Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  Psycho 1960

  ★★★★★ Watched 26 Aug 2023

  Top 50 Reely Bernie Faves

  Film School 101. Alfred Hitchcock’s pièce de résistance. The Bates Motel. The shower scene. The shrieking strings in Bernard Herrmann’s score. The Hershey’s chocolate syrup used for the blood. Norman Bates as the most terrifying mama’s boy.

  Psycho is the black-and-white classic we turn to for horror movie reference without realizing it’s the groundbreaker for everything horror utilized today. Brooding tension with sporadic jump scares, oddball characters you wouldn’t trust if your life depended on…

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  Parenthood 1989

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 21 Aug 2023

  Top 50 Reely Bernie Faves

  Oh, what a big hug of a movie.

  I cry at the end every time as Randy Newman’s warm-hearted score also sobs in the background.

  Here is a dramedy portrayal of your typical (meaning: dysfunctional) American family that covers the gamut in household wins and losses: supportive marriage, anxiety disorder, love at first sight, premarital sex, pregnancy, young kids, older kids, birthday parties, proudly watching your son catch a fly ball, sullenly watching him drop…

Recent reviews

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  Trainspotting 1996

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 24 Sep 2023 2

  Top 50 Reely Bernie Faves

  ‘70s pop, Iggy pop, and Britpop are what the lust for life sounds like while heroin is playing in the background. There is an impalpable sense of contradistinction in Trainspotting (1996) as audiences get so enraptured by the music and Director Danny Boyle’s rapid jump cuts, zoom shots, and freeze frames that they end up lost in the same false promises of addiction as the so-called “protagonists.”

  Even more enigmatic, the hooligans we follow are…

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  The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters 2007

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 22 Sep 2023 5

  Top 50 Reely Bernie Faves

  In one corner, you have the defending champion, Billy Mitchell, a restauranteur who sports a mullet so grotesque, the 80s feel shame. In the other corner, you have an out-of-work engineer, Steve Wiebe, who has likable underdog written all over his face. The competition? Nothing else but achieving the high score record for the 1981 arcade game hit, Donkey Kong.

  Officiating the match is Billy’s kiss-up and founder of the Twin Galaxies website for video…

Popular reviews

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  The Batman 2022

  ★★★½ Watched 05 Mar 2022 10

  An argument can be made that anything “Marvel Cinema Universe” is the same movie with 27 different titles. The formula never fails: Arrogant, grumpy, or emotionless hero + desensitizing CGI +/- obligatory love interest + forgettable villain who always possesses one less level of power = box office points.

  The DC Comics movies are no different, and I’m not sure how many more Batmans and Jokers and Supermans we need and why their origin stories have to get rebooted ad…

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  Dune 2021

  ★★★★½ Watched 28 Oct 2021 2

  I never finished Frank Herbert’s novel; David Lynch’s movie adaptation put me to sleep; and I read enough about Denis Villeneuve’s latest being all set up with no payoff. This all being said, I went into Dune with no expectations because I didn’t think I earned them.

  I left Dune wholly enthralled.

  I was and still am in a state of veneration, dread, and wonder. I am awed.

  To be only experienced in the theatre, Dune provides depth in its…