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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Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny
Lynch | 2006 | USA Umpteenth viewing. Good for a revisit every couple of years, and crazy that it’s almost 20 years old now. I’ve had the soundtrack in regular rotation for as long. There are underrated bits of clever craft that elevate this past mere stoner comedy, like the cuts between the shroom-induced hallucinations […]
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A Minecraft Movie
Hess | 2025 | USA The marketing for this film really worked on the little guy, despite the fact that he’s never played Minecraft and doesn’t really know what it is. And so… his first movie in a cinema was the one he wanted to see. We cuddled. We ate popcorn. We danced to the […]
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Lost Highway
Lynch | 1997 | France, USA My year of David Lynch continues with what might be my favourite yet. Here the echoes of Twin Peaks resound rather clearly, and in ways that extend beyond red velvet curtains. Sound is the thing with a Lynch film, and it does a lot of the work here. Above […]
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Death of a Unicorn
Scharfman | 2025 | USA I guess we’re at the point where A24 movies are a genre unto themselves, and this movie feels like the salient indicator. I’d have been more excited about such a development 5-6 years ago, but starting with Bodies Bodies Bodies the guiding question has become “how violent can we make […]
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The Souvenir: Part II
Hogg | 2021 | USA, UK Second viewing. In recent years, l’ve become somewhat obsessed with memory as a concept, and art-as-memory is a component of that obsession. When you convert memory into art, you freeze it in time and thereafter you can engage with it as an artifact of having previously engaged with the […]
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The Souvenir
Hogg | 2019 | UK, USA Second viewing. I wrote this last time and frankly, nothing has changed: Exceptionally lovely, despite treading dark and painful water. Honor Swinton Byrne navigates the highs and lows deftly, guiding us toward a magical moment in the penultimate shot that I dare not spoil for fear of undercutting its power.
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Back to the Future
Zemeckis | 1985 | USA Umpteenth viewing. Still my favourite movie of all time; it captured my imagination when I was a kid and never let me go. The final two lines even provided the introduction to my PhD thesis. Fox and Lloyd are inimitably iconic in their roles; the music is perfect and timeless […]
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Blue Velvet
Lynch | 1986 | USA Singularly oneiric, as is all of his work. I am drawn to cinema in part because it indulges my inner voyeur, and this film knows that we all have that same perversion. After having discovered him hiding in her closet the night before, Dorothy tells Jeffrey that she looked for […]
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Happy Death Day
Landon | 2017 | USA Second viewing. I was well overdue to revisit this one, being the underrated and under-appreciated gem it is. Jessica Rothe understands the assignment — I’m not exaggerating when I say her performance is one of my favourites in recent memory. Elsewhere, craft shines through to remind you that movies are […]
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Borderline
Warden | 2025 | Canada, USA Nicely proves the point that horror comedy requires a deft and precise blend of elements to work by, well, not striking that balance. Still, Samara Weaving turned up for work and managed to be funny by being openly annoyed by the proceedings.