Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Wicked 2024

  ★★ Watched 17 Feb 2025

  Largely terrible. The songs are entirely forgettable. Coupled with the fact that it took them 2 1/2 hours to get through half of a stage production and the retconning of the original story to make the villain sympathetic make this a grueling slog.

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  Trading Places 1983

  ★½ Watched 01 May 2024

  It’s almost staggering when I see wildly praised comedies from the 70s and 80s only to discover how poorly they hold up. 

  There is a seed of a good idea here, but Aykroyd in blackface, a few gratuitous scenes of Jamie Lee Curtis topless, a rather surprising use of a racial slur, and a truly awful scene with one of the film’s antagonists being sodomized by a gorilla more than cancel out the few laughs.  

  Notable for performances from…

Popular reviews

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  Nightmare Alley 2021

  ★★★★ Watched 05 Mar 2022

  A well crafted film all around, with sublime cinematography and production design, and fine performances from the entire ensemble. Ultimately though this is a genre picture, essentially a exceptionally well crafted episode of the Twilight Zone. Beautiful and fun but not exceptionally profound.