"Lord, I swear the moon turned fire red". That's not only a Jimi Hendrix lyric, it can also be used to describe Kathy Etchingham's rage at John Ridley once she watched Jimi: All is By My Side. The lat...

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.

52 Years in 52 Weeks Challenge: 2026 Edition (13/52) Students diving off tables with their hands tied up with an electrical cord for a full piggy bank - Skolimowski style! I find it hard to write abou...

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...

In honour of One Battle After Another winning Best Picture, why not talk about the OG gritty chase film that also won Best Picture in 1971. I never knew that about The French Connection, the next film...

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...

"Political thriller" - though The Secret Agent is not really that, is it? The Secret Agent needs a few runarounds in my head before I can write my thoughts down here. But if I'm Still Here is consider...

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...

Random Blu-Ray Roulette: No. 120 Writing a review of A Face in the Crowd without mentioning the 'T' word is difficult, as is writing one without using 'prescient'. Although, is that what Elia Kazan or...

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...

The donkey from EO: I gave the greatest animal film performance of the 2020's! Indy: Hold my bone. I liked Good Boy, and while the discourse that this is an overextended short stretched to feature len...

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...

Not my favourite PTA, One Battle After Another is still a rollicking, frenzied experience about the worst revolutionary ever seen - and at a time when Charlie Kirk's assassination is still a hot topic...

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 - A Film Released by Troma (37/54) A film most fowl (BA-DUM-TISHH!). My first experience with Troma and the wild world of Lloyd Kaufman and what an introduc...

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 ...

Random Blu-Ray Roulette: No. 114 Finally, a Johnnie To film I click with. PTU riffs on a lot of things - an uber-cool Michael Mann atmosphere, an inciting incident that draws on Akira Kurosawa's Stray...

"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 - Set in a Dystopian Future (31/54) The granddaddy of all deathsport films, Rollerball is a flawed film in that it struggles to maintain any fun or investme...

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...

Yes, this is drawing comparisons to Coralie Fargeat. And as if the Brothers Grimm influence was not strong enough for The Ugly Stepsister, Emilie Blichfeldt also throws in an inspiration from another ...

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...