Favorite films

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1945

★★★★★ Rewatched 09 Jun 2025

One of the great arguments for the primacy of mise-en-scène, this, able to barrel through a whole lot of phooey about dreams & symbolism & other psychobabble into becoming a great film by sheer force of ion & blunt emotional-psychological vibrations given via actors & camera & cuts. Proto-Psycho (1960) stuff? -- Gregory Peck, razor in hand, slim triangular face gone blank & dangerous, reminds one of nothing else than Anthony Perkins

2025

★★★★★ Watched 05 Jun 2025

Art, man

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2020

★★★★★ 28

why do you love me?

With Fincher it always comes back to this: loneliness, plus its attendant causes and effects -- alienation and self-isolation, ambition and failure, love and disappointment, desire and loss, etc. etc. The questions of why certain people stick around and others leave when someone is who they are and does what they do. I find Mank and his wife's relationship quite moving, and as such is a great example of how Fincher subtly operates with this…

2024

★★★★★ 1

If today were like the 1950s, this would inspire a second string Cahiers critic to write an imioned multi-page piece called "Schizophrénie et l'image" or something, the film would end up #12 on the publication's year-end-list to the minor chagrin of the less radical editors, and establishment English-language critics would get a chuckle and head shake out of it when they heard the news.
M. Night in the 2020s: King of the Bs (in the guise of As)

230

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