Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  White Material 2009

  ★★★★½ Watched 15 Mar 2025

  This type of colonialist horror, of somebody so completely deluded that this land is their own as it swallows them up slowly, is always completely up my alley. Makes a great companion piece to Chocolat (though it is obviously more focused on the devastation) but also Aguirre and Pacifiction. Denis obviously treats the suicidal overconfidence of Huppert’s Maria with a large degree of contempt but she also empathizes with where it comes from. And it’s such a great performance: steely, cold, and ironclad…

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  The Portrait of a Lady 1996

  ★★★½ Watched 13 Mar 2025

  Haven’t read the novel but I would figure that there’s a lot more interiority there, being James. If only because, despite the title, Archer remains very enigmatic in her decision-making. Kidman is good here but it might just be the nature of it as an adaptation that keeps her a mystery. Still, it’s a fairly good period piece. Dryburgh and Campion clearly relish in the opulent European locations and they give it a nice painterly look. Great interiors, great costuming.…

Popular reviews

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  THX 1138 1971

  ★★★★ Watched 24 Feb 2025

  Trapped in a sterile, miserable dystopia, suffocated by architecture and work and routine and sound and peers. More effective as a mood-piece then as a narrative, as it does have the standard ‘break out of the machine and get punished in turn for it’ though the performances of Duvall, Pleasance, and Colley make it work. And what a mood it is. I also loved the detail that, even with the dystopia, it’s largely ineffective- budgets run out on police chases,…

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  Nosferatu 2024

  ★★★★ Watched 17 Feb 2025

  Mulled over this for a while. On the one hand, it’s a Dracula movie so there was always a high chance of me enjoying this. On the other hand, it can’t help but be compared negatively to Murnau’s and Herzog’s and Coppola’s versions. And it also just doesn’t feel like an adaptation of Nosferatu but rather Dracula (my theory is that he just decided to make this Nosferatu so as to use more Germanic period detail).
  Anyhow, Eggers is one of…

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