Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Memories of Murder 2003

  ★★★★½ Watched 29 Mar 2023

  It’s been less than a day and I already feel comfortable calling “Memories of Murder” my new favorite Bong Joon-ho film. In truth, I haven’t been this riveted or shattered by a years-long police investigation since the virtually immaculate first season of “True Detective” back in 2014. Based on a string of killings in the late 80s and early 90s in rural South Korea, the Hwaseong serial murders, Bong puts three detectives, two local ones and a more experienced outsider…

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  The Prestige 2006

  ★★★★½ Rewatched 28 Mar 2023

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

  The thing about “The Prestige” is that once you have seen it, it’s like every magic trick in the book. It’s perfectly obvious when you know how it’s done. The key to its success is that Christopher Nolan and his brother Jonathan dangle the answers in front of our faces the whole time, but officially, the other shoe doesn’t drop until the final minutes. There is a ridiculous amount of foreshadowing all over the film, starting with the cruel trick…

Popular reviews

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  Chernobyl 2019

  ★★★★★ Watched 18 May 2019 2

  Assuming you didn’t already cancel your HBO subscription following last Sunday’s universally maligned “Game of Thrones” episode, they have much to offer beyond controversial conclusions to character arcs. “Chernobyl”, by far the best show currently airing on HBO about numerous people dying of burns all over their bodies, is a deeply unnerving experience, a detailed look at the catastrophic nuclear accident in 1986 that put the whole continent at risk and made at least some people ponder whether there are…

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  Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker 2019

  ★★½ Watched 20 Dec 2019 7

  I have questions. Tons of them. But the one I would most like answered regrettably happens to be the one that likely never will. That is unless J.J. Abrams decides to pen his explosive tell-all memoirs some day. I want to go back to the early 2010s, shortly after Disney acquired, among other assets, the registration of the Millennium Falcon, all the real estate on housing hot spot Tatooine, and the instruction manual for how to construct a lightsaber. And…