Just gonna use this as a place for rough thoughts on things--star ratings are purely polemical and no word is final.
Favorite films
Recent activity
AllRecent reviews
More-
Belfast 2021
Kenneth Branagh's The Long Day Closes, or maybe his Mank (not a pejorative) -- of course none of this really means anything, it's a memoir story in black-and-white, but I like throwing "artier" titles next to something like this, which is perceived rightly or wrongly as Oscar bait and given little credence as a film of much value. It's no masterpiece, if that word means anything to you, and I didn't expect as much; my very little familiarity with Branagh…
-
Popular reviews
More-
Mank 2020
why do you love me?
With Fincher it always comes back to this: loneliness, plus its attendant causes and effects -- alienation and self-isolation, ambition and failure, love and disappointment, desire and loss, etc. etc. The questions of why certain people stick around and others leave when someone is who they are and does what they do. I find Mank and his wife's relationship quite moving, and as such is a great example of how Fincher subtly operates with this…
-
The Card Counter 2021
who are you, God?
Schrader's L'argent, a movie that is barely a movie, a film at the end of the 21st century. Conversations filmed in shot-reverse shot or in two shots with no resemblance to any conversations i've ever seen in a movie, the lack of perceptible tension, momentum, excitement in them is the very thing that makes them tense, momentous, exciting. As late films go this one is veerrry late. It seemingly exists not to be a film but…
