Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Black Bag 2025

  ★★★★½ Watched 19 Mar 2025

  Floating the idea that the Soderbergh action trilogy is
  Black Bag (the mind)
  Haywire (the body)
  The Limey (the heart)

  This did it for me: espionage, perfect decor, lots of suits, dialogue sharp as a knife, in and done at about 90 minutes.

  Oddly pinged nostalgia in my mind for office work so immersive that you spend the day together and also go out to dinner together, all in dry-cleaned work clothes.

  Also pinged a more distant nostalgia, having written spy thrillers all through my teens.

  Anyway, it moved quick and was thoroughly satisfying.

• 

  Flow 2024

  ★★★★★ Watched 04 Mar 2025

  Blew me away, moment by moment. Best dog chase scene since No Country for Old Men.

  Loved that the characters weren't humanized animals, but just animals portrayed as accurately as possible.

  Loved seeing this in a theater (the Moreland), seeing this enormous world through a cat's perspective on a giant screen.

  Loved that this would be the movie to show a group of people who don't speak the same language.

  Love that this doesn't feel at all like IP, or a studio concept, or any of that. As timeless a story, and probably as enduring, as To Build A Fire.

Popular reviews

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  Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri 2017

  ★★★★ Watched 24 Feb 2025

  Just saw this for the first time, last night and this morning (pausing at the exact midpoint, which was the perfect spot for an intermission). Have known/loved McDonagh's Irish plays (The Lonesome West is my favorite) but only known In Bruges of his films. Interesting seeing in this one the same devices as the plays: letters left behind, unexpected pairings, unpredictable escalations and tenderness. At first this felt too much like every character spoke the same way and had the…

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  High Fidelity 2000

  Rewatched 28 Dec 2024 2

  Saw this last-minute at my neighborhood rep house (Cinemagic). Last time I'd seen it was the weekend it came out, in Chicago in 2000. And it brings back pre-9/11 Wicker Park. Smoking everywhere. Glad to see it on the big screen again, to catch the background details of the Rainbo Bar and Lounge Ax, and the real posters and flyers in every scene, and so on (and the very familiar apartment layouts and even apartment stairways and entryways—really familiar, real…

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