin helping his comrade Little John on a mission to recapture his farmland, taken from him by a powerful family with Viking roots. In an opening sequence we have met and ageing Robin, roasting an animal over a campfire in bleak but beautiful mountains. A young woman comes to avenge her family, we and learn that he scorns the legends about himself as lies, and that he

The middle part of Haugerad's Oslo trilogy, this is a charming and rich portrayal of first love and identity. It uses a very Arnaud Desplechin device to frame the story as a literary text; just when I was starting to weary of the constant, very consciously written (Haugerad is a novelist) narration, the conceit is revealed, and teh story breaks open in fascinating ways. The way it plays with perspective - on life, love, sex, relationships - is lovely, and Haugerad has a great eye for the poetry in Oslo's urban spaces, which helps when that narration is doing so

This is a c-list Spaghetti, Euro-Western landfill, if you like. Romitelli was a prolific Assistant director and he directs like one: so much of this feels like coverage, with mostly dull framing and lighting. He only really comes to life during the action scenes, but even then it's all cuts of static shots with little dynamism, for all the spaghetti tropes that pop up: gatling gun massacre, gunmen on rooftops, three-on-one shootout. The story is generic in the extreme: the titular protagonist seeks revenge after the murder of his brother and rape of his new sister-in-law. The bad guys have

Perhaps the most underrated American film of the much-vaunted cinematic year of wonders that was 1999, Ang Lee's adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's great novel "Woe to Live On" is a beautiful epic about the effects of conflict. It comes clad in the iconography of a Western - the action scenes and look (Elmes' cinematography is sublime; painterly and using the frame with a feel for the landscape recalling the Hollywood epics of the 1950s and '60s) recall Walter Hill's brilliant the Long Riders, another novel of bushwhackers and raiders on the edges of the American Civil war, but this is

Peter Heller's novel reads like he read McCarthy's The Road and thought, "What this needs is a bit more plot, and a romance." The movie leans into that to some extent. But it's Ridley Scott, so it is handsome and an altogether smooth piece of cinema storytelling. Elordi's Hig lives on an isolated Colorado airfield with Brolin's Bagley, a cynical, badass survivalist who seems to enjoy sniping the occasional ravagers who happen by, calling them "roaches". Hig escapes through flight, soaring over the midwest in a Cesna and allowing Scott and cinematographer Messerschmidt (last few directors: Mann, Fincher, Dominik, Reeves