Michael McClain Patron

@michaeldmcclain (Instagram)
MAY 2025 TOP FOUR:
Celebrating Mutha.

Favorite films

  • Serial Mom
  • Moonstruck
  • 20th Century Women
  • Mildred Pierce

All
  • Ride with the Devil

    ★★½

  • Salesman

    ★★★★½

  • Rosetta

    ★★★½

  • Mountainhead

    ★★★

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Maria

2024

★★★★ Liked Watched

Maria: Pablo Larrain’s final piece of his triptych lets the audience in on the realization that each woman we’ve seen—from 2016’s Jackie to now—has been delivering their own mad scene inside prisons not of their own designs. 
In the case of Maria Callas, film and celebrity blend to form her own unique landscape where reality and the drama of opera assemble her life before her eyes. Angelina Jolie’s face is the conduit of memory and accesses a deep stillness I’ve…

Wicked

2024

★★★★½ Liked Watched

I have my nitpicks—the choreography reeeally didn’t do it for me 75% of the time (except “What Is This Feeling” she ate), I think the film could’ve been a total knockout if we did some trimming for the sake of brevity—but who am I kidding? This was my favorite musical for my whole teenage-hood. 13 year old Michael would’ve been shitting himself seeing this. 

I felt transported right back to when I first heard the cast album and saw the…

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Ride with the Devil

1999

★★½ Watched

Criterion Challenge 2025
35. Random Number Generator (Spine #514)

I couldn’t have cared less. 😴
Ride with the Duvet amirite?!

Salesman

1969

★★★★½ Liked Watched

Criterion Challenge 2025
10. Andrew Garfield’s Closet Picks

Paul Brennan hanging his head with abject hopelessness…it felt like I was watching the literal **death of a salesman.**

Much like the saga of the Maysles’ Grey Gardens is essentially a tale of suspended delusion, their Salesman can be distilled to a tragic portrait of American ambition mingling with the emotional toll of the sales pitch; each encounter is a living room thriller. A riveting documentary.

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Aftersun

2022

★★★★ Liked Watched

Their last vacation.
Their last dance.
The last thing he bought for her.
The last time they felt as connected. As happy. 

Now he lives inside a camera, inside a small, flashing room in her mind.

Rambling Rose

1991

★★ Watched

A baffling screenplay. Here’s some of my favorite lines:

“Replace that tit!”

“I have robbed the cradle and fell into hell.”

“The strangest vibrations in this house today!“

“I am only a human girl person and I ain’t always perfect.”
“I am only a human man person myself of the father variety.“

“Pack your bag, baby. As of this moment, you are hired, mired and fired.”