Film & TV
Recommendations
Explore
Resources

amerigo

amerigo
Celluloid Junkie
# Film Ratings: 2919
Member Since: 07 Jul 2007
Bio: My film rating scale: if it's over 80--it's a damned good movie; if it's between 80-70 it's either notably flawed or one of those 'different strokes for different folks' movies; if it's between 70-60 it's still enjoyable and/or has some artistic merit; if it's below 50 it's inexcusable, utter crap.

Featured Reviews

74 34%
Heretic
Heretic (2024) - Rated 30 May 2025
A poor man's Red State that holds one's attention only due to the quality of the acting. The first act is interesting enough, but it feels like the scriptwriters didn't really know where to go with the material--how to make it SCARY horror? So it meanders through horror tropes in the outdated postmodernist way: by hiding in layers of meta-irony and riffing off Wikipedia articles. They had a good hook, but just wasted the idea by thinking the film needed to be like Saw to be taken seriously.
81 75%
Civil War
Civil War (2024) - Rated 26 Oct 2024
Nice to see Garland return to form. After experimenting with film convention subversions that always felt muddled, this mostly-by-the-numbers war thriller feels more like 28 Days Later than anything Garland has done in a while. And that's very much a good a thing. The acting is immersive, the action taut and well-paced, and the set pieces have just enough complexity to make this stand out from the usual action dross. A very fine film. Reminscent of The Last of Us in the best of ways.
88 93%
Weapons
Weapons (2025) - Rated 23 Aug 2025
It wears its Hereditary influences on its sleeve and while it leans into Ari Aster's offbeat dark humor on occasion, it stays taut throughout. It really nails the recipe that made the best of 80s horror so unique and it does so without pandering to 80s aesthetics (cough cough Longlegs). It's thematic nods to contemporary American small town politics is not overly overt, which only enhances the sense of immersion. A very significant improvement over the frustrartingly unfocused Barbarian.