Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Wildcat 2023

  ★★★ Watched 22 Mar 2025

  Was cheering this on initially. Ethan Hawke is often great. Love Flannery O’Connor. It’s a valiant effort all around.  But actors straining hard to narrate in suthun accents can be trying. 

  Classic biopic dilemma: a conventionally attractive actress labors to embody the oddball quirk of a singular writer. It can’t all boil down to 50s nerd glasses, but beyond these, Maya Hawke does her best. Laura Linney & Liam Neeson give excellent performances. Liked some of dramatizations of O’Connor’s stories.

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  Mifune 1999

  ★★ Watched 15 Mar 2025

  Hey. I discovered some Dogme 95 rules you may have overlooked in the official manifesto when you signed up to watch Mifune:

  Rule Number 11: When you pack in as many gratuitous rapey male fantasy plot points as possible focusing on your sex worker-cum-housekeeper characters, the soundtrack shall be diegetic and the lighting shall be natural. 

  Rule Number 12: the extreme histrionics on regular display must arise without logical reason within the plot. 

  Rule Number 13: If you’re turning your…

Popular reviews

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  Dopesick 2021

  ★½ Watched 10 Nov 2021

  Goes without saying that the Sackler family should be in prison for crimes against humanity and general corporate shitbaggery. But what needs to be said right now about the Dopesick series is that whoever styled the hair pieces and wigs stole the show in breathtaking ways. One of the Sackler brothers wears a fake bald pate encircled by a Squirmel-like strip of synthetic dog fur, apparently cut with pinking shears. Some of the wigs ‘n weaves are so stiff and…

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  mother! 2017

  ★ Rewatched 17 Sep 2017

  Can't wait for the sequel! 

  
  Mother! so desperately wants to be a masterpiece, it’s soiled itself in the process. 

  When allegory and metaphor are the lead pipe with which a director beats the audience senseless, what's gained? Does the world really need a two hour visual assault in order to better grasp the notion of the [male] artist as god-creator or of the rise of religion, aka misogyny, in society (Aronofsky straddles the two stories, having his ugly way with…