Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  The Cabbage-Patch Fairy 1900

  Rewatched 23 Mar 2020

  Cinema's Cabbage Patch

  This is the most interesting of Gaumont's available early, fin-de-siècle productions generally attributed to the studio's main director, producer and writer, Alice Guy. That's regardless of its uncertain dating, too, which I address in my comments for the 1896 entry of "The Cabbage-Patch Fairy." To summarize, only one such film exists today, although Guy remade the cabbage-patch scenario later in "Midwife to the Upper Class" (1902) and, briefly, in "Madame's Cravings" (1906). Thus, everyone posting reviews for…

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  The Cabbage-Patch Fairy 1896

  Added 2

  Where Do Movies Come From?

  You know where babies come from, but do you know the real origins of movies? Contrary to Internet folklore, movies weren't actually born and reproduced of YouTube--not directly or originally, at least. Apparently, that's how many people, including the reviewers on this site, came by this early film, though. Consequently, some lose sense of the picture's meaning and origins. The birds and the bees of the matter, however, is that "The Cabbage-Patch Fairy" was, first,…

Recent reviews

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  Resurrection 2022

  ★★½ Watched 21 Mar 2023

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

  It’s a Gas-lighting

  I’m not sure, though; that might’ve been an electric oven cooking that paedophagy platter.

  Dead baby jokes aside, this movie is silly, although I find some dark amusement in it for that reason, and the ostensibly-serious commitment to it by stars Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth is laudable. Many seem to be keyed into the trendy verbiage that supposedly describes “Resurrection” as being about gaslighting, and not in the stove sense (which apparently has been another hot…

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  Fletch 1985

  ★½ Watched 20 Mar 2023

  SNL Investigative Journalism

  Meh, I was planning on watching this, “Fletch,” and its sequel, “Fletch Lives” (1989), and before seeing the newest, recast iteration, “Confess, Fletch” (2022), but I’m bailing on this series. It’s just too much banal sketch comedy with a mediocre and convoluted investigative journalism plot. They even cast “Saturday Night Live” veteran Chevy Chase to make sarcastic remarks in various disguises as if he were doing another lazy no-imitation imitation of President Gerald Ford or something. Without…

Popular reviews

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  Women Talking 2022

  ★ Watched 09 Mar 2023 18

  Dreadful Didacticism

  Blessed by streaming and earlier-and-earlier home-video release dates, I saw all of the Best Picture Oscar nominated movies before the ceremony this year and despite my reluctance nowadays to leave home for a cinema. The only one I had to see in a theatre to meet this deadline happening to be the only nominee for which it mattered otherwise that I saw it that way (i.e. that it was worth seeing in 3D IMAX). The fact this is…

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  Room 2015

  ★★★½ Rewatched 17 Mar 2023 2

  Camera Obscura, Constricted by Character

  Cinema is all about spatial dimensions—two planes and a suggestion of depth, blocking and framing, the confined and shared perspective of the camera—so when you have a scenario restricted in location, there’s tremendous potential there. Seemingly, all the more so when one limits the title of their picture to “Room.” “Rear Window” (1954) and “12 Angry Men” (1957) are two classic examples of what can be done with this. Problem is, where “Room” needs an…