Letterboxd — Your life in film

I tried. I REALLY tried, but I now know that Les Mis is not for me.

I have an inbuilt inability to enjoy musicals (bar Grease and South Park), so one as overblown and religiously adored as this was never going to win me over. What surprised me was that there is also some genuinely BAD film-making at work here, which clearly the audience of Les Mis disciples I just saw it with couldn't give a monkey's about, and were…

It sounds so simple, but it is amazing what a good director (and good behind the scenes crew) can bring to a franchise.

Sam Mendes and, especially, Roger Deakins, bring new life into Bond, reinvigorating a series which seriously floundered with Quantum of Solace.

On first viewing, my thoughts were it was the most Fleming-inspired of the whole series. Fleming often put Bond through the ringer in quite painful ways (physically as well as mentally). Here Bond is seemingly killed…

Well, this was a disappointment.
As the only film I was seeing at Frightfest this year, and after the months of hype, I had high hopes that this would be a throwback to the good old fashioned scary (but fun) anthology heyday of the 70s. My enthusiasm dipped about 20 seconds into the first story.

Our framing story concerns a group of obnoxious fratboy types who assault women in public, recording the action for some sleazy website. One of the…

Whilst I'd been excited about seeing LOOPER since first catching a trailer months ago, I was amazed to find that the film not only met my expectations, but surpassed them.
Knowing little beyond the trailer is a good idea, and the plotline about Joseph Gordon-Levitt having to kill his future self (Bruce Willis) is literally only half the story.

Writer-director Rian Johnson skillfully weaves in elements of several other sci-fi movies, but it never feels like a rip-off, or a…

Ok, I know I'm not the target demographic for Inbetweeners. I've come to accept this. I tried watching the first series when it started and thought to myself "This is what my parents must have felt like when the Young Ones started." It was a sobering moment.

Since then, I'd seen a few clips which made me think maybe, actually, possibly, I'd been wrong, and it was in fact right up my scatalogical street. So it was with some trepidation…

It's been a while since a film made me feel this uncomfortable.

It seems that in the 21st century, filmmakers are determined to revive the nihilistic 'New Brutalism' of the 70s and take it to a whole new plain. While torture porn now seems to be on the wane, writers and directors are having to come up with new ways to test the mettle of viewers.

Based on true events, COMPLIANCE is not a horror movie in the conventional sense.…

There have been a few films this year that have been praised to high heaven, and then, for me at least, failed to meet those high expectations. Thankfully, Killer Joe is not one of them. It's an amazing piece of work.

William Friedkin has never been the most consistent of film-makers, so those calling this a 'return to form' are a little off base. It's certainly his best film since To Live and Die in LA, and possibly since his…

It's taking four days of soul-searching, but I think I've decided that Dark Knight Rises is not only an incredible disappointment but also a colossal mess of a film. I don't say this lightly.
I'm a huge fan of what Christopher Nolan has done to the Caped Crusader, and I still think he's one of the best directors working within the Hollywood system. But this is a case of where Nolan needed a firm hand on the brake.

If Batman…