Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  My First Film 2024

  ★★★½ Watched 07 Sep 2024

  Like many here, it seems, I come away from this with conflicting reactions. The pretense and self-indulgence trigger my gag reflex, but they’re clearly self-conscious, and part of what Anger is mixing into an auto-fictional account of events and themes she’ll probably never stop recounting. Like the maxim her narrator declares, every director tells versions of the same story over and over again.

  There are some truly spectacular moments in this, and some truly annoying ones. Being the huge Odessa…

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  Kinds of Kindness 2024

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 29 Sep 2024

  Beware. Spoilers are spoiling everywhere.

  Okay, so I don’t want to review Kinds of Kindness, but I do want to talk about it. Very much so. I can't seem to stop rewatching it, so I've gathered some thoughts. In place of a “review” (which I never really do anyway), I’m extending a reading, or analysis, of this peculiar picture, with love and kindness. It goes on for a bit.

  I’m not quite dumb enough to think I can assign any…

Recent reviews

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  The Electric State 2025

  ½ Watched 17 Mar 2025

  No.

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  Heretic 2024

  ★★ Watched 09 Mar 2025

  I pretty much checked out with the first weirdass Monopoly seminar. Not bad until then. East is fun.

Popular reviews

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  Portrait of a Young Girl at the End of the 60s in Brussels 1994

  ★★★★★ Watched 20 Feb 2021 8

  All of Akerman condensed into a single pristine hour. Michèle yearns for connection, but can’t pretend it will ever come easily to her. Defying all conventions and restraints, she presses out into the world, alone. Like so many Akerman protagonists, the more Michèle interacts with others, the more solitary she becomes. The simultaneous experiences of pain and happiness, of proximity and distance, of brightness and gloom, Akerman bestows on Michèle, played pitch-perfect by Circé Lethem. Other than Chantal herself, no…

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  Bluebeard 2009

  ★★★★ Watched 10 Oct 2020

  I really do love the flat, static tableau style of Breillat’s visual composition. It resembles precisely the mental imagery of a young girl envisioning a faery tale (I imagine). As a feminist retelling of the old French yarn, the female characters are just as accountable for their own captivity as the blue-bearded ogre (played to forlorn perfection by Dominique Thomas), if not more so.

  The women and girls condemn themselves and one another as sacrificial virgins, setting traps they then…