Rating: 2.5★
You can pile all the shiny, high-budget sprinkles you want on top of a scoop of vanilla ice cream, but at the end of the day it's still just prettier vanilla ice cream. That's essentially where I land on Avatar: The Way of Water, James
Rating: 2.5★
There is a specific kind of emotional exhaustion that comes from watching people stubbornly refuse to save themselves. It is one of the most frustratingly, achingly human things a story can put on screen, and Mariya Saakyan's The Lighthouse (known in Armenian as Mayak) leans into it hard.
Rating: 2.5★
There's something both admirable and frustrating about Listen to Britain. Humphrey Jennings and Stewart McAllister's 1942 short is one of those films you feel almost obliged to respect, because the historical weight of what it captures is genuinely extraordinary. And yet, sitting with it as a
Rating: 2.5★
I'll be upfront: I went into this one already rattled. I absolutely loathed Before Sunrise, the 1995 original, where two insufferably wide-eyed twenty-somethings wander around Vienna trying to extract grand philosophical meaning from every stray dog and overheard conversation. It was a complete chore. So when
Rating: 2.5★
There's a version of watching The Heart of the World where you sit back, jaw slightly open, genuinely dazzled by what Guy Maddin has pulled off in six frantic minutes. And then there's the version where you resurface afterwards, blinking, and wonder what on earth you
Rating: 2.5★
Somewhere between Aquaman and Transformers: Dark of the Moon, I stopped enjoying my self-imposed challenge of working through the billion-dollar box office club on Letterboxd and started genuinely dreading it. What I naively imagined would be a curated tour through modern cinema's crowning achievements has, in
Rating: 2.5★
There's a particular kind of unease that settles in when you're watching a British-produced documentary from 1978 attempt to reckon with the brutal machinery of British colonialism. That unease never fully leaves you during Rupert Roonaraine's The Terror and the Time, and honestly,
Rating: 2.5★
The cover art for Wim Wenders' 2018 documentary is genuinely quite cool. Striking, minimalist, it promises something profound and intimate about the life of the modern pontiff. But the moment you actually press play, that sleek packaging gives way to what is, without exaggeration, one of the most by-
Rating: 2.5★
There's a version of Aquaman that could have been genuinely great. Think about it: an underwater kingdom, bioluminescent cities, armies riding seahorses into battle, a king who talks to fish. Lean into that absurdity with real commitment and you might have something genuinely special on your hands. James
Rating: 2.5★
There's a moment about halfway through Personal Shopper where Kristen Stewart's character sits alone on a train, exchanging cryptic text messages with an unknown sender, and the film genuinely crackles with unease. It's tense, it's modern, it's quietly terrifying in
Rating: 2.5★
Sometimes the best way into a director's work is through a side door. A documentary about Roberto Rossellini sent me digging back into his films, and that led me straight to Germany, Year Zero. I'm glad I watched it. I'm also not sure I&
Rating: 2.5★
There is a very specific moment early in Crumbs where a supposed alien artefact is dramatically revealed, and I'm fairly certain it's just a repainted plastic water pistol. I couldn't tell you whether Miguel Llansó intended that as a joke, a statement, or simply
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