I recently started a Substack blog with my friend Tony G. Huang called In Plain Sight. Expect weekly film reviews, special features, podcasts and other musings on cinema.

I'll link to my review of Marjorie Prime, a film that I enjoyed revisiting in the wake of AI's full emergence into the online sphere. While some might argue that the film is a critique of humanity's attempt to replace people with tech, I'd argue that Almereyda's perspective on the characters' use…

After revisiting this film and THAT OLD DREAM THAT MOVES recently, I’ve been surprised to feel that Guiraudie’s dialogue in these films can be a touch too clever and cute at times. I’ll qualify my statement by saying that I’m a big Guiraudie guy and still like these films a lot. But there’s something about the deadpan riffing that can feel too self-contained; in these films Guiraudie often abandons structure in favor of reflexive winks to the audience. I tend…

“Art frees us from all our sentiments, even good ones and justifies its amorality by returning to ethics what it had borrowed.” – Eric Rohmer

It’s impossible for me to discuss to this film without dealing with the shadow cast by the controversy over its depiction of a homosexual subculture. While watching early scenes in the West Village bar called The Cock Pit full of detached lateral tracking shots surveying aggressive displays of homosexuality, I wondered whether films have a…

If I were to select any working director whose films are the opposite of what I think the cinema should be, the honor would likely go to Denis Villeneuve. Mr. Villeneuve excels in pulpy thrillers that pile contrivance upon contrivance to reveal “important” and “serious” takes on zeitgeisty issues ranging from cycles of violence in a Lebanon-ish Middle Eastern country in INCENDIES, Bush-era torture in PRISONERS and modern relationship ennui a la carte in ENEMY. The latest Villeneuve hot topic…