Brogan Morris
@broganjmorris.bsky.social
Writing about film at BFI, Guardian, BBC Culture, The AV Club, Paste. London programmer @distortedframe.bsky.social.
If you're free tomorrow evening and fancy a spooooky screening of J-horror classic Pulse at The Castle Cinema in Hackney, us good folks at @distortedframe.bsky.social have two tickets that we're giving away for free. First come first served, DM me if you're interested. 👻 😱
October 28, 2025 at 12:46 PM
If you're free tomorrow evening and fancy a spooooky screening of J-horror classic Pulse at The Castle Cinema in Hackney, us good folks at @distortedframe.bsky.social have two tickets that we're giving away for free. First come first served, DM me if you're interested. 👻 😱
I can be sentimental, and moved by stories about good men in trouble. The Smashing Machine didn't floor me - it's too gentle for that - but its message of seeing value in learning to fail did get me pretty good. DJ's (very tender) performance will surprise only those who haven't seen Pain & Gain.
October 23, 2025 at 9:33 AM
I can be sentimental, and moved by stories about good men in trouble. The Smashing Machine didn't floor me - it's too gentle for that - but its message of seeing value in learning to fail did get me pretty good. DJ's (very tender) performance will surprise only those who haven't seen Pain & Gain.
The chemistry between these two in Something's Gotta Give is unreal. Keanu's hunky doctor stood no chance.
October 17, 2025 at 10:50 PM
The chemistry between these two in Something's Gotta Give is unreal. Keanu's hunky doctor stood no chance.
PTA just gets DDL as no other director does; he's a transformative actor, yes, but he's also rather silly. He will dance in a sozzled rage, he will react to the crunching of toast like it's the most insulting act in the world. It's like how Scorsese is the only one who knows that De Niro is funny.
September 23, 2025 at 5:15 PM
PTA just gets DDL as no other director does; he's a transformative actor, yes, but he's also rather silly. He will dance in a sozzled rage, he will react to the crunching of toast like it's the most insulting act in the world. It's like how Scorsese is the only one who knows that De Niro is funny.
Gone With the Wind: so wilfully dishonest, disdainful and supremacist, and so full of caricatures and self-centred bastards it could have been written by Ayn Rand. Some neat expressionistic sequences, and Olivia de Havilland gives some life to her two-dimensional goodwife, but good God what a slog.
April 22, 2025 at 5:47 PM
Gone With the Wind: so wilfully dishonest, disdainful and supremacist, and so full of caricatures and self-centred bastards it could have been written by Ayn Rand. Some neat expressionistic sequences, and Olivia de Havilland gives some life to her two-dimensional goodwife, but good God what a slog.
Richard Widmark: the original Walton Goggins.
April 20, 2025 at 10:02 PM
Richard Widmark: the original Walton Goggins.
Stagecoaches burn, as the Fordian hero ceases to believe in the American West altogether. A beautifully imperfect, halfway revisionist Western featuring some regrettably dated casting, Cheyenne Autumn is John Ford challenging racist myths that his own earlier films helped to perpetuate. Epic elegy.
April 20, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Stagecoaches burn, as the Fordian hero ceases to believe in the American West altogether. A beautifully imperfect, halfway revisionist Western featuring some regrettably dated casting, Cheyenne Autumn is John Ford challenging racist myths that his own earlier films helped to perpetuate. Epic elegy.
Today at BFI Southbank, Vincente Minnelli's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was a revelation. A queasily lush study on what gives rise to fascism - some seduced by it, others remaining 'neutral' while it creeps closer to their door - to be mentioned in the same breath as Visconti's The Damned.
April 18, 2025 at 9:49 PM
Today at BFI Southbank, Vincente Minnelli's The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was a revelation. A queasily lush study on what gives rise to fascism - some seduced by it, others remaining 'neutral' while it creeps closer to their door - to be mentioned in the same breath as Visconti's The Damned.
Nicky Katt was a Timothy Carey for the 90s/00s: we only ever got him in small doses, but the live wire energy often made him the most riveting, dangerous performer in a scene.
April 14, 2025 at 11:27 PM
Nicky Katt was a Timothy Carey for the 90s/00s: we only ever got him in small doses, but the live wire energy often made him the most riveting, dangerous performer in a scene.
Thank you to all who came along to the sold-out @distortedframe.bsky.social screening of INLAND EMPIRE at The Victoria Dalston on Sunday. Thanks also to @lindsayhallam.bsky.social for the excellent intro, and to Juna Lypenko and Damo Alexander for the Lynchian post-film music.
Until the next one!
Until the next one!
April 8, 2025 at 8:04 AM
Thank you to all who came along to the sold-out @distortedframe.bsky.social screening of INLAND EMPIRE at The Victoria Dalston on Sunday. Thanks also to @lindsayhallam.bsky.social for the excellent intro, and to Juna Lypenko and Damo Alexander for the Lynchian post-film music.
Until the next one!
Until the next one!
What we're doing at @distortedframe.bsky.social at The Victoria Dalston on Sun 6 Apr: showing the 2022 remaster of INLAND EMPIRE, with intro by @lindsayhallam.bsky.social and followed by music from 'Roadhouse DJs' Juna and Damo Alexander. Join us! Tickets and more info here: dice.fm/event/v3mwa6...
March 25, 2025 at 9:13 AM
What we're doing at @distortedframe.bsky.social at The Victoria Dalston on Sun 6 Apr: showing the 2022 remaster of INLAND EMPIRE, with intro by @lindsayhallam.bsky.social and followed by music from 'Roadhouse DJs' Juna and Damo Alexander. Join us! Tickets and more info here: dice.fm/event/v3mwa6...
This might be Dwayne Johnson's best performance, but is it the last time Mark Wahlberg gave a great one? There's complexity there that you don't see in Bay's other characters - an insecure, delusional, hateful character, played straight or for laughs depending on the scene.
February 4, 2025 at 1:44 PM
This might be Dwayne Johnson's best performance, but is it the last time Mark Wahlberg gave a great one? There's complexity there that you don't see in Bay's other characters - an insecure, delusional, hateful character, played straight or for laughs depending on the scene.
On rewatch, it's shocking how close Michael Bay comes to greatness with Pain & Gain. He can't help himself with the digressions and the lame insult comedy, but his busy, sun-kissed visual style has never been used better, the heroic framing becoming ironic, the slickness seeming queasy and perverse.
February 4, 2025 at 1:28 PM
On rewatch, it's shocking how close Michael Bay comes to greatness with Pain & Gain. He can't help himself with the digressions and the lame insult comedy, but his busy, sun-kissed visual style has never been used better, the heroic framing becoming ironic, the slickness seeming queasy and perverse.
Pleased to sing the praises of Buffalo Bill and the Indians for this. It has a reputation for being one of the duff 70s Altmans, but it's a blunt, blackly comic revisionist Western which presents the story of America as a literal piece of theatre written by swindlers. And Newman is a great buffoon.
January 26, 2025 at 11:46 PM
Pleased to sing the praises of Buffalo Bill and the Indians for this. It has a reputation for being one of the duff 70s Altmans, but it's a blunt, blackly comic revisionist Western which presents the story of America as a literal piece of theatre written by swindlers. And Newman is a great buffoon.
Brando had the highest highs, no one was as devastating as Clift and The Misfits alone proved Marilyn was formidable, but of all those to emerge from the Actors Studio as stars, there are a few good reasons why Paul Newman endured the longest. Excited to share two pieces for his centenary next week.
January 21, 2025 at 4:47 PM
Brando had the highest highs, no one was as devastating as Clift and The Misfits alone proved Marilyn was formidable, but of all those to emerge from the Actors Studio as stars, there are a few good reasons why Paul Newman endured the longest. Excited to share two pieces for his centenary next week.
A Complete Unknown: Moving account of personal and cultural change which keeps its own subject at a remove. The contextualisation of the songs suggests what might have been going on in Dylan's head, but the film's less about BD than it is about friends and collaborators who couldn't really know him.
January 20, 2025 at 3:43 PM
A Complete Unknown: Moving account of personal and cultural change which keeps its own subject at a remove. The contextualisation of the songs suggests what might have been going on in Dylan's head, but the film's less about BD than it is about friends and collaborators who couldn't really know him.
Masked and Anonymous: The vaguely sinister uncanniness of early-digital, a circuitous Bob Dylan-penned script and a hero played by Dylan, who brings an energy so unusual his character reads as something like a microwaved Jack Sparrow play-acting as a cowboy. Never boring. Cameos 'round every corner.
January 17, 2025 at 11:25 PM
Masked and Anonymous: The vaguely sinister uncanniness of early-digital, a circuitous Bob Dylan-penned script and a hero played by Dylan, who brings an energy so unusual his character reads as something like a microwaved Jack Sparrow play-acting as a cowboy. Never boring. Cameos 'round every corner.
I don't care if A Complete Unknown is any good, we all have to go out and see it until we convince the suits to make a sequel about the Jesus period.
January 17, 2025 at 7:42 PM
I don't care if A Complete Unknown is any good, we all have to go out and see it until we convince the suits to make a sequel about the Jesus period.
@christinalefou.bsky.social's Visconti season at the BFI is the remedy for bitter January. Last night, La terra trema: at his harshest, Visconti still makes the imagery and pacing luxurious; these are worlds to be absorbed into for two hours (or four - see Ludwig if you can, it's one of his best!).
January 17, 2025 at 12:11 PM
@christinalefou.bsky.social's Visconti season at the BFI is the remedy for bitter January. Last night, La terra trema: at his harshest, Visconti still makes the imagery and pacing luxurious; these are worlds to be absorbed into for two hours (or four - see Ludwig if you can, it's one of his best!).
Watching Something Wild for the first time and I respond to the entrance of this guy like I suppose the first time people saw Elvis. Frightening, beautiful, shifting the tone entirely - a man who could feasibly seduce or murder either of the leads. A true 'add a whole star just for X' performance.
January 12, 2025 at 10:36 PM
Watching Something Wild for the first time and I respond to the entrance of this guy like I suppose the first time people saw Elvis. Frightening, beautiful, shifting the tone entirely - a man who could feasibly seduce or murder either of the leads. A true 'add a whole star just for X' performance.
2024 bonus: best-looking films I saw all year were Herzog Blaubarts Burg and The Mystery of Picasso. Michael Powell does Bluebeard's Castle as full-colour expressionism, and a shirtless Picasso creates original art in real-time for Henri-Georges Clouzot.
January 10, 2025 at 11:07 AM
2024 bonus: best-looking films I saw all year were Herzog Blaubarts Burg and The Mystery of Picasso. Michael Powell does Bluebeard's Castle as full-colour expressionism, and a shirtless Picasso creates original art in real-time for Henri-Georges Clouzot.
Four favourite rewatches from 2024: Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Heartbreak Kid, The Talented Mr Ripley, Vertigo.
January 10, 2025 at 10:50 AM
Four favourite rewatches from 2024: Aguirre, the Wrath of God, The Heartbreak Kid, The Talented Mr Ripley, Vertigo.
Four favourite new (to me) films from 2024: The Circus, Dont Look Back, The Green Ray, Hud.
January 10, 2025 at 10:39 AM
Four favourite new (to me) films from 2024: The Circus, Dont Look Back, The Green Ray, Hud.
I’m late, but: Four favourite new new films from 2024: Challengers, Dahomey, The Holdovers, Perfect Days.
January 10, 2025 at 10:26 AM
I’m late, but: Four favourite new new films from 2024: Challengers, Dahomey, The Holdovers, Perfect Days.
A moment that reminded me it was all right for me to describe myself as a 'film critic': being asked to vote on the Sight and Sound 2024 films of the year poll. www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-so...
January 8, 2025 at 10:57 AM
A moment that reminded me it was all right for me to describe myself as a 'film critic': being asked to vote on the Sight and Sound 2024 films of the year poll. www.bfi.org.uk/sight-and-so...