Favorite films

Pinned reviews

• 

  The Ruins 1984

  ★★★★★ Watched 25 May 2023

  Seen in 240p, unrestored, subtitled only in Spanish, a language I don’t speak. Still five stars.

  No love story has pained me this much in years. And yet it was so delicate, so bare, that I’m not sure it was a story of love. Hope, perhaps. Hesitation. A bit of self-deception, just like any good romance. The pain of seeing, for a moment, a half-remembered dream lost to time, and the quiet disappointment at a future turned to ash. There was born a forgotten saint, foundress of nothing, whose loving heartbeats trembled off and whose loneliness remained.

• 

  His Motorbike, Her Island 1986

  ★★★★★ Watched 13 Feb 2025

  There was a German sociologist, Kracauer, who wrote that memory and photography were natural opposites. That the edges of a memory fade, the details blur, the faces become indistinct, but the emotion at the heart of it remains. But a photograph steps out of time. The details of the image never change, but the person in it will; the setting of it will; and in time, it won’t be recognizable. 

  From the moment it’s taken, it’s already growing old.

  11.25.98 - 03.02.22

Recent reviews

• 

  Miss Lonely 1985

  Watched 08 Feb 2025

  Someday, I’ll write a thesis on Obayashi’s ghosts. 

  His movies are haunted; in fully seven that I’ve seen, there’s someone spiritually out-of-place — a ghost, a person out of time, the vampiric spectres of House and Hanagatami, the kind woman of Seven Weeks. Over and over again, he returns to that motif. 

  With only a few exceptions, Obayashi’s “ghosts” are benevolent; they lead the living to understanding, and sometimes even peace. For their part, it’s a chance to reconcile with regrets…

• 

  Fire Dragon 1994

  Watched 06 Mar 2025

  The Youtube version plays at 1.25x speed, and yet the fight choreography is still crystal-clear and easy to follow. Not sure I would've noticed the technical quality at normal speed; credit to Yuen Woo-Ping & co.

Popular reviews

• 

  Contempt 1963

  ½ Watched 14 Aug 2023

  It's not as intelligent as it thinks it is. Insufferable.

• 

  Arth 1982

  ★★★★★ Watched 14 Oct 2023

  Shabana became so vulnerable. After pleading with her husband for a new beginning, Pooja is turned down. We hold the camera on Kulbhushan Kharbanda, hold it for quite a while. And then I called cut; I saw Shabana crumbling to the ground, and falling to pieces.

  Floored, and deeply moved, by Shabana Azmi's extraordinary acting as a woman picking up the pieces. A film unsparing but not unkind, a camera gentle enough just to sit with people in pain, and a performance so full of grace.