Favorite films

  • Slap the Monster on Page One
  • Eggshells
  • Death May Be Your Santa Claus
  • King of Jazz

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  • The Red Ball Express

    ★★★

  • Le Plaisir

    ★★★½

  • Hell's Highway

    ★★½

  • Mary

    ★★★

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  • The Red Ball Express

    The Red Ball Express

    ★★★

    Boetticher tackling... a war movie? A bit outside his wheelhouse, but the crackling racial tensions within the squadron are pretty unusual and distinctive for 1952.

  • Le Plaisir

    Le Plaisir

    ★★★½

    Magnificently sly, and unmistakably Ophuls... but of his late-career masterpieces (haven't seen Earrings yet), this one did the least for me. That's praising with faint damn.

    Thought experiment: imagine the second episode as a John Ford movie.

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  • Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

    Valerie and Her Week of Wonders

    ★★★

    If this were by a female director, it'd be a compelling menstrual-hut-power fantasy ode to Goddess Reproductive Magic, but that's not a movie that any man could make, so...

    Disturbing crypto-pedo fantasy that reads like Charles Dodgson and Roman Polanski brainstorming on heavy doses of MDMA.

    It's got vampires + a very girly magic-realism drawn from fairy-tales and dream-work. A bit kitsch, innit? In a good way, though, like a lo-fi Nazareno Cruz.

  • Vicky Cristina Barcelona

    Vicky Cristina Barcelona

    Glib and carelessly-imagined ode to privilege. I tried to ignore my distaste for the superficial artsiness of the characters, but after the scene where the blonde girl decided it would be kicks to go to a slummy-looking neighborhood and photograph sex-workers I just couldn't. Esp. when the SW were all "Hello, American Lady Woman! We love you! Come taste the wines and cheeses of my village!"

    An art-adjacent lifestyle is one thing, an arts career is another.