If I listen wide and listlessly I will climb the trellis of understandin’
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
The Conversation 1974
Wiretapping is the forbidden fruit of the post-Watergate era. Nixon tasted it and now the American public has lost its innocence. The filmmaker is shaming the technicians who tempted us, crafting a story that shows their hands are bloody because this technology will inevitably be used for evil by the powerful. The film also exposes us all as voyeurs, as gossips, who will eavesdrop on anything, and cheer on the privacy violations this technology guarantees.
Setting a film in the…
Translated from by -
Bob Roberts 1992
Tim Robbins’ candidate, Bob Roberts, is an entrepreneurial market man with fake family values running against a liberal aristocrat. While the liberal speaks in abstract phrases like “tackling homelessness” and “fixing healthcare,” the market man speaks a language of materialism, of desire: “Ladies and gentleman, why can’t you get ahead? Why can’t you have the home of your dreams? The fast car? A nice vacation?”
Robbins taps into a current in American politics that is the same today that it was…
Translated from by
Popular reviews
More-
Hit Man 2023
There was a magic to movies made before streaming that still mystifies me. Even if they were shitty, I felt transported to another world. But with many movies now, especially those made by streaming services, I feel like I’m seeing how the sausage gets made. It’s too similar to the hundreds of other videos I see every week on my phone. It was especially bad for me because the movie’s set in New Orleans, where I used to live, so…
Translated from by -
The Brutalist 2024
It’s not that it was bad, or too long, or too bleak, but the strongest themes got blurred with a lot of pointless stuff that demanded equal attention. The Van Burens were a key into America — rich, unsophisticated, resentful of artists, but jealous of their clout, hungry for beauty, but too greedy and impatient to preserve it. The scenes at the marble quarry are the heart of a brilliant movie about artists and patrons in America. The family drama with…
Translated from by
