Likewise on Carol, but Moonlight still has me tied up in knots. It's excellent.

Depends on whether she's saying "the fact of a three-act structure is reminiscent of theater" or "this particular three-act structure is reminiscent of theatre," which are two different things.

Likewise.

I'm not mad that Alaska won, since she deserved it on the merits, but her comment about being the best contestant in the show's history made me want her to lose out of sheer spite. I mean, c'mon.

If you're only going to be famous for one song, White Town's is a pretty great song to be famous for.

It's unequivocally sci-fi. Plenty of SF has been about all the things the author lists in contrast to SF, so I don't even fully understand the opening paragraph. To "[confront] death and the vast screaming unknown" and "contemplate the idea that there are forces at work in the universe that you will never understand…

Likewise. Most of the LGBT films I own are not American, sadly. Which isn't to say there isn't good stuff out there (especially independent films), but that there's a real wealth of it overseas.

Mentioned a couple of weeks ago that she's the one contestant who seems completely guileless. That's not to say she couldn't play strategically, but that when she says she's not angry at someone, it's transparent and you believe it. And that's really charming (in addition to all her other positive qualities.)

Hilarious that this season was for Roxxxy what PhiPhi wanted it to be for herself, and without even pressing the point.

I think we can all agree that this season's real winner is Alyssa. She was saddled with that awful CoCo "feud" during her own season, but has really carried this season on her back(rolls) in terms of consistency, good nature, and humor. I love Katya and even think Alaska probably still deserves the actual crown, but…

Yeah, that's just not true: "la race blanche" is pretty common in French documents from the time, while colonial France referred to Algerians with the slur bougnoul, from the Wolof for "black". Camus called French violence against Algerians "the racism that dares not speak its name". Mauriac repeatedly criticizes…

Not sure I view this as a weakness:

Best moment of the movie, hands-down. I quite like the movie, but the ending squanders a lot of that goodwill.

don't bill your film as Iranian if it's Iranians in New York

It does, however, end with the dumbest voice-over in recent memory. At least it’s got that.

I'm torn because I really like the opportunity to chat about books here outside of the "what are you reading?" discussions (which are fine, too, but I like the narrower focus of reviews). And I don't think there's anything wrong with a non-expert reviewer talking about a book's strengths and weaknesses as such,…

I can only go by the description, but this doesn't sound anything like Tolstoy (or Dostoevsky). Maybe something between Pasternak, Nabokov, and Bunin - the limited narrator, the backgrounding off of major historical events outside the hotel, the ironic focus on "unimportant" (in the larger scheme) issues - Tolstoy…

Even the folks I know who liked the first Metro book (and even then, with tons of caveats) couldn't finish the second, so I never bothered. Is it really worth it?

And quite a few living authors take D&T as direct influences, and plenty of people are writing 21st century versions of "Russian novels," and so on, and so on. I don't understand how the first two paragraphs of this review made it through any kind of editor.

Sounds like Mizgirev read Pushkin's "The Shot" and wondered how Zack Snyder would rewrite it. Hard pass.