Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Nickel Boys 2024

  ★★★★★ Watched 22 Jan 2025 1

  Through laudable cinematic effort Nickel Boys manages to clinically dissect some of the most grotesque types of truths, without leaving any bit of the clinical form or the grotesque inside the images. The forensic history and the dense violence are also not hidden away either, the gaze of deciphering the horror is allowed to pass back and forth between our cinematic view and the ongoing labor of the two lead characters. The film is generous and sweet to all involved,…

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  Here 2024

  Watched 10 Jan 2025

  Formally enchanting. Robin Wright is the anchor to an otherwise dull performance palette. I'll probably come back just to watch the Hans Richteresque boxes dance though.

Popular reviews

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  A Panicky Picnic 1909

  Watched 11 Feb 2016

  Of all Segundo's nightmare visions I've encountered, this one seems to best precursor the fetishes/fears of the surrealists. It's easy to see Bunuel in the transformation of food into pests. The creepy entrance of the fireplace spirits into the room, or the demonic attack of the wife's silhouette are foreboding and strange in the particularly erotic fashion of Surrealist Cinema. Many Melies and De Chomon films can be safely filed under the "absurd," this one seems like more. Would love to see contemporary reaction compared to the other "fantasies."

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  Come Cretinetti paga i debiti 1909

  Watched 03 Feb 2016

  Cretinetti (Foolshead), one of the first "characters" of film comedy to return across a series of films, is an impish character whose main delight is escape. Here he bounds through several scenes with high energy enthusiasm as he dodges a group of irate debt collectors. He possesses two essential abilities that make him impossible to catch: the ability to turn ghostly (visible to the pursuers, but untouchable, an effect achieved through simple double exposures but often clearly well-planned in terms…

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