Category: Film Reviews
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PlayTime (1967)
Jacques Tati’s PlayTime was, famously, a flop. Tati built an enormous stage on the outskirts of Paris, at great cost. Audiences didn’t come and critics were divided. Over time, however, the film has come to be regarded as a masterpiece, a simultaneous statement on the confusing hollowness of modernity and a depiction of human resistance.…
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Apocalypse Now (1979)
I have an acquaintance—once a good friend, now an acquaintance; these things happen—who survived an act of political violence. Nearly one hundred people around her died. She was very close to the bomb but, as far as I know from our infrequent meetings, suffered neither serious injury nor persistent psychological trauma. Apocalypse Now is about…
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The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)
Well. The crudeness of 40 Year-Old Virgin—and be prepared for some extreme crudeness, some of which, two decades later, would for good reason no longer be tolerable—has a purpose. The film explores male fragility, especially with respect to sex, by amplifying it. And, truth be told, as offensive as some of these jokes are, they…
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Sinners (2025)
Walking out of Sinners, I thought: human creativity will never be exhausted. Yes, we’re surrounded by a bland artistic landscape shaped by algorithms that attract and desiccate human minds. The tech companies are carnivorous pitcher plants and we are flies…and then a film like Ryan Coogler’s Sinners restores perspective. There is a reservoir of beauty…
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Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
I wasn’t expecting Singin’ in the Rain to be quite so…psychedelic. And also, if one is lacking hallucinogenic assistance, so boring. Yes, Gene Kelly’s athleticism is a marvel. Donald O’Connor’s body-and-soul commitment to “Make ‘Em Laugh” deserves our respect. But it’s all so empty. Critics gush over the film’s feel-good purity, but isn’t this exactly…
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Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat (2024)
Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat is not a story: it’s a feeling. A clip of Nina Simone singing a few bars of Bob Dylan’s “Ballad of Hollis Brown”—”The rats have got your flour/Bad blood it got your mare/If there’s anyone that knows/Is there anyone that cares?”—plays several times in the film, and each time one…