#LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched Fellini curio as part of a Terrance Stamp run (just out of the frame) Bava hodown with the devil inspiration for Toby Dammit One of the greatest films I've ever seen, first time watch I was a chaperone for a school outing this morning - in French, no subtitles

My #LastFourWatched for #LetterboxdFriday. Big on Japan this week! #FilmSky

my daughter went with her lycée classmates to see Alien (1979) on the big screen as part of her English studies on the gothic! Says she loved it! 😎

On David Bowie’s birthday, here’s a playlist I made, picking one track off every album in chronological order. I tried to avoid the higher-profile songs. open.spotify.com/playlist/5GG...

Also "Odyssey", acknowledged by the makers and also a very arch Newley/Pop Goes The Weasel ref in the film itself discontinuednotes.com/2025/11/07/t...

It had a couple of outings at @talkingpicturestv.bsky.social. Don't know if they have any more planned. Maybe they'll get the even more amazing Gurney Slade, another Newley project, sorta Sammy Lee, but suburban, and on acid.

TFW a seed you planted in a Backlisted episode in 2018 is still bearing fruit eight years later, which grew in turn from a screening of Sammy Lee at the BFI circa 2008, when the film was out of circulation. @backlisted.bsky.social

#LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched Bergmanesque meta from Joachim Trier, a double dose of Robert Aldrich, and Ken Hughes' once-forgotten British noir classic

First 2026 release watched and it’s a giddy 5***** from me 😍😍😍😍 #FilmSky boxd.it/cwE0tL

The director’s personal favourite, there’s something quite Lynchian about 'Shadow Of A Doubt', Hitchcock taking his dead eyed villain out of the rotting carcass of a distinctly seedy New Jersey and setting him down in a cute, folksy California. My review on Letterboxd - boxd.it/cwuN1V #FilmSky

Here's my new favourite past-time. Checking Letterboxd to see what the most popular film that I haven't seen by the actors and director of the most recent film I have watched: George Stevens - The Diary of Anne Frank Jean Arthur - Too Many Husbands Joel McCrea - Stars in My Crown

My favourite first-time watches in December 2025, which seems months ago now. I watched WOMAN IN THE DUNES on 1st Dec, and it stayed in that top spot all month! #FilmSky #Films

First watch: The Small World of Sammy Lee (1963), written and directed by Ken Hughes (best known to me for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang!) and starring the multi-talented Anthony Newley. Once-forgotten, ace noir set in multicultural Soho: a world of peep shows, jazz clubs, bookies and loan sharks. 1/4

This book is good (my piece is credited in it!)

snowing heavily now! I feel like we're the last part of France to get it 🥶

@jamesewand.bsky.social cinephiliabeyond.org/the-dirty-do...

First watch: The Dirty Dozen (1967, dir. Robert Aldrich). One of those films I just assumed I had seen but had not. A really fun genre movie, especially the final act: a siege on a Nazi-occupied French chateau on the eve of the D-Day Landings. 1/3

Poster in my mess of an office (I’ve cropped most of the mess out)

Incoming! 💿💿

If anyone needs help with a rhyming couplet you can have this for free: "golden retriever" / "over-achiever" You're welcome!

Ah, 7 January – or as it’s otherwise known, 88th anniversary of the time Samuel Beckett was stabbed by a pimp on the streets of Paris in the small hours, causing him to meet his soulmate and giving rise to the phrase (and recipe) ‘assassination custard’ 🧵

I haven’t had time to write this up properly, but it’s the 31st anniversary today of the bank robberies which gave the world the Dunning-Kruger effect, when two men concealed their identities by the brilliant method of smearing their faces with lemon juice. Anyway, here’s a press cutting:

Another of those films that I was barely aware of this morning and consider an all-time great by evening: The Small Back Room boxd.it/cryDrd

Joel McCrea would have made a good Jack Reacher. He is a circuit judge who rides into town to arrest the son (Kevin McCarthy as a total shitheel) of a powerful landowner (the great John McIntire) to court for murder over. The rest of the town is the murderer's family and McCrea doesn't flinch at all

THE CLOUD-CAPPED STAR (Ritwik Ghatak, 1960). Loved this beautiful, heartbreaking film, in which a compassionate young woman sacrifices her own needs and desires to support her ungrateful family. The soundscape and cinematography are especially striking, (1/2) >> #FilmSky

My take on Hamnet www.thenewworld.co.uk/john-bleasda...

I’m fascinated by Soderbergh’s reading list, which includes Percival Everett, Georgette Heyer and Elizabeth Taylor (AT MRS. LIPPINCOTE’S - a tremendous debut). #BookSky 💙📚

First watch: Apache (1954). A Hecht-Lancaster Productions film directed by Robert Aldrich, and the first of two Westerns he did that year starring Burt Lacaster, the other being Vera Cruz. Burt plays one-man war-machine Massai, “the last Apache warrior”, who repeatedly escapes his white captors 1/3

Today @empirepoduk.bsky.social we launch our first mega series of 2026 1857- The Greatest Anti-Colonial Revolt in History Our epic eight part history of the Great Uprising/Indian Mutiny/First Indian War of Independence...

"Lushly immoral" "A cross between a music-hall act and a witch hunt" My final post for now exploring The Wednesday Play's legacy at 60 is on Clive Exton's bizarre oddity THE BONEYARD, a cantankerous comedy which takes satirical aim at no fewer than maysbritain.home.blog/2026/01/05/e... (1)

La bête humaine (1938), and Human Desire (1954). Orson Welles said making a movie was like having a big train set, but Jean Renoir and Fritz Lang got to play for real here. They both fetishise trains, tracks, wheels, levers, pistons… the sooty glamour of steam, the scary diesel behemoths of the 50s

First watch: Sentimental Value (2025), starring Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Stellan Skarsgård and Elle Fanning. It also stars Elle Fanning. A bit less youth-orientated than other Joachim Trier films I have seen: a Bergman-esque family drama with a big slice of meta. 1/3

Gillo Pontecorvo’s masterpiece The Battle Of Algiers. This film will become increasingly important in the next years. #FilmSky #GilloPontecorvo

wikiflix.toolforge.org#/ is an archive of public domain movies made available for streaming - free, no accounts, no ads. paging @jamesewand.bsky.social

Give The Pirate (1948) a shot. Huge flop on release but I love it to bits. It’s all of Cole Porter’s worst songs in one place, Garland & Kelly are electric together, Slezak is genuinely scary, & Kelly is channeling Doug Fairbanks & John Barrymore like a champ. So much fun!

John Ford klaxon! At 15.55 BBC2 is showing Ford's western masterpiece THE SEARCHERS - and again they're showing Warners most recent and eye-wateringly gorgeous 4k restoration (though not in 4k). Available on iPlayer for 28 days after the screening... #FilmSky

On any given day, I think that this actually may be my favourite of #BOTD Sergio Leone's incredible westerns - my review on Letterboxd #FilmSky boxd.it/8wvSRH

slow start to the year, film wise, but here are some belated thoughts on Vincente Minnelli's The Band wagon (1953) letterboxd.com/jamesewand/f...

A Yorkshire New Year walk that includes STANDING STONES, ROMAN SHIT, BATTLE SITES and MEDIEVAL CHURCHES? Go on then Let’s meet at Boroughbridge car park and set off from there… 1/? 🧵

New on the blog today, I've written about THE LONG SHADOW by Celia Fremlin. A Christmas-themed domestic drama in which peculiar things begin to happen, highlighting the tensions in this dysfunctional family. Another enjoyable novel by a favourite writer! 💙📚 jacquiwine.wordpress.com/2026/01/04/t...

Nobody mentioned that it's the WOLF SUPERMOON! Chances of sleep tonight vanishingly small...

ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS (1955) on the big screen at De Cinema? Hey, why not. Let's go!

Up next 💙📚

I think this is now my longest period of severe insomnia. I've been reading until three or four in the morning for the last five nights because I've forgotten how sleep works

Just read: Not for the first time with an Ian McEwan novel this felt like two incomplete ideas for novels merged together with some metatextual shenanigans. Oddly, the part which appealed to me least initially (the post-apocalyptic cli-fi narrative frame) was the bit I enjoyed the most. 1/3

American Regional Horror Movies, a new thread for a new year 🧵 A rough definition: Independent low-budget horror movies, made far away from mainstream Hollywood, by local casts & crews which often might include non/semi-professional members. And sometimes only ever exhibited locally

My top first time watches for 2025, listed alphabetically. I was originally going to do 20, but it was so hard to whittle down that 25 for 25 seemed appropriate boxd.it/Qv9Ds

SENTIMENTAL VALUE (Joachim Trier, 2025). What a beautiful, layered, deeply moving film this is! So much is left unsaid (or simply not shown) in Trier’s portrayal of the complex relationships between a film director father & his two adult daughters. I hope it picks up some awards this year. #FilmSky

Going to do a thread of my favourite first time viewings in 2025. #filmsky Before we begin, some stats for most represented years and top cast/directors (because Letterboxd has them for lists now). Now, on to the movies!

Think I have my list… 25 21st Century albums but honestly, on another day… 🤷‍♂️ #MusicSky