Favorite films

Recent reviews

• 

  The Curse 2023

  ★★★★★ Added 1

  Oh, are we doing TV shows on here now? Cool.

  For 9 episodes this is “only” a skin-crawling social comedy/drama/horror about the distorted gravity of privilege in America, the trouble we create for ourselves, and the social games we anxiously navigate every day.

  Then in the finale it becomes something I will think about for the rest of my life.

  Unbearable and essential.

• 

  Jaws 3-D 1983

  ★ Added

  Horrible garbage. The worst Jaws by a considerable margin.

  You can rank the ambition of the movies by how far out to sea they were shot, and it goes like this:

  -- Jaws: Filmed on the high seas by a young genius who simply can't allow himself to ever let an inch of land appear in the background of any shot in the second half of the movie, even as the crew gets closer to mutiny every single day
  --…

Popular reviews

• 

  Venom 2018

  ★★★★ Added

  A hysterical movie, in the literal sense that I felt myself going insane while I watched it. Early on Riz Ahmed (who seems to have been told to deliver his dialogue at 1.5x speed) has a conversation with Tom Hardy (who plays Eddie Brock with a mushmouthed accent like he's from the Bronx, or Mars) and I cackled like Sutter Cane.

  Hardy brings all the physicality of his Max Rockatansky to this, which does a lot to ground the action…

• 

  Sausage Party 2016

  Added

  I'm generally on board with Rogen and Goldberg’s work. I laughed myself silly watching Pineapple Express and This Is the End. I even chuckled at plenty of ribald jokes in the first few scenes of this very movie. I say all these things to establish my bona fides re: not being a prude or a scold.

  But, look. Early in Sausage Party there's a scene of violent sexual assault, and it just made me feel sick and sad. Of course…