Favorite films

Recent activity

• 

  ★★★★

• 

  ★★★½

• 

  ★★★

• 

  ★★★★

Pinned reviews

• 

  Friendship's Death 1987

  ★★★★ Watched by Joe 25 Nov 2021

  7.5
  Blu Ray (BFI)

  Taking place in a hyper-specific real-life context- namely, Jordan in 1970 during the Black September riots- Friendship’s Death, written and directed by noted film theorist Peter Wollen, puts together Friendship (Tilda Swinton), a robot emissary from an earthophile planet who has crashlanded far from her targeted landing zone, and Sullivan (Bill Paterson), a sarcastic, somewhat jaded journalist covering the Jordanian Civil War. Having both been captured by the PLO, they end up stuck in the same…

• 

  Annette 2021

  ★½ Watched by Joe 06 Dec 2021 3

  2.5
  MUBI

  Expectations were high for Leo Carax and Sparks' Annette, but what I got was a crushing, thundering disappointment, a bloated, turgid rock opera with surface-level weirdness a-plenty but no heart, depth or grit. The film’s surrealness isn’t the issue: in fact, the moments of oddness are arguably Annette’s best feature, from the endearingly meta opening number "So May We Start?" (which happens to be by far the catchiest in the film), to the song set to the rhythm…

Recent reviews

• 

  Way Out West 1937

  ★★★★ Watched by Joe 25 Jan 2022

  7
  IMDB TV

  My first Laurel and Hardy! I had a fun time with Way Out West, although based on this I can’t see them joining Chaplin and Keaton in the upper-echelons of early-cinema comedic geniuses. The story is somewhat thin, the hapless duo bumbling around a series of Old West studio sets in their attempts to deliver an orphan’s inheritance but ending up falling into the schemes of her evil, saloon-owning guardians. In truth, the narrative is just there…

• 

  Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer 1986

  ★★★ Watched by Joe 25 Jan 2022

  6
  Blu Ray

  Bleak, disturbing, confrontational: Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is perhaps cinema's ultimate statement about the banality of evil. Michael Rooker's Henry moves through Chicago, murdering as he goes, seemingly feeling nothing as he does so. Henry is not a charismatic Hannibal Lector-type, prone to dramatic speeches and convoluted methods. Henry's utter normality is the whole point. Rooker is fantastic throughout, an intense and commanding screen presence.

  As an audience we are so used to violence on…

Popular reviews

• 

  Pig 2021

  ★★★★★ Watched by Joe 05 Sep 2021 5

  9.5
  Amazon Prime Video (Rental)

  * SPOILERS *

  A knowing deconstruction of the revenge thriller, as typified in recent years by the John Wick and Taken franchises (amongst many others), Pig tees up a classic genre scenario: the mysterious loner who has something precious taken from him (in this case, an adorable truffle pig named Apple) and goes on a mission to get it back. The filmmakers then go even further into this territory by casting Nicholas Cage (who as…

• 

  The Fly 1986

  ★★★★★ Rewatched by Joe 22 Oct 2021 1

  9.5
  Blu Ray
  Rewatch (2nd viewing)

  What does it mean to be human? David Cronenberg's Frankenstein-esque cautionary tale stars Jeff Goldblum as a nerdy scientist who accidentally fuses his DNA with a fly, gradually becoming more and more insectile in nature until he literally falls apart.

  My personal favourite Cronenberg film, this has everything: the purest expression of his obsession with the malleability and spongy, liquidy grossness, but also the beauty, of the human body; a brilliant lead performance from…