rcmnd

James Ellroy

American crime novelist and essayist, author of the L.A. Quartet (The Black Dahlia, L.A. Confidential and two more) and the Underworld USA trilogy, and of the memoir My Dark Places.

3 things

Brief EncounterOther David Lean

loved

Brief Encounter is my favorite of David Lean’s films.

Criterion Collection Top 10 list by James Ellroy, the entry for Brief Encounter.

2026-07-30·criterion.com ↗

NashvilleOther Robert Altman

loved

I was dumbstruck by this motion picture. Nashville is the movie that cine-dinks claim Citizen Kane is.

Criterion Collection Top 10 list by James Ellroy, the entry for Nashville.

2026-07-30·criterion.com ↗

Miller’s CrossingOther Joel Coen

liked

Miller’s Crossing speaks to me.

Criterion Collection Top 10 list by James Ellroy, the entry for Miller’s Crossing.

2026-07-30·criterion.com ↗

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The shading behind a date shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Fully green is recent. It drains a quarter at a time as the post gets older, and is empty once it reads as dated.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The shading is gone after about:

Stripes mean the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no shading.