Alex Smith

Alex Smith Pro

Favorite films

  • Burn!
  • The Conformist
  • Blow Out
  • Paris, Texas

Recent activity

All
  • Demented

    ★★½

  • The Monkey

    ★★½

  • Red River

    ★★★★½

  • Posse

    ★★★

Recent reviews

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  • Demented

    Demented

    ★★½

    Asks for much from you while returning less than. Rxpe-revenge melodrama that focuses on her not coping with PTSD then enjoys the histrionics and carnage in exploitation. Sallee Elyse's performance sits somewhere between a John Water's Dreamlander and a hypothetical role Todd Haynes would have for Julianne Moore if he ever went shockingly disreputable (Safe but with buckets of blood)

    Her inevitable rampage is fun though. She's a prankster, that one. I should dig up Death Game somewhere, think I'm ready now.

  • Red River

    Red River

    ★★★★½

    That ending seems off kilter to what else it serves up, but I believe many a frontier disagreement have been settled by a frantic woman with a gun.

    Plenty of thrills and adventure. Lighting also supports a New Dawn interpretation (shinny daylight to dark night to morning next) as a post-WW2 western might want to. Typically the genre for American self-reflection, the West serving as the promise of America made possible.

    Wild to think of John Wayne serving as emblem…

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  • Nosferatu

    Nosferatu

    ★★★

    Me 🤝 Lily-Rose Depp 🤝 Orson Welles & the '82 César Awards 🤝 Jacques Deray & the '81 Cannes jury: thinking Isabelle Adjani's performance in Possession was something else.

    Seemed that my audience grinned and bore it based on overheard chatter on the walk out. I had more mixed reaction. I don't hold with the most gloomy "Egger's penchant for meticulous research has overtaken his filmmaking capacity" assessments.

    Yet it does have the aura of a well-appointed banquet hall serving Swanson's Thanksgiving…

  • Dune: Part Two

    Dune: Part Two

    ★★★★

    Long live the fighters!

    Chris Nolan has the crux of it as DV's Empire Strikes Back. Star Wars and Empire have a dynamic in which Star Wars worldbuilds a setting then Empire shows you a story that setting can sustain. Similar relationship for Part 1 and Part 2 under Denis Villeneuve.

    And what a story we have, paced so those 167 minutes melt away. A religion and politics war adventure informed by Quebec's Quiet Revolution. Love contending with destiny and…

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