Category: Film
My collected writing on one of my greatest passions: film. I was a film critic in my undergraduate days (trivia: that’s how I met my wife!) but I now take a more philosophical approach to thinking and writing about films I see.
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The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Shakman | 2025 | USA Trivia Factoid: the subtitle of this film refers to the first steps on the road to forgiveness for Julia Garner (who subjected me to Wolf Man earlier this year).
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Le Rayon vert
Rohmer | 1986 | France Considered by many to be his greatest film, this was a Rohmer blind spot for me until now. Knowing people loved it, I’d saved it for “the right moment”. Ironically so, it turns out, as the central character is also waiting for something she can’t articulate or read in the […]
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Affeksjonsverdi
Trier | 2025 | Norway My most anticipated 2025 release, and it delivered. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus posits that suicide is the only true philosophical question. He ultimately rejects suicide and outlines his absurdist philosophy, using the stage actor as one of his illustrative examples of the “absurd man” [sic]. The stage […]
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À bout de souffle
Godard | 1960 | France 3rd watch; first in cinema. And what a delight to see the recent 4K remaster on the Ritz’s biggest screen in the dark of the matinee. Godard’s manner of punctuating nods to his influences with idiosyncratic formal touches is what makes him inimitable. This is my favourite of his films […]
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The Talented Mr. Ripley
Minghella | 1999 | USA I’d never seen this, and can’t stop seeing people note how good Jude Law looks here. And, agreed, but let’s not sleep on late-twenties Cate Blanchett, people. Elsewhere, there just seems to be too much story for a single movie. It’s pacey to the point of feeling like a dot […]
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Friendship
DeYoung | 2025 | USA As somebody who has seen every episode of I Think You Should Leave many times over, it’s very hard for me to take Tim Robinson seriously in any other context. Fortunately, that seems to be a feature of this production rather than a bug. The attempt to balance a very […]
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Superman
Gunn | 2025 | USA The character/concept of Superman has never really done it for me. Consequently, this imperfect but well-executed piece of cinema is about as good as I can imagine a Superman movie ever being. There is a thread of humanity here that is rendered tenderly and extratextually rather than aggressively and overtly. […]
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La Femme de l’aviateur
Rohmer | 1981 | France 3rd watch. A movie that I adore so unreservedly that when I was in Paris last year, I went out of my way to visit Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, where the above sequence was filmed. It’s hard to show a character completely wake up to themselves in merely 106 minutes, and […]
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Raising Arizona
Coen | 1987 | USA 3rd watch and, somewhat miraculously, 2nd in cinema. On the cusp of my 41st birthday, I find myself in an ongoing period of reflection. Or perhaps I am continuing a 41-year-long period of reflection. There is no beauty in this world except the beauty one perceives. Sometimes this perception occurs […]
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La Chimera
Rohrwacher | 2024 | Italy Just the tonic I needed this week. Every now and again cinema just really delivers. Josh O’Connor is sublime here, as is his linen suit. Quietly and yet unrelentingly romantic, it is elliptically punctuated with oneiric imagery that foregrounds the turmoil within Arthur’s psyche. One to rewatch and reinterpret through […]