Reviews
A curated archive of the films that shaped me — each review written as a conversation between the screen and the soul.
28 essays
New reviews arrive after each screening, edited with care.
Yi Yi
"Since movies were invented, we have lived three times as long."
Wendy and Lucy
*Wendy and Lucy* is seventy-six minutes long, and it broke me in half.
The Worst Person in the World
Are we living in the worst of eras? This is the question that haunts me as I watch Joachim Trier's *The Worst Person in the World*, a film that captures the specific anxieties and contradictions of being young in the...
The Turin Horse
I watched *The Turin Horse* and felt like I'd been buried alive.
The Seventh Seal
I was nineteen when I first watched *The Seventh Seal*, and I thought I was so deep for understanding it. I wrote a pretentious essay about existentialism and the death of God and the search for meaning in a meaningle...
The Mastermind
This might be the quietest, clumsiest "heist film" I have ever seen. The title is a massive irony—there is no "mastermind" here, only a man trapped by life, shivering in the chill of 1970. Kelly Reichardt's *The Maste...
The Lobster
*The Lobster* is the weirdest film I've ever loved.
Taste of Cherry
Endless yellow earth, winding roads, and Mr. Badii's solitary drive. He is searching for someone to bury him, yet he stumbles upon reasons to stay alive. Abbas Kiarostami's *Taste of Cherry* is a film about death that...
Synecdoche, New York
I've watched *Synecdoche, New York* three times, and I still don't fully understand it. But I feel it. In my bones. In the pit of my stomach. In the creeping dread that I'm wasting my life.
Stalker
I watched *Stalker* on a rainy Sunday afternoon when I was supposed to be doing something productive. Instead, I sank into my couch for nearly three hours and let Tarkovsky pull me into his Zone—that forbidden, myster...
Spring Summer Fall Winter and Spring
I watched *Spring Summer Fall Winter and Spring* on a retreat, alone in a cabin by a lake. It felt like the only appropriate setting for this film—isolated, quiet, surrounded by nature.
Solaris
I tried to watch *Solaris* three times before I finally made it through. The first two times, I fell asleep. Not because it's boring—though it is slow—but because Tarkovsky's rhythm is so hypnotic, so deliberately pac...
Rosetta
Fish hooks set on glass jars. A river thick with mud. The meager warmth of a hairdryer. A girl's stubborn back. A gas canister that refused to light. These are the images that stay with me from the Dardenne brothers'...
Paris, Texas
Paris, Texas. People always yearn for something beautiful, even when it is embedded in scorched earth—just as love flickers within the banality of life. Desolate. Poignant. These are the words that come to mind when I...
Mulholland Drive
I have no idea what this film is about, and I've watched it four times.
Landscape in the Mist
A runaway bride frozen in time. A horse thrashing in its final death throes. A violinist whose melody is left hanging in the cold air. A truck that bleeds silently into the street. Even the "Hand of God"—that massive...
In the Mood for Love
I fell in love with this film the way you fall in love with a person—slowly, then all at once, then forever.
Harakiri
I thought *Harakiri* was going to be a samurai film. Swords, honor, noble deaths. The stuff of legend.
Frances Ha
Black and white New York. Frances, running. Twenty-seven is an awkward age—not young enough to be reckless, not old enough to have it figured out. Frances is clumsy, broke, and supposedly "undateable." Yet, I adore he...
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
If I could, I would want that clinic, too. Just one button to erase the person who broke my heart. Who hasn't fantasized about this? The ability to simply delete the memories that cause us pain, to wake up one morning...
Come and See
I don't know if I can recommend *Come and See*. I don't know if "recommend" is even the right word. This isn't a film you enjoy. It's a film you survive.
Chungking Express
If *In the Mood for Love* is Wong Kar-wai's heartbreak, *Chungking Express* is his caffeinated fever dream. And I mean that in the best possible way.
Boyhood
I watched *Boyhood* when I was twenty-four, and I cried because I recognized my own life in Mason's.
Blue Is the Warmest Color
Even after all these years, I still remember that touch of blue fading away at the street corner. This film is so intensely personal to me that I find it impossible to analyze through a critical lens. It is not a film...
Bicycle Thieves
I watched *Bicycle Thieves* in a film class in college, and I remember thinking it was "important" but not particularly moving. It was black and white, it was old, it was Italian neorealism—all the things you're suppo...
Before Sunrise
I watched *Before Sunrise* on a first date. We streamed it on my laptop, sitting on my couch, barely touching. And by the end, we were holding hands, and I was thinking: this is what I want. This. Exactly this.
Amour
I watched *Amour* alone in my apartment on a Tuesday night, and I had to pause it three times because I couldn't stop crying.
A Ghost Story
I watched *A Ghost Story* alone at midnight, and I had an existential crisis.