Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  The Wolf of Wall Street 2013

  ★★★½ Rewatched 13 Mar 2025

  Don’t get me wrong, Marty is one of the GOATs, buuuuut… he peaked with Goodfellas, at least popularly peaked (artistically I’d say Raging Bull is his best), and since then many of his most lauded films try to recreate the style of that movie while painfully missing its essence. This movie is a blast to watch for its scummy opulence and intriguing peek into a true American capitalist villain. I truly think this film’s portrayal of Belfort and American greed…

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  The Departed 2006

  ★★★★ Rewatched 10 Mar 2025

  Really not in the same league as the great Scorsese movies, and somehow still a massive step above most films. Starting with Casino, or maybe a bit later, I feel like Scorsese began to make movies less focused on character and style, and more focused on story and plot. The Departed is a great example of that. The story here is riveting and the plot is complex and elegantly told, but the style of the film lacks cohesion, substance, and the characters are less complexly developed. It’s fun and dramatic, but not transcendental like Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, or Goodfellas.

Popular reviews

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  This Place Rules 2022

  ★★½ Watched 31 Dec 2022

  First of all Andrew Callahan is a real one, he offers a uniquely raw voice in the modern media landscape. His style of interviewing is effective and entertaining, and he and his crew often do a great job of highlighting the absurd and bizarre in a grounded, human way. Though his whole career is based on finding total characters, his disarming demeanor seems to always bring out those universal qualities in people. I can’t overstate how refreshing it is in…

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  Ambulance 2022

  ½ Watched 06 Jun 2022 1

  Abso-fucking-lutely atrocious. My god, I had zero expectations for this and it was so much worse than I’d ever have imagined. If I weren’t watching this with other people I would have turned it off 30 minutes in.

  I just imagine Bay on set yelling at people “it’s cool cause I say it’s fucking cool! Nobody does what I do! Got it? Alright now let’s get some coverage of her ass! I’m gonna need lots of ass shots in editing…”

  Totally…