Favorite films

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Pinned reviews

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  Sudden Fury 1975

  ★★★★½ Watched 04 Jan 2021

  I told myself I was going to review every movie I watched this year, but I’ve already broken my resolution with Sudden Fury. So here are some aspects of the movie that struck me, in lieu of an actual review:
   
  1. Surprise: I had never heard of this movie, which is great. 
  2. Exacting: the director Brian Damude knew exactly what story he wanted to tell and how he wanted to tell it. Sudden Fury breezes by with total…

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  Patrick Still Lives 1980

  ★★★ Watched 31 Dec 2020

  Patrick Still Lives is critic-proof. Everything you can say against it is a reason to see it.

  Shamelessly derivative? You bet. 

  Shockingly, unnecessarily violent? You have no idea.

  Sleazy? Oh, man.

Recent reviews

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  There's Always Tomorrow 1956

  ★★★★ Watched 21 Jan 2023

  “Well, what do you know? Long pants at last.”

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  To Leslie 2022

  ★★★★ Watched 19 Jan 2023

  Nom for Riseborough.

  The whole cast is great, actually. Marc Maron (despite a sometimes-shaky Texas accent), Allison Janney, Stephen Root.

  To Leslie gets at the self-fulfilling hopelessness of alcoholism. You know you’ve let everyone down, and that they’ll never forgive you or see you as anything but a fuck-up. You don’t know how to stop wanting the approval of those folks, or how to stop drinking, so you drink more and hurt more feelings in a worse way. Especially your…

Popular reviews

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  Mandy 2018

  ★★★★½ Watched 14 Sep 2018 3

  A gorgeous, haunted rock concert of a movie. I’m so happy Panos Cosmatos has been able to continue the throw-everything-at-the-wall style trip he was on for his debut, Beyond the Black Rainbow. Mixing Argento, 80s kitsch, proto heavy metal so heavy it feels like the soundtrack to an ancient sect of evil monks, and a strong simple belief in true love, Cosmatos doesn’t so much make a movie as cast a spell.

  At the start of the film (set in…

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  Schlock 1973

  ★★★½ Watched 22 Jun 2018

  Schlock has been unavailable for years. There was an out of print DVD from the early 2000s that kept getting more expensive, but other than that there's been no way to see John Landis' debut film. Recently an all-region blu-ray came out from a German company. Wow, was it worth ordering.

  Schlock has all the flaws you'd expect from a low-budget horror movie made in the 70s by a 21-year-old. There's plenty of bad acting, sloppy lighting, and a threadbare…