n472w

just staggering

Watched on Thursday May 22, 2025.

God loves a Trier!!!!!

Outstanding. A razor-sharp study of trauma, and how oppressive regimes can seem like intangible, powerful forces, but are upheld, at the end of the day, by people. How we are haunted by pain, and the contradictions of anger as both a clarifying and destructive force. Full-body chills from that final scene.

sharp, smart, funny and heartfelt. a bad relationship is not wasted time: out of the pain rises a good education. my fav of cannes so far!

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

It's trad, sure, but I found it very thoughtful - particularly in the way it considered how the invention of recording devices literally changed the way we love. a gay liking the gay movie ... groundbreaking

some of the most uniquely tender expressions of friendship I’ve seen in any movie. Théodore Pellerin is astounding.

there was certainly a scheme. I’m in love with norwegian michael cera.

Full review on Mastermind!

finally some representation of the seismically healing power of Atomic Kitten’s Whole Again. I liked the two minutes where it became Annihilation (2018)

Watched on Saturday May 17, 2025.

cars are evil and people are all we have

We’re all familiar with the hopeful sentiments shared online early in the pandemic – that it was an opportunity to reset, to organise society differently, to return to our social lives with a renewed respect for each other and our differences. Five years on, Ari Aster’s smart but frustrating satire Eddington looks back at the pandemic with a misanthropic lens, recasting those aspirations as infantile and naive, while firmly placing Covid as the genesis of our current nightmare, where technology and disinformation have driven imible rifts through even the quietest communities.

Reviewed for AnOther mag!!

This review may contain spoilers.

Humans are so lucky to have opposable thumbs. Until we aren't

watched this in a tuxedo with influencers either side of me who were on their phones the whole time. the one on my left walked out halfway through, but the one on my right whooped and cheered during the standing ovation. I was so jet lagged that I think I nodded off in the first hour and kinda thought I was hallucinating that highlight reel of the first seven films. but once Tom Cruise was underwater I locked in.

Watched on Wednesday May 14, 2025.

just as good on round 2!

Watched on Tuesday May 13, 2025.

jesus christ

I liked this for the first two hours and then in the third I wanted to toss my laptop out the plane window.

if we had a modern equivalent of The Great Library of Alexandria, the lyrics of Rock DJ would be engraved into the walls. This movie is fine but that song genuinely makes me believe that life is worth living.

Watched on Tuesday May 6, 2025.

damn. we've all known friends (or been the friend) who at some point in their 20s/30s wonders what the point of everything is. but then you have to wake up and go to work and wash the dishes and meet someone and have a kid and carry on cause there isn't really a point, beyond being alive in the first place, which is the most unbelievably beautiful thing in the world, but that's too vast a thought to even fathom, so we circle back to there being no point. but there is a point! Hug your friends tightly! We are alive!!!

Watched on Saturday May 3, 2025.

Beautifully made, but so many missed opportunities. I ire that it was trying a different style of documentary filmmaking, but I felt this would have really benefitted from some simple talking heads and in-depth interviews to add context to the beautiful images on screen. Why do we hear nothing from Marlon Williams’ dad, particularly when they travel to his marae? Why isn’t Kommi and his background introduced and explored further? Most notably, why don’t we learn anything about how Marlon Williams actually wrote the lyrics for his reo Māori album, and where he drew inspiration from? His relationship to te reo Māori, and how he lives with the tension of being between two worlds, is left strangely unexplored, despite myriad moments and openings to dive deeper.

Again, beautifully made, and maybe I was unfairly expecting a more academic study of Marlon Williams’ relationship with language than this doco was actually intending. I would still encourage people to see this and soak in the dramatic cinematography, and Marlon Williams’ gorgeous waiata.

My Joaquin Phoen-ick is too strong for me to enjoy this fully. i need him to enunciate better and publicly apologise to Todd Haynes. but this was cool and score shreds

wild that the plot is an almost beat-for-beat remake of Red Eye, updated for the iphone era. But I had a good time!

damn. makes every black mirror episode feel like a student film lol

Watched on Tuesday April 15, 2025.

Watched on Sunday April 13, 2025.

Klara and the Stun Gun

being young is so damn scary. this film made me feel very in love with being 29. joan chen you made me cry.

Watched on Saturday April 5, 2025.

Watched on Thursday April 3, 2025.

if i was close friends with a cosmetic surgeon i would give him a photo of Sam Shepard in this movie and tell him to just go for it. I’m guessing this is Theresa May’s favourite film.

what the hell, sure

wastes a lot of good ideas but this definitely has the hardest poster in the franchise

why does no one warn you that billy ray cyrus is in this.

crisp and comforting as a negroni on a thursday evening. that polygraph scene was fucking fire

Watched on Sunday March 16, 2025.

Meg Ryan does such a good Nicole Kidman performance in this movie

Watched on Tuesday March 4, 2025.

jesus christ. apologies to the people next to me for how much i was weeping in this. 

tbh the script needs some work, but holy hell about halfway through this really kicks into a high gear of transcendent emotion. What really got me is how acutely this understands how lost so many youth in Aotearoa are, across backgrounds—whether they’re a young Samoan boy battling the loneliness of modern life, or teenage pākehā struggling to understand why their Eton knockoff is pushing them in the wrong direction. and how the act of singing, breathing, just being together is sometimes enough to silence the noise and let the beauty in. 

Some of the best acting I’ve seen in any New Zealand film. Anapela Polataivao and Antonia Robinson both give such rich, emotionally generous performances, and holy moly Beulah Koale is SO damn good in this. Turns a ing performance into something so much more. 

The ending is great, but that midway scene of the kids lying on the choir room floor, learning how to use their breath and voices in harmony, was so beautifully blocked and framed that I had tears running down my face. Sorry for being so earnest lol. I hope this becomes a new classic that is studied by NCEA media studies classes for eternity.

Watched on Wednesday January 29, 2025.

*to the tune of avril lavigne’s sk8er boi* he was a boy… she was a plate…

Alessandro Nivola has such beautiful legs

Simon McBurney I am currently looking for work and am available to lead the PR on your Best ing Actor campaign.

lots to love about an era of blockbuster filmmaking now somewhat behind us (practical effects, location shooting). lots I’m happy we’ve left behind lol

loved this so much! as charming as a swim in the lake and a hug from mum.

Watched on Thursday December 19, 2024.

• Emilia Pérez
• The Apprentice
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
• Bird
• Anora
• Megalopolis
• The Shrouds
• The Substance
• Marcello Mio
• Caught by the Tides

...plus 20 more. View the full list on Letterboxd.