Letterboxd — Your life in film

The World Is More Than Enough - 30 Countries In 30 Days Challenge (15 / 30) - Australia

Just how difficult, do you think, is it to create a film that finds the perfect blend of beauty and savagery set against a backdrop that favours the latter far more than the former?

Director John Hillcoat didn't have much of a background to speak of before he directed The Proposition, and even less to suggest that he would have been capable…

Whenever Miller's Crossing begins, I get the same feeling I do when talking to an old friend or listening to a favorite song from my youth. Movies like GoodFellas can cause the "I can't turn it off" effect. This film also falls into that category. But GoodFellas excites and challenges, where Miller's Crossing comforts.

The Coen Brothers have a layered use of language, and this is a prime example. Here the language works as a way of establishing setting, of…

Salem DJ Heidi (Sheri Moon Zombie) receives some vinyl by 'The Lords' which when played places the females of the town under some kind of trance. It all links back to a curse from the leader of a coven of witches, burnt at the Salem witch trials in 1696. Rob Zombie's latest film has a 70s feel to it but its execution is so inept it actually plays like a bad Argento film. I admire Zombie's ethic, he makes the…

An absurdly over-praised, trite and manipulative love story featuring a manic depressive (Bradley Cooper) and a young grieving widow (Jennifer Lawrence). There are some cute scenes involving dancing.

Like Paul Haggis's Crash before it, this is one of those films which, in years to come, will be cited as an embarrassing, over-hyped anomaly on the Oscar roll of honour. Jennifer Lawrence did not deserve her Best Actress gong, and the nominations for her, Cooper, Robert de Niro and Jacki Weaver…

I like this film a lot. Used to watch it a bunch back in college when I had the old Warner LaserDisc version. Don Johnson is a down-and-out cop who cares about nothing but his job. When a cop is gunned down on Christmas eve he gets drawn into the criminal world of hate crimes, white supremacy and neo-Nazis.

Many consider this one of the lesser films of John Frankenheimer, but I have to disagree. The violence is brutal, the…

Taken at face value it's bloody awful, but I'm now convinced Verhoeven is doing something much smarter here: the craftsmanship is so good, and Sin City's rendered with such sickly vibrancy, that you have to accept the arch performances and outrageous nudity as equally controlled parts of Verhoeven's overall vision.

Showgirls panders to your basest instincts while at the same time lampooning them - the guilt-feelings aroused by this guilty pleasure are an essential part of the package. It's a…