Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Hidden Fear 1957

  Watched 17 Mar 2025

  John Payne plays the ugliest of Americans shaking the trees in Copenhagen to find out what kind of frame-up has landed his miserable slut tramp of a sister (the film's reading––but to me she seems only a touch melodramatic) in a Dutch prison. Payne gets what facts he can out of his sister by hauling back and slapping her so hard she stumbles back and collides with the wall behind her. He kisses a Dutch hooker in such an American…

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  Love Bandit Rat Man 1972

  Watched 16 Mar 2025

  Chusei Sone's second film bears a lot of the influence of his mentor, Seijun Suzuki, and his frequent collaborators in Guryu Hachiro, the writing group Sone brought together to support Suzuki's films. In other words, the counterculture vibe is strong in a cynical story of a louche bandit, elevated by political machinations into a folk hero, and taken down by those same manipulators once he is no longer useful. The cartoonish humor of Suzuki is present, but with Sone's own…

Popular reviews

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  Swallowtail Butterfly 1996

  ★★★★★ Watched 28 Sep 1997

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

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  Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse 2023

  Watched 08 Aug 2023

  Into the Spider-Verse was great fun, exceptionally well-made, with a wonderful sense of humor. It relayed the Spider-man origin story in record time, incorporated a bunch of Spider-man villains not depicted before on the big screen, and it managed to stuff multiple Spider-man characters into the smallest acceptable spaces all throughout, making for exceptional, if brief, characterization. The film was fun, fun, fun, but...if one has to admit to a criticism, then maybe the film delivers a premise which takes…