Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Blue Velvet 1986

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 10 Apr 2022

  One of the cool things about David Lynch is that his early works maintain their power. Later works contain deeper levels of craft and complexity while plumbing the same psychosexual depths, but earlier movies like Blue Velvet still feel like a complete thesis. The spiritual successor to this, Twin Peaks, goes farther and looks closer, but never feels like it's coming from a place of filling in the gaps for an earlier exploration. Lumberton is a proto-Twin Peaks town in…

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  The Duke 2020

  ★★★ Watched 01 Apr 2022

  Saved almost entirely by Jim Broadbent and Helen Mirren, both of whom have enough native watchability to elevate this entry in the Magical Doofus genre from "kill it with fire" to "well, I'm okay with the fact that I watched that."

  This one's about Kempton Bunton, a real-life figure in the 1960s who attained some notoriety for being tried in the Old Bailey for stealing and then ransoming Goya's painting Portrait of the Duke of Wellington as part of a…

Popular reviews

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  Megan Is Missing 2011

  ½ Watched 02 Jun 2019 28

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

  Very, very difficult to write this one up without a ton of unproven personal assumptions about director Michael Goi. There are a number of red flags that go up when one watches Megan is Missing, however:

  - The presentation of the film as "educational" by its director and producers is plainly dishonest. This is pure exploitation and the thought of showing this film to a kid is abhorrent. The fact that the bonus materials include a snippet from Marc Klaas…

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  The Poughkeepsie Tapes 2007

  ★½ Watched 10 Jun 2019 6

  Not sure how this one acquired the reputation it has. This is the kind of heartbreak you set yourself up for when you have an ill-advised love for found footage films.

  It's difficult to pinpoint the main problem with The Poughkeepsie Tapes. The first thing that comes to mind is the awful acting by the guy playing the killer (Ben Messmer). I'm not sure if anyone could have done much with the seventh-grader's vision of a serial killer presented by…