Favorite films

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Pinned reviews

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  L'Avventura 1960

  ★★★★★ Rewatched by Ethan 21 Oct 2020 8

  “Words are becoming less and less necessary; they create misunderstandings.”

  A wealthy listless young woman disappears during a boat trip around the rocky Mediterranean islands off Sicily. She is never heard from again; it is almost like she never existed at all. Her disaffected lover Sandro and best friend Claudia spend months trying to find her, but their relationship slowly devolves into a love affair fraught with guilt and tension.

  Michelangelo Antonioni’s enigmatic L’Avventura premiered at Cannes in 1960 to…

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  A Brighter Summer Day 1991

  ★★★★★ Watched by Ethan 03 Aug 2020 14

  “Are you lonesome tonight?”

  Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day is a film where everything and nothing happens all at once. An unrivalled artistic achievement in its magnitude and scope, the film encompasses adolescence, ideals, love, and anguish in a tender portrait of Taiwan's search for a collective identity. The film chronicles the exploits of the young and disillusioned Si’r, who is forced to attend night school after failing one of his classes; his family grows worried he will be…

Recent reviews

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  Mirror 1975

  ★★★★★ Rewatched by Ethan 26 Oct 2021 4

  “Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect.”

  When we look back to pivotal moments that shaped our lives, oftentimes what we remember most vividly isn’t the details of what happened but the lingering feeling we are left with.

  Andrei Tarkovsky was an arthouse film director who was endlessly fascinated by the spiritual and the metaphysical. Throughout his career, he devoted his brand of cinema to tackling questions concerning time, memory and our…

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  Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce 1080 Bruxelles 1975

  ★★★★★ Rewatched by Ethan 30 May 2021 5

  Chantal Akerman was a Belgian director whose filmography consisted of experimental narrative films and intimate personal documentaries. For Akerman –– a Jewish woman who was also queer –– identity was always an important dimension of her work. In 1975, Akerman would release her magnum opus, Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles. The film is widely regarded as a masterpiece of feminist and arthouse cinema. The nearly three-and-a-half-hour film follows the lonely housewife Jeanne Dielman, played by French star…

Popular reviews

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  Paris, Texas 1984

  ★★★★★ Watched by Ethan 13 Apr 2018 21

  “I wanted to see him so bad that I didn't even dare imagine him anymore.”

  Seemingly birthed from the dust that surrounds him, a man wordlessly emerges from the desert, trudging towards an invisible horizon, his face weary and withered, his memory elusive, his soul haunted by regret and sorrow.

  Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas is a melancholic portrait of a broken man yearning for reconnection with a family whom he had left years ago. But much more so, the film…

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  Naked 1993

  ★★★★½ Watched by Ethan 12 Jun 2018 11

  “You think you can recapture your youth by fucking it. You don't wanna fuck me. You'll catch something cruel.”

  Mike Leigh’s Naked is a riveting parable brimming with a scornful wit and humanity unseen through initial viewing. The film chronicles the exploits of the sardonic and nihilistic vagabond, Johnny, a man who is first introduced as he brutally rapes a young woman in a back alleyway. Fearing the repercussions of his actions, Johnny flees to the streets of London. There,…