Favorite films

Recent reviews

• 

  Black Hawk Down 2001

  Watched 02 Sep 2023

  One of the more brutal depictions of modern warfare. Ridley Scott doesn't hold his punches as he tells a story inspired by the Battle of Mogadishu during the Somalian Civil War. It has a giant ensemble of up and coming male actors, and a good amount of them get at least a little bit of an arc as they experience a military clusterfuck of epic proportions. The movie spends a decent chunk setting up all these young hopeful soldiers and…

• 

  Jules 2023

  Watched 13 Aug 2023

  A cute lighthearted alien encounter movie featuring a couple of retirees and a lost little alien. It's less about sci-fi stuff and more about the very real issues of getting old and coming to grips with accepting the declining qualities of the mind and body. Ben Kingsley is great as the main guy whose backyard is besieged by a crashed UFO (his poor azaleas RIP), and he and the couple of neighbors who also discover the alien use this little gray…

Popular reviews

• 

  Ikiru 1952

  Watched 28 Jan 2021

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

  Kurosawa delivers a masterful exploration of mortality and how we choose to spend our lives. A man learns he will die from stomach cancer, and suddenly realizes he's wasted his adult life in a menial job providing for a son that doesn't fully appreciate him. It can certainly hit home for a lot of people in those types of jobs, and make them wonder, as a doctor in this film posits, what they would do if they knew they only…

• 

  Sound of Metal 2019

  Watched 11 Dec 2020

  A profoundly moving story of a drummer who goes deaf, and how he struggles to adjust to this handicap. Riz Ahmed is brilliant as Ruben, a man experiencing some extraordinary grief, as his chosen lifestyle slips straight away from him, ironically because of its very nature as a super loud occupation. The story actually plays out more or less by following the five stages of grief, and it's his refusal to come to the final stage of acceptance that makes…