Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  B-Boy Blues 2021

  ★ Watched 20 Jun 2022

  Poorly conceived, acted, written, directed and edited. I didn't believe these characters or care about them.

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  Hillbilly Elegy 2020

  ★½ Watched 29 Nov 2020

  This film just didn't feel authentic. I wanted to understand/bear witness to the "Hillbilly" experience and instead feel like I was served a narratively formulaic film that felt reductive and exploitative. Poverty porn, if you will. Ron Howard directed so I didn't have high expectations. I wonder what this film would have looked and felt like if Sean Baker ("Tangerine" and "The Florida Project") had directed it, although I don't think he's the kind of auteur who would have ventured…

Popular reviews

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  The Vast of Night 2019

  ★★★★ Watched 03 Jan 2021

  “There’s something in the sky.”

  One of my favorite films of 2020 and a stunning first feature. The director Andew Patterson plays with genre tropes to create something that is nuanced and feels fresh. Although this is a peroid film it feels contemporary . This mircobudget indie film with limited scale feels big and boy does it earn its moments. Patterson is a talent to watch.

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  Antebellum 2020

  ★½ Watched 24 Sep 2020

  I anticipated the film because I thought I might finally see something come to the screen along the lines of Octavia Butler's speculative fiction/neo-slave narrative book "Kindred". This movie is marketed as though it might rise to the narrative level of films like "Get Out" and "Us," but what we've been given feels little more than slavery-based torture porn.

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