Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  La Comédie-Française ou L'amour joué 1996

  ★★★★½ Rewatched 08 Nov 2023

  It was an honor to revisit this 1996 Frederick Wiseman documentary and discuss it with Shawn Glinis and Arlin Golden in this episode of their Wiseman Podcast.

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  Passion 2008

  ★★★★ Watched 29 Jun 2023

  If you purchase the Film Movement Blu-ray edition of Ryusuke Hamaguchi's debut feature Passion, you can check out the video essay I created for it drawing some connections between it and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy as a special feature. I know people mostly stream stuff these days, but I do genuinely believe this one's worth purchasing, and not just for my contribution to it.

Popular reviews

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  Andrei Rublev 1966

  ★★★★★ Watched 12 Apr 2013 6

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

  Seven episodes in the life of the titular medieval Russian icon painter, all of which add up to one of the most vivid and detailed cinematic depictions I've ever seen of the life of an artist. From naive optimism about human nature to an abject despair that leads him to swear off art-making for about 15 years, then finally a renewal of his passion with the help of a former monk and a young bellmaker (whose obsessive quest to finish…

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  Trouble Every Day 2001

  ★★★★½ Watched 17 Oct 2013 2

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

  An alternately lyrical and brutal vision of desire as pure lust, with cannibalism envisioned as the end result of tossing off one's inner humanity in favor of animal instinct. But then, isn't that what sex essentially is, in some ways? Not that Claire Denis is puritanical about sex; Trouble Every Day is framed not merely as the typical slasher-movie "sex = death" equation, but more as a blood-and-thunder struggle between thought and feeling, scientific detachment and Romantic passion. Certainly, I…