Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Bad Lieutenant 1992

  ★★★★ Rewatched 22 Mar 2023 2

  (Minor Spoilers)

  A slab of ferociously raw theological provocation created by a hard drug-taking, binge-drinking lapsed Catholic. Bad boy Abel Ferrara's controversial and crotchety ' Bad Lieutenant' is an unapologetically brutal and uncomfortable exorcism of personal demons - where the iron grip of religious guilt stifles a desperate man who no longer wishes to be a pawn in God's unfair game. Patti Smith once sang: ' Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine,' and as Harvey Keitel's beleaguered New…

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  King of New York 1990

  ★★★★½ Rewatched 20 Mar 2023 3

  Perhaps the clearest indication that an artist has reached canonical status is when the suffix -esque is attached to their name. When a writer is describing a film's resemblance to a well known influence, I often see the names Hitchcock, Kubrick, Scorsese, Lynch etc bestowed this particular honour (as in Scorsese-esque). Abel Ferrara is rarely afforded this adjectival quality. Yet, for decades this brilliantly talented filmmaker has made distinctively stylish and idiosyncratic pieces much admired by a plethora of modern…

Popular reviews

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  Blue Velvet 1986

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 17 Apr 2020 5

  When an artist releases a work that is deemed to be a failure both critically and commercially it can ruin the creator. David Lynch's ' Dune' was ruined by the studio : extremely badly edited and ultimately deemed a box office failure, with Lynch disowning the finished piece. A lot of directors would have no doubt quit through bruised dejection, so two years later to then release the masterpiece that is ' Blue Velvet' feels especially impressive.
  Lynch is a…

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  La Cérémonie 1995

  ★★★★½ Watched 13 Jan 2021 15

  By showing a rifle in an early scene, Claude Chabrol's terrific thriller quickly says what it's going to do but still manages to leave you in a state of feverish anticipation waiting for the inevitable horror to happen. Based on a novel by Ruth Rendell, this frosty and unemotional tale of classism and murder finds ingenious ways of showing how the poor are often maltreated by the rich.
  Embittered and capricious, we know from the moment we are introduced to…