Favorite films

Recent reviews

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  Phantom Thread 2017

  ★★★★½ Watched 11 Jan 2018 32

  Punch-Drunk Love's Evil Twin or:
  All's Fair in Love and Wardrobe or:
  Be Careful What You Stitch For

  Elegantly, caustically hilarious.

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  The Neon Demon 2016

  ★★★½ Watched 21 Nov 2016

  Third acts are tough. Most of my film-going experience has seen plot propelled by premise, launched by first acts and relying on an agreement with the audience that the filmmaker makes an opening deposit on engagement. In a world where nothing is original, and everything has been done before, we settle for predictability (sometimes, but less frequently, in hindsight) because "the journey is more important than the destination" has been hammered into us as a bulwark against criticism that escapism…

Popular reviews

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  The Master 2012

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 26 Jan 2013 35

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

  Freddie is a bad dog. He keeps running away from home. He stumbles on a new master who loves him very much and tries to teach him to behave. Freddie loves his new master very much too, and tries to learn new tricks for him. Unfortunately, the call of the wild proves too much for Freddie and he runs away again. After a time, he returns to the master he loves so much only to find that his master has…

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  High and Low 1963

  ★★★★½ Watched 24 Mar 2013 21

  Leave it to Kurosawa to make an hour of listing evidence and clues exciting.

  High and Low is tight, tense, and engaging, but what makes it so great for me is that Kurosawa (based on the book King's Ransom by Ed McBain) uses an almost Dante-like structuring of the three points of view by which this story is told. Each act is a discrete and self-contained plot with its own beginning, middle, and end, which make High and Low more…