Letterboxd — Your life in film

One of those docs that pretends to be about one thing before kicking the floor out from under you.

It was the ultimate in good news stories: three triplets, separated at birth, who somehow found each other again! But what’s this? Everything is absolutely fucking terrible? Oh OK, yes, that sounds more likely.

This is an incredible (and incredibly sad) story, intelligently told, with some climactic thoughts about nature v nurture that – if hardly as conclusive as the film…

uses gentrification and academia in chicago as an access point to the trauma of slavery being painted over in reconstruction, before jumping off into a moody urban folklore dream where historical pain is mythologized and martyred in the form of tony todd's candyman whose incredible physical presence, reverberating voice and vicious acts of violence serve to draw (and heighten) his feelings of longing and rage into something tangible and fleshy. between the excellent location work and Don't Look Now's cinematographer…

Whenever I discus literature with my students I try to teach them that in interpreting what they read there is no real right or wrong as long as you back up what you find with evidence from the text. It's not important what I think or what the author maybe meant, it's just you, the text and what it does to you.

The latter is of course the most difficult, especially because you need to be critical of what you…

This flick was nowhere near my radar, like at all, for a long eight years. But since I decided to rewatch the original late last night, I found out there's a sequel and that people on LB actually kind of like it. And I think it's better than the first one in pretty much every statistical category. This movie is gnarly as hell, and fun, where the first is mostly dire and depressing. There's a stretch where's it's basically a…

Another set of 'marmite' movies are the Judd Apatow stable, that delight and infuriate in equal measure. To some, his films are one-joke, overblown and very self congratulatory (it's hard to defend Funny People from any of those accusations); to others they are earthy, likeable, riven with clever improvisation and some truly memorable creations and comedy moments. I firmly place The 40 Year Old Virgin among the latter - infact this may rival Knocked Up as Apatow's best movie.

Steve…

This film has become something of a time capsule for the mid Aughts. The film isn't exactly steeped in referential humor, but it's so imbued in its own time frame that it has become dated. Bookstores, pre-HD televisions, flip phones, and freakin' VHS tapes are still around, among other dated ideas. It's a film that exists on the edge of oblivion.

But it still works. It's still genuinely funny, and seems to exist from a time when most of these…

First of all, Steve Carrell was 42 when this film was made. Second of all, Paul Rudd and his hair are a snack and a half. Third of all, this film has aged into a wonderful time capsule and I really appreciate that. As for 2005, the "Year That Doesn't Exist", this is one of those few films that very much survived the infamously forgettable year. It still has that Apatow quicksand narrative where there is no driving momentum to…

Having watched Robocop 1&2 again recently I wanted to evoke the same feelings before taking the plunge with the RoboRemake later in the week. Dredd is a bittersweet movie for me now. A perfect genre flick that was dismissed on release because of the fatal misuse of the character by Sylvester Stallone some years earlier. That and the fact that the public were pretty much forced to watch it in 3D meant it performed poorly and killed a fledgling franchise…