Favorite films

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Recent reviews

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  Top Gun: Maverick 2022

  ★★★½ Watched by Oly Overbury 26 May 2022

  Hard carried by that final 40 minutes.

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  Everything Everywhere All at Once 2022

  ★★★★★ Watched by Oly Overbury 13 May 2022

  Optimstic Nihilism

  Probably one of the least pretentious films I've ever seen. It manages to be extremely moving and fairly thought provoking without any veiled messages or unnecessary abstractions. That may seem like a low bar, but it's pretty rare, especially for A24, as much as I love their output.

  If you don't have any emotional or intellectual response to this film you are genuinely dead inside. Only half joking.

Popular reviews

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  The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford 2007

  ★★★★★ Watched by Oly Overbury 08 Feb 2022

  Casey Affleck gives one of the best performances of the century.

  The themes of Idolisation, mythology, and the deception in storytelling are ever-relevant. These themes work on a few different levels. They work dramatically, as fuel for character. They work to critique the genre as a whole. In a truly genius act of casting, they work — subtly — in reference to Brad Pitt and Casey Affleck, and how they parallel their characters.

  The film is also communicating on a…

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  Unforgiven 1992

  ★★★★½ Rewatched by Oly Overbury 08 Jun 2021

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  A deceptively clever deconstruction and reinterpretation of the Western. It's a story that, taken at face value, could be seen as typical of the genre, but beneath this we find the dark myth of the heroic Gunslinger. A ruthless killer, that must, at some level, be motivated by bloodlust, lack of empathy, or a willful ignorance of consequence. Or maybe he's just a lucky drunkard perpetuating a self-gratifying lie. Likely he's all of the above. This myth is mirrored by…