Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  The Hand 2004

  ★★★★ Rewatched 27 Mar 2023

  This will always be a favorite of mine for reasons I'm a bit shy to reveal (without getting too personal, let's just say I introduced it to a special someone years ago and she took our viewing as an opportunity to do a Rocky Horror-styled reenactment), but seeing the extended cut for the first time does expose how little the narrative has going for it beyond its overlaid fetishistic devotion. In many ways this is Wong Kar-wai doing a Tsai…

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  Come and See 1985

  ★★ Watched 26 Mar 2023

  So much to see yet so little to say: Elem Klimov's much-lauded antiwar epic aims for unrestrained anguish, yet for all its orchestrated pummeling (at times resembling a Miklos Jancso script directed by Michael Bay, or a Disney theme-park ride through an Edvard Munch painting) I was oddly unmoved, perhaps because Klimov keeps aiming for surreal poetry—e.g., the way a dead cow's eyeball rhymes with a larger-than-life moon, all those crazed facial closeups, etc—which repeatedly flies in the face of…

Popular reviews

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  The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat 1897

  ★★★★★ Added 3

  If any movie deserves a 3-D rerelease, this is it.

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  Hong Sangsoo – Winner of the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay 2021

  ★★★★★ Watched 03 Apr 2021

  Letterboxd including "Snail" in the cast list here makes me almost as happy as the video itself. Don't know if Hong is going to start a new career path directing nature documentaries with Kim Min-hee singing French songs in the background, but if so I fully support it. (Maybe a duet with Huppert next time?)