Jul 31, 2026 • Watched

Colossal

Despite the warm critical reception, I had low expectations from a few key reactions I heard, and yet still, I was disappointed. I love the idea of blowing genre to bits, to be clear. This makes all the moves of a rom-com and subverts them all. But what's left? Ridiculous in-world logic and a metaphor so frustratingly messy that I gave up by the finale. Hathaway does her best, Jason Sudeikis is fine, but neither character is convincing. Then it teases the Bechdel test only to fail it. No thanks.

Jul 24, 2026 • Watched

BlackBerry

I thought I'd avoided all of these product biopics (Nike, Flaming Hot Cheetos, Tetris) until I watched Nirvanna & learned that Blackberry is from the same creators. Gosh bless them Canadian can-do kids. I gather this is very exaggerated, and no doubt the timeline of events was squished together for the sake of efficiency and pacing. It works. I was glued to the screen. The handcam zooms capture tech garage dreams as they are eaten up by cheap, glossy capitalist machinery. Smart, sad, inevitable.

Jul 20, 2026 • Watched

Dune: Part Two

All I know about Dune is what I've seen in the Lynch version and Villeneuve's Part One (and Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice"), but my partner confirms it's as faithful an adaptation as one can expect. I couldn't appreciate those details, but I do love this darkly calculated epic grandeur. It's edited to utmost efficiency, its visuals hum with originality, and thankfully someone told Hans Zimmer to simmer down. A satisfying middle to a trilogy is never guaranteed, so I was exceptionally pleased.

Jul 20, 2026 • Watched

Frankenstein

I struggle to critique it. It's an expertly crafted, passionately told story that feels more definitive than any take in decades on this classic tale. I don't know the source material, so I had to find out later which elements were new and which were standard. It didn't make much difference; my feelings are the same. The reliance on CGI, especially in impossibly picturesque wide shots, felt too perfect to me. Somehow, I find the tailored filmmaking undercuts the flawed nature of what it serves.

Jul 20, 2026 • Watched

Donkey Skin

Maybe I'm too used to conventional Hollywood storytelling, but I wanted this to be either more streamlined or more unhinged, more family-friendly or more adult. A friend had to explain to me the context of its gay director and the story's rationale for being about incest at all. It helps, as do the anachronistic elements. The songs are fun. (I'm less partial to the score.) The colors, costuming, and set design are truly iconic, but the plot detours and pacing kept me at odds with the experience.

Jun 27, 2026 • Watched

12 Angry Men

Jun 26, 2026 • Watched

The Apartment

Jun 22, 2026 • Watched

Star Time

A few years before Natural Born Killers became the poster child for mass murder media infamy, this forgotten indie explored the topic through a shadowy, painfully isolated lens. Its satire is aimed directly at the psyche instead of the societal, with unreliable narrator, splintered timeline, and a wire walk between absurd humor and off-putting horror. Lynchian-weird in the best ways, its ramp-up is best viewed without a synopsis. Hardly revelatory in its message, but inspired in how it tells it.

Jun 17, 2026 • Watched

Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie

I was told to go into this completely blind, but I think at least some familiarity with the Canadian TV series would be helpful in retrospect. Still, surprises and laughs soar high. Void the snark of the Baron Cohen school of scripted/real world hybrid comedy, this gets its edge from the audacity of its stunts, which are always sure to punch up and at the system rather than individuals. It's more silly parody than biting satire, so it keeps its heart full amidst the chaos. Sweet & one-of-a-kind.

Jun 16, 2026 • Watched

Loving Vincent

A one-of-a-kind hand-painted film released before generative AI could kill it, this masterpiece of animation is only hindered by its narrative. While novel in how it incorporates Van Gogh's scenes into settings and characters, it jumps through hoops that makes the getting-there fairly convoluted with detours & irrelevant details. As an international experiment from first-timers, though, it's a big success -- one I'll be referencing for the rest of my life. I hope to see it in a theater one day.

Jun 11, 2026 • Watched

Backrooms

It's fine. I like the set design, the sound design (I liked that light bulb hum), and the acting is solid. It has some genuinely unnerving moments and inspired choices, but it ends up a bit of a nothing burger for the dramatic dominoes it lines up. It gets tedious at times, too, which would be ok if it hadn't hit the ground running. Adaptation-wise, for liminal entrapment from undercooked properties, I much prefer Exit 8, and for doppelganger horror, there's far more to glean from Annihilation.

Jun 5, 2026 • Watched

Obsession

"What is this, a monkey's paw fable for gen-x incels?" I thought after the first act of Obsession, yet another victory for YouTuber low-budget indie horror at the box office in 2026. I wasn't wrong, but I underestimated just how much was in the tank to explosively escalate those beats via plot twists, acting choices, and special effects. It's the kind of film that proves the folly of judging a film on a one-sentence summary. It's in the execution, the work of many tiny parts to elevate it all.

Jun 2, 2026 • Watched

Bugonia

This rating may change if I watch a second time, since this really demands a second viewing given how many clues it drops along the way to its highly anticipated ending. I love how Lanthimos has the range to be defiantly bold and nuanced moderation in the same breath. The acting is incredible across the board. The score is its own layer of commentary. Ultimately, though, I feel its sci-fi elements overshadow its social discourse, thereby deadening its power despite what its finale would suggest.

Jun 2, 2026 • Watched

Everything Everywhere All at Once

I don't disagree that this is an overstuffed, overplotted cacophony of lol random humor and multiverse sci-fi that happened at what was arguably the height of public interest in the multiverse. It has its cake & eats it too, then has another & eats it too, then has another...and that's what makes it profound. When it doesn't make sense, it's metacommentary. When it stacks another layer of drama on top of another layer of comedy, it's maximalist. Existentialism has never been so awe-inspiring.

May 25, 2026 • Watched

Super Mario Bros.

For a so-bad-it's-good cult movie, this is one of the greats in my book. It's full of big budget (for the 90s) spectacle and insane creative decisions, the result of too many cooks in the kitchen that's on an airborne plane without wings. Not as tedious as Manos, not as trope-filled as Waterworld, decently paced, full of practical & digital effects, and a time capsule of post-TMNT studio trash. Despite trying to make some serious sense of Mario lore, it's barely recognizable as that IP. Bonkers.

May 24, 2026 • Watched

Whistle