Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Collateral 2004

  ★★★★ Watched 16 Mar 2025

  Great views of Los Angeles with a searing guitar riff and a Chris Cornell banger makes for an almost perfect neo noir. I hate a chatty cab ride, so minus one star for that. Love a blonde ambition Tom Cruise villain (I would def smash that). Mann is in his bag for this one.

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  Christopher Strong 1933

  ★★★ Watched 08 Mar 2025

  Caught this Arzner gem on TCM. The rich go hard in this one. Party til past 4am? That’s some white pony energy. And the nightgowns have brooches and pearls. This film is wild.

Popular reviews

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  Lightning Strikes Twice 1951

  ★★★ Watched 18 Feb 2023

  Interesting twist on the Noir Film genre with the gender roles reversed. Ruth Roman plays an actress who is prescribed a vacation in the West at a dude ranch to get over her illness and finds herself falling in love for a man accused of murdering his wife. Richard Todd is the “femme fatale” and his backstory leads to suspicions. Yet Roman fights for him, even though she still doesn’t know the whole truth.

  King Vidor amps up the noir…

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  Hive 2021

  ★★★★½ Watched 03 Feb 2021

  Hive is writer-director Blerta Basholli's debut film and it is a strong entry for her into cinema. Based on a the true story of Fahrije Hoti, in the aftermath of the bloody events in Kosovo on March 1999, we witness a one-woman rebellion to stay alive and provide for her family as they await news about her husband who went missing during the Kosovo war. Hive is not just a story about grief and trauma in a patriarchy-dominated culture, but of perseverance and the bonds created by the survivors who must begin to consider the future without their husbands.