Letterboxd — Your life in film

It’s a crime drama, a religious epic, a romance, a political thesis, and a complete and total masterpiece. One of the greatest movies ever made, and I don’t even think its Spike’s best film. Imagine making Do the Right Thing and this within a five year span. I know both of these movies are beloved, but Spike Lee is still clearly not getting the adoration he deserves for making two of the best American movies in history. This is Coppola, Scorsese,…

Happy birthday to Spike Lee, revisiting this seminal work of American film in celebration of one of the masters of the art form.

Its all about love and hate. Maybe doing the right thing is nothing more than choosing love over hate, something most of the characters fail to do at one point or another throughout a scorching day of rising racial tensions. Could any single individual in this story have perhaps effected the tragic ending by making a different…

“They can’t all conduct, honey. It’s not a democracy.”

Tár tells this to her child in one of the film’s few short moments they spend together, yet Todd Field’s choice to play the credits first at the beginning of the movie yells at the audience that this statement is not true. Yes, they cannot all be conductors, but they can’t all be cellists either, or percussionists, or lighting technicians, or stage designers, and all are necessary for the success of…

True Stories: Observations on Culture Americana

David Byrne is fascinated by the world around him. The most mundane of topics can forge a brilliant popular song, which is why when his band, Talking Heads, worked on the followup to their debut album, drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Weymouth arrived at the title of More Songs About Buildings and Food. The band joked that was what most of the last record had been about, and that the new one was…

— Edited to add that shortly after watching this I found out Lance Reddick has passed away. Genuinely shocked and very saddened by this news. He was a great addition to the franchise, especially loved him in the third one. —

I love how the filmmakers realized the bath house and club sequence was the most interesting part of the movie and seemingly vowed to make the sequels be feature length versions of those scenes.

John Wick is incredible, but I…

The story of the guy who was in the back alley getting his ass kicked the moment Bob Dylan was discovered.

What separates the losers from legends? Inside Llewyn Davis argues timing and placement over talent or dedication. Llewyn is most definitely talented, and undoubtedly, detrimentally dedicated to his life as a struggling artist. It is admirable how many punches Llewyn can take without giving up, but his resilience can’t save him from a time and place that is unwilling to…

I have liked Scream (2022) less each time I watch it, which is a shame because Radio Silence is clearly a talented group of filmmakers who I believe have what it takes to make a great Scream movie. Their previous installment is bogged down by a script full of dialogue that can be best describe as Netflix-core. I still recoil in discomfort at Jenna Ortega’s “I still prefer the Babadook” which is supposed to be a climactic, powerful mic-drop callback to the opening scene…