Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  Annette 2021

  ★★★★½ Watched 29 Aug 2021

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

  On first viewing this one seems so baffling to me. It seems a bit more simple-minded than Holy Motors, more restrained maybe in comparison to the previous film's outbursts of ideas, but at the same time more difficult to reach a conclusion on. These are just some initial thoughts:

  What Carax seems to be doing with the musical genre and the crisis of spectacle is intriguing. Is Annette a musical, a rock opera movie, or a Greek play in front…

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  A Hero 2021

  ★★½ Watched 04 Nov 2021

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

  Among the string of 'ethical hell' dramas of Farhadi from Fireworks Wednesday to date, this is the most decent film in dramatic terms, since it does not place the viewer in a position of judgement only to pull the carpet from under their feet and throw them in an inherently conservative sinkhole of moral relativism. Farhadi's interest has slightly shifted. Instead of creating unbearably mechanical and calculated plot holes to trap the viewer and characters in an ostensibly insolvable quagmire,…

Recent reviews

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  The Delinquents 2023

  ★★½ Watched 21 Nov 2023

  Starts with Morán looking at the streets of Buenos Aires from behind his apartment balcony’s balustrade. Then, first scene in the bank with all the barred gates, and my first guess was that Morán works at a prison (later on he’s actually in prison, and the prison ‘boss’ is played by the same actor who plays his boss in the bank). Very obvious visual and narrative cues for social entrapment and its ubiquity. But Moreno does not stop there: five…

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  Priscilla 2023

  ★★ Watched 21 Nov 2023

  This film is about boredom and the languorous passage of time, youth and desire – at least, that is what the structure suggest. However, what is a strength in the first half (before Graceland) which is accentuating Priscilla‘s desire and agency in becoming Elvis’ dolled up baby girl, turns out to be the Achilles heel of the second half and the film as a whole. The strategic mistake in treating a structure concerned with time and repetition here is that…

Popular reviews

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  Love at Sea 1964

  ★★★★★ Watched 26 Aug 2020

  The style of montage and the choices as to whether each shot would be in color or black and white demonstrates how complicated the dichotomy of the detailed reminiscences of the past vs. the mundane now may work. This film is a beautiful eruption of feelings.

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  Leech 2021

  ★★★★½ Watched 26 Sep 2021

  No matter who operates the camera and who questions whom, the camera reveals both sides.