Favorite films

Pinned reviews

• 

  Alien: Romulus 2024

  ★★★½ Watched 16 Aug 2024 2

  Completely delivering on the promise of a Fede Alvarez helmed Alien entry, Alien: Romulus is a creative and visceral gorefest with several tense and memorable sequences. It has beautiful production design that feels straight out of the original and cinematography rivaling the best films of the last half decade. 

  Two aspects I particularly enjoyed are David Jonsson’s wide ranging performance as Andy and the Easter eggs that feel like they’re in conversation with the rest of the franchise.

  My main…

• 

  Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. 2023

  ★★★★★ Watched 16 Jul 2023 4

  I’m the problem. It’s me. This movie has been out for months and I kept putting it off because I wasn’t as interested for it as I was for bigger movies. I constantly complain that we no longer get small dramas for wide release yet when one is released and lauded by the film community I fail to show up at the theatre or purchase on VOD. I even rented this which is unusual for me. Why couldn’t I just…

Recent reviews

• 

  Mission: Impossible III 2006

  ★★★½ Rewatched 03 Mar 2025

  The first two Mission Impossible movies are cool but MI3 is the first in the franchise that’s fun. Fun>cool. 

  Gone are the days of auteurs giving this property a go with their unique styles. In are the days of Ethan Hunt as a character we care about. Other than the aforementioned vibe shift, the best change here is allowing us to invest in the protagonist and his relationships. We never find out what the McGuffin is because it’s secondary to…

• 

  Three Little Pigs 1933

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 04 Mar 2025

  Still slaps. I’ve better reviews for this.

Popular reviews

• 

  Island in Between 2023

  ★★½ Watched 18 Jan 2024

  Considering how fascinating the history and current state of Taiwanese-Chinese politics is, I found this documentary to be strangely light. Still, the personal stories and striking images kept me engaged.

  Here are my reviews for the other nominees.
  - The ABCs of Book Banning
  - The Barber of Little Rock
  - The Last Repair Shop
  - Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó

• 

  The ABCs of Book Banning 2023

  ★ Watched 07 Jan 2024 109

  I’m old enough to remember when conservative Christian groups burned piles of Harry Potter books because they believed it encouraged children to practice witchcraft.

  The ABCs of Book Banning is powerful but ultimately uninterested in having a nuanced discussion of the actual issue. Whatever gets the kids reading but do they really need unsupervised access to stories and images of sucking dick at 5 years old? Like most political issues nowadays it’s an all or nothing fight rather than a…