Letterboxd — Your life in film

It was about 90 minutes into Django Unchained that I turned to myself and, slightly aghast, asked:

"Is this Tarantino's best work to date Ronan?"
"It could be," I replied, just as surprised to be saying it as I was to be suddenly engaged in a dialogue with myself, "It's yet another of his gratuitously violent revenge fantasies, but it's rooted in a surprisingly affecting emotional foundation and almost unbearably entertaining."
"Right," I nodded, "His strengths are here particularly strong,…

Thoughts on a rewatch:
—It is a little slow to start, as some have complained. Didn't think it first time, so probably a symptom of knowing what's to come.
—Cap is still the best Avenger. His relationship with each of the other three is perfect, plus he has believable connections to most of the support.
—Whedon has stolen Tony Stark from Jon Favreau. This Stark is a billion times funnier than both individual outings thus far.
—I can't recall the…

When I first heard Joss Whedon was the man chosen for the job, my immediate thought was "...why?" I like Whedon as much as any other sane person, but with three cancelled TV shows and an underperforming movie to his name, he seemed an odd choice to helm the point of convergence of four multi-million dollar franchises. Having seen the finished product in the company of a massive turnout, I finally got it. This movie is a guaranteed profit; you…

I'm starting this review without knowing what my rating will be, cos still I'm not sure what it deserves. It is something of a disappointment, this I know. I liked, but was baffled by the love for, Batman Begins when I watched it first, finding its aspects of realism appealing but its eventual descent into a traditional actiony third act with little dramatic stakes a waste of so much characterisation. Seeing The Dark Knight for just the first time the…

Review from Next Projection

Nothing could better summate the experience that is Skyfall than its own opening shot: into a darkened corridor emerges a shadowy figure, accompanied by the first two notes of that immortalised theme tune, instantly familiar yet somehow so different. There’s something about their sound—perhaps it’s the slight discordance, perhaps just the fact that they are isolated from the notes we expect to follow—that’s slightly unsettling. The shadowed figure moves closer, still obscured, until met by the…

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Bruce Willis as Joe Simmons. The way JGL emulates Willis' distinctive facial mannerisms is almost terrifying, that sly one-sided smile—what do you call that? A grin? A smirk?—perfectly reproduced in such a way to make the silly idea that he could really be a younger version of Bruce entirely believable. That's really Rian Johnson's greatest strength in Looper: making the conceits of his narrative so damn believable, so rooted in the world we know, and the…

Having never before seen Christopher Nolan's alleged masterpiece of comic book adaptation, I figured I'd better finally get it watched ahead of the third installment's release. I'm glad to say I found it to be well deserving of much—though certainly not all—of its praise, being a significant improvement over its predecessor and a surprisingly involving work of dramatic engagement. Where Batman Begins faltered in the heavy-handed approach it took to its themes, with every second word of dialogue being "fear",…

The December Project: Film #46

I was 10 years old when Peter Jackson first took us to Middle Earth in The Fellowship of the Ring. For an imaginative child with a love of fiction, it was heaven. By the time he brought us back, seemingly for the final time, with The Return of the King two years later, I had read Tolkien's books at least twice each, written a few of my own unashamedly-plagiarised novels, wrangled the money from my…

For so long I dreaded watching Silver Linings Playbook, convinced it would be yet another of those films on which the masses and I are divorced. Y'see, I don't like Bradley Cooper, I'm in the middle where Jennifer Lawrence is concerned, I have very little time for Robert De Niro anymore, and I hate football. What a miracle, then, that I came away from the film mildly impressed. What a shame, though, that the impression was just mild. David O'Russell…

Flirts with a full-on 4 star rating, yet just falls short of that in my view thanks to one-too-many trips into the realms of fantasy. A sweetly charming story of first love, it beautifully represents a child's eye view of the world, wonderfully juxtaposing the complexities of the adult lives around with the far more sensible attitudes of its young protagonists. It's as overcast as a dreary day, Swinton in particular not wasted, but not quite utilised as she should…