Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Snowpiercer 2013

  ★★★½ Watched 05 Mar 2025

  Mixed feelings. Has about a million plot holes. Takes too long to get interesting. Too many ham-fisted metaphors. Comedy barely lands. Not many interesting side characters besides Swinton as Mason and the always stellar Kang-Ho as Minsu. The last scene is god awful, and ruined a great potential (darker) ending. 

  Does have a few great moments, and despite all my qualms I actually had a pretty decent time watching it. Evans is good/campy, Harris quite literally just plays himself as…

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  Chan Is Missing 1982

  ★★★½ Watched 22 Jan 2025

  Interesting with beautiful B&W and style that reminds me of Jarmusch. Unfortunately I do think Jarmusch perfected this later on and I can’t get behind the glacial pacing of this one. 
  Definitely an awesome time capsule of San Francisco though, and especially Chinatown. Not quite Vertigo levels of me going, “what happened to this city?” but pretty darn close.

Popular reviews

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  The Substance 2024

  ★★★★½ Watched 09 Oct 2024

  Bravo. Reaches for the stars with that ending and definitely falls short but the first three quarters are magnificent. Cronenberg meets Lynch, although the better of Cronenberg and the lesser of Lynch. Just a wild experience through and through and magnificent to catch on the big screen. Cinematography was out of this world, so many unique and fun shots. Sometimes the editing was a bit too fast paced and the message was ham-fisted but the film mostly makes up for it. Dennis Quiad’s character is fucking awesome and Moore/Qualley play a captivating rival duo.

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  The Tree of Life 2011

  ★★★★★ Watched 23 Feb 2022

  Bravo to Malick. Way different than I was expecting. I’ve never seen a film tackle as many heavy themes as this one, and it does so extremely well. Masculinity, parenting, birth, death, loss, God, meaning, afterlife, etc. The writing is near flawless however the soundtrack, stunning imagery and cinematography do most of the talking. If you can’t feel this film, you won’t like it, which explains why it’s so divisive. I don’t fault the people who think this is a…