Etan Weisfogel

I rate things when I feel like it, I don't when I don't.

Favorite films

  • Linda Linda Linda
  • Rangeela
  • Final Victory
  • French Cancan

Recent activity

All
  • Almost Famous

  • The Assistant

  • Fast Times at Ridgemont High

  • Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret.

Recent reviews

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  • The Assistant

    The Assistant

    Begins in a way that suggests a film about the mundane drudgery of being a corporate underling, and so the typical indie minimalist aesthetic (little glimpses into the assistant's daily activities with regular jump cuts to keep things moving) feels unremarkable and obvious, a sort of commercial bastardization of Jeanne Dielman where our immersion into the ritual of labor is replaced by a more efficient, bullet-pointed version of quotidian routine.

    But then there's the scene where she goes to see…

  • TÁR

    TÁR

    ★★

    I keep coming back to the Juilliard masterclass and the tweeted video which subsequently comes out of it—for a film which is so invested in accurately recreating a particular milieu, which goes to great lengths in order to situate its protagonist within the real world of classical music, and which mostly succeeds in that regard, these scenes feel shoddy and misjudged at best, insidious and regressive at worst.

    The extent of Tár's sexual indiscretions, the main thread in the narrative,…

Popular reviews

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  • A Dangerous Method

    A Dangerous Method

    Men will literally invent therapy instead of going to therapy

  • Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

    Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

    ★★★★★

    Forget all the backhanded compliments, all the "despite its flaws," "say what you will about the dialogue," etc etc.... Just on a surface level, this is an incredibly enjoyable and effective (and affective) Hollywood blockbuster—I don't think a better one has been made since, Speed Racer excepted. Like the other prequels, this has a really precise three act structure, but Lucas perfects the pacing in this one: the momentum of the initial action on Coruscant is carried into the middle…