I love the moody vérité style of Cassavetes, the minimalist noir of Jean-Pierre Melville, the epic scope of Lean, and that mix of post-60s hippie auteurs and film school movie brats that formed New Hollywood. For directors working today, I like Claire Denis, the Safdie Brothers, Paolo Sorrentino, Emma Seligman, David Cronenberg, Cristian Mungiu, Nicolas Winding Refn, Hong Sang-soo.

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At Columbia I took up media studies and cultural criticism. Here I was exposed to the great 20th C. cultural critics: Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Paul Schrader, Jonathan Rosenbaum, Robert B. Ray. Although I disagree with many of their takes, Sontag’s "Against Interpretation" formalism and Kael’s rejection of sappy moralism and eye for creative "trash" became the bedrock of my critical lens for movies.

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In 2022, I watched and reviewed a new movie every single day. I'm a writer and producer in TV now but log new movies + reviews often. The posts below fall into three categories: my quick takes, full film reviews, and essays. Read more on my Letterboxd: @msxviii