Favorite films

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Recent reviews

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  Night of the Demon 1957

  ★★★★½ Watched by Kenji Fujishima 16 Jan 2022

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  A horror film about a rationalist who discovers the limits of a worldview he had so long cherished in the face of a universe he gradually discovers is a lot more disordered than he ever dared to imagine.

  When, at the end of the film, John Holden (Dana Andrews) says "maybe it's better not to know" upon witnessing the death of a major character at the hands of the eponymous demon (which he himself does not see), that admission feels…

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  The French Dispatch 2021

  ★★★★ Watched by Kenji Fujishima 14 Nov 2021

  [sigh] If only the journalism world today worked the way it does in The French Dispatch.

  Also, though, this...might be my new favorite Wes Anderson movie since Moonrise Kingdom? I say that as someone who has run very hot and cold on Anderson's work over the years (yeah, I don't even love The Royal Tenenbaums, still considered his masterpiece by many). But this feels to me like his richest movie: Anderson on visual and thematic overdrive. I'm already looking forward to seeing it again, to both savor its images and parse it out dizzying array of ideas.

Popular reviews

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  Andrei Rublev 1966

  ★★★★★ Watched by Kenji Fujishima 12 Apr 2013 6

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  Seven episodes in the life of the titular medieval Russian icon painter, all of which add up to one of the most vivid and detailed cinematic depictions I've ever seen of the life of an artist. From naive optimism about human nature to an abject despair that leads him to swear off art-making for about 15 years, then finally a renewal of his passion with the help of a former monk and a young bellmaker (whose obsessive quest to finish…

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  Trouble Every Day 2001

  ★★★★½ Watched by Kenji Fujishima 17 Oct 2013 2

  This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

  An alternately lyrical and brutal vision of desire as pure lust, with cannibalism envisioned as the end result of tossing off one's inner humanity in favor of animal instinct. But then, isn't that what sex essentially is, in some ways? Not that Claire Denis is puritanical about sex; Trouble Every Day is framed not merely as the typical slasher-movie "sex = death" equation, but more as a blood-and-thunder struggle between thought and feeling, scientific detachment and Romantic passion. Certainly, I…