Favorite films

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Pinned reviews

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  An Autumn Afternoon 1962

  ★★★★★ Rewatched by Adam 27 Feb 2021

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

  Ozu’s final film looks again at the problem of the upper middle class marrying off daughters, with another variant in perspective. But like “Good Morning” and “ Kohayagawa Family” there is some shift back towards the comedy and nansensu stylings of the 1930s films that were once Ozu's bread and butter. And the opening credits seems to confirm this call back to 30s comedies, instead of the familiar cross hatched brown (tatami mats? Burlap?), of Ozu’s post-war films, this films…

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  Late Spring 1949

  ★★★★★ Rewatched by Adam 07 Feb 2021 2

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

  When doing what’s right (by social expectations) is wrong (for the individuals) every person involved winds up unhappy and less well off and separated from the family they truly and deeply love. 

  The fascinating balance of the film is that it manages to critique the universality of behavior society requires without discarding the institutions that society is trying to enforce.

  That is to say the film does an admirable defense of marriage but also is extremely insistent upon this point,…

Recent reviews

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  Porky's Snooze Reel 1941

  ★★ Watched by Adam 12 Aug 2022

  A budget short that’s making a series of topical gags and play on word puns. The best bit is the tank trap gag.

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  Porky's Bear Facts 1941

  ★½ Watched by Adam 12 Aug 2022

  More of a merry melody, in a way, this is a dull retelling of the grasshopper and the ant, with some good character animation but not a lot of gags. And the ideology is a bit suspect, clearly this is about “relief” in the 1930s and how resentful many folks felt at what they perceived  to be a lack of gratitude from those who did not starve because of that relief—and that those who didn’t lose their jobs believed the victims of the depression were to be blamed for being victims and were nothing more than loafers before during and after the depression.

Popular reviews

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  Jojo Rabbit 2019

  ★★★★★ Watched by Adam 05 Nov 2019 1

  A film with a miraculous balance of tone and sentiment that manages to find sweetness and humanity and forgiveness in the darkest of times and offer a narrative path of humor and absurdity to counterpoint a story of the terrifying indoctrination of children and the creeping insidious terror of fascism and authoritarianism. 

  Let us not forget that children becoming fanatics selling out their parents and loved ones is no laughing matter and rooted deeply in history particularly the history of the 30s-50s. The real stories of children like Jojo are far darker and more disturbing than this fable—but we have to have hope.

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  Le Petit Soldat 1963

  ★★ Watched by Adam 18 Oct 2019

  A moderately competent intelligence assassin has a mediocre existential crisis and wants to fuck a pretty Russian girl, complete with excessively precious narration and a torrid climactic speech to camera.