Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  The Homecoming 1973

  ★★★½ Watched 27 Nov 2023

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  #8 of 12 films in my Adapted Screenplay Challenge (8) (Tony Awards)

  I found Harold Pinter's script most disturbing. Although he never uses the terms "free love" or "open marriage," he takes the concepts to an extreme, evolving one man's marriage toward a combination of polyandry and prostitution. For days after reading the play, I was in a funk, thinking largely about my own failed marriage (which involved adultery on both sides) and my attitudes toward sex for money. Although…

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  What's Cooking? 2000

  ★★★½ Watched 26 Nov 2023

  Film #30 among my 52 Films by Women 2023

  I thoroughly enjoyed this Thanksgiving dramedy from writer-director Gurinder Chadha. She has us follow the Thanksgiving activities of four diverse Los Angeles families -- Vietnamese, Afro-American, Latino, and Jewish -- which can be so close to the reality of family dynamics, it hurts to watch at times.

  Take for example Dennis Haysbert as office-dalliance-guilty Ronald Williams and Victor Rivers as the adulterous in-law Javier Avila, both trying to make holiday nice…

Popular reviews

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  Mulholland Drive 2001

  ★★★★½ Watched 09 Aug 2014 36

  No hay banda! It's all a tape. Il n'est pas de orquestra. It is... an illusion! ~ Bondar at Club Silencio

  This magnificent movie will mess with your mind. Over a five-hour period on Saturday night, I watched this film carefully, read up about it on the Internet, and watched it again with frequent pauses and rewinds. I know I liked it. I think I get it. But one never knows for sure with David Lynch.

  SPOILER ALERT - SPOILER…

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  Drive 2011

  ★★½ Watched 23 Aug 2014 23

  Sorry, but I really don't get why so many people love this movie. Almost all the communication is conveyed through subtext and "meaningful" looks. Some of the cast and crew have stated that what's important "isn't what's said, but what isn't said." It was like watching a silent movie, and not in a good way.

  Yes, the opening chase scene is probably among the best I have ever seen after Bullitt. If the movie stopped right there, as the crowd…