Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Solaris 1972

  ★★★½ Watched 23 Mar 2025

  I went back and forth a lot on what to rate this. It felt very refreshing to see a Tarkovsky film that had a umm plot?? But I couldn’t escape the feeling that with a lot less of that signature Tarkovsky-ian experimental liminality to cover them, a lot of the shortcomings of Tarkovsky’s directorial style were laid bare in this one. A lot of the time, it felt like they were lingering on shots just because they had room to…

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  Mirror 1975

  ★★★½ Watched 13 Mar 2025

  I could copy and paste my Stalker (1979) review in here and it would all be true.

  A beautiful movie. Just shot after shot of the most beautifully acted, beautifully blocked, beautifully composed, beautifully scored images ever put to film, but with so little tying the whole thing together that I struggle to make anything of it. I’m a known Fan of Narrative (tm), so that’s where most of my gripe with the film lies. However, I do still consider…

Popular reviews

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  Empire M 1972

  ★★★ Watched 07 May 2024

  A fun little romp. Unremarkable in a lot of ways, but interesting in the way it examines the Egyptian family dynamic. It takes an interesting approach to the narrative structure, the characters don’t really grow or change at all, but just kind of… get closer to each other? Start understanding each other more? It’s sweet, but it does leave me kinda begging for something to change. Somebody please learn something!! Otherwise, Faten Hamama is a great actress, and I personally related to Mustafa a lot (I too am an obnoxious oldest sibling who talks politics all the time)

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  Megalopolis 2024

  ★★★½ Watched 08 Oct 2024 1

  Look, I SEE THE VISION…

  There’s no putting it lightly, this film is a mess. But there’s something at its core!! Something good? I don’t know about that…

  This is an epic tale about a very simple theme, which is that optimism always wins and cynicism always loses. The message definitely got lost in all the fluff though, and it definitely wasn’t helped by the very weak (or maybe a better word is discordant?) performances of the main cast. There…

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