Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Full Time 2021

  ★★★ Watched 31 May 2023

  An experiment in meshing the film-grain-and-synth-pulse Good Time thriller style with Dardennesque social realism, and the experiment is successful I suppose in that they totally pulled off what they were trying to do, but also unsuccessful in that it demonstrates you probably shouldn't do that. Safdie films are very stressful, yes, but they're also a lot of fun; take away the fun, take away any promise of a big score, a perfect getaway, and all you have left is the…

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  Return to Seoul 2022

  ★★★½ Watched 09 May 2023

  Congratulations to Mubi, they made a trailer so good it actually tricked me into seeing an arthouse film about a young woman caught between two cultures who reconnects with her biological father. And that bait-and-switch did sort of define the film for me, because I maintain this is in fact a hopelessly conventional indie drama imbued with an undeserved cool factor via a magnetic lead and some nice grainy photography. Those last few scenes, come on.

Popular reviews

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  Arrival 2016

  ★★ Added 7

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Can any explain to me why Amy Adams' character doesn't prevent her daughter from getting cancer? We know that she can use her knowledge of the future to intervene in the present, as she does with General Shang. The random cell mutation that causes cancer in her daughter will have required a specific set of circumstances at the molecular level – it's exceptionally bad luck (see the amazing account in Francis Spufford's Red Plenty of how many different things have…

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  RRR 2022

  ★★★★★ Added 1

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  The first two times I saw this were at Zone 3 Cineworlds with little to no audience, and I was getting so envious watching all those videos on Twitter of packed houses hooting and hollering at encoRRRe screenings in the US, so when I saw it was playing again at the Prince Charles I jumped at the chance. But even though the whole point was to see it with a crowd, I then became very apprehensive about seeing it with…