Favorite films

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Recent reviews

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  County Lines 2019

  ★★★ Watched by WraithApe 18 Jan 2022

  For a film that puts the British phenomenon of County Lines front and centre, I don't think it does a very good job of explaining it. The choice is made to show everything from the perspective of the young teen who gets caught up running drugs between the city and the sticks, which gives it a sense of immediacy but means the bigger picture is sketchy at best. For anyone unfamiliar with County Lines, it's the practice of drug trafficking…

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  The Hunger 1983

  ★★★½ Watched by WraithApe 11 Jan 2022 3

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

  By all accounts an outlier in Tony Scott's oeuvre, The Hunger is an artful, self-consciously arty vampire flick where David Bowie ages before our eyes and Catherine Deneuve taps into her inner ancient Egyptian succubus. With copious shots of billowing drapes against a heliotrope purple sky and a dule of doves flapping in slo mo, I could easily see how many would balk at a perceived style over substance here. But for all of its stylistic trappings, there's a strong…

Popular reviews

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  Possum 2018

  ★★★ Watched by WraithApe 27 Aug 2018 5

  Darkly oblique, low key character study of a damaged mind. Philip is a puppeteer by profession, who is forced to return to his childhood home following his disgrace at his last paying gig. He terrified the kids with his puppet, a macabre arachnid creation with a blank head resembling his own. This is Possum, an alter ego which has haunted him since entering his life in childhood, preventing him from becoming a functioning adult.

  Scored by a brooding collection of…

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  Bait 2019

  ★★★★ Watched by WraithApe 31 Aug 2019 9

  I'm not sure what I was expecting - neo-realism or retro-styled kitchen sink drama perhaps - but Mark Jenkin's entrancing film is a labour of love that borders on anti-realism with its expressionistic editing, montage and post-synced sound. It's a defiantly experimental, subtly confrontational piece that stays true to his own Dogme-like Silent Landscape Dancing Grain 13 manifesto. It looks like a long lost artefact, rescued from oblivion, but has an unmistakably modern sensibility.

  The way the sound is entirely…