recent product reviews
The Invitation (2015)
The characters, the actors who pay them, the way story is told… The whole thing oozes LA. Everybody is pretty and trendy and cool, hiding their insecurities and hollow lives with big smiles, well-timed laughs, and hipster fashions. The story is superficially tense, the scenes are are unrealistically awkward. Just…
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Moonlight (2016)
Bold subject matter, but Best Picture? If the award is given to the film with the boldest subject matter, and not the one which is most engaging or well-made or entertaining, then I think that’s a shame. Even more confusing is the Best Supporting Actor. He was only in the…
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Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo (2005)
A couple of laughs and some hot women, but overall it’s pretty goofy.
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Zero Days (2016)
Great collection of footage and high-quality interviews. Good explanation of some pretty technical stuff. It all really opens your eyes to how much is going on that we don’t know about. The visual effects, diagrams are ever-present but help to make things more stimulating and informative. The subtle droning of…
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Towelhead (2007)
Strange title, and I understand the controversy around it. This movie is less about racial slurs (she’s never even shown shown wearing a hijab) than it is about a young girl’s sexual awakening. Sexual coming-of-age stories seem to be Alan Ball’s thing. It’s no coincidence that he wrote and produced…
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Motel Hell (1980)
It’s a little cheesy and goofy, but as far as horror films of the 80’s go, it’s gruesome and creepy and surprisingly good. Sticks with the horror movie traditions of gore, camp, black comedy, hot women, sex, deviancy, and of course, chainsaws. The formula works. And it actually has a…
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Nocturnal Animals (2016)
Three stories told in parallel, and there are some interesting metaphorical connections between them all. But the experience of watching the film, as cleverly layered as it is, is quite disturbing and unsettling. Tom Ford is an interesting dude. The desert story alone would have been a good movie. A…
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Manchester by the Sea (2016)
An odd story oddly put together. Flashbacks are jarringly subtle. Some scenes with delightful sarcasm start to be funny but are lost in the greater tragedy of the movie. A few other scenes, entertaining as they are, involve characters other than the obvious protagonist, which makes me wonder what role…
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Carol (2015)
I wasn’t born in the 50’s, but I imagine this is how it really looked, this is how people acted, and this is how people talked. Even the photography has a slight fade and color cast to it that evokes another time. Oscar-worthy in terms of it’s costumes and visual…
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The Sessions (2012)
Heavy and well-made. Definitely a unique storyline. I know it’s based on a true story, but I really enjoyed the complex relationship between the patient and the surrogate. It lost a bit of steam when it veered away from that plotline just as things were getting interesting toward the end…
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I'm a photographer, web developer, travel enthusiast, and movie buff living in Alexandria, Virginia, USA.In the summer of 1993, I started writing reviews for every movie I saw and haven't looked back. I'm up to 2,374 reviews now. This makes me cool or a complete dork, depending on your perspective.
Some of these reviews contain spoilers, so if that bothers you, don't read!
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