the screen

Films & TV

Films, documentaries, and a few TV shows. The ones worth the two hours.

filter7 entries

film2003

Lost in Translation

Sofia Coppola

Two people in the wrong place at the right time. Coppola understands that the most meaningful connections exist in the space between words — the shared glance across a hotel bar, the 3am corridor, the ending we're not allowed to hear. The loneliness here is specific and true. Bill Murray barely acts and that's the whole point.

★★★★½4.8

quietmelancholictender

stayed with me

film1995

Before Sunrise

Richard Linklater

A film built entirely on conversation and the feeling that a night like this could happen to you. Linklater trusts his actors and his audience completely. There's no plot. There doesn't need to be. Some films make you want things. This one made me want to walk around a city with someone I didn't know yet.

★★★★½4.5

nostalgicfeel-goodbeautiful

stayed with me

film2004

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Michel Gondry

The only film I know that makes grief feel like a form of love. The structure is one of cinema's great ideas — watching the erasure happen backwards, watching Joel fall back in love with the memory as it disappears. Carrey's quietest, best performance. The ending asks the only question that matters.

★★★★★5.0

heartbreakingbeautifulinventive

stayed with me

film2023

Past Lives

Celine Song

Song's debut and one of the best films about adult longing I've seen. Nobody is the villain. Nobody does anything wrong. It's about the roads not taken — and how they shadow the ones you did. The last ten minutes are devastating without a single dramatic thing happening.

★★★★★5.0

emotionalnostalgicbeautiful

stayed with me

film2016

Arrival

Denis Villeneuve

The twist recontextualises everything, but unlike most films with twists, the rewatch is better than the first viewing. It becomes a film about accepting loss rather than escaping it. Amy Adams carries the whole thing with barely any dialogue. Villeneuve at his most precise.

★★★★★5.0

thought-provokingemotionalslow-burn

stayed with me

film2016

Moonlight

Barry Jenkins

Three chapters, three versions of a person. Jenkins uses light and silence like language — every frame is a deliberate choice. I've thought about the diner scene more than most things that actually happened to me. The ending is so quiet and so much.

★★★★★5.0

emotionalbeautifulquietly-brilliant

stayed with me

film2019

Parasite

Bong Joon-ho

The most purely constructed film I've seen in years. Bong choreographs class anxiety like a thriller — every scene plants a seed that detonates later. The genre shift halfway through is genuinely shocking even when you're expecting it. I've seen it three times and I still notice new things.

★★★★★5.0

thought-provokingdarkfunny

stayed with me