joshmatthews

joshmatthews Patron

Favorite films

  • Hoop Dreams
  • The Puppetmaster
  • Manhattan Murder Mystery
  • The Long Day Closes

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  • The Cider House Rules

    ★★½

  • Arlington Road

    ★★★

  • The Electric State

    ★★½

  • The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie

    ★½

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  • Come and See

    Come and See

    ★★★★★

    Although I've seen people call this a realistic movie, nothing in it strikes me as real, in the sense of photographic realness that captures an event accurately.

    Seen through the eyes of a 13-14 year old protagonist, with a wandering, moving camera that itself feels like a real participant in the movie (and thus the movie's persuasion is very powerful -- you feel like you are there with everyone), "Come and See" depicts a wartime nightmare of what it feels…

  • Three Colours: Blue

    Three Colours: Blue

    ★★★★½

    "Blue" is less a formal movie than a visual lyric dedicated to grief. You could say that the main character suffers terrible loss and, as the plot goes, she deals with it. That's it.

    But wait, Kieslowski structured these Three Colors films around the French Revolution's three values, even though he downplayed that, and "Blue" is about liberty. I'm one to think that his movies, whether Three Colors or Decalogue, are in fact profound meditations on their topic.

    How is…

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  • The Cider House Rules

    The Cider House Rules

    ★★½

    Probably no other movie makes me feel like I walked into a mainline Episcopalian service in New England.

    A lot of my followers like to judge a movie harshly by calling it "Oscar bait." In the case of "Cider," this bait is tuna-sized, for the capture of the great-white-sharks who make the nominations. Look up 1999 movies. Somehow "Cider" eclipsed probably the largest volume of very-good-to-great movies ever to get a Best-Picture Oscar nom.

    The movie comes from a John…

  • Arlington Road

    Arlington Road

    ★★★

    This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

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  • Barbie

    Barbie

    ★★

    "Barbie" watches to me as if someone took an evolutionary psychology class, another on the Frankfurt School, and another on feminist philosophy. That person was so confused about how those might fit together that they made this movie, idealizing their favorite toy while undercutting it, only to promote Mattel in the end.

    I have complained about the toyland movies I've seen in the last decade or more. The first "Avengers" watched as if it were a recreation of the toy…

  • Civil War

    Civil War

    Deliberately contextless, so as not to offend anybody, "Civil War" ends up being most obviously about . . . the nature of photojournalism?

    Yep, and with the cliché of the youngster who wants to be an awesome photojournalist just like her idol, a journalist from Reuters. When said youngster decides to tag along with the world-weary veteran, only one of two things can happen -- according to the Laws of Mediocre Movies -- and one of them most certainly does.…