Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Life of Pi 2012

  ★★★★½ Watched 26 Nov 2012 1

  A non-flowery review:

  Super fucking pretty. Just the prettiest film and best use of 3D I've seen. That tiger had to be CGI a good chunk of the time and I couldn't tell. ALSO the dude who played grown up Pi was absurdly natural so his monologue toward the end about Richard Parker was delivered with staggering naturalism. Also it made me bawl. Great jorb.

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  Argo 2012

  ★★★★★ Watched 22 Oct 2012

  I've always liked Ben Affleck. In fact, in the Greatest Debate of My Generation: Affleck v. Damon, I've always landed on Ben's side, despite the fact that Matt Damon is the stronger actor and never had a questionable J.Lo and Gigli period. Affleck just always seemed likeable. And now look at him.

  Argo is a triumph. It's a thriller, it's a caper, it's a heist, it's a (loose) history lesson, and in moments like the fellow explaining the storyboards to…

Popular reviews

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  Edward Scissorhands 1990

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 28 Apr 2012 4

  It's easy to lose sight of how spectacular Tim Burton once was. He can still occasionally knock them out of the park (Sweeney Todd) but we all know his aesthetic has become rote and without depth. Edward Scissorhands is his masterpiece (although arguments can be made for Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Big Fish, for totally different reasons), and it's one of those cinematic moments, like watching Jaws or Pulp Fiction where you wonder how all these elements came together to…

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  Dial M for Murder 1954

  ★★★★★ Watched 13 Oct 2012 4

  The attempted murder scene, in fact the very moment shown in the image to the left, is one of the most glorious, beautiful things Hitchcock has shot. When her hand shot out like that, I wanted to freeze it and stare at the light and the texture and the shadows; I wanted a snapshot of this cinematic epiphany.

  It's utterly surprising to me that movies this old and famous still have the power to surprise me. Like Vertigo, which I…