Letterboxd — Your life in film

Mawkish, simplistic, triumphalist, sycophantic, meandering, disjointed, misleading and historically inaccurate.

I judged The Iron Lady, as much as I was able, on its own merits rather than my personal political views. Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, it's hard to deny that Margaret Thatcher's world was anything less than interesting. For Phyllida Lloyd to have made a dull film about a towering figure of 20th century politics, both in Britain and internationally, is a big achievement. The tragic thing…

Echoing the one other review for this, Dancing in Dulais is less an actual film and more a short documentation of a brief time in British social history that was (until recently, anyway) mostly forgotten. I find it hard to be critical of a film's lack of finesse or technical accomplishment when the person behind the camera seemingly had neither as their goal. It's also interesting to see the real people behind many of Pride's characters creating lasting bonds which…

The titular shout, mercifully employed only once during The Shout ("merciful" because any overuse would have lessened its impact) is perhaps the most horrific noise will you ever hear. A sound so un-human and ear-shatteringly intense that you'll jump out of your skin the second it rises up and bellows from Mr. Crossley's lungs.

With or without the concept of a sound horrific enough to kill all those within earshot, The Shout makes for uncomfortable viewing. Who wouldn't feel unsettled…

I expected Around China with a Movie Camera to be interesting, but I didn't expect it to be moving. Perhaps it was the effect of viewing moving images of a far-off time and place, of people who have undoubtedly long since died, combined with a score of ethereally beautiful classical Chinese music, or perhaps it was sadness at the loss of the world on display here, with its abundance of ancient ways of life, architecture and landscapes now lost to…

Don't do what Donny Don't does!

Chaining up naked ladies in your metal-encased basement is an unacceptable pastime (although playing your disco records loudly while jumping on the furniture is a little more benign).

It's a strange world: despite the braying of cultural conservatives that "moral standards" have slipped inexorably in depictions of both sex and violence in the last few decades, this is only a half-truth. In reality, while depictions of generalised violence are undoubtedly more visceral and intense,…

I watched this film not out of an obsessive love for Pink Floyd as many seem to have (I've never been a fan), but out of a fascination with the island of New Guinea. The fact that this vast island, with its impenetrable jungles, swamps, gorges, hidden rivers and unconquered peaks floating above fecund cloud forest, has remained largely unexplored is a miracle in these modern times (although the loggers are rapidly moving in), and that is what makes it…

From the hokey poster, reminiscent of a plethora of religion-based horror yarns of the last decade, to the promise of another "found footage" horror film, I couldn't help but raise an eyebrow when I first came across The Borderlands and its many good reviews.

The plot is agreeable, and the nagging question of "why didn't they stop filming and leave immediately?" that plagues other found footage films like the hounds of hell is given a plausible answer here. What really…