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Alex Watkins

alex_watkins
Member Since
08 Nov 2006
N/A
TCI
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2341
ratings
2151
Films
164
Shorts
25
TV Series
1
TV Episodes
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6
collections
0
Recent ratings
2328
Minireviews
4813
Starred reviews
See all TCIs
2151
Films
164
Shorts
25
TV Series
1
TV Episodes
See all ratings
0
Recent ratings
2328
Minireviews
4813
Starred reviews
Bio: Read my full reviews here! http://mymoviemusings.wordpress.com



I like just about anything; I have my preferences (I find myself leaning towards crime, noir, and epics), but I'm not an extremely discriminate moviewatcher. Chances are, if it's a classic and/or well-received by most, I'll probably like it, so I guess I'm kind of predictable. I also love anything with great cinematography and gorgeous visuals; my very favorites are populated by-and-large with movies that are, among their other merits, pleasing to the eye.
Recent Ratings
4 70%
Horizontal Boundaries (1997) - Rated 23 May 2020
O'Neill flattens and deterritorializes the image so that it bleeds beyond the usual limits of the frame. Not as exciting or imaginatively illuminating as O'Neill's longer works, but a worthwhile experiment nonetheless.
4 70%
Baseball Bugs (1946) - Rated 23 May 2020
It helps to love baseball, as the writers clearly did, but this is one of the stronger Looney Tunes shorts regardless.
3 38%
Hare Tonic (1945) - Rated 23 May 2020
Just didn't find this one terribly funny, for whatever reason.
4 70%
Looking for Mushrooms (1996) - Rated 23 May 2020
A colorful and surreal free-associative essay on Conner's time in Mexico, suggestive (beyond just its title) of a particularly pleasant trip. I'm surprised at how consistently funny Conner is; the last frame made me burst out laughing, dumb as it might be.
5 91%
The Decay of Fiction (2002) - Rated 23 May 2020
O'Neill's dense, disorienting collage of images renders Hollywood history as a macabre camera obscura. The ghosts of celluloid past haunt the hallways of the abandoned Ambassador Hotel, flitting from room to room in half-remembered purpose, doomed to decay, entropy, and anonymity. Removed from narrative causality, our characters' behavior assumes a bent of existential absurdity, routine without purpose, everyone reduced to the shadows of their forgotten lives.
5 91%
Crossroads (1976) - Rated 22 May 2020
Aside from going some way towards its purpose of restoring some of the strangeness and horror to mankind's strangest and most horrifying creation, the repetition instills it with an eerie melancholy: doomed forever to witness, in all its simultaneous beauty and terror, the opening of history's biggest Pandora's Box.
4 70%
Cosmic Ray (1962) - Rated 22 May 2020
The thrusts of the first half of the American twentieth century - sex, war, and global pop culture - distilled in a flurry of bold imagery.
4 70%
A Movie (1958) - Rated 22 May 2020
A piss-take on the very concept of traditional feature film storytelling, as evinced by the tongue-in-cheek title, compressing everything into a rapid series of climactic moments, replete with false endings and hilarious juxtapositions. (Seriously, this movie is funny as hell - I wasn't one bit surprised to learn that Conner was largely influenced by a scene from Duck Soup.)
5 91%
Water and Power (1989) - Rated 22 May 2020
Jaw-droppingly dense visual essay on the relationship between Los Angeles, its sources of water, and the desertification of the surrounding areas. Some of its more obscure snatches seem like dead ends, but it contains more breathtaking moments than any film I've seen in years. Its combination of time-lapse photography, optical printing and animation, and in-camera effects has to be seen to be believed.
4 70%
Hair-Raising Hare (1946) - Rated 22 May 2020
Needs more Lorre!