Recent reviews

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  Scott Pilgrim vs. the World 2010

  ★★★★ Watched 13 Aug 2010

  The first thing to know about this film is that the protagonist, the 22-year-old Scott Pilgrim, starts off the film as an actual and verifiably shitty person. Does he know it? Really, not at all, partly because he’s 22 and that’s not a quality age for self-introspection, despite being a quality age for self-absorption. His friends are no help because they are also in that age group; only two of them — notably, both women — bother to let him…

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  Tootsie 1982

  ★★★★★ Watched 31 Dec 1982

  I adore Tootsie, which I think is one of the greatest movie comedies of all time. It has the sort of snap and crackle to its dialogue that generations of comedy writers would give an important body part to be able to produce, and a cast that absolutely knows how to deliver it. It could hardly be better than it is.

  Also, holy buckets, when you are talking about a film “of its time,” here is that film. Its sexual…

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  Josie and the Pussycats 2001

  ★★★★ Rewatched 07 Apr 2001

  Josie and the Pussycats was a 2001 box office bomb, and one reason it failed is that, apparently, no one knew who they were making the movie for. Filmmakers Harry Elfont and Debra Kaplan, who wrote and directed the movie, whipped up a satirical takedown of capitalism and the music industry winkingly aimed at adults, set it to music aimed squarely at teens, and made it for a studio who marketed it to the tweens they apparently thought knew anything…

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  Sleepless in Seattle 1993

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 26 Jun 1993

  It is late June 1993, and you are me, and you are about to go on the third date in two weeks with this impossibly out-of-your-league woman you've somehow managed to attract to yourself. You don't know much of anything when it comes to romance (trust me on this one), but you know that the third date is kind of the "make or break" date for relationships. It's the last date where you can go "you know, this is not…

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