What I've Caught Up With, October 2025 Part 2

On the television front, I’ve been pushing toward getting through the MCU shows more out of a sense of completeness than anything else. The biggest of these is Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which I just wrapped up. I also watched Channel Zero as my workout show for October. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s sort of the Hydrox-not-Oreo version of American Horror Story. The seasons are shorter (six episodes each), and a lot more focused. While it doesn’t have the star power, the stories are pretty good, with season 2 being the highlight.

What I’ve Caught Up With, October Part 2
Film: Cold Souls (2009)

Paul Giamatti, playing himself, is struggling with the weight of his existence when he discovers a medical clinic that allows him to have his soul removed. He goes through with the procedure, retaining just enough of his soul to keep him functional, but otherwise, he is void of the weight of his own existence. It’s fine for a bit, but he struggles to relate to his wife (Emily Watson), and still struggles with the play he is performing in. When he goes to have his soul restored by the doctor (David Straithairn), he discovers it has been stolen and trafficked to Russia. Cold Souls is darkly comic and weird and feels like a very natural riff on Being John Malkovich. Good, potentially great, and a really solid character piece for Giamatti, who never seems to get the respect he deserves.

Film: The Reluctant Debutante (1958)

Young Jane Broadbent (Sandra Dee) comes to London to live with her father, Lord Jimmy Broadbent (Rex Harrison) and his second wife Sheila (Kay Kendall). In social competition with Mabel Claremont (Angela Lansbury), Sheila decides in the moment that she will hold a debutante ball for Jane and bring her out into society. From here we get the sort of classic love muddle. Mabel’s daughter Clarissa (Diane Clare) is madly in love with attractive but traffic-obsessed and dull David Fenner (Peter Myers), who pursues Jane. Jane much prefers drummer David Parkson (A 22-year-old John Saxon!), who performs at most of the debutante balls. I’d love to say this is harmless, but it’s not. The class war stuff is here, since everyone in this film is bourgeoisie or worse. A bigger problem is that dull David Fenner is also clearly a sex pest, and manages to get a happy ending that he clearly doesn’t deserve. Dude should be in prison.

Film: Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot (2018)

Alcoholic John Callahan (Joaquin Phoenix) hits rock bottom after a car accident leaves him paralyzed from the chest down. Needing an outlet, he discovers he has some talent as a cartoonist. Much of the film deals with his descent into his rock bottom, and then his time in AA to pull himself out and rediscover the trauma that led him to drink in the first place. It’s well-cast, featuring Jonah Hill and Rooney Mara among others, including a couple of scenes with Jack Black. It also hits the same tone as Callahan’s cartoons—there’s both humor and darkness here. A lot of the laughs happen and make you feel like you should be looking over your shoulder, lest someone else see you laughing at what’s on the screen. The title, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot comes from one of Callahan’s cartoons.

Film: Explorers (1985)

There’s a bunch of films from the 1980s across the science fiction, comedy, and horror genres (and combinations) that feature kids having wild adventures without their parents knowing it. If you needed evidence that Gen X was a group of feral kids, the existence of films like Explorers, where a group of three boys build a spaceship at night and fly off to meet aliens is a pretty good place to start. Our boys, Ben Crandall (Ethan Hawke), Wolfgang Müller (River Phoenix), and Darren Woods (Jason Presson), build a spaceship out of junk and based on plans that Ben seemed to get in a dream. The result? They meet aliens who are the ones who beamed the dream into Ben’s head. Remember, these kids are entirely unsupervised. Where the hell were their parents? Fun, but hardly necessary.

Film: A Scanner Darkly (2006)

A Scanner Darkly is based on a near-future book of the same name by Philip K. Dick. The U.S. has lost the drug war, and about 20% of the population is hopelessly addicted to something called Substance D, which causes hallucinations and paranoia. Undercover agent Bob Arctor (Keanu Reeves) has been assigned to immerse himself in the culture and has wound up addicted and erratic. Because of the surveillance culture, Arctor’s actual appearance is unknown in the precinct, and he has become so immersed in the culture that his boss has commanded him to start investigating himself. The selling point here is not merely the cast—Winona Ryder, Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr., Rory Cochrane—but the rotoscoping. Essentially, this was filmed and then animated over the film. This is an exercise of descent into madness and drug-fueled conspiracy thinking, reminiscent of Bug from the same year. My real question—why the hell is Alex Jones here?

Film: Star Trek: First Contact (1996)

When Star Trek films are good, they’re really good. When they are bad, they are terrible. Fortunately, the first-ever Next Generations-only film is a good one. It is once again a film where the Enterprise goes back in time, this time to prevent the Borg from assimilating the Earth just before first contact with the Vulcans. So, onboard the Enterprise we’re going to fighting the Borg while on Earth, most of the crew is going to help put together the first-ever human ship with warp capability. It’s the standard Next Gen crew with the additions of James Cromwell, Alfre Woodard, and, of course, Alice Krige as the Borg Queen, who is both horrifying and overtly and disturbingly sexual. It’s not Wrath of Khan, but what is?