Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One 2023

  ★★★★ Watched 03 Dec 2023

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

  Self-awareness has crept into this series. The "Fast and Furious" movies got there first, with Tyrese Gibson hysterically speculating that their luck at not dying can only be explained by superhero invincibility. Here, we get Shea Whigham as a bumbling, unthreatening agent who manhandles the faces of people he suspects of being Tom Cruise in a mask, Vanessa Kirby fainting like she's in a cartoon, and Cruise ending a hyped-up motorcycle jump and parachute chase with a plummet through a…

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  Albert Brooks: Defending My Life 2023

  ★★½ Watched 23 Nov 2023

  Reiner does two things here that I can't stand in documentaries. First, it is packed with unenlightening celebrity interviews. The insights never run hotter than "that was a really funny Albert Brooks bit." Second, it plays clips from his work with no theme or commentary. Nothing beyond "this was a really funny Albert Brooks bit."

  Luckily for everybody, they are correct. They are good bits! Reiner uses a 70s TV segment, when Brooks lists the humiliations he thinks we expect…

Popular reviews

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  Licorice Pizza 2021

  ★★★★★ Watched 14 Dec 2021 5

  Best depiction of the transition between "I can do anything, I have my whole life ahead of me!" and "I've wasted my life, I can't do anything!" - ie, being 15 and being 25 - that I've ever seen. I keep trying to write more but I gush and sound ridiculous, because it's all so goddamn good.

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  Cats 2019

  ½ Watched 22 Dec 2019 2

  Art was a mistake.