I cannot believe how it is possible that I have never seen this film in my life. I have logged almost 4,000 films on Letterboxd, almost 90 percent of which are feature films, and yet I chose never to make Princess Mononoke one of those 4,000 films for some stupid reason that I cannot even properly explain.
It is rare that I give a full five-star rating on a first-time watch – granted, I did it two days in a…
Almost four years after my first viewing of Andrei Tarkovsky's masterful sci-fi rumination Stalker, I finally watched it a second time. When I saw it for the first time, I spent hours upon hours delving into YouTube essays and written commentaries regarding the meaning of Stalker; I thought that would have sufficiently prepared me for a second exposure to Stalker, but as it turns out, once again I had to frequently jump to the Wikipedia summary in order to actually…
"I got news for you. Most of the guys up in Sing Sing weren't murderers until they killed somebody."
This movie rules.
What a hard-hitting blast of a heist movie Inside Man is. I haven't seen it in at least five years and forgot almost everything about it, so it felt like watching it for the first time thanks to my terrible memory. But from the first second, Spike Lee knows how to grip you with his unique grasp for…
The Marriage of Maria Braun is one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's most fascinating films. Made when the director was just 32 years old but already had eighteen films under his belt, fifteen of which feature-length, Fassbinder channeled the post-war state of Germany, analyzing the changes in society and how West Germany transformed in the first ten years after the end of its darkest hours.
Maria Braun is a fascinating and multi-layered character. Fassbinder uses this character to draw parallels from…
At its core, Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy depicts people who most likely never would have thought themselves capable of violence being coerced into violence, mostly by motivation of revenge for infinite suffering and grief.
And so, the thematic focus of the previous two films in his trilogy continues: that violence and vengeance will only fuel further violence and vengeance. In a striking departure from Mr. Vengeance, however, Lady Vengeance finds its satisfaction not so much through the physicality of its…
"An animal caught in a trap will gnaw off its own leg to escape. What will you do?"
So, Dune. Easily the most highly anticipated movie of the year for many, which is inevitably going to lead to some reactions of disappointment. In my book, Denis Villeneuve transcends all my high hopes with his visually striking adaptation of Frank Herbert's classic novel.
To get it out of the way first, the major criticism of Dune so far seems to be…
