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But we’re all fine now, forever

More superhero tentpoles heavily featuring suicidal ideation from former meth addicts dealing with physical and emotional childhood abuse!

Pushed the line between entertaining ridiculousness and straight up “oh, come on now” shenanigans until I simply couldn’t remove the wince from my eyes or the scoff from my mouth. Genuinely had a lot of fun until meeting Bill again though!

I’m gonna be thinking about (and obsessively rewatching) that ‘past, present and future’ sequence for the entire rest of my life.

Expect many more films in the near future to utilise aspect ratio changes for narrative impact. Go and see this in IMAX, please.

Oh! And stay for the credits.

Bloody hell, what a performance from Brenda Blethyn; one for the ages. So much unsaid in moments throughout this film that are nonetheless screamed by the actors’ performances.

Grief is fucking horrible, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste is utterly incredible at portraying what it can do to a person.

A bit saccharine if you ask me

I genuinely don’t know what was distracting my mind so much during my only prior viewing of this that I have it two stars, but this time it just clicked for me.

Internal conflict and social masking personified and given space. Lynchian before Lynch; filmic experimentation of the psyche that only maybe Buñuel had really nailed (or even attempted) beforehand.

And also: shot for basically fuck-all! It’s in a brassic, barely-decorated stage for the empty, clinical hospital and then it’s in a beach house (and the beach) for the rest of it. Astonishing economy of resources to attempt such powerful and evocative (and inspirational) work in storytelling on screen.

Would like to slap myself past self for not paying proper attention; I’ve been missing out on a lot for the entire time since then.

It’s amazing that we live at the same time as some eternal talents. John Williams is one of those, and this film does him a LOT of justice.

A great Dickensian depiction of childhood journeys through family and surroundings met with a load of day-players who burn themselves into a kid’s trauma response for their entire life, but I still felt it doesn’t quite deserve its five-star hype. Also, it should probably just be called Alexander

Some incredible one-shot cinematography throughout this as well as dance used as a really effective and haunting method of tying the stardom into the trauma. Really, really great performance throughout by Naomi Scott (that obviously went unrecognised à la Toni Collette in Hereditary).

Story-wise: I feel like the conclusion of the first Smile doomed audiences to already know what’ll happen at the end of this and any future sequel too.

It’s the EFFORT that is put into maintaining this sort of white power and violence that still gets me. This film and its first-person techniques really (hopefully) creates a sense of empathy for people just being people and being burdened with the routine hate of others while doing nothing but getting by harmlessly. Britain’s far from innocent but, man, America has a big crack in its very foundations.

Gena Rowlands deserved every Oscar for several decades for how good she was in this.

Every man in this movie is a fucking coward, and the sheer level of “I’ll just shout at the problems instead of caring or having any patience” says a lot about my parents’ generation.

There’s a point in the second half of the film where a big narrative event happens that closes a chapter, and the screen fades to black. If they’d have followed that up with about 15-20 mins of the Tóths licking their wounds and building back up from their troubles to make a life despite an unfinished, uneasy relationship with the Van Burens, I think I would’ve given this movie five stars. But everything that happens after that fade to black is disted, unfounded and kind of like a lost trail of thought meandering to an eventual “well, anyway, it all ended up okay for them” ending.

The first two thirds were great, though, and Adrian Brody shines from his first second on the screen and throughout.

I really miss him.

Good lord, what an achievement in so many varieties of cinema this is. I still weep at “my friends, you bow to no one”, and won’t ever stop.

My wife, for the first twenty minutes of the film: “soooo… this is up for Best Picture, huh?”
She was sold the second they got back from Vegas, though.

Just as genuinely horrific as the book, with similarly unique and grotesque imagery paired with totally nonsense character reactions that are forgiven for the visuals and the emotional destabilisation they drive into the viewer.

Now do The Enigma of Amigara Fault!

The Production Design and Costuming on this film are beyond incredible. I can literally imagine the creative teams watching this film and picking their nails bloody to contain their rage at the script and performances, each of which appear to have been given less effort than an unspiced curry.

The staging and cinematography in this film is immediately incredible, but as it goes on the characterisation of Kelly-Ann and her unhealthy obsession with involvement in a serial killer trial becomes tense and unfathomable. Truly excellent portrayal of someone with skills and detachment enough to fall too far down a rabbit hole of curiosity.

I always think of TTT as “the one where they just walk a lot” but it starts with a mid-air Wizard/Balrog fight and ends with the goddamn battle of Helm’s Deep. Really stunning and Jackson gets to up the violence from the first entry.

There’s so many dramatic turns in this movie that the plot-centric one spoiled in the trailer barely even s. Thatcher and Quaid do some incredible and progressive work playing characters that end very differently from how they began (or do they? Were they like that underneath the surface the whole time?) and all others in the cast are a treat throughout. Guillén and Gage’s heartfelt scene in the forest will garner this movie a LOT of queer fans, and deservedly so.

I want that book SO badly.

Beautifully acted and shot. Meryl Streep certainly stole the show in a stacked cast but man do I miss PSH.

It’s about time, once more.

Beautiful; love a modern silent film, and this one is inventive and gorgeous and heartfelt throughout. My toddler also adored this in rapt silence, and she never pays attention to anything for more than five minutes!

Still trying to figure out the meaning behind the ‘floating’ bit, though?

Like a documentary that truly inhabits the viewer in its characters’ selves. Remarkable.

I left this film inspired to make something about the emotional and social troubles of my family and personal homes that I think of as normal but complain about how they shouldn’t be.

My word, I need to rewatch Twin Peaks: The Return IMMEDIATELY. Even after decades of watching Lynch, I still find it astonishing how this film starts basically as a pisstake of melodramatic small town procedural soaps and ends as a metaphysical horror show centred around teen exploitation and familial sexual abuse.

I particularly found myself thinking on how this film presented Leland Palmer as far less innocent in the abuse than he seemed in the series.

Fucked up, and very thought-provoking. Lynch!

Adam Elliot please stop making me cry by proxy over my own perceived solitude thanks

Stop giving him so many potatoes, Jeanne, you know he won’t eat them all

I hated this movie as it began and really liked it by its end. I think the throwaway line about buttons – “instead of having one odd button, might as well replace them all so the jacket looks new” – was not so throwaway after all, and the constant staring silently into space (no reading at the table!) worked to craft the end of someone’s tether on self-control extremely effectively.

Still: not worth the number-one-film-of-all-time slot, in my opinion. But, hey, what is?

This started out as a fun riff on bad, underwritten and convenient tropes that plagued not only culture but also a lot of filmmaking in the 90s, then the riff started to wear off and just left behind a bad film relying entirely on underwritten conveniences.

Justice for Julian Dennison, who carried the whole first act of the film!

Welp. I really wasn’t ready for that entire dinner table scene. Eisenberg sure can devise and deliver something to knock you the fuck down.

But also: I cannot describe how badly, and how frequently, I wanted to give Kieran Culkin a hug and tell him it’s going to be okay.

Wow.

Colman Domingo is a force of nature who consistently gets me excited when I see his name attached to anything at all. This film was incredibly endearing and no doubt indicative of many people’s fight for a chance at escapism while incarcerated, but some of the based-on-a-true-story elements seemed a bit too realistic in the “this just happened” way that real life differs so often from narrative fiction. Regardless, I was so happy to see these big tough men learning to be vulnerable while fighting for some justice.

I’ve never before felt so sympathetic to a neurotic, middle-aged balding man

I have to mention that I’ve watched this about forty times in the past month because my daughter is obsessed

I dunno man, there was a point halfway through where I just thought, if he DID do it AND gets found out, the writer is being INCREDIBLY cruel to his wife and kid for the sake of some saccharine “justice is blind” point. So many blatant cuts to the justice statue and the “in God we trust” placard that I just couldn’t help but wonder exactly what this movie was actually trying to say besides “crime is bad”.

Woeful misuse of Kiefer Sutherland; was his whole part a reshoot?

I really enjoyed this but felt it had been a little oversold by some people who’d recommended it to me as “life-changing stuff”, and I can only imagine it’s because they watched it with the lens of someone who grew up with faith and hadn’t really exercised a whole lot of skepticism before, but I’ve been calling bullshit on god and the controlling nature of religion since I was in primary school, baby

Beautifully-shot. Just exquisite lighting and set design throughout, with several incredible performances.

I had honestly been turned off by the log line, but when people described it as “Gossip Girl meets 12 Angry Men but in the Vatican” I was forced to reconsider the dryness I expected of it.

That vape hit in the Sistine sold me. Excellent work, all involved.

I liked it a whole lot more than I expected to; musicals remain a bit off-putting because of (rather than in spite of) my youth spent in stage school, but this was so much fun and yet serious where it needed to be. Both leads killed, but Erivo especially ought to be receiving awards already and this will hopefully tip that scale.

Looking forward to the sequel. More Bowen Yang, please!

I remain in such awe of the audacity of “it’s this one” followed by a cut that immediately switches the prosthetic to the other side of Giamatti’s face and laughs in the face of the eagle-eyed audience

A bonafide Christmas classic. I’ll watch this and Tokyo Godfathers far more often than either Home Alone movie for a while yet.

Very slight spoilers:

Perhaps only behind the Akira bike-slide shot, the visiting room scene at the end of High and Low, and its reflections of the actors, may just be one of the most homaged stagings in cinema history. I can immediately see its direct influence on scenes from Paris, Texas to Spectre to The Batman and so many more besides.

The structure of the story, too, is so unconventional. The kidnapping, the police investigation, the sting; all of these could have effectively been the bulk part of movies in their own right, but the narrative breathes and flows through as it intersects corporate and family dramas with thriller elements and detailed puzzle-solving.

The GI bar scene is something that feels like it should be out of place in a Kurosawa picture but instead creates a stark picture of the country (and the world) still reeling from the damage done by a global war, which in turn puts more into the audience’s mind for the cops, criminals and corporate heads alike.

Such a damn good movie.

The sheer masterclass of editing in this movie. SAVAGE with the cuts. You wanna see a scene breathe? Fuck you! You get what you need and we move on. Brilliant direction from Lumet, supreme acting chops from Pacino, excellent watching from me. Wish it had a little more to say than it does (it gets a little repetitive as it continues) but as a form and function it’s incredible.

I’m starting to think maybe Robert Eggers doesn’t like children

Gaudy with gold, scattered with pretentious dialogue snippets and visually design-focused in ways that truly don’t match its central purpose as a story... honestly resembles a two-hour-long perfume commercial with no scent to sell.

It sure isn’t boring, though.

That the only woman who’s not SA’d is introduced tits-first and then killed off is pretty telling of this entire film’s production

It’s astonishing to me how difficult it is to get a script made nowadays, or for talented actors to be cast in paying roles, but in the 80s everyone was just like “YEP THAT’LL DO”

Given the acts and the presented sympathies, I can say with my whole chest that this film made me truly want not to be a man

There was a point during watching that I realised this is the film that basically every modern crime movie for the past fifty years – those about detectives, heists and hitmen alike – stole their ideas from. Seminal and inspiring work, with some of the most incredible single-shot scenes made by the cinematographer choreographing the camera with the action; reframing rather than editing. Spielberg definitely watched this a lot before shooting Jaws, and that’s the very least of the titles influenced by this film.

Man, cops and security guards really just sat on their arses for decades, huh

I think I would have given this another entire star if it continued its story for another fifteen minutes rather than stopping where it did and giving its audience cinematic blue balls.

Give the sound design team an Oscar, regardless. Excellent spookiness throughout.

I watched a pretty massive amount of films this year; here’s my ten favourites that were released (or seen at an industry event) in the UK between January and December 2024.

• The Substance

  Easily the film that has stuck in my brain the most this year. It’s rare to see films that feature scenes like this anywhere but low-budget straight-to-Shudder stuff, yet this managed to have a LOT to say (with, intendedly, the subtlety of a brick) and incredible acting from both Moore and Qualley. Coralie Fargeat has my undivided attention now.

• I Saw the TV Glow

  I have an aching in my heart and mind from watching this movie just once and I need to see it again so I can continue my ongoing identity crisis more thoroughly 

• Nosferatu

  I’m an enormous fan of all Eggers’ work but the sheer style and characterisation of this from its opening to its closing shot make it potentially his best film to date.

• Challengers

  The fact I can’t figure out what genre this film is but it had me excited, aroused and intensely gripping my seat for its entire runtime and that’s a really great thing I don’t get from much I see

• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

  It is criminal that more people didn’t see this; it’s every bit as INSANE as Fury Road in its world, story and in-camera stunt-filled ridiculousness, and Taylor-Joy fucking shines in it. Tom Burke is utterly great in it too, and I can’t wait to see more from him

• Civil War

  Jesse Plemons has one scene in this entire film and yet it haunts me so much more than any other thing that happens in the whole narrative 

• Anora

  Excusing the recently-discovered problematic natures of its filming, this film was a joy to laugh and cry with as it explores a person who is so so so much more than just her surface. A film about a mind choosing to live as a body until the option not to appears, yet is fought away by others.

• Monkey Man

  Dev Patel is a daddy now, that’s how it works

• Dune: Part Two

  Exactly everything that I hoped for upon reaching the end of the first part, this film will stand so tall in the pantheon. Truly spectacular in all ways I can think of

• Harvest

  This film touched something personal within me and so I’m intensely happy it exists; I’m keen to see how the public reacts to it on what will probably be a very limited release. Power dynamics and self versus role, all amid a story of the Highland Clearances that, to my knowledge, hasn’t ever been told on film before

Films that actually had me on the crew, mostly standing in doorways or fixing emails.

• The Zombie Diaries 2

  I came in on this film as an unpaid assistant Editor and somehow ended up as a co-Editor when the main one handed in an unfinished cut and walked away. I was also the VFX supervisor because they found out I knew how to animate gunshots in After Effects.

• Monk3ys

  This was filmed over a bunch of night shoots even though it was almost entirely internal and set in an old bank vault. Working on this film set me up for fatherhood as I’ve never known tiredness since.

• Wrath of the Titans

  First actual studio film. I was genuinely shocked at how well we were fed and that I was paid anything at all. I learned the revelries of red light and bell.

• Closed Circuit

  Met a lot of great crew on this one; it was my first foray into working on something that seems like it’ll be big and then just comes and goes without anyone even noticing. Disappeared.

• Having You

  Walked to work for this one; it filmed a bunch in a hospital in Tooting while I lived nearby. Very low budget; I one unfortunate runner spent the ENTIRE day once just manning the lift between floors because its outer call-lift buttons weren’t working.

• Kick-Ass 2

  This was a blast to work on. I particularly Donald Faison repeatedly being the only member of cast who would yell out with excitement when we brought trays of chocolate snacks around the cast and crew each day. I was also SO excited to be working alongside Daniel Kaluuya as I was a massive fan of Skins; didn’t even have any idea what Posh Kenneth had in store back then. 

• Cuban Fury

  My first full-time film job (everything else was dailies), as a stand-in/runner. Very low budget and so everyone was constantly upset at how little we all had to go around. But I hung out with Olivia Colman and practised my wedding vows on her, so I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

• Guardians of the Galaxy

  Did a bunch of 2nd Unit set PA work on this and had no idea who Chris Pratt was because I hadn’t seen Parks & Rec. Watched them blow up Knowhere in a Longcross alley between stages. Such goddamn fun.
  

• The Inbetweeners 2

  One of the Thai girls at the end, shown under the table to have a massive prosthetic penis, agreed to do the film because she thought it was an obscure indie titled The Long Goodbye (which was its security title). She was horrified to learn when I greeted her at unit base that she was in fact going to be in a popular film that her friends would almost definitely see, and almost didn’t do the film.
  
  This was the first job in which my brain clicked to understand the active timekeeping aspects of ADing after I left a costume change up to the actress, only for her to not change at all and then turn up to set in the wrong outfit and set everything behind schedule.

• Pride

  Didn’t do too many days on this but I’m still proud (pun intended) that I was involved at all.

...plus 9 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Films I think have influenced my writing and direction for VILLAIN, to be added to and updated frequently

• Villain

  Obviously

• Come and See
• Morvern Callar
• Blue Ruin
• The Witch
• The Northman
• Stalker
• Dark City
• Braveheart
• Willow

...plus 18 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.

Barely seen anything that would probably make this list, but will catch up soon on The Iron Claw, Anatomy of a Fall, Godzilla Minus One, The Boy and the Heron, American Fiction, May December and various others from earlier in the year.

• Past Lives
• The Holdovers
• The Zone of Interest
• Bottoms
• Oppenheimer
• Killers of the Flower Moon
• Barbie
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
• Talk to Me
• How to Blow Up a Pipeline