Platoon 1986 ★★★★½ Watched Sep 11, 2020 "Platoon" works best considered as a cinematic memoir about director Oliver Stone's service time in the American Vietnam War. It's misidentified as an anti-war movie, and, unlike most other Stone fare, it's not especially about abstract politics or some vast sweep of history.…

Sunday Too Far Away 1975 ★★★ Watched Sep 10, 2020 (WARNING: the IMDB.com summary of this movie is a sick travestry. It only describes the last 5 minutes of the movie! Avoid at all costs.) This movie's advertised as one of the finest and earliest gems of the 1970s Australian New…

Dawn of the Dead 1978 ★★★½ Watched Sep 09, 2020 I knew going in that this movie was partly a critique of American consumerism, by featuring a shopping mall. I had not known, though, the the critique was not just the zombies who instinctly return to the mall, but the…

This Is Not a Film 2011 ★★★½ Watched Sep 06, 2020 Self-portraits populate art history; most painters make them. But why don't filmmakers create self-portraits? Maybe Jafar Panahi wouldn't, and even didn't want to, but here he's desperate. Under house arrest and awaiting a verdict, after being arrested for his recent…

I’m Thinking of Ending Things 2020 ★★★★ Watched Sep 04, 2020 At its core, at least upon first viewing, this movie is about the bleakness of aging, whether growing old oneself or a relationship that aging. That is the ambiguity of the title: "Ending things" could be about wanting life…

The Shawshank Redemption 1994 ★★★★½ Rewatched Jan 05, 2021 I first watched this movie on my tiny 10" TV in my bedroom, probably at the age of 15, when the movie came out on VHS. Since then, I have seen it a couple times, but not in the last 25 years.…