Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Leonor Will Never Die 2022

  ★★★★★ Watched 18 Mar 2025 2

  A meta-movie about making movies; call it filmmaker's delight. A film so creatively constructed that it one-ups One Cut of the Dead by replacing a staged reveal of the meta-narrative with a narrative that is in a conversation with its meta-self, leading to a number of delightful reveals and deep emotional swings.

  I'm obsessed. Every film conversation that I have for the next year will end up touching upon this movie. It's a beautifully composed love letter to loving movies (esp. pre-2000s filipino action schlock) with a killer soundtrack. Might be one of my favorite movies of all time.

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  Wake of Death 2004

  ★ Watched 12 Mar 2025

  Baffling. Even with the significant hitches in production described on the wikipedia page I can't understand how a movie could be released in this state, or was even shown on screens.

  I can say with my whole ass that Van Damme's acting is the best part of this movie. He goes from laying pipe with his whole ass out to snivvling and sobbing like a baby—it's great stuff.

  The movie really falls apart in post. Moments filmed for a pacing…

Popular reviews

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  PTU 2003

  ★★★★ Watched 02 Mar 2025

  A very interesting and well directed mood piece. Empty streets, lifeless buildings, and shuttered storefronts create a feeling of anxiety and isolation. Using masterful night lighting, streetlights turn into stage lights, leaving oceans of black for the characters to moodily peer across.

  I appreciate the level of disdain this movie has for the police. This is not the situation where the cops are trying to stop the bad guy; setting their interests as entirely self-serving at the start of the…

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  A Hero Never Dies 1998

  ★★★★★ Watched 09 Mar 2025

  I've have the pleasure of getting into Johnnie To's films within the past handful of month and, boy howdy, this might be my favorite one yet. I feel confident that he might be one of my favorite directors to be making movies with this sort of mood, where westerns are brought into a future coated in neon lights and shady figures. An amazing bromance in the first act, and one of my favorite action climaxes to date in the third act. Completely impressed.