The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)

Absolute queer cinema. An injection of life in the arm. Possibly the only thing that would make me want to actually go to Australia. (9/10)

To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995)

Unfortunately this loses steam once it stops being a road movie and starts being a True Stories-esque small-wacky-town comedy — which is, uh, most of it. That said, it’s kind of crazy how well John Leguizamo passes. (5½/10)

Upgrade (2018)

I love the depiction of a human/AI “centaur” in this — it’s so rare you see one in media, and the way it’s presented, almost like the dæmon of a bicameral mind telling you what to do, is brilliant. Good enough action, too, to make up for a lacklustre performance from the lead antagonist. (8/10)

Princess Mononoke (1997)

Holy shit they made the ChatGPT meme into a movie? (10/10)

No Country for Old Men (2007)

There is very little i can say about this movie that has not already been expressed much better than people who are not me. Anton Chigurh is one of the most terrifying characters in fiction and he does it all with that fuckass haircut. (9/10)

Project Hail Mary (2026)

Deservedly on its way to becoming a sci-fi classic. I’ve rambled about it enough already, but suffice it to say that if you haven’t already gone and seen it at the cinema thrice, what the hell are you even doing? (10/10)

Yellow Submarine (1968)

Jeremy Boob is the real fifth Beatle. (6/10)

Boogie Nights (1997)

RIP Dirk Diggler, you would have loved OnlyFans

I love how the porno company treat each other like one big, fucked-up family. A strangely heartwarming film for the premise (at least in the first half)! (7/10)

Akira (1988)

I went to the Tyneside Cinema thinking i was going to watch The Drama. Then i saw this on the schedules, and thought… well, i have to.

Every ten seconds i was soyjak-pointing at the screen and thinking, “Oh, that’s where that other thing i like got the idea from!” In that context it’s kind of funny how little emphasis is actually given to The Slide™® — it’s just a cool trick that happens in the first chase scene, but it’s so mega-cool that everyone who watched it and went on to have a career in the arts made it their life’s mission to do it again.

It’s incredible that they could do all that in 1988. Few animated films come close to looking this good even today. IMDB trivia said they had to mix dozens of new pigments for all the various nocturnal hues they wanted to use, and reading that just blew my mind even more — you don’t tend to think about how, before computers, you couldn’t just paint in any RGB colour you wanted!

The only critique i really have is that it sags a bit around the middle, but it’s cool enough that i can’t care. (9½/10), and if you ever get the chance to see it on the big screen, take it!

The Mission (1986)

all the Guaraní at my church make me do the fortnite dance and shout go white boy go

Didn’t care much for most of this — not really the filmmakers’ fault, but any Christian conversion story is likely to bounce off me — but there’s some beautiful shots of the South American wilds, and Ennio Morricone put his whole Morriconussy into the score as always. (4½/10)

Mother Mary (2026)

I still haven’t fully figured out what to make of this. Some of it feels underbaked; everything is caked in ten layers of metaphor, but… maybe i liked that? I don’t know.

Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel deserve all the awards for this. I’m buying stock in the latter. Ms Coel to the moon for Best Supporting Actress. All in.

The songs, contributed by Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff, and FKA Twigs, are an equal highlight, and remain in my regular listening — has Ms Hathaway’s Wikipedia page been updated to list her as a singer in the opening line yet? (7/10? I think? Maybe 6?)

The Madness of King George (1994)

A chilling documentary about daily life in the White House. (6/10)

Crank (2006) and Crank 2: High Voltage (2009)

What if: Speed, but Jason Statham is the bus? The most late-2000s movies ever made. Constantly in-your-face with outrageous, offensive, adrenaline-pumping nonsense. It’s everything you could ever ask for.

Actually, you know what? Let me just list some things included in these films. This is all real:

• Jason Statham holding a doctor, who is the guy from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, at gunpoint while wheeling an elderly patient down a corridor and getting into an argument with said patient
• Chester Bennington telling him to buy nasal spray to get high
• Jason Statham having unenthusiastic public sex with his girlfriend in the middle of Chinatown while a crowd of Chinese people and a bus full of Japanese schoolgirls cheer them on
• Jason Statham connecting a car battery up to his tongue to recharge his artificial heart
• David Carradine as an elderly Chinese man
• A transvestite Latino informant with “full-body Tourette’s” who is the identical twin of a dead character from the last film
• A horny therapist who vomits onto the camera after her client accidentally gets shot in the head
• A kaiju fight in a substation
• Google Earth
• Jason Statham shocking himself with a dog collar and farting
• A sentient head in a tank of ominous yellow fluid
• John de Lancie
• An erect horsecock
• A dream sequence inspired by the Jeremy Kyle Show where Ginger Spice plays Jason Statham’s mam

If you read that and thought “hell yeah”, then Crank and Crank 2 are the movies for you. (7/10)