Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  Burden of Dreams 1982

  ★★★★ Watched 11 Jan 2020 2

  "I'm tired of it all and I couldn't care less if they move the stupid ship – or finish the fucking film." - Les Blank's personal production journal from Burden of Dreams.

  Les Blank is not a megalomaniac, and so he ends up making the same film Herzog is making, thematic beat for thematic beat, except without the self-important fabrications of make-believe and strained pretense.

  Herzog makes his film through force of will. Blank makes his through observational intimacy. When I was young I wanted to be Herzog. Now that I am old, I want to be Blank.

  Best DVD-extra ever.

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  I Was Born, But... 1932

  ★★★★★ Watched 18 Dec 2020 15

  Which is boldest in your memory? Remembering the first time you realized your father was a buffoon? Or the first time you realized the world was divided into stratified economic caste classes that would, to a lesser or greater degree, hold sway over the rest of your life?

  Or was it when it dawned on you that the two might be deeply related to one another?

  Ozu’s soft power is always his ability to delicately pick apart society. Not just…

Recent reviews

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  Dangerous Men 2005

  ★★★ Watched 26 May 2023 2

  These are the least dangerous looking "Dangerous Men" I have ever seen.

  This flick is slipshod as fuck, absolutely ramshackle, practically abstract in its story construction, but it is not without its own unique style. The music cues are insane and relentless and very often super groovy. The unique way the music is used - laid down like wall-to-wall carpet without reason - can often turn incompetently made sequences into high brut art.

  The movie’s relationship with time is interesting.…

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  The New Land 1972

  ★★★★½ Watched 12 May 2023 4

  Swedish Protestant foreplay is talking about how you could die if you have sex.

  You cross an ocean and brave an unknown world to escape the Christian fascists of your homeland, only to have them follow you and move in next door. Everyone comes to America to build something new, but they all just end up making it in the image of the very things they were trying to escape in first place.

  That's only a small part of this…

Popular reviews

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  Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution 2020

  ★★★½ Watched 02 May 2020 5

  There are at least two sure ways to know you're on the right side of history...

  1. The Black Panthers bring you food during your sit in.
  2. The press gives you a bad ass name like "The Occupying Cripple Liberation Army".

  That powerhouse and political force of nature Judith Heumann wasn't on the stage during the signing of the ADA, after all that she did, and instead it was a bunch of white dudes, is the fucking story of civil rights movements in America.

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  The Human Condition III: A Soldier's Prayer 1961

  ★★★★★ Watched 09 Nov 2020 29

  There’s a scene about 515 minutes into this nine and half hour movie where our protagonist, Kaji - having fully made the transition from manager of a Japanese prison labor camp to POW of a Soviet prison labor camp - comes before the Russian management of the camp to answer for his attempts at democratizing the POWs.

  Kaji is, as far as he knows himself, a socialist. Many times throughout the six part filmic cycle he is referred to as…