Favorite films
Don’t forget to select your favorite films!
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★★★★★ Watched 15 Jul 2024
3rd(?) viewing (unseen in ~10+ years); first time on 35mm.
It’s silly to quibble with perfection—and rest assured this is as perfect as a 20th century American film gets, obviously: an awe-inspiring synthesis of amalgamated aesthetic sensibilities, urban ethnography, evergreen political “provocations,” and a bottomless well of empathy, which make up a microcosmic portrait of humanity in all of its beautiful, ugly shades. (Again, obviously; there’s nothing new to be said or written about this film especially.) But the epilogue,…
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First viewing; 35mm.
As a vehicle for sheer unpleasantness, Cape Fear succeeds in spades, but the supposed moral ambiguity that Wesley Strick tries to mine in his script doesn’t pass muster. It’s a compelling idea on paper: Beta Male Pillar of Society, who smugly coasts on his upright community standing, isn’t even aware of his professional/personal corruption until a Straight-Outta-Hell Alpha Criminal forces him to see that they’re both on the same continuum of wrongdoing. I haven’t read The…
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This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.
I think it’s easy to forget that much of this movie’s climax hinges on the independent decisions made by female characters, i.e. Jules’ sobriety and Becca getting shitfaced on her own, both of which spotlight the boys’ insecurity and the shortsightedness of “their plan.” Though Superbad’s premise—a Homeric odyssey for booze in part to loosen up objects of affection so they’d consider hooking up with dorks—is probably no longer kosher for good reasons, the way that it eventually wraps up…
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This movie used to only be funny, with maybe enough melancholy to give it some teeth. I watch it now and every moment that doesn’t make me laugh breaks my heart. I’m loath to praise a film for its niceness because Our Current Cultural Landscape exalts the most boring form of it imaginable, i.e. people being gooey to each other because any other mode of expression (sarcasm, cynicism, apathy, contempt) is ostensibly too much for such dull, sensitive souls to…
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