Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Summer of Sam 1999

  ★★★★ Rewatched 12 Mar 2025

  Angry, anxious, sweaty; borrows liberally from a dozen familiar sources but blends them in a way that only Spike Lee could. Unique in his filmography, but probably shares the most DNA with Crooklyn (thematic/tonal differences aside), and that's a register where he really excels. The casting really works, with Leguizamo practically oozing toxicity and Brody masterfully capturing his character's precarious blend of defiance and insecurity. I remember being disappointed in this when I was expecting something in the vein of…

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  Mickey 17 2025

  ★★★½ Watched 07 Mar 2025

  consistently engaging and funny throughout its first 2/3rds or so; flails a bit in its final act when it becomes more creeper-centric, focusing on the destructiveness of humans, which is handled with no less subtlety than, like, FernGully. Not that this needs to be understated - it very proudly isn’t - but it’s not at all clear to me why the final act shifts the focus away from the Pattinson’s character(s). Some of the negative reactions are way overblown, and I love that Bong Joon-ho followed Parasite up with something defiantly weird, but this pretty firmly lands in the “good not great” bucket for me

Popular reviews

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  The Broadway Melody 1929

  ½ Watched 11 Apr 2021 4

  me at dinner: *explains to my wife, uninterrupted for probably six minutes, why it is actually good and fun to watch and rank every single Best Picture winner in quick succession, and not in reality an insane task*

  me several hours later, roughly thirteen minutes into watching The Broadway Melody: My will to continue has been utterly decimated. Surely no earthly being has ever experienced this level of misery. please release me from this hell

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  The Tree of Life 2011

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 20 Feb 2021 2

  Becoming a parent doesn't fundamentally reshape you, but it does bring your priorities into focus and invite a new level of introspection. Have I been good to my parents - namely, have I ever fully appreciated them? Have I fully grappled with the way they raised me? Do I know what values I want to instill in my children? But wait, back up - are my values even the right ones? Am I the person I want to be?

  I…

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