Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  Premature 2019

  ★★★½ Watched 14 Nov 2020

  Only a month ago that I saw this and I couldn't tell you much about how it ended. So there's limits on how memorable an experience it will give you, in terms of plot, but as a movie with vivid characters and a strong atmosphere this one is aces. It's all about Zora Howard, a talented young playwright who is also an incredibly powerful performer — she co-wrote the movie with director Rashaad Ernesto Greene and also plays Ayanna, the…

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  The Inhabitant 2017

  ★★★★ Watched 20 Aug 2018

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

  Scary Movies XI.

  Very deliberately putting this review behind the spoiler veil.

  There are potential triggers in this movie that viewers would ideally be aware of beforehand; unfortunately, to forewarn the viewer is also to spoil the movie. Christian theology and Roman Catholic iconography are a big part of the movie's second half; there are also onscreen (though brief, and not especially graphic) depictions of sexual assault against children. And of course sexual assault with overtones of spiritual abuse (where…

Recent reviews

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  The Tenant 1976

  ★★★ Watched 29 Sep 2023

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

  Hoop tober No. 9 #12

  What do you call the opposite of a jump scare? (A dread drop?) Whatever you call it, Roman Polanski's The Tenant has one of the best ones I've ever seen.

  One of the running gags of the movie (and I call it a gag, even though it's hardly ever funny, because there's a lot of dark comedy in this movie and even the scares are structured like gags) is that Trelkovsky is obsessed with the…

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  Night of the Comet 1984

  ★★★½ Watched 29 Sep 2023

  Hoop tober No. 9 #11

  Watched with Leah. She liked it — three-stars level. It would have done better if it wasn't wobbly in its plot. Basically, everything hinges on the process by which people become zombies, and for some reason the rules for this (who's turning into a zombie and who isn't) are left obscure, and that decision leaves a lot of unfortunate uncertainty in the second half of the film. But basically the movie looks wonderful and has…

Popular reviews

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  No Reservations 2007

  ★★★ Added 2

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

  It's probably a mediocre movie in the final analysis, but it contains one scene that is priceless to me, and part of its immeasurable worth, for me, is that it provides a kind of iconography for the notion of a masculinity that's healthy and potentially healing.

  Aaron Eckhart plays a man who is really good at what he does but has retained all the spontaneity and even goofiness of a boy. He doesn’t fade into the scenery and he projects…

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  Collateral 2004

  ★★★★★ Watched 21 Aug 2004 6

  Subgenres of the thriller genre:

  1. the thriller as art film, where the artist cannot stoop to actually thrilling his audience

  2. the thriller as philosophical rubbernecking, where we are invited to meditate upon the nature of evil — as severed heads roll our way

  3. the thriller as pastiche of esoteric pop-culture references

  4. the redundant thriller, either a remake of a good thriller or adaptation of a good novel, or both

  My highest praise of Collateral is that…