“I would never let my personal desires influence my aesthetic judgement.”
—Songwriter and convicted doper, Winslow Leach
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
Bedknobs and Broomsticks 1971
There’s plenty to admire in witchy babble, zany technicolor, musical hijinks, and general Lansbury-hamming—speaking personally now, all it really takes is absurdly British children to get hooked (orphans not required, but appreciated)
Translated from by -
The Last Days of Disco 1998
It’s a testament to Disco’s themes and staying power that I feel so compelled to join the ranks of these insufferable characters, in their miserable circumstances, through an era so shiny only in the rear-view. Our times fade far and fast
Translated from by
Popular reviews
More-
Othello 2001
There were significant spans of the movie where the fabric of its plot wasn't recognizable as Othello, and that's not a bad thing. This is how you helm an effective modernization of Shakespeare—with conviction in the departures.
And for being inspired by Shakespeare's text rather than translated, it's safeguarded from that awful critical charge of on-screen Othello I've seen too often: "Shakespeare didn't have race on his mind." Even if that were true (fight me), and even if filmmakers weren't allowed to…
Translated from by -
Shoah 1985
We are humans! Do you understand it? Do you understand it?
Sites of atrocity are places of power and potential. Lanzmann reveres spaces that, while in some cases ruined or otherwise significative, cannot betray the scale of life and death which there transpired. In Shoah, then, what one might anticipate as a harrowing historical narrative reveals itself instead to be the most essential exercise of making meaning as Lanzmann juxtaposes his considered images with global and, given this runtime, remarkably…
Translated from by
