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.)

#SaveThePCC Some of you may have read about the situation regarding our new landlord wishing to add a new redevelopment break clause, with only 6 months notice to our lease. For now, we're simply asking you all to share & sign the petition below; you.38degrees.org.uk/p/princechar...

This week! Join us for Unsane at The Castle Cinema - no ads, just a great film with intro by film critic Brogan Morris (BFI, The Guardian, The AV Club) and post-film discussion in the bar. 📅 Wed 29 January ⏰ 6:30 pm 📍 The Castle Cinema, Hackney 🎟️ £13.95 🔗 Tickets: ticketlab.app/event/29508-...

For Paul Newman's centenary, I put myself forward for an unenviable task: selecting from his 50 years of work just ten great films. These, at any rate, are the ten that I think contain his greatest performances. www.bfi.org.uk/lists/paul-n...

Next week! Grab tickets for our Unsane event at The Castle Cinema in Hackney, with intro and post-film discussion of a smartphone-shot B-movie which "harnessed the potential of the gizmo in your pocket to create a striking and affecting new visual dialect" (Charles Bramesco, The Guardian).

It's The Brutalist week here in the UK, so here I am on another ten great films about architects. The Fountainhead: horrible experience as a book, but great as a two-hour film!

Soderbergh has a new film out this week, so @distortedframe.bsky.social are putting one of his boldest experiments back on the big screen. If you're free next Weds, come down to The Castle Cinema. Intro from me on a quietly revolutionary piece of filmmaking, followed by discussion in the Castle bar.

Brando had the highest highs, no one was as devastating as Clift and The Misfits alone proved Marilyn was formidable, but of all those to emerge from the Actors Studio as stars, there are a few good reasons why Paul Newman endured the longest. Excited to share two pieces for his centenary next week.

SHOAH (1985) - Claude Lanzmann's remarkable 9.5 hour documentary about the Holocaust - is now on the BBC iPlayer. It's the first time it's been on the BBC for a decade. www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/epis...

A Complete Unknown: Moving account of personal and cultural change which keeps its own subject at a remove. The contextualisation of the songs suggests what might have been going on in Dylan's head, but the film's less about BD than it is about friends and collaborators who couldn't really know him.

In our ongoing celebration of the best and most groundbreaking examples of digital cinema, @broganjmorris.bsky.social and I are back at The Castle, this time with Unsane, which will be preceded by an intro and followed by post-film chat in the Castle bar.

In our ongoing celebration of the best and most groundbreaking examples of digital cinema, @liamdunn82.bsky.social and I are back at The Castle, this time with Unsane, which will be preceded by an intro and followed by post-film chat in the Castle bar.

Masked and Anonymous: The vaguely sinister uncanniness of early-digital, a circuitous Bob Dylan-penned script and a hero played by Dylan, who brings an energy so unusual his character reads as something like a microwaved Jack Sparrow play-acting as a cowboy. Never boring. Cameos 'round every corner.

I don't care if A Complete Unknown is any good, we all have to go out and see it until we convince the suits to make a sequel about the Jesus period.

Vale David Lynch, one of the absolute geniuses of cinema. Can't stop thinking about his touching monologue from the film Lucky. "He affected me." He affected all of us. R.I.P youtu.be/MCx-BahDSGg?...

@christinalefou.bsky.social's Visconti season at the BFI is the remedy for bitter January. Last night, La terra trema: at his harshest, Visconti still makes the imagery and pacing luxurious; these are worlds to be absorbed into for two hours (or four - see Ludwig if you can, it's one of his best!).

Still looking for tix to our screening of Unsane on 29th Jan? We got you. ticketlab.app/event/29508-...

Watching Something Wild for the first time and I respond to the entrance of this guy like I suppose the first time people saw Elvis. Frightening, beautiful, shifting the tone entirely - a man who could feasibly seduce or murder either of the leads. A true 'add a whole star just for X' performance.

Apologies folks, the link on our previous post isn't working. Whoops! Rest assured tickets are still available. Please click the link below (or scan the QR code on the image) to get yours now!! ticketlab.app/event/29508-...

As Steven Soderbergh's latest film experiment, Presence, lands in UK cinemas, @liamdunn82.bsky.social and I are showing Soderbergh's still-timely, (not-so-)paranoid smartphone thriller Unsane at The Castle Cinema in Hackney, Weds 29 January. Tickets here: ticketlab.app/event/29508-...

I’m late, but: Four favourite new new films from 2024: Challengers, Dahomey, The Holdovers, Perfect Days.

So nice to be away from "X". Only downside here is there's no 83-year-old Bob Dylan posting unpredictable trivia.

lots of @writelikeagrrrl.bsky.social workshops coming this year, including ones that i run! 😍 grrrls in the north, harrogate (weekend writing retreat) - only 4 places left: www.writelikeagrrrl.org/product/harr... 😍 the craft coven, online (2 hr workshop): www.writelikeagrrrl.org/product/the-...

A moment that reminded me it was all right for me to describe myself as a 'film critic': being asked to vote on the Sight and Sound 2024 films of the year poll. www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-so...

As Steven Soderbergh's latest film experiment, Presence, lands in UK cinemas, @liamdunn82.bsky.social and I are showing Soderbergh's still-timely, (not-so-)paranoid smartphone thriller Unsane at The Castle Cinema in Hackney, Weds 29 January. Tickets here: ticketlab.app/event/29508-...

Please give @distortedframe.bsky.social a follow and come along on January 29! Distorted Frame is a London-based community film club that presents screenings of digital films that celebrate the unique qualities, possibilities and flaws of the digital camera.