Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  The Good Shepherd 2006

  Watched 18 Mar 2025

  I think this movie is good precisely because it centers the nuclear familial unit as a vector for societal stagnation. The sins of the father become those of the son precisely because of the American postwar obsession with family. The movie may not be perfect, but it’s thoughtful and well-made; and maybe this reflects potion on me, but I didn’t at all find it boring.

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  Mickey 17 2025

  Watched 14 Mar 2025

  And people said capital-R Resistance art was dead under Trump’s second term!

Popular reviews

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  Barbie 2023

  Watched 20 Jul 2023 1

  Best understood as an analogy for intense nationalistic conflicts between ethnically-similar nation-states with violent histories, à la Albania and Serbia. Mattel is NATO?

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  The Booksellers 2019

  Watched 01 Jun 2021

  I mean I guess I’m the target audience for this sort of thing, what with my staunch, obnoxious support of physical books, but this overall felt really slight to me. There is little background or distinction given to the different talking heads, and they things they say are taken at face value with little external context or viewpoint added. They’re allowed to contradict each other, which is a cool feature, but these contradictions carry little weight since there is no…