Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 1920

  ★★ Watched 23 Mar 2025

  It’s hard to “like” a film that’s so far removed from anything else, but the influences are there. With incredibly simple production design, angular walls and sets that look like they were created by grade schoolers, the film feels jumbled, never making clear the characters’ relationships to one another, tying together plot and taking its time in the process. The twist in the end hardly feels surprising and with its far-too-chipper score, I wouldn’t call it horror. Like VAMPYR, it’s a film that’s better studied than enjoyed as entertainment.

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  Vampyr 1932

  ★★½ Watched 22 Mar 2025

  Wildly experimental, with haunting moments and imagery that's straight out of a dream, Dreyer's film is more mood, vibe, and tone poem than actual story. There are no traditional story beats, no characters, no plot. It just drifts lazily from one moment to the next, connected by dream logic and blood -- the way it takes away one's life as it revives another. That may be its primary vampiric connection -- there is no Dracula figure, no Renfield or Van Helsing. If anything, it's just metaphor, figurative vampiring. Important film, but be warned. VAMPYR feels a lot longer than 74 minutes,

Popular reviews

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  The French Dispatch 2021

  ★½ Watched 23 Oct 2021

  "Plot? Character development? Entertainment? I have no need for such things. My images are so enticing, my attention to detail so precise that the idea of enjoying my films has become, in fact, completely anathema."

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  Kill Your Lover 2023

  ★★★★ Watched 12 Oct 2023

  Gnarly debut by A/K, committed performances from Murphy & Gilmour, body horror makeup effects (by Rebecca Wheeler) that will have you wondering how the F*CK they did that, a score (by Thibault Chavanis) that does a ton of heavy lifting, and sound design that makes the squishiest and squelchiest effects come to grossly practical life. This definitely opened some old wounds (figuratively speaking), but then, isn't that why we go to the movies? To be shaken... and stirred?

  Seen at the 2023 Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.