Category: Film
My collected writing on one of my greatest passions: film. I was a film critic in my undergraduate days (trivia: that’s how I met my wife!) but I now take a more philosophical approach to thinking and writing about films I see.
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Supergirl
Gillespie | 2026 | USA I’m in danger of getting sucked into the new DC Universe. Perhaps it’s already happened. Moments of this were unexpectedly moving, a testament to the care being taken to develop these new takes on familiar characters (and in a contemporary moment of “cinematic universe” fatigue, no less). Darker than you […]
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Carolina Caroline
Rehmeier | 2026 | USA A little miracle of a film, and I say that because what it does is so very hard to actually pull off. The first act is a parade of genre tropes so densely concentrated but measured in their presentation that one immediately gets the sense your expectations are being calibrated. […]
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Superman
Gunn | 2025 | USA Second watch, as (likely unnecessary) prep for Supergirl. Half-hearted prep at that, as I found this aggressively average upon first viewing. And so I was rather delighted to have enjoyed it *much* more this time, appreciating everything I liked the first time all over again even as subtler elements clicked […]
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Howl’s Moving Castle
ハウルの動く城Miyazaki | 2004 | Japan First watch – indeed, my first ever Ghibli. 2026 is the year of the watchlist so far. Viewed subtitled in cinema, which made the wait to crack this particular seal feel worthwhile. I was already familiar with the game here – the beautiful animation, the fablistic storytelling – and the […]
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Disclosure Day
Spielberg | 2026 | USA | IMAX I teed myself up for this rather well over the past week by dipping into previously unseen (by me) Spielberg aliencore (namely: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind) and the fact that I was happy to do a lot of work on behalf of […]
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Close Encounters of the Third Kind
Spielberg | 1977 | USA First watch – my final Spielberg blind spot addressed, and I now feel adequately prepared for Disclosure Day. Some of the photography here is breathtaking, including the shot above (and the one below). I find it much more interesting when the existence of aliens is just taken as given (rather […]
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E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
Spielberg | 1982 | USA I know that I must’ve watched this a lot as a kid but I have no single memory of ever watching the whole thing through and so, rather improbably, this is my ‘first watch’. A blind spot I was correcting as I prepare for Disclosure Day and not one that […]
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The Great Gatsby
Luhrmann | 2013 | USA, Australia 5th or 6th watch; first since 2020. In my younger and more vulnerable years, I fell in love with this film at first sight. I was in the minority at the time (outnumbered by an oddly large portion of the cinemagoing public that engages with art so literally that […]
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Atomic Blonde
Leitch | 2017 | USA 4th or 5th watch; a singular pleasure but one I had apparently not indulged in for five years. I’ve never liked Charlize Theron as much as I do here – she’s all in and understands the assignment. Highly stylised from lights to soundtrack (a frequent spin before my turntable went […]
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Battle Royale
Fukasaku | 2000 | Japan So glad I saw this for the first time in a cinema (where it paradoxically played as a “cult classic” to a sold out auditorium on a cold Monday night). One of those experiences where you can appreciate how original this would have been contemporaneously while also clocking how undeniably […]