Berken

Berken

Favorite films

  • Before Sunset
  • The Big Lebowski
  • Rushmore
  • Guardians of the Galaxy

Recent activity

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  • BlackBerry

    ★★★★

  • It

    ★★★

  • Talk to Me

    ★★½

  • Elemental

    ★★★

Recent reviews

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  • Noah

    Noah

    ★★½

    Truthfully, it would be hard for me to not like Noah. I'm far from an atheist but I've always had issues with the moral view taken by the biblical stories of Noah, Job, and Abraham. Abraham, for instance, agrees to the Old Testament god's request to kill his son in order to prove he loves god more than his son - and in doing so, comes off in my eyes less as a heroic figure and more as an unctuous…

  • Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

    Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

    ★★★★

    Now this is how you do a Hollywood blockbuster on the subject of war! Forgive me if I'm wrong, but this seems like the first time I can think of that a war movie (especially a big budget crowd-pleasing one) split its characterization and empathy precisely down the middle between two (potentially) warring factions. Each side has its heroes and each side has its (sympathetic) war-mongerers. (Avatar, where the human faction is vilified to give us a big bad to…

Popular reviews

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  • Pan's Labyrinth

    Pan's Labyrinth

    ★★

    Though it's redeemed somewhat by its sadly limited number of striking fantasy sequences, it saddens me to have to be the one to point out that Pan's Labyrinth's portrayals of its twin themes of childhood and human cruelty are about as nuanced and insightful as Crash's portrayal of racism.

    Truthfully, I'm in disbelief that I didn't love this. It's almost impossible for me to feel relatively indifferent to such an original cinematic concoction, especially when it's loaded to the brim…

  • Punch-Drunk Love

    Punch-Drunk Love

    ★★★★★

    "SHUT UP, SHUT UP! SHUT, SHUT, SHUT, SHUT, SHUT UP… SHUT UP!"
    #3 on Berken's Favorite Movies Of All Time

    Everyone involved in the making of Silver Linings Playbook should look on this movie and despair. This is how you make an offbeat indie rom-com with a bipolar protagonist, David O. Russell. You can, for that matter, give your audience a happy, uplifting ending without resorting to Hollywood cliches and ending everything with a "you had me at hello" style…