Favorite films

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Recent reviews

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  Dead Poets Society 1989

  ★★★★½ Rewatched by neilgrahamuk 21 May 2022 3

  A stunning movie. Beautiful, nuanced, intelligent.

  I also think it's a little misunderstood. I blame Ellen.

  There is certainly more going on here than the standard inspirational teacher narrative. That’s just the surface. These are privileged boys at a fine school. They really don’t have to rebel against anything. Even Keating berates them when their actions threaten to spin out of control. The school has much to offer. Expulsion would be a mistake. The fight here is quiet. It’s less…

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  Goldfinger 1964

  ★★★½ Rewatched by neilgrahamuk 05 May 2022

  This remains the most iconic of the Bond films.....

  So many of the conventions are formalised here: quirky megalomaniac villainy, snappy dialogue, gadgets galore and the Aston Martin, global beautiful scenery, big-set pieces (well sort of). And this one of course, has a frickin' laser.

  I've never quite been able to get passed the absurdity of some of this. There must be spin-off potential in a film set around working with the tradesmen who constructed Goldfinger’s Fort Knox map room.…

Popular reviews

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  Accident 1967

  ★★★★ Watched by neilgrahamuk 15 Mar 2015 9

  Europe must have been in existential crisis in 1967. A lot of the early New Wave films were dark affairs. But they also had a playfulness, a joie-de-vivre, and sense of hope. But in 1967 Bresson gives us the tragedy of Mouchette; Godard went apocalyptic in Weekend. Even Rohmer dripped in toxic masculinity in La Collectionneuse. And in the UK, Losey gives us Accident. It is a brilliant, complex but immensely bleak view of the English middle class. If art…

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  Tout Va Bien 1972

  ★★★★ Watched by neilgrahamuk 21 Feb 2016 3

  I go along with the broad critical consensus – that between 1960-1967 Jean-Luc Godard created an incredible body of work: innovative, daring, exciting, controversial, sexy, funny, beautiful, challenging and unique. I want to write these words in red, white and blue capitals. Maybe split them across a page or two: and of course accompany the texts with the sound of a gunshot. That would be Godardian. He created such a distinctive visual style – it becomes difficult to use words…