Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  Blue Jean 2022

  ★★ Watched 16 Jun 2023

  Excerpted from my review for The Spool. 

  “A portrait of a closeted lesbian woman living in England during Margaret Thatcher’s oppressively homophobic 1980s reign, Georgia Oakley’s Blue Jean illustrates a unique paradox for a critic. How does one navigate criticizing a film’s self-imposed binaries while also accounting for the realities of a restrictive period, the gravity of the subject matter (and parallel current circumstances), and the differentiation of what is intended as cinematic affect and what constitutes clumsy filmmaking? 

  From the…

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  Solaris 2002

  ★★★½ Rewatched 01 Mar 2023

  Discussed on Discussed on Episode 15 of Intermission. with Dan Mecca.

  Here's how I contextualized this conversation in the description of the episode:

  "Coming off a disparate and largely consistent run of projects (including most recently, the stubbornly low-key backstage musical/relationship drama, Magic Mike’s Last Dance), Soderbergh was and remains an unpredictable filmmaker who’s as likely to knock out a four-quadrant-blockbuster as an obtusely rendered conspiracy thriller throwback like Kimi.

  Today’s conversation touches on Soderbergh’s ongoing fluency switching between different…

Recent reviews

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  Venom: The Last Dance 2024

  ★★ Watched 09 Mar 2025

  Exceptionally sloppy while also carrying through the nagging feeling of being totally perfunctory table-setting (only possible, remotely satisfying explanation for how they handle Ifans, Ubach (?!), Temple, other characters). Kept wondering when the middle part would come in that would flesh out the half dozen characters they introduce and have come into the climactic final fight, which is not going to beat any accusations of looking extra like digital sludge. Hardy is still killing the voicework though, so I guess we'll keep doing these?

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  The Crow 1994

  ★★★ Rewatched 24 Feb 2025

  One of the most 90s movies I’ve ever seen. Incredibly goofy movie, but it has so much personality. A stable of great character actors help - Wincott, Todd, Hudson, Polito, Massee. And Lee is so committed to this character that you can only wonder where he could have gone if the tragedy didn’t happen.

Popular reviews

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  Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! 1989

  ★★★½ Watched 13 Oct 2019

  “It’s more of a love story than a horror story.” “They can be hard to tell apart.”

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  Titane 2021

  ★★½ Watched 01 Oct 2021 3

  Heavy metal petting.

  Really feel like I should have had a stronger positive or negative reaction to this given how hard it’s trying to make me feel something.