Freelance writer and editor. Formerly a senior writer at Newsweek. Author of a new 33 1/3 book. Still sitting in a room.
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
Cha Cha Real Smooth 2022
Cooper Raiff is a 25-year-old writer-director who makes earnest movies about precocious young men who love their mothers and share their feelings openly and freely. The characters Raiff writes and plays (he’s an actor, too) are achingly wholesome: In Shithouse (2020), his debut feature, Raiff portrayed a friendless college freshman who, upon being seduced by his RA, is more interested in helping her give a proper burial to her deceased turtle than in getting laid.
Turns out niceness sells. Few…
-
Shithouse 2020
Starts off bland, but the late-night Before Sunrise bonding portion drew me in. Captures the weirdly intimate nocturnal conversations that arise unexpectedly in college, and the uncertainty afterwards about whether or not to pretend it never happened. Most gratuitous epilogue since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
Popular reviews
More-
My Psychedelic Love Story 2020
I love Errol Morris, but don't love his late-career tendency to center every documentary around One Big Interview with One Single Interview Subject, such that he has to work so hard to spice up the format with flashy visual flourishes and superimposed text.
Anyway, this was OK. I like when you can distinctly hear Errol Morris shouting at his interview subject from offscreen.
-
Palm Springs 2020
"That's Joanna Newsom's husband."
—me whispering to my girlfriend every time Joanna Newsom's husband appears onscreen
