Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Elbow 2024

  ★½ Watched 15 Mar 2025

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

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  The Immigrant 2013

  ★★★ Watched 13 Mar 2021

  Psychologically twisted love story set in the Lower East Side in the days of Eastern European immigration - a story of exploitation and dependency, the pimp-whore relationship, with florid and unusual local/historical detail (Caruso performing at Ellis Island?)... stage magicians ,fist fights, police corruption, prohibition... Echoes of PHANTOM THREAD in the dark chaotic central relationship between Cotillard and Phoenix (both excellent) - both James Gray and PTA turn to Phoenix for their complex, tortured male avatars.

Popular reviews

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  Nosferatu 2024

  ★★★ Watched 26 Dec 2024

  Was a third Nosferatu really necessary? Murnau delivered stark, indelible imagery, Herzog a potent mix of expressionism and documentary actuality (real rats, real revelers, real city) plus one of the most beautiful compilation soundtracks in the history of cinema, and Eggers? His speciality, especially since THE LIGHTHOUSE, seems to be extended ripe-fruity dialogues. So we get a lot of those in this overlong edition of the story. All the exposition and waffle and kerfuffle that Herzog and Murnau cut out…

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  Two Strangers Trying Not to Kill Each Other 2024

  ★★ Watched 16 Dec 2024

  To be fair, if you film any couple quite intimately, they will probably be annoying at times. And the sub-set of "couples" who are "couples who willingly allow a documentary crew to film them intimately" is probably more full of annoying people than those who would prefer not to be filmed. The couple at the centre of this film just come across like people who I would take efforts to avoid at a party. I wouldn't like to be stuck in a lift with them for 10 minutes, let alone watch them for 100 minutes. Others might well disagree, but this wasn't a film for me.