Recent Posts

• November 02, 2025

  Hard Boiled

  I watched what felt like a lot of John Woo in the late ’90s and early ’00s, but looking back now at the list it was pretty much just Face/Off, Broken Arrow and Mission: Impossible II. I opted not to go see Red Cliff when I was living in Japan, as it was in Mandarin with Japanese subtitles, so I figured I wouldn’t get that much out of it. It seems now he’s making “Peacock original” pictures, which feels like a step down, but he’s 79 years old so he probably doesn’t have to keep working. Regardless, I had never taken the trip back in time to his Hong Kong heyday.

• October 25, 2025

  Toronto Waterfront Marathon 2025

  Now I’ve done a winter training in -20 and blasting sleet, and summer training in +30 and sweltering humidity, I can safely say that the summer is harder. You can layer up in winter, but there’s a limit to what you can take off in the summer without getting arrested or dying of blood loss. There were several training runs in July and August that I crashed on, or just bailed out early and went home. I would arrive back absolutely drenched in sweat, despite having left the house before 7am, or after the sun went down. Pretty much every single time I tried to go fast, as in under 4 mins/km, I would wipe out. I, to some extent, ignored this, seeing as the race itself was in October and would presumably be at least under 20 degrees. It wasn’t total carnage, “general aerobic” runs, ie just going out and coming back, were mostly fine even when 30+ km, and the Big Test, the 23km at marathon pace in mid September went kind of fine. I did stop during it though, having gotten a stitch and some breathing problems which I put down to the rib I broke in August.

• October 18, 2025

  Triangle

  I enjoy a time loop. Jess goes off on a yacht with a bunch of friends and friends-of-friends, including a Hemsworth, and they get caught in a huge storm and capsize. I will say off the bat that there were very ropey effects here, we’re all just keeping our eyes on the prize until we get onto the actual physical set that we have, which is a giant cruise ship with supposedly nobody on it. Except there is, in fact, at least one person on it, who tries and more or less succeeds to kill everyone. Spoilers, it’s actually Jess from the recent past.

• August 08, 2025

  Weapons

  A killer hook: at 2:17am one night, seventeen children from the same class all leave their houses, run off into the night and disappear. I went into this totally cold, but having experienced Barbarian, I was a little more prepared for the distinct Zach Cregger mix of creeping dread and Looney Tunes. This time it was much more balanced throughout rather than a cut to Justin Long in the middle signaling a complete change of tone.

• August 02, 2025

  Ran

  Suddenly we found ourselves with an unusual amount of time in the evening, and neither of us had to get up in the morning, so finally, after many months of “I’d love to but it’s too long”, we finally got to watch Ran and it was awesome. I’ve seen most of the Kurosawa big hitters at this stage (but his back catalogue is deep) but this has been a long standing 2hr 40min hole. I think we did Seven Samurai in two sittings, much as I dislike doing that, but I have a job and children here.