I won't be able to see an actual film in my local cinema this Friday because the screens are being monopolised by The Official Release Party of a Showgirl for the new Taylor Swift album...(FYI, for the record, I'm just as annoyed by Andre fucking Rieu concerts taking up screens as well).

Ruin a movie by changing one word: Written by Aaron Sorkin —> Directed by Aaron Sorkin

MAD FOR IT

Just learning about the Riyadh Comedy Festival…erm…is the concept of there even being a Riyadh Comedy Festival an elaborate multi-layered meta-joke itself?

Without wanting to get too deep about favourite films/Letterboxd top fours, the thing posts like this fail to recognise is that favourite films can be a constantly moving thing and also context dependent. My favourite films when I was 10 are not the same at 20, 30, or when I turn 40 soon(ish).

Never thought I’d see a Corridor VFX Artists video look at Roy Andersson but here we are.

Anyone else noticed hearing fuck all about the mEtAVErSe in the news cycle now?

One Battle After Another is, in the best way, relentless. Greenwood is still a musical genius & the way Anderson has distilled so much into Penn’s character & his dynamics with others is really something. Also just surface level gripping & engaging. More here & @takeonecinema.net soon: boxd.it/DUHM

If this intends to make it legally compulsory for every adult in Derry to carry something called a "Brit Card", then I'm willing to offer some high-paid consultancy on why this plan might be flawed.

Sometimes it's nice to remember that even Marcus Aurelius was like "you don't have to comment on everything bro"

I’m already writing my (doomed to fail) pitch for Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait…

Look, there are so many potential problems with this being well-articulated elsewhere, but at a basic idea level *what is the fucking point of this*? I already have a driving licence, National Insurance number, and a passport! Why in the name of fuck do I now need a bRiT cArD?!

I don’t know about you, but I’m still sort of processing that the US president stood up in the UN and declared that London is about to be under Sharia law, and the response has been “actually, that won’t happen” rather than “Jesus, that is insane.”

I'll save my longer & more analytical thoughts for the @takeonecinema.net Xenopod special...but...there were plenty of things I liked about Alien: Earth but they were all pretty superficial. I really do not understand what they were trying to achieve here, and the S1 finale is genuinely terrible.

Very much this. Encapsulates nicely why I hate the concept of LLMs to draft any sort of critical/analytical writing - word choices matter! And the words you choose to describe the work matters! You shouldn’t have these chosen via statistical methods! It’s completely antithetical to the whole idea!

I have a lot of thoughts on Alien: Earth after that finale…

Reminds me of a time a filmmaker was a dick in a Q&A, so we posted a photoshopped image of him for our interview article, and got an email from his agent when it showed up as one of the top Google Image results: “not sure what your source was but please can you confirm that it will be removed”

The end of The Impossipod is in sight, as we start to move firmly into the late era of the Mission: Impossible franchise. And the films are very good, but it's starting to get a bit...weird...in tone sometimes.

The Impossipod is back for M:I- FALLOUT, a highly-regarded entry that, frankly, @simonxix.com & @jimgr.bsky.social are a bit meh about. They discuss Henry Cavill & his $3M moustache, a shift towards messianic tropes, & the script’s misunderstanding of political anarchism. - buff.ly/pq8UlGj #filmsky

Emailed councillors about getting (numerous) flags in our neighbourhood taken down. They intend to, but apparently, contractors were "approached by men threatening the workers [with] some form of aggressive reaction." Nothing says 'wE wAnT a SaFe CoUnTrY' like threatening violence to randoms, huh?

As a young teenager, I think Heroes is the track that ‘unlocked’ Bowie for me, for want of a better word. In particular when the vocals start to break into a near scream. There was a rawness to it that had a genuine and emotional quality I wasn’t used to hearing.

Why is everyone on here talking about the rapture all of a sudden?! What did I miss?

Just watched a whole video about the Ballon D’Or voting being rather opaque, closed off and open to bias…which used the Oscars as a counter-example of a not-perfect-but-better system. Um…folks…u wot!?

ENOUGH! Enough of this shit! My wife, the mother of my daughter, went through this process, and if anyone thinks the path to ILR is a gravy train, you have no basis in reality and no basis for expressing an opinion on legislation around it. This is just nonsense. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I honestly have no words for this Tylenol garbage they're spouting. The anti-women angle. The anti-science angle. The anecdotal justifications. The confirmation bias. The intolerance of autism as something that exists. The ridiculous extrapolations from personal experience. Just endless nonsense.

"If any short contains the thesis of presenting the Gazan anthology FROM GROUND ZERO together, it is arguably a line from Mustafa Al-Nabih’s OFFERINGS: 'We know they had a past, dreams, a life, and a future'." 🇵🇸 - @jimgr.bsky.social reviews: takeonecinema.net/2025/from-gr...

Why is the biggest film franchise in history out here with fucking WordArt ass looking title logos?

My actual most millennial thing is the idea of using TikTok for what I do here, Letterboxd or did on Tw¡tter terrifies me. It doesn’t make huge sense given how much radio & podcast work I’ve done (and public speaking as a student), but something about adding my actual moving face seems too real.

Attended my first fourth-tier women’s football match today, which my toddler daughter seemed to get a kick out of. Does that mean I’m too woke to be a Proper Football Bloke now?

It isn’t the job of punters like me or pundits and influencers to stay on platforms that actively amplify fascists & transphobes shouting! You’re a *columnist*, at the goddamn **Washington Post**!! Get your colleagues to do *their* job! Write about abuse of power instead of whining about BlueSky!

Not quite sure how I haven’t made this connection before. If you take a bunch of school buses as a surrogate for the nuns and stroller the this is actually fairly dead on…

Online gaming is fucking terrible and I have always hated it. Bring back split screen multiplayer. Or the best is locally networking things together with your pals if you’re a giant nerd. Be gone with genuine online gaming.

Knowing when to phone versus text is a life skill. I don’t want to be on the phone to discuss every little thing. Equally, I don’t want an ongoing inefficient text string over where we’re going to meet tomorrow.

Depressing that my GenAI antennae end up twitching on a significant portion of new writer applications. When it happens, I seem to be correct (based on two detection things I sometimes run stuff through). Went through 4 applications today & 2 had samples that felt & then seemed to assess as GenAI.

Given he’s the least offensive to the lunatics, we’re living in a bizarre timeline where Jimmy Fallon could be the last symbolic bulwark against tyranny. Jimmy. Fallon.

Would love to know what the “You couldn’t make it nowadays” crowd are saying now, when governments are forcing that famously hardball, feet-to-the-fire programming genre - the… *ᶜʰᵉᶜᵏˢ ⁿᵒᵗᵉˢ* American late-night talk show… - off air en masse.

if Jimmy Kimmel's political humor is too hot for you to handle, I'm not sure "snowflake" even cuts it as a term of derision for the level of fragility you've achieved

Anyone going have an email about the LFF press schedule? I thought it was meant to be released yesterday, but I don't see anything in my inbox...?

SORRY, BABY one of my favourites of the year. Heavy subject matter, but a lightness of touch that never trivialises & feels emotionally genuine. Great technical filmmaking also. I loved this, and the ending felt rather beautiful. One of those unnervingly assured feature debuts. boxd.it/b6ked1

I regret to inform everyone that I may need to be hospitalised with cinematic whiplash...

I can't find it online but the montage of Robert Redford in The Old Man and the Gun set to Blues Run the Game has stuck with me so much - I'm glad Redford went out with that film, which you should seek out if you haven't. An astounding swansong for an American icon.

I’m sure folks have many thoughts about modern Sundance, especially w/ the pending Colorado move, but it was in Utah of all places. The UK could really learn something about establishing hugely influential film epicentres away from established cultural capitals i.e. London. It won’t. But it could.

I have to get it out of my system that this is not how a ranking would work. I’m sorry. I actually am. But I have to say it.

If any outlet leads their Robert Redford story with "Captain America: The Winter Soldier star Robert Redford dies" or some such shit, I will lay your SEO worship to waste and will make your comment sections desolate.

Re-up ICYMI over the weekend, with a gift link: bit.ly/3IbrmCy

Might be a deep cut in 2025 this one…

When the Overton window shifts the way it has over the last decade plus, aggressively centrist ‘bipartisan’ positioning is useless. If anything, it just provides a veneer of respectability to extremist nonsense. An ideology tied to where it lies in relation to others is hedging, not leading.

Suggestions here and in the quotes are great, but I'll add some here as well... B&W movies that are not 'boring': Rashomon (1950) Sweet Smell of Success (1957) 12 Angry Men (1957) Cléo from 5 to 7 (1962)

I've also thought a lot about this since becoming a father. My daughter was born in Scotland, has a Scottish father, an American mother, and has lived in southern England since she was less than a year old. I've actively rejected the idea she is 'half American' and 'half Scottish'.