Gabe Blank

Gabe Blank Patron

2,092Films

2This year

171Lists

92Following

498Followers

I've fallen for an elaborate trap where I subscribe to a dozen streaming services but still need to rent every movie I want to watch.

Seattle
GabeABlank

Favorite films

  • La Haine
  • The Zone of Interest
  • Civil War
  • Rome, Open City

Recent activity

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  • Se7en

    ★★★★★

  • Crawl

    ★★★

  • Deep Impact

    ★★★½

  • Zodiac

    ★★★★★

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  • Dune: Part Two

    Dune: Part Two 2024

    ★★★★★ Rewatched 01 Mar 2024 3

    "The world has made choices for us."

    Some directors have such a distinct cinematic fingerprint as to be recognized by a single shot. For Spielberg, it’s a close-up of a character's face as they look at the world in wonder. For Denis, it’s a wide where the enormity of the world utterly dwarfs their tiny, insignificant contribution to it.

    It’s Jeanne, diminished against the vast deserts of the Levant in Incendies, on a quest to discover her past.

    It’s special…

  • The Zone of Interest

    The Zone of Interest 2023

    ★★★★★ Watched 28 Jan 2024 1

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

    Not a film about the searing of consciences, but rather how frighteningly easy it is to build a life behind a wall, insulated from the horrors that might otherwise prevent you from tending to your garden. Conscience none the wiser.

    The complete moral collapse of a society is easier to achieve than we'd like to admit. All it takes is a few narcissistic sociopaths, a class of bureaucrats distanced enough from the dirty work to execute their policies, and a…

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  • Se7en

    Se7en 1995

    ★★★★★ Rewatched 04 Jan 2025

    The best looking movie of the ’90s, of Fincher’s career, of Khondji’s career—maybe ever. Okay, I’m exaggerating. But only slightly.

    It's astonishing how incredible film can look in low light when a cinematographer of this caliber knows how to process it. Has a movie this beautiful ever inspired so many awful-looking imitations?

  • Deep Impact

    Deep Impact 1998

    ★★★½ Watched 31 Dec 2024

    In June of 1998, you could walk into a theater and CHOOSE your dumb asteroid movie: the masterpiece Armageddon, or this very good, very strange, melodramatic, anthology-adjacent film about how great America could be if Morgan Freeman were president.

    We used to be a country.

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  • Nosferatu

    Nosferatu 2024

    ★★★½ Watched 26 Dec 2024 1

    He’s unmatched at living and breathing a period setting while transcribing it into pure cinema—Eggers is a peerless craftsman, and 1830s Transylvania fits his temperament like a black glove.

    Cinematography by Jarin Blaschke is predictably jaw-dropping, with an understanding of luminance that forces your eyes to adjust to pitch-black darkness, only to blind you with bursts of sun or stark white light. The blend of black-and-white photography with color—designed to feel like black-and-white—is perhaps the greatest example of Eggers “updating”…

  • Dune: Part Two

    Dune: Part Two 2024

    ★★★★★ Watched 25 Feb 2024

    I reminded myself before sitting down that this was a near-impossible adaptation. Even if Villeneuve and his team embraced the moral darkness at the heart of the novel (really, if Warner Bros allowed them to), the film still had to be a crowd-pleasing action spectacle of the highest order. This tightrope walk demands perfection; I'm still not sure general audiences will be pleased, but I sure am.

    Villeneuve and Jon Spaihts' screenplay doesn't just echo Herbert’s cynical examination of the…

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  • The Zone of Interest
  • RRR
  • The Worst Person in the World
  • Sound of Metal
  • The Irishman

The Greatest Film of Every Year 93 films

  • Metropolis
  • Casablanca
  • Bicycle Thieves
  • Seven Samurai
  • Rear Window

My Favorite of All Time 83 films

Recent lists

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  • Se7en
  • Heat
  • Casino
  • Die Hard With a Vengeance
  • Devil in a Blue Dress

The Films of 1995 17 films

  • The Irishman
  • Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood
  • Parasite
  • Uncut Gems
  • Portrait of a Lady on Fire

The Films of 2019 68 films

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