Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Mickey 17 2025

  ★★★★ Watched 15 Mar 2025

  Is Mickey 17 messy and overstuffed, with too many plot threads and underdeveloped characters? Absolutely. But it’s also delightfully silly, sharp and even sweet in its (admittedly broad) satire. (Mark Ruffalo’s grating performance as a Trump/Musk/Mussolini mashup aside.) And I can see the last third not working for some, but I dug all the weird places this movie went. More Mickeys, please.

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  Conclave 2024

  ★★★½ Watched 30 Jan 2025

  Much more contemplative than I expected from the trailer. A thoughtful meditation on power, ambition and doubt that’s undercut by a late-game “twist” that feels constructed more for shock value than anything else.

Popular reviews

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  Stop Making Sense 1984

  ★★★★★ Watched 20 Apr 2024

  Okay, I get it now. Saw this as part of the Milwaukee Film Fest, where it’s an annual tradition. I could talk all day about the staging, camerawork, and David Byrne’s impossibly-elastic dance choreography. But belting out Burning Down the House in a packed theater while people dance in the aisles, only for applause from the speakers to ripple out into cheers all around me? Pure movie magic, baby.

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  Killers of the Flower Moon 2023

  ★★★½ Watched 09 Nov 2023

  The way the soundtrack oozes and slithers is perfect. Not sure how I felt about some bold storytelling choices in the last act, which admittedly dulled some of the emotional (and narrative) impact for me, but this was gut-wrenchingly powerful and masterfully crafted

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