The four films below are my most recent 4.5+ star films.
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No Rest for the Brave 2003
After revisiting this film and THAT OLD DREAM THAT MOVES recently, I’ve been surprised to feel that Guiraudie’s dialogue in these films can be a touch too clever and cute at times. I’ll qualify my statement by saying that I’m a big Guiraudie guy and still like these films a lot. But there’s something about the deadpan riffing that can feel too self-contained; in these films Guiraudie often abandons structure in favor of reflexive winks to the audience. I tend…
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Challengers 2024
I had a hard time with the humorlessness of the film in general and specifically in the construction of Tashi as a character. There’s something compelling about centering the film on a woman who uses tennis and her appeal over two friends to manipulate them. But she never seems to get much pleasure from her use of power, aside from the flashback scene where she gets Art and Patrick to make out. I guess she enjoys the tennis, but that…
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Cruising 1980
“Art frees us from all our sentiments, even good ones and justifies its amorality by returning to ethics what it had borrowed.” – Eric Rohmer
It’s impossible for me to discuss to this film without dealing with the shadow cast by the controversy over its depiction of a homosexual subculture. While watching early scenes in the West Village bar called The Cock Pit full of detached lateral tracking shots surveying aggressive displays of homosexuality, I wondered whether films have a…
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Sicario 2015
If I were to select any working director whose films are the opposite of what I think the cinema should be, the honor would likely go to Denis Villeneuve. Mr. Villeneuve excels in pulpy thrillers that pile contrivance upon contrivance to reveal “important” and “serious” takes on zeitgeisty issues ranging from cycles of violence in a Lebanon-ish Middle Eastern country in INCENDIES, Bush-era torture in PRISONERS and modern relationship ennui a la carte in ENEMY. The latest Villeneuve hot topic…
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