Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  The Second Game 2014

  ★★★½ Watched 28 May 2023

  “But you couldn’t make a film out of this.”
  “Let’s see.”

  “Anyway, these things are past history now. They’re not interesting to anyone. Just like this match isn’t really of interest to anyone.”

  One of my favorite aspects of the cinema of football is that, while the beautiful game contains deeper geopolitical intrigue and elicits violence in the name of fanaticism more than every other sport combined (a fact Porumboiu acknowledges throughout), the films so often portray matches which the world has long forgotten - insignificant encounters between a limited number of people that don’t even rise to the level of historical footnote.

• 

  Mekong Hotel 2012

  ★★ Watched 10 May 2023

  Really had a hard time getting into this, mainly due to the unserious choice to layer a acoustic guitar score high in the mix over the entire thing.

Popular reviews

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  Licorice Pizza 2021

  ★★★★★ Watched 10 Nov 2021 3

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

  To think I was actively prepared that I might hate this….and yet, it is basically* perfect, and might ultimately prove to be my favorite coming of age film, full stop. It’s everything I love about PTA - an explosion of culture, history, politics, and the deepest of intimacy. Emotionally messy, shaggy in the name of character, and with more blood in its veins than anything else I’ll see this year. The kind of movie that can just floor you equally…

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  First Man 2018

  ★ Watched 08 Oct 2018 2

  I hated so many things about this, but I feel I should at least commend the general aesthetic chaos of the flight sequences: a mostly impressionistic series of underlit handheld closeups which highlights the physical toll on the human body, and also the fact that this technology - while being at the forefront of human achievement - never seems to be quite as secure as one would hope.

  Having said that, the motif wears out almost immediately because Chazelle shoots…