What I've Caught Up With, October 2026

I didn't watch a lot of movies in October. My job has been incredibly difficult, and will be through the middle of December, and there's no way around that. Right now, it feels like I'll be moderately lucky if I watch 300 movies this year, let alone 400.

On the other hand, I finished a bunch of television shows in October. I completed the 12 Monkeys show at the start of the month as my workout show. If you're a fan of time travel stories, this one is pretty solid top to bottom. I watched the third and final season of The Wheel of Time essentially as an obligation--I can't imagine wanting to watch a fourth season if it ever comes out. I finished the second and final season of The Sandman as well. I've dived back into the MCU by watching The Punisher series, and then bore down on Halloween by watching the new Carrie series, the old Kolchak: The Night Stalker series, and the very recent Below.

What I’ve Caught Up With, October 2026
Film: Metropolis (2001)

I don’t know why I keep torturing myself with anime. Metropolis from 2001 is based on a manga of the same name and has some surface similarity to the silent classic. In a future city, a powerful duke creates a massive building where he plans to ensconce a robot to run the city and essentially the entire world. This plan is opposed by his adopted son, who crusades around the city destroying malfunctioning robots. But will the robot instead develop humanity? The real sell here is the animation and artwork, which looks like the child of an issue of Heavy Metal and Tin Tin had a baby with Astro Boy. If you like the style, this probably will work for you. If you don’t, don’t bother.

Film: Vengeance (2022)

New York writer Ben (writer/director B.J. Novak) receives a call from Texas telling him that his girlfriend Abilene (Lio Tipton) has died of an overdose. The problem is that Ben doesn’t have a girlfriend named Abilene. He’s guilted into going to Texas to her funeral and is then pulled into the drama of her family and the belief that her death was nothing accidental. Looking to multitask, Ben immediately turns his investigative journalism into a podcast. Vengeance is serious, but also comic, and while much of the humor comes from a New Yorker showing up in West Texas, the story itself is interesting, unsettling, and human. It’s also oddly what might be the best performance in Ashton Kutcher’s career.

Film: Jesus shows You the Way to the Highway (2019)

One of the weirdest movies I have seen in a long time, Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway is a surrealist cyberspace project that might have the most unique film style in the past decade. A pair of CIA agents, (Daniel Tadesse and Agustín Mateo) are sent into a VR simulation in an attempt to destroy a computer virus called The Soviet Union. In the VR world, many people wear masks of famous people (our agents appear as Robert Redford and Richard Pryor), with much of the simulation under the sway of a man in a Bat-Man costume who calls himself Batfro. Much of the VR world looks like live-action stop-motion. It appears that frames have been removed to make much of what we see look choppy and unreal. This is a head trip, hard to follow, but hard also not to enjoy.

Film: Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror (2021)

I freely admit that I am a bit of a whore for a good horror documentary. Tell me that I’m going to learn about horror trends, films, stories, or see them in their historical context, and I’m right there. Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched looks at the idea of folk horror, from its British roots to all of the different ways that it has been expressed. This means we’re going to get the American fascination with how the indigenous people were treated and slavery as well as colonialism around the world. This is one of those films that is really useful for adding things to the watchlist, not that I really need that these days. As usual, my complaint is that even though this is about 200 minutes long, I would love for it to be two or three times that length.

Film: The King (2019)

I am a complete sucker for the Henry IV and especially Henry V from Shakespeare. Henry V is one of Billy the Shake’s best efforts. The King is a sort of stylized version of all three of the plays in question forced into a bit less than 2 ½ hours. It’s a far different version than, say Branagh’s Henry V (which to my mind is the definitive version), but it’s not trying to be that—it’s very much its own version of the history. The cast is the reason to watch this. As with many films like this one, it’s the cast that recommends it—Timothee Chalamet, Joel Edgerton, Lily-Rose Depp, Thomasine McKenzie, and Robert Pattinson among a host of others. It won’t replace Shakespeare, but it’s a tale worth seeing and well-told. The biggest issue is that Chalamet can’t quite pull off the accent.

Film: He Ran All the Way (1951)

In John Garfield’s short career, he made more than 40 films, finishing with this one, a short film noir that puts him in the role of a small-time crook on the lam after shooting a police officer in a robbery gone bad. Garfield was at home in any role but excelled in this kind of blue collar persona. He Ran All the Way is a pretty standard noir in all of the ways that matter, and Garfield feels at home in the role. He is also ably assisted by a young Shelley Winters (as well as Gladys George). Garfield is equal parts sex appeal and menace in this one, something at which he excelled. While hardly a necessary film, seeing the last of John Garfield on screen is worth your 78 minutes.

Film: Star Trek: Generations (1994)

With the recent deaths of Walter Koenig and Patrick Stewart, and my own catching up on Star Trek: The Next Generation on Saturdays, watching this first excursion of the Next Gen cast (and the last of the OG Trek) felt appropriate. Star Trek: Generations is where the movie torch gets officially passed from one franchise entry to the next, and for that, it’s worth seeing. It’s not top-tier Trek, though, especially since a lot of the TNG characters are given pretty short shrift. Picard, Geordi, and Data feature prominently, but Counsellor Troi could’ve stayed home. Malcolm McDowell as a somewhat lunatic bad guy is a good casting choice, even though at the time that was his niche. Worth seeing if you’re into Trek, but if you are…you’ve already seen it.

Film: Remain Calm (2026)

Years ago, I played a game with coworkers where we tried to think of someone who had been in at least five movies and was terrible in all of them. My go-to answer was always Pauly Shore, but thanks to the short Remain Calm, he now gets a pass. A creature that reads body language and attacks anything that shows signs of stress escapes from a lab and winds up in a gas station staffed by Matt (Shore) and Erwin (Nick Swarsdon). A government agent (Doug Jones) shows up to try to corral the monster and hilarity ensues. This could have very easily been put into something like a V/H/S movie, but I love that it was released separately on YouTube. Hey, we’re still close enough to spooky season for a quick scare, and at 13 minutes, you could do a lot worse.