Ahh, nothing sells the Easter spirit more than watching this: Consumerism telling you to buy more Nintendo merchandise. No, thank you. I think I'll pass.

Random Blu-Ray Roulette: No. 126 There seems to be a discourse on The Last Laugh where people either fall in love with its grotesque perspective on a portly old man losing his job at a prestigious hot...

52 Years in 52 Weeks Challenge: 2026 Edition (9/52) This is where I am drawing a line with Luchino Visconti and his bone-dry, simplistic, dour and boring films. I know people rave about him, but Osses...

Strange business. Very strange business indeed. Although there is something very enjoyable yet crude about The Night They Raided Minsky's. The fact that Norman Wisdom's Chick Williams oogles within an...

"All I'm askin' is for a little" time to go and jump on the POP SCREEN feed as me and Graham audibly discuss Aretha Franklin. Amazing Grace has had a weird Orson Welles-like journey to get to the scre...

52 Years in 52 Weeks Challenge: 2026 Edition (4/52) For as long as I have been on Letterboxd, Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Assassin has been one of the earliest films I became aware of because of the site - ...

You either get on board with Kelly Reichardt, or you don't - and I get what her critics are saying. However, what is important about understanding Reichardt is that she takes film and boils it down to...

My NDA has expired. I can finally talk about this barking behemoth. My main worry transitioning from 28 Years Later to 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple was how Nia DaCosta would build and offer a uniqu...

52 Years in 52 Weeks Challenge: 2026 Edition (1/52) Before Gints Zilbalodis, before Hayao Miyazaki, and before Walt Disney, we had Lotte Reiniger. The Adventures of Prince Achmed sells you on pure bea...

There is much to take in with The Boy and the Heron, but I also think it's the Hayao Miyazaki film that is full-fat rarefied - no excuses. The fantasy shown in this not only taps into the usual Miyaza...

The Podcast Macabre Challenge: 2025 Edition - Produced by Debra Hill (51/54) "THE ICE IS GONNA BREAK!". I wish I liked The Dead Zone a little more, and although David Cronenberg makes a compact and st...

Random Blu-Ray Roulette: No. 119 The much-missed Peter Watkins: an innovator in every sense of the word, although an innovator whom I have slightly struggled to get on board with. I caught both The Wa...

I had forgotten I was doing a Miyazaki retrospective this year, and this is the film where I almost stopped. Not to stall any further, but Ponyo was the Hayao Miyazaki film I was looking forward to wa...

Random Blu-Ray Roulette: No. 118 Not my favourite Francis Ford Coppola film (it's still a damn sight better than the last one I saw!), yet Rumble Fish's unique monochrome gangland style probably makes...

The Podcast Macabre Challenge: 2025 Edition - Hammer Horror (45/54) I never knew I needed Patrick Troughton to come out of the world of Blackadder IV until now...

The Podcast Macabre Challenge: 2025 Edition - Released in 1955 (39/54) Dementia (a.k.a. Daughter of Horror) is a film that I can't get behind. Since nearly all of it revolves around a weird nightmare ...

The Podcast Macabre Challenge: 2025 Edition - Starring Dee Wallace (35/54) Filled with that classic '90s CGI that looks like rubber and featuring a convoluted plot on paranormal investigations, Peter ...

"Ohhh say caaaaaN yuuu SEeE3E!". I needed a laugh, and after seeing the trailer for the new The Naked Gun, it got me thinking that I hadn't seen any of the originals. The Naked Gun: From the Files of ...

The Podcast Macabre Challenge: 2025 Edition - Bonus Pick (2/2) (30/54) Triangle - a film that many people find underrated - is one that I found lukewarm and hollow. Firstly, I didn't like Christopher ...

The Podcast Macabre Challenge: 2025 Edition - Starring a Pro-Wrestler (28/54) Ah yes, from the great French auteur, un film de Zack Snyder. Look, I have no interest in Snyder - the pro-macho, nearly s...

Currently finished Season 1 of Twin Peaks (I know, unacceptable), and so a short from the late, great David Lynch was on the cards. WHAT DID JACK DO? is humorous and novel, featuring Lynch as a homici...

Random Blu-Ray Roulette: No. 108 Lovely in every sense of the word and beautiful in every way too, I must confess that Vojtěch Jasný's Desire also didn't grab me in the way that I wanted it to. It's d...

ALT: a very small man in a red suit is dancing on a zigzag floor .

Joshua Oppenheimer's anti-musical. Please be assured, The End is not Wicked, and everything that Oppenheimer designs in The End is not meant to be a colourful or lavish spectacle - but one that's Orwe...

Here we go. Four paragraphs. I haven't done that in a while. What is Megalopolis? Why is Megalopolis? Those are the questions. Even I, a Francis Ford Coppola defender, was extremely baffled by what I ...

Random Blu-Ray Roulette: No. 106 Not the greatest François Truffaut film out there, The Story of Adele H. sees him at his most formal, but out of the French New Wave, he always was that when compared ...

If the A24 thriller/horror bubble has finally burst, I don't think Opus is the film that has done so. Still, it's alright; worth it for Ayo Edebiri alone, and without her going toe-to-toe with a very ...

The Podcast Macabre Challenge: 2025 Edition - Made in Spain (19/54) A curious place to start with the work of one exploitation extraordinaire, Jess Franco, The Diabolical Dr. Z is his riff on the Germ...

Ooo-ooo-ah-ah. I've talked about my dislike for Osgood Perkins's last film, Longlegs, before - it's a film I find frustrating to wrap my head around with an overworked and, frankly, awful Nicolas Cage...

The Podcast Macabre Challenge: 2025 Edition - Letterboxd Top 250 (16/54) If I had to pick my favourite Juraj Herz film that isn't The Cremator, his adaptation of Beauty and the Beast would be it. It's...

Hey, Siri: what's the most boring psychological thriller of the 2020s? Siri's answer:

WORK IN PROGRESS Because no one has made this list on Letterboxd yet and it needs to be done. RULES 1. Feature or short fiction films only. I am not counting any documentary broadcast on Channel 5, te...

The Podcast Macabre Challenge: 2025 Edition - 1980's (14/54) The first Mr. Vampire is a fun staple of '80s Hong Kong action-horror-comedy (it's a mouthful, I know). As for the first sequel, Mr. Vampir...

This is a quality filmography so far; for Hayao Miyazaki's third feature, Castle in the Sky combines the best of both worlds from Cagliostro and Nausicaä to create something that is beyond alive. The ...

Random Blu-Ray Roulette: No. 99 Another director I admire but personally never quite clicked with, Andrzej Wajda's groundbreaking Ashes and Diamonds deserves respect as one of the greatest Polish film...

Iran: some great cinema, terrible laws. The Seed of the Sacred Fig challenges the Iranian government in ways that I haven't seen since Mohsen Makhmalbaf's censored The Nights of Zayandeh-Rood; a film ...

Random Blu-Ray Roulette: No. 98 Nosferatu and Faust this ain't. I realise there are a few repeated director names on Random Blu-Ray Roulette - like Almodóvar or Honda, and maybe I should diversify the...

This is UNBELIEVABLE. Keir Starmer has just handed Donald Trump a letter from King Charles, inviting him for a second state visit to the UK. It’s totally unprecedented, and I was so outraged when I heard, I dropped everything to let the 38 Degrees community know straight away. This is the same Donald Trump that in recent weeks has buddied up with Putin, cranked up tariffs on trade and slashed aid across the world. Meanwhile his best buddy Elon Musk has been sticking his oar into UK politics...

Tetsuya Nakashima's thrillers are not for me. The issue I have with them is not only how Miike-esque they are, but also how empty and clinical they can be too - that makes Confessions teeth-pulling to...