Reviews of Music, Movies, Anime & More
1,778 reviews and counting. More reviews can be found in my Cultural Diet.
Shut Up & Sing by Barbara Kopple, Cecilia Peck (Review)
Ultimately a testament to such American values as love, friendship, family, and loyalty as much as free speech.The Night’s Bloom by Pinetop Seven (Review)
A vital collection of everything that’s beautiful and evocative in the group’s spooky, forlorn music.Aerial Days by Songs of Green Pheasant (Review)
Aerial Days is full of tiny shimmering moments of beauty.So This Is Goodbye by Junior Boys (Review)
Every single note, melody, and beat on So This Is Goodbye has been streamlined and polished as much as possible.Swing Girls by Shinobu Yaguchi (Review)
Swing Girls is far better than it frankly has any right to be, thanks to the sheer amount of fun, enthusiasm, and aplomb it contains.Songs for Christmas by Sufjan Stevens (Review)
I’ve heard most of the songs on here before, countless times. But I had never heard them like this, in such a sublime context.Songs From Before by Max Richter (Review)
Richter’s music is perfectly suited to the themes of loss, nostalgia, and alienation that permeate Haruki Murakami’s work.The Twilight Sad EP by The Twilight Sad (Review)
There’s a rawness and youthful recklessness that never fails to render their music beguiling, even at its loudest and most abrasive.IBM 1401, A User’s Manual by Jóhann Jóhannsson (Review)
A tribute to an old computer, the five long tracks that make up this disc are elegiac and gorgeous.District B13 by Pierre Morel (Review)
The stunts and fights scenes have an edge and brutality that you just don’t see everyday.The Proposition by John Hillcoat (Review)
The film always returns to its central violent themes with a crackling, harrowing intensity.Casino Royale by Martin Campbell (Review)
For the vast majority of its 144 minutes, Casino Royale is absolutely thrilling.Geochilmaru by Kim Jin-Seong (Review)
There’s something refreshing, even affecting, about the lo-fi approach that Geochilmaru takes to martial arts cinema.Beyond Sea and Sky by Secret Shine (Review)
Rough around the edges but still full of lovely textures in which to lose yourself.Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa (Review)
Kurosawa’s film takes on topics and expounds upon themes that could have easily come from that most existential of books: Ecclesiastes.Songs for Creeps by The Places (Review)
Annelle’s songs encapsulate entire tiny little worlds of sound, conjuring up dim images of broken down places and darkened rooms pregnant with memory and longing.Songs of Green Pheasant by Songs of Green Pheasant (Review)
The album’s awkward-yet-earned shortcomings, much like its audio imperfections, only make it more affecting.