Favorite films

Recent reviews

• 

  Collateral 2004

  ★★★★½ Watched 25 Mar 2025

  Came in after a slow week of B films knowing I needed a pick up. Michael Mann’s name came to mind and I found exactly what I needed for a recharge. Doesn’t have the same scale as Heat but the nightcrawler setting within a condensed time frame keeps the conflict piping hot. Excellent acting all around; a bunch of cool characters being badass and delivering suave quips. Is Mann the king of chase sequences? I believe so.

• 

  Princess Mononoke 1997

  ★★★★★ Watched 26 Mar 2025

  THIS is what meaningful world-building looks like, feels like and sounds like. I’m very appreciative of whomever pushed for this 4K IMAX re-optimization, it was a beautiful journey and I feel so lucky that this was my first time with the film. I was most impressed with the mixing on the sound and score, which felt overdriven in the first action sequence but came into equilibrium as I settled in. I let so many Ghibli film showings pass in 2024…

Popular reviews

• 

  Le Samouraï 1967

  ★★★★★ Watched 18 Aug 2024

  A cat and mouse game with both parties proficient in their craft. Cant help but draw the comparison to Death Note, though the jazz cuts and Paris locale give this a pretentious leg up on its many imitators.

• 

  Kuroneko 1968

  ★★★★★ Watched 04 Feb 2025

  I hadn’t known just how similar the base of this story was to Onibaba before watching. Both hit hard on themes of wartime loss and grief, with an confident feminist lens that applauds the mother-daughter pairs in their revenge for atrocities received. Recency bias acknowledged, I was more impressed with the visual storytelling in Kuroneko. Though grassland scenes in the former are iconic; the sequences within the latter’s house in the grove are better executed as a whole. Dramatic spotlights give the scene…