This film is on quite a few Spanish syllabuses in the UK (A-level or degree) and I can see why - there are so many layers here which particularly appeal to a literary sensibility, all with things to say about history, contemporary politics and questions of who speaks in making art. I nearly didn't watch it because of motion sickness, but seeing yet more mentions of it today, I decided to start playing it in a really small window... and…

A chaotic grid down situation AND OTT action? Of course this is my kind of movie.

Even more than most action heroes, McClane can run and shoot after an absurd sequence of batterings and falls that would cripple anyone whose bones weren't made of stainless steel. But it's still just so much fun - somersaulting car takes out helicopter, anyone? And the young hacker is quite a good audience identification character in a similar vein to Doctor Who's assistants.

It…

I'm really getting to like the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, having loved this, L'Avventura and Blow-Up.

Whilst the first film of his alienation trilogy had an otherworldly, slow, fevered atmosphere some describe as boredom, it was in much of La Notte that I found something akin to boredom or neutrality or even a very mild depression: a feeling of what standard days are like in the spaces between things: the way that much of life is spent waiting for things…

I'd heard so many recommendations for Un prophète from people with good taste, on Letterboxd and before I joined, that at some point I forgot that it's a two and a half hour prison movie. An extra-large helping of a genre I usually avoid. Fuck.

Not long after Malik's arrival in gaol though, it stops being an account of claustrophobic, intrusive routine whilst isolated amongst thugs - and becomes a mesmerising character drama about the men stuck in this big…