Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  The Day the Earth Stood Still 2008

  ★½ Rewatched 23 Feb 2024

  Coming about in a post-9/11 world, and in the long shadow of Spielberg's War of the Worlds remake, Derrickson's The Day The Earth Stood Still revisits the well-trod ground of America's paranoid, hysterical fear of the Other, but ultimately the film fails because unlike the 1950s, the zeitgeist wasn't interested in averting nuclear apocalypse, but rather looking for an excuse to wield it.

  It also unfortunately released months after the election of Barack Obama which, rightly or wrongly, stymied much…

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  Insomnia 2002

  ★★★½ Rewatched 22 Feb 2024

  Will Dormer can't sleep. His conscience won't let him. Walter Finch can't sleep either, but then again, he never could. Dormer (Al Pacino) is a detective who spends his days trying to shine a light on Finch (Robert Williams), who murdered a teenage girl. At night (which also happens to be daytime), he does his best to avoid the light from revealing his own darkness.

  Insomnia may be Christopher Nolan's smallest Hollywood film (perhaps most intimate), but what it lacks…

Popular reviews

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  L.A. Confidential 1997

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 23 Jan 2014

  As much a postmodern commentary on the hard-boiled detective story, its archetypes and idioms, as it is a critique of Hollywood-Los Angeles and the dark, deeply disturbed environment it can foster.

  From technical quality to performance to story, it is a great film, and my favorite of 1997.

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  The Sunset Limited 2011

  ★★★★★ Added

  A few musical inflections aside, this dialogue-heavy character study is a prominent and poignant dissertation on the internal conflict many of us experience, grappling back and forth between the perils of each separate and distinct mindset. Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson give equally prominent performances, managing the roles of Black and White astutely and with a certain gravity that lends depth to the discussion.