New Yorker, Film and Festival Goer, and Boutique Label Collector.
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Babylon 2022
I guess nobody told Damien Chazelle that it wasn’t his year to make an epic tribute to cinema. Spielberg is gonna be sooooo pissed.
The opening scene of BABYLON exists as a test for the audience’s limitations. Someone stands behind an elephant to push it up a steep hill. Now, there’s only one thing that can happen in a movie when someone stands behind an elephant, but this is prestige Oscar bait so there’s absolutely no way that… oh. No.… -
TÁR 2022
Regardless of their quality, this year's New York Film Festival has several films in its program that come prepackaged with expectations of how we're supposed to feel and react to them. Films like "Till" or "She Said" tell historical stories on which the dust has settled and that have only been documented so that we may remember what they stand for. Todd Field's TÁR creates an entire life history out of fiction, and then presents you with all the context…
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Honolulu 1939
For whatever reason, I always have had an affinity for films in which a single actor plays doppelgängers in a dual role. Good or bad, I’m just endlessly amused by the same actor sharing a screen, or imagining them read their lines opposite a stand-in for each take. Bonus points if there’s a slight visible error in the splice between images. Well, I may need to amend my policy after watching HONOLULU, a perfectly fluffy charmer that I found borderline…
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The Sin of Harold Diddlebock 1947
When I was 6 years old I visited The Movieland Wax Museum in Anaheim, California. I remember the thrilling dioramas and figures, far more impressive than any Madame Tussaud's I've ever visited since, but my favorite display in the whole complex was of Harold Lloyd. Aside from some Laurel & Hardy shorts I saw as a very young child, I was completely unfamiliar with silent films. Something about this display of a man on the ledge of a building excited me…
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C'mon C'mon 2021
"There just aren't any films made about how hard it is to be a parent," thought director Mike Mills one afternoon while giving his son a bath. Thank god he's here to fill that void with this perfectly harmless but utterly hollow drama. I've enjoyed Mills' previous films to various degrees. He draws from his own life and family history to deliver tributes to the people who shaped him into who he's become. Up until now, those films, "Beginners" and…
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The Banshees of Inisherin 2022
I was initially disheartened by the recent news that Martin McDonagh was going to quit writing plays to focus on his film career, but if he keeps churning out films as good as THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN then I'll have no objections. This is the first McDonagh film to be set in Ireland, on one of those sleepy, isolated towns of which he's so fond. It certainly comes packaged with many of his signature tropes and character types, but it…
