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Recent reviews

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  Ali & Ava 2021

  Watched by Kurdt 19 May 2022

  It’s a romance film elevated by its likeable + interesting working-class characters against the backdrop of a multicultural modern Britain that’s still struggling to reckon with its past. Everyone here falls back to old habits when conflict arises, and a lot of the film is about coming to terms with the faults of the past and using them as a catalyst to learn and move forward. It’s also impressively realistically down-to-earth without ever feeling like it’s deliberately trying to make…

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  The Day of the Locust 1975

  Watched by Kurdt 17 May 2022 2

  It’s probably not a great sign that I realised just before watching the movie that I had in fact read the novel, but barely remembered it. I really have nothing insightful to say and can’t really figure out why exactly I didn’t like it, I just found this extremely dull and didn’t think any of the characters were interesting in the slightest. I also don’t think I have much patience for this sort of broadly metaphorical and thematically basic “hey,…

Popular reviews

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  Melancholia 2011

  ★★★★ Watched by Kurdt 20 Apr 2015 11

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

  Von Trier apparently got the idea for this film while battling depression and he definitely nails that feeling with the character of Justine. During the first half of the film, the wedding, her own wedding, the happiest day of their lives for most people, she forces out toothy grins and fakes happiness ("I smile, and I smile, and I smile") but in the end can't fake it any longer. She leaves her wedding to put her nephew to bed, to…

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  The Piano Teacher 2001

  ★★★★½ Watched by Kurdt 27 Apr 2015 11

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

  The manifestation of sexual repression up close. Real close. This is probably my favourite Haneke film as of right now. Just a scary, brutal, unflinching look inside the mind when it's hunting for pleasure above all else.

  Piano teacher Erika, in her forties, still lives with her overbearing mother who we see tear up any of Erika's clothes that she considers too revealing or "gaudy" as she puts it. Erika is constantly focused on her teaching, pushing her students to…