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Ryan Swen

Tomatometer-approved critic
Biography:

Ryan Swen is a freelance film critic and member of the Los Angeles Film Critics Association. He has written for various publications, including Reverse Shot, Film Comment, and Variety, and his personal website is Taipei Mansions.

Reviews

Movies TV Shows
Dracula (2025) 66% EDIT “Much, much messier than Jude’s other recent work, Dracula nevertheless finds insight in its own madness, mirroring the wild world we live in, whether we like it or not.” – Taipei Mansions Dec 31, 2025 Full Review Resurrection (2025) 89% EDIT “A reflection of a series of changes, fundamental shifts in perception that require radical alterations to capture them in imagistic form.” – Taipei Mansions Dec 31, 2025 Full Review Nouvelle Vague (2025) 91% EDIT “Linklater’s treatment of the early French New Wave and Breathless, while quite rosy and genial, feels entirely in keeping with Godard’s sense of play.” – Taipei Mansions Dec 31, 2025 Full Review Blue Moon (2025) 90% EDIT “Blue Moon uses what could be standard biopic trappings as a container for one of Linklater’s most potent explorations of time.” – Taipei Mansions Dec 31, 2025 Full Review Videoheaven (2025) 87% EDIT “What might set Videoheaven most apart from its other video essay brethren, however, is the clear urge to memorialize something that Perry sees as already being in the past. ” – Taipei Mansions Dec 28, 2025 Full Review Below the Clouds (2025) 94% EDIT “Many of these storylines are of sufficient interest that an entire (albeit shorter) documentary could be made about each of them, but Below the Clouds is most in thrall to the push-pull of the past and present.” – Taipei Mansions Dec 24, 2025 Full Review The Secret Agent (2025) 98% EDIT “The scale afforded here allows for the most vivid canvas Mendonça Filho has ever painted on.” – Taipei Mansions Dec 24, 2025 Full Review Sirāt (2025) 92% EDIT “Laxe’s film is in essence an examination of connections between the sacred and the earthly, each tied in accordance to a certain set of rules that must be divined through experience.” – Taipei Mansions Nov 21, 2025 Full Review Peter Hujar's Day (2025) 92% EDIT “The film even appears to take place over the span of a few days, with a full day-night-day-night cycle, suggesting that to simply talk about one’s day in any detail at all itself takes more time than it does to live it.” – Taipei Mansions Oct 15, 2025 Full Review Late Fame (2026) 85% EDIT “Late Fame is, above all else, an often thrillingly imperfect film, one more open to the possibilities of total failure than Jones’s last film.” – Taipei Mansions Oct 15, 2025 Full Review Kokuho (2025) 100% EDIT “At nearly three hours, “Kokuho” takes its time in covering the events of 50 years — ending, after its longest of many time jumps, in 2014 — but it remains engaging throughout, in no small part because of its ambivalent perspective toward its protagonist.” – Variety Sep 24, 2025 Full Review Grand Tour (2024) 91% EDIT “There is never any point at which the film is unaware of the distance that exists between it and everything it is depicting.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review Misericordia (2024) 94% EDIT “Guiraudie establishes early on that there is much more on his mind than another tale of a h(a)unted man.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review Here (2024) 36% EDIT “It’s possible to see Here as a film simultaneously highlighting and dismissing the unity of world.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review Here (2023) 95% EDIT “Here is a film that revels in imagination, in the direct images of its characters’ experiences and the thrumming richness of the world that surrounds them.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review Cloud (2024) 93% EDIT “Feels of a piece with Eyes of the Spider in its approach to violence and the numbing consequences of economic manipulation.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review Serpent's Path (2024) 80% EDIT “The Serpent’s Path introduction of a more coherent throughline trades Serpent’s Path‘s haze of confusion—signified by the copious use of complex math problems—for the brutal, cold light of digital and two-faced interactions.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review Chime (2024) EDIT “Chime, by contrast, is almost perversely committed to its evocation of the dread that has been his most widely beloved mode for so long.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review Caught by the Tides (2024) 99% EDIT “Much of Caught by the Tides‘s extraordinary achievement rests in the way in which it manages to question every single scene that appears on screen, even as they frequently register with a grand jubilation.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review Inside Out 2 (2024) 91% EDIT “Inside Out 2 is ultimately successful, in large part because, like in the first film, the embrace of a harmony and balance among the emotions is emphasized above all else.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review Evil Does Not Exist (2023) 91% EDIT “Hamaguchi constantly searches for a new means of conveying an essential mystery of human behavior; here, he has found yet another realm to ponder.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed (2023) 87% EDIT “While The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed does contain plenty of mortifying humor in line with Arnow’s past work, the range afforded by a much longer runtime expands the opportunities for perpetual, low-key embarrassment.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review The Beast (2023) 86% EDIT “The general cacophony suggested by this hailstorm of information, however, does not truly describe the experience of The Beast, and how both Bonello and Seydoux contribute to the singular, overwhelming mood.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World (2023) 96% EDIT “Do Not Expect constantly demands and foregrounds the moments of contemplation. And in those many, many scenes of Angela focused on the road, trying to stay awake as she moves from place to place, he has found the perfect vehicle.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review Ferrari (2023) 73% EDIT “Ferrari‘s narrative compression into a couple of weeks in 1957, as opposed to the grand sweep of past Mann biopics, applies doubly towards the juggling of his two home lives and his work stresses.” – Taipei Mansions Sep 5, 2025 Full Review
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