Favorite films

Recent reviews

• 

  The Last Picture Show 1971

  ★★★★★ Watched 17 Aug 2024

  I was thinking it the whole movie and then the song plays oh my god.

• 

  Old Joy 2006

  ★★★★ Watched 21 Apr 2024

  contemporary mid-2000s Americana

  You can feel the sense of loss of a particular way of life for Americans, when record stores became juice shops and industries left the country. 

  The music really makes the film, and sets the pace such that this is the first car-ride movie I’ve felt drawn to (makes me want to revisit Taste of Cherry). Panoramics of highway towns give way to beautiful shots of the Pacific Northwest. The motif of the birds is touching.

  A more somber Withnail and I for American dudes who came up in the nineties. Some things will never be re-animated. “Sorrow is nothing but worn out joy.”

Popular reviews

• 

  Brazil 1985

  ★★★★½ Watched 11 Mar 2024

  I recently had to find emergency dental care in the city. I was careful to list it as a checkup so that insurance would cover it. I faced insurmountable scrutiny for taking personal calls at work to get it scheduled. When I finally got a date sorted, I called to make sure everything was in order and was informed that I was out of network. 

  Now imagine that my wisdom tooth was impacted during the Reagan era. That’s basically what this movie was about.

• 

  Beau Is Afraid 2023

  ★★★★½ Watched 22 Apr 2023

  I love that A24 let Ari Aster run with this. I think every good director should have to spend 3 years with 12 hours a day processing the world through a cell phone and then get to make a deranged masterpiece. 

  *Some* of the absurdism (one scene in particular!) can detract in the same way that some people complain about EEAO. But I don’t know how you can talk about the modern experience without the lens of absurdity and disjointedness—which is why both movies fundamentally work.

  Mental health. Medication. Mommy issues. Media consumption and the associated guilt. This is Ari Aster’s therapy session.