Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate is one of my favorite films. Not one I revisit often, or even think about all that regularly—but when I do, it blasts itself into my consciousness with a fervor that is unshakable. It’s less a film than a reckoning. For anyone in the business of making things—of translating interior chaos into something tangible—this one cuts deep.

It’s a quiet, aching meditation on isolation and the brutal courage it takes to keep creating when the world treats your vision like a disease. Schnabel doesn’t romanticize Vincent van Gogh; he lets the ache of the man rise naturally. And Willem Dafoe—Jesus. He doesn’t perform Van Gogh so much as dissolve into him. The fragility, the flickers of joy, the full-body loneliness—it’s all there, raw and unvarnished. There’s a gentleness in his portrayal that makes the cruelty around him hit harder.

The melancholy runs through every frame, but so does something else—something flickering and defiant. Even in the film’s hardest moments, in the scenes that are awkward or quietly humiliating, there’s this pulse of hope, of resilience. The struggle isn’t background noise—it’s the entire point. And still, Van Gogh paints. Still, he sees beauty and tries to pin it to the page.

Benoît Delhomme’s cinematography might be one of the greatest visual achievements I’ve seen. It doesn’t just show us the world Van Gogh painted—it invites us into the way he saw it. The camera jitters, floats, fixates, loses focus—always searching, always just slightly off from comfort. It’s intimate without being precious, expressive without ever feeling like a trick. It never once talks down to the audience or tries to impress us. It just is—earnest, vulnerable, and unwavering in its perspective.

Van Gogh’s art is beautiful, yes—but it’s inseparable from the biography behind it: a life shaped by loneliness, rejection, and the desperate need to be seen. This film doesn’t flinch from that. It shows us not just the product of his vision, but the cost of carrying it. It’s not easy to watch, but it’s honest—and in that honesty, there's something transcendent.

I’m thankful this film exists. It reminds you that art isn’t always born out of clarity or peace. Sometimes, it’s clawed from the wreckage of being misunderstood.

Stanley Kubrick occupies a weird little corner of film culture I tend to tiptoe around—the realm of self-serious film bros, gatekeepers, and guys who treat their Letterboxd like a Rolex. Kubrick is often their god, and Barry Lyndon could be seen as the pinnacle of their gospel—just obscure enough to seem elevated, just gorgeous enough to flaunt.

My not so hot take: Barry Lyndon is stunning. I knew the imagery before I knew the film—those painterly frames, the candlelit shots, the mythic aura that radiates from stills alone. That’s what got me in the seat. There are too many movies to see in this life, but this one had been sitting on my list like a dare.

And I’m glad I took it. Because Barry Lyndon is three hours of visual seduction. Kubrick doesn’t just shoot scenes—he composes them like an 18th-century oil painter with a bone to pick. Kubrick directs like someone possessed by the ghosts of Claude Joseph Vernet and Jean-Baptiste Greuze. There’s Boucher in the indulgence, Watteau in the melancholy, and more than a little Chardin in the stillness. Each frame is a masterclass in composition, lit with maddening precision. You don’t watch this movie—you get ushered into a living gallery of aristocratic rot. The attention to detail is obsessive, borderline unhinged, and it works. You feel swallowed by it. Every frame is a lesson in restraint and decadence at once, and that tension becomes the film’s pulse.

Narratively, it’s a long, cold glass of betrayal, ego, violence, and bitter class satire. The kind of story where you’re not exactly rooting for anyone, but you’re glued to every damn turn of their downfall. It’s overlong, sure. It meanders. But it also hypnotizes. It invites you to settle into its luxury, then kicks you in the teeth with what all that luxury cost.

It may not have the pop culture shine of The Shining or the academic fanfare of Dr. Strangelove, but to me, this is one of Kubrick’s boldest swings—and he hits. I’m glad it’s found a second life through Criterion and the slow burn of time. It deserves to be seen, not just admired academically. 

Terrence Malick is one of those directors who looms large—his filmography, good and bad, feels like a mountain, daunting to climb but impossible to ignore. A friend called me as I was leaving the theater and asked what I’d seen. When I told him Days of Heaven—my first Malick film—he congratulated me, saying I’d picked a good place to start.

I’d have to agree. Seeing it as a matinee at the Vista was nothing short of sublime. I went in knowing only that it was beautifully shot. It is that—and so much more. A true American epic, from the struggle to the scenery, to the quiet ache of its ending. I felt the brutal punch of a bygone era that echoes its tragedy into these modern days.

What struck me most was how odd and layered the characters are, how the film refuses to hand you easy moral answers. It gives you space to just sit with the weight of it all, to absorb the drama like a slow drink of water.

The climax sneaks up on you—you don’t realize you’ve arrived until you’re fully submerged. And when it hits, it feels inevitable. Our conflicts don’t unfold in a vacuum. They build, piece by piece, from choices and circumstances beyond our control. Days of Heaven understands this in a way that feels stark, relentless, and deeply, deeply human.

The first time I saw Kill Bill Vol. 1, it was on a beat-up second-hand DVD, playing on a two-hundred-pound television. Cut to nearly fifteen years later, and last night, I watched it on Quentin Tarantino’s private 35mm print at his theater, the New Beverly, here in LA. It was a different experience — more vivid, more alive — but no more or less special. This film has stuck with me. Like the sharp yellow tracksuit Uma Thurman wears, Kill Bill Vol. 1 is unforgettable, a loud, unrelenting slice of cinema that refuses to fade.

Now over twenty years old, the film holds a different place in the pantheon of Tarantino’s work than it did when I first saw it. Back then, he was gearing up to release Inglourious Basterds, riding the wave of his early success. Today, he’s older, probably wiser, but no less sharp. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood proved he’s still got the juice — still capable of shaking up the industry as he did in the ’90s. Sean Baker even thanked Tarantino in his Oscar speech this year, crediting him for casting Mikey Madison in Once Upon a Time, a break that helped land her in Anora. Tarantino’s influence hasn’t waned; it’s evolved.

This puts Kill Bill Vol. 1 in an interesting spot. It’s the bridge between his early, lean crime thrillers and the wilder, more indulgent middle period that followed. Watching it again, I was struck by how much has been stolen, borrowed, and parodied from it — the music cues, the quick cuts, the arterial spray. It’s the kind of movie that burns itself into your brain. Scene after scene, I realized I hadn’t forgotten a frame.

What makes the film endure? One crucial creative decision: it’s a fantasy. Sure, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, and Jackie Brown flirt with heightened reality, but Kill Bill leaps off the cliff. It’s a love letter to grindhouse cinema, to the blood-soaked, revenge-fueled B-movies that made Tarantino want to pick up a camera in the first place. It doesn’t just wear its influences on its sleeve — it slathers them across the screen in bold, unapologetic strokes.

Let’s be honest — this is Uma Thurman’s most iconic role, full stop. Pulp Fiction may have put her on the map, and she is phenomenal there too, but Kill Bill is where she becomes electric. She’s a stoic, vengeful Clint Eastwood cowboy blended with Bruce Lee’s ferocity — a mesmerizing, unforgettable force of nature. The gender dynamics add another layer, pulling from the ’70s revenge film playbook but flipping it on its head. It’s a landscape tailor-made for Thurman to dominate, cementing her as one of the great cinematic icons.

The Japanese setting becomes Tarantino’s playground, letting him pay homage to the kung-fu and samurai flicks he worshipped as a kid. It’s a mash-up of styles — over-the-top, heartfelt, awkward in just the right way — and it all works because the film knows exactly what it is. The cultural nods, some a little cringeworthy by today’s standards, don’t feel forced. The anime sequence, the sleek, mod Tokyo aesthetics — all of it makes Kill Bill Vol. 1 one of the most visually arresting films in Tarantino’s catalog. His eye for detail is razor-sharp; this film never wavers from its purpose. It knows what it is, and will kindly tell you to fuck off if you don’t like it. It’s unrelenting, brash, and utterly confident. It doesn’t ask for your approval. It dares you to look away — knowing you won’t. 

I didn’t expect to walk out of the New Beverly feeling any differently about Kill Bill Vol. 1, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much more powerful the experience was seeing it again. I’m looking forward to watching Vol. 2 when it comes up on the Beverly's schedule — a welcome break from the relentless violence will give me a chance to process the second half of the story, especially now that I’ve revisited the first in this new context.

All in all, two thumbs up for a film that’s nearly a quarter-century old. I’m happy to say it still carries the same vitality it did on its original release, even bolder as time passes. That’s not something you can say for every film.

There are films that astonish with their brilliance, and then there are films that live just shy of greatness—achingly close, yet all the more affecting for it. This is one of those films: desperately optimistic, quietly devastating, and utterly intoxicating in its charm.

Set in a time that feels just out of reach, the film captures the wistfulness of a bygone era without ever lapsing into nostalgia. Instead, it leans into something more elusive—a feeling, a mood, a particular kind of exhaustion that settles in after a long, indulgent night. Watching it is like making an omelette with a hangover: tender, familiar, slightly painful, and wholly necessary.

Every performance is delicately measured, adjusting to the film’s stakes with an ease that never calls attention to itself. The characters, each in their own way, navigate a shifting reality—gaining and losing their footing in ways that feel as heartbreaking as they are inevitable.

For those who love food not just as sustenance but as a language, a memory, a philosophy, this is a film worth savoring.

I loved that this film shows San Francisco’s true self—beautiful, yes, but also confusing and eerie.

If you had given me a thousand chances to guess this film’s plot, I wouldn’t have come close. It kept me engaged from start to finish—a modern-feeling film that still feels deeply rooted in the era in which it was made. Any awkward, lingering scene is more than compensated for by sharp performances and stunning cinematography.

Admittedly, my interest waned in the second act, where the film veers into predictability and drags its feet. But just when I thought it had lost momentum, it delivered a jolt of adrenaline, launching into a finale that is as gripping as it is unsettling. As more is revealed, the unease settles in—a testament to the film’s craftsmanship. This is a concept that could have easily crumbled in the wrong hands, but with the precision of Hitchcock, it is handled masterfully. Every shot is lush; every frame, deliberate.

This is a film I had put off watching for years—one that loomed over me when I first began approaching movies with real intentionality. Now that I’ve finally seen it, I know one viewing won’t be enough. To fully grasp its layers, I’ll have to watch it again—probably several times. And even then, I’ll still convince myself I’m missing something. The balance of grandeur and restraint creates a film that lingers in the mind—one that I clearly do not understand in just one viewing.

Swashbuckling Rebellion with a Forced Heaping Side of Nationalism.

Few films manage to balance cheerful high-seas adventure with a pointed jab at authoritarian rule quite like Captain Blood. Directed by Michael Curtiz, this buoyant spectacle not only cemented Errol Flynn’s place in Hollywood but also introduced audiences to the first fully symphonic film score, courtesy of the legendary Erich Wolfgang Korngold.

Flynn’s mischievous charisma keeps the film afloat, even as it occasionally lingers too long on exposition. Based on Rafael Sabatini’s 1922 novel, Captain Blood marked the first of eight electric on-screen pairings between Flynn and Olivia de Havilland—one of which, The Adventures of Robin Hood, would become equally iconic. Here, Flynn commands Curtiz’s often densely packed frames with sweeping emotional gestures and an energetic physicality that makes him impossible to ignore.

However, the film’s third act takes a hard right turn into nationalism, abruptly shifting gears in a way that dampens its rebellious spark. The character we’ve admired for his defiance suddenly submits to the very system he spent the entire film resisting—an arc that feels forced, if not entirely dissonant.

And yet, I dare anyone to resist Flynn’s charm. Whatever missteps Captain Blood makes, its exhilarating action and undeniable levity make them easy to forgive. In the grand tradition of pirate films, this one still reigns supreme.

Jimmy Stewart is great, even though he is playing what I assume is a twenty year old when he has the crows-feet and jowls of a man pushing Forty. The film has an energy to it that took me a moment to settle into, but weaved its way into my emotions. It was transcendental. I was surprised that the ultimate message is one that leans on opposing the exploitation of a wealthy elite; trusting entirely in one's laws and community. 
The death of Liberty Valance is subtle and brutal in a human way. It’s unsanctimonious. While at times preachy, the overall character of the film is something I really appreciate.