Favorite films

Recent reviews

• 

  The Conversation 1974

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 27 Feb 2025

  *RIP Gene Hackman*

• 

  Speak No Evil 2024

  ★½ Watched 27 Jan 2025

  This is a classic example of Hollywood dumbing down a vastly superior and nihilistic horror film (the 2022 Dutch original of the same name). 

  Somewhere stood the Geico chainsaw guy, watching each character make one ridiculously dumb mistake after another during an amusingly awful final act.

Popular reviews

• 

  The Long Voyage Home 1940

  ★★★★½ Watched 13 Feb 2020

  This is like no other Ford film I have ever seen. Is it blasphemous to say I prefer Ford's non-Westerns (ie: THE INFORMER, LONG VOYAGE HOME, THEY WERE EXPENDABLE, QUIET MAN, etc.) ?

  Of course, the usual Ford tropes are here - rabid male bonding, rabid drinking, stereotypical Irish characters, Ward Bond, a drunken brawl and an occasional flag wave (this time, the British flag at the onset of WWII). Despite these often distracting sidebars, there is something different with…

• 

  Tempest 1982

  ★★★½ Watched 27 Jul 2021

  What a wonderfully outrageous shipwreck of a movie.

  When John Cassavetes winks at the camera by film's end, you feel like you are exiting the boat along with the cast. All of the screen is a stage in this wildly unexpected take on Shakespeare's 'The Tempest'.

  The lightning filled fury of a finale is more reminiscent of Cecil B. DeMille than anything you would expect from director Paul Mazursky and the talent involved. Sporadic bits of humor, as well as great early 80's NYC and Greek locales, save TEMPEST from being unwatchable.