Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  TÁR 2022

  ★★★★½ Watched 10 Feb 2023

  Greatness is really nothing more than a haunted post-Soviet Bauhaus villa spewing sewage and predation into the margins. It's that place where the powerful think no one will ever notice. Until we do. And even then all they need do is wait. It's attrition as accountability.

  There's this Black Swan vibe to all of this but it hardly feels derivative. This movie definitely has more to say. It's weird seeing all this talk about cancel culture but really it's more…

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  Decision to Leave 2022

  Watched 06 Feb 2023

  I'm not clever enough to disguise that I feel no ways about this if only because I fell asleep for like the entire middle portion of the movie so you can imagine how confused I was by the end. Another one for the re-watch list!

Popular reviews

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  Roadgames 1981

  ★★★★ Watched 18 Sep 2017

  Plucky yet relentless. Stacy Keach nails it as the gregarious guy-who-drives-a-truck-but-is-not-a-truck-driver and JLC cements her scream queen reputation as an inquisitive hitcher in this 80s gem that features one of the weirdest car chases I've ever seen.

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  Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance 1972

  ★★★★½ Rewatched 14 Jul 2017

  The sheer brutality and nihilism of Koike's writing doesn't really make the transition from manga to screen but enough of it bleeds through to give you this fresh sense of alien doom that is otherwise lacking in other chanbara before or since. I remember watching the New World Pictures mash-up as a kid feeling utterly disturbed by Itto Ogami's almost vile single-mindedness. At least in comparison to other samurai flicks I'd seen. Wakayama suffused his portrayal of Ogami with an…