Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Blue Beetle 2023

  ★★★ Watched 23 Sep 2023

  Despite the charm and good looks of the lead, his character's family is the real star of this show, and although the filmmakers know it too, they don't seem to trust that the audience does; so, they lay on the Mexican-American schtick a bit too thick at times. (It's great to hear so much unapologetic Spanish in a mainstream movie that isn't animated, though.) Without them, this would have been as no-fun as any recent Marvel movie, even though it's…

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  Barbie 2023

  ★★★★ Watched 16 Sep 2023

  It's a bit too schematic and flat in its talkier, more preachy stretches, but it's energetic and good-hearted in the more clever and satirical ones, four things that hardly ever go together in mainstream, non-animated movies. Everyone's committed and seems to be having a good time, too.

Popular reviews

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  In from the Side 2022

  ★ Watched 23 Oct 2022

  It was everything I could do to get through this utterly ordinary gay romance. The film's only claim to novelty is the rugby field, and yet it manages to fuck that up, too, with some of the most inept and unconvincing sports choreography I've seen in a while.

  But the worst of it is the generic dialogue. At one point, a character asks his lover and fellow "cheater," "How did we end up here, Mark?"

  Oh, I dunno…a shitty script?

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  Her 2013

  ★ Watched 12 Jan 2014 5

  I can't imagine anyone who reads sci-fi more than casually, or even someone who's seen a decent number of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, and especially anyone who's read Richard Powers' prescient and emotionally rich Galatea 2.2, or perhaps a reasonably informed average user of modern computers, to do anything but scoff and laugh at Spike Jonez's superficial attempt to speculate about artificially intelligent agents in, what? The near future? An alternate universe? Inside his head? Every time someone…