Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Yi Yi 2000

  Watched 16 Apr 2021

  One of the best films I've seen in a long time. Somehow manages to encapsulate everything that is life (birth, death, marriage, family, history, youth, old age, work, boredom, disappointment, regret, discontentment, love, hate, and so on) within three hours of runtime. Every frame is masterfully composed, giving the viewer an objective (but not uncaring) view of the characters. You'll definitely recognize yourself somewhere in this film. Yang somehow manages to capture totally recognizable feelings that don't have names. Perfect film.

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  Hemingway 2021

  Watched 13 Apr 2021

  Great documentary. Burns and Novick did a great job pulling apart the legend of Hemingway and exploring the complicated man that he actually was. The film also gives a lot of attention to Hemingway's actual writing and style, so if you have even a passing interest in the craft of writing you won't want to miss this.

Popular reviews

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  Sylvia 2003

  ★★★½ Added

  I'm a fan of Sylvia Plath so I was already interested in the subject matter before I watched the film. I think the filmmakers did a pretty good job here. Gwyneth Paltrow and Daniel Craig were great. This movie is about depression and poetry. The problem is it's really hard to make poetry and depression engaging on film. Poetry is all about language, which doesn't translate easily to film. And depression is totally internal, so it's pretty much impossible to get the audience to feel it just from watching. So the movie had that working against it, but if you like Sylvia Plath, it's worth watching.

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  Okja 2017

  Watched 15 Feb 2020

  This film has Jake Gyllenhaal acting like a complete madman, Tilda Swinton (twice!) with braces, action set pieces that rival that of the 007 franchise, a group of militant vegans led by Paul Dano, and a lot of pig shit. And it made me want to go Vegetarian! I haven't, but I'm thinking about it a little more than I did before I watched this.