This is the online home for Mark Llobrera, housing his blog, reading log, and film log.
Watched: Aug 08, 2026 Working through some of my gaps in the Petzold filmography, after watching Miroirs no. 3 . Who wouldn’t instantly ruin their life for Nina Hoss? I’m at an age where Ali’s character hit me the most: his alienation from his wife, his childhood home country, his adopted country. He has a line late in the film that explicitly expresses all those feelings, and I really felt that.…
Watched: Aug 08, 2026 Watched this as part one of a double-header with Dark City . Gets darker and sadder every time I see it. Interesting to see this now that we’ve had a generation or two of kids who grew up with their lives broadcasted on YouTube and other social media platforms. Today the casual betting on the show’s events would be done on Kalshi. Even when Laura Linney plays a villain (I saw…
Watched: Aug 07, 2026 Feels like it will take a turn into horror but instead ends up somewhere funnier and sadder. More of an ache than a visceral gut-punch due to the quiet approach and the reserve in Beer’s and Auer’s performances. (I had forgotten that Auer was in Petzold’s The State I Am In , years ago. I think that the Nina Hoss collaborations still hit linger in my mind more than these…
Watched: Aug 05, 2026 The first half is slower but I liked it more, and I preferred the slow dread to the second half’s madcap, over-the-top violence that felt like a throwback to the 90s when everyone was doing a Tarantino bit. You try to earn a little pocket money by scamming people and end up (figuratively? literally?) in hell. Not sure I’ll revisit this anytime soon, but I am looking forward…
The past two years I’ve gotten deeper into the accessibility practice at Upstatement . All of our website projects go through an official accessibility audit, and I’ve gotten to run a bunch (and help remediate issues) on different projects across the agency. The constant practice has meant that I’ve gotten more and more comfortable with using a screen reader — I’m still slow, but I feel pretty…
Watched: Aug 04, 2026 S and I went to this, first time seeing it on the big screen for both of us. Laughed the whole way through, what a delight. Flashed back to S at age 5, asking her lolo “dig with me” after seeing this for the first time. I wish Criterion would make the 4K of this available as a standalone release.
Started Reading: Aug 01, 2026 Finished Reading: Aug 03, 2026 Oh no is this a DSA meeting
Started Reading: Jul 12, 2026 Finished Reading: Aug 01, 2026 Inception -era Christopher Nolan would have loved the nesting layers of epistolary missives in this novel. The real historians were the friends we made along the way.
Watched: Jul 31, 2026 Project Hail Mary but make it horror. What a fascinating cast. Hiroyuki Sanada as the captain makes so much sense…just the coolest cat flying into the face of the sun. Post-Johnny Storm, pre-Captain America Chris Evans — that early, cocky persona really got turned into something else for the MCU years. I thought this was one of Rose Byrne’s earliest roles until I checked her…
Watched: Jul 30, 2026 The story beats to set up the quartet’s turn to bank heists are fairly predictable, but the leads have such charisma that you go along for the ride. Queen Latifa blows the doors off as Cleo (loved the insistence on a proper soundtrack when boosting a car). The three decades gone by have really made the sums of money in this sound silly. Would like to watch this and Widows as…
Watched: Jul 28, 2026 Another packed screening at Bryn Mawr Film Institute. I really should stop thinking I can just roll up 15 minutes before showtime — the line stretched out the door. The visiting lecturer who introduced the film drew some really interesting historical connections between the growth of science fiction in Japan to the themes of the movie, to our current moment where we are…
Watched: Jul 25, 2026 Watched this with S, who loves musicals. Had to pause the diner scene to explain its murderer’s row of Broadway stars. I sometimes struggle with modern film musicals (looking at you, Wicked movies) because they rarely leave the songs alone — there’s often interruptions from dialogue, or action. Let them sing!
Watched: Jul 24, 2026 So stylistically heightened in the first hour or so — the score, the performances, the camerawork — that I found myself sweating (it did not help that it was a warm theater). Everyone in the foursome is capital-C committed. The final third successfully navigates a turn into quieter, more introspective waters, and gets to some real emotional depth. Olivia Wilde, comeback kid.
Watched: Jul 24, 2026 I was still in high school when this came out, I know it flopped but we didn’t know how good we had it. I wish this vein of comic book adaptation still existed instead of the overly serious era we got over the last fifteen-plus years. Jennifer Connelly…that is a face made for the big screen, free her from tv jail!
Watched: Jul 23, 2026 Still as goofy and charming as ever. Watched this with S and she was howling at Fran’s makeover/transformation — what, these glasses? Don’t actually need ’em. You can see Baz working through some of the visual language that would go supernova in Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge . Really glad this got a 4K restoration and forthcoming disc release, because the transfer currently…
Watched: Jul 22, 2026 Noir is often about how sex scrambles the brains of men who overestimate their intelligence, so there’s a certain comfort to the familiar way that things play out here. The plot matters less than the atmosphere conjured out of dust, sweat, and beautiful women. I wished for an ending that played more like Bound instead of what we got, but overall this worked for me.
Watched: Jul 18, 2026 Strips away the mystery of the series, and what’s left is pure horror. What an all-time performance from Sheryl Lee.
Watched: Jul 17, 2026 Was supposed to see this in 70mm but BMFI has been having issues with their projector. Didn’t really matter — we sat pretty close to the screen and it was plenty immersive anyway. Nolan’s films don’t always excite me — I think he often tries to be too clever, and I wish he would collaborate with a writer who can make dialogue sing. But they’re always well-made, and with this…
Watched: Jul 15, 2026 I haven’t seen the original, so I can’t comment on how much this echoes or subverts it. The Babygirl comparisons hold in some respects — but if Babygirl creates tension from the possibility of public shaming due to one’s kink breaking containment, this one just…floats. It drifts its fingers on the surface of some very rich possible explorations: sex as labor, sex as refuge…
Started Reading: Jul 14, 2026 Finished Reading: Jul 20, 2026 Whew, FitzChivalry was getting on my last nerve for much of this one. The story feels like a tightening noose and some folks (like myself) might grow impatient. I’m still fuzzy on the way that the Forged ones behave, but maybe that isn’t very important.