Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Stalker 1979

  ★★★½ Rewatched 01 May 2024

  Dammit people, read the short story Roadside Picnic on which Stalker is based! The Zone is loaded with extraterrestrial trash left behind by visitors from highly advanced worlds. It’s packed with out of this world technological artifacts, many of which are very dangerous; e.g., can fold (literally) space and time. Hence the Stalker tossing the bolts to detect dangerous phenomena. Tarkovsky, as is his style , meditates on it with characters deliberately ignorant of its true nature.

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  The Post 2017

  ★★★★ Watched 01 Feb 2018 1

  Let’s take a trip down memory lane.

  
  Back half a century to a time when America still held on to its greatness.

  A different time than now when the president had enough integrity and was sufficiently secure in his beliefs, values, and having done the right things for our Nation, to trust and respect, and not fear, the Fourth Estate, the press. 

  A time when investigative journalists worked hard, strove deep, to get to the truth. And the truth, above…

Popular reviews

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  Dracula 1931

  ★★★★½ Rewatched 24 Oct 2017 3

  Is it antiquated? Yes
  Is it stiff and stagey? Yes
  Is it overacted? Yes
  And above all, it is iconic.
  Search for the word typecast and you’ll find Lugosi as Dracula.
  Search for vampire and you’ll find that Bela was the first to utter the phrase “I never drink...wine.”
  In the hands of the early master of atmosphere, the maestro of the slow creep of fear and dread, Tod Browning, Dracula stands as THE monumental achievement in monsterdom.
  Encumbered with only…

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  The Illustrated Man 1969

  ★★★★ Rewatched 25 Oct 2017 2

  Yet another rewatch (first review below) and film came across more dated this go-around. Reportedly Bradbury hated this film and I can see why. With Steiger’s brutishness, it substitutes the harsh sensibilities of the 60s for the fantastical, almost enchanting, carny storyteller framework that is truest to Bradbury’s  soul.

  
  First review:
  I came back to this movie after seeing Blade Runner 2049.  The tattoo, the skin illustration, of The Veldt segment came to mind with the holographic realities of BR.  …