Favorite films

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Recent reviews

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  Shutter Island 2010

  ★★★★½ Rewatched by Andrew Corsini 24 May 2022

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

  As a Martin Scorsese film, this is a simple modern blockbuster homage to Val Lewton. If taken as a Christopher Nolan parody, the film becomes a subtle work of genius.

  I’d like to discuss why people think this is directed by Nolan. Unless of course, they’re simply mistaking it for Inception, released that same year and also starring DiCaprio. Shutter Island revels in misdirection and has a tremendous plot-drive; those thunderous wheels of plot mechanisms constantly turning. The soundtrack by…

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  The Irishman 2019

  ★★★★★ Rewatched by Andrew Corsini 22 May 2022

  Martin Scorsese takes a deathbed confession by former Mafia hitman, Irishman Frank Sheehan (De Niro) and weaves it into what Whittaker Chambers might call, “a Tragedy of History” taking in Jimmy Hoffa, JFK and an assortment of mafia notorieties. Forrest Gump may depict a vast stretch of life but it feels like a young man’s film, vigorous and optimistic to a fault. The Irishman is an old man’s film, solemn, melancholy and full to the brim with depth.

  The central…

Popular reviews

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  Hook 1991

  ★★★★★ Rewatched by Andrew Corsini 16 Feb 2021 3

  This is perhaps Spielberg's most hated film. Not even 1941 ( in which the wunderkind director managed to botch an Ackroyd/ Belushi pairing in between Animal House and The Blues Brothers) comes in for so much hatred from critics, armchair cinema connoisseurs and even Spielberg himself, who has confessed to disliking the film in multiple interviews and, in a fascinating aside, said that while he was making the film, "the more insecure I felt about it, the bigger and more…

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  Andrei Rublev 1966

  ★★★★★ Watched by Andrew Corsini 15 Jan 2021

  Tarkovsky will take your breath away.
  I've never given much thought into the subject, but I imagine this film perfectly sums up the Russian national character: the ability to suffer life's brutalities and yet endure. This Soviet film is the ultimate tribute to Russia as a country and to its people who have battled oppression for centuries. Tarkovsky uses a close and personal style with intense framing that makes the epic moments, when they happen, feel more epic than Kurosawa.…