Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Happiness 1998

  ★★★★ Watched 17 Mar 2025

  I can’t describe my reaction to this film in any other way than abstract word associations: ashtray, pastel puke, Cost Cutters, iguanas, Mantovani, delusion, rash, absurdity, sitcom, New Jersian inadequacy complex, Tamagotchi, cliched, vomit, suffocation, humane, indecent, radical, amateur, darkly funny, inexperienced, myopic, Dixie cups.

  New Jersey filmmakers are always showboating. I’ve consciously avoided all of Solondz’s films my entire life until today, and now I’ll get back on the turnpike and out of Jersey for an indefinite time.

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  Tideland 2005

  Rewatched 16 Mar 2025

  My tolerance for the film jettisoned out the window at the church revival song, spruce up the house montage.

  I remember seeing this in cinemas when it was first released, and there was a short introduction by Terry Gilliam before the film, saying that he found his inner child making this film, or something to the like, but he never thought it would be a 9-year old girl. That perspective really explains everything for me, but it also doesn’t make it a watchable film.

Popular reviews

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  Alien: Romulus 2024

  ★★½ Watched 15 Aug 2024 1

  If Ridley Scott’s most recent Alien movies were akin to George Lucas’ prequels, this is like a J.J. Abrams continuation.  For once I wish these types of franchise movies would be original, instead of digging up old references, and presenting a structurally similar story to the first one.  I was never bored, and I love this world of Weyland-Yutani Corp., but like so much contemporary cinema, it just doesn’t go far enough.  Tame.  Fun, but scared of frightening its audience and leaving them uninformed of every, little detail 😩

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  The Stranger and the Fog 1976

  ★★★★½ Watched 31 Aug 2024

  Rife with allegorical situations that veer from realistic to surreal.  Country, government, oppression, paranoia, prayer and belief in omens — the dead never really die— living through life believing in the propaganda of the victorious men who are said to have died, but really they ran away to shirk their responsibilities.

  Breathtaking cinematography that reminded me of On The Silver Globe, but without the futurist, technological aspect.  The film creates its own visual language and works through presenting an epic…