“...an aesthetic defense of the dissociated world in the awareness of death. Roughly like that.”
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
The Birdcage 1996
Forgive me for having never bothered to watch this before. Frankly had a lot of trouble getting into it. The movie plays up Lane’s diva histrionics so much for laughs, it sorta papers over how cruel the charade is and how genuinely homophobic the son comes across. The energy doesn’t really flip in that regard until Lane shows up to dinner in drag in the last quarter and exacts a kind of revenge. I see the appeal of the ambient…
Translated from by -
The Last Showgirl 2024
“The kicking is so redundant.”
I think ultimately a quite cruel and pointless movie that imagines at moments it is channeling Barbara Loden or Gena Rowlands via Pamela Anderson but doesn’t challenge any assumptions about the characters and their world. It looks great and was sufficiently strange to hold my attention, but Coppola’s eclectic vision seems often to lack emotional intention and comes off as merely curious and inscrutable.
Translated from by
Popular reviews
More-
Poor Things 2023
Poor Things doesn’t so much reflect our society’s obsession with sexual propriety as it does have its own fixation on Bella’s sexuality. As an experiment, she gets to experience the world totally new at a rapid pace, free from norms and prejudice. But, while she does develop a social, intellectual and political life, they aren’t taken very seriously. Her debate with Harry Astley and subsequent trip to Alexandria, where she discovers the cruelty of the world, despite the visual pomposity,…
Translated from by -
Anatomy of a Fall 2023
I was reminded of Marriage Story the way it’s kinda dumb if taken too seriously but works great as a travesty. The movie never really confronts us with unknowability, though it is loaded with superfluous detail. It’s a torrid relationship drama and legal farce that comfortably invites you to weigh the evidence and pick a side, even though we are told from the outset that doing so will get us nowhere. Some great performances (and great fights) aside, it feels like…
Translated from by
