Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Death on the Beach 1991

  ★★½ Watched 19 Mar 2025

  "I am mildly curious about the sources of Vinegar Syndrome's restoration, because the very start and end of the movie look like they are sourced from VHS copies, priming the audience to see it as the sort of disreputable, shot-on-video underground cinema of the 1980s, except that it quickly shifts to 35mm film and the sort of pretty darn passable cinematography that comes from pointing the camera at people with good physiques in sunny locations and not messing up the…

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  The Surfer 2024

  ★★★½ Watched 19 Mar 2025 1

  Huh, I don't think I've ever heard Julian McMahon's actual accent before.

  The Surfer is the sort of Nicolas Cage movie that makes you wonder what would have happened if Nic Cage hasn't taken the role. Like, it might have been more timid, or it might have been the same but more unnerving because we're not looking for him to Nic Cage it up. He's good at this, and good in this movie, but it's not necessarily going to take…

Popular reviews

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  The Concierge 2023

  ★★★★ Watched 30 Jul 2023 1

  There's a moment in the middle of The Concierge where one character basically points out that this whole situation is messed up, since these animals going extinct and the rise of department stores are linked to the same rise in consumerism, and then the whole movie basically shrugs and goes "anyway..." Weird, right?

  Anyway... It's a really charming little movie that does a nice job of taking what were probably one-off stories in the manga and building a narrative out…

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  The Booksellers 2019

  ★★½ Watched 18 Apr 2020

  Movies like The Booksellers don't exactly backfire when, halfway through, certain viewers find that this film meant to celebrate a rare and vanishing breed of person is instead providing examples of just how that breed rubs them the wrong way. A documentary doesn't necessarily need to be convincing to be worthy, but at times there is enough self-satisfaction evident in this one to visibly crowd out the more dynamic stories that filmmaker D.W. Young could be telling.

  You almost have…