John Stephen

Favorite films

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  • This Gun for Hire

    ★★½

  • The Blue Dahlia

    ★★★½

  • American Beauty

    ★★★★★

  • May December

    ★★★★½

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The Blue Dahlia

1946

★★★½ Liked Watched

Elizabeth Short was found murdered in a Los Angeles park in 1947. Her nickname, the "Black Dahlia", was coined from The Blue Dahlia, a film released one year before her death.

Murderers. Racketeers. Alcoholics. WWII veterans with PTSD. Wives with nothing to lose. A woman murdered. Such is the case in The Blue Dahlia.   

"Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” Such is the case here. The Black Dahlia case remains unsolved.

American Beauty

1999

★★★★★ Liked Rewatched

"I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that one second isn’t a second at all. It stretches on forever, like an ocean of time."

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Dressed to Kill

1980

★★★ Watched

There’s a deliberate pulpiness present in De Palma films that revel in the lurid sensation found in pulp fiction yet he uses his pastiched auteurism to elevate his films through stylish self-awareness.

De Palma uses his gritty grandiosity to criticize the grotesque such as in Body Double (1984) revealing the seediness of the sex industry surrounding show business, the film itself reflecting the obscured lines of actor/actress and sex work present in Hollywood. Through this contrast De Palma is able to exalt…

Warfare

2025

Liked Watched

Melton representing for the Asians.