j. mamana

j. mamana

Favorite films

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  • Lincoln

    ★★★½

  • Mulholland Drive

    ★★★★

  • Nosferatu

    ★★★

  • Twin Peaks: The Return

    ★★★★★

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  • Lincoln

    Lincoln

    ★★★½

    a decade now between us and obama's hobbesian optimism, which, in the years since, has been revealed to be the last gasp of a now-feckless postwar international order, we take this portrait of our greatest president to be more tragic than inspiring, true only in our collective memory as an account of american democracy such as it might have been. out from under the pacifying yoke of incrementalism, for better or for worse, we freely admit that spielberg and kushner's…

  • Mulholland Drive

    Mulholland Drive

    ★★★★

    lynch is the most distinctive and imaginative director of his generation. i suspect the hollywood satire here is partly motivated by lynch's depression following the failure of twin peaks and fire walk with me. the point that LA runs on the sexual exploitation of women comes across in so bleak and surreal a manner that it might induce paranoia. anyway, we've seen this kind of critique before. yet, lynch's approach is simply more sophisticated than his peers'. naomi watts' audition…

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  • Water Rises

    Water Rises

    ★★★★★

    young man student of the transcendental style in cinema finds recourse in the nature-loving rapture of a young woman whose lover’s attempts to strong-arm nature into fecund compliance leave them reeling. this is an Art Film of the kind that will alienate some with its oblique storytelling. thank god! our only hope is to find more filmmakers willing to stick to their aesthetic guns and create work that finds drama in the image, in the composition, letting the frame do the talking while the characters whisper.

  • Oppenheimer

    Oppenheimer

    ★★★★

    oppenheimer is a film about a killer. yet for much of the film, perhaps its entirety, the killer seems wholly unable to assimilate that he is, in fact, killing people, dramatic readings from the bhagavad gita be damned. interestingly, the film begins with a young oppenheimer knowingly, perhaps for the first and only time, attempting to kill someone. fortunately for him, the latency between his intent and the eventual deadly bite into the apple is sufficiently short so as to…

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