Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 2001

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 04 Apr 2023

  Extended Cut. 

  The greatest works of literary art are cultural synthesis. Homer condensing legends of law and love. Dante’s reckoning of papacy, subsequent vision of hell, and resurrection of the Greek epic tradition. Milton’s theomachy of the Greco-Roman gods with Christianity. These are artists who, by careening backwards toward ancient tradition, reached forward into esoteric greatness. J. R. R. Tolkien’s realization that he couldn’t fall completely into an English antiquity, because there was no true foundation — many of Britain’s…

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  Alien: Covenant 2017

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 14 Nov 2022 5

  In Prometheus, it’s made clear in the opening sequence on the titular ship that this series has shifted its perspective to being about the link between androids and humans and the abyss of the stars. The question of artificial intelligence is the question of consciousness itself. As Blade Runner begins with a shot of an eye taking in the fiery Los Angeles skyline, so too does Covenant begin with an eye. Ridley is returning to the same question. The eye…

Recent reviews

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  Saw X 2023

  ★★★ Watched 30 Sep 2023

  Feels nice to have everyone’s favorite mean-spirited, gore-laden, ultra-nihilistic horror franchise back in theaters, but I will admit… I miss when these movies were an a-plot of Jigsaw doing his crazy Jigsaw thing, a b-plot of someone investigating Jigsaw doing his crazy Jigsaw thing, and a c-plot convergence of those two previous plots through the wildest, weirdest twist imaginable. Haven’t felt a visceral push-and-pull like that since the days of my favorite big frickin’ giant weirdo, Hoffman. Saw X tries…

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  The Omen 2006

  ★★★★★ Watched 30 Sep 2023 3

  The aggregate consensus on this film is a joke, right? A collective years-long prank on Tyler to keep him from ever considering checking this secret sleeper-banger out? Well, joke’s on you all, I finally watched it thanks to Shout Factory, and… it rocks so hard. Movies today, not just horror movies, but movies in general, wish, beg, plead that they could be even half as atmospherically scenic as John Moore’s retelling of The Omen. And let’s make this clear —…

Popular reviews

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  Flight 2012

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 06 Nov 2020 11

  This very fictional movie is, actually, very true. Let me tell you a story.

  For a short period of time, my dad drove a city bus here in town. It was his way of finally trying to settle down and get sober, except he couldn’t get sober, nor could he settle down. One early dark morning, at around 5AM, on one of his more unsavory city routes filled with an unsavory clientele, a massive argument broke out on his bus.…

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  The Empty Man 2020

  ★★★★★ Watched 16 Jan 2021 3

  Metaconciousness is transposed here as something both deeply malevolent and elysian, purported as some sort of bicameral bliss of terror, worthy of worship, and yet devastated by selfhood and experience. If we consider America our own private tulpa, then I suppose Missouri is precisely dead center mass where the beating heart of the country would lie — beating, though? More like a decayed, black pearl defunct and still. So, it makes sense that we set our sights on Missouri here,…