Favorite films

Recent reviews

• 

  Skate Kitchen 2018

  ★★★½ Watched 09 Mar 2025

  See this if you’re looking for…

  *a slice-of-life movie about young, female skate boarders in NYC
  *a movie where most of the characters are played by non-professional actors

  Solid. Some cool cinematography with the skate shots. Pretty standard hangout movie.

• 

  Booksmart 2019

  ★★★★½ Rewatched 02 Mar 2025

  See this if you’re looking for…

  *the smart female version of Superbad
  *a time capsule of the mid 2010s
  *a raunchy comedy with some incredible subjective cinematography

  It’s so wild (no pun intended) that Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut is so self aware and fantastic at the dance of leaning into & subverting genre tropes. Like this movie has so many tremendous moments of subjective perspective. Her follow-up film was nothing like that. But I digress…

  “I don’t know if she’s even into girls.”
  “She wore a polo shirt to prom”

Popular reviews

• 

  Sanjay's Super Team 2015

  ★★★ Rewatched 31 Aug 2023 1

  I show this in class every year. I didn’t even think to review it until I saw one of my students absolutely demolish it in their review. 🤣

  I think the short film does a great job of showing the tension felt by many children of immigrants between their parents’ culture and their peers’ culture. It also shows how art & storytelling can be used to bridge the two cultures, creating a synthesis that hadn’t existed before. And to do that in 7 minutes with the only words coming from an action figure… that’s pretty sweet. 

  Or maybe Kyle is right & the film is trash. 🤣

• 

  Death by Detention

  ★★★★★ Watched 02 Jun 2024 1

  See this if you’re looking for…

  *a horror parody of the Breakfast Club
  *a short film by two visionaries kickstarting their filmographies with a poignant statement on America’s education system
  *15 minutes to…😈kill🔪

  This was so great! My fiancé & I were howling. Keep an eye out for Finch & LoSasso cause those dudes are going places. If anybody knows where I can find any other films with the janitor in it, send em my way cause that dude stole the show!