Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Hunger 2008

  ★★★★½ Watched 17 Mar 2025

  The body as a tool for resistance. The opening at the prison guard’s house essentially tells you why the hunger strike wasn’t going to get through to these people on moral grounds. Here’s a guy whose job it is to beat up and shear unarmed prisoners, and each time he has to give his knuckles a little soak afterwards. Meanwhile, Sands and the other strikers suffer unimaginable indignities and perform unimaginable sacrifices— not without flinching, but without surrendering. It takes…

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  The Trouble with Angels 1966

  ★★★½ Watched 16 Mar 2025

  Really delightful! It rocks that men are barely a factor in this movie: it’s just the girls and God (uncredited). 

  Russell, Mills, and Harding are all great, but I especially appreciated the ensemble playing the rest of the community. So much of the film hinges on Mary realizing the humanity of the sisters and coming to see their lives as full of joy and purpose; but the audience has known this all along, from the way the supporting cast breathes…

Popular reviews

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  The White Tiger 2021

  ★★★ Watched 22 Jan 2021 1

  Sharp, cynical, and stylish. Gourav, Rao, and Chopra are all good in this, and the best parts deal with the layered dynamic that forms between them. Ashok (Rao) and Pinky (Chopra) don’t want to see themselves as masters, with Balram (Gourav) as their devoted serf, but easily and naturally treat him that way when it’s most convenient. When Balram describes Ashok to another driver as “a good man,” the other scoffs: “He’s a rich man.” Wealth relies on a certain innate…

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  Anora 2024

  ★★★★½ Watched 18 Nov 2024

  Great goons, beautiful goons!

  Entertaining enough in the first ~hour, but it really kicks into gear as soon as it’s Ani and the goons, and everything from that point on was some of my favorite stuff I’ve seen in theaters this year. When they’re searching for Vanya all around Brooklyn I realized that I would have been perfectly happy just watching three hours of that. In retrospect the first act probably could have been shorter, but I also think you need…