Favorite films

Recent reviews

• 

  Handel: Alcina 2015

  ★★★ Watched 26 Feb 2021

  Reinterpretation? How about misinterpretation? The distasteful and unnecessary directions are a disgrace to Alcina, one of the most beautiful baroque operas.

  Within the first 18 minutes, three rounds of kinky sexual activity (there’s more to come!) were instigated on that bed, which is in the smack middle of the stage.

  Bradamante taking a huge knife and fashioning a bomb while singing a demanding aria? Melisso grooming and putting socks on Ruggiero, the knight, like a little kid? Flimsy military costumes,…

• 

  The Passion of Joan of Arc 1928

  ★★½ Watched 09 Jan 2021

  I tried really hard to enjoy this film but I just could not. I had very high expectations for this film; regarded as one of the “best” silent films and French films. 

  Carl Theodor Dreyer takes a voyeuristic approach with his highly acclaimed film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. The film is composed almost entirely of close-ups, which allows for intimacy, but the excessive amount of hands, faces, and crosses made me want to shrink my screen. Dreyer did a…

Popular reviews

• 

  Come and See 1985

  ★★★★★ Watched 12 Sep 2020

  Elem Klimov’s criminally underrated Come and See feels like a living nightmare, one of the most devastating and hallucinatory films ever made. This brutal anti-war film is an exploration of wars’ effect on humanity, accomplishing something along the lines of The Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now.

  Come and See does not follow a clear plot, but is rather impressionistic in nature with the backdrop of the Nazi occupation of a Belarusian village. This is not a film about heroes, self-righteous…

• 

  The Master 2012

  ★★★½ Watched 05 Sep 2020

  I am not a huge fan of Paul Thomas Anderson. His movies have repeatedly disappointed me and piqued no interest, but I decided to give him one last chance at the urge of a friend.

  The Master, as its name might suggest, is a masterfully constructed film that I consider to be impressionistic in nature, telling through acting which incites emotion, rather than a carefully formulated plot. The ambiguity of this film allows it to be approached very differently, with…