Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  Blue Jean 2022

  ★★ Watched 16 Jun 2023

  Excerpted from my review for The Spool. 

  “A portrait of a closeted lesbian woman living in England during Margaret Thatcher’s oppressively homophobic 1980s reign, Georgia Oakley’s Blue Jean illustrates a unique paradox for a critic. How does one navigate criticizing a film’s self-imposed binaries while also accounting for the realities of a restrictive period, the gravity of the subject matter (and parallel current circumstances), and the differentiation of what is intended as cinematic affect and what constitutes clumsy filmmaking? 

  From the…

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  Solaris 2002

  ★★★½ Rewatched 01 Mar 2023

  Discussed on Discussed on Episode 15 of Intermission. with Dan Mecca.

  Here's how I contextualized this conversation in the description of the episode:

  "Coming off a disparate and largely consistent run of projects (including most recently, the stubbornly low-key backstage musical/relationship drama, Magic Mike’s Last Dance), Soderbergh was and remains an unpredictable filmmaker who’s as likely to knock out a four-quadrant-blockbuster as an obtusely rendered conspiracy thriller throwback like Kimi.

  Today’s conversation touches on Soderbergh’s ongoing fluency switching between different…

Recent reviews

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  Priscilla 2023

  ★★★½ Watched 29 Nov 2023

  “Promise me you’ll stay the way you are.”

  I understand why some view this as potentially fussy to the point of redundancy but I think there’s something compelling and moving in its juxtaposition of the minute and an abstract mythic.

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  All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt 2023

  ★★★★ Watched 28 Nov 2023

  There’s so much I want to say about the ways that hands and arms and backs and bodies are shot in this. Remarkable film.

Popular reviews

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  Titane 2021

  ★★½ Watched 01 Oct 2021 3

  Heavy metal petting.

  Really feel like I should have had a stronger positive or negative reaction to this given how hard it’s trying to make me feel something.

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  Licorice Pizza 2021

  ★★★★ Watched 16 Nov 2021

  “I doubt it, but we’ll see.”
  Hustle and Flow.

  A very rewarding continuation of Phantom Thread’s thematic concerns of partnerships vs. transactional dynamics. Toes difficult line of making these relationships literal without narrativizing them.

  PTA has long thrived in motion, but this feels crucially breathless to avoid preciousness or relationship signposting. Every passage feels dense in concept (just an endless string of schemes), but smartly blends together as a combination of youthful impulse, melancholic wanderlust, and gamesmanship. 

  On some level,…