Favorite films

Recent activity

• 

  ★★★★

• 

  ★★★★

• 

  ★★★★

• 

  ★★★★

Recent reviews

• 

  One Fine Morning 2022

  ★★★★ Watched 30 Jan 2023

  I watched this just after reading and discussing David Bordwell's ideas about classical narration, so this made me think of Hansen-Love (whom I've always loved) as a kind of radical narratologist, which I'd never really thought of before. Here, her storytelling is quite loose: there's usually no causal linkage between scenes -- we seem (early on, especially) to see one random thing, then another random thing (Seydoux at her job as a translator, Seydoux cuddling with her daughter, Seydoux visiting…

• 

  The Green Room 1978

  ★★★★ Watched 24 Jan 2023 3

  I think I liked this one more than most people.

Popular reviews

• 

  Imitation of Life 1959

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 09 Nov 2016 2

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

  I finished watching the second half of this movie for the third class in a row this morning. My students at Tisch today were angry, ashen. What could I say to them? In the 8am class, I was in tears throughout a lot of the film. Every time Sarah Jane or her mother spoke I had to choke back a gasp. The funeral was more moving than anytime I’d ever experienced it. But in this screening, my usual ironic antagonism…

• 

  Through the Olive Trees 1994

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 23 Mar 2015 9

  I had that all-too rare experience of appreciating a film I loved even more because of the experiencing of teaching it. The first time I saw the movie (at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens (then called the American Museum of the Moving Image) back in 95 or 96) was one of the very few moments I left a theater feeling as if my mind had split open (my first screenings of L'AVVENTURA and of Apichatpong come to…