ajayn

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Favorite films

  • Mulholland Drive
  • Everything Everywhere All at Once
  • Dune: Part Two
  • Poor Things

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  • Black Bag

    ★★★

  • Vertigo

    ★★★★½

  • The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

    ★★★★½

  • Mickey 17

    ★★★★

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  • Oppenheimer

    Oppenheimer

    ★★★★★

    An astonishing experience in IMAX 70mm that I won’t soon forget.  The way Nolan was able to weave scenes together, across time and between narrative frames, specifically alongside the incredible sound design, was truly incredible, and the changing aspect ratios in IMAX added a level of dynamism to the flow of the film and an extra layer of complexity to Nolan’s subjective vs. objective framing device, which had real weight. The pacing was unceasing and feverish, and I was held at…

  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

    Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

    ★★★★★

    SV2 is seamless. The film moves with a relentless pace, flowing between stunning sequence after sequence, punctuated with moving character moments that are full of heart and charm. It strikes a perfect balance between thrill, laugh-out-loud humor, and delicate emotionality that had me feeling all sorts of things. The story is engaging and feels packed, though many plot points are left unresolved. The movie has a strong emotional core, and does a great job at continuously elevating the stakes and…

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  • Black Bag

    Black Bag

    ★★★

    Interesting conceptually and well acted, but the movie lacked real stakes. I didn’t feel any of the tension because the plot largely progressed through expository dialogue, the relationship dynamics were under-explored, and the pacing was too fast. We were told what was happening and how people felt about each other, but we weren’t really shown it, and there was no time to process anything that was happening.

  • Vertigo

    Vertigo

    ★★★★½

    The first half lulled me into a trance, and the second half pulled me out of it in such a satisfying way. The slow descent into madness is so well done and very affecting in a subtle, lingering way. The film held me in a very particular emotional state that’s hard to describe, but I really did feel the journey that Scottie is taken on. Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak are simply phenomenal. There are some leaps that I’m not…

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  • Perfect Days

    Perfect Days

    ★★★★★

    I could’ve watched this movie go on and on, like a warm embrace. So simple and repetitive, yet fully engaging, this film made the mundane feel beautiful and important. Perfectly paced and an acting masterclass, Koji Yakusho’s performance was as good as any I’ve seen. I left the theater feeling empowered and with my emotional sensitivity heightened, snapped out of the inherent discontent of modern life.

  • Beau Travail

    Beau Travail

    ★★★½

    There wasn’t much for me to latch onto here. For a while, it was even difficult for me to pick out who Sentain was (though, to be fair, I’m not sure if it was meant to matter all that much). Towards the end, I think I figured out how I was supposed to feel about what was happening, but I didn’t have any concrete takeaways — just a rough impression of Galoup’s psyche. I could appreciate what Denis was trying…