Favorite films

Pinned reviews

• 

  Mildred Pierce 1945

  ★★★★½ Watched 18 Nov 2023

  🎵She works hard for the money🎵
  (Certainly too hard to be treated so badly by that cunt of a daughter #TheWrongKidDied)

  Superb direction by Michael Curtiz, nearly matching that of Casablanca; noir-inflected cinematography that brings out the psychological elements of James M. Cain's story; a tragic melodrama about the sacrifices mothers (or parents in general) make for ungrateful children. Simply remarkable.

• 

  Code of Silence 1985

  ★★★½ Watched 18 Feb 2025

  A solid Chuck Norris actioner with some relevant social commentary. The last fifteen minutes were glorious. That being said, for pure entertainment value, I prefer the loose remake, Above the Law.

Recent reviews

• 

  Memories Within Miss Aggie 1974

  ★★★★ Watched 15 Mar 2025

  Which Aggie-tha was it all along?

  Another atmospheric, moody erotic film from Gerard Damiano which I also liked a lot. The titular Aggie tries to remember how she and Richard first met, leading to a trio of memory vignettes in which she and Richard are played by different people. I liked how the film explored the fragility and fungibility of memory, how it can be self-serving, or entirely manufactured to repress the truth about ourselves. The different scenarios presented also…

• 

  Born on the Fourth of July 1989

  ★★★½ Watched 15 Mar 2025

  Oliver Stone doing something almost Spielbergian, helped greatly by an emotionally resonant John Williams score. Tom Cruise giving a performance that, if not a career best, is certainly in his top three. And a deep bench of recognizable actors showing up for a scene here and there. This had all the ingredients to be a great film, but it came up a bit short for me. While Oliver Stone and Ron Kovic were certainly the right people to bring the…

Popular reviews

• 

  A Time to Kill 1996

  ★★★★ Watched 22 Sep 2022 1

  "Yes, they deserved to die, and I hope they burn in hell!"

  Case closed.

• 

  In the Mood for Love 2000

  ★★★★★ Watched 14 Mar 2025 4

  Elegant, restrained, and stunningly beautiful. It's one of those films where you don't need every little thing spelled out for you because, on a deeper level, you just get it. And then it blossomed into something even greater once its intentions were revealed in the last ten or so minutes. Something to meditate on, indeed. This is how you do cinema *about* something without beating the audience over the head or treating them like idiots.