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Enter the Dragon (1973)
Saw this movie for its 50th anniversary at my local cinema. I’d never seen it before, but it’s one of those movies whose tropes you’re aware of via osmosis. Having finally seen it, I was pleased to have found it a riotously entertaining piece of work, one of the more involving and fun movies that I’ve seen this year. The…
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Haunted Mansion (2023)
Based on a theme park ride, Disney’s Haunted Mansion is one of their few live-action films in a while to not be a bastardisation of one of their animated classics. It also has a lively sense of humour and real energy to its storytelling, harkening back to the first Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse…
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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)
Co-written by Seth Rogan, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is a surprisingly fun and effective cartoon feature, drawn in the kinetic, impressionistic style of the SpiderVerse movies and scored with a thumping mix of modern and classic pop standards. It seems that with this combination studios have re-energised comic-book films to a super-heroic degree,…
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Talk to Me (2022)
Directed by YouTube stars the Philippou brothers, Talk to Me is a surprisingly clever twist on The Monkey’s Paw, the 1902 ghost story by WW Jacobs in which the titular mummified paw grants wishes with terrible consequences. This time the paw is an embalmed human hand covered in names like a plaster cast, and the…
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Oppenheimer (2023)
Now that it’s been released, Oppenheimer feels like such a natural project for Christopher Nolan, a writer/director whose works have always been concerned with concepts. He approaches his stories rather like a theoretical physicist, starting with a baseline of plot and twisting it back and forth across many permutations, dissecting time travel, space exploration, unconscious…
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Barbie (2023)
I saw the Barbie movie and it was… fine? I’m not really sure what I was expecting and was probably expecting too much. This is really a movie for little girls and women trying to get in touch with their inner little girl, so I feel bad criticising it for things like plot and nuance,…
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Blood Feast (1963)
Described as the worst horror film he’s ever seen by Stephen King, Blood Feast is a notorious 1963 splatter film by celebrated schlockmeister and “godfather of gore” Herschell Gordon Lewis. I say “celebrated”. He’s discussed and referenced fondly by artists who cut their teeth on the sort of pulp trash that Lewis made his name…
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Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)
So I saw Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One and it was… bad? I don’t consider myself a contrarian. I normally have views that fall somewhere in line with the general critical feeling. I might be more or less moved by a particular film than others were, but normally if one receives what can be…
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The Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968)
It’s possible to interpret Curse of the Crimson Altar, on the surface another hoary old tale of black magic and fleeting nudity in the same vein as The Devil Rides Out (also ‘68) and The Skull (1965), as a transitional sort of swan song in British horror. It’s very much an old man’s film, the…
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)
I just saw Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and it was an enjoyable if somewhat forgettable coda to the franchise. It’s been getting the usual sneering reviews from critics who must think it a sign of their cine-literacy to hold their noses when passing pulp trash, but it’s a watchable piece of hokum…
I Just Saw
Telling you about movies I just saw
I Just Saw 