I have minor quibbles with “Bottoms” (the generic setting holds it back a tad) but its wonderful visual flair, queer and millennial humor, and freakout ending are such a winning formula for instant laugh out loud moments and indelible characters that I couldn’t help but be wholly won over.
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
-
It Lives Inside 2023
It begins with your standard shot, a camera tracking through a modest but deteriorated home. In the abode’s hallways are dead, crumpled bodies. Screams can be heard emanating from an ajar door leading to the basement. We travel down creaky stairs to a body burned so badly that steam is still rising from the charcoaled skin. Its hand is outstretched to a glass jar filled with black smoke. This jar is merely a vessel, a metaphor for the difficulties faced…
Popular reviews
More-
Oppenheimer 2023
“Oppenheimer” stunned me. You could accuse it of being another tired great man or tortured genius narrative, but I think you’d be wrong. For one, Christopher Nolan wonders aloud if Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) even was a genius or merely a good organizer (it’s telling that we see Oppenheimer make very few discoveries, everyone is usually scientifically and mathematically ahead of him, yet he is continually capable of leveraging the appearance of his genius for the desired outcome). I’m also not…
-
Babylon 2022
“Babylon” is already a misunderstood gem, in my opinion. Weirdly called a mess, even though its plotting and character arcs are tightly interwoven and classically structured (you could almost accuse it of being a tad too simple rather than chaotic).
It’s a fascinating critique of the ways the white capitalistic greed of Hollywood forced (and still forces) assimilation onto the dreams of the marginalized and then forces them to turn on each other. It spotlights who cannot live without the…
