Devout Orthodox Christian.
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Once Upon a Time in America 1984
This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
No film has a more moving title than "Once Upon a Time in America". The phrase is a sentence fragment that implies a second half. I submit that what occurred, once upon a time in America, is the making of the old Hollywood movies that Leone so affectionately references in his films. They didn't make movies like Underworld anymore in 1984, but once upon a time, dreams were put to screen.
Dave Kehr understood it best when he said that…
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Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver 2024
Chalice of Blood + Curse of Forgiveness
Snyder says he made this film for televisions and watching it made me understand he meant that he wanted every shot to have the force of the big screen even on a laptop. He achieves this through focusing on his actors. The piercing, shallow focus close ups are shocking in their tender appreciation for the actors' faces and intense expression of their feelings. The film's human focus goes beyond the close ups: even…
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The Scarlet Empress 1934
Sternberg makes a turn for the sensorily oppressive in this tragedy. The development of the protagonist, and her various midnight romantic/sexual encounters, are brilliant and empathic. Sternberg’s portrayal of Russia (and Orthodoxy) however is sick propaganda. He covers the film in the most ghoulish statues, none of which are remotely realistic since the Orthodox Church does not use statues. The narrator’s comments about backwards Russia take on a comical irony when you realize that the director had to make up…
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Megalopolis 2024
The infinitely lively new film from Francis Ford Coppola reminds that he is the least racist, least sexist, least judgmental director around. The brilliant, ecstatic, open-hearted Megalopolis reveals Coppola's doubts about himself in a bracing manner, but it also reveals the secularism of his ambition. George Lucas lovingly depicted this conflict between him and Francis in his great 1977 film "Star Wars" through the characters of Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. They're also a modernist and a post-modernist (Lucas is…
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Anora 2024
Vanya is a Gen-Z male archetype, a grown infant driven by pure id. He's like if an iPad kid could also string women along. His emotional and sexual callousness is violent, which is miserably relatable. In some sense, Anora is a play on "Way Down East", following Griffith's promise in that film's opening narration to get men to reflect on their own fornication. What's amazing is that Anora actually loves Vanya's child-like behaviors, which are products of the privileged life…
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