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OUR CONTRIBUTORS
DANIEL LAMMIN
SWITCH Contributor / Ink & Paint Host
Daniel Lammin has worked extensively as a theatre director, playwright and actor, and his passion for storytelling recently led to him graduating from the post-graduate Directing course at NIDA (2011). His very candid approach to film critiquing comes from his high standards in all creative pursuits, and love of movies from an early age.
TOP 3 ARTISTS: David Ford, Bob Dylan, Death Cab For Cutie
TOP 3 MOVIES: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Zodiac
BEST CONCERT: London Symphony Orchestra with Jean-Yves Thibaudet - 2010
FIRST MEMORY OF A FILM: Seeing 'The Neverending Story' recorded from the TV onto a VHS when I was 3 or 4.
[email protected]
www.twitter.com/DanielLammin
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The two volumes of The Cinema of Powell and Pressburger are the most impressive project for Imprint thus far, pulling together films from various studios and licensees into the most comprehensive collection of their films yet assembled. As a passionate lover of the work of this monumental creative partnership, these two sets feel like a miracle, a worthy celebration of their work and legacy.
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One could dismiss 'The Adventures of Tintin' as a stilted relic from the history of children's television, but I was genuinely surprised at how quickly it drew me in, just as it had when I was a child. Revisiting it has been such a pleasure, and it left me enthralled by Tintin's adventures screened in their modest yet spirited way.
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'Les Liaisons dangereuses' is still a tremendous theatrical landmark and a play that, like its source novel, still finds contemporary resonances with the sexual power games the genders can play against one another. It's just a pity that this production from the National Theatre aims for often empty spectacle over dramaturgical nuance.
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'The Odyssey' is an immense achievement, even with its imperfections, perhaps even helped by its imperfections. Not only is it rare to see a film of this visual and aural scale rendered with such grit and immediacy, but even rarer to see a contemporary film of this scale so uncompromising in its tone and so resonant in its ideas. Furious, chaotic, monolithic and overwhelming, 'The Odyssey' roars with every frame.
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No amount of cinematic trickery can replicate the power of live theatre, and in particular something as gigantic as this play. Thank goodness, though, that with this initiative, we are given the chance to see something akin to that experience, shot and edited with careful consideration of preserving the work and crafting a powerful experience for cinema audiences.
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I'm glad it's 40-year-old Daniel watching it rather than 10-year-old Daniel. He would have been bored at the lack of action and frustrated at all the things they get wrong, not willing to give them the grace of making the film before anyone had found the damn ship. It's a strange thing to consider, but time may have actually worked in this film's favour. We have two definitive masterpieces on this event, so a silly bit of speculative trash isn't hurting anyone, and what might have been dull in 1980 now at least has a bit of extra power.
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Steven Spielberg is a man reaching the final act of his life, and each film from him, each precious film, matters, and he is taking the opportunity to make these films his final statements. In 'Disclosure Day', a breathtaking film of immense heart and soul, he makes a plea for empathy, openness and understanding. He asks us to listen.
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'Wolfram' is a worthy sequel to the 2017 masterpiece 'Sweet Country', and an impressive feat of filmmaking of its own.
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'I Swear' is exactly the film you expect it to be. It's the story of someone overcoming a disadvantage, balancing humour and sadness, and building to a rousing finale that celebrates the human spirit. And yet, within that familiar structure is an honesty and a veracity that elevates it from a good film to a great one.
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With '28 Years Later: The Bone Temple', this series is shaping up to be a true rarity in horror cinema, the only one that gets better with each new entry. The relief is that Nia DaCosta has furthered the bar set by Danny Boyle, that Garland has continued to expand this world and its fascinating characters, and that it hasn't lost the inherent human core that made '28 Days Later' and '28 Years Later' so remarkable.
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That is the purpose of art: to say the things we cannot say out loud, to express the things we cannot express ourselves. It is the grand, never-ending documentation of the human experience, the ongoing spiritual search for the answer to why we are here. Few films have expressed this as thunderously or as perfectly as 'Hamnet'.
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Few films, achingly few, change the world. 'Brokeback Mountain' is one of them.
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Though Jack Finney's novel was adapted further (and likely will be again), it's unlikely any version will better Philip Kaufman's 1978 sci-fi horror masterpiece. It's a visceral, palpable nightmare, where something as innocent as a flower can lull us into complete submission, stripping us of everything that makes us human, marching us inexorably towards eradication.
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More than anything, it's the recognition you feel as you watch it. The paranoia these characters feel, you know it well - the sense that something is very wrong and that we feel completely powerless to stop it. Few films this year have tapped into that collective anxiety with as much imagination, clarity and bombast as 'Bugonia', yet another remarkable film from one of the great contemporary filmmakers, the master of making us laugh in order to stop us from screaming.
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It's a real risk with a music biopic that the storyteller either cannot get past their intense love for their subject or that they assume we come to the film with extensive prior knowledge. In this case, writer/director Scott Cooper is guilty of both.
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'After the Hunt' is an appropriate title, not just for its discussion of the aftermath of a sexual assault accusation, but for the way every single character in the film wields a weapon, a spear sharpened to startling precision, ready to thrust it into any potential enemy at any point, regardless of whether they are lover, friend or colleague.
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When I come to a 'Tron' film, I don't want to watch people driving around recognisable streets or blowing up buildings. I want to be taken to another world; a digital world of light and sound, where the complications of human fallibility collide with machine certainty. Take away that mythical journey into the digital, and it hardly feels like 'Tron' at all.
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A new film from Paul Thomas Anderson always comes with astronomical expectations, but 'One Battle After Another' completely surpasses them. It isn't just, arguably, the best film of the year. It's the battle cry we so sorely need.
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Watching Powell and Pressburger's films, even the more conventional ones, is like wandering into a dream, where even a slice of life becomes something spiritual. They were considering what the language of cinema was capable of in ways few at the time, and arguably few since, had ever imagined.
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It's less of a departure for Darren Aronofsky as it is a pivot, and a much-needed one. You can feel the great director crack his knuckles, flex his muscles, shake off the familiar and try something new. He's still just as concerned with the fallibility of the human soul, but 'Caught Stealing' offers him a new way of exploring those concerns. Bursting with energy, rapturously shot and anchored by terrific performances, 'Caught Stealing' is one of the hidden gems of 2025.
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This is what makes 'Picnic at Hanging Rock' the finest film this country has produced, based on the finest novel this country has produced. It's a bottomless well, deep and dark, so rich in ideas and provocations while utterly refusing to ever explain itself.
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The cheering crowd are on their feet because they think they've seen a miracle, but we who have travelled with Babe on his journey know differently. We know how he got there, what it took and the satisfaction he can now feel in what he has achieved.
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As with all great films, it is such an object of its time and one that exists out of time, an object of pure cinema and raw human experience that feels immediate and modern, and primal and ancient all at once.
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At its best, 'New York, New York' is a potent portrait of the struggles of balancing the artistic and the personal, the poison of professional jealousy and the violence in the fear of failure. The latter is written into the fabric of the film itself, an emotional violence born from the pursuit of artistic daring.
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This is a truly stellar film, intelligently written and bombastically realised, building on the grand tradition of weird and wonderful British science fiction and perhaps the most inherently cinematic sub-genre of horror storytelling.
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There's a genuine charm and magic to 'Elio', a gentleness and a cheekiness that's almost undeniable. Elio feels so relatable and recognisable, a young kid trying to unravel the unimaginable through something he can obsess about and control, something that belongs entirely to him, something that might be able to provide an escape from the sadness he feels.
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It's almost as if the film is hedging its bets in both directions. The film would have been all the better for deciding one way or the other. Either send Ethan off in a blaze of glory or just let this be another impossible mission for him to complete.
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In its theatrical version, where 20th Century Fox insisted Scott's adhere to the model he had set with 'Gladiator', the emphasis was on action and romance. The problem was that Scott hadn't made that film. He'd aimed for something far more thematically ambitious: a recreation of a pivotal moment in the medieval past.
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This is a production that has nothing to say other than how silly people in power can be and to poke fun at them. That isn't what Kubrick intended in 1964, and with the current state of the world, this pointless adaptation of 'Dr. Strangelove' feels all the more misguided.
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If the joy for the audience in revisiting a classic like this is seeing how a contemporary company of artists might refit this play from another time and make it feel fresh and immediate for them, then this National Theatre production, as sweet a confection as it is, fails to deliver on that opportunity.
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A beautifully executed piece of high-concept sci-fi with the budget and resources to realise it, underpinned by some really potent and immediate concerns, all wrapped up in an irreverent, mad-cap package that never stops surprising you.
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Thankfully, Halina Reijn has no interest in tired tropes. Instead, we're delivered a complex, delicious meal to deconstruct and digest, asking us to examine our own preconceptions about sex, power, gender and the balancing of all three.
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It's never easy, realising that your gods can die. It's a feeling of displacement, the earth suddenly shifting on its axis. Someone we assumed would always be there, perhaps even taken for granted, is suddenly missing from the world. As hyperbolic as it may sound, I think it's appropriate to see David Lynch as a kind of god.
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It was a delight to find that 'Nosferatu' did not meet or exceed my expectations but instead offered something unexpected, a wickedly oppressive and profane fairytale of unapologetic brutality.
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This is a truly unique, wildly imaginative and deeply moving film, one whose familiar structure works in its favour as its aesthetic approach reaches for the heavens. Forget any trepidations you have and throw yourself into the wondrous chaos of 'Better Man'.
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'Suspiria' is a wholly unforgiving experience, a guttural roar of a film, but ultimately a hopeful one. By the end, it isn't so much that the slate is wiped clean but that the unspoken words are finally spoken.
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Even with its weird quirks and ever-so-slight missteps, 'Maria' is a powerful, devastating film, a worthy portrait of a woman who, ultimately, was unknowable even to herself.
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'Gladiator II' leaves little to be excited about, a lacklustre facsimile of the original with Paul Mescal holding it all together by the sheer will of his talent and charisma. It's a film with little new to offer and little new to say other than recycling the same aphorisms we heard 24 years ago.
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It does feel at this stage of his career that Pedro Almodóvar is unearthing something with his films, anxieties about growing old, growing frail, seeing the passing of what was towards the inevitability of what must be. 'The Room Next Door' is yet another breathtaking piece in that ongoing exploration, a gesture of humanity from its creators and a gift of generosity to its audience.
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'The Brutalist' is an impressive monolith to look at, but lacks the grit or the clarity to make it truly great.