Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Eyes Wide Shut 1999

  Watched 26 Jan 2025

  Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle, the novella Eyes Wide Shut is based on, centers around ideas of sexual repression in a country that was still deeply conservative and catholic. Schnitzler's novel was deliberately written to be provocative: for example, the orgy scene in the novel features nuns and monks. Unsurprisingly, Schnitzler was deeply influenced by his friend Sigmund Freud: Beyond the Pleasure Principle was published a year before the novel.

  These prefatory remarks are largely about why I think the original novel…

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  Odd Man Out 1947

  Watched 12 Jan 2025

  A lot of Carol Reed's films seem somewhat forgotten these days, which seems rather a pity when you consider examples like this. Like The Third Man, Odd Man Out revolves around a criminal being pursued by the police, depicting James Mason as a wounded IRA terrorist running through the backstreets of Belfast at night. Perhaps the central distinction is that The Third Man mostly keeps the figures of Orson Welles hidden as Joseph Cotton searches for him, whereas although Odd…

Popular reviews

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  Nosferatu 2024

  Watched 04 Jan 2025 3

  In truth, Bram Stoker was far from the most brilliant writer (as might be guessed from the number of people who've read The Lair of the White Worm or The Jewel of the Seven Stars) but in writing Dracula he did succeed in creating - or recreating - a modern folktale. As is usually the case with folktales, it began being retold and reinterpreted during his lifetime, with the Swedish, Icelandic and Turkish translations effectively rewriting vast swathes of the…

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  A Face in the Crowd 1957

  Watched 30 Nov 2024

  The contemporary relevance of this parable showing how the media created a power hungry demagogue is obvious enough. But the sad truth was that when events finally caught up with fiction, most people had known all along that the demagogue was a monster and simply didn't care.

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