syzygyzip

syzygyzip

Favorite films

  • Fanny and Alexander
  • Eyes Wide Shut
  • Mulholland Drive
  • The Last Picture Show

Recent activity

All
  • To Catch a Thief

    ★★★★

  • Madame Web

    ★★

  • Paprika

    ★★★½

  • Eraserhead

    ★★★★

Recent reviews

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  • To Catch a Thief

    To Catch a Thief

    ★★★★

    You can feel old and new Hollywood acting styles coexist in this thing. Always funny when that happens; feels like they people are coming from different eras onto the same stage.

    Also a funny interstitial moment in the timeline of cinema is the chase scene, with the dramatic helicopter shots, but shaky as hell because they didn't have any equipment to help hold the damn thing up there. But where would we be without that epiphany, "Let's see the whole…

  • Madame Web

    Madame Web

    ★★

    Takes the superhero formula and edges the payoff (revelation of powers) for as long as possible. So if you want two hours of, "Oh no, something bad is going to happen," and "What is happening to me?" you will love this movie.

    The first half has the all the makings of a camp cult classic: an ungrounded premise, surreal images, bizarrely abrupt shifts in tone, general stupidity and clumsy stylishness, and a "what are they doing in this movie" cast.…

Popular reviews

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  • Paprika

    Paprika

    ★★★½

    Watching this again at a later stage of my life allowed me to have a deeper appreciation for the oneiric realism of it. The evermorphing images and actions of dreams are an easy thing to become aware of in waking analysis, but to actually evoke this faithfully in art is much more difficult.

    I don't think this film FULLY succeeds at that task, but it does better than most, and at least it happily avoids cliche and reductionism around dream…

  • Eraserhead

    Eraserhead

    ★★★★

    What a lived-in, high-res world, like life, like when you're bored and zooming in with your eyes onto some surface, a love letter to grain and crease. It wasn't as inscrutable as its reputation portends; I found realistic dream logic in every beat.

    I took note of when he stepped in a puddle at the beginning, because it was so well directed and acted, it seemed like a real error. But it wasn't until the movie was over that I…