Full-time film enthusiast on a limited schedule and budget.
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Petite Maman 2021
When I was a kid, there was a point when it occurred to me that my grandparents were my parents' parents, and by extension that they were once kids just like I was. From then on, I kept wondering about the ways they might have been like me - what music they liked, what games they played, the subjects they enjoyed in school. Trying to reconcile our parental figures with the children they used to be is one of the…
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Sobibor, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m. 2001
Definitely the right call for Lanzmann to separate this from SHOAH, since that was about wholesale extermination whereas this is the rare story of the Jews triumphing over their oppressors. Packs a surprising amount of power into the protracted nature of Lanzmann's interviews, which includes all the translations. And while I'm not sure this was the filmmaker's intent, I kept thinking about the sheer level of dehumanization caused by the Holocaust, not just in the treatment of the Jews but also in draining of Germans of their compassion and empathy and leaving behind only hatred and cruelty.
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Another Woman 1988
For a while, I was sort of annoyed by Marion's tendency to narrate the events of her own life in such an on-the-nose manner. Then it hit me that OF COURSE Marion (Gena Rowlands, masterful) would do that- she's the sort of person who would want to neatly package all of her actions with a minimum of emotional fuss, just to "set the record straight," if only to herself. Once I got over that hump, the movie as a whole…
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Oz the Great and Powerful 2013
This is exactly the kind of movie that seems like it'll be ideal for a Yesterday's Hits-style anthropological assessment in a couple of decades. Those elements that have made this so popular- the wall-to-wall CGI-based spectacle, the four-quadrant-skewing reappropriation of one of the classics of Hollywood cinema- will probably be what makes this look quaint and dated over time. Yet it also promises to be fascinating in a number of ways.
Most noticeably, this might be the first blockbuster I've…
