Distorted Frame is BACK at The Victoria Dalston next month, with a film so incendiary we're probably not going to be able to show any images from it on social media! £9 early bird tickets now on sale!

Robert Aramayo is very good in I Swear, but I've seen so many artless, saccharine Sunday teatime British dramas I couldn't help saying "Why are British films LIKE this?" out loud ten minutes into the damn thing. Careless script, no technical imagination. This kind of British cinema must be stopped.

Gus Van Sant's first feature in eight years is here, so to celebrate I wrote about some great films involving kidnap. I describe Tony Scott's Man on Fire as 'MTV Peckinpah', and I mean it. www.bfi.org.uk/lists/10-gre...

Lol never been more excited to announce a @distortedframe.bsky.social screening. 🛥️🍹📹

The depth and maturity that Tony Kushner has brought to some of Spielberg's best mid-late films is miraculous. Watch Munich again - it's the giddy dynamo behind Raiders (a film I love!) thoughtfully grappling with the whole Israel/Palestine thing, and for near three hours. www.gq.com/story/tony-k...

To celebrate the upcoming release of The Secret Agent, I spent some time in the mad, paranoid world of the political thriller for the BFI. www.bfi.org.uk/lists/10-gre...

I wrote about Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights, an imperfect adaptation (as all WH adaptations are) that gets closer to approximating Brontë's style and meaning than any other has. www.avclub.com/andrea-arnol...

Andrea Arnold didn't like the film, but watching her Wuthering Heights again now it looks like an (imperfect) adaptation which gets much, much closer to putting the book on screen than any other version has. My word, Robbie Ryan's cinematography for this... Elemental cinema vérité.

A new episode awaits so I thought I'd better hurry up and post this from the previous one! What dark forces are lurking within cyberspace? @lindsayhallam.bsky.social and Liam with special guest @broganjmorris.bsky.social cautiously take a peep at our haunted motherboards. rss.com/podcasts/sci...

Arriving right at the end of the year, Marty Supreme is the 2025 film I most look forward to revisiting. Every actor, from the top-billed cast to the extras, seems handpicked, while each character reads as so alive and complicated it feels like you could follow them into a film of their own.

My contribution to the 2025 Sight and Sound critics' poll. Toyed with putting Bugonia in here instead of Harvest (which had the best film cinematography of 2025), and It Was Just an Accident would have made it in if I'd seen it in time, but you'll have to pry The Naked Gun from my cold, dead hands!

If you're in London and free Tue 16 Dec for a FREE viewing of Sean Baker's Tangerine at The Castle Cinema in Homerton (Hackney), us good folks at @distortedframe.bsky.social have two tickets that we're giving away for FREE. First come first served, DM me if you're interested. 🍊🎄

If you're in London and free Tue 16 Dec for a FREE viewing of Sean Baker's Tangerine at The Castle Cinema in Homerton (Hackney), us good folks at @distortedframe.bsky.social have two tickets that we're giving away for FREE. First come first served, DM me if you're interested. 🍊🎄

It was either this or Elf: this festive season at Hackney's Castle, we'll be showing Sean Baker's Tinseltown fairytale Tangerine on its ten-year anniversary. Come on down, have a mulled wine, see a great film (the second best Xmas film ever, says The Guardian): thecastlecinema.com/programme/10...

My primer on the films of Lynne Ramsay and all their sensational loneliness. www.bfi.org.uk/features/whe...

For my latest I sing the praises of Burn After Reading, one of the stupidest, most pointless films I've ever seen (in a good way). www.theguardian.com/film/2025/no...

Merry Christmas Eve, bitch: in our first ever festive slot, we're showing Sean Baker's anarchic breakout film Tangerine at The Castle in Hackney, 6:45pm Tue 16 Dec. What could be more appropriate to the season than 90 minutes of iPhone-shot chaos? 🎄 thecastlecinema.com/programme/10...

"World's first potential trillionaire has killed 600,000 people, including 400,000 children" is the only headline that anyone should ever read about Elon Musk

Thank you to @liamdunn82.bsky.social and @lindsayhallam.bsky.social for having me on the latest episode of @scifrightspod.bsky.social to discuss Colossus: The Forbin Project and Pulse, as well as AI, nuclear panic in the movies and the horror of early digital: open.spotify.com/episode/3vwp...

If you're free tomorrow evening and fancy a spooooky screening of J-horror classic Pulse at The Castle Cinema in Hackney, us good folks at @distortedframe.bsky.social have two tickets that we're giving away for free. First come first served, DM me if you're interested. 👻 😱

I can be sentimental, and moved by stories about good men in trouble. The Smashing Machine didn't floor me - it's too gentle for that - but its message of seeing value in learning to fail did get me pretty good. DJ's (very tender) performance will surprise only those who haven't seen Pain & Gain.

The chemistry between these two in Something's Gotta Give is unreal. Keanu's hunky doctor stood no chance.

Happy heavenly 105 to this man: two quite different performers, the intensely insular (and astonishingly beautiful) pre-1956 movie star and the agonisingly vulnerable post-1956 character actor, both great.

The kitchen sink drama continues to be Britain's most reliable contribution to cinema, as Harris Dickinson's directorial debut, Urchin, follows confidently, modestly in the footsteps of Loach and Leigh. My review: www.pastemagazine.com/movies/urchi...

Join us at Castle Cinema on 29th Oct for a Halloween screening of Kyoshi Kurosawa's terrifying J-horror classic PULSE on the big screen. TIX LINK IN BIO!

Following our sellout screening of REC last year, on Wed 29 Oct we're back in the big screen at Hackney's Castle Cinema with another modern classic of international horror for Halloween. Come and see Kiyoshi Kurosawa's gloomy techno-horror with an intro by @jaspersharp.bsky.social - if you daaarre!

For the BFI, I revisited some adolescent me favourites for this review of the dud-less career of Paul Thomas Anderson. An interesting moment for me: realising just how many Daniel Plainviewisms have made it into my everyday speech. www.bfi.org.uk/features/whe...

Following our sellout screening of REC last year, on Wed 29 Oct we're back in the big screen at Hackney's Castle Cinema with another modern classic of international horror for Halloween. Come and see Kiyoshi Kurosawa's gloomy techno-horror with an intro by @jaspersharp.bsky.social - if you daaarre!

Delighted to be introducing probably the greatest J-horror of them all in Hackney for Halloween. See you there!

BOTD Tony Curtis! MCCT5 5)Last Tycoon (Kazan) 4)Boston Strangler (Fleischer) 3)Spartacus (Kubrick) 2)Some Like it Hot (Wilder) 1)Sweet Smell of Success (Mackendrick) More S D Bose/ @faroutmagazine.co.uk: faroutmagazine.co.uk/tony-curtis-... @broganjmorris.bsky.social: www.bfi.org.uk/features/fin...

Big fan of Richard Fleischer's The Boston Strangler. I wrote about Tony Curtis' (great) performance in it for his centenary. www.bfi.org.uk/features/fin...

Stay tuned!

HBD Harvey Keitel!!! MCCT5 5)Who's/Knocking (Scorsese) 4)Death Watch (Tavernier) 3)Ulysses Gaze (Angelopoulos) 2)Bad Timing (Roeg) 1)Mean St (Scorsese) More Langmann: www.esquire.com/entertainmen... Weintraub: collider.com/harvey-keite... @broganjmorris.bsky.social: thequietus.com/culture/film...

Gone With the Wind: so wilfully dishonest, disdainful and supremacist, and so full of caricatures and self-centred bastards it could have been written by Ayn Rand. Some neat expressionistic sequences, and Olivia de Havilland gives some life to her two-dimensional goodwife, but good God what a slog.

Stagecoaches burn, as the Fordian hero ceases to believe in the American West altogether. A beautifully imperfect, halfway revisionist Western featuring some regrettably dated casting, Cheyenne Autumn is John Ford challenging racist myths that his own earlier films helped to perpetuate. Epic elegy.

Today at BFI Southbank, Vincente Minnelli's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was a revelation. A queasily lush study on what gives rise to fascism - some seduced by it, others remaining 'neutral' while it creeps closer to their door - to be mentioned in the same breath as Visconti's The Damned.

If there’s one film you must see in the @karinalongworth.bsky.social season at BFI it’s this late Minnelli movie today. Includes Karina introduction …

Nicky Katt was a Timothy Carey for the 90s/00s: we only ever got him in small doses, but the live wire energy often made him the most riveting, dangerous performer in a scene.

Thank you to all who came along to the sold-out @distortedframe.bsky.social screening of INLAND EMPIRE at The Victoria Dalston on Sunday. Thanks also to @lindsayhallam.bsky.social for the excellent intro, and to Juna Lypenko and Damo Alexander for the Lynchian post-film music. Until the next one!

Remembering that glorious time three years ago when I watched every Francis Ford Coppola film (odds are good you've never heard of Gardens of Stone) to write this primer on that New Hollywood king. Take another look at his 1980s stuff!

Come join us!

What we're doing at @distortedframe.bsky.social at The Victoria Dalston on Sun 6 Apr: showing the 2022 remaster of INLAND EMPIRE, with intro by @lindsayhallam.bsky.social and followed by music from 'Roadhouse DJs' Juna and Damo Alexander. Join us! Tickets and more info here: dice.fm/event/v3mwa6...

Gonna be mint.

Early Bird tickets have already SOLD OUT for our screening of INLAND EMPIRE (+DJ set) at the Victoria in Dalston on 6th April. Unbelievable! But never fear, general admission tix are still available. They will go fast so get yours now! 🎟️ link.dice.fm/uo9rXjjcuRb?...

It is happening again! Distorted Frame presents Inland Empire, introduced by the brilliant @lindsayhallam.bsky.social, and followed by a set from 'the Roadhouse DJs', who will be playing music selected from and inspired by Lynch and his films. Sunday 6 April, 4pm (doors) at The Victoria Dalston.

Michael Bay is 60 years young, so for the BFI I delved into the films: action movies from the sublime (Ambulance) to the tongue-in-cheek (The Rock) to the utterly deranged (Bad Boys II). www.bfi.org.uk/features/whe...

On rewatch, it's shocking how close Michael Bay comes to greatness with Pain & Gain. He can't help himself with the digressions and the lame insult comedy, but his busy, sun-kissed visual style has never been used better, the heroic framing becoming ironic, the slickness seeming queasy and perverse.

Tonight!

Tomorrow! is the day I finally stop posting about this. But until then: come on down to The Castle and we'll watch some Soderbergh, then talk some Soderbergh! (Specifically digital Soderbergh, because that's what we're all about at @distortedframe.bsky.social.)