Favorite films

Recent reviews

• 

  Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice 2016

  Rewatched 08 Jun 2023 6

  "I just wish it was more simple."

  Alongside Spider-Man 2, this is the greatest superhero film—every time I watch it, I understand the mainstream-dislike more and more. Dawn of Justice takes its characters and the weight of their mythologies seriously; there's not a sarcastic dismissal of their stories for the sake of a quip, just actual, existential emotion.

  And like Spider-Man 2, this is about the responsibility of heroism, how even if the world abandons obvious good, even when the…

• 

  Evil Dead Rise 2023

  Watched 03 Jun 2023 5

  The cheese grater really says it all: Evil Dead Rise is brutal and sadistically funny—it's been quite a while since I've seen any of the previous 'Evil Dead' films, but this feels as comfortably great as the rest. The character dynamics feel genuine and it's painful when their bodies get obliterated; but also, wow, there are some grotesque moments and they're cleverly presented.

  Death seen through a peephole and eyeball-suffocation, the chaos is creative. By the end, there's a lot…

Popular reviews

• 

  Glass 2019

  Watched 18 Jan 2019 5

  A pure synthesis of Shyamalan's formal, thematic, and emotional style—a trilogy bow and a career crescendo; anger and compassion in a perfect helix, crisscrossed into jagged catharsis. Shyamalan is an auteur of overflowing empathy and immaculate craft, and Glass is a heart beating with the passion of destined purpose. This film is reflexive and revolutionary—a self-affirmation and a rallying beacon for we the discarded.

  Uses comic mythology as confirmation that superhumanity exists in kindness and community, that the broken are…

• 

  Alien: Covenant 2017

  Added 13

  Five years ago, as I walked out of Prometheus, my imagination was ablaze with the possible trajectories the sequel would go as David and Elizabeth’s journey to their creators continued. That film, while certainly dreary, had a streak of optimism in discovery that high school Austin expected to continue. I was totally unprepared for Ridley Scott to submerge my soul into an inescapable hell.

  Alien: Covenant is unrelentingly nihilistic in its philosophy, seemingly suggesting that humanity is a disgusting species…