Favorite films

Recent reviews

• 

  The Celebration 1998

  ★★★★½ Watched 10 Mar 2025

  Thomas Vinterberg kicks off he and Lars Von Trier's Dogme 95 movement with The Celebration, a disturbing family drama that works within the self-imposed constraints to hugely compelling results. True low budget filmmaking is often synonymous with a lack of vision or sloppiness in its craft but on top of being an achievement of script and performance this is proof that you don't need limitless resources to make something special. The grainy handheld digital photography lends a raw, unfiltered feeling…

• 

  Mickey 17 2025

  ★★★ Watched 09 Mar 2025

  Disappointed with this one and it's probably near the bottom of my Bong rankings. Broad, toothless satire is fine if it's funny but that's kind of the whole issue here, it's just not very funny. I appreciate the silliness of the tone and it's easy to see why Bong would want to let loose after something that feels as perfectly structured as Parasite but this is a little too messy and shapeless to work. The satire is too over the…

Popular reviews

• 

  Satantango 1994

  ★★★★★ Watched 06 Sep 2020 16

  Thanks to Criterion Channel (and Arbelos for the wonderful restoration) I have finally tackled a "white whale" of world cinema: Hungarian auteur Béla Tarr's seven and a half hour slow cinema masterpiece Sátántangó. It is a film that demands your complete focus and that you don't think about focusing, not necessarily an easy place to get. If you can get yourself in that mindset and stay there it is capable of inducing a cinematic trance unlike anything I've experienced.

  Tarr…

• 

  Children of Men 2006

  ★★★★★ Watched 19 Aug 2020 4

  Anyone else heard of this little indie? The biggest blindspot I've tackled since Saving Private Ryan, Alfonso Cuarón's lauded 2006 scifi Children of Men is one I'd put off for way too long. I had seen the scene coming in but was delighted to find that the power of it was not diminished and that the film held plenty of surprises. What stands out right away is the world building which surpasses similar apocalyptic films with lazy "news footage exposition"…

Following