Ken Ilgunas
May 13
The Prison Movie Hall of Fame and other Consumables
Movies Land and Sons (Iceland, 1980) I don’t know how anyone would access this delightful little film, but I watched it on a connecting...
Ken Ilgunas
Jan 31
Barbenheimer stunk. Watch these instead.
Movies Crumb (1994, USA) Crumb and his weirdo brothers make this documentary into a sort of Northeastern Gothic. I haven’t seen many of...
Ken Ilgunas
Dec 19, 2023
The Best Stuff I Consumed - 2023
Movies It was a fruitful movie-watching year for me, partly because I had a lot of long flights on United Airlines, which has a...
Ken Ilgunas
Dec 7, 2023
To be consumed: UFOs, Caribou, and Killer Angels
Films Past Lives (2023, US & South Korea) - Just go ahead and give this the Oscar for Best Picture. It’s a beautiful movie about romantic...
Ken Ilgunas
Nov 5, 2023
To be consumed: Problematic movies about problematic men
Elena (2011, Russian) - I can’t seem to write one of these newsletters without mentioning an Andrey Zvyagintsev film. Zvyagintsev’s Elena...
Ken Ilgunas
Sep 28, 2023
What to Consume: Russian Rot and How to Blow Up a Pipeline
Movies The Return (2003), Leviathan (2014), and Loveless (2017) These are all Russian movies by director Andrey Zvyagintsev. These films...
Ken Ilgunas
Jul 26, 2023
Mission Impossible kinda sucks, so consume this stuff instead…
Films Daughters of the Dust (1991, USA) This is one of the most surprising movies I’ve ever watched. It's about a group of...
Ken Ilgunas
Feb 8, 2023
Two Months of Consumption: Why We Need Daredevils and the Problem with Pixar
Movies I’ve watched 18 movies in 62 days. If it was up to me, I’d be watching a movie a night, but two a week is not bad for a house...
Ken Ilgunas
Jan 18, 2023
Must Great Be Bleak?
Every ten years, the British Film Institute (BFI) revises its list of the greatest 100 movies ever. A month ago, the BFI published its...
Ken Ilgunas
Jan 7, 2023
My favorite films, books, and shows - 2022
Movies The White Ribbon (Germany, 2009) - Director Michael Haneke may be making the case that Germany’s descent into 20th Century...
Ken Ilgunas
Nov 28, 2022
What I’ve consumed: November ’22
Movies I have a highbrow list of movies to watch almost five hundred movies long. In the last month or two I’ve consumed — with the help...
Ken Ilgunas
May 2, 2021
Movie Review: Nomadland
When I saw The Rider (2017) by Chloe Zhao (now 39), I was amazed that a young Chinese person (with less than 20 years of experience in...
Ken Ilgunas
Dec 29, 2020
Best Films I watched in 2020
I'm doing a better job cataloging the media I consume, so I have a better idea of all the films I watch from year to year. Here are my...
Ken Ilgunas
Oct 8, 2020
"The Good Lord Bird" TV Review
I give the first episode of Showtime's The Good Lord Bird a C+. I've been patiently waiting for fifteen years for a John Brown...
Ken Ilgunas
Jan 8, 2020
Movie Reviews: "The Two Popes" and "Thunder Road"
During the first 45 minutes of The Two Popes, I thought I was watching a classic-to-be. That should have been the whole movie: two great...
Ken Ilgunas
Dec 21, 2019