Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Oppenheimer 2023

  ★★★★ Watched 04 Sep 2023

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

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  The Great Beauty 2013

  ★★★★ Watched 09 Jul 2021

  A drifting meditation on the meaning, and ultimate beauty, of life. Jep Gambardella, a once promising writer, shows the utmost contempt for his self-indulgent lifestyle among Rome’s elite, but chooses to indulge in it nonetheless. This aggressive self-awareness is key to his character; indeed he ruthlessly humiliates those of his associates who submit to the false pretence that their inert lifestyle does somehow have meaning. But Jep’s forgotten search for the great beauty, having proved futile up until this point,…

Popular reviews

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  Parasite 2019

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 05 Jul 2020

  "This is so metaphorical."

  I don't really have much new to write that hasn't been said by countless video essayists and reviewers before me - Parasite felt like a classic immediately after my first watch, and one year later it definitely holds up. This time the experience was heightened (perhaps you could say that) by the cinema's faulty lights that flickered throughout the film, as if sending a message through Morse code. What follows are just some general observations.

  From…

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  Moonlight 2016

  ★★★★ Watched 24 Jun 2020

  Barry Jenkins' Moonlight provides an intimate portrait of identity and masculinity in the 21st century. The film, based on an unproduced play by Tarell Alvin McCraney, In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue, utilises various art house conventions to place the protagonist at odds with his tempestuous society. The expressive camera, the slow motion, the lack of diegetic sound in favour of Nicholas Britell's incredibly melancholic score, all combine to create a unique and memorable character study.

  However, the subjective style…