You Saw Me Standin' Alone

Film: Blue Moon
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

When people talk about very talented actors, people who are genuinely and consistently good at the craft, Ethan Hawke doesn’t get mentioned enough. Hawke feels (to me) like one of those actors who goes into every job like it’s the one that’s going to make his career. He commits, and he’s good to great in pretty much everything he’s been in, at least that I’ve seen (and I even forgive him for The Purge). I was happy to see that he was nominated for an Oscar, his third acting nomination and first for lead. Blue Moon hinges entirely on Ethan Hawke’s performance. This film is him, and he is the film, even with a good supporting cast.

Blue Moon is a memoir of sorts of Lorenz “Larry” Hart (Hawke), the lyricist half of Rodgers and Hart, who wrote a number of Broadway musicals over the course of a couple of decades. Hart’s decline came about not from rumors of his sexuality (he was what we would today probably call pansexual), but his copious drinking. Rodgers, needing a more consistent partner for his music, teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein to make the greatest musical composition team ever, starting with their first collaboration, Oklahoma!

A Boy and His...Zombie?

Film: Fido
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

The movie Fido tanked at the box office in 2006, and I think there’s a specific reason for it that has nothing to do with the actual quality of the film. The problem is that Fido is a spoof of a type of movie that is no longer made. This is a zombie film, which puts it firmly in the horror camp, but much more than that, this is a parody of Lassie movies, just with a zombie instead of a collie. The kid in this is even named Timmy.

Fido takes place in an alternate timeline in what looks like the 1950s. Because of space radiation, the dead come back to life as flesh-eating ghouls, which caused a worldwide war against the undead. The radiation still plagues the planet, and the newly dead also return as zombies unless they are quickly cremated or decapitated. Many people, though, are neither decapitated nor cremated—they are collared and become zombie servants tasked with menial jobs. All of this is controlled by a company called ZomCon, which also maintains fences around town, keeping folks safe from the zombie-infested wild zones.

BTS, Eat Your Heart Out

Film: KPop Demon Hunters
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

Based on the film’s almost immediate cultural impact, I suppose I wasn’t really surprised at the Oscar nomination for KPop Demon Hunters. When this hit NetFlix, it became a huge sensation. What better place to start going through Oscar movies than this, I thought. It’s not a movie I would normally choose to watch and I’ll knock it out quickly and move on. Honestly, my original plan was to watch One Battle After Another, but by the time I had a chance to sit down with a movie, it would have taken my past midnight to finish. And so, KPop Demon Hunters it is.

This is a film where I want to spend a lot of time on what it is and less on the plot, so I’m going to speedrun the story in three paragraphs. Years ago, demons plagued the Earth, collecting souls and feeding them to Gwi-Ma (Byung-hun Lee), the demon king. A trio of women rose up to stop the demons, and pushed them back both with fighting skill and with the power of song, which created a magical barrier called the Honmoon. As time progressed, new signing trios emerged to maintain the Honmoon and fight against the demons who managed to break through.

More Like a Bad Dream

Film: Sleepwalkers
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!

We have got to talk about Sleepwalkers. Once upon a time, Stephen King, who wrote this screenplay, had a serious drug problem. There’s evidence of that in some of his projects, like the ridiculous Maximum Overdrive (the only movie he directed), and this one. Sleepwalkers has a premise that is at least mildly interesting, if a bit derivative. But once you get past the premise, this movie is complete nonsense. What it has going for it is that it’s the ridiculous kind of nonsense that eventually gets beyond silly and kind of becomes entertaining again.

You should be aware right from the start that we are going to go in some nasty places here—not nasty in the sense of blood and gore, but nasty in the sense of the habits of our two main characters. We start with police in California investigating a house that is surrounded by the bodies of dead, often mutilated cats. There’s also the desiccated body of a young girl in the house as well, but no sign of the occupants.

Infect Me With Your Love

Film: 28 Years Later
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on various players.

28 Days Later is not just one of my favorite horror movies; it’s one of my favorite movies. I was wildly disappointed in the sequel, 28 Weeks Later. The first 10-15 minutes are brutal and fantastic, and then it becomes a series of plot holes. Danny Boyle and Alex Garland have returned to the series, though, and have inexplicably skipped having 28 Months Later, going instead for years. I was guardedly optimistic going into this one. I adore the first movie, but I’ve been burned by a sequel before.

The lore is something that definitely needs to be addressed here. The second movie ends with what seems to be the Rage virus being released on the European mainland, a fact that would quickly lead to the virus spreading across all of Europe, into the Middle East and Asia, and potentially into Africa as well. We get a snippet at the start of the virus spreading in the Scottish highlands, with a young boy named Jimmy Crystal (Rocco Haynes initially) escaping, and also watching his minister father willingly give himself over to the infected in what he believes to be something like the Rapture.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Picture 2024

The Contenders:

Anora (winner)
The Brutalist
A Complete Unknown
Conclave
Dune: Part Two
Emilia Pérez
I’m Still Here
Nickel Boys
The Substance
Wicked

...But No Mule

Film: 40 Acres
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on gigantic television.

I’ve said a couple of times in the past that one of the subgenres we’re going to start seeing more and more of is environmental-based horror. Environmental disaster science fiction is going to be just as much a thing in coming years. 40 Acres is absolutely a film in that subgenre. While this is an action movie in a lot of respects, the entirety of the film turns on climate catastrophe and famine.

We are in the new future, and the world has experienced a massive catastrophe. A fungal blight has destroyed crops the world over, plunging the entire planet into a massive famine. While food is a prized commodity, it is arable farmland that is the true prize. Any place where actual crops can be grown is more valuable than anything else.

Let it Rot

Film: The Shrouds
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

David Cronenberg makes movies that are upsetting. He took a break from overt horror movies for a bit, but the movies he made were still upsetting in real ways (and I remain convinced that Eastern Promises is the most depressing movie with a happy ending I have ever seen). Lately, he’s slid back into horror films. The Shrouds is a film that touches on horror, but only in the sense that there are clear body horror elements to it, which is par for the course with Cronenberg. This is much more a science fiction drama with disturbing romance elements, but since it’s Cronenberg, horror is certainly going to be an element.

The Shrouds is also a film that has a suitably bizarre premise to get things going, something that Cronenberg is no stranger to. That’s not a necessity for Cronenberg, but it is pretty common. The central premise of The Shrouds is that there are people who, so distraught in grief by the loss of a loved one that they would want to be able to see the body of the body of that loved one decaying in the grave.

What I've Caught Up With, January 2026 Part 2

I watched some television in January as well. I finished a show from Shudder called Horror's Greatest, and it was a decent look at different aspects of the horror genre. I also finished the Fargo television show as my workout show, and I cannot recommend the show enough. Even if the stories weren't great (and they are), the cast list is one of the most impressive ever put together. The most out-of-the-norm show I watched was the She-Ra cartoon series that is soon being removed from NetFlix. Normally, that's not really my speed, but when an openly pro-gay, pro-trans, pro-feminist show that is not completely transferred to discs is about to disappear, potentially forever, I think it's important to watch.

What I've Caught Up With, January 2026 Part 1

My stated goal—usually one that I fall very short on—is to watch 400 movies every year. That sounds like a lot, but it’s a movie a day plus three movies per month (2 in February). That being the case, I need to watch 34 movies in January to be on pace. I watched 31, so I’m a touch behind, but not terribly so, and it feels like something easily surmountable. I did watch a ton of movies off the big list of stuff to catch up on, so that’s a help.

Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Director 2024

The Contenders:

Sean Baker: Anora (winner)
Brady Corbet: The Brutalist
James Mangold: A Complete Unknown
Jaques Audiard: Emilia Perez
Coralie Fargeat: The Substance

Ever Since I Was a Young Boy, I've Played the Silver Ball

Film: Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

The first Phantasm movie is a weird horror classic—the sort of movie that invites you into the mind of Don Coscarelli, who clearly has more ideas than he knows what to do with. The Phantasm movies are famous for the flying chrome spheres that reveal head-stabbing blades and drills that drain people of blood and for the presence of the undertaker-adjacent Tall Man (Angus Scrimm). The first movie is a fever dream of murder and aliens, as is the second. By the time we’ve reached Phantasm III: Lord of the Dead, Coscarelli has lost the plot in a lot of ways.

That’s the thing about the Phantasm movies: they don’t make a great deal of sense. Are they supernatural horror movies? Is the Tall Man actually connected to aliens on some distant planet? If so, why resurrect the dead? The reality is that you either buy into the insanity of the films and the series or you don’t. If you buy in, you’re going to see some things that don’t make a lot of sense but will stick with you.