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Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999)
The Star Wars prequels have recently undergone a slight recovery in reputation given how disappointing the sequels turned out to be, and in my opinion, they deserve it. Perhaps I’m buying into a conspiracy theory here, though at this point I feel that the backlash was really just fanboys who watched the original films as…
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Blink Twice (2024)
I just saw Blink Twice, the directorial debut of Zoe Kravitz, and it was really good. Besides the certification card, it came with its own “trigger warning”, and I guess I can see why. This is very much a post-MeToo movie, and possibly (?) the first fiction film to tackle the Jeffrey Epstein scandal in…
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Alien: Romulus (2024)
I just saw Alien: Romulus and it was so good it made up for every bad sequel in the franchise and has earned its place as the third best after Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986). A group of young people living as indentured servants on a mining outpost owned by those dastardly villains of the…
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I Saw the TV Glow (2024)
I just saw I Saw the TV Glow and it was honestly fantastic. What starts as a typical if somewhat atmospheric YA drama about disaffected high schoolers in the ‘90s bonding over a television show becomes stranger and spookier until it’s an almost David Lynch-ian mystery, with resonant themes of fear and self-loathing. When I…
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Trap (2024)
I just saw Trap and it were crap. (More like Claptrap, amirite?! My humblest apologies.) Of course it was, though, it’s by M Night Shyamalan. He’s only made crap for the last… what? 20 years? Apparently Split (2016) is worth a watch, but I’ve no desire to see another movie about M Night not understanding…
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Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
I just saw Deadpool & Wolverine and it was good. The Deadpool movies are my favourites of the Marvel cinematic stable because I’m not too invested in the larger overarching stories of these films and Deadpool provides a less baggage-laden movie-going experience, mixing self-aware humour, cartoonish ultraviolence, and large-scale set pieces. That isn’t to say…
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Longlegs (2024)
I just saw Longlegs and it was really good. It has one of the best minimalist prologues that I’ve seen in a while, ruthlessly exploiting the child’s POV to create a haunting moment without any violence at all. It also begins with a quote from the classic rock band T-Rex that informs both the prologue…
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MaXXXine (2024)
I just saw MaXXXine and it was somewhat disappointing, sadly. The terminus of what until now had been a pretty great trilogy, starting with ‘70s-set slasher pastiche X (2022) and then World War I-set prequel Pearl (2022) – the latter shot back to back with its predecessor and starring writer/director Ti West’s collaborator Mia Goth…
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In a Violent Nature (2024)
I just saw In a Violent Nature and it was really good. I would have thought that there were no more places to take the slasher film, a subgenre that’s been played both straight and ironically in just about every permutation imaginable. But this Canadian entry manages it, pitching somewhere between (very) black humour and…
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Kinds of Kindness (2024)
I just saw Kinds of Kindness and it was certainly an experience. A trilogy of short stories themed around sex, relationships, abuse, and power, it may be director/co-writer Yorgos Lanthimos’ coldest and most contemptuous film, with a title as playfully un-apt on a surface level as Todd Solondz’s Happiness (1998), another film about sad and…
I Just Saw
Telling you about movies I just saw
