cinema
Comfort Films
My comfort rewatch. Two people walking and talking through Vienna for one night, and that's the whole film. It never gets old because conversation never does.
Favorite moment
The listening booth scene — two people deciding not to look at each other.
Watch it if
Slow evenings when you want a film that feels like company.
A man cleans Tokyo toilets, listens to cassettes, and photographs trees. It reframed what a good day — and good work — can look like. Routine as a kind of craft.
Favorite moment
Hirayama looking up at the morning sky, every single day, and smiling anyway.
Watch it if
Anyone tempted to believe meaning only lives in big ambitions.
A film about modernist architecture that is really about attention — what buildings hold for the people who stand in front of them. Calm, symmetrical, and quietly moving.
Favorite moment
Casey explaining why her favorite bank building moves her, shot from inside the glass.
Watch it if
Designers, architects, and anyone who has a building they return to.
Perfect Design Movies
My forever favorite. Restraint as its own language — every frame composed, every feeling implied rather than said. I learn something about negative space each time I watch it.
Favorite moment
The slow-motion noodle runs in the stairwell, strings swelling, nothing spoken.
Watch it if
Designers who want to see what withholding can do.
A film about modernist architecture that is really about attention — what buildings hold for the people who stand in front of them. Calm, symmetrical, and quietly moving.
Favorite moment
Casey explaining why her favorite bank building moves her, shot from inside the glass.
Watch it if
Designers, architects, and anyone who has a building they return to.
The most plausible vision of future technology on film — warm, soft, and worn-in instead of chrome and glass. The interface design still feels ahead of where we are.
Favorite moment
Theodore dictating letters at his desk — a whole product imagined in thirty seconds.
Watch it if
Anyone designing how people and software should talk to each other.
A design system disguised as a film — typography, color palettes, and aspect ratios all doing narrative work. Proof that a strong constraint is a style.
Favorite moment
The Mendl's box being tied with ribbon — packaging as a small ceremony.
Watch it if
Anyone who believes craft and whimsy belong together.
Favorite Sci-Fi
The most plausible vision of future technology on film — warm, soft, and worn-in instead of chrome and glass. The interface design still feels ahead of where we are.
Favorite moment
Theodore dictating letters at his desk — a whole product imagined in thirty seconds.
Watch it if
Anyone designing how people and software should talk to each other.
Patient, enormous science fiction. It trusts silence and scale to carry meaning, and Deakins makes every frame feel like a finished poster.
Favorite moment
K walking through the ruined orange haze of Las Vegas.
Watch it if
Big-screen nights when you want to sit inside a world for three hours.
Movies That Changed How I Think
My forever favorite. Restraint as its own language — every frame composed, every feeling implied rather than said. I learn something about negative space each time I watch it.
Favorite moment
The slow-motion noodle runs in the stairwell, strings swelling, nothing spoken.
Watch it if
Designers who want to see what withholding can do.
Recently loved. A quiet film about the lives we don't live and the people we leave inside them. Nothing dramatic happens, and somehow everything does.
Favorite moment
The final walk to the car — a whole relationship resolved in one long, silent take.
Watch it if
Anyone who has ever wondered about a road not taken.
A man cleans Tokyo toilets, listens to cassettes, and photographs trees. It reframed what a good day — and good work — can look like. Routine as a kind of craft.
Favorite moment
Hirayama looking up at the morning sky, every single day, and smiling anyway.
Watch it if
Anyone tempted to believe meaning only lives in big ambitions.