Recent reviews

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  Vertigo 1958

  ★★★★★ Added

  Senior year Film Studies class would have been so much easier if I'd realized that the Cantilever Bridge brassiere was the perfect metaphor for this film, its purpose, its structure, its method, and what it was expressly trying to critique.

  Ah, well. L'esprit de l'escalier.

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  Psycho 1960

  ★★½ Added

  "Well, a boy's best friend is his mother."

  I don't know. Maybe it was because I saw Vertigo first and got spoiled, but I didn't really get into this one. Don't get me wrong, I liked plenty of it. Anthony Perkins's awkwardly charming/incredibly distrubed Norman Bates was fun to watch. The notorious shower scene couldn't have been more Eisenstenian if it had been shot on a staircase. And that final weird pseudo-fade where Mrs. Bates's pearly whites are briefly superimposed…

Popular reviews

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  Metropolis 1927

  ★★★★★ Added 2

  I'll come right out and say it: in terms of sheer quality, I enjoyed Metropolis substantially more than I enjoyed The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. I was constantly in awe of the immense production values in terms of set and visual effects. The cohesive story involved multiple nuanced, well-acted characters weaved seamlessly into the narrative, something I felt Dr. Caligari lacked. After finishing Metropolis, I was ready to sing Fritz Lang's praises for expanding upon expressionism in ways that Robert…

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  Punch-Drunk Love 2002

  ★★★★½ Added

  PROMPT: How does Punch Drunk Love use its unconventional narrative style to create meaning?

  As confusing as it sounds, Punch Drunk Love is unconventional in an unconventional way. There's a meta-convention being broken with Adam Sandler playing the main character. Sandler is famous for playing more or less the same character in all of his comedies: a rash, vulgar man-child with frequent fits of unbridled anger. These characters are always played for laughs, finding themselves in unsavory situations but winning…

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