Letterboxd — Your life in film

"You're my little Ang Lee."

The "entered high school in the fall of 2008" representation... chilling!

I really enjoyed Sean Wang's Oscar-nominated documentary short Nai Nai & Wài Pó, but it's amazing how assured his direction is in Dìdi. Wang's script is as incisive, as personal, and as funny as the best teen coming-of-age films, but Dìdi gets an extra boost from its two extraordinary central performances: Izaac Wang, as the "younger brother" of the title, gives an uncannily confident performance,…

I know Gints Zilbalodis has gone on the record to insist that the cat in Flow is gray, but as the father of a little black cat, I can't accept that.

Before Tilly, I wasn't a cat person. I was scared of them, actually -- I had a bad experience with one as a preteen and it put me off of them for over a decade. But I love my guy more than I can say. He's a rude little…

"Life can only be understood backwards, but we have to live it forwards. Snails never go back over their trails, always moving forwards. Time for you to leave some glittering snail trails all over the world. And remember: never, never go back."

I know Adam Elliot's whole thing isn't for everyone, but I find his work so special. Memoir of a Snail is, like the rest of his films, darkly funny and simultaneously almost unbearably sad. It's the almost that…

"Every day's a good day for racing!"

If you're like me and you have whatever brain worms make you an Oscar completist, you'll inevitably watch some very, very bad movies. Anyone who's ever endured Coquette probably deserves some kind of award of their own. Even by those standards, though, Kentucky is uniquely terrible. At its best, it's a bland Romeo and Juliet-by-way-of-the-Kentucky-Derby melodrama. At its worst, it's unforgivably racist pro-Confederacy schlock.

I'm sure the only reason why anyone goes back…

52 Films by Women, Vol. 2: 6/52

"A pox on Columbus."

For years, I only knew of Hester Street as the film that led Carol Kane to her only Oscar nomination. Having finally watched it, I was surprised at how much of an ensemble film it really is. Kane's Gitl is, indeed, the heart of the film, but much of the film is built around Steven Keats' Jake, who, in the name of assimilation and the pursuit of happiness in…

52 Films by Women, Vol. 2: 5/52

"You remind me of my father, a magician. Able to exist in two places at once. In the tradition of men in my blood you come home at 3 AM and lie to me. What are you hiding? The past and the future merge to meet us here. What luck. What a fucking curse."

I'd seen so many sequences from Lemonade over the years, but I'm not sure I ever actually sat down…

"You're just not what she needs anymore."

I know it's probably naive to assume Disney and Pixar care about things like artistic integrity or storytelling, but Inside Out 2 was probably always going to be a lost cause. The first film (almost a decade old now!) is still a high watermark for Pixar partly because its premise is so simple. It begins, like a person's emotional development, in the broadest strokes possible -- the characters are literally Joy and Sadness…

"I didn't have any ambition of being a soloist. I liked being in the background."

Orin O'Brien is one hell of a musician. Directed lovingly by O'Brien's niece Molly, The Only Girl in the Orchestra is certainly not a radical piece of filmmaking, but it does shine a light on an under-appreciated pioneer in a way that is touching and engaging. It's a very calm, very peaceful film until one conversation where Molly is trying to get Orin to open…

"There is no right and wrong. There is no morality. There is no truth with a capital 'T.' It's a construct. It's a fiction. It's man-made. None of it matters except winning."

It was never going to matter how well-made or well-acted Ali Abbasi's The Apprentice would be -- it was always going to be a tough sit in January 2025. I watched it ten days into the second Trump administration -- it's going badly, if you were wondering --…

"Baby, I love you. And I’m going to build us a great big table and our family gonna be eatin’ off it for a long, long time to come. And I’m alright too. Don’t you worry. I’m coming home. I’m coming home to you."

Gutting, essential filmmaking. Still one of the defining films of the century so far. Nicholas Britell's score is an all-timer -- how do you make music that sounds like what love feels like? Everything about it…