Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  The Northman 2022

  ★★★ Watched 06 May 2022 6

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Without wanting to keep him in a box he has no obligation to continue occupying, Eggers’ weakest period design to date. Can probably (EDIT: can definitely) assign some of that to studio meddling since the cut so clearly prefers action to place and tone, desperate to find someone doing or saying something, but he also seems to have thrived on the limitations of his first two features, both in budget and premise. Cannot abide assertions that this is “beautifully” shot, strictly at…

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  Django Unchained 2012

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 31 Jan 2021 1

  It’d be easy to say I know what y’all are talking about when you call this technically mediocre and politically disgusting and leave it at that.

  Fact is, I don’t. The transmutability of story, both forward in the Brunhilde tale’s resonance in a new time and place and backward through the revisionism that positions Django to receive it, not simply as romantic fairytale but as necessary liberation. “I know how he feel.” And not as the self-conscious leader of a…

Recent reviews

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  Lincoln 2012

  ★★★★½ Rewatched 09 Jun 2023

  Color generally is a matter of the pigment of the thing and the light reflecting off of it. Here, the frames are so oily it’s as if the subjects themselves emit the light.

  My Spielberg sicko era rolls on

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  Mission to Mars 2000

  ★★★½ Watched 05 Jun 2023

  ”The universe is not chaos, it’s connection. Life reaches out for life. That’s what we were born for, isn’t it?”

Popular reviews

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  Three Little Wolves 1936

  ★★★ Rewatched 06 May 2019 1

  I liked the part where the pigs thought they were being propositioned for a threesome.

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  Prey 2022

  ★★★ Watched 05 Aug 2022 5

  A fine time for what it is, even if what it is is also a resolutely theme-forward quest toward generic self-actualization. The vistas are appreciated but otherwise the wild setting rarely registers as much more than a series of enclosed, CG-packed arenas, making for a sense of schematic inevitability that tends to undermine any visceral desperation. Suitably gnarly where it counts but missing a real edge.

  Would’ve liked to have watched the full Comanche dub but subtitles have become a bit of a challenge with the babe.