Favorite films

Pinned reviews

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  The Night Porter 1974

  ★★★★★ Watched 26 Aug 2021 24

  The Years of Lead – Book Out Now!

  "Cultural criticism finds itself faced with the final stage in the dialectic of culture and barbarism. To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric."
  –Theodor Adorno, "Cultural Criticism and Society"

  "Adorno does not wish to negate representation; on the contrary, he argues that the aesthetics of post-Holocaust poetry are of a particular 'barbaric' character... Adorno is attempting to describe a new form of poetry which is stylistically and thematically awkward. The language is…

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  Cure 1997

  ★★★★★ Watched 14 Nov 2022 34

  MESMERISM AND THE END OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT IN FRANCE

  This one little stray title on a textbook lying discarded in Mamiya's room was what tied it all together for me. The Enlightenment was a 17th and 18th century philosophical movement that sought to understand the world through empiricism and rationality. Here, in 1997 when Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure was released, at the end of the 20th century, at the peak of the postmodern era, that search for truth and understanding is…

Recent reviews

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  Light Sleeper 1992

  ★★★★ Watched 13 Aug 2024 2

  Depraved & Dejected: Part One

  "I have trouble sleeping. Look. What do you see around me? Is there anything? Is it dark? Have I run out of luck? Is there luck?"

  I feel this deep down tremblin'
  In the earth 'neath my feet
  That shakes the great foundations
  I awake from my sleep
  I trust my life to providence
  I trust my soul to grace
  But nothing takes away the pain
  I can't forget your face

  And it feels
  Like the world's on fire

  A…

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  August in the Water 1995

  ★★★★★ Watched 09 Aug 2024 9

  "During a class in primary school, I was staring at parts of my body like nails or hair, and then, as I looked more closely at them, I became aware of the particles that make up my body… Even smaller than atoms or molecules. However small, they're part of me. Then I realized there are even smaller parts than the air, which are still parts of me. And all the particles, like that of my classmates or of a chair,…

Popular reviews

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  Mulholland Drive 2001

  ★★★★★ Rewatched 04 Mar 2015 217

  "Hey pretty girl, time to wake up."

  There was a time not too long ago when if you asked me what my favorite movie was I might have told you Mulholland Drive. There's a lot going on in the film and I certainly won't claim to understand all of it (something I might have done when it was my "favorite movie"), but I do have a reading of it that seems to answer a lot of the questions it poses,…

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  Ferris Bueller's Day Off 1986

  ★★★ Watched 01 Apr 2014 205

  In a selfish attempt to cope with his separation anxiety, a sociopathic student abuses his relationship with his mentally unstable best friend in order to throw his future away on a single day of raucous debauchery.