Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Firecreek 1968

  ★★★★ Watched 21 Feb 2025

  Manichean morality play that isn’t afraid to get out in the murk and down in the mud. I imagine old-timers like me are most likely to recognize themselves in its nuanced indictments, to say nothing of Jack Elam’s loud, grotty lechery. Underrated.

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  Backbone 1975

  Watched 03 Jan 2025

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

Popular reviews

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  The Outwaters 2022

  ★★★★ Watched 18 Feb 2023

  Gerried the rendezvous.

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  Soldier Blue 1970

  ★★★½ Watched 06 Oct 2023

  Justifiably infamous for its final act, which manages to be admirable, leering, grim, cheesy, honest, and exploitative all at once (the poster’s a tip-off). Unjustifiably, Soldier Blue is never remembered as the movie in which Donald Pleasence and John Anderson both carry extended musical numbers. In case anybody was clamoring for that.

  Peter Strauss in midcentury sensitive-man mode is too much of a lightweight to hold up his end of the film — he goes garishly ugly-weepy not ten minutes…