Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Napoleon 2023

  ★★½ Watched 19 Nov 2024

  I can’t deny it’s worth watching for the well execute battle scenes and the exquisite period recreations. Unfortunately I feel the stellar supporting cast is given short shrift by a film weirdly too focused on an unbelievably uninteresting depiction of Napoleon. I don’t think Joaquin Phoenix was the right choice, and that’s not to say he didn’t give it his all.

  Napoleon is a historical figure whose impact we are still treading in the ripples of to this day.
  I don’t feel the film ever gets inside Napoleon’s head, but builds him through polemical writings, both contemporary to his time and revisionist.

• 

  Red Rocket 2021

  ★★★★ Watched 18 Nov 2024

  Sean Baker’s atmospheric white-trash epic about a washed up suitcase pimp landing on his estranged wife’s doorstep comes off as an absentminded slice of life about dirty and overlooked people. It’s actually far more calculated and deliberate. Every choice the protagonist makes says something deeper about him and his aims.

  You can also feel the humidity of the gulf coast subtropics exuding out of the screen with every lingering shot on an oil refinery or a swamp that serves as the white wall for this mural of broken souls and greedy dreams.

  Also another example of Sean Baker’s obsession with donut shops.

Popular reviews

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  The Passenger 1975

  ★★★★★ Added

  The anti-Casablanca. A film for anyone who's ever wanted to escape their life.

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  Long Day's Journey into Night 2018

  ★ Added 1

  I did not care for this one. Paper thin story. I'm supposed to be wowed by the technical feat, I suppose. But that just made a vague, impenetrable story all the more tedious by the elongated run time.