Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles 1975

  ★★★★★ Watched 18 Mar 2025

  My partner was so angry at me for taking her to see this

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  Eraserhead 1977

  ★★★★½ Watched 05 Mar 2025

  I can’t imagine what it would have been like to see this in 1977. Stylistically, it sets the template for the Lynch aesthetic that would then be aped by the “elevated horror” subgenre in the 2010s and is now used indiscriminately in pretty much every horror movie. Weird because it many ways this isn’t a horror movie. It’s more of a psychedelic take on a folk tale. There’s a lot of Woyzeck in it except that the humiliation is combined…

Popular reviews

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  Lost in the Night 2023

  ★★★★ Watched 09 Oct 2023

  After winning the Best Director Award at Cannes in 2013 for Heli, Amat Escalante could have given people more of what they expected from a hot young Mexican director: violence, drug cartels, corrupt cops, and lingering shots of the desert. It’s not these things don’t exist, of course, but it does reinforce some of the negative Mexican stereotypes. And it’s not what he did. Instead, he made The Untamed, about a tentacular space creature who fucks. While that movie was…

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  Places in the Heart 1984

  ★★½ Watched 08 Jan 2023

  Great cast and well intentioned, I think. Several aspects of this later became Oscar movie cliches and you can see why it didn't become a classic.

  Really I just watched this because we've been trying to watch a Best Picture nominee from every year from 1970 and Amadeus wasn't available to screen (also I have seen it and Passage to India). 1984 really wasn't a great year for American movies, eh?

  Except that it was the year The Terminator and Gremlins came out so the Academy is just dumb