Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Evil Does Not Exist 2023

  Watched 16 Dec 2024

  Saw this a few days ago, and it didn't hit me incredibly hard, but it's been swimming around in my head ever since. Truly meditative, restrained cinema that feels like an expression of some deeper natural force. What could be quite a cliche city Vs town story is elevated by Hamaguchi's understated, but everpresent empathy for his subjects. He acknowledges the shared humanity of those in different positions within the framework of a constant irresolvable battle with the natural world,…

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  The Souvenir: Part II 2021

  Watched 20 Mar 2024

  One of the best uses of a meta-textual framework I've seen in a film. Brings home the idea of art creation and expression as therapy. Retro-actively improves upon the already excellent first film by thoroughly exploring the grief following its ending with as much care and maturity as it explored the love leading up to it. Additionally, the previously mentioned meta-textuality eventually giving way to something truly impressionistic as a higher form of "truth" provides a wonderful contrast given how restrained and grounded much of both films had been. Brilliant stuff.

Popular reviews

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  The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie 2004

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 08 Apr 2022

  The quality of this film is just absolutely unreal

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  Love 2015

  ★★½ Added

  During a scene in Gaspar Noe's 'Love', the protagonist Murphy claims that he wants to make a film which truly depicts "sentimental sexuality". I don't think it's a leap to assume that this is an exact mirror of Noe's own personal pitch for his film. And yes, that is a moment where a character describes the point of the fiction he exists in, one of the many wanky moments throughout the film, both metaphorically and literally.

  Ultimately, the idea is…

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