Letterboxd — Your life in film

Spurred by circumstance, in which the local theater was planning to pull this film after a grand total of six days, I made the snap decision to watch this without revisiting the original, and I’m not fully sure how wise that choice was from the perspective of emotional payoff. The Souvenir Part 2 occupies an interesting space - as one of what I presume to be a scarce quantity of contemporary sequels to decidedly artistic independent films, it would presumably…

My first reaction to seeing the title of the film back when I was made aware of its existence at some time which eludes my memory, I smirked and thought, “They totally wanted to use the title Diana but couldn’t because of that Naomi Watts biopic that bombed several years ago”. Yet, the film managed to suggest a purposefulness to the title itself, tying into the apparent convergence of past and present into its subject matter’s life, and serving as…

In the summer of 2012, before cinema supplanted video games as my predominant artistic hobby, my pre-teen self convinced my mother to allow me to subscribe to Nintendo Power, that staple of late 80's video game culture, rather than merely adopt the window shopping perspective I had previously. Imagine my disappointment when just a few months into my subscription, I received the solemn news that the magazine would be shutting down that December. Though I was a subscriber for only…

Is it pure happenstance or deliberate coordination that causes David Dastmalchian to get killed off in literally every Denis Villenueve film he signs on to?

I had quite the fun time with Dune, personally. Despite not having read the book, I found much of the film pretty comprehensive and accessible - perhaps in part to the laborious exposition, which only really feels jarring in the first fifteen minutes or so, but especially due to Villenueve’s adept visuals and a sense…

Perhaps the first film in a while or otherwise that I’ve seen which can be aptly described as “nasty” yet subvert the connotations the word implies, allowing it to evolve into a positive descriptor. I haven’t had as visceral a reaction to scenes in a movie in quite a while, as my decision to go in with nothing but some precursory readings about the director’s fledgling reputation and the deliberately cryptic trailer. But despite its forays into the profoundly uncomfortable…

Audiences of today may rightfully be flummoxed at the fact that a film by David Lynch can be found within the Disney catalogue (surprised they don’t use it as a selling point for Disney+ for completionist  movie buffs - barring a DVD this is the one place you can stream it for free) - not only because of its director, but also due to its stylistic tendencies and the way its potentially quirky premise belies an unexpectedly potent underbelly of…

As I write, I cannot help but reflect on how it’s been a year since I began my deep dive into the world of Evangelion. It would seem I was once again blessed by the accessibility of streaming entertainment that I didn’t have to wait for almost a decade if not longer for the conclusion of the mainline franchise and its bipolar entities. Obviously I’m under no pretense that we’ll never get more EVA content, as I’m sure Khara would…

Once Night is Short, Walk on Girl advances beyond the opening third’s focus on drinking/contemporary party culture (which simply isn’t an interest of mine, so take my personal preference with a grain of salt) it really becomes a uniquely charming experience, with wildly imaginative and frequently funny swerves whenever one expects to have finally got the film figured out. The comparisons to After Hours are warranted but I found it to also have in its DNA traces of Yellow Submarine -…

If Nintendo is ever crazy enough to lease the rights out to a Breath of the Wild adaptation, I think we’ve found the right director for the job.

That aside, the first movie of the summer season that I’ve genuinely been excited for has finally arrived, and for someone whose gateway into cinema was Lord of the Rings, that paragon of fantasy cinema, this proves to be a different type of swords-and-sorcery catnip.

Take that “different” descriptor seriously -  David…