After Life (Hirokazu Kore-eda, 1998)
Magical Mundanity. After Life is a story about what happens after you die. You are asked to choose one memory from your life, and it will be recreated and screened for you at the end of the week, at which point you will move on, retaining only this recreated memory, and nothing else. The film is like […]
Identity and Humanity in RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven 1987): What It Means to be Human
(contains spoilers) Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 action/sci-fi classic RoboCop is not just a hilarious satirical masterclass, a special-effects showcase replete with religious symbolism (RoboCop is Jesus!), or one of the best action films ever made. It absolutely is all of these things, but it’s also a study on identity and what it means to be human, […]
Top 10 of 2018
This is a list of the 10 films I liked the most that I saw for the first time in 2018, in no particular order. There aren’t actually any films from 2018 in this list… Wind River (Taylor Sheridan, 2017) A mystery film centred around a murder on the Wind River Indian Reservation starring Jeremy […]
The Best Films I’ve Ever Seen: Don’t Look Now
Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973) (contains spoilers) Don’t Look Now has the unique honour of being the first (and so far only) thing that I have studied for a class and ended up enjoying even more afterwards. Usually, when you put something under the microscope and try to pick it apart and analyse it, it can […]
The Best Films I’ve Ever Seen: First Blood
First Blood (Ted Kotcheff, 1982) (contains spoilers) I never saw First Blood when I was growing up, my only experience of the Rambo character being First Blood Part II where he singlehandedly frees a bunch of POWs in a Vietnamese camp killing scores of enemy soldiers in the process (I looked it up, it seems the body count […]
The Best Films I’ve Ever Seen: Police Story
Police Story (Jackie Chan, 1985) (contains spoilers) With Eureka Entertainment’s recently released remastered Blu Ray box set of Police Story + Police Story 2, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to revisit one of my favourite Jackie Chan and Hong Kong action films: Police Story. Synopsis The story starts with a police operation to apprehend a crime boss named […]
The Best Films I’ve Ever Seen: Whisper of the Heart
Whisper of the Heart (Yoshifumi Kondo, 1995) (contains spoilers) After the violent and grim nature of the past two entries(Unforgiven and Halloween), I felt it was time for something a little more optimistic and heartfelt. For that, I turn to Studio Ghibli, and their 1995 film Whisper of the Heart. When people talk about the best of Studio […]
The Best Films I’ve Ever Seen: Halloween
Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978) (contains spoilers) I know that this is probably 5 months too early, but it doesn’t have to be Halloween for you to enjoy Halloween… John Carpenter’s 1978 horror classic’s incredible box office takings (it made about 200 times its budget) supercharged the popularity and prevalence of the slasher genre in the years to […]
The Best Films I’ve Ever Seen: Unforgiven
Unforgiven (Clint Eastwood, 1992) (Contains spoilers) I used to say that the hotel chain Best Western should just change their name to Unforgiven, because I like lame jokes, and love this film. While I might reconsider that today, it’s certainly up in the top 3 shooting it out with Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, […]
Oscar Picks 2018
Since it’s the 90th Academy Awards tonight, for fun/out of boredom here’s my picks for some of the bigger categories. I’ll include what I think will win as well as my personal choice if it differs from what I think the Academy will choose. Here we go: Best Picture I’ve seen all of the […]