Favorite films

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Recent reviews

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  Song Without End 1960

  ★★ Watched by Josh Gillam 19 May 2022

  Dirk Bogarde stars in Charles Vidor’s biographical romance as Franz Liszt, focusing on the Hungarian pianist and composer’s forbidden romance with the married Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein (Capucine) and their attempts to be together despite the restrictions of the time.

  I can see why this didn’t particularly connect with audiences at the time; Liszt’s character as written is far too arrogantly smug to ever really sympathise with, and the adulterous relationship (which he abandons his previous lover and their children for)…

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  This Is Spinal Tap 1984

  ★★★★½ Rewatched by Josh Gillam 19 May 2022 3

  The ill-fated US tour of past-their-prime British heavy metal group Spın̈al Tap is captured in Rob Reiner’s classic mockumentary featuring Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer. I enjoyed this even more the second time around; for a film that’s entirely improvised there are more jokes packed in here than some actual written comedies, with the cast being so in sync that even the smallest gag immediately gets picked up and developed between them.

  It’s a testament to the people…

Popular reviews

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  Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 1958

  ★★★★ Watched by Josh Gillam 10 May 2022 2

                                   MILD SPOILERS 

  A brooding drama based on Tennesse Williams' classic play, following alcoholic ex-football player Brick (Paul Newman) and his volatile relationship with wife Maggie "the Cat" (Elizabeth Taylor), which comes to a head during the birthday celebrations of his father Big Daddy (Burl Ives).

  Director/co-writer Richard Brooks brings all the jealousies and repressed secrets from the source material to the screen with an…

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  No Time to Die 2021

  ★★★½ Watched by Josh Gillam 20 Oct 2021 1

  Daniel Craig’s final outing as James Bond finds the former MI6 agent pulled out of retirement by an old friend, finding himself face-to-face with ghosts from the past as he attempts to track down a bioweapon that could put the world in danger, in Cary Joji Fukunaga‘s spy thriller co-starring Léa Seydoux, Raimi Malek, Lashana Lynch, Ben Whishaw, Christoph Waltz, Ana de Armas, Naomi Harris and Ralph Fiennes.

  The film caps of Craig’s era as 007 well, tying several loose…