Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  May December 2023

  ★★½ Watched 03 Dec 2023 5

  This is one of those year-end movies where I feel mildly befuddled by the overwhelming praise. I mean, on the one hand, I get it: there are a couple of really solid performances, the whole thing is shot and lit with expert care, it's occasionally darkly funny, etc. But the thing as a whole just doesn't work for me: I don't care for the melodramatic tone, I found the musical choices offputting even if I think I understood what Haynes…

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  Silent Night 2023

  ★★★★ Watched 03 Dec 2023 2

  So SILENT NIGHT’s gimmick is that it has almost no dialogue; the lead gets shot in the throat and goes off for revenge against the Mexican gangsters who killed his kid. The first (almost only) line is delivered during a radio news broadcast, when the host explains that interest rates are going up to combat out of control inflation. And this is all set during a montage of the lead seeing crime everywhere (drug dealers, etc) with “fuck the police”…

Popular reviews

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  Sound of Freedom 2023

  ★★★ Watched 18 Jul 2023 16

  Competently shot and well-acted with a very good cast, though giving off strong "eat your vegetables" vibes. (This is as much like homework as any black-and-white classic or modern oscar-bait movie that gets tagged with the "veggies" label.)

  At the end of the movie, Jim Caviezel comes on the screen and gives a "thanks for coming to the movies, this is the power of theaters" speech of the sort we've seen a lot of at the BEGINNING of movies (most…

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  Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood 2019

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 26 Jul 2020 9

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

  Did Cliff do it?

  Murder his wife, I mean. There's an intentional ambiguity to the question, an open-endedness. After all, we never see him pull the trigger on that speargun, even if we see his finger curled around it in violation of gun safety etiquette. Kurt Russell's character seems to think he did, as do others on the set of THE GREEN HORNET. Rick, on the other hand, brushes that aside as nonsense. An unfair pejorative slapped on a war…