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May (2002, Lucky McKee)

64/100

Spent a lot of May feeling as if there were just too damn much going on with May. You've got the lazy eye that makes her a social outcast (swiftly corrected); you've ...

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Secret Mall Apartment (2024, Jeremy Workman)

60/100

Irresistible for about 40 minutes, thanks to the human Borrowers’ treasure trove of self-shot video—this project was surprisingly well-documented for the pre-smartphone er...

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Köln 75 (2025, Ido Fluk)

64/100

Improvisation rarely appeals to me, instrumental noodling still less, so I’ve never listened to Keith Jarrett’s The Köln Concert. Nor has Köln 75 exact...

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Little Trouble Girls (2025, Urška Djukić)

57/100

Dirty pool to have my standard walk-out point (at ⅓ of total runtime) fall just as the choirgirls’ game of Truth or Dare is heating up. (Dared to kiss the prettiest girl i...

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The Hairdresser’s Husband (1990, Patrice Leconte)

33/100

Second viewing, last seen during its 1992 U.S. theatrical release. Having loved Leconte’s previous film, 2025-12-04 03:59:54 +0000 UTC View Post

Caught Stealing (2025, Darren Aronofsky)

62/100

Was After Hours mentioned in the press kit or something? I see virtually no resemblance outside of both being set in lower Manhattan (it’s not even the same neighbo...

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Gemko Quibi: November 2025

As a reminder: These are brief (though they always wind up growing longer and longer) thoughts on films that I'm revisiting mostly just because it's been at least 20 years and I’m feeling nostalg...

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Hamnet (2025, Chloé Zhao)

40/100

From apathy to enmity: a journey. Spent the movie’s first hour or so faintly bored, which seems almost inevitable—it’s essentially a biopic focused on the celebrated per...

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Jay Kelly (2025, Noah Baumbach)

49/100

Crippled by rampant phoniness, plus some surprising ineptitude. I don’t blame Billy Crudup, who salvages that scene as best he can from beneath a singularly unflattering hai...

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Fool for Love (1985, Robert Altman)

50/100

One of the long-forgotten indie films I “reviewed” (in 100-word capsules) for Entertainment Weekly back in the late ’90s bore the cringeworthy title I Love ...

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Bed and Sofa (1927, Abram Room)

73/100

That '86 Soderbergh notebook entry became sex, lies and videotape......

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Dark Habits (1983, Pedro Almodovar)

54/100

Avoided this for many years because it looked like non-stop Fallacy of the Profane Granny. Nuns snorting coke and shooting heroin! A convent decorated with Marilyn Monroe and ...

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Shoeshine (1946, Vittorio De Sica)

66/100

Let me note first my single favorite thing about this movie: Its original title, Sciuscià, turns out to be not the Italian word for "shoeshine" (as I'd alwa...

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Sirāt (2025, Oliver Laxe)

59/100

Raves: not even once.

[I guess there's one minor SPOILER below.]

Harrowing, to be sure, and it's arguably my own fault that the punishment our he...

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Going home to get my shine box.

Shoeshine got off to a quick lead in last week's request poll but was ultimately overtaken by Landscape Suicide. This week, it handily beat Branagh's Henry V and the new ...

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Oscar (1991, John Landis)

53/100

Something I assumed about Oscar: Sylvester Stallone plays a character named Oscar. (Oscar doesn't show up until 40 seconds before The End.)

Something else I as...

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Landscape Suicide (1986, James Benning)

63/100

Looking up where I could watch Landscape Suicide (Tubi, surprisingly, but see Anal-Retentive Title Corner below), I inadvertently glimpsed the first few lin...

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The Ice Tower (2025, Lucile Hadžihalilović)

53/100

Not the warped fairytale I'd assumed (based on every promotional still), for better and worse. Better in that Hadžihalilović's strengths are largely suggestive, intimating a...

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Shivers (1975, David Cronenberg)

56/100

Second viewing, last seen at Anthology Film Archives' complete Cronenberg retro in 2002...during the course of which I also first watched Rabid and found that to be <...

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Reflection in a Dead Diamond (2025, Hélène Cattet & Bruno Forzani)

63/100

Can't imagine ever being anything but excited to see Cattet & Forzani ask themselves questions like "How can we create something visually spectacular from four quick shots...

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The Childhood of a Leader (2015, Brady Corbet)

50/100

Title's final word does a lot of load-bearing work here. To be fair, so does Tom Sweet's presence (more than his performance per se; he mostly just looks abs...

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Suicide is painless?

Hope so, since Landscape Suicide came from behind (or so various comments suggest; I wasn't paying attention myself) to eke out a victory over Shoeshine in this week's request pol...

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Enjo (1958, Kon Ichikawa)

57/100

Second viewing, last seen 24 June 1995. (My screening log indicates that I rented it from Kim's Video between theatrical viewings that same day of Apollo 13 and P...

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Good Fortune (2025, Aziz Ansari)

56/100

Honestly, I didn't even need the high-concept premise. Would happily have watched an entire movie about Seth Rogen as a blowhard finance bro and Aziz Ansari as his put-upon pe...

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Green Snake (1993, Tsui Hark)

62/100

Anyone know Tsui's colored-gel budget for this sucker? Every dollar withheld from F/X work—released the same year that Jurassic Park made it clear that digital was ...

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Not enough of my yammerin'. Let's boogie!

As I noted in the most recent Quibi post, my October rewatches of Sick: The Life and Death of Bo...

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Sentimental Value (2025, Joachim Trier)

42/100

Dunno if I'd say there are actual spoilers below, but I do give away a pretty funny joke right off the bat.

Like all of my friends who've seen Sent...

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My Undesirable Friends: Part I • Last Air in Moscow (2024, Julia Loktev)

59/100

Easily the most remarkable thing about Loktev's epic documentary project (Part II: Exile, due sometime next year, will apparently also run somewhere around five hours...

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The Devil to Pay! (1930, Geo. Fitzmaurice)

76/100

Second viewing, last seen at NYU (seems to have been a class on early sound in Hollywood; I wasn't actually taking it, just sitting in on screenings) in 1995. Were I to draft ...

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Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale (2025, Simon Curtis)

55/100

Best of the three films, though that's not saying 2025-11-08 02:07:34 +0000 UTC View Post