Favorite films

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Recent reviews

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  The Friends of Eddie Coyle 1973

  ★★★★½ Watched by Stephen M 14 Aug 2022 11

  COLLAB FILM CLUB

  A downbeat film about an aging smalltime career criminal on the lower-tier of the Irish Mafia in Boston, this is more of a character study than a thriller. And Robert Mitchum is perfect as Eddie Coyle. He’s living on the edge of desperation, making deals and trying to cash in on loyalties long gone. His dreams of an easier life keep slipping further away. So he considers becoming an informer to stave off going to prison. It’s…

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  Salome's Last Dance 1988

  ★★★★½ Rewatched by Stephen M 13 Aug 2022 4

  August 2022: Theme of the Month - Make/Remake
  "Salome" (1922) vs "Salome's Last Dance" (1988)

  Like Nazimova, director Ken Russell sticks closely to the storyline of Oscar Wilde's 1891 one-act play. But Russell puts an interesting frame around it. He imagines it as being staged in a brothel frequented by Wilde and his young lover Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas as a birthday present to Wilde because the play had been banned. The parts are played by the sex workers (male…

Popular reviews

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  The Power of the Dog 2021

  ★★★½ Watched by Stephen M 01 Dec 2021 19

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

  I know I'm going to be an outlier here. In many ways I was awed by Jane Campion's masterful unpacking of masculinity, gender, homosexuality, repressed desire and psychosexual conflicts - both within and between her characters - in 1920s Montana that still evokes the Old West. This didn't surprise me because she's such an accomplished filmmaker. The cinematography blew me away, as well as the score. But something about her portrayal of a man tortured and in many ways damaged…

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  The Florida Project 2017

  ★★★★½ Watched by Stephen M 17 Jul 2022 5

  There's always been films about children and families living on the margins of society. But here Sean Baker shines an ironic and unflinching spotlight on kids living in the cheap "welfare hotels" just a short distance from Orlando's Disney World where families across the country and beyond come to experience (and pay expensive admission fees) for a fantasy version of the American dream.

  It's a masterful move, and it's to Baker's credit that he does this without judgement. He lets…