Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Native Son 1951

  ★★★½ Watched 23 Mar 2025

  It's no surprise that this was made outside the Hollywood system because this film tackles issues no other film of it's time would be doing.

  The hatred that Bigger faces is palpable and intense.  Really disturbing.  

  Bigger also is facing these problems because his so called "allies" put him in a bad situation.  The film could have cheaped out and shown Bigger to be an angel, but it clearly showed that Bigger had a predilection toward violence.  It made for a more realistic film.

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  Anora 2024

  ★★★★½ Watched 22 Mar 2025

  This featured an absolute whirlwind romance that was almost fairytale like.  But what goes up must come down and chaos follows.

  Really funny film.

  My Oscar nominee rankings: boxd.it/c8pGG

Popular reviews

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  Black Venus 2010

  ★★½ Watched 11 Aug 2018 3

  This film has historical merit,  but there’s no way I can recommend anyone watching this.

  The main character is placed into escalating scene upon scene of indignities.  We definitely feel a lot of empathy for her.  
  The main problem I have is:  no actress should be subjected through 2.75 hours of these indignities.
  It’s horrible that this young lady had to subject herself to such embarrassing scenes.  This is too close to art imitating life when it comes to exploitation.

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  Black Panther 2018

  ★★★ Watched 18 Feb 2018

  We could all learn a lot from Wakanda and have our political leaders fight to the death on the top of a waterfall.  

  But seriously, this is a very average superhero movie.  
  There was one interesting action set piece in Korea and not much else.  The ending battle was mediocre, with a lot of hokey cgi.  
  The cast was pretty great, especially Micheal b Jordan, Daniel Kaluya, and Letitia Wright, but the lead is kind of a dud.  Chadwick Boseman has no charisma or screen presence.

  I did find the political discussions of Wakanda's protectionist politics interesting though.