Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Being Women in Japan: Living with the Ocean 1974

  ★★★★½ Watched 17 Dec 2024

  Lovely cinema verité/handheld montage, mostly in close proximity to its subjects, with a great chorus of voices, all chiming in around the voice of a woman recovering from brain cancer. She's about to go home, after having life-saving surgery, and while there is clearly a gaping hole around her, 4 months in bed has given her the time of repose needed to ask why no one else has learned to do laundry, tho everyone complains about how their quality of…

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  Lola 1989

  ★★★★½ Watched 30 Nov 2024

  Really lovely film, Maria Novaro's first. A bit recalling Chantal Akerman/Agnes Varda's portraits of drifting, compelling but not that self-aware women. But how can you be self-aware with a broken heart that's at least halfway somewhere far away, as with this character? The film is, maybe for this reason, at least a bit distant from the characters, and she is not self-aware the way much cinema wants its protagonesses to be. But different--beautiful use of exterior city sound--playground swings and…

Popular reviews

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  Dahomey 2024

  ★★★★½ Watched 03 Nov 2024

  This film packed a lot into 67 minutes, while also...a lot of sequences took their time. The acousmatic narration from the POV of "26," one of the 26 of about 7000 statues repatriated to Benin from France, sets up a lot of things. Like Derek Jarman's blue, the black screen with voice gives you a pause, for thinking, for registering loss, for being aware of confinement and forced passages. While essayistic, it's also a bit of a process film, as…

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  Godzilla Minus One 2023

  ★★ Watched 01 Dec 2024

  Boy what a wretched movie. The best part was the music from the 1954 Godzilla that ran over the ending credits. It picked up the most maudlin parts of the old Godzilla--the nationalism and faith in "communication" that can solve everything, killing the monster, and bringing the nation (and family) together. One star for re-imagining old sepia trains and streetscapes (my weak spot), as in a NHK reenactment. One star for OK special effects (the reporting was weird on this,…