Nathan S

nathan_s
Cinema Addict - 2419 Film Ratings
Member Since: 08 Nov 2006
Location: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
Age: 33
TCI: not enough ratings
Films in Common: 0
Not in Your Top 1000 TCIs
Bio: Since my early teenage years, cinema has been my primary form of education. A travelogue which has afforded me experiences I otherwise haven't had the opportunity of enjoying: different eras, locations, languages, cultures, methods of thought. It's a fulfillment damn near spiritual.

My ratings are divided into five points for a more generalized representation of quality. The less reliance on nitpicky numerology, the better. I have awarded a sixth point to films which have had the largest and longest lasting influence on my own cinephilia. They are my all-time favorites, hence a movie is never given a six on first viewing.

The filmmakers who are most important to me include Chantal Akerman, Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson, Olivier Assayas, Ingmar Bergman, John Cassavetes, Joel & Ethan Coen, Jules Dassin, Terence Davies, Robert Eggers, Werner Herzog, Alfred Hitchcock, Buster Keaton, Masaki Kobayashi, Hirokazu Kore-eda, Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Fritz Lang, Spike Lee, Sergio Leone, Sidney Lumet, David Lynch, Terrence Malick, Jean-Pierre Melville, Hayao Miyazaki, F.W. Murnau, Yasujiro Ozu, Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger, Satyajit Ray, Nicolas Winding Refn, Kelly Reichardt, Jean Renoir, Eric Rohmer, Roberto Rossellini, Martin Scorsese, Isao Takahata, Hiroshi Teshigahara, Francois Truffaut, Ming-liang Tsai, Denis Villeneuve, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, and Kar-Wai Wong.

more Recent Ratings

74% The Zone of Interest (2023) - Rated 09 Mar 2024
"The normalization of fascism and theme of "banal evil" is well-trodden, but one has to admire a film which simply moves at a rhythm most others wouldn't dare."
74% Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade (1998) - Rated 10 Feb 2024
"A deliberate, muted pace and visual style are in distinct contrast to its blatant analogy. It's not at all subtle, but neither is it particularly ill-considered or tacky. In fact it's a rather intelligent film, dour and removed as Oshii's material typically is, and concerned more with the post-traumatic mentality of its protagonist rather than any moral signposting for the political in-fighting of which he finds himself in the midst."
93% Head (1968) - Rated 30 Jan 2024
"Oh my god this movie is hilarious. This sort of acidic kaleidoscope might be viewed as a cliché relic of hippiedom, but it's representative of an experimental, non-sequitur cinema that doesn't really exist in the mainstream. Few movies manage to so thoroughly capture an entire zeitgeist: a scattershot satire of media, pop culture, and political climate which now feels transporting. Amusing Frank Zappa cameo, pleased as punch to see Timothy Carey, lost my shit at the appearance of Victor Mature."
21% The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023) - Rated 07 Dec 2023
"It's easy to elicit the warm and fuzzies with end-to-end fan service, and this film doesn't amount to much more than that. You're better off getting your Super Mario fix by just playing the games, which continue to flaunt unique and unbridled sparks of creativity, as opposed to another big budget American animated film which feels exactly like all the others in the post-Pixar world."
93% Strange Days (1995) - Rated 05 Dec 2023
"Millennium anxiety. The proliferation of VR, especially as a pornographic commodity. A militarized police force which is simultaneously corrupt and incompetent. "Gas is over $3 a gallon and fifth graders shoot each other in class." This dystopia isn't so far fetched. What a graphically exhilarating depiction of a future that's come to pass, and not merely in a theoretical or metaphorical sense. This movie, despite being sculpted in the unrest of 1990s Los Angeles, is more topical now than ever."
45% Midnight Run (1988) - Rated 03 Dec 2023
"Most everything about it is pretty good, but truly this is Charles Grodin's movie."
74% Malcolm X (1992) - Rated 03 Dec 2023
"As American as apple pie. Fantastic performances, editing, and montage. A few transcendent sequences, especially later in the film, help to justify its gargantuan runtime and cement the feeling of development."
21% The Devil's Own (1997) - Rated 27 Nov 2023
"This could be something better if it wasn't all contrived around Harrison Ford's good cop embodiment of an uncomplicated moral compass. Despite the Brad Pitt character's insistence that the politics of it all are messy, this film deigns no real consideration for that perspective. It becomes rather boring. A shame, for the first half hour or so I thought this was gonna be a late triumph for Pakula."
74% The Killer (2023) - Rated 11 Nov 2023
"A worthy entry into the lineage of lean and diligent hitman tales (This Gun for Hire, Blast of Silence, Le Samourai, Woo's The Killer). The pretenses of faith and justice are vacancies, a belief in no higher governing forces than his own agency, codified with verbose narration into tenets that form his own philosophy of cold anti-nihilism. Plan, action, reaction. This system is repeatedly challenged with wrenches unaccounted for, until finally reaffirmed with a choice. Original, no, but refined."
74% Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) - Rated 08 Nov 2023
"Perhaps there's much more to be said about this film's perspective, which is undoubtedly white, but it is a measured and tasteful reckoning on the remnants of manifest destiny, of the entitlement of colonizers."