rotacirav
Bio: I care too much about literature and music to write quippy few-liners about it, much less grade it (fuck you Robert Christgau), so take my opinions on film cum grano salis. Works rated higher than 80 are recommended. Works rated lower than the 42 Iʼve given “Man Walking Around the Corner”, a one-second proto film from 1887, are advised against.
Featured Reviews
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| 90 92% |  |
Citizen Kane (1941) - Rated 29 Aug 2024
"Let’s be more down to earth and just call it the greatest film of pre-midcentury Hollywood – it’s an easy sociological inference how it got a reputation as best of all time from there. Less capitalist than I expected (confrontation with the Soviet Union really killed a lot of possibilities in American thought), this is still more of a spectacle than something profound. Undeniably monumental as is typical for the age, but you can see the joints."
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| 85 88% |  |
12 Angry Men (1957) - Rated 04 Aug 2024
"An impressive demonstration that the classical unities of theatre (time, place, action; here even with the added restraint of no change in configuration, or group of characters present) can work in film, this is probably one of the greatest pieces of left-liberal propaganda (I mean that word neutrally: that’s what it is). Its truth lies not in depicting our institutions as they are, but as they should be, if we are to have these institutions at all."
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| 35 19% |  |
Inglourious Basterds (2009) - Rated 04 Aug 2024
"solve the problems of the world with VIOLENCE and CINEMA"
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| 98 96% |  |
The Night of the Hunter (1955) - Rated 25 Aug 2024
"Symbolic, not mimetic – of course it flopped, but even on this site many people don’t seem to understand nonmimetic representation (“thin plot”, “overacting”). Apart from cinematography, the use of song (tied to the use of scripture) is extraordinary, helping to create a second act as otherwordly as in “Tristan und Isolde” (and the lullaby’s chromatic mediant pendulum is very Wagnerian). Read it as a psychoanalytic fairytale – the odd-seeming changes in tone are very deliberate."
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| 63 71% |  |
The Godfather (1972) - Rated 29 Aug 2024
"My guess for why this is so popular with film buffs is that it marks the transition from old Hypocritical Hollywood to modern Cruel Hollywood with something technically excellent (but more palatable than Clockwork Orange), so it is a founding document for cinephiles socialised in the 70s to early 00s (after that hypocrisy got new fuel). But it comes years after Leone to whom it owes everything while playing it safer, so it’s only groundbreaking if you think all cinema history happens in America."
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| 15 1% |  |
War Room (2015) - Rated 27 Aug 2024
"I started to watch this in a room full of European hardcore Catholics – the kind of people who believe in literal demons intervening in life. (Long story.) After the first few minutes they said “this is too ridiculous, let’s watch something else”. It’s that kind of film."
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| 94 95% |  |
Barry Lyndon (1975) - Rated 04 Aug 2024
"The great achievement here is shifting the focus away from humans: Like there are parts in Wagner where the voice becomes accompaniment to the orchestra, this is a film about cinematography and staging with the script in service of it. Human life is shown for what it is in a subsidiary manner – we donʼt matter too much after all. Might rate it even higher after rewatching."
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| 66 75% |  |
Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) - Rated 29 Aug 2024
"This could be condemned for Hollywoodizing one of mankind’s greatest tragedies, or respected for educating a mass audience about it. The romantic subplot is definitely in bad taste, but might have been necessary for mainstream acceptance; at any rate, it is balanced out by the surprising acknowledgement that the Nazis took inspiration from U.S. eugenics laws. There have been much more shameless films about the topic, but Hollywood means go only so far here."
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