Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  Los Frikis 2024

  ★★★ Watched 17 Dec 2024

  The first half of Los Frikis is vibrant, less interested in how punk looks than how resistance feels. In the film, Cuba, even at its most oppressive, is an island of vast, crystal-blue skies and verdant greens. Los Frikis, at its most exhilarating, captures what “We keep us safe” means in practice. For an all-too-brief period in which the sanitoriums were free of the state’s heavy hand, this community could flourish with art, music, and a great deal of self-sustainability.…

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  A Different Man 2024

  ★★★★ Rewatched 17 Sep 2024

  "Disability and performance have long held an uneasy professional relationship. It can be traced from the sideshow-act era famously and controversially depicted in Tod Browning’s 1932 Freaks to current media in the form of voyeuristic reality TV and award-winning (or award-aspiring) films. Aaron Schimberg’s A Different Man is metatextually aware of the tension that follows a movie like Freaks in which disability is framed as a tragic performance for spectators to discern as either a pitiful obstacle or a feared curse."

  Read my review of A Different Man for the Chicago Reader.

Recent reviews

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  Kiki's Delivery Service 1989

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 25 Mar 2025

  What if we all just tried to make sure we take care of each other

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  Eephus 2024

  ★★★★½ Watched 24 Mar 2025

  Baseball, the greatest sport there is. The only one that allows you to ponder. That teaches patience (and that you shouldn't always expect a reward). It's the smell of the grass. The smack of gum. Looking up at the sky. It's the conversations in between plays. It's the static of the radio. It's the rhythm of a player's breath as they run, time their swings, hold their pitches. It's personality. It's disappointment. It's the way an incredible play tastes so…

Popular reviews

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  Cow 2021

  ★★★ Watched 20 Oct 2021 2

  Today I watched a triple feature of Lamb (2021), Pig (2021), and Cow (2021), and the animals in all three of those movies put out more complex and nuanced performances than anything Jared Leto ever has in his entire life.

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  Summering 2022

  ½ Watched 22 Jan 2022 1

  James Ponsoldt introduced this movie saying he wanted to make a movie for his wife, daughter, sister, mother, etc. and I'm just saying that if I were any of those aforementioned people and I saw this movie, I'd immediately get a restraining order against him.

  Edit: I didn't expect my most scathing review to be my most popular one and I'm bad at being mean, so James Ponsoldt if you're reading this, I'm sure you're a perfectly fine person. Just uhhh maybe save the "father of a daughter" thing next time