gonna keep it brief in the interest of not seeming too enthusiastic:

very strong in the heist/procedural vein, excellent and compelling twists in the narrative as it progresses, and maybe most importantly, very convincing characters that make for great interplay between extremely different motivations and backgrounds. where a similarly structured movie like ocean’s eleven uses its layering to playful ends, this is earnest and passionate and the layering serves to illustrate the intricacies in people generally as well as the…

disclaimer: i was intermittently checking my phone for updates on the ongoing occupation of UCLA while watching, which certainly added another layer to chew on as i whipped myself back and forth between the foundational moment of militarized policing and its modern apex, but i definitely could’ve been a little more focused for this watch.

this documentary is very successful at creating a sense of “unreality” on multiple levels that run parallel to the main theme. the hyper saturated coloring,…

i think i’ve been picking kinda intense movies lately so this one was considerably more fun

crazy ensemble cast, great acting all around. even the relatively minor bit characters like william H macy who only shows up when his wife is getting plowed and phillip seymour hoffman being a weird little slimeball were always great to see onscreen

a rich ecosystem of characters and narratives

excellent soundtrack

pacing was pretty perfect, very fleshed out without dragging at all. like with…

incredibly chilling. this wouldn’t work without the unspoken cultural context that probably only exists for the holocaust, which makes single lines of dialog or wordless actions saturated with horrifying implications. 

it’s a really fascinating portrait because it humanizes these nazis without making them sympathetic: you’re able to see how they self-hypnotize with ideology, pass it on to their kids, have it passed down from the older generation, etc. They aren’t monsters, they’re evil people. There’s no change of heart, and…