Favorite films

Recent activity

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Recent reviews

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  Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings 2021

  ★★★★ Watched by Julie 13 Jun 2022

  A Big H Hollywood movie that not only respects, but also really loves the Chinese martial arts movies to which it is so indebted? That is about family and lineage and modernity and growth and also fun as hell? Fight (not battle) scenes with exhilarating choreography, shot well, not edited to death? Of course I loved it.

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  Top Gun 1986

  ★★★ Watched by Julie 12 Jun 2022

  Pretty compelling even though the conflict was almost entirely internal. Interesting for a Hollywood blockbuster

Popular reviews

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  Samsara 2011

  ★★ Watched by Julie 16 Sep 2012 16

  While undeniably beautiful, this film left a bad taste in my mouth. Samsara is a series of images, cut together in fairly rapid succession, taking the viewer on a “global” tour of the “cultures of the world”. Some images are meant to be purely aesthetically beautiful (which they are), some images are meant to be confrontational. But as these are just images, without context, and in the absence of any explicit narrative, the meaning comes from montage, and I did…

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  Drunken Master 1978

  ★★★★★ Watched by Julie 14 Jul 2012 7

  I'm breaking my rule and not reviewing both times I watched this film.

  I watched this on Friday night, and thought it was alright - some great fights, but nothing really stood out.

  But I knew I was missing something, and I immediately turned on the commentary, which I finished the next day. The DVD commentary is by Ric Meyers, author of Great Martial Arts Movies and a friend of Jackie Chan, and Jeff Yang, author of several books including…