Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  Aftersun 2022

  ★★★★½ Watched 15 Feb 2023

  This movie works on you slowly, like the sun and lapping waves and hazy drifting days of a fading summer, until you suddenly feel that autumnal Sunday evening shadow creeping in through your ribs and realize that something precious is ending the way everything ends and you have no mortal power to stop it or get back any of those lost days. Time never stops. If only we could find a way to live inside our memories... Oh but wait,…

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  Memories of Underdevelopment 1968

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 10 Mar 2023

  First saw in a class at UCSC in 2001, taught by documentary filmmaker Saul Landau. It was nothing short of a revelation, and seemed to knock something loose inside me in terms of what a film could be. Its mix of personal and political storytelling, employing jarringly different styles, creates a jagged, open-ended piece of art that is infinitely expansive beyond its meager runtime. It is foremost a political film, but at its heart is a pulsing, deeply alive existential…

Recent reviews

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  Weekend 1967

  ★★★ Watched 18 Mar 2025

  This line from Mike D'Angelo's review pretty much sums it up: "Admirable in principle but tedious to endure."

  Godard wants you to hate this movie -- though if you do hate it you are part of the problem and a gang of French hippies with cap guns are going to eat you.

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  Rise of the Nazis 2019

  ★★★★ Watched 17 Mar 2025

  The actual parallels between then and today are endless. This has never been hyperbole and it certainly isn't now. This is literally who runs our country, they just wear stupid red hats instead of red armbands. They have been breaking institutions and dehumanizing immigrants, LGBTQ folks, poor people, which is only the first step that ends in camps. We will have a "Reichstag Fire" in the next 2 years that will allow them to suspend elections and consolidate power. Then…

Popular reviews

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  Michael Clayton 2007

  ★★★★½ Rewatched 19 May 2024 1

  Ah, 2007. Not just a banner year for movies, but we had no idea how good we had it. That this was some kind of peak before the long slide into formulaic, cartoonish, mega-budget mediocrity. That Marvel and COVID and streaming and now AI would destroy the movie-going landscape forever.

  This diamond. This ancient relic. A legal thriller made for adults, featuring a brilliant script and top-tier talent, in a year that had legions of other intelliegent, beautifully-made adult movies…

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  Oppenheimer 2023

  ★★★★ Watched 29 Jul 2023 1

  Went to see this with my wife on my our 6th wedding anniversary.

  She is now divorcing me.

  In my defense, my first suggestion was Barbie!!