Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Ikarie XB 1 1963

  ★★ Watched 16 Mar 2025

  Pretty startling set design and effects for its time. They get a lot right—time dilation effects, the dangers of radiation, a decent zero-g simulation. This is clearly a masterful achievement of 1960’s film-making (also a pretty rad score).

  Unfortunately, nothing really holds up. It seems like the movie attempted to make life on a starship seem like life on a cruise ship. The first half focused on depicting “normal” social interactions including a wide variety of character types and several mini-sub-plots running in parallel. The result is a disorganized mess of aimless, dialog-heavy scenes which confuse rather than serve the story arc.

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  The Box 2021

  ★★★★ Watched 15 Mar 2025

  A brutal coming of age film: a young boy caught between resurrecting a relationship with his father and following his own moral compass. The tragic consequences of his decisions are cast against the greater tragedy of Mexican migrant labor conditions.

Popular reviews

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  The Girl with the Needle 2024

  ★★★ Watched 15 Feb 2025

  In post-WWI Denmark, Karoline struggles to improve her bleak situation. Presented with few choices (all bad), she chooses poorly with disastrous results.

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  The Piano Teacher 2001

  ★★½ Watched 04 Feb 2022

  This movie is the equivalent of picking a scab for two hours: painful yet irresistible and in the end all you’re left with is a scar.

  “Perversion at its wicked best!” says the tagline, which is an odd way to describe this dark and joyless psychosexual study. Michael Haneke has a reputation as a provocateur and, fine, he wins. I’m provoked.