Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Raising Arizona 1987

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 18 Feb 2023

  Perfect movie. Pure delight. No notes.

• 

  Aftersun 2022

  ★★★★½ Watched 19 Jan 2023

  Groanings too deep for words. Extraordinary.

Popular reviews

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  Young Mr. Lincoln 1939

  ★★★★ Watched 15 Oct 2020

  Marvelous film that underscores the fundamental mystery of Abraham Lincoln. Whence came this man, this instrument of Providence, who was so well suited to his moment and his country? The movie plays up the element of chance in his story: a family barters for his services with law books and sets him on his life’s course; he visits the grave of a former love and casts lots regarding his career. And yet it’s clear this man was marked for greatness…

• 

  Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World 2003

  ★★★★½ Rewatched 25 Nov 2020

  Master and Commander is a perceptive meditation on timeless dualities: duty versus desire; reason versus passion; loyalty to cause and country versus loyalty to friends. It is thoroughly male, and in doing so it shows some of the many different ways that men can exist in relation to the world and to one another. And it stands out for taking friendships among men seriously without trivializing or pathologizing them.

  What a marvelous, sturdily built film—artfully made, but no more artful than it needs to be. It has aged so well, and I expect that it’ll continue to do so.

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