Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  The Man Who Turned to Stone 1957

  ★★ Watched 24 Feb 2025

  A group of 300-year old folks use the life forces of young women from a detention home to stay alive. Promising story with some decent acting, but such a cheap and drab production, making it difficult to stay with it. Looks and feels a bit like an Ed Wood affair, but more coherent and competent.

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  Greed 1924

  ★★★½ Watched 28 Feb 2025

  I saw the 2 hour version of this back in the 80s and really liked it. This is a semi-restoration of the 4-hour "director's cut" that Von Stroheim put together in 1924 which was rejected by the studio. Despite the good intentions of those who put this together following the original script, nearly half of this version consists of production stills and mostly invented title cards. It drains the energy away from the film and winds up feeling more like a visual essay about the movie rather than the movie itself. If the 2 hour version is still out there, that's the one to see.

Popular reviews

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  Noah's Ark 1928

  ★★½ Added

  The flood sequence is pretty amazing--though it's a little sobering to hear that as many as three extras died during the shooting of it. The two plots don't really mesh together well--it's quite a stretch to connect the main story, a WWI melodrama, with the story of the flood and the ark--so points off for that. Also, it's an awkward mix of silent film with an occasional sound sequence with no rhyme or reason. Still, an interesting example of that strange time before talkies took over completely.

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  National Theatre Live: The Importance of Being Earnest 2025

  ★★★½ Watched 22 Feb 2025

  Performed in an appropriately campy style, though the efforts at giving it an actual queer subtext don't work as well. But it's colorful, well acted, and fun.