Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  The Machinist 2004

  Watched 22 Mar 2025

  This is so specifically part of the post-Nolan/Fincher aughts mindbender canon that it feels wrong to watch this in HD as a judgemental adult. Like, it's weird that I didn't catch this as an impressionable kid in 2008 on some 480p .avi file ripped from a DVD. Anyways despite some cliché characterization and lunkheaded dialogue, the descent into paranoid guilt works thanks to the oppressive atmosphere, while the mystery itself gives the viewer some credit by revealing things visually rather than through exposition. A very solid and diverting Hollywood-meets-Euro programmer, didn't hate it.

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  Belle 2021

  Watched 21 Mar 2025

  At its best—when it focuses on the achingly hypermodern melodrama about a troubled teenager's online self-actualization or when it surrounds you with the most absurdly detailed version yet of Hosoda's signature pop art cyberspace—it's remarkable, an uncommonly gorgeous and hopeful movie that's made for the biggest screens possible. Because this is a Hosoda film, though, it's also a cyber-sleuth investigation, a high school romance, and a Beauty and the Beast update that quotes liberally from the Disney, with a sprinkling…

Popular reviews

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  Chernobyl 2019

  ★★½ Watched 06 Jun 2019

  Very telling that despite all the powerhouse acting, sickening production design, and the successfully looming sense of dread, I was affected most by the actual documentary footage in the epilogue (the score helped). Maybe I'd have preferred to watch real people telling and living this story for five hours instead of a thinly-veiled dispatch about How We Live Now from a bunch of privileged #RESISTers. Not that we shouldn't be more aware and informed, and the argument for collectivism is…

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  Tito and the Birds 2018

  ★★★ Watched 08 Sep 2018

  TIFF 2018 #1

  This Brazilian animated adventure is incredibly gorgeous, not only for its mixed-media art but also its subtly Latin American identity (our protagonist’s family is a source of conflict but never once is love lost between them). The medium is made use of for some unique montages, panning and spinning across the canvas to convey a society in disarray. 

  The story is dystopian, portraying fear as a literal infectious disease. I can’t think of a more noble topic…