Writer whose influences include Ingmar Bergman, '40s film noir, '50s musicals, neorealism, and Full House.
Favorite films
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Gone Girl 2014
First time rewatching since theaters - this thing holds up!! One of the fastest 150-minute movies. It GLIDES by, feels under two hours easy.
Julianne Moore in STILL ALICE got an Oscar over Rosamund Pike? How?? Pike is the shrewdest, iciest thriller villain since Sharon Stone in BASIC INSTINCT.
Fincher’s imagery and sound are world class as usual but the movie is such a bitter treat, so twisty and engrossing right off the bat, that you don’t notice how absurdly well…
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L.A. Confidential 1997
Just a glorious movie. Seen on 35mm at the Academy Museum, everything about it crackled.
Curtis Hanson is one of my favorite filmmakers, an underrated journeyman who grabbed this thing by the coattails and willed it into existence.
L.A. CONFIDENTIAL is written and directed with such relish, as if Hanson is being given the opportunity of a lifetime and knows it. He’s also prepared for it and tackles it like a master craftsman. His years as a director for hire…
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tick, tick...BOOM! 2021
Whoo, I have Thoughts™️.
It’s fine but ultimately rubbed me the wrong way. Keep in mind I’m not much of a Jonathan Larson fan - his era-defining smash RENT is unfinished, ranges in quality from brilliant to mediocre, and would never have achieved its iconic show-of-a-generation status if not for its creator’s tragic and untimely death.
The chief problem with this movie is that it’s one insufferable egotist (Lin-Manuel Miranda) paying tribute to another (Larson). I’ve always found Larson a…
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Zola 2020
Vapid and hollow to the core. I think it’s time we discussed the stanning of A24 as a company - once a mandate-less indie studio eager to take on emerging filmmakers of any genre/aesthetic, they now seem to have a calculated brand designed to appeal to Very Online™️ film Twitter and Letterboxd denizens.
It’s all there. The neon. The chunky film grain. The droning Mica Levi score. ZOLA is desperate to let the audience know how effortlessly cool and nonchalant…
