Recent reviews

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  International Settlement 1938

  ★★ Watched 25 Mar 2025

  George Sanders is great heroic George Sanders mode, Keye Luke really shines in his way too brief moment, and there are a bunch of nice performances all around, but they’re not really in service of anything, and the melodrama takes a turn towards nonsense late in the film.

  The setting’s great but its possibilities are mostly unrealized. It’s great seeing them outline the historical context, and it’s interesting to see historical footage woven into the film, but ultimately there’s just…

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  Black Bag 2025

  ★★★½ Watched 23 Mar 2025

  Pretty clever, tightly constructed enough to make you feel like you’re moving with the film rather than ahead of it (there’s a good chance you’ll guess the culprits correctly), and that’s really all you need. Don’t get me wrong, it’s great for what it is, but its disinterest in being anything, even slightly, more than that feels a bit like a missed opportunity.

  Also what was up with Fassbender’s dye job? His character values honesty, so he’s honest that he’s dying his hair?

Popular reviews

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  The Tale of Genji 1987

  ★★ Added

  So as part of my ongoing listening to weird/obscure Japanese music from the eighties binge I ended up Haruomi Hosono’s soundtrack album for a 1987 anime of The Tale of the Genji, and I was curious about how it fit in with the film and also just what everything was referring to and The Tale of the Genji more generally (beyond “the first novel, except maybe for some Hellenistic stuff,” which is the extent of my knowledge of The Tale…

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  Ballet 1995

  ★★★½ Watched 01 Feb 2025

  The only other Wiseman I’d seen previously was Missile, which is very straightforward to follow: a handful of instructors and students (all wearing nametags and rank insignia) making a straightforward progression through a training platform. Ballet has a lot more moving parts: multiple pieces of repetoire to rehearse with multiple dancers, ballet masters, and choreographers. There are throughlines, but not quite enough structure to keep things moving forward. I also danced in high school and remember that “I get what…

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