What I've Caught Up With, September 2026

September is another month where my movie viewing faltered a great deal. I managed only 20 movies in September, far fewer than the 33 to keep pace for the yearly goal. Ah, well. Some years are like this, and both work and family pressure take time away. It is what it is.

Television-wise, I caught up with the second season of the excellent Batman: Caped Crusader. I also watched the recent fourth season of Reacher, which was fine, but was also definitely the least of the four seasons. We can hope that it will improve on a fifth season. Finally, I finished Person of Interest, which I enjoyed for Michael Emerson, could have lived without Jim Caveiezel, and ultimately feel like it comes across as apologia for AI. Still, it ain't the worst I've watched.

Lunchtime!

Film: Raw (Grave)
Format: DVD from Wilmington Public Library through interlibrary loan on gigantic television.

Julia Ducournau is really early in her directorial career in terms of the number of films she has made. I think, for me, she’s going to be a director whose work I seek out, but only watch once. That’s definitely the case for Titane, which I think is a masterpiece. It’s equally true of Raw. (Grave in the French, which translates to “serious.” It would be Brute if we wanted the French to be the same as the English.) This is an important film and one I’m happy to have finally seen, but I’m not going to watch it again any time soon.

Let’s get the main points of this out in the open before we dive in: Raw is a film about cannibalism. This is not a zombie film, nor a film that pretends to be an ethnography and is actually just poorly-disguised racism. No, this is about people living in the modern world, in Western society, with inexplicable, terrible, monstrous cravings. And, importantly, it’s not clear that this is what the film is about until we’re a good distance in and already invested in the story, one of the realities that makes this such a masterful piece of cinema.

That's Really Super

Film: Supergirl
Format: Streaming video from HBO on various sources.

Before we talk too much about Supergirl, we need to spend some time talking about the toxicity of nerd culture. If Supergirl had been a perfect superhero movie, something that rivaled the cultural relevance and power of Avengers: Endgame, there would have been a sizable contingent of nerds online rating it 1-star, sight unseen. Why? Because it’s a superhero movie with a female lead who isn’t entirely dependent on a male character or even in any kind of relationship with a male character. Wonder Woman got a pass because of Steve Rogers. Birds of Prey was downgraded because Harley Quinn escaped from the toxic influence of the Joker in that film. There are a lot of nerds who project their desperate desire for male dominance on all movies, and none so much as those they seem to think are theirs by divine right. Oh, and probably Supergirl isn’t hot enough for the standards of guys who haven’t touched a woman other than their own mother.

The truth is that Supergirl is not a perfect superhero movie. It’s not even the best DC superhero movie of the last few years. It is, however, at least very good, and presents a very interesting view on the title character. It also does this without a lot of the expected “Grrl power” attitude. In fact, for a good portion of the movie, Kara Zor-El/Supergirl (Milly Alcock) isn’t very likeable.

All You Can Eat

Film: Buffet Infinity
Format: Streaming video Amazon Prime on Fire!

I’m not sure how to explain what Buffet Infinity is. It feels like it is pulling ideas from completely disparate sources but also like something completely original, something you have never experienced before. It’s horror, but also comedy, and also kitsch. There are connections to the movie Stay Tuned, SNL short films, Detroiters, Mr. Show, SCTV, Scientology, and cheap local ads. But none of this tells you what Buffet Infinity actually is.

Imagine someone watching late night television where all of the ads are cheap, local ones. The person holding the remote has that sort of scrolling ADHD that keeps them switching channels every 30 seconds or so, and that they have a unique ability to only find news and commercials. And as they continue to move from channel to channel, some odd reality starts to take shape.

A Remake Worth Watching

Film: The Naked Gun (2025)
Format: Streaming video from Paramount on The Projector

I’ve had a number of different methods to watch films over the last 16 or so years of this blog, but now and then I get to add a new one. Through a series of events, I now have access to a device that projects streaming channels on a blank wall. Long story, and I may reveal it some time in the future. Anyway, this weekend, I’ve spent some time with a cousin, his wife, their son, and their son’s partner, and we watched the remake of The Naked Gun. So, while this is not entirely unique for me, this review will also come with the necessary context of seeing this with a group of people, and frankly, that is the way to watch this movie.

For those uninitiated (and why would you be uninitiated in this), The Naked Gun is based on the movie of the same name, which came from a short one-season television show called Police Squad. This is a film done in the style of Airplane! with hundreds of jokes tossed at the screen at the same time with the hope that a few of them will stick. This is the sort of comedy that rewards rewatching, since there are often multiple jokes happening at the same time, and you have to work to catch them all.

He Loves Me...Not

Film: Heart Eyes
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

If you are perpetually online, you have almost certainly seen clips of shows from the Dropout Network. One of the shows, Make Some Noise, is an improv show that frequently features the talents of Josh Ruben, known for some impressive impressions and the ability to make odd animal noises. I bring this up because Josh Ruben also directed the horror/comedy Heart Eyes. I know nothing about Ruben beyond what I’ve seen online. The comedy seems right on for what I know; the horror seems surprising.

Heart Eyes is an attempt to create a new slasher villain, a character with an iconic look. Our killer, naturally known as the Heart Eyes Killer or HEK, has had a two-year reign of terror. The gimmick is that HEK kills happy couples on Valentine’s Day. The first year, he killed couples in Boston; the following year, he attacked Philadelphia. Since this movie takes place in Seattle, you can guess the city that will be struck this year.

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

I did better with television shows in August. I watched the final season of Good Omens, which was really just a movie-length episode of the show. I also finally finished The Sopranos as my workout show and have moved on to 12 Monkeys, which is surprisingly intense. I watched the second season of Fallout as well. I also watched the DC animated show Harley Quinn. It was fun for four seasons and went one season too long. Last and absolutely least, I watched the Harley Quinn spin-off Kite Man, Hell Yeah, which at a single season also went one season too long.

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

As seems to be the case lately, I go into the month with plans of catching up on movie watching and I simply fall further behind on my goals. I watched 26 movies in August; three rewatches and 23 new-to-me films. It’s almost a full week’s worth off the pace of just watching one movie per day. So, it seems likely that I won’t hit the year’s goal for movies this year, either. Ah, well.

The Bride Wore Red

Film: Ready or Not 2: Here I Come
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

I love a good subgenre, the more obscure or personal, the better. When I say I love a good subgenre, I’m including things like “zombie” of course, but I’m really talking about subgenres that are more about finding connections between movies that are otherwise unrelated. “Good for her!” is one such subgenre—movies where the female protagonist overcomes something terrible. It includes movies as diverse as Swallow and Happy-Go-Lucky. One of my current favorite subgenres like this is “Samara Weaving covered in blood.” Based on that, you should realize that we are talking about Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (which I will be referring to as Ready or Not 2 from this point forward).

There is no way to discuss this movie without discussing the original film. So, while I’m not going to offer up any spoilers for this movie I am necessarily going to have to at least mention important plot points from the original Ready or Not. If you don’t want that movie spoiled, you should stop reading at the end of this paragraph. Or, just skip the next two paragraphs—I’ll keep the spoilers limited to that.

Burning for You

Film: Is God Is
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

I’ve got a lot of feelings about Is God Is, and I’m not sure exactly where I should start with them. So let’s start with the fact that this is director Aleshea Harris’s debut film as a director. Harris is a playwright and this movie started as a stage drama, but that’s not at all obvious from the way this is filmed. Discovering that this is her first movie is not unlike learning that Get Out was Jordan Peele’s directorial debut. Is God Is is a mature effort that feels like Harris has been sitting in the directors’ chair for a decade.

This is a revenge movie through and through, but this is not like an ‘80s revenge movie where Arnold Schwarzeneggar tracks down the guys who left him for dead and kills them one by one with a quip for each death. This is an old school revenge movie, one that feels like the natural child of every Western in history where a man hunted down the gunslinger who murdered his family.

No Exit

Film: Warfare
Format: Streaming video from HBO on Fire!

I’ve been trying to post reviews about more current movies lately. If you look at what I have been posting in general, I’ve been watching movies from this year and last year, at least in terms of what I’m putting up as full reviews. Part of this is because I want to have a more or less consistent posting schedule, even if I don’t always keep to it. Part of it is also that it’s a sort of self-defense. The more I watch from these current years, the less gets added to the list later. So, today it was the turn of Warfare to be the film of the day. This is a film that comes from Alex Garland, so I was interested based on that going in.

The truth is that you have already seen this in large part. While the events of this film come from the experiences of the men who lived through this event. In fact, co-director Ray Mendoza is a survivor of the battle in question, and is one of the only characters in the film depicted with his actual name. Warfare is every bit a modern war movie, though. There is no tearful scene where some kid from Brooklyn talks about his girlfriend before being killed by an errant shot. This is brutal, and violent, and vicious. The issue is that there’s not a lot here that feels any different from Black Hawk Down.

Police (Not So) Procedural

Film: Normal
Format: Streaming video from HBO on gigantic television.

Bob Odenkirk has an odd career trajectory. He made his bones in comedy as one half of the two heads of HBO’s Mr. Show, then became much more of a household name with his connection to Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Recently, though, Odenkirk has become an action star, but a vastly different one in a lot of ways. Odenkirk’s action characters don’t spit one-liners and walk away with a couple of scratches. His characters get hurt—shot, stabbed, beaten, and bruised. And rather than one-liners, he’s going to have speeches and moments of surprising badassery. This brings us to Normal.

It’s also worth noting that there was a film made in the early 2000s that was also called Normal. It featured Tom Wilkinson and Jessica Lange as a married couple in a situation where he realizes that he is transgender and wants to undergo sex reassignment surgery. I say this not because these two movies would ever be confused beyond the name, but because it was filmed a few miles from where I live. Odenkirk’s Normal is not a story of discovery, but an extremely bloody action comedy with a surprisingly high body count and multiple Rube Goldberg-style deaths.

A Normal Day in Indianapolis

Film: Dead Man’s Wire
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

The old saying is that truth is stranger than fiction. There are variants of this: “You couldn’t write this” or “If I wrote this, no one would believe it.” Movies like Dead Man’s Wire show the reality of the saying. This seems like a story that comes out of a weird fever dream, something just barely on the edge of possible. And then, you have to wonder why it took 50 years to make this story into a movie.

This genuinely feels like the sort of story that belongs on a television show, either as a wacky plot for some weird sitcom or as some insane plot-of-the-week for a crime of the week show. Honestly, it would have worked really well as an episode of Burn Notice or Person of Interest. I still struggle to realize that this is something that actually happened.

Resurrection

Film: The Bride!
Format: Streaming video from HBO on Fire!

There are a couple of things I say pretty regularly here to the point where I’m not sure if I should keep saying them. One of them is that I genuinely want to like every movie that I watch, even when I suspect it’s not going to be good. With The Bride!, with or without the punctuation, there was added incentive to like the film. Any time a movie gets negative reactions because of the theme, the cast, or the director (see the recent controversy around The Odyssey), I go into it predisposed with the opinion that the attacks on it are probably nonsense. The Bride! got a lot of negative reactions, not a few of which regarded Maggie Gyllenhaal at the helm.

The reality, at least as I see it, is that this is a movie that isn’t sure what it wanted to be. It’s clearly a romance and there are clearly horror elements in it. Is it a feminist manifesto? A fever dream? A story of possession? An undead remake of Bonnie and Clyde? The problem is that it’s kind of all of these things, and because of that, it’s also kind of none of them.

Troy Story

Film: The Odyssey
Format: Market Square Theater #3.

It seems like every now and then, a movie shows up that really pisses off a lot of people for no reason more than the fact that it exists. The backlash against Barbie happened before it released, and the same thing happened to The Odyssey. Over and over again, the movies that draw this kind of negative attention prove to be wildly successful, just as The Odyssey has done. It’s gone from having the most-disliked movie trailer in YouTube history to a movie in the high 90s on Rotten Tomatoes and clearly on its way to more than $1 billion, and it still hasn’t opened in China.

So, while I am going to talk about the movie, I think the controversy is worth a paragraph here. The backlash against The Odyssey was framed as being “historically inaccurate” because of the casting. Were people upset that we didn’t have an actual cyclops? Or that Odysseus was being played by a guy from Boston? No, of course not. The problem was that Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world, was being played by Lupita Nyong’o, a woman who is objectively gorgeous, but happens to be Black. Oh, and Elliot Page plays Sinon, who actually isn’t in Homer’s epic poem and that freaked a lot of people out. In fact it freaked people out so much that the rumor was that Page was actually playing Achilles. And in the movie? If you aren’t waiting to be outraged, you wouldn’t even notice.

What I've Caught Up With, July 2026

I’d love to say that I caught up a ton on movies in July and am now on track to hit 400 movies by the end of the year. Alas, the exact opposite happened, and life intervened in a lot of ways. On pace would be 34 movies in July, and I didn’t come close, watching only 22. Honestly, I probably won’t hit 400 this year, but 365 might still work out.

On the TV front, I finished The Americans, which I enjoyed, and The Boys, which I was happy to get through—there are some really good points to it, but it’s almost impossible to recommend to anyone. I also finished the ITV series Jeeves and Wooster, starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie when they were very young. As the show is based on the writings of P.G. Wodehouse and Wodehouse is one of my favorite authors, this proved to be a delight.

The Gaang is Back

Film: Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender
Format: Streaming video from Paramount on Fire!

Avatar: The Last Airbender is one of the greatest television shows ever made. I say this with no conditions or reservations. The show is smart, the characters are deep and believable. There are moments of great humor and moments of real tragedy, and it depicts a world in terrible conflict, with young kids at the center of it—kids who are essentially charged with solving that world-spanning conflict on their own. It is (my opinion) the best animated show in history, and without qualification, a show that I think everyone should watch. So I was very excited to see that Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender was a thing. I was also happy to see that it received just enough of a limited release for it to qualify for awards season.

It would be impossible to give a comprehensive look at the Avatar universe, but a quick primer will help with understanding the movie. In this world, there are essentially four nations, each one based on one of the four classic elements. Some people in each of those nations—the Fire Nation, the Water Tribes, the Air Nomads, and the Earth Kingdom—have the ability to “bend” those elements, something akin to performing magic with those elements. Overseeing all of this is the Avatar, an element bender who has the ability to learn all four elements and who is charged with maintaining balance. When each avatar dies, the spirit is reincarnated in the person of another bender, and the title rotates from someone in one nation to the next.

From the Future

Film: Arco
Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!

As I say frequently, I try to go into everything I watch with a completely open mind. I want to like whatever it is I’m watching, but there are going to be times when, for one reason or another, I’m expecting something to be good or bad, not based on hype or the trailer, but some other reason. It might be the name of the film, or the cast, or a still. In the case of Arco, it was a still. Of all the Oscar films I was slated to watch from 2025, this is one that I really didn’t look forward to: I don’t like the art. For an animated film, that’s going to be hard to overcome.

Because of this, I went into Arco feeling like it had to prove itself to me more than the average movie does. That’s probably unfair, and it’s also pretty clear that I’m in the minority when it comes to the art style. I should also say at this point that, in a rarity for me, I watched the dubbed version of this. Typically, I watch with subtitles, but this bothers me a lot less with animation. Because of this, I’m not going to go through the typical casting—there’s a decent chance that the people I mention here won’t be the voices in the version you might watch.

Shark Week

Film: Dangerous Animals
Format: Streaming video from Kanopy on Fire!

I’m of two minds when it comes to dangerous animal movies. On the one hand, they are incredibly visceral. There’s something very lizard brain fearful about things like lions, grizzly bears, alligators, and sharks. Sharks might well be the most viscerally scary specifically because they live in a place where it feels like they can attack at any time. Of course, they don’t—shark attacks are incredibly rare. But it doesn’t change the fact that there is a gut level reaction to the idea of shark attacks. Ever since Jaws came out, people have tried to reinvent the shark movie, usually without much success. But Dangerous Animals feels like the first film in some time to really rise to the challenge seriously.

Don’t take this as me saying that Dangerous Animals is in the same class as Jaws, because it isn’t. To be fair, most movies aren’t—it’s not just one of the greatest rogue animal movies or horror movies in history, it’s one of the greatest movies ever made. Dangerous Animals, though, has a lot going for it. The reason is that, for a wonder, it doesn’t make the sharks the bad guys. The sharks here are just sharks acting like they do. The true evil is human, and honestly, this is exactly the right way to do this kind of movie.

Sounds Scary!

Film: Undertone
Format: Streaming video from HBO on gigantic television.

One of the issues that horror has as a genre is that what scares us is always going to be subjective. While there are certainly some visceral things that will get to a lot of people, some things work on us and other things don’t. Look at The Blair Witch Project, for instance. You can find horror fans who think it’s one of the worst horror movies ever made, and you’ll find others (like one of my brothers) who considers it one of the scariest movies in history. I bring this up because I get the sense that this kind of divergence of opinion will be the norm for Undertone (or undertone if you prefer the more stylized version of the title).

Before we launch into the movie itself, I want to talk about the aspect of this that needs to be discussed in some detail regardless of anyone’s actual opinion on the film. Undertone is an exercise in minimalism. While there is a full cast for this film, only a couple of actors appear on camera, with everyone else appearing only as voices through the phone or over the internet. Undertone was made for about half a million dollars, close to a shoestring these days, and while that’s obvious in retrospect, it’s not obvious while the movie is running.

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

I’m still watching The Sopranos as my workout show, and should be just about finished (but possibly not quite) by the end of July. I’m very close on finishing The Americans as well. On the MCU front, I rewatched The Defenders, which feels like a huge lost opportunity. I also watched The Inhumans, the easiest MCU show to skip and in which every single character is a miserable ass. I watched the last season of High Potential, which continues to be a great show, and also watched Hilda, which is great and should be watched by any kids interested in anything. Finally, I finished Gen V, and am now finishing The Boys so I can be done with that universe completely.

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

On pace for June for me is 33 movies, which is exactly how many I watched. I didn’t catch up at all, which still puts me at 7 movies off the pace for the goal for the year. Hitting the minimum goal is a good enough accomplishment for now, and July offers the opportunity to catch up. As seems to always happen, I was on pace to catch up a bunch and had a week where I watched almost nothing. If I can avoid those weeks, I’ll be on pace in no time.

Shearers Out

Film: The Sheep Detectives
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

When I first saw the poster for The Sheep Detectives, I figured it was an obvious miss. I liked Babe well enough, but talking animal movies aren’t really something I seek out, and there’s always a sense of CGI talking animals hitting that uncanny valley area that I find disturbing. And then the reviews started coming in and they were almost entirely positive. So when it showed up on streaming, I figured it was time to take a more serious look at it.

There are certainly some initial similarities to Babe, of course. It takes place on a farm, there are plenty of sheep, and all of the animals talk. But, The Sheep Detectives is a murder mystery, and it’s the sheep who need to try to figure out who killed their shepherd, because the local police are not specifically inept, but completely inexperienced in dealing with any serious crime like murder.

Grim(m), Indeed

Film: The Ugly Stepsister (Den stygge stesøsteren)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!

I genuinely appreciate the fact that horror movies are starting to get attention when it comes to award season. In the past, a horror movie getting a nomination for anything was a shock, and a lot of those nominations were for categories like special effects. There’s been more respect for the genre, especially in the last couple of years, and that respect has shown up in nominations across the spectrum. Such a case is the nomination for Makeup and Hairstyling for The Ugly Stepsister (or Den stygge stesøsteren if you want the Norwegian title).

And don’t get it twisted; The Ugly Stepsister is very much a horror movie. It’s also a sort of fantasy romance and a very dark comedy, but this is body horror before it’s anything else, and it goes to some very uncomfortable places. The fact that this comes from a tradition of a classic fairy tale only makes this that much more effective.

Emergency Broadcast System?

Film: This is Not a Test
Format: Streaming video from AMC on Fire!

Is the zombie subgenre played out? I think you can make a pretty good case for that even if I don’t specifically agree with it. The problem with zombie movies is that it’s very difficult to distinguish one movie from another after a while. A movie needs to either be really innovative and do something different or it needs to be made so well that it can’t be ignored. The Girl with All the Gifts presented very different zombies and an interesting version of the zombie plague. Train to Busan was simply pure, high-octane action. Both work because of that. Since This is Not a Test doesn’t have the wall-to-wall insanity of Busan, it’s going to need to do something new.

Sadly, it does not. Zombies and high school kids is something that has been explored before and in interesting ways. Dance of the Dead (zombies at prom) and Anna and the Apocalypse (zombie Christmas musical) did something new. Kids trapped in a high school while zombies rage outside was definitively handled by the Korean show All of Us Are Dead. This is Not a Test follows a lot of the same path. There is a difference here, but it’s not a notable or interesting one.

Back to the Drawing Board

Film: Sketch
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on gigantic television.

I genuinely try to go into movies that I watch wanting things to be good, and I always try to approach every film as neutrally as possible. I admit that I went into Sketch with some real reservations. Sketch was produced by Angel Studios, which is run by the Mormon church. These are the same people who made Sound of Freedom, and who generally make movies that are available in theaters as “special events” on a random Tuesday. To that point, the “Special Features” section of the DVD has a promo for the Tuttle Twins; if you’re not familiar, they are libertarian cartoons for kids, or more appropriately, right-wing propaganda for children in grade school.

But, I watched it anyway, and it does seem to be evidence of the idea that even a blind squirrel finds the occasional nut. Sketch is inventive, fun, and actually feels in a lot of ways healthy in terms of the psychology of the kids involved and the family situation. This was far better than I expected. Sometimes, you just have to take a flyer on something and it pays off.

The Devil You Don't Know

Film: They Will Kill You
Format: Streaming video from HBO on various players.

Tropes and basic plots exist for a reason: they work. They serve as a sort of shorthand for character and plot. We can pick up a lot of basic truths about a story or a character quickly, and this also serves as a way for creators to subvert those tropes. Haunted house stories work the same basic way—people are trapped in a house and are unable to leave and are pursued and often killed by the thing (or things) haunting the house. Alien and Event Horizon are really just haunted house movies in space. Ready or Not subverted the genre by giving us a single victim being pursued by everyone else. They Will Kill You does the same basic thing.

I mean that sincerely. They Will Kill You is an almost spiritual sequel of Ready or Not, and it’s not much of a coincidence that they came out at virtually the same time. We’re going to have one motivated person against a crew that wants to get rid of her and there’s going to be plenty of Satan along for the ride.

They Blew It

Film: Whistle
Format: Streaming video from AMC on various players.

I had hopes for Whistle, but admittedly, those hopes were based on the poster and what I gathered from a short synopsis. What the story looks like is that some kids find an Aztec death whistle. Shaped like a skull, when blown, it releases a horrible screeching noise. In the film, though, this causes the people who blow the whistle (actually, anyone who hears it) to die horribly. It’s a cool idea, even though it hits the same tropes that we tend to see in movies like this, but just original enough to perhaps give us something new.

The reality is that Whistle is almost certainly a movie that you’ve seen before if you’re at all a fan of horror, and I mean that in no positive way. What we learn is that the whistle doesn’t cause those who hear it to die horribly; it literally summons their death. So, if you were destined to die at 85 of a pulmonary embolism, you die of an embolism essentially now, and if an autopsy is performed, your body will essentially read as being 85. The whistle accelerates your death, and you die in the way you were destined to die. In other words, it’s Final Destination with a bit of a twist. Sure the deaths are essentially pre-ordained, but capital-D Death is the antagonist.

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

I finished two big shows and two smaller shows in May. I’m continuing to work my way through the MCU shows, rewatching the first season of Iron Fist and then the second season for the first time. I also watched the four-episode Eyes of Wakanda, which was fine, but ultimately forgettable. I completed The Good Fight as well and am currently between legal shows. The biggest completion was Babylon 5, and I’m now working my way through the related movies, several of which are highlighted below. I’m still watching The Sopranos as my workout show, and am just at the halfway point. Beyond that, I’m a few seasons deep into The Americans, which is good, but I find impossible to binge.

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

With the stated goal of 400 movies viewed for the year, I needed to see 34 in May to break even. I watched 35, so I caught up a single movie, putting me seven off the pace. Honestly, that's pretty good for me. Normally at this point, I'm a couple of dozen behind where I want to be. It was a pretty normal month. Nothing too bizarre, aside from a week where, due to circumstances, I didn't watch much of anything. Had I been a bit more dilligent, I might have caught up all the way.

No One Hurts You Like Family

Film: Sentimental Value (Affeksjonsverdi)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

As I slowly make my way through the latest crop of Oscar movies, I’ve found myself struggling at times to want to pull the trigger on them. All of the ones I haven’t seen are currently streaming at this point; I could finish this in less than a week if I had a mind to, but right now, what I want to watch is going in different directions. So, while Sentimental Value (or Affeksjonsverdi in the Norwegian) has gotten mountains of acclaim, I’ve found it difficult to want to watch it. But sometimes you just have to force yourself into doing those things that you know you need to do. I’d like to knock out one of the remaining Oscar films ever week—I’d be done late June/early July, and that would absolutely be a record for me.

Anyway, Sentimental Value on its surface is one of those movies that is about making a movie, but it’s really about the relationships of the people involved. Hollywood always likes movies about movies, but this is not a movie that at all feels like it’s glamorizing the business. In fact, it does the opposite, and it takes some very obvious digs at NetFlix to the point where it will clearly never be shown on that streaming platform.

Easier Said Than Done

Film: Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on gigantic television.

Gore Verbinksi has a surprisingly good track record as a director. Not many people could create an entertaining movie out of a Disney ride, after all. Verbinski’s latest, Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die, is a similar sort of project. This is a movie that shouldn’t work in a lot of ways, but does in spite of itself. It’s also a movie that you can point to when people complain that all movies are the same or that Hollywood is just producing remakes and sequels.

That said, there are certainly going to be people who will tell you that Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die is in many ways a very long episode of Black Mirror, and there are certainly times when that seems to fit. There are also moments where it is far too surreal for Black Mirror, but much of it has the same feel. It’s darkly comic like many episodes and is very much a warning against technology, AI in specific. And there are strong connections to other movies and stories. There’s a lot of 12 Monkeys here just for a start, and the opening sequence is reminiscent in many ways of Pulp Fiction.

She's Got Those Baby Blues

Film: Die My Love
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on gigantic television.

Remember a few years ago when Jennifer Lawrence was the flavor of the month? It was right around 2012 when she was in both The Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook, even though her real coming out party in Hollywood was her role in Winter’s Bone. She’s not that anymore, which is probably a good thing. In a sense, she has the ability to do what actors like Daniel Radcliffe and Kristen Stewart have—she can basically do what she wants and take whatever roles she feels like. That brings us to Die My Love, which is essentially a movie about post-partum depression.

Another person who has that same ability to pick projects that they want because they don’t really have to worry about their career is Lawrence’s co-star for this film, Robert Pattinson. Why am I talking about this? Because it’s important to have these people in the industry so that films like this get made. Die My Love was never going to be a box office smash. You need people who don’t care about how much money a film will make, who might even be willing to take scale for a film that has less big hit appeal but much more artistic credibility.

New List, Who Dis?

Film: Predator 2
Format: Streaming video from Hulu Plus on Fire!

Just like almost every May, the They Shoot Zombies list of 1000 most highly acclaimed horror movies has been revamped and retooled. This year, the list returned six films previously cut and added another 26, many of them from the last couple of years. There were a few older brand new additions, though, including Predator 2. This seems like an odd addition. It’s much more a science fiction/action movie than a horror movie, although there are certainly some clear horror elements. Anyway, I figured this would be a good way to herald in the new version of the list.

The original Predator was released in 1987 and presumably took place in 1987. The sequel, released three years later, takes place in that far distant future for the time of 1997. In this world, Los Angeles (and presumably other parts of the country and world) has become a war zone of criminal gangs fighting each other and the police in broad daylight. Into this rides our good cop Mike Harrigan (Danny Glover). Our opening sequence will show him taking out a number of criminal thugs, not realizing that there’s also our title character in the mix.

Koi Pond

Film: Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ( Amélie et la métaphysique des tubes )
Format: Blu-Ray from Cortland Public Library on gigantic television.

Ray Bradbury said in interviews that he has distinct memories of being not merely an infant, but of being days old despite being told that this is essentially impossible. I say this because it’s going to be relevant to Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ( Amélie et la métaphysique detubes in the original French). This is a story a very young child, essentially in utero until 3, from that child’s perspective. Little kids have been in movies before, and have even been main characters in movies before, but this feels like the first time that a film has been narrated from this perspective.

What this means is that our title character, Amélie, is going to have an adult vocabulary, but a child’s version of the world around her. Specifically, this means that she is going to be a solipsist for the bulk of the film, which takes place between her second and third birthdays. Amélie is difficult to like initially because of this. It’s not inaccurate, but it is frustrating. Amélie is entirely self-absorbed, which makes her a difficult narrator.

Last Rites

Film: We Bury the Dead
Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!

There are times when I look at a film that a lot of the world outside of the film needs to be addressed. That’s definitely the case with We Bury the Dead, and it has nothing to do with the plot of the movie (although having the U.S. kill everything on the island of Tasmania certainly feels relevant). No, this is about the star of the film, Daisy Ridley. We need to take into account the toxicity of many an average Star Wars fan, who will reflexively hate anything Ridley touches for years specifically because they object to the character she played in some movies. We Bury the Dead is a great example of this—critic approval is almost double that of average viewers on Rotten Tomatoes, and while that does happen, many times it happens because of people who have an agenda.

The idea of We Bury the Dead isn’t going to be immediately obvious, but we’re going to figure it out as the audience in the first few minutes. After seeing a bit of the relationship of Ava (Ridley) and her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan), we find out about the inciting incident of the film. The U.S. has accidentally tested a new weapon on Tasmania, destroying the city of Hobart and killing everything else on the island. Clean up teams are sent in, and Ava volunteers, because her husband was on a work trip on the southern end of the island. In her orientation, we learn that some of the brain dead bodies are waking up—while disturbing, most of them are peaceful.

Dennis Miller? Really?

Film: Bordello of Blood (Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood)
Format: DVD from Manteno Public Library through interlibrary loan on gigantic television.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything, and honestly, it’s been a few days since I’ve watched anything. I’ve been out of town for a bit and have not really had the opportunity to do much but yardwork and grading papers for the last week. May has really gotten away from me, and all of the progress I made last month catching up on the goal of 400 movies/year has melted away. So I’m trying to get back to it, and a short, goofy horror movie seems the best way to do it. And so we have Bordello of Blood. To give you an idea of exactly how goofy this is, it’s also known as Tales from the Crypt Presents: Bordello of Blood. Yep, it’s an extension of the Tales from the Crypt show.

There is something that you’re going to have to get prepared to deal with right off the top. There was a short period of time where Dennis Miller was post-SNL Weekend Update and pre-right wing conservative clown and Bordello of Blood falls right in the middle of that. What that means for you if you’re going to watch this is that Dennis Miller is going to be the good guy. Honestly, that fact played a lot better 30 years ago when this was new than it does now.

Welcome to the Loony Labyrinth

Film: Dave Made a Maze
Format: Streaming video from Tubi on Fire!

You have to love it when someone comes up with a completely bonkers premise for a story and then pulls it off about as well as it could be done. Dave Made a Maze is a film that shouldn’t work. It’s marginally a horror movie, although the violence is clearly cartoonish and the blood is literally replaced with yarn and glitter. It’s a comedy because there is a lot of humor here, but it’s not really a horror comedy. The closest genre that it fits in is magical realism. We have characters who live in the real world but have an experience that cannot really be explained as anything other than magic. It’s just a hell of a lot weirder than the more standard magical realism films like Field of Dreams, Life of Pi, or Midnight in Paris.

Annie (Meera Rohit Kumbhani) comes home from a weekend to discover that her artist boyfriend Dave (Nick Thune) has built a small maze out of cardboard in the middle of their living room. Dave has a history of not completing projects, and the maze that he has created for him feels like a genuine breakthrough. The problem is, as he tells Annie, that he hasn’t finished the maze and he’s lost inside it. This seems patently ridiculous, as the maze appear to be about 20 square feet of cardboard boxes. When Annie tells him to just come out, he refuses to destroy the work, and also tells her that he’s lost inside the maze and can’t get out. Adding to the confusion, when Annie shakes the cardboard exterior of the maze, she can hear machinery and more rattling inside.

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

I finished three shows in April. The first was just catching back up on The Lincoln Lawyer, one of those rare cases where the show is better than the movie (although, to be fair, both are based off a series of books). I also finished Luke Cage, after rewatching the first season. My minor physical issues have cleared up, so I managed to complete Evil (aka: Catholic X-Files) a couple of weeks after initially intended. The new workout show is The Sopranos, which I’m finally getting to a mere three decades or so late.

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

I watched 33 movies in April, which means that in terms of the goal of 400 movies on the year, I was exactly on track—one movie per day, plus three movies. So, while I didn’t fall behind on that goal in April, I also didn’t catch up any. Baby steps, though, right? Treading water is better than falling further behind.

Life Happens

Film: If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You
Format: Streaming video from HBO on various players.

I’ve talked a little bit about what my life was like in 2025, but I haven’t really gone into a great deal of detail. It was the worst year of my life by a pretty good margin. When I had a conversation with my boss about what I had accomplished in 2025 with a look toward 2026, my answer was that my biggest accomplishment was that I hit all of my deadlines—all of my students’ papers and projects got back to them on time. There were a lot of times during the year where it felt like I was always on the edge of a complete breakdown—it was a combination of the events happening around me and the reactions of other people to those events in some cases. All of this brings me to If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You, a movie I don’t think I could have made it through had I attempted to watch it last year.

If I Had Legs, I’d Kick You (I’m going to shorten this to just the pre-comma part of the title for the rest of this) feels like a modern update of Diary of a Mad Housewife combined with the white anger film Falling Down. Linda (Rose Byrne, who was Oscar-nominated for this role and the reason I watched it) is a woman whose life is falling apart on every front. My situation last year was plenty bad, but I have nothing on Linda.

Appomattox

Film: Civil War
Format: DVD from Sycamore Public Library on gigantic television.

It was only a matter of time before someone decided to project a new civil war onto the United States. The level of division is maddening and disturbing—there are states I’d rather not drive through right now, and some that I have driven through recently where I wasn’t exactly worried, but where I definitely felt out of place. Alex Garland’s Civil War feels like a worst-case scenario, but also feels unfortunately real.

We don’t actually get a great deal of background on the war that is being fought. We see the unnamed president (Nick Offerman) practicing a speech that feels a bit overblown and hyperbolic, especially since we soon learn that there are multiple successionist movements of varying strength and success, and the group commonly referred to as the Western Forces are rapidly approaching Washington D.C.

Zom-Rom-Com

Film: Life After Beth
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

I went into Life After Beth with a couple of clear reservations. The first is that I’ve never been entirely sold on Aubrey Plaza. I know I’m supposed to like her; she’s been marketed as someone who is emotionally detached in a cool way, sort of the live-action version of Daria. The second issue is Dane DeHaan, an actor who has one of the most slapable faces I have seen. DeHaan reeks of smugness to me. That might be unfair, but it’s also true that the first couple of movies I saw him in, I disliked, so my dislike of him is at least there for a reason.

And yet, Life After Beth beckoned. It’s a zombie movie, one of my favorite subgenres, especially considering how much has been done with it over the years (I see you shaking your head; we’ll get there). It’s also clearly a romance that is going to end badly, something else I tend to appreciate. Finally, it’s a movie that clearly wants to have fun with the premise. This is a horror movie with a cast of comic actors. So, while the two stars are actors I don’t tend to like as much as I’m supposed to, there was a lot here that drew me in.

Drilling Down

Film: The Loved Ones
Format: DVD from Rock Island Public Library through interlibrary loan on gigantic television.

I don’t enjoy the torture porn subgenre of horror, and I don’t seek out gore for the sake of gore. My preferences in the horror genre are more psychological than anything else, and while I don’t tend to shy away from gore, for me, it works when it’s plot-necessary. I think it works better when it’s used in small amounts and when it’s implied. So movies that involve any amount of torture are always going to be ones that I hesitate to watch. It’s one of the reasons that I’ve waited this long to see highly acclaimed Aussie horror film The Loved Ones. I knew enough of what I was getting into to wonder if this was going to be extremely troubling.

The Loved Ones is a film that contains some gore elements but also tends to keep the most brutal aspects off camera. It’s also a film where the torture is extremely plot-relevant. In fact, that torture is very much the point of the film. Normally, this would be a reason for me to wonder what I was doing through the entire short run time, but in this case, what happens is surprisingly tasteful for a horror movie from a first-time feature-length director.

The Title is the Review

Film: Honey Don’t
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

Someone needs to tell me what the hell happened to Ethan Coen. I consider myself a fan of the Coen Brothers. I’m not any kind of superfan—I haven’t seen their entire catalog, but I’ve seen more than I haven’t. When the Coens decided to separate artistically for a bit, Joel made The Tragedy of Macbeth, a film that earned three Oscar nominations. Ethan Coen made Drive-Away Dolls and then Honey Don’t, which are the two lowest-rated movies of his career. Like I said, I haven’t seen everything attached to Ethan Coen’s name, but I certainly understand why Honey Don’t sits under everything else of his I’ve seen, and in fact below pretty much everything he’s directed.

Honey Don’t was written by Coen with his wife, Tricia Cooke. It’s their second writing collaboration, and also the second in a proposed “lesbian B-movie trilogy.” Since neither of the two movies in the trilogy have been well-received, it does bring up the question of whether or not this will be completed.

Cold as Ice

Film: Dead of Winter
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on gigantic television.

Every now and then, an actor who has made their bones in traditional roles starts making action movies. It happened with Liam Neeson did Taken and it happened when Colin Firth did Kingsmen. It happens to comedians sometimes, too—Bob Odenkirk and the Nobody films, for instance. With Dead of Winter, it appears that it is now Emma Thompson’s turn. And let me tell you, if Emma Thompson is now going to be doing thrillers and action movies, I am 100% here for it.

Dead of Winter is a high concept movie in the sense that you can run down the plot in a couple of sentences. Barb (Thompson) is a recent widow who is traveling to a remote lake in northern Minnesota to scatter her husband’s ashes. On her way to the lake, she discovers that a couple has kidnapped a young woman (Laurel Marsden) for some unknown reason. Since the area is incredibly remote, has just survived a blizzard, and there is no good cell phone service, Barb realizes she is the only hope the young woman’s survival.

Hombre Secreto

Film: The Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto)
Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!

There were times when I was watching The Secret Agent (O Agente Secreto in the original Portuguese) when I felt like I had seen this movie before. The reason is that it feels like it covers a lot of the same territory as I’m Still Here from the previous year. Both films deal with the military dictatorship in Brazil in the 1970s and with the lives that were devastated or lost under that regime. I’m Still Here deals with a woman looking for what happened to her husband. The Secret Agent deals much more with the direct victim of the violence. The stories are different but similar, and feel united even though they take place years apart and concern different people.

Armando Solimões (Wagner Moura) is a dissident in a Brazil that has been under military rule for more a decade. He travels to Recife where his in-laws are taking care of his son Fernando (Enzo Nunes) ever since Armando’s wife Fátima died. He finds his way to a sort of commune of dissidents and takes the name Marcelo as an alias. He is placed by the group in a job at the city office that creates identity cards. This allows him the opportunity to look for information on his mother, who he knows very little about.

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

I had planned to finish the show Evil by the end of the month as my workout show, but an injury kept me out of the gym for a couple of weeks, so I’m still a week or so away from finishing. I did cross off a few large shows in March, though. I got through The Ray Bradbury Theater, a show that had some significant high points and a few low points. I also finished The Good Wife, all 156 episodes, a show I’ve been watching for months. And, on the opposite end of the spectrum in terms of speed, I burned through The Dragon Prince on NetFlix—a show that has some interesting similarities to Avatar: The Last Airbender. Strong recommend.

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

My stated goal every year is to watch 400 movies, and every month I fall a little more behind on that goal. Hitting that goal looks like 34 movies in March and I watched 30, which puts me at an average of a movie per day exactly right now. It seems like fate that I set that goal and always fall a little short of it. Still, it was a good month and I watched a lot of pretty good films and a few real stinkers.

Apex Predator

Film: Predator: Badlands
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on gigantic television.

The original Predator movie is a classic and the second one is at least interesting, if not that great. And from there, the franchise tanked and it stayed tanked until it was handed to Dan Trachtenberg with Prey. Since this film, the franchise is on an upswing. The animated Predator: Killer of Killers was a great addition to the series, and then came Predator” Badlands. And while it’s not quite at the level of Prey, it really feels like the third movie in the franchise in a row that really gets it.

What’s different this time is that for the first time in the franchise, the film in the main will come from the perspective of the predator (the species refers to itself as “Yautja”) rather than the hunted prey. A young Yautja named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) is the runt of his family, and because of this, desperate to prove himself. For his hunt to bring him fully into the clan, he decides to travel to the hell world of Genna and hunt a creature known as the Kalisk, thought to be unkillable.

Let's Make a Baby

Film: The Assessment
Format: Streaming video from Hulu on Fire!

I’ve said before that horror movies are going to be more and more about environmental issues. The same is true of science fiction. Some science fiction will be specifically about environmental issues, and then there will be films like The Assessment, where the environmental problems are tangential.

We’re looking at a world in this case where some environmental disaster has happened. The environment has collapsed and resources have become rare, which means that the powers that be have put huge restrictions on parenthood. This is not just because of the scarcity of resources but also because human life expectancy has been dramatically increased through a variety of pharmaceuticals, drugs that also prevent fertility. In this world, people who want to be parents must be assessed for fitness.

"Nightmare" is Right

Film: A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010)
Format: DVD from Cortland Public Library on gigantic television.

There’s an idea that circulates online every now and then is that filmmakers should remake movies that had good premises but turned out badly. Imagine, if you will, a version of Army of the Dead that didn’t suck. Sadly, though, we live in a world where the good and great movies get remade or rebooted, and nowhere does that appear to be more prevalent than in the horror genre. Tons of the classics have been remade with varying levels of skill. And while there have been some real trainwrecks, perhaps nothing has been more egregious than the 2010 remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Honestly, it seems inevitable. Most of the best work of Wes Craven has been remade (The Hills Have Eyes, Last House on the Left) or rebooted (Scream), so why not his absolute masterwork? This feels like a venal cash grab, something so completely soulless that there’s a whiff of brimstone when one opens the DVD case. And, since the film was produced by Michael Bay, that fits completely.

Good Times Never Seemed so Good

Film: Song Sung Blue
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

I’m extremely white. A few years ago, when it was the thing to do, I had my DNA run on 23 and Me and the results were than 99.9% of my DNA is from the British Isles, northern Europe, and Scandanavia. A substantial amount of my ancestry could chuck a rock into the Arctic Circle. What this means is that there are a few things I can count myself an expert in. One of those is white people music. The whitest music ever made isn’t country or bluegrass or polka. It’s Neil Diamond. That being the case, it was only a matter of time before we got a movie that featured Diamond’s music, and thus we have Song Sung Blue.

Song Sung Blue is a biopic, but it’s not a biopic of Neil Diamond himself. Instead, it’s about Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman) and his wife Claire (Kate Hudson, who was Oscar-nominated for this role). The two made a living in part as tribute musicians, with Claire specializing as Patsy Cline. They realize that Mike, who calls himself “Lightning,” could probably pull off a Neil Diamond tribute band (what he styles instead as a Neil Diamond experience).

I'm a Snake When We Disagree

Film: Zootopia 2
Format: Streaming video from Disney Plus on Fire!

I had issues with Zootopia when it was released. It’s a movie whose heart is in the right place when it comes to things like racism, but it gets so much wrong that it’s hard to connect it to the way that racism actually works in the real world. Essentially, the ultimate message of Zootopia is that the way to defeat racism is to just stop being racist. That being the case, I didn’t have a lot of hope for an improvement in this when it comes to Zootopia 2, which gives us a much more obvious racism plot.

The reason it’s more obvious in this case is that we’re bringing in an entire class or two of animals into the story. The original Zootopia concerned itself entirely with mammals. For the sequel, we’re bringing in reptiles. I looked for amphibians—I didn’t see any, so they may be reserving them for a future sequel (but you can expect based on the short scene in the credits that if there is a Zootopia 3, it will center on birds).

Germany's Most Wanted

Film: Nuremberg
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on Fire!

Every year, there’s an Oscar bait movie or two that fails to secure a single nomination. Sometimes, it’s a good to great film that is simply overlooked, like The Woman King from 2022 or The Iron Claw from the subsequent year. Sometimes, it’s a movie that has gone hilariously bad, like Cats from 2019. And then there are the movies that have big ambitions, but fail to gain any traction. By all rights, Nuremberg was created for a run at the Oscars, and it goose egged.

It had to have had a shot, though. It’s a movie that is clearly relevant, discussing the Nuremberg trials at the end of WWII, making clear comparisons to the rise of fascism in the U.S. today. It’s headlined by two Oscar winners (Russell Crowe and Rami Malek) and a two-time nominee (Michael Shannon) and a one-time nominee (Richard E. Grant). This was clearly a film that wanted to take a swing for the top prize, and probably a few others (Best Actor, Supporting Actor, and Adapted Screenplay for a start).

Save the Green Planet (Trade it with Friends)

Film: Bugonia
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

Of all the Best Picture nominees, Bugonia is the one that I’ve been putting off. Before you correct me and say that there’s at least one available streaming that I haven’t seen, I acknowledge that, but Bugonia has been available for a long time. The truth is that I don’t like Yorgos Lanthimos films as a rule. In fact, of the four I have seen prior to this one, The Favourite is the only one I can say I’ve actually enjoyed. Honestly, I think that’s a fair justification for why I’ve waited this long.

I also knew that this is a remake of a Korean film called Save the Green Planet! There was a part of me that thought I should watch the original before I watched the remake. But, at some point, you just need to get the work done, and what that means here is getting through Oscar films. Surprisingly (for me), this gives me 7 out of 10 for Best Picture before the ceremony starts, and it completes me on Best Adapted Screenplay. That’s got to be a record for me.

Vroooooooooooom!

Film: F1 (F1: The Movie)
Format: Streaming video from Apple TV on rockin’ flatscreen.

There is a huge problem at the heart of F1 (sometimes called F1: The Movie). The problem is that because we know we are watching a movie, the endgame is played out for us once we know the premise of the film. Once you know what the plot is, the ending, while not guaranteed, is shuttled into a couple of possibilities with slight variation. It makes about 90 minutes or so of the film not meaningless, but having nothing really at stake. We know where we have to get.

We’re going to start not with F1 cars but racing at Daytona in the 24 hours at Daytona event. The person we are focusing on is Sonny Hayes (Brad Pitt), a one-time F1 prodigy gone from that world for 30 years. Hayes now lives in his van, moving from driving gig to driving gig, essentially working for hire. His team wins the race, but he refuses to touch the trophy, or even really to celebrate. He collects his bonus check and drives off.

Green Acres, Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction

Film: One Battle After Another
Format: Streaming video from HBOMax on Fire!

We need a regular reminder that the Oscars are political and rarely correct. I say this because Paul Thomas Anderson is almost certainly going to win Best Director on Sunday and One Battle After Another seems likely to take Best Picture. The reason this is upsetting is that this is clearly not the best movie of this year and not the best directorial performance. However, Paul Thomas Anderson is a top director and much like the year that Christopher Nolan won for Oppenheimer, people have decided that it’s Anderson’s year.

That’s frustrating. Paul Thomas Anderson, to be fair, does have 14 nominations and no wins, so I understand the sentiment that he is due for a win. The problem is that One Battle After Another, while a fine movie, is not anything close to Anderson’s best work. This feels like Pacino winning an Oscar for Scent of a Woman or Paul Newman finally winning for The Color of Money. But, that’s where we are, and in a couple of days, it’s likely that that’s where we’ll remain.

Too Too Solid Flesh

Film: Hamnet
Format: Streaming video from Peacock on Fire!

My undergrad degree is in English literature. What this means is that there are times when I know at least some of what is going to happen in a movie. You can’t be much of an English student without knowing something of the life of William Shakespeare. Because of this, while I didn’t know exactly where we were going with Hamnet, I at least knew one or two of the major plot points. In this case, that doesn’t affect my enjoyment of the film, but it does mean that there will be people who are shocked at a particular moment that I spent a large part of the film expecting.

With Hamnet, named after Shakespeare’s son (both the movie and the play), we’re not getting a new filmed version of Hamlet, but sort of the story of its creation. This is much more the story of Shakespeare’s (Paul Mescal) tumultuous family life and his tormented relationship with his wife Agnes (Jessie Buckley). This was something that surprised me—traditionally, Shakespeare’s wife is recorded as Anne, but no matter.