Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  Alien 1979

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 14 Feb 2023

  To be alive is a grotesque, mechanical process, from the invasive violence of sexual creation to the cosmic terror of reactionary survival. Alien endures as an iconic masterpiece of Lovecraftian abjection by viscerally deconstructing our sacred borders of being consciously human.

  This psychosexual horror comes alive in the biomechanical designs of H.R. Giger; From the dripping ribbed spaceship corridors, and the vaginal facehugger's forceful oral impregnation, to the violation of birthing a phallic parasite, we can't help but recoil in…

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  Lost in Translation 2003

  ★½ Watched 16 Dec 2022

  What a waste of a film, Coppola absolutely squanders her compelling premise and lush setting, opting instead for an unironic tale of white people discovering how it feels to navigate a world not built for them.

  It is futile to try sympathizing with these xenophobic characters when they spend their precious time within the walls of the Park Hyatt or taxi cabs, replying "hello" to everyone's "こんにちは". When they actually do begrudgingly interact with Japanese people and culture, Coppola flattens…

Recent reviews

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  Æon Flux 2005

  ★★★★★ Added

  Unapologetically bizarre, visually provocative, & intriguingly mature, Æon Flux(1991) is the apex of avant garde sci-fi.

  Amusingly, it was Peter Chung's frustrating time at Rugrats, animating clumsy babies trapped in children's plots, that eventually broke him. Craving the polar opposite, he imagined a fantastical biopunk dystopia, sculpted acrobatic, fetishistic characters, and threw them into a blender of moral dilemmas & philosophical musings. Combined with an ethereal soundtrack & the entrancing visual aesthetic of Moebius & Egon Schiele, Chung probes deep into the absurdity of…

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  Le Samouraï 1967

  ★★★½ Watched 26 May 2024

  I've heard that there's a kind of bird without legs that can only fly and fly, and sleep in the wind when it's tired. The bird only lands once in its life...that's when it dies.

  Navigating the textures of solitude without any hint of sentimentality, our protagonist fulfills his professional function without wasting a word. Nevertheless, as he feeds his caged parrot trapped within a dilapidated apartment, I couldn't help but imagine him recalling the flightless bird from Wong Kar-Wai's…

Popular reviews

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  The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 2001

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 28 Jan 2023

  Truly epic in every sense of the word, J.R.R Tolkien's timeless high fantasy fairytale comes alive in Peter Jackson's hands. Middle Earth feels tangible, blossoming with Anglo-Saxon and old Icelandic inspired lore that is both meticulously detailed and impeccably consistent.

  Only after setting such a lush stage is it possible to stay grounded while also serving as a philosophical fable. Tolkien's romantic take on life may lack nuanced ethics, but it's hard not to find joy in the simple fulfilled…

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  A Brighter Summer Day 1991

  ★★★★★ Watched 07 Apr 2024

  牯岭街少年杀人事件, or in Elvis's ineffable foreign melody, A Brighter Summer Day, is very much a film of a time and a place. Exiled from the past with unease for the future, Yang intimately paints a microcosm of 1960s Taiwan that unpretentiously evokes the universal anguish of adolescence.

  At a daunting 237 minutes, not a single second of this vast & sprawling epic is wasted. From the intoxicating rush of your first kiss, to growing numb to violence, every ephemeral moment of…