I didn’t learn until after the credits rolled that the director of this was also the lead actor and the sole writer — oh, and it’s her feature debut. Everything about this felt so confident. The direction was fluid and alive — there were a couple moments that brought a smile to my face, built entirely by the cinematography and editing. The writing was sharp, fearlessly shifting tones, breaking our heart one moment then making us laugh the next — the result feeling far from jarring, but rather, like real life as experienced by this protagonist vividly sketched and brought to life by Eva Victor.

9) SUPERMAN

When we spent something like ten minutes straight in a small apartment listening to Clark and Lois do nothing but talk in the first act of a blockbuster Superman movie, I knew we were in for something special.

In true James Gunn fashion, I actually cared about the characters — I was hooked by how human they felt. Superman’s heart is in the spotlight, the blood pumping through everything in this film. Lois was a layered character. Lex Luthor was an engaging villain, playfully portrayed by Nicholas Hoult. The side-heroes were not present merely for marketing; they served a purpose for the story, and they each did the best with the screen-time they were given. The animal side-kick wasn’t just cute, he wasn’t just useful, he had a whole ass personality with flaws and unique quirks.

The character work isn’t all that’s to like in this either. The action was consistently fun to watch. The plot moved with good pace, with effective twists and turns. If I could change anything at all, I would tone down Superman’s speech to Lex a couple notches — the audience saw everything he was preaching in the hours that preceded it. Other than that, I’m happy to report that my superhero fatigue isn’t actually permanent — I just need great movies in the genre to come out more often than they do.

8) IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU

In one fell swoop, this film snatched two common cinematic superlatives for itself:

1) Feel Bad Movie of the Year

2) Don’t Have Children Movie of the Year

We are with a sensational Rose Byrne, experiencing a two-hour panic attack we wish would mercifully end but need to know how it resolves. Quite the resolution, I must say; the last couple minutes of this hit me just right — especially that last shot of her daughter, who she’s finally taking a second to see.

7) BLUE MOON

Ethan Hawke is unleashed in this chamber piece that felt to me like Richard Linklater channeling prime Woody Allen.

Seriously, I watched the blue Sony Pictures Classics title screen appear, sitting in a tiny independent cinema, bringing to mind the days of annual Woody releases. Then the movie started, a bar in New York City was the setting, the dialogue was snappy and witty, the protagonist was neurotic and the performance was captivating. This film took me back in time in more ways than one, and I loved every minute of it.

6) WEAPONS

This story is told through the eyes of several beautifully layered characters in a town where seventeen elementary school students inexplicably went missing on the same night. What follows is what I thought was a story about how a community is affected by great tragedy. We see characters fall into the arms of their vices. We see their worst traits bubble to the surface. Fingers get pointed, then lives are ruined — and/or the other way around.

Then, a good ways through the runtime, we’re introduced to the actual antagonist of this film, and my reading of the story shifted. After a while wading in the terrors built by the writer/director, searching for signs through the darkness, I started to see this story as a modern day folk tale about a witch. My reading could very well be way off, but once I started viewing the film with that lens, my wading in the darkness started to become far more focused.

Allegories, metaphors, and all the like aside, I’m so impressed by Zach Cregger’s directorial work here. Even when I wasn’t sure where the film was going or what it was trying to say, I was still feeling everything he wanted me to feel whenever he wanted me to feel it. I was tense when he wanted me to be, jumped when he wanted me to, squirmed and flinched and laughed when he wanted me to. Not unlike his antagonist, he was in full control of my emotions, my attention, and my experience watching this, only his second feature film.

5) ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER

A rewatch on IMAX really unlocked this film for me. I went into the first screening with all the expectations and preconceived notions that come with “written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson” for me. Still, I genuinely enjoyed my first viewing. A second viewing threw all of that baggage aside, allowing me to watch this film as it was, instead of how I wanted it to be — how it should have been viewed in the first place.

Just a few notes on a film that’s being discussed ad nauseum in film circles and beyond: Leonardo DiCaprio is a comedic genius; Sean Penn gives one of the best performances by a supporting actor that I’ve ever seen; this is basically an action movie for cinephiles — its pace is marvelously breakneck, and damn near every scene is electric.

4) SENTIMENTAL VALUE

My god, the hundreds of thousands of words that the faces in this film are uttering. The eyes are rendering souls bare. This film that includes the making of a film is a story that could only be properly told as a film.

By the time words break through the barrier between these sisters and their father (between the characters and us) we’ve felt the pain simmering, we’ve seen the hurt. Our hearts are aching, though we know not why.

The words, when they finally come, are cathartic, confirming what we’ve been feeling all along, bringing to the spotlight the suffering, reframing a relationship that was thought to have withered with no hope for growth.

3) MARTY SUPREME

I’ve long praised Chalamet for his filmography — the man knows how to choose movies to work on. I have not, however, been as big a fan of his work on those films. He’s one of those actors that, to my eyes, always looks like he’s acting. I struggle to see past his performances to find the characters. This might be the first time I wholeheartedly bought into the character.

There’s so much to love about this movie, so much that has become predictable (in the best ways possible) for the Safdie name: The jittery energy, the artful messiness, the uneasy cinematography, the New York City of it all, but allow me to focus on what I most love to focus on: Character, the aforementioned protagonist of the film: The writing, in the micro (dialogue) and macro (arcs), for Marty was remarkable. This man will say absolutely anything he has to in order to get what he wants, he’ll say what he has to in order to make his point. He’s a slick-talking, hustling young man who is constantly working at the knife’s edge of his capacity to con people or weasel his way out of every situation he finds himself in — if a couple things go wrong or the person across from him shows enough resistance, the cocky, seemingly bulletproof twenty-something starts to flounder spectacularly. The character was vividly drawn, sensationally flawed, tragic in the ways of Shakespeare, and endlessly fun to watch. Needless to say, all of that would either fall apart or never come to fruition with a weaker actor tasked with bringing him to the big screen — this is one of those performances that feel like the actor was born to play the role.

2) SINNERS

This movie is more or less split in half, between the vampire stuff and the pre-vampire stuff. I’m sure there’s a healthy chunk of audiences who wish the vampire stuff was more prevalent in a movie marketing itself as a horror flick. But I’m in the polar opposite camp; I wish I got more of the pre-vampire stuff. I wish I had two more hours of it — shit, I’ll take ten more hours of it.

This story is bursting at the seams with rich histories for the people, places, and things that inhabit it. The first half of the film follows Smoke and Stack as they go from place to place, beautifully shot, portrayed as an organic part of the world our characters move through, places that exist after the camera moves away from them. The twins meet with fascinating people doing interesting things, talking about lives they lived before the movie started, picking up on relationships that go back years, chock-full of experiences we’ll never be privy to. It’s so rare for a movie to present a world that feels like it’s filled with thousands of stories that’ll never be told, hundreds of hours with these characters that will never be mined, so much space in these places that will never be explored.

This feels like a phenomenal adaptation of a 600-page novel. I want to go buy that book so damn bad right now. I’m sick to my stomach that it doesn’t exist.

A second viewing allowed me sink my teeth into the subtext of it all, to pay attention to the metaphors at play, the deeper themes. I love how cool this film is, how rich with story and character it is. I love that it’s not afraid to make the vampires actually vampires. I love that it’s a story very much revolving around Black people set in Jim Crow-era Mississippi that explores themes more complex than “racism is bad.” I knew this was a great film on first viewing. A second viewing showed me it’s even better than that.

1) HAMNET

I genuinely can’t remember the last time I was this moved by a film at the cinema — I cried discussing it on the way home after fighting back tears for the majority of its runtime.

This is a story that when described on a whim would sound either mundane or melodramatic, but when experienced with the guidance of Chloe Zhao’s masterful hand is anything but — the emotions are raw and they’re potent, and they’re earned. This is a story about falling in love, being in love, about building a life for oneself, about raising a family, about suffering loss, about grieving alone, about connecting to loved ones and strangers alike through universal experiences and empathy.

The first three-fourths of this movie explore life at its best and at its worst. Then, in the final quarter, the film pivots into a story about the reasons human beings have told stories and made art for as long as we’ve existed. As the credits rolled, I was stunned in my seat, utterly awestruck by how everything I’ve just talked about came together so perfectly — a shining example of a whole that is somehow greater than the sum of its remarkable parts.

I can go on and on about this for hours, analyzing every character, every scene, every sequence, every chapter, every act, because it was all so purposeful, so deftly executed and strung together; but I’ll leave it here for now.

I fully acknowledge that recency bias might be at play here, so ask me about this again in a year or two, but as of the end of 2025, I’m willing to say that this is my favorite film released in theaters since 2019’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Only time will tell if that stays true.

One final thing I’ll mention is that if Jessie Buckley doesn’t win the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role, I never want to hear somebody bring up that contemptible award show around me ever again — the performance she gives in this is one of the best I’ve ever seen, let alone the best I’ve seen this year.

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Put twelve people from various backgrounds in a room, make them uncomfortable, put the life of a young man in their hands, and see how much drama you can squeeze out of that. It’s amazing how much humanity can be explored with that kind of premise, how much conflict can be mined.

This feels as relevant now as it was in 1957. Stick twelve men from New York in a stuffy room to debate the guilt or innocence of a young minority, and I bet you’d find that the questions this film poses would still be prevalent today.

OFFICE SPACE (1999)

Over the years, I’ve come to wonder if I’m not wired to judge comedies fairly — but the counter argument is: Why should I hold comedies to a lower storytelling standard?

Anyway, I watch this, I giggle a few times, but all I can think about is how promising the premise of this story was, and how about a third of the way in, it loses focus and becomes about something other than what it was about when the movie was being established. I was interested in this guy who hates his job and chooses to stop caring about it. I didn’t care in the slightest about the shenanigans that became the focus of the story after that.

HAMILTON (2020)

Musical theater is so magical. Just humans on a stage, moving amongst each other along with the music, singing their hearts out, performing in front of hundreds of humans watching with their hearts wide open. It can be traced to the ancient Greeks, and probably didn’t look all too dissimilar. It’s a form of storytelling on a plane unaccompanied by any other. When the story matches the medium in majesty, you get magic. You get an experience that pierces straight into the soul.

Previously Reviewed in 2020 & 2023

NETWORK (1976)

According to the Brainrot Department on Twitter, the 7th of January is national I’m Not Going To Take It Anymore Day. As such, I’m using that arbitrary designation as an excuse to revisit this Sidney Lumet / Paddy Chayefsky masterpiece. You may ask, what do these two things have to do with each other? Well, according to that very same Brainrot Department, the appropriate response to your inquiry would be: IYKYK.

IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946)

I was a younger man when I last watched this movie. Swiftly approaching thirty-two, this film certainly strikes at my heart and soul in ways it never could all those years ago.

It’s an amazing thing when a piece of media can rewire your brain, the patterns of your thoughts. It’s a miracle, frankly, that a piece of media can make you reflect on the life you’re presently living and appreciate it in ways you perhaps weren’t before pressing play. What a gift this film is.

THE LITTLE MERMAID (2023)

I totally understand hating on a remake if it makes no improvements to the original, therefore having little reason for existing. This remake makes significant improvements while remaining impressively true to the original. The lore is deeper in this remake. The new songs are wonderful (I don’t despise The Scuttlebutt). Ursula is a fuller character here. Eric is a much better character here, colored with a backstory, wants and dreams of his own — elements that parallel Ariel’s so beautifully. Ariel’s relationship with him is richer — their chemistry is genuinely lovely, adding much-needed weight to the love story at the center of this movie.

Finally, It should be noted that although this number of positive changes have been made, Ariel remains largely the same as the beloved character from the 1989 masterpiece — and spending one additional hour with her certainly allows us connect with our protagonist. In a movie paced so well, this extra time can only be helpful.

Previously Reviewed on July 9, 2023

IN THE HEIGHTS (2021)

“I just want to see the whole world through her eyes” is one of the most romantic lines I’ve ever heard. It says so much with so little — about her, about him.

Yeah, I love this movie. It makes me feel good. It’s one of my handful of go-to rewatches. The vibes are immaculate. That ending is like an enormous hug as warm as the summers in Washington Heights.

Previously Reviewed in 2021 & 2022

SAVING MR. BANKS (2013)

I remember really enjoying this movie when it first came out. I was still in my cinephile infancy then, so this has a special place in my heart.

Watching it now, over a decade after first experiencing it, I can’t help but feel like there is a good story here, but it’s poorly told as it stands. There is a soul at the core of this, but uncovering that soul is a laborious task to say the least. The performances do a good job at keeping this thing together, however — Emma Thompson is very fun to watch in how little fun her character is having.

COMPANION (2025)

This is one of those movies that do everything just well enough to be considered a good time when all is said and done. The premise is interesting, if not utterly unique. The execution on that premise is shaky from time to time, but solid for the majority of its run. The performances are good, even if the script makes it difficult on the actors here and there. Overall, it’s one of the better genre pictures you’ll see released in the dreaded month of January.

THE APPRENTICE (2024)

If it’s not a sign of good storytelling, it’s the work of truly exceptional performers to make us feel bad for the devil after we’ve spent time watching him do his work, and to (almost) make us root for the devil’s spawn before he grows up to raise hell. Really great stuff from Stan and Strong.

CUCKOO (2024)

I spent so long trying to make out what the point of this was, and by the time the film decided to let us know what the point of this was, I no longer cared what the point of this was. That was ultimately a blessing, because by the end, the point of this wasn’t something I cared for in the slightest — it would have been unfortunate to remain invested until reaching that conclusion.

The relationship between the sisters got me through this.

TRAP (2024)

The twist came a lot earlier than I’m accustomed to seeing from M. Night Shyamalan, but it was still super effective — I audibly gasped when Russ suddenly appeared out of the ground during the concert. I’ve been a big fan of his for years.

THE GORGE (2025)

I should come up with a name or phrase for movies that are directly derailed by the midpoint after starting off on solid footing. The midpoint is generally a plot point where a story is turned on its head, for better or worse. Often, the characters enter a whole new environment. Sometimes, the story does a good job introducing us to one type of movie, and the midpoint thrusts us into a different kind of movie, as a way of turning the story on its head.

The first half of this film is about these two interesting characters learning to live with the circumstances they’ve found themselves in, separately then together. The midpoint turns this into a monster hunter action movie with a sinister conspiracy at the heart of it. I’m sure there are people that would like the second half of this better than the first, but I am not one of those people. It’s a shame the midpoint is making us choose.

MURDER ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS (2017)

I read the book right before seeing this movie at the cinema in 2017. I remember feeling deeply dissatisfied by this back then. For my liking, it wasn’t a good enough adaptation of the novel I quite enjoyed.

It wasn’t until I read Death on the Nile, then subsequently saw the sequel to this film, that I learned to appreciate these movies for what they are. It’s an impossible task to adapt Agatha Christie’s novels with the depth and layers they require — there’s just not enough time in a movie to do so. What this film does (its successors too) is make a good-looking, earnest, entertaining movie based on the novel by the same name. 7+ years removed from reading said novel, I can finally appreciate this film for what it is.

THE MONKEY (2025)

Osgood Perkins is stacking up a filmography of movies that are close to being genuinely good but don’t quite get there. One thing that I’ve learned to absolutely expect from his films is for them to look beautiful — he makes very pretty genre pictures; this one is no different.

I know this movie is based on a Stephen King short story, but even if I didn’t know that, I would have guessed it was after only about a third of the way in. I don’t even know if this is a faithful adaption, but it sure as hell feels like one. I say all of the above as a compliment to the filmmakers.

HEART EYES (2025)

One of my favorite Romantic Comedies in recent memory. Make no mistake, this is a Rom-Com first and a Horror/Slasher second. The former is unquestionably benefitted by the presence of the latter, but its identity is never in question — the film goes out of its way to insist that it is a Romantic Comedy.

It starts with a Slasher cold open, but swiftly establishes itself as a Rom-Com and ends as such, leaving the Horror fans hanging. Then the mid-credit scene comes in, teasing the Horror fans, then pulling the rug from under them yet again — really well done. I respect the filmmakers for sticking to their guns. It makes this movie a genuinely unique Rom-Com, instead of just another run-of-the-mill Horror Comedy.

A REAL PAIN (2024)

This is a small story about two cousins on a trip to their ancestral motherland — it’s so tactfully told, so delicately delivered. It explores such enormous topics as the experience of human suffering and the importance of human connection to overcome and make sense of it all.

Hats off to Jesse Eisenberg, who with his pen and his direction, deftly brought to life characters that feel real, filled with the flaws and complexities that make us human. Oh, and to act as one of those characters, delivering one of the best performances of his career, makes this feat nothing short of an absolute triumph.

BOTTOMS (2023)

Is this not quietly one of the best comedies released this decade? It’s legitimately funny, it has something to say, it looks nice, the performances are great, it balances over-the-top and grounded well. Yes, it’s a good comedy, but it’s also a good movie with a real, unique voice.

Previously Reviewed on December 17, 2023

NE ZHA (2019)

There isn’t a boring choice made in the entirety of this movie. Time and time again, they decided on an utterly absurd choice over a bland choice, even if the bland choice would have sufficed for the story’s needs.

The most impressive thing about this film, however, is that, after everything this little shit said and did during the nearly two-hour runtime, they managed to make me sympathize with this demon child. He wears his insecurities on his sleeve while he’s being an absolute pain in the ass.

NE ZHA 2 (2025)

This is everything you could have fathomably hoped for in a sequel and more. First and foremost, it’s less silly than the 2019 film. Just like its predecessor, the heart of this story sneaks up on you and punches you hard, through to your soul. The fight sequences were maybe the best I’ve ever seen in animation — genuinely jaw-dropping moments of technical achievement.

I’m thrilled to see how successful this movie has been — the only reason I knew of its existence was all the headlines saying it broke Disney’s record for the highest grossing animated film of all time, undoubtedly destined to become the first to ever cross the two-billion dollar milestone.

THE WAR OF THE ROHIRRIM (2024)

With a modest budget, a PG-13 rating, and a runtime of over two hours, I was hoping this film would provide more meat on its bones than it did. Interesting characters were introduced and a grand story was told. I think maybe the grand story of it all stood in the way of the interesting characters of it all. But as mentioned above, the film had the resources to strike a more satisfying balance (says this one audience member who prefers to find the depth in stories to be disproportionately allocated toward character).

Upon doing some research into the production of this film after my initial review, I came across a statement that alleged Warner Bros fast-tracked this to ensure New Line Cinema (a WB subsidiary) did not lose the film adaptation rights for Tolkien’s novels. This certainly adds context to my feelings toward the lack of depth in the final product.

GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS (1992)

One of my favorite cinematic genres is the great adaptation of a great play. The script is bulletproof, as plays must be. The actors have fleshed out, meaty roles to slip into and prance around in. The direction and cinematography can remain simple, and therefore, are primed for creative flourishes by the artists.

This film is one such great adaptation of a great play.

BO BURNHAM: INSIDE (2021)

This really feels like a piece of art beyond cinema, beyond stand-up comedy, beyond whatever box you want to put it in. This is a creative genius dumping all of his pent-up creative energy into a single project, completely unshackled, unaffected by the expectations of anybody other than the man in the mirror.

The songs are a good example of Bo Burnham firing on all cylinders. But it’s the interludes where it really seems like Bo is flexing his creative muscles. It feels like he was just bored out of his mind, got a random idea or had something to say, and felt compelled to get to work on bringing it to life. Pure, unadulterated art by an artist in his prime.

Previously Reviewed on June 7 & September 27, 2021

LOOKING FOR ALASKA (2019)

“If you take Alaska’s genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed.”

So many changes were made to the book to fill eight chapters at nearly an hour per episode. The changes were made with the source material’s heart and soul in mind, which is all we can ask for as fans of the book.

Miles’ monologue to end the series was altered to better fit the story being told on screen. The above segment, however, holds so much of this story’s heart and soul — it’s fitting that the words recited by actor Charlie Plummer here match those written in John Green’s novel, verbatim.

GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (1988)

Around the point Setsuko was eating marbles and wanting to feed her brother rocks, I was prepared to write “every minute from this point forward was diabolical.” But then I thought about the scene before that one and the scene before that one and the scene before that one. I watched the final scene, then went back to rewatch the opening scene. It was only then that I realized every minute from the very first minute was diabolical.

What a stunning, heart-wrenching film.

SPIRITED AWAY (2001)

Only God and Hayao Miyazaki know what the hell was going on here. What do this man’s dreams look like? What do his thoughts present to him while his mind wanders? Oh, to spend a day in his head…

Moment to moment, anything and everything could happen. Thematically, I was following (mostly). Chihiro was established as a sympathetic protagonist almost instantly, so following along through the chaos did not feel like a chore. Watching this was like being on a train, gazing out at my surroundings — I had no idea what was up ahead, but the view from the side is a beautiful one, so I’m peacefully leaning against the window, enjoying every second.

DEATH OF A UNICORN (2024)

It’s a very specific kind of disappointment that I feel when the beginning and end of a film feel like they really belong together, but the whole feels bad while those parts feel good. It’s the kind of disappointment that comes from a story that seems to know what it wants to say, but spends the entire film saying anything or everything else.

There’s a really solid story about the relationship between this father and daughter in here somewhere, but I fear it can’t be unearthed from the movie we’ve been delivered.

PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997)

This is a familiar story told better than the others you’ve heard or seen. It’s a familiar animation style that’s beloved by so many around the world. It’s structurally and allegorically far more accessible than Spirited Away, but it’s no less fruitful in what it has to say. It’s a classic fantasy story about the battle between man and nature, told only how Hayao Miyazaki can tell it.

Let the record show I watched this for the first time in a packed house for an exclusive 4K IMAX screening. What a treat.

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988)

It’s insane to think about the fact that this film and Ghibli colleague Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies were released as a double bill in 1988. The vibes are quite literally polar opposites. Where the latter is grim from start to finish, this film is like a warm hug from the first minute to the last. In Grave, when things seem bright, they end up dark. In Totoro, when things seem dark, they end up bright.

I really hope they screened this film second, because frankly, the alternative would be inhumane.

HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE (2004)

I think a moment that really, truly epitomizes the pure, innately wholesome tone that Miyazaki’s movies strike happens at the end of this film:

In order to save Howl’s life and free the fire demon, Sophie desperately needed to retrieve Calcifer from the grasp of the Witch that cursed her at the beginning of the story, turning her into an elderly woman, with all the struggles that come with inhabiting such a body. She doesn’t fight the Witch, who is frail and decrepit now, easily defeatable. She doesn’t scream or shout or threaten to hurt her if she doesn’t hand Calcifer over. Without hesitation, Sophie wraps her arms around the Witch, tears in her eyes, and says, “Please give him back.” When the Witch concedes, Sophie gives her a kiss and tells her she has a big heart.

PORCO ROSSO (1992)

Of the five Miyazaki films I’ve seen so far, this was by far the most grounded in reality.

That said, the protagonist is a war veteran who the ladies love who happens to be a pig, there’s no shortage of strong female characters, the aviation sequences were dazzling in their animation, and the film was overall bursting with the eccentricity I’ve come to love about Miyazaki’s work.

PONYO (2008)

This movie was as colorful and as full of life as I expected. Ponyo and Sosuke were adorable — so much of this film’s runtime is just them hanging out, holding space together, passing time together.

It was during those moments that my mind kept traveling back to the fact that this film was made well into Miyazaki’s career. In fact, it’s the film right before he made his (first) last film in 2013 (before he came out of retirement to make one more ten years later, in 2023). This film was also the successor to an incomprehensible streak of Princess Mononoke (‘97), Spirited Away (‘01), Howl’s Moving Castle (‘04). It’s fascinating to me, that after everything Miyazaki accomplished and the magnitude of the stories he’d told, he chose to tell this smaller, more affable, less thematically resounding tale in 2008.

None of this is meant to be taken as criticism of Ponyo — they’re just observations. I’ve always been interested by the projects great artists choose to take on, and when.

ONE OF THEM DAYS (2024)

For months, I’ve watched all of the clips of these two promoted this film, so finally seeing the movie felt like watching a follow-up, in a bizarre, borderline uncanny the-movie-is-a-sequel-to-all-the-promotion, which-was-the-original-feature-presentation kind of way.

Anyway, my biggest takeaway from the above comment is that a script can never be as funny as Keke Palmer is in person, but this script did enough to let her shine here and there. My second biggest takeaway is that the chemistry between her and SZA was a pleasure to watch in the promotion and the movie — also, SZA did her thing in this, holding her own beside Keke all the way.

KIKI’S DELIVERY SERVICE (1989)

In 1989, Hayao Miyazaki made a movie about how technically, mentally, and emotionally difficult it is to be a working artist in 2025. I especially love how Kiki had to do side-gigs to get by, and how she had to use her talents to build a business tangentially related to what she actually loves to do because her talents aren’t viewed as inherently valuable by society — not to mention she got discouraged, lost inspiration, and suffered from the witch’s equivalent of writer’s block in the third act.

THE WIND RISES (2013)

Before this, the closest I’d seen a Miyazaki film get to being completely grounded in reality was 1992’s Porco Rosso, which had an animal protagonist. This film, the last before his first retirement, is completely grounded in reality, but for some dream sequences. This is also the most straight-forward narrative I’ve seen from the legendary writer-director.

Miyazaki’s adoration for all things aviation and flying is on full display here, as the story revolves around a young man who is incapable of piloting planes due to his poor vision, and therefore dreams of engineering the planes that take to the sky instead. Much like Kiki’s Delivery Service, the talents of our passionate protagonist are used to fulfill the wishes of others, usually those with more power and financial means. Much like a brilliant American physicist in the World War II era, Jiro Horikoshi’s mind is used to create a weapon that would lead to the deaths of thousands of people in an act of war committed by his motherland.

Allow me to drag another two Ghibli movies into this review: It is known that Grave of the Fireflies and Totoro were released as a double-feature back in the late-80s, but I think the most logical Ghibli double-feature at this point would be this film followed by Grave. It wouldn’t be the most effervescent of experiences, but the narratives fit so well it’s hard not to think of the 1988 masterpiece while watching this one.

CASTLE IN THE SKY (1986)

This is the first Miyazaki film I’ve seen (his third feature) that I felt was legitimately weighed down by its plot — so much chasing (on foot and in the sky), guns are blazing, things are blowing up, way more action-based conflict than I’ve grown used to, and a mustache-twirling villain who declares victory with multiple evil cackles minutes before being defeated by the power of friendship. The magic of the world and the depth of the characters fell flat for me due to all of the above.

Maybe a future rewatch will unearth the admirable qualities that are undoubtedly present here, but for now, this is the first of nine Miyazaki films (ten Ghibli films) that I’ve seen which didn’t do it for me.

TALK TO ME (2022)

The horror elements were occasionally frightening, but soon linger in our presence for long enough to numb us. It’s when we’re numb to the horror that we find ourselves waist deep in the terrifying reality of how easily we can lose ourselves to grief if we let it in and allow it to take over.

SINNERS (2025)

This movie is more or less split in half, between the vampire stuff and the pre-vampire stuff. I’m sure there’s a healthy chunk of audiences who wish the vampire stuff was more prevalent in a movie marketing itself as a horror flick. But I’m in the polar opposite camp; I wish I got more of the pre-vampire stuff. I wish I had two more hours of it — shit, I’ll take ten more hours of it.

This story is bursting at the seams with rich histories for the people, places, and things that inhabit it. The first half of the film follows Smoke and Stack as they go from place to place, beautifully shot, portrayed as an organic part of the world our characters move through, places that exist after the camera moves away from them. The twins meet with fascinating people doing interesting things, talking about lives they lived before the movie started, picking up on relationships that go back years, chock-full of experiences we’ll never be privy to. It’s so rare for a movie to present a world that feels like it’s filled with thousands of stories that’ll never be told, hundreds of hours with these characters that will never be mined, so much space in these places that will never be explored.

This feels like a phenomenal adaptation of a 600-page novel. I want to go buy that book so damn bad right now. I’m sick to my stomach that it doesn’t exist.

THE LITTLE MERMAID (1989)

My toddler nephew said he wanted to watch a Disney movie but he couldn’t make up his mind on which one he wanted me to put on, so I made the executive decision to introduce him to the best of the Disney classics.

He sat still for maybe ten minutes of it in total, so we might have to attempt round two in a couple days. I don’t mind — I could watch this movie on a loop.

Previously Reviewed on March 29, 2020

THUNDERBOLTS (2025)

Even the good superhero movies aren’t doing anything for me these days. I guess the fatigue is permanent for some.

Nevertheless, like I said, this is one of the good ones. Not because the superhero elements were fantastic — they were nothing to write home about. It’s the themes in the script and the heart in the moments between characters that makes this a good one. I really appreciated how the central themes were explored en route to ultimately resolving the story’s climactic conflict. The most powerful antagonist in this could only be defeated by mining the story’s themes for a resolution.

It should also go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: Florence Pugh carried so hard.

CLOWN IN A CORNFIELD (2025)

I recently heard a Booktuber pose a counter-argument to those who criticize books in the Romance genre for having the same storylines, the same tropes, the same arcs, etc. She didn’t say any of the above was false — instead, she said that fans of the Romance genre don’t see any of the above as a negative, but rather, factors that they actively seek out. The readers want something they know they will enjoy, something they can comfortably devour. They don’t want to be pushed and pulled in unpleasant or unexpected directions. They don’t want sad endings. They want the shell of the story to be something they’re comfortable with — that leaves room for the inside of the shell to add little twists and quirks to the familiar story.

Listening to that Booktuber, I suddenly understood how fanatics of Horror movies are capable of devouring the heaps of derivative slop plaguing the genre. What I find tedious, repetitive, cringey, and boring about the vast majority of Horror movies out there is exactly what the core fans seek out. This movie is no different. I’ve seen these characters a million times before. I’ve heard every line of dialogue in this before. I’ve seen the first and second act of this film before. The third act adds those twists and quirks I mentioned above, but the shell is very much identical to so many other Horror movies.

I’m sure Horror devotees will eat this up, just as Romance fans will eat up Emily Henry’s newest release. I just don’t happen to be in either of those target audiences.

UPDATE: This earned $3.8 million over its first weekend, on a budget of about one million — the biggest opening weekend to date for IFC. So yes, the Horror devotees ate this up.

THE BIG SHORT (2015)

I’ve basically been rewatching this movie every two years since it’s release in theaters. I pretty much love everything about it. The performances are top-notch. I love these despicable characters. I love the atrocious words coming out of their mouths. I love the tone and how it conflicts with the subject matter. The pacing is break-neck in the best ways possible — it’s over two hours long, but it doesn’t feel a minute over an hour and a half. Some people describe movies as being an easy watch; well, this movie is as easy a watch as there is for me.

Yes, I’m talking about the movie about a global economic meltdown that caused the disappearance of 5-trillion dollars in pension money, real estate value, caused 8-million people to lose heir jobs, and led to 6-million people losing their homes.

Previously Reviewed in 2021 & 2023

DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012)

I didn’t notice until after I was getting ready to write my review for this that I hadn’t revisited this movie for something like seven years. It wasn’t until I struggled to figure out what to write about it that I realized it had been seven years for a reason, I suppose.

I don’t love this movie. I appreciate its existence. I enjoyed watching Waltz, DiCaprio, and Jackson work. The cinematography was beautiful. The dialogue was engaging. The story, however, feels flimsy far too often. The pacing drags in places. I’m happy to revisit this once every handful of years, but it’s a middling Tarantino movie for me; maybe even a bottom-third Tarantino movie for me — I’d have to rewatch them all and really think about it to make a concrete declaration like that.

AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (2018)

This movie belongs in the Hall of Fame for films to watch on a flight. It chugs along at the kind of pace you need to keep your mind off of the fact that you can’t move and you’re in the sky. It’s long enough take a big chunk out of the travel time in one fell swoop. It’s not overly emotionally investing, so it’s okay if you’re getting distracted by the baby crying six rows up or the teenager pressing her knees into the back of your chair. Also, it helps that the movie is actually good and actually fun to watch.

Previously Reviewed on December 14, 2020

FEAR STREET: PROM QUEEN (2025)

The Fear Street trilogy was one of the biggest surprises of the year for me all the way back in 2021. The quality of the films fluctuated between entries, but I enjoyed them all nonetheless.

Four years later and I’m preparing the downloads I need to get me through an eleven-hour flight. I see a new Fear Street movie recommended to me on Netflix. With great haste, I downloaded it and watched it on the plane. This fourth entry does not hold a candle to the previous three, unfortunately. This felt like the Dollar Store version of those films.

SINNERS (2025)

A second viewing allowed me sink my teeth into the subtext of it all, to pay attention to the metaphors at play, the deeper themes. I love how cool this film is, how rich with story and character it is. I love that it’s not afraid to make the vampires actually vampires. I love that it’s a story very much revolving around Black people set in Jim Crow-era Mississippi that explores themes more complex than “racism is bad.” I knew this was a great film on first viewing. A second viewing showed me it’s even better than that.

THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME (2025)

Wes Anderson is on a several film run (a decade’s worth?) where I’m having a nearly impossible time connecting with the story being told, while at the same time, thoroughly enjoying the way the stories are being told. I’m enjoying the ride, because Wes is a singular filmmaker with a vision as unique as they come. That said, I’m not as emotionally invested as I would like to be, given the talents of the auteur director.

MATERIALISTS (2025)

Celine Song’s follow-up to the weighty Past Lives is a film that feels like a romantic-comedy, except it doesn’t really act like one. It feels like a story that wants to parody what it’s like to date in New York City in this day and age, but it doesn’t really do that either — it gets earnest on us. This often gets so close to making fun of itself, only to stop right before that line to try and make you think deeply and feel feelings.

I’m not sure all of the above worked as well as Song may have hoped, but it was a fresh story, navigated by three actors I’m happy to watch for a couple hours.

THE LIFE OF CHUCK (2025)

Fans of Mike Flanagan’s productions looked like the Rick Dalton meme for two hours, pointing at the screen every time a familiar face showed up. Fans of Mike Flanagan’s productions will also be pleased to find the familiar heart and soul present in this film, along with his abundant thoughtful monologues, and his unique way of using genre stories to say something profound about the human experience.

THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING (2001)

I haven’t watched these movies in nearly a decade, so my eyes were nearly as fresh as humanly possible when I decided to watch the entire trilogy in one day. I started around noon, and didn’t reach the closing credits until a little before midnight.

What struck me on my rewatch of this first chapter is how elegantly it’s paced. The story takes its sweet time, but it’s engaging all the way through. This is the first part of an epic trilogy of blockbuster movies, but it isn’t structured like one. As an example, we don’t see Aragorn until an hour in — I can’t help but feel that a modern blockbuster would have made it to that point in the story after fifteen to twenty minutes.

“It’s called the Fellowship of the Ring,” croaks the crabby Executive, “why are we waiting so long to meet the Fellowship?”

THE TWO TOWERS (2002)

This, to me, very much suffered from middle-movie-of-a-trilogy syndrome. That’s not a damning designation by any means, as it is, in fact, the movie between a phenomenal first entry and a sensational third entry.

It gives us an opportunity to cover more ground in this fantastical world, further develop characters we already know and love, continue to build the roster of personalities and factions that will play a role in the events to come.

While the structure of the first film impressed me, the structure of this one frustrated me. It wasn’t so much the symptoms of the middle-movie-of-a-trilogy syndrome that got to me, but rather the things that Peter Jackson decided to spend his time on. Now, I don’t exactly have my fingers on the pulse of the Lord of the Rings discourse on the internet, but I would be utterly flabbergasted if I’m the only one who was incredibly frustrated with how much time was spent chugging along in the forest on the back of those giant trees alongside Merry and Pippin.

I understand the trees had to be established. I understand the Hobbits’ willingness to join the fight had to be established. All of that could have been done in three scenes (four, maximum) — we really, truly did not need to keep cutting away from the actions of more important characters and storylines to see what they were up to. By the time we reached this movie’s famous final battle, I was so irritable from the frequent cuts back to Merry and Pippin that I was prepared to pull my hair out when I realized that Jackson was not going to cease hitting us with frequent meanwhile-back-in-the-forest transitions while IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BATTLE OF HELM’S DEEP. This awe-inspiring cinematic achievement in direction, cinematography, music, and special effects was being interrupted with a couple of Hobbits and their banter from the backs of a group of lumbering trees — frankly, it’s incomprehensible.

Anyway, that’s my rant. There’s nothing I can add to the analytical conversation surrounding these movies except for my gut reactions to watching them after so many years. So, that’s what this is.

Samwise Gamgee saved this movie for me with his iconic speech in the third act. In that monologue, he reoriented the entire story before we move on from this middle chapter. He reminded us what was at stake after all the chaos of the last three hours. He shifted the spotlight back to Frodo, and brought to focus for the audience just how in over their head the Hobbits are on this journey. At this moment, the destination, the goal, it feels unachievable. We couldn’t ask for a better place to be heading into the trilogy’s final entry.

THE RETURN OF THE KING (2003)

Almost one complete trip around the clock’s face later, I am wholeheartedly convinced that watching this entire trilogy in one sitting is the absolute correct way to experience this epic story. It’s structured as one long journey, so it should probably be consumed as one long journey. That said, I’m eternally envious of lifelong fans of Tolkien’s stories who only had to wait ONE YEAR between installments back in the early 2000s, after principal photography for the trilogy was conducted concurrently for 438 days from October 1999 through December 2000. And that’s not to mention the good fortune the fans were blessed with to have that adaptation of their beloved story end up being one of the greatest cinematic achievements of all time.

This final chapter does everything you’d want it to do. It satisfyingly concludes this journey we’ve been on. It does justice by the characters — most importantly confirming that Samwise Gamgee is the real hero of this story. It has three too many endings (one of which I still don’t understand), but we won’t hold that against it. There’s not much more to say at this point, two-plus decades later. It’s epic. It’s monumental. It’s Cinema.

28 DAYS LATER (2002)

“All the death, all the shit — it doesn’t really mean anything to Frank and Hannah because she’s got her dad and he’s got his daughter. So, I was wrong when I said that staying alive is as good as it gets.”

Now, ain’t that what it’s all about?

28 YEARS LATER (2025)

I’ve been consuming a lot of zombie stories recently, and the more I consume, the more I understand how The Walking Dead went on for so long, but the less I understand how the quality of The Walking Dead fell off a cliff. That is to say it’s amazing how deep this well is for stories about humanity, about death, about family, about society, about chaos and order, the list goes on. We told zombie stories until everyone was sick of them, then we continued to tell zombie stories with continued success. There’s something to this sub-genre. It just can’t stay dead.

This movie takes several turns that didn’t necessarily feel obvious or inevitable or even mandatory for the story to work. But that’s the beauty of the post-apocalyptic zombie story: They could go anywhere, do anything, and as long as the writing is on point, the story will work. The film starts in one place, then a dozen viable forks in the roads appear, then it takes one of the routes, only to be presented with a dozen more, on and on. The places where this film ultimately goes worked out splendidly, but in the hands of Alex Garland, the places don’t stop here — they can go on ad infinitum. Maybe that’s why he already has the sequel to this one written, set to be released in January of next year. We’ll see if the lure of this sub-genre keeps him coming back for more after that.

ELIO (2025)

Elio (11 y/o): “How’s your back?”
Neighbor: “Eh, you know…”
Elio (11 y/o): “I hear you!”

In a movie about the quirks of one’s personality isolating them from a society that doesn’t see the world the same as they do, it’s this string of dialogue that I related to most.

BOOKSMART (2019)

From start to finish (literally, first frame to last), the tone is just plain fun. The quality of the jokes remained consistent throughout. The main characters are so easy to empathize with — the flamboyant side characters and cliche high school villains get some depth too.

I remember the mandatory end of Act Two argument between Amy and Molly being aggravating when I first saw this years ago, but it didn’t bother me at all this time around — I thought it fit, given what we know about these characters and the place they are physically and mentally heading into Act Three.

I think this is one of the better high school comedies to come out in the past decade.

GROUNDED (2014)

In preparation for finally diving into the sequel, I decided to play this game again for the first time in nearly a decade. I beat the game, watched the credits run, then started it up again on New Game Plus, where I proceeded to play it all over again to complete all of the challenges required for the Platinum trophy (achieving 100% completion on the game). But alas, I still hadn’t had my fill of this particular story — so before I dove into the sequel, I watched this film on Playstation’s YouTube channel documenting the creation of this beloved game.

First off, a couple parts that really stood out to me: Neil Druckmann said that at one point, they considered removing the infected altogether, as this is not a story about them, but rather about Joel and Ellie, ultimately deciding against it for the sake of the gamers holding the controller. This absolutely tracks with the product that was delivered. To consider removing the zombies from a zombie game indicates that the characters would never take a backseat to any gameplay or story decision that would be made from that point forward. We also got a look into what it was like capturing the actor’s performances. It was so cool seeing how much of Ellie came from Ashley Johnson. It was such a thrill to watch Troy Baker and Druckmann work together to get Sarah’s death scene right.

There’s so much to love about this. What a blessing it is to have a documentary set in the room(s) where it happened, the room(s) where the game was built from concept to masterpiece. We see what the work culture is like at Naughty Dog. We hear from the animators, the programmers, the performers, the writers, directors, sound designers, composers, you name it. We are introduced to the man-power it takes to make a video game.

THE LAST OF US: Season 1 (2023)

It’s been a couple years since I watched this first season, and in those couple years, I’ve only grown more attached with the source material. So, the fact that I still enjoyed this season of television as much as I did came as a surprise to me, frankly. It all comes down to the philosophy deployed by the writers for adapting the game: They would respect the source material, but they won’t create a one-to-one copy; they would use the television show to build on sequences in the game that would make for great television and add depth to the established lore (or make a change for the sake of storytelling).

In the game, we meet Bill and we hear about Frank, and their relationship is touched on ever-so-briefly. The television show spends an entire episode fleshing out the fascinating character of Bill and showing us the life he lived with the man that gave his life purpose, who eventually took his own life.

In the game, we meet David and his crew, and we realize that they’re cannibals. The show puts us in the room while David preaches, shows us how he is leading his people through hard times. We get to know the man a little more, and see how he comes to make his decisions, then we watch as Ellie is trapped in his cage and all that follows, just like in the game.

I could go on and on: We spend so much more time with Sarah before she dies (in a genuinely remarkable first episode); we get a better picture of who Henry and Sam were before their tragic demise; we get a better feel of Jackson, which doesn’t play a huge part in the story until Part 2.

There were a few changes that rubbed me the wrong way, however — when your philosophy is to be liberal with changes to the source material, you win some, you lose some. One in particular was the way they decided to leave Jackson in the show — the moment between the three of them as Joel tells Ellie to get on his horse is a top-five moment in the game for me, so making the changes that they made and undercutting that moment hurt my soul a little bit, even if the goal was to give Ellie some more agency in the matter at hand; the decision was not up to her, and that was kind of the whole point.

Finally, I’ll mention that I thought placing the Left Behind episode where they did on the schedule as a mistake, even if that’s technically how the DLC’s story is framed — we simply must go from the episode of Joel being gravely injured to the episode of Ellie fighting through hell to keep him alive. If that means cutting that prequel story from the slate entirely, so be it.

All in all, I still very much enjoyed this first season of The Last of Us. It does not attempt to remake the beloved story told in 2013, but rather uses it as a guiding light to flesh out parts of that beloved story that weren’t allowed the time and space to be fleshed out in the game.

Previously Reviewed on March 12, 2023

GROUNDED 2 (2024)

This documentary spends less time on the craftspeople and spends more time talking about and inside the mind of Neil Druckmann — which is exactly what I’d want the topic of this documentary to be. Through Neil, we see how the idea for this project took form, and how those ideas brought forth controversy, the likes of which I’ve never seen for a video game. We see how meticulous Neil is with what gets shown to audiences in the process of making the game, and when — the parts about preparing the teasers, trailers, and gameplay reveals all leading up to how a devastating flood of leaks affected the entire team at Naughty Dog. From those leaks forward, this masterpiece of a game has been tainted by dirt flung by small minds, and this documentary certainly doesn’t shy away from any of it.

P.S. I got the Platinum trophy for this one almost immediately after completing Part 1. I made the “small minds” comment above because, in my opinion, the story that Neil and Naughty Dog were endeavoring to tell here absolutely worked. I think the choices made, and the execution of those decisions, were big, bold, and unequivocally successful. I fully experienced the game that they hoped to deliver. This story checks so many of my storytelling boxes. Complex female protagonist(s). Profound character arcs. Relationships doomed due to personality flaws. Countless parallels between characters and their respective plot-points. Set-ups, pay-offs, and call-backs. Small human moments, big dramatic set pieces grounded in character. I am a known lover of depressing stories, and this is a delicious stew of interweaving depressing stories — but it’s not without a helping of hope for humanity. I said it immediately after reaching 100% completion, and I still feel the same way a few weeks out: I think this is officially my favorite game of all time (overtaking The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on my overall rankings).

THE LAST OF US: Season 2 (2025)

I’m just going to ramble a bit, hit Enter, and just move on, because I don’t want to spend enough time gathering my thoughts on this season to make an intelligible review, but I also don’t want to let my fingers run wild to their hearts’ content, because both of those options require me to be depressed for longer than I would prefer to be. So, please know, if this review seems long, it should have been exponentially longer.

First and foremost, it doesn’t really feel like this season even told a real story, let alone a full story or a coherent story. It just feels like a compilation of poorly adapted scenes or sequences pointlessly fabricated, placed beside each other to give off the illusion of progress. I don’t know how anybody unfamiliar with the source material could know with certainty what exactly is going on and why. To riff off of the sequences that were pointlessly fabricated: When Season 1 made stuff up, it usually added quality lore to the source material. Rarely is something of any import added here. The changes that are made to Season 2’s source material are disrespectful at best, criminal at worst (forgive the hyperbole; I love this game). What’s most frustrating is that the scenes that are faithfully adapted are mostly pretty great.

Even so, the elephant in the room of every scene remained: While Bella Ramsey plays a good 14-year-old Ellie (this season’s flashbacks once again prove this), I fear Bella Ramsey is a bad 19-year-old Ellie. There’s no sugar-coating this, but also, there’s no need to linger on it either — dead horse and all. I will say, in her defense, the writers set her up for failure in what I think was their attempt to make the best with what they had to work with, knowing that Bella wasn’t going to be able to adequately bring the video game’s Ellie to life on screen this season.

I’ll move on from that belabored point to a few moments that stood out to me, for better or worse.

I think I liked the change to Eugene’s story, as I think it fit Joel’s character to do awful things in order to ensure the survival of himself and those he loves. However, I don’t like what that sequence did for Ellie’s character, and I don’t like that it was used as a replacement for another pivotal scene in the game. That being said (writing is complicated), the pivotal scene that was replaced was combined with another pivotal scene, which I thought was executed pretty darn well, all things considered.

Jackson’s stand against the zombies made for great television, I’m not going to lie, but it wasn’t worth the cost of Tommy not being at the cabin with Joel when Abby went golfing. The repercussions for Tommy’s character into the future are far more negative than the positive repercussions that come with Dina being there with Joel instead.

Speaking of Abby going golfing, I can’t possibly talk about this season without talking about its (arguably) most pivotal scene. Kaitlyn Dever absolutely murdered everything she was given to work with. In fact, there’s a legitimate argument to be made that she did too good a job. We see the pain brewing inside of her with every word she utters, and that makes a character we’re supposed to hate so much more sympathetic. The writers didn’t help in this department either, providing Abby with more screen-time than she probably should have gotten (especially considering Dever was eating up every scene she was in). The narrative wants us to think Abby and her crew are monsters — to best do that, we should have seen much less of Abby and her crew than we did. The season literally opens on Abby at her father’s grave. That’s an incomprehensibly poor decision if your goal is to adapt the story that the game so masterfully told.

I thought Ellie’s reaction during and immediately after the golfing sequence was great. Even the start of the next episode, when she woke up in the hospital, screaming with panic after picturing traumatic images that were now certainly seared into her mind. But then, the opening credits played, and we cut to three months later, and she’s literally joking around about missing him with her therapist. There were hints of the writers’ character assassination of Ellie prior to this point, but this is when things got really bad. This just isn’t the character from the game. It’s not just a poorly adapted version of her; it’s not her. Like I said earlier, I can see 14-year-old Ellie from the first game in Bella Ramsey from Season 1. But 19-year-old Ellie from the sequel is not present here; Bella is playing an original character who goes through similar experiences as Ellie Williams did in The Last of Us: Part 2.

Anyway, yeah, everything from Episode 3 onward was a deeply unpleasant experience to sit through for me, the source material to this season being my favorite game of all time. I guess I’ll just leave it at that.

SUPERMAN (2025)

When we spent something like ten minutes straight in a small apartment listening to Clark and Lois do nothing but talk in the first act of a blockbuster Superman movie, I knew we were in for something special.

In true James Gunn fashion, I actually cared about the characters — I was hooked by how human they felt. Superman’s heart is in the spotlight, the blood pumping through everything in this film. Lois was a layered character. Lex Luthor was an engaging villain, playfully portrayed by Nicholas Hoult. The side-heroes were not present merely for marketing; they served a purpose for the story, and they each did the best with the screen-time they were given. The animal side-kick wasn’t just cute, he wasn’t just useful, he had a whole ass personality with flaws and unique quirks.

The character work isn’t all that’s to like in this either. The action was consistently fun to watch. The plot moved with good pace, with effective twists and turns. If I could change anything at all, I would tone down Superman’s speech to Lex a couple notches — the audience saw everything he was preaching in the hours that preceded it. Other than that, I’m happy to report that my superhero fatigue isn’t actually permanent — I just need great movies in the genre to come out more often than they do.

EDDINGTON (2025)

Honestly, there's a decent-to-good chance that I enjoy this film in another ten (or fifteen) years, but its modernity (a trait that it's being praised for: Modern Western, etc.) is just such an excruciating turn-off for me, living in the United States in the year 2025.

I already know this about myself: I get bumped out of a movie when it cuts to characters filming something on their iPhones, or even if the background characters are standing behind the drama with their phones up, flash or no flash. This film takes that pet-peeve of mine, cranks it to eleven, populates it with characters parodying the performative politics on both sides of the American aisle, and forces me listen to the same song and dance from 2020 that, still to this day, makes my skin crawl.

Gradually, this turns into a “Modern No Country for Old Men”, and I think the film is structured well, getting to that destination elegantly and effectively, but all the annoying (to me) stuff I mentioned above continues through to the end, so I could never really sink my teeth into this thing. I really like Ari Aster as a director, and I look forward to revisiting this (much) further down the road, but for now, this didn't do it for me.

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2025)

Every once in a while a slasher will come out and I’ll enjoy it and it’ll get me into the cinema to see the other slashers to come out over the next few months but that just usually means I have to sit through not-great movies over and over again just for the chance of coming across another gem.

Anyway, Heart Eyes is the slasher I enjoyed earlier this year which led directly to me fighting the urge to walk out the theater for the majority of the runtime of this one.

THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS (2025)

This newest entry to the Marvel Cinematic Universe is low on action and high on character. We spend damn-near this entire movie hanging out with the Fantastic Four, getting to know them as individuals and getting to know them as a family (not merely a team). At some point, I found myself genuinely impressed by how much time we’d already spent developing these characters and how little time we spent on any kind of protagonist-antagonist clash — they established Galactus’ might but we didn’t have to watch the heroes fight a world-ending titan like mosquitos pestering a grizzly bear. That’s a recipe for disaster, cinematically speaking.

This approach paid off at the climax, when the bond established between the members of this family was front and center, and I found myself actually feeling real emotions during a superhero movie — a feat rarely achieved by the MCU, dating all the way to its inception.

THE BAD GUYS (2022)

The characters were fun to follow. The dialogue was snappy enough to be pleasing. The plot chugged along at a satisfactory pace. The story had enough heart mixed into the twists and turns to add real depth. The animation was consistently engaging, if not beautiful. All in all, solid flick.

BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN (2025)

As an outside observer, it seems to me that this documentary was essentially created to be the mode of delivery for reels of rare archival footage of the band’s earliest years. Modern day interviews with the surviving members fill the runtime covering the pre-band days, but after that, it’s more-or-less just music video after music video made up of archival footage, with some more modern day interviews interweaved throughout.

Does all of the above a documentary make? I’m not so sure. Did I enjoy watching this nevertheless? Yes, I did.

TOGETHER (2025)

The metaphor was interesting at first (if a bit obvious), but it overstayed its welcome without evolving enough to remain interesting. The paranormal activities should have been directly connected to the characters’ psyche, getting deeper as we learned more about them — their fears, their desires, their physical and emotional needs. Instead, all of the horror elements were arbitrarily connected to a loosely explained cult whose place of worship sunk under ground, where our protagonists decided to take shelter for the night after finding themselves trapped in a storm.

The good stuff here is like a seed that’s never watered. The rest is perplexing, tedious, or apropos of nothing.

DARKEST HOUR (2017)

I am at the age where the subway scene made me cry. After so much debate about what’s best for the people of their nation, we hear from the people of their nation (in a scene that beautifully pays off a comment Churchill makes earlier in the film). We meet a brick layer who eagerly offered Winston a match, a mother and a five-month-old who looks like the Prime Minister, another woman who shared the same last name as Churchill’s mom, and more.

The people were of one mind: If the enemy showed up on their doorstep, they would fight them off with anything they could lay their hands on, broom-handles if they must. And to a peace deal with Hitler, a deal with the devil, they respond emphatically: Never. And thus, the debate weighing the Prime Minister down had been settled.

“Then out spake brave Horatius, the Captain of the gate:

To every man upon this earth death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better than facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods?”

DUNKIRK (2017)

The story of World War 2 cannot be told without describing the force that was the Luftwaffe, Germany’s official air force from 1935 to the end of the war. Countless accounts from veterans describe what it was like to be gazing up at the sky as those planes screeched into sight like a bat out of hell before leaving destruction in their wake. There’s a hundred things I can say about this film, but this is what stuck out to me most: Chris Nolan made the Luftwaffe feel like one of the scariest monsters I’ve ever seen in a movie. When those boys dreaming of home heard a high pitched noise in the distance, time stopped — it was as if everyone stopped breathing. Like fish in a barrel, all they could do was pray it wasn’t them that the bombs rained down on. The beaches weren’t safe. The ships meant to save the soldiers from those beaches weren’t safe. The British (and French) were absolutely helpless but for the Royal Air Force patrolling the sky in an attempt to mitigate the damage and death toll.

P.S. This is the perfect movie to watch right after fellow 2017 release, Darkest Hour. The stories line up borderline seamlessly, and they’re different enough tonally to make for an ideal double-feature night.

WEAPONS (2025)

This story is told through the eyes of several beautifully layered characters in a town where seventeen elementary school students inexplicably went missing on the same night. What follows is what I thought was a story about how a community is affected by great tragedy. We see characters fall into the arms of their vices. We see their worst traits bubble to the surface. Fingers get pointed, then lives are ruined — and/or the other way around.

Then, a good ways through the runtime, we’re introduced to the actual antagonist of this film, and my reading of the story shifted. After a while wading in the terrors built by the writer/director, searching for signs through the darkness, I started to see this story as a modern day folk tale about a witch. My reading could very well be way off, but once I started viewing the film with that lens, my wading in the darkness started to become far more focused.

Allegories, metaphors, and all the like aside, I’m so impressed by Zach Cregger’s directorial work here. Even when I wasn’t sure where the film was going or what it was trying to say, I was still feeling everything he wanted me to feel whenever he wanted me to feel it. I was tense when he wanted me to be, jumped when he wanted me to, squirmed and flinched and laughed when he wanted me to. Not unlike his antagonist, he was in full control of my emotions, my attention, and my experience watching this, only his second feature film.

SCHINDLER’S LIST (1993)

There are some movies that are so admired, so revered, so perpetually on the lists for greatest cinematic achievements of all time. I’ve been obsessed with cinema and have been consistently consuming films since 2012 — sometimes, you watch those “revered” movies and you’re left simply befuddled as to why they became so admired in the first place. But sometimes, you’re faced with a three-and-a-quarter hour behemoth revolving around one of the most depressing subjects in human history, and you realize that some films have stood the test of time for a reason. You realize why a discussion about cinema’s history cannot be conducted without their mentioning.

This film was released the year I was born, which means I literally had my entire life to sit down and watch it. I chose to wait 32 years instead. Without belaboring my above point any further, I’ll just say it’s astonishing how good this movie is. Yes, it’s long, but frankly, there’s few better ways for you to spend three-plus hours in front of a screen.

There’s absolutely nothing I can say to add to the conversation for this film, seeing how late I am on it, but I can’t end this without mentioning what stood out to me most on my first viewing of this Cinematic Mount Rushmore motion picture: The script is otherworldly, seriously; the score is haunting; Spielberg was put on this earth to do exactly what he’s spent his life doing; Ralph Fiennes was so astoundingly good (and utterly terrifying) in this role — it is a crime against humanity that he didn’t walk away with the Oscar for his onscreen crimes against humanity.

OPPENHEIMER (2023)

This is my only rewatch of this film since seeing it at the cinema, and sitting through it again in my bed, I distinctly recall how much the plodding pace of this narrative weighed on me then and continues to do so. On the one hand, I agree with my past self when I say this helps to really feel the journey that our eponymous protagonist goes on. On the other hand, I can’t help but imagine a version of this story where the entire subplot with Strauss was cut from the script, or otherwise chopped down for the sake of the entire narrative at large.

The first two hours of this film are dynamite, leading up to the Trinity test. It’s during this portion of the film where the pacing couldn’t matter to me less — I was strapped in and loving every second. The final hour of the film is where I started wondering whether this winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture could have benefitted from a restructuring of the screenplay at its foundation.

SAVING PRIVATE RYAN (1998)

My face folding in on itself, a single tear crawling to the edge of each of my eyes, I muttered under my breath with no one else in the room, “He’s so good. He’s so fucking good.” Steven Allan Spielberg understands the connection between cinema and the human heart like you and eye understand that water is wet. This movie is gruesome, it’s gory, it’s chaotic, it’s loud, it’s disorienting, infuriating, saddening, disturbing, off-putting — but Spielberg always elegantly directs us back to its heart.

The opening thirty minutes are a renowned cinematic achievement, but by the time the American flag fades away and the credits roll, damn if you don’t feel the rest of the movie was just as effective, be it the enormous set-pieces or the quiet moments between characters.

GREATEST EVENTS OF WORLD WAR 2 (2019)

I’ve spent the last three or four weeks bingeing history content on YouTube about World War 2, which is something I do every year or so — as a lover of stories, that era is a treasure trove of them, big and small.

This exceptional docuseries highlights (as the title would suggest) several major beats on the timeline of that war, provides breathtaking colored footage from the time, and supplements the images with enlightening commentary by historians from all over the globe. I’ve consumed a lot of content about World War 2 in my day, and this right here is some of the best I’ve ever seen.

THE STUDIO: Season 1 (2025)

As a fan of Entourage (sue me), I was immediately struck by the energy of this series, as it felt very similar to the aforementioned HBO series. Sure, the setting is and always will be intoxicating to me, but it’s the energy of the episodes, scene to scene, that kept me engaged and enthusiastically hitting “Next Episode” when it popped up.

While a few episodes knocked it out of the park and used the concept to the fullest to deliver a great episode of television, I did feel there was another few episodes that almost felt like they would be in later seasons after the freshest and most potent ideas had been used already — if that makes sense. All in all, the episodes themselves were a mixed bag, but the scene to scene construction of those episodes kept me coming back for more. That’s a dangerous line to walk, however; the energy of the cast and the snappy dialogue can only hold this boat afloat for so long.

THE STORY OF FILM: AN ODYSSEY (2011)

In 2012, nineteen-year-old Arthur discovered his love for movies. No passion before or since has taken over his life in quite the way cinema did. I became utterly obsessed. I watched movie after movie after movie after movie. I consumed analytical content and every interview with every filmmaker I was in love with at any given time. This is not an exaggeration: The entire trajectory of my life was altered in 2012; I am where I am today, who I am today because of my love for movies.

With that dramatic preface out of the way, I can say that in that first year of manically watching movies and inhaling and digesting everything there was to find about movies, this docuseries was one of the productions that sticks out to me, all the way to this day. I don’t recall which streaming service it was on at the time, but I went years trying to find it after it disappeared, to no avail. I’d forgotten about it in the decade since, then like an early half-birthday present to me, it showed up as a recommended watch on Prime Video. After the happy hormones settled down, I pressed play. Much to my great pleasure, the happy hormones continued to spike with every episode as I found that this limited series on the history of cinema is just as good as I remembered, and just as informative to me now as it was back then.

HONEY DON’T! (2025)

This film forced me into a crouched position just outside the theater, looking up every movie the Coen brothers have made together. I saw a few of my favorite movies of all time on the list. Seven Oscar nominations for Best Screenplay, and two wins. Three Best Director nominations with one win. Three Best Picture nods, one win.

Joel and Ethan Coen haven’t worked together on a project since 2018. Since then, Joel wrote and directed a film that was nominated for three Academy Awards, and Ethan appears to be hellbent on proving that big brother was the only talented one all along.

JOJO RABBIT (2019)

A piece of writing advice that I heard many years ago from a source I can no longer remember claimed that we learn about characters through their relationships with other characters. Through the course of this film, we learn about who Jojo is at his core by watching certain relationships in his life wither away as others blossom into something beautiful. This character says one thing to himself and the world at large, but we see who he really is in his heart and soul through the other human beings that cross his path, that challenge him, make him question his place in the world, and wish to see the best in him. Taika Waititi must’ve also heard the above advice at some point, because this film is a shining example of that principle at play.

CAUGHT STEALING (2025)

For better or worse, audiences come into a movie with certain expectations given the director attached to the project. This could work to a film’s benefit (see: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), or it could work against the film (see: Caught Stealing). If at least half the audience isn’t muttering to their significant other about how terrible the movie was, did I even watch a movie by Darren Aronofsky? I don’t know why this renowned director suddenly decided to go and make a film so safe, so inoffensive, so aggressively mid. This isn’t a bad movie. It’s quite engaging actually, scene to scene. But the parts never add up to a whole worth writing home about. There’s nothing special here — something I never thought I could say about an Aronofsky picture, something I hope to never say about an Aronofsky picture again. Here’s hoping, for the next project, at least a quarter of the audience in the cinema calls it the worst movie they’ve ever seen in their life. That’s how I’ll know we have our old buddy Darren back.

THE ROSES (2025)

With the help of a witty script, Olivia Colman and Benedict Cumberbatch put on a riotous show. At all times, the good and the bad, I genuinely felt like I was watching two people who have loved each other for so long that they’ve grown to hate each other at the same time. They’re so vile toward each other, so cruel, then they’ll meet eyes across the table and with the softening of their battle positions, they share a loving glance, and they’re reminded of who they are, why they’re here, and all of a sudden, they’re snapped out of their respective murderous rampages and they’re back in love with the person they married and started a family with. Quite the exploration of the muss of marriage through middle-age, steered by two master thespians.

SPLITSVILLE (2025)

This Romantic Comedy strikes a chord that I can’t say I’ve often seen. On the comedy front, it’s consistently funny without ever feeling like it’s telling any jokes. But for a couple slapstick moments of the cast and crew having fun doing their jobs, the filmmakers never treat this movie like a comedy, per se. These actors playing these particular characters interacting in these specific ways just made for some really great comedy. It really felt like the characters were driving the laughs, not the script (but of course, it’s a smart screenplay in the background pulling the strings). Not unlike the filmmakers’ approach toward comedy, the romantic elements are also handled with a delicate touch. The film steers away from cliches at every turn and always keeps the characters at the front of mind. These are messy adults, and they’re acting messy, the “Romance” in “Romantic Comedy” be damned.

THE THREESOME (2025)

I don’t remember the last time I saw two brand new Romantic Comedies at the cinema in the same week, let alone three in one week, let alone three in three consecutive days. Seeing The Roses, Splitsville, and now this back to back to back, I can’t help but notice a trend in the way rom-coms are being made and delivered in 2025. They’re leaning less on the comedy of it all, while also kind of keeping the romance at arm’s length. The goal of these films isn’t to be laugh-out-loud funny, and it’s not to follow the tried and true beats of classic romantic stories. These filmmakers set out to make real movies about complex characters in awkward periods of their lives. If it’s not just a coincidence that these three quality films came out at the same time, in the same genre, telling very different stories, then I’m quite excited for the future of the Romantic Comedy.

This film is the least funny of the three, but it’s the one that most wears its heart on its sleeve. Like the other two, it’s about the characters, first and foremost. The story is about their struggles, their triumphs, their stumbles, their humiliations. When comedy comes of that, great — but it’s not forced. I thought the script for this was well constructed to force the characters to make the most difficult decisions possible, and that’s where great drama can be mined. And since this is a 2025 rom-com, I couldn’t predict where it would go based on all of the other rom-coms I’ve seen in my life, which made for an engaging ride all the way through. It helps that all three leads, the eponymous threesome, were charming as hell.

WEDNESDAY: Season 2 (2025)

I described the first season as feeling “like it should be the best show on the CW.” Well, this second season was demoted to the level of all the other teen slop that could historically be found on that network — except, somehow, this is less edgy. Come to think of it, I’m not exactly sure what age demographic this is even shooting for.

Three years have come and gone between seasons, and those years of development are nowhere to be seen in the product delivered to our screens. While the first season was just barely good enough to keep me watching, this season had me kicking myself for watching the first three episodes in one night — at that point, the sunk-cost fallacy was behind the wheel. To give up on this season was my biggest wish as I watched the remaining five episodes. Nothing could save this for me: Not Tim Burton, not Jenna Ortega, nothing.

Season 1 Reviewed on November 28, 2022

THE LONG WALK (2025)

This would have been in the running for one of my top movies of the year if he just put the gun down at the end. There’s so much beautiful character development in this film (which is to be expected for a Stephen King adaptation), but arguably the most crucial bit of development was eradicated with the decision to end the film the way that they did — an ending, it should be noted, that was constructed specifically for this film, having diverged from the source material.

I’ve made my point about the ending, but the rest of the film is so good that I don’t want to linger on that any longer. It’s gruesome to watch, not pulling any punches whatsoever — the first death was genuinely shocking. For every moment that makes you flinch or squirm, there’s a moment that fills you with hope for humanity in these dire times. The characters are front and center, built up so well through long strings of dialogue and their actions toward opponents in this cruel contest. The relationships they form provide further insight into who they are, what they’re afraid of, what they want out of life — looking forward to a brighter future only one of them is allowed to see. The performances cannot go without due praise, as every single one of these young actors bringing these full characters to life was downright exciting to watch. I expect we’re going to be seeing quite a few of them for many years to come.

A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY (2025)

Listen, writing rules should never be treated like gospel. As they say, learn the rules like a pro so that you can break them like an artist. I say all this because I’m going to make a claim that this film should be studied for being a prime example of what happens when you completely disregard the following (utterly trite) writing rule:

Show, Don’t Tell.

These characters do nothing but talk about the kind of people they are, what they’re afraid of, who they want to be, who they’ve been in the past, etc. The audience is told absolutely everything about these characters through the mouths of these characters, on the nose, usually lacking any nuance. 100 minutes go by, we been on an alleged big bold beautiful journey, and at the end of it, we feel nothing.

Exclusively telling, eschewing the showing, leaves the viewer/reader feeling hollow. The credits will roll and you won’t be able to put your finger on it, but you’ll find that you’re not moved by what you’ve just seen, regardless of what the characters have said to make you think you should feel otherwise. Without any conscious calculation, our brains reject any connection to the people in the story. It just remains the attractive actors reciting the lines in their script. It never evolves into empathy for another human being, a heart to heart connection that touches the soul and shows us the ways the writer figured out how to be alive.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (2025)

I am a movie lover, a cinephile if you will. Unlike most (if not all) of my kind, I am not a Paul Thomas Anderson enjoyer. It’s like I’m allergic to his taste for storytelling — his stuff bounces right off of me. Often, I’m left wondering what the hell is wrong with me as I scroll through all the praise and adulation rained upon the film I just watched and was deeply underwhelmed by.

There is, once again, a disconnect between me and my people when it comes to this film. Everybody and their sister are talking like this is a monumental contribution to the art form. Meanwhile, I’m over here calling it the first PTA movie I thoroughly enjoyed sitting through. That said, the barrier between me and his storytelling was not quite pierced with this one either. I want to be more emotionally affected by the greats. I didn’t feel nearly enough to be talking how seemingly everyone else is talking about this film.

ALIEN: ROMULUS (2024)

Listen, I’m sorry, I really am, but I can’t not talk about this again (see my second paragraph) — I just couldn’t stop thinking about it (again) while watching the movie. I promise I won’t mention any of this on my third watch, which will absolutely happen before I know it, because I really like this movie. The first quarter of it is sensational — I’m obsessed with this film’s set-up scenes. The first half, overall, is great. The second half doesn’t quite maintain that level of quality as the action ramps up, but it’s consistently entertaining and has some really incredible sequences throughout.

ANYWAY! Watching this movie, all I could see was the cast of a Last of Us Part 2 adaptation that will tragically never be. I saw the dream Ellie. I saw the actual Dina from the HBO series, pregnant and all. Those two are enough to get me yearning — don’t get me started about minute-82. Then, I realized I was seeing Jesse. I was seeing Lev. I was seeing Manny. I have no idea who David Jonsson would play, but he has to be included in some considerable capacity — this phenomenal young actor is getting his props after The Long Walk, but real ones knew he was special with the release of this film. After my first watch, I joked that the Costume and HMU departments were flagrantly taunting those of us that want to see these actors in a Last of Us adaptation. Well, this time, I realized that their home colony is literally called Jackson, the name of the settlement where Ellie and Dina call home. Yeah, how could I not think about this stuff when they’re literally laughing in our face?

Previously Reviewed on August 18, 2024

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (1989)

With this viewing, Rob Reiner & Nora Ephron’s masterpiece has found itself tied for my most rewatched movies since 2018 (which is when I started tracking every movie I watch). Real ones could probably guess one or two of the films it’s tied with — but I must say, if there was a category for “easiest film for me to watch”, this would probably be my winner. I want to watch it way more often than I actually do. It’s just so mind-bogglingly charming.

Previously Reviewed in 2024, 2022 & 2020

INTERSTELLAR (2014)

This movie has so much heart that it can almost convince you that nothing else matters, that the whole is the sum of exceptional parts. But the script is just too mediocre for me. The dialogue is frequently painfully on the nose, often outright cheesy. The narrative feels nonsensical and scattered, and weighs the whole thing down with melodramatic beats and twists that would feel at home in soap operas. The filmmaking makes the three hours feel like two, and feeds the eyes and ears to distract the brain. It’s the premise that really keeps this thing moving though, even when you feel like you’re just floating in space. It’s the heart at the center of this film that makes it special.

ROOFMAN (2025)

Channing Tatum plays a character who feels too strongly for his own good. He follows his bellowing heart head-first into bad decisions, time and time again. That’s really bad news for Jeffrey Manchester, but really good news for us, the audience. Manchester’s antics are unquestionably fun to watch — this movie doesn’t work if they weren’t. His decision-making had the middle-aged woman sitting next to me mumbling to herself, “he’s so stupid.” But through Tatum’s commendable performance, we feel the criminal’s inner turmoil. We feel where all of those poor life choices are coming from. And we’re rooting for him to find peace.

ANNIE HALL (1977)

Woody Allen’s love letter to Diane Keaton earned her the only Oscar she’d ever win — an Oscar with the engraving “Best Actress in a Leading Role” but should really say “Creation of a Cinematic Icon.” Woody may have written the words on the page and directed the actor across the picture, but in more ways than a couple, there is no Annie Hall (the character, and therefore, the Best Picture winner) without Diane Keaton, the singular human being and the brilliant performer.

Previously Reviewed on February 9, 2021

BLUE MOON (2025)

Ethan Hawke is unleashed in this chamber piece that felt to me like Richard Linklater channeling prime Woody Allen.

Seriously, I watched the blue Sony Pictures Classics title screen appear, sitting in a tiny independent cinema, bringing to mind the days of annual Woody releases. Then the movie started, a bar in New York City was the setting, the dialogue was snappy and witty, the protagonist was neurotic and the performance was captivating. This film took me back in time in more ways than one, and I loved every minute of it.

SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE (2025)

I’ve seen this movie maybe a dozen times — in fact, I saw it around this time last year. There is very little (if any) deviation from the tried and true formula here. It doesn’t go out of its way to be interesting. That said, it’s inoffensive. The lead actor does a great job. The name in the title will sell tickets. A tale as old as time in the biopic genre.

This movie did not get any sentimental help either, even though I am a huge Springsteen fan. I never really cared for the album, Nebraska.

MIDNIGHT MASS (2021)

I’m a man of honor, so I will link the location of my first review for this limited series, the same way I do with every movie or show I’ve previously reviewed. That being said, I’m not proud of that review — I’m borderline embarrassed by it, frankly. I don’t know what headspace I was in almost four years ago to the day, but I feel sorry for that version of me, because I clearly was not able to see the brilliance in this show back then.

There’s so much humanity to be found in each and every character on this island. They each have their reasons for devoting their lives to God. There are those who depend on the Lord for their mental health or physical wellbeing. There are those who are waiting on a miracle. There are those that can no longer point to what the heart of their devotion is after a lifetime with the church.

The horror seeps through many different cracks in this story. And the image of the angel as described in the bible is far from the most frightening of it all. So much of the horror comes out in the ways that religion is shown to be wielded as a weapon, to punish, to threaten, to lie, to mislead, to be cruel. There’s a verse in the bible to condemn actions you take when your heart is in the right place. There’s a verse in the bible to defend actions that every outside observer would consider heinous.

There’s a scene in Book V: Gospel that has been seared into my mind (after the episode ended, I went back and rewatched the scene immediately), and perfectly exemplifies my claims above. Bev Keane stands before Riley Flynn with a gold cup to be filled with human blood that Riley will have to drink, lecturing the troubled young man on God’s Will. I will quote her directly: “[Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life] and I will raise them up on the last day. For my flesh is real food, and my blood is real drink. And whomever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will remain in me, and I in them. Gospel of John. And it’s pretty specific, isn’t it? I mean, he’s not really mincing words, is he?”

The wielding of religion to coerce and to gaslight continues like that for even longer in that scene, and only becomes more prevalent as the stakes of the series continue to rise toward a climax. And in that climax, we see how the interpretation of religion can cause conflict between even the most devout, among those closest to God and his glory.

Previously Reviewed on October 11, 2021

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN’S LETTER TO YOU (2020)

Springsteen’s twentieth studio album finds him meditating on what death looks like to him, what it means to him. Bruce and his band of lifelong friends and musicians have grown old together, come to the precipice of that next step in life together. This was the first time Bruce produced an album with the whole band playing together live.

It’s such a treat to watch them perform these songs that were in part inspired by the death of a beloved bandmate, and then to watch them celebrate together after a successful day’s work/play. There’s an unavoidable heaviness in the air, justified by the lyrics in the songs and their ageing bodies performing the music that accompanies them. For that reason, it feels like a blessing to have these sessions documented — I’m sure they’d all agree.

Previously Reviewed on November 11, 2020

ALIEN EARTH: Season 1 (2025)

Right off the bat, we’re faced with threats from alien lifeforms and human beings alike. We’re introduced to themes of identity, what it means to be human, how far is too far for scientific development — evergreen subjects for the genre. What excited me most was this question of what it means for children on the brink of death to be given a second chance at life in technologically advanced bodies.

What disappointed me most about this season of television is that the show never gave that question its due exploration — as the season progressed, the themes as a whole got lost in the shuffle. The in-universe rules for the aliens, the cyborgs, the hybrids, and the humans never started feeling clear to me, which caused me to struggle with the stakes at any given moment. Speaking of stakes, as the season progressed, the alien lifeforms basically became allies for the protagonist, so they no longer felt like a threat — and as that was happening, the protagonist was realizing her true strength, so all of a sudden, nothing felt like a threat anymore. With the aliens becoming allies and the power dynamics between the hybrids and the humans leaning overwhelmingly in the hybrids’ favor, the tension was basically non-existent as the season was coming to a close.

What was teased by the early episodes as a thematically dense story set in a politically and economically turbulent future just ended up feeling like a run-of-the-mill show for tweens about kids with superpowers.

PREDATOR: KILLER OF KILLERS (2025)

Dan Trachtenberg seems to be building himself a cinematic shrine to the Predator — this loosely plotted, gorgeously animated, proof-of-concept-for-something ass movie being his follow-up to Prey. If absolutely nothing else, this was cool as hell to behold with my eyes for eighty minutes. I mean, how could it not be with the following description: “A Viking raider, a ninja in feudal Japan, and a World War 2 pilot encounter a fierce intergalactic hunter.”

PREDATOR: BADLANDS (2025)

This world is so richly designed and brought to life that I couldn’t help feel like this could have been an awesome story to tell as a video game. I don’t think I’ve ever actually had that thought before, honestly. Each setting was as beautiful and interesting as the last, and the diversity and creativity in wildlife that wanted our protagonist dead was genuinely astounding — and that’s not to mention the Synths sent by Weyland-Yutani. The movie does a really good job making the worldbuilding feel important, wrapping it all up with an impressive bow in the third act. Dan Trachtenberg could have just had us move through the places he built and fight through the obstacles he placed in our way, but no, he made it all an important part of the story, and for that, I tip my cap.

ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER (2025)

I had been meaning to give this a rewatch before it left cinemas, so imagine my excitement when I searched showtimes and found that it was returning to the one IMAX screen in my area for one showing a day for one last week.

A rewatch really unlocked this film for me. I went into the first screening with all the expectations and preconceived notions that come with “written and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson” for me. Still, I genuinely enjoyed my first viewing. A second viewing threw all of that baggage aside, allowing me to watch this film as it was, instead of how I wanted it to be — how it should have been viewed in the first place.

Just a few notes on a film that’s being discussed ad nauseum in film circles and beyond: Leonardo DiCaprio is a comedic genius; Sean Penn gives one of the best performances by a supporting actor that I’ve ever seen; this is basically an action movie for cinephiles — its pace is marvelously breakneck, and damn near every scene is electric.

IF I HAD LEGS I’D KICK YOU (2025)

In one fell swoop, this film snatched two common cinematic superlatives for itself:

1) Feel Bad Movie of the Year

2) Don’t Have Children Movie of the Year

We are with a sensational Rose Byrne, experiencing a two-hour panic attack we wish would mercifully end but need to know how it resolves. Quite the resolution, I must say; the last couple minutes of this hit me just right — especially that last shot of her daughter, who she’s finally taking a second to see.

DIE MY LOVE (2025)

This is one of those movies where you get in the car and have a discussion about what it means for a movie to be good or bad, and how that designation is not the same as liking it or not. I am never going to watch this movie again for as long as I may live. Frankly, I don’t know the kind of person who would kick back on their couch and press play on this for a second viewing from the comfort of their home. I did not enjoy my time with this movie.

But was it good? Jennifer Lawrence is back in tour de force territory after some time away from Hollywood. The filmmaking had me on the edge of my seat, unsettled, uncomfortable, knowing that her unstable character may do absolutely anything at any given time, social rules be damned. I was fearing her next move while hoping she was alright. So yeah, the movie was good. I wouldn’t have felt such strong emotions, during and after, if it weren’t good.

FRANKENSTEIN (2025)

A Guillermo del Toro helmed adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic novel seems like the most inevitable move in the history of motion pictures. If you asked me what could possibly go wrong with such an adaptation, I would say that I worry I’d be left feeling as though his other monster movies feel more personal and original, that the beating heart is felt more profoundly. Seeing the film is being funded by Netflix would then have me worrying that del Toro might have a little too much fun with the setting and source material, losing the plot a bit as a result.

Sometimes, my concerns going into a highly anticipated movie prove to be unfounded. Sometimes, they’re spot on.

THE RUNNING MAN (2025)

If this movie was playing on a flight, and you knew nothing about it, you’d have found yourself a good way to spend a touch over two hours. But I was sitting in an IMAX theater, and I know this movie was co-written and directed by Edgar Wright, so I can’t help but feel deep disappointment over how generic the film looked and how mediocre the writing was. We’re getting an Edgar Wright picture every four years these days, so to have one of them be something like this is mildly depressing.

THE SANDLOT (1993)

It’s so hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that the filmmakers didn’t know that every decision that was made here was going to become iconic. Like, did they not know they had magic while writing this, or while the kids were performing the lines? In the early 90s, was this just a solid coming-of-age movie about putting yourself out there, friendship and baseball? Do I just feel this way because I was a kid who was born in ‘93 and grew up playing baseball? Nostalgia is a hell of a drug.

NUREMBERG (2025)

Watching this was like watching an adaptation of a beloved book. The Nuremberg Trials, much like all of the other chapters in this era of world history, was chock-full of compelling storylines, fascinating characters, and sources of conflict. Due to the nature of the motion picture, the film had to focus on a select few storylines, characters, and sources of conflict. It did hint at a wider world of intrigue for the World War II nerds in the crowd, but it left a lot of the story unexplored. The story that it did tell here was told very well, however. By the end, I couldn’t believe how quickly two and a half hours flew by.

ZOOTOPIA 2 (2025)

It seems like the storytelling approach and target audience for this doesn’t overlap widely with the rest of Disney’s catalog — this feels like it’s almost fifty-fifty made for adults. It’s not made for adults, obviously, but the story being told, how the story is told, all of the winks and nods, they add up to an experience an adult would surely appreciate more than a child. Yes, there are a lot of moving parts onscreen at any given moment to keep the kids engaged, but the rest of it really feels to me like it’s aimed at us.

Okay, that’s enough rambling. I liked this. The plot unfolded in a swift and satisfying manner. The characters and their complexities were explored in more depth than I expected. Really solid stuff all around.

WICKED: FOR GOOD (2025)

Bless their hearts, everybody did their absolute best to justify the existence of a separate film for the second act of this beloved musical. For the most part, I thought Jon Chu made good decision after good decision in how to approach this. Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande prove, once again, transcendent in these roles. Jonathan Bailey and Ethan Slater filled the spaces where Elphaba and Glinda weren’t together beautifully.

In the end, there was really only one way to save a film adapting the immensely inferior second act of Wicked, and that’s by adding new songs at the quality of No Good Deed or For Good in a way that made sense to the narrative. I thought No Good Deed and For Good were performed and filmed exceptionally well. However, the two new songs (one for Elphaba, one for Glinda) weren’t great, and therefore, simply weren’t enough to save this latter half of the story.

Like I mentioned above, there’s nothing and nobody to blame here besides the source material. Everybody gave it their all in trying to make this work. From this point forward, watching the two movies back-to-back basically becomes essential for a truly satisfying watch. That shouldn’t be a problem though — all things considered, with these two films, I don’t think we could have asked for a better adaptation of the musical.

ETERNITY (2025)

This film committed the crime of having an interesting premise then proceeding to choose the safest, most boring decisions possible every step of the way in seeing the premise through. It didn’t push hard enough into the comedy to be a memorable Rom-Com. It didn’t push hard enough into the melodrama to be a memorable Romance. It wasn’t sentimental enough to be a memorable film about life-after-death.

The desire to see this premise flourish kept the train moving at a steady enough pace for me (all three leads were charming, which helped), but by the end, I was left completely unaffected — which is the absolute last thing you want with a film like this.

THE MAKING OF DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN (2010)

Thom Zimny gives us an unbelievable behind-the-scenes peek at what it looked like for Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band to follow up 1975’s Born to Run. It was fascinating to watch Bruce captain the ship of his burgeoning career during a pivotal time like this. The tumultuous business side that reared its ugly head, and the creative side that wanted to find its way back to the roots after his life was forever changed with the release and reception of his previous album — no longer an up-and-coming underdog, now a budding superstar.

Without question, the highlight for me was the unprecedented insight this film gives us on Bruce’s process, straight from the studio in the mid-70s or from the man himself in the late-aughts: His philosophies on constructing an album, his approach toward building a song, his practice of filling notebooks with lyrics that would never be heard.

HAMNET (2025)

I genuinely can’t remember the last time I was this moved by a film at the cinema — I cried discussing it on the way home after fighting back tears for the majority of its runtime.

This is a story that when described on a whim would sound either mundane or melodramatic, but when experienced with the guidance of Chloe Zhao’s masterful hand is anything but — the emotions are raw and they’re potent, and they’re earned. This is a story about falling in love, being in love, about building a life for oneself, about raising a family, about suffering loss, about grieving alone, about connecting to loved ones and strangers alike through universal experiences and empathy.

The first three-fourths of this movie explore life at its best and at its worst. Then, in the final quarter, the film pivots into a story about the reasons human beings have told stories and made art for as long as we’ve existed. As the credits rolled, I was stunned in my seat, utterly awestruck by how everything I’ve just talked about came together so perfectly — a shining example of a whole that is somehow greater than the sum of its remarkable parts.

I can go on and on about this for hours, analyzing every character, every scene, every sequence, every chapter, every act, because it was all so purposeful, so deftly executed and strung together; but I’ll leave it here for now.

One final thing I’ll mention is that if Jessie Buckley doesn’t win the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role, I never want to hear somebody bring up that contemptible award show around me ever again — the performance she gives in this is one of the best I’ve ever seen, let alone the best I’ve seen this year.

WAKE UP DEAD MAN (2025)

An incredibly fine line has to be walked to make these Agatha Christie ensemble whodunnit mysteries really work on film. What typically happens when those books are adapted is certain characters get more space in the movie, and most of the others hang around, ever-present, after they’re introduced. This leaves the audience with less to work with as they’re following along, making each step in the unfolding plot feel less satisfying. In the novels, every character gets the space they require in order to feel like a full participant in the mystery at hand, which in turn gives the audience all the information they need to feel invested in the events and outcomes.

There have been fine adaptations in the past, and Rian Johnson is currently on a streak of three straight original, thematically-resonant, tonally-sound stories told in the genre. While I do think this entry is stronger than Glass Onion, I feel this one suffers from the problems I lay out above more than Knives Out does — the first of these films doing the most with what it had to work with, in my eyes.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love what Rian Johnson is doing here, and I hope he continues doing it for a very long time. He’s delivering high-quality stories to an audience that is hungry for a genre this medium has generally had trouble supplying.

SORRY, BABY (2025)

I didn’t learn until after the credits rolled that the director of this was also the lead actor and the sole writer — oh, and it’s her feature debut. Everything about this felt so confident. The direction was fluid and alive — there were a couple moments that brought a smile to my face, built entirely by the cinematography and editing. The writing was sharp, fearlessly shifting tones, breaking our heart one moment then making us laugh the next — the result feeling far from jarring, but rather, like real life as experienced by this protagonist vividly sketched and brought to life by Eva Victor.

K-POP DEMON HUNTERS (2025)

The second act of this film really weighed it down for me. The first act was exciting and did a great job of hooking me in, and the third act was triumphant enough to ultimately win me back — but man, that middle portion just felt like hitting the same somber note over and over in a part of the movie that should theoretically be the most fun.

How It’s Done, Golden, and What It Sounds Like have been added to the playlist though. Bangers.

JAY KELLY (2025)

The final few minutes of this film tell you exactly how the two hours that preceded it unfolded, for better or worse. It’s on the nose, but it’s honest. It’s sentimental, but it’s sincere. Baumbach and Clooney captained this ship with grace, and I was a contented passenger on the voyage down this ageing movie star’s memory lane.

TRAIN DREAMS (2025)

A portrait of a man stuck in a period of time that renders him small, stuck in a place he’s planted roots, watched them burn, then rebuilt. He’s profoundly alone, moving through the uncertainty of the days, the weeks, the years. The film is slow because to capture loneliness is to linger on the quiet, the emptiness, the pointlessness. The film is despondent to highlight the times when this early 20th-century logger found true meaning in his life, ever-fleeting.

NOUVELLE VAGUE (2025)

So often, Linklater films feel like him gathering a group of his friends to go make a movie together, just for fun. This one is special because it feels like Linklater gathering a group of his friends to go make a movie together about a legend of cinema gathering a group of his friends to go make a movie together. It’s all such good fun.

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I examined the pictures, I looked into Jinx’s eyes, and I had to admit that the Original Poster was right. There’s no denying that Jinx looks utterly overcome with terror — despair even — as she stares into the darkness toward what should theoretically be a pleasant sight. The question indirectly being asked here is why did Jinx react that way to seeing her father holding her sister, when there’s no doubt this is an image she would have given anything to see since she was a child with a different name. To answer that question for myself, I watched the scene over and over again, watched previous scenes, and watched last season’s scenes, all with a close eye and a sharp ear, because the people involved with making this show do not do anything by accident, and their attention to detail is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The answer that I eventually arrived at was that Jinx appeared utterly terrified looking at an otherwise lovely scene because in that moment, she was staring down the barrel of her greatest fear — something that broke her once, and would surely end her this time around.

The episode opens with Jinx trying to convince Vi to follow her on a hunt for their father — the man that died in Vi’s arms many years ago. Jinx has to know that Vi wouldn’t believe her, after everything they’ve been through together. Vi knows that Jinx knows that Vi wouldn’t believe her. But there she was, against the wall with Vi’s hand around her throat, with shimmer-laced tears falling from her eyes, telling her sister that their father was still alive. Vi being Vi, incapable of letting her loved ones go, no matter what, removes her hand from Jinx’s throat, against her better judgment, against everything within her that says this is just another one of Jinx’s tricks.

They arrive at the tunnels, and Vi watches Jinx move through them, clapping with Isha to turn the lights on. You can see in her face that she’s still unsure, shaking her head, rolling her eyes as she follows behind the two of them, toward god knows where, still under the impression that she’s with them down here, chasing another one of Jinx’s fantasies. She’s still convinced Jinx is wrong, but the possibility of seeing Vander again is enough for her to remain in step with her estranged sister. They bicker at each other, each convinced the other one is crazier than them, they get into a fight, and Vi instinctually strikes Isha, making her bleed. Jinx shoves her big sister away and takes care of the young child as Vi watches. Maybe she sees Powder in Jinx here. Maybe she sees herself in Jinx here, and Powder in Isha. Either way, it was clear at this moment, that there were cracks beginning to appear in the image of her psychotic sister that Vi had in her mind.

This change in Vi’s headspace was clear in the words she uttered immediately after, as the exchange that follows is between equals, as adults with level heads — not between two sisters, one crazy and one sane, or between enemies that mean each other harm. She wasn’t just tagging along as the butt of a joke, this much was clear to her now. She wanted to know what was actually going on, the assumption being she would believe her little sister this time around.

“Why’d you come get me?” Vi asks. “You don’t actually need my help. You haven’t for a long time.”

How Jinx answers that question is at the heart of the answer I arrived at to the question that was posed in that aforementioned tweet.

Jinx says, “Last time Vander needed us, we tried it alone, and nothing was ever the same. So, maybe this is like a do-over.” This is at the heart of why Jinx went through the trouble to find Vi and to convince her, against all odds, to join her. This is at the heart of why Jinx is doing what she’s doing — and she says those words with a heavy heart, unable to make eye contact, each line carrying so much weight, entirely devoid of irony. It’s so earnest that she attempts to stick a laugh in before she suggests this could be a do-over, but even that is humorless — she can’t even convince herself that she’s not expressing her deepest desires at that moment. It’s only after this that she can turn to look at Vi and let some of the air out of her tone. “Besides,” she says, “he’s your father too.” The first part was all about why Jinx needed Vi to be with her. The final part is to convince Vi to stay.

When they find Vander’s letter to Silco in the next scene, we see Jinx mulling over how things could have been different if Silco had received this apology from a brother. This is a sign of how Jinx susceptible to struggling with the concept of What Could Have Been — a sequence of words that happens to be the title to the final song in the final episode of Season 1. The lyrics in the song are phrased in such a way that presents the character juggling in their mind all of the ways that things could have been different, “playing” as it’s stated. “I want you to lose how I lose when I play what could have been.” The word play makes it seem like this is something that comes around often in the character’s mind — this is a game they’re used to playing.

Vi sees how this contemplation is affecting her sister, and moves to comfort her. She pulls back, however, redirecting her hand to her oversized bitch-mitten instead. Isha approaches Jinx and does the comforting. And then, they’re back into the dark to continue their hunt for Vander.

It doesn’t take long for them to hear the rumblings of the beast hunting them. Vi wants to run, but Jinx tells her it’s Vander, except “something’s got him riled up.” Warwick pounces in Isha’s direction, hungry for her blood, but Vi stops him, seemingly protecting the child. Vi looks up at the monster with fear in her eyes, and she utters, “He’s gonna kill you.” She wasn’t protecting Isha; she was protecting Jinx. And as Jinx screams, “Don’t hurt him”, Vi charges at the beast, now hellbent to stop him from hurting her sister, with no regard for how much danger she’s putting herself in.

She takes a beating, but bloodied and bruised, she stands up with her gloves up, prepared to fight this monster to the death. You can see in her eyes that she might be preparing for the worst. Still, there is nothing that’s going to stop her from seeing this through to the end. Nothing, that is, except her sister’s pleas. “Vi, it’s him. You have to believe me.”

Vi considers this for no longer than a second before dropping her hands to her sides. After everything that has happened to lead these two sisters to this point, Vi makes the choice to trust Jinx with her life. A moment later, Jinx sees this and terror begins to fill her eyes.

Warwick charges. Vi stands in place, defenseless, helpless. The drums in the score cease. Then the rest of the music drops out. All we can hear is the beast’s growl. Then, the rapid beating of a heart. Then… Now, stay with me here! Then, we hear a sort of ticking, right at the tail end, before Vi yells out Vander’s name. For a couple seconds, the heartbeat morphs into a ticking. Now, what in the world would lead to the makers of this show to make such a specific choice? Like I mentioned earlier, nothing these brilliant minds do is an accident. I knew that I needed to get to the bottom of this before I continued.

So, I racked my brain for what this ticking sound could be connected to. Naturally, my first thought was Ekko, him being so thematically tied to time. But I discarded that thought in no time, as it simply didn’t fit here. I replayed that two-second section on loop, trying to figure it out.

Then, suddenly, it hit me. My mind went back to a moment in Season 1. Before I even confirmed my suspicions, I realized that this was the exact moment that Jinx’s mind went back to as well. Terror was already slipping into Jinx’s eyes here as her mind transported her back to the root of her deepest, darkest trauma. In the final seconds of this scene, we hear Vander’s growling, we hear Vi’s heartbeat, and we hear the ticking of Powder’s monkey bomb.

Do you need some convincing? Listen to this:

As Warwick closes in on her sister, Jinx’s mind goes back to the moment she wound up her invention and set it off in an attempt to save her loved ones. Their lives were in her hands, and the result was catastrophic. In trying to save her family, she tore them apart. As Warwick closes in on her sister, Jinx’s mind goes straight to her greatest fear: Reliving the trauma of the moment where she killed her friends, killed her father, and caused her sister to turn on her, leaving her alone in the world as a child, with nowhere to go, and nobody to care for her — setting herself on a path that has brought nothing but death and destruction.

So we cut back to Jinx in the dark as the lyrics to the song in the soundtrack begins. Loud sounds bring forth the light where they are, so the stillness is deafening and blinding. Jinx is left in the silence to face the possibility that her do-over had caused just as much heartache as the first time around. She was left in the darkness to grapple with the possibility of losing everything, all over again, with nobody to blame but herself — mourning the death of her sister, battling the guilt of it being her fault, and accepting that Vander did, in fact, die in the explosion she caused.

Jinx creeps forward, primed to burst into tears. Finally, the dim light catches the body of the beast that attacked Vi. And at this exact moment, the lyrics in the song on the soundtrack say, “Don’t make me go through this again.” I’ve said it twice, and I’ll say it a third time: This is not an accident. That is precisely what is going through Jinx’s mind here. It’s her moment of reckoning. She got her do-over. Now it’s time to see the consequences of her actions.

It’s insane the complex emotions on display in the animation here. Jinx only gets a split second of relief before being drowned by all of the emotions that come with a tendency of playing what could have been. When the thing you’re dreading is bad enough, the relief over it not happening can crush you by itself. Instead of being overwhelmed by joy over it not happening, Jinx switched from the terror over it potentially happening to dread over it almost happening.

This is a girl traumatized by her own actions, hurt by her own decisions. This is a girl who has learned that everything she touches withers away, everyone she loves dies or otherwise abandons her. She knew all too well how things would turn out if things went terribly wrong here. Still, the risk of losing everything all over again was outweighed by having the chance to fix the mistake she made that ruined her life, ruined her sister’s life, and ended the lives of the members of her family.

There’s no telling what would have happened to her if this do-over had gone like the first time. The thought of it being a possibility was enough to break her down. Luckily, in the heartbreak of events that didn’t play out, Jinx had her family to lean on — she had a pair of open arms to run into.

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Leading up to this chapter, Harry is in arguably his worst mental-state in the whole series thus far. He’d just seen a friend of his get murdered right before his eyes. He watched as Voldemort was reborn from his own blood. He fought for his life when the Dark Lord tried to finish what he started all those years ago. He managed to escape by the skin on his teeth, but the psychological damage was done. He spent the end of Goblet of Fire in the tides of his spiraling thoughts, not wanting to speak about the events he’d experienced. And then, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, he was forced to go back to the Dursleys and spend the following month wondering why his friends were keeping secrets from him, and why the entirety of the magical world seemed to have turned their backs on him, intentionally keeping him in the dark.

Then came the events that lead to Harry’s hearing before the Ministry of Magic. While walking around in the Dursley’s home town of Surrey, a couple of dementors appeared and attacked his cousin Dudley, threatening his life. Harry acted quickly, casting his Patronus to save Dudley and driving the dementors away. At this point in the story, Harry had already received an official warning about using magic outside of Hogwarts. This was his second violation of that rule. However, due to the actions of Dobby, the house elf in an earlier book, this was Harry’s third and final strike in the eyes of the Ministry. This third and final strike would result in Harry’s expulsion from Hogwarts. This life-saving act of courage and compassion resulted in Harry being banned from the only place in the world that has ever felt like home to him, banned from the only people who have ever felt like family to him. To quote the twelfth-century writer, Walter Map, Harry’s decision to save his abominable cousin’s life caused the Ministry to act in such a way that “left no good deed unpunished.”

So, it’s the day of Harry’s hearing. They leave for the Ministry early, only to find out that the site of the appointment had been changed, and the time of the appointment had been moved up at the last second. “You’re late,” were the first words uttered to him, and when Harry began to explain that he hadn’t been made aware of the change in time, the voice of Cornelius Fudge snapped back, telling him that an owl was sent that morning, carrying notice of this change. Immediately, this makes the reader wonder: Why would they change the time and place of this hearing on the morning of the hearing? Why would they move it up, no less, certainly creating the possibility that the accused would be late? Harry and Mr. Weasley did the right thing by leaving early. Surely, the Ministry would consider the fact that they might do so, if not out of respect for the authority of this group, but out of the desire to make a good first impression.

Before the hearing has even commenced, the tension is rising. Harry takes his seat in front of fifty or so members of the Wizengamot who would decide the fate of the rest of his life. He recognizes Percy Weasley who refused to meet Harry’s eyes. He saw Mr. Fudge and a few other faces dimly lit. But to the Minister’s right, sat a witch whose face was in shadows. Who is this woman sitting so far back on her bench as to stroud her face in the darkness of the room? Surely, she’s a person of import, sitting directly beside the Minister.

Sitting very alone, feeling the weight of everything that has led up to this moment on his shoulders, Harry listened to the crimes he was accused of committing. As the gravity of his predicament continued to press down on him, a quiet voice was heard from behind him, announcing themselves as a witness for the defense. It was none other than Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. And thus, we have our first real twist in the drama at play here. Harry was alone, under the watchful eyes of those who sought to ruin his life as he knew it. Now, he had an ally to face the coming onslaught alongside. What was just a one-sided affair is now a conflict among two parties.

Dumbledore’s appearance filled Harry with a “fortified, hopeful feeling” but the members of the Wizengamot (which until very recently, Dumbledore was a member of) looked annoyed and even slightly frightened. Cornelius was “obviously flustered” and “thoroughly disconcerted” by the Headmaster’s presence in the courtroom. With a stutter, the Minister noted that Dumbledore must have successfully received the message that the time and place of this hearing had been changed, to which Dumbledore admitted that he missed that message, but “due to a lucky mistake” he had arrived three hours early, “so no harm done.” What all of this tells the reader is that the Wizengamot had no intention of speaking with Dumbledore on this day – they wished to interrogate and sentence Harry without a defense; they didn’t want Harry to stand a chance at skirting his expulsion. If it wasn’t already clear, it is now: There’s a potential conspiracy against the boy wizard afoot here.

Mind you, I’ve already listed enough conflict to set up and explore in this chapter. Can you guess how many pages into said chapter we are at this point? We are not even two pages into this chapter, and there are already several layers to the drama that is building, the bulk of which is conveyed entirely through subtext – yet another sign of genuinely good writing.

As we dive back into the prose, Cornelius Fudge began uttering the charges that were being brought up against Harry Potter, which the boy wizard admitted to committing but was urgently trying to fit in a defense for his actions before getting cut off by the Minister questioning him. The series of formal inquiries led to a brief back-and-forth about the fact that Harry can produce a fully fledged, clearly defined, corporeal Patronus in the form of a stag. Though this feat is impressive for a fifteen-year-old, Fudge states that “It’s not a question of how impressive the magic is… In fact, the more impressive the worse it is, I would have thought, given the boy did it in plain view of a Muggle!” Agreeing murmurs filled the stands and Harry watched the one friendly face in the group (Percy Weasley) nod self-righteously in response to the Minister’s statement.

This was the last straw for Harry. “I did it because of the dementors!” he shouted. The crowd of interrogators fell silent before one of them questioned his claim. What followed Harry’s confirmation was a condescending string of comments by the Minister of Magic, who had already been under the impression that Harry was an attention-seeking, perhaps mentally unwell individual — thanks to the fabricated articles published in the Daily Prophet, and since the events of Goblet of Fire. When Harry was greeted by the Minister in the hospital following the sequence of traumatic occurrences that took place in the graveyard where the body of Tom Riddle Sr. had been laid to rest, Cornelius Fudge had been in absolute, wholehearted denial about the return of the Dark Lord, Voldemort. Worse still, he had been actively silencing any word that may come out about this. He refused to allow the public to believe what he considered to be a dangerous lie, or the elaborate creation of a mentally deranged young boy. He could not allow for the possibility of people to believe such a claim, which would certainly cause chaos, and worse even, usher in another dark age, which had plagued their world up until the events that took place in Godric’s Hollow, where Lily and James Potter were murdered in cold blood — where Voldemort had lost his powers, his body, and his suffocating hold on the magical world. Cornelius was prepared for Harry to put his mental illness on display and mention the dementors, and was prepared to strike his claims down as nothing but a “nice little cover story.”

When Mrs. Figg was summoned as an eyewitness to come to Harry’s defense, she began recounting the events of that night very poorly, lingering on pointless details and describing the dementors as if she had merely seen a picture of them once, as opposed to actually seeing them attack with her own two eyes. Harry felt a “horrible sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach” as the Wizengamot muttered amongst themselves, and Fudge “snorted derisively.” This scene is already neck deep in conflict, surface level and subtextual – this short sequence revolving around Harry’s only eyewitness appearing unreliable was not needed for this scene to work. This is a great example to point to when examining just how remarkably loaded this chapter is in drama.

Soon, Mrs. Figg’s voice and her recounting became more confident, and the details she was reciting became more detailed. This minor dramatic arc weaved into a web of other dramatic arcs came to an end when she was finished speaking, and everybody on the Wizengamot turned to Fudge, who was now fidgeting with his papers – this testimony was obviously not a part of his plan. Only after Mrs. Figg left the room did he say, “Not a very convincing witness.” This was met with disagreement by the witch beside him. Now, all of a sudden, there was conflict within the body assembled before our hero.

What happens next is, once again, so multi-layered it’s begging to be studied by writers and readers alike. Fudge claimed that the odds of two dementors happening to sneak into the Muggle world and happening to come across a wizard were absurd. Dumbledore countered this statement by saying he didn’t think the dementors were there by coincidence. Let’s stop here: What is he actually saying? What claims is he making without making them? This is really delicious stuff. Dumbledore then claimed that the dementors must have been ordered there — specifically by someone other than the Ministry of Magic. Boom. This conflict just shot to the stratosphere.

Dumbledore wholeheartedly believed Harry when he said that Voldemort was back. He believed it so strongly that he began taking actions to prepare for when this new dark age would begin — for when Voldemort would begin his next reign of terror. This put him at odds with Cornelius Fudge who essentially cut ties with the Hogwarts’ headmaster. When Dumbledore made this claim that the dementors might have been taking orders from somebody else these days, the Minister knew precisely what (or rather, who) Dumbledore was talking about. Fudge insisted that the dementors were still at Azkaban, and were still “doing everything we ask them to.”

Somehow, someway, this is about to get a whole lot juicier!

Dumbledore then tried to get Cornelius Fudge to admit that the dementors might well be under the control of the newly-returned Dark Lord. But this didn’t work — the Minister is still completely in denial of this fact. Dumbledore wasn’t out of cards to play though. His next statement officially put the Minister of Magic between a rock and a hard place: “Then, we must ask ourselves why somebody within the Ministry ordered a pair of dementors into the alleyway on the second of August.” If it wasn’t Voldemort who sent the dementors to kill Harry Potter, then, according to the Minister of Magic, it must have been the Ministry who sent the dementors to kill Harry Potter. Why would the Ministry want Harry dead? If they were trying to keep the return of Voldemort buried, killing the only person who saw him return would be a good place to start. Harry Potter’s voice was bound to cause the Ministry a lot more trouble in the coming months. In the Ministry’s eyes, the fifteen-year-old boy wizard was a ticking time bomb. Again, ladies and gentlemen, none of this was written in the book, but all of this was palpable to the reader.

Dumbledore’s incredible claim brought Dolores Umbridge out from the shadows beside Fudge, putting a bow on yet another dramatic thread. “So silly of me. But it sounded for a teensy moment as though you were suggesting that the Ministry of Magic had ordered an attack on this boy!” A few within the Wizengamot laughed along with Dolores Umbridge, but it was clear that none of them were actually amused. The tension of the situation was beginning to overwhelm them.

What followed was a petty exchange, as Fudge was now on his last legs, desperate to keep hold of the reins on this hearing. Dumbledore insisted that the Ministry investigate why the dementors were so far away from Azkaban and why they attacked Harry without authorization, to which Fudge snapped, saying it is not up to him (Dumbledore) to decide what the Ministry of Magic does or does not do. Dumbledore, mindful of the fact that he was now firmly in control of this situation, said calmly, “Of course it isn’t… I was merely expressing my confidence that this matter will not go uninvestigated.” That line of dialogue is saying so damn much with so damn little.

This long exchange between these two men was about several things under the guise of one thing. They were fighting for power over the room. They were arguing over the outcome for this trial — over the fate of Harry Potter. They were trying to convince each other about the reappearance (or lack thereof) of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, without ever naming him or directly mentioning him. These two men were having several different conversations within one, and they were the only people who knew just how many different conversations they were actually having. Surely, Harry could pick up on a couple of the layers, but only the two men engaged in this back and forth could pick up on all of them. Even though Cornelius was sitting on the bench that belonged to the Judge, Jury, and Executioner, Albus Dumbledore, sitting far below him on an armchair beside the accused, was in control from the moment he walked into that room.

Having lost almost all ground to stand on, Cornelius Fudge attempted to pull himself back to the helm of this hearing while at the same time, once again, returned the line of questioning back to Harry’s sanity. “I would remind everybody that the behavior of these dementors, if indeed they are not figments of this boy’s imagination, is not the subject of this hearing!”

Dumbledore replied by saying the dementors, though not the subject of the hearing, were highly relevant, as under the rule of law, wizards were allowed to use magic when the life of the wizard or Muggle are threatened. Still grasping at straws, Fudge began to say, “If there were dementors, which I doubt—” Dumbledore told him to bring the eyewitness back to question her further if he needed any more testimony backing the claim that the dementors were, in fact, there. Fudge’s fumbling continued: he said he didn’t want to question Mrs. Figg again because he wanted to get the trial over with today; Dumbledore said that it shouldn’t matter how many times one heard from the witness as long as it avoided “a serious miscarriage of justice”, which caused Fudge to shout, offended. He scolded Dumbledore for believing everything Harry ever said while also covering up his flagrant misuses of magic over the years, bringing up the hover charm in Chamber of Secrets.

Harry defended himself, telling him that the house-elf Dobby had committed that illegal act. “YOU SEE?” blurted Fudge. He couldn’t believe that Harry would use a house-elf as an excuse — he must’ve thought that this was the most ridiculous thing he’d ever heard. Fudge believed with every fiber in his being that he had caught Harry Potter in a wild lie, finally getting what he needed to incriminate the boy.

Unfortunately for the now clearly compromised Minister of Magic, Dumbledore was prepared for that as well. “The house-elf in question is currently in the employ of Hogwarts School… I can summon him here in an instant to give evidence if you wish.”

At this point, Fudge had completely lost his temper. He was now bellowing, “banging his fist on the judge’s bench and upsetting a bottle of ink.” The Minister pivoted the argument to what Harry had been getting up to at school, even though a few minutes earlier, he was desperately trying to get the argument back on the matter of the hearing at hand, thinking that would help his cause. Dumbledore shut him down yet again, saying it wasn’t up to the Minister how he handled the students at his school, and the Ministry had no authority to expel a student from Hogwarts. Fudge insisted that laws can be changed, subliminally threatening both Dumbledore and Harry.

Dumbledore responded, “You certainly seem to be making many changes, Cornelius. Why, in a few short weeks since I was asked to leave the Wizengamot, it has already become the practice to hold a full criminal trial to deal with a simple matter of underage magic!” Dumbledore was calling him out for what was now obviously a blatant conspiracy against Harry Potter. At this point in the chapter, everything was adding up to make the evidence of this conspiracy clear as crystal, barely ever uttering a word on the subject, or making a single formal accusation. All of this conflict was bubbling between the lines that were written in the book. Drama was dripping through every crack between sentences. The power within the scene was being fought over under every paragraph, and the tension was growing increasingly taut, until finally, it snapped.

Dumbledore said, “As far as I am aware, however, there is no law yet in place that says this court’s job is to punish Harry for every bit of magic he has ever performed. He has been charged with a specific offense and he has presented his defense. All he and I can do now is await your verdict.” Dumbledore calmly brought his fingers together and sat back in his chair.

Only one more than half a dozen members of the Wizengamot voted in favor of conviction. It was clear to everybody in the room that Fudge did not do an adequate job in what he was so desperate to do, which was convicting Harry Potter of a crime, ridding him of this giant thorn in his side, one who threatened the status quo within the Magical world. Harry Potter was cleared of all charges. Dumbledore sprang to his feet and swept out of the dungeon, having done his job of defending Harry’s innocence, maintaining the boy’s status as a legal wand-carrying underage wizard, and an active student at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft of Wizardry.

Fifteen pages of prose, and not a paragraph was wasted. Not a sentence, and not a word. This chapter could have done one thing well, or two things well to really succeed – but it did so many things well, elegantly weaving story elements that start and end all throughout the timeline of the scene. The conflict starts big, gets bigger, stretches wider, then dives deeper. Chapter Eight of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a masterclass in crafting a layered, dramatic scene.

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All of this is to say that, over the years, I’ve found that one of my favorite ice-breakers when I’m in a social setting among people I don’t really know is to ask them what their favorite Disney movie is. If they were born after the Disney Renaissance, then they’ve undoubtedly seen enough Disney movies to have an answer to this question – and in my experience, their answer is given with enthusiasm, because it’s undeniable the impact Disney movies have had on almost all of us. So the conversation is sparked, the bantering is in full swing, and eventually, the question gets turned on me, at which point I tell them that my favorite Disney movie is the one that kick-started that renaissance period: None other than 1989’s The Little Mermaid.

Within sixty seconds of me declaring this masterpiece as my favorite Disney movie of all time, somebody in the room inevitably begins interrogating me armed with claims that Ariel gave up the entire ocean, along with her voice, for a man. The main character is irreparably flawed, completely unwatchable, absolutely uninteresting because she gave up everything she’s ever known for a man she had just found and become infatuated with. It’s remarkable how many people share this opinion of Ariel. When the inevitable individual begins interrogating me with the above claims, there’s usually others in the room that are giggling along, either silently or verbally agreeing with everything being said.

I watch a lot of movies. I’ve read a lot of books. I’ve seen a lot of television shows. I love talking about stories. This is without a doubt the topic of conversation that I’ve had the most in my life – and it’s downright baffling how infrequently people push back on these claims about Ariel. It seems society has agreed, as a collective, that Ariel is a terrible protagonist because she gave up the ocean for a man, in turn making The Little Mermaid a mediocre film.

I don’t mind having this argument, because I know I’m right. In fact, by the time the conversation between me and the interrogator has concluded, I’ve usually successfully convinced everyone in the room that Ariel did not, in fact, give up the ocean for a man. She did not give up her voice for a man. You have every right to remain stubborn, to stick with the status quo which derides Ariel for no good reason, or you can listen to what the story is telling you. You can pay attention to what the songs and the dialogue are saying.

If you want to take your objectively incorrect opinion about Ariel to the grave, you have every right to do so. But if you want to be on the right side of this argument in the future, allow me to explain, in excruciating detail, why Ariel was so willing to leave her life under the sea in favor of a life out of those waters.

Aaron Sorkin, Oscar-winning screenwriter of The Social Network, Moneyball, and Molly’s Game, says that the easiest way to show a character’s intentions in a story is to have them say, “I want,” then follow that up by making it clear why that intention is important.

In musicals, this is often accomplished in song form, which over the years has been referred to as the Want Song. This is usually sung by the main character of the story, and it tells the audience how they are unsatisfied with their life as they know it, and explains what they are looking for — what they want for their future. This type of song was very popular among the animated movies that came out of Disney during their renaissance period, from 1989 to 1999.

Stephen Shwartz, the Oscar and Tony-winning musical theater lyricist and composer of such musicals as Godspell, Pippin, and Wicked, describes the Want Song as a moment in a musical that is not there “to move the action forward, but to set up the desire of the leading character that will drive the action for the rest of the show.” He says that any successful musical has one within the first fifteen minutes of the show, and feels that the lack of a Want Song is a weakness in most cases.

If you skip to exactly 15:00 on the timeline for the 1989’s The Little Mermaid, you’ll cut from Sebastian’s dropped jaw to Ariel’s collection of trinkets. And with that cut, comes the music that will build into this movie’s Want Song: None other than, Part of That World – a song written by the legendary lyricist, Howard Ashman, who wrote your favorite songs in The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. Lin Manuel Miranda, writer of Hamilton and In the Heights, says Part of That World “may be the greatest Disney want song ever written.”

Holding the fork she had just found in a shipwreck, Ariel speaks of her father and their fundamental disconnect regarding the world outside of the ocean: “I just don’t see things the way he does. I don’t see how a world that makes such wonderful things could be bad.”

Ariel admires her collection of human objects, singing, “Look at this trove, treasures untold. How many wonders can one cavern hold?” Gadgets, gizmos, whozits, whatzits, thingamabobs: She has no idea what the names of these objects are, and it couldn’t matter less. Like a person who collects meteorites, she’s in love with them because of where they come from.

Ariel is a princess — the youngest daughter of the King of the Sea. She looks around at everything surrounding her, and, very self-aware, puts herself in the shoes of somebody who might spot her there, forlorn, desiring something more than what she has — something more than these trinkets; something more than the title of Princess; something more, even, than the vast ocean that, for all intents and purposes, is hers to do with what she will. She says, “Looking around, you’d think [Ariel’s] got everything.” To that, she says, “Who cares? No big deal. I want more.” Not more trinkets, not more titles, and not power. Like a child of a wealthy family who isn’t enchanted by all the glamour and glitz, Ariel doesn’t have any interest in the things others would die for. She wants more of what the world that gave her those trinkets has to offer.

“I want to be where the people are. I want to see them dancing. Walking around on those feet. Flipping your fins, you don’t get too far. Legs are required for jumping, dancing. Strolling along down a street.” Ariel, more than anything in the world, wants to live on land with people. Like a sixteen-year-old human who doesn’t feel at home where they were raised, she wants to leave her nest and see what the rest of the world has to offer. Like the human who doesn’t feel understood by her family, or feels trapped and suffocated by the walls surrounding their parents’ home, Ariel wants out — out of the sea that she was raised as a Princess by no choice of her own, and out from under her royal father’s thumb.

“Wandering free. Wish I could be part of that world. What would I give if I could live out of these waters? What would I pay to spend a day warm on the sand?” There isn’t a thing she isn’t willing to give to live on land. She’s willing to give everything up. She’s willing to leave her collection, her voice, her titles, her family, and even her ocean behind for something that she spends every waking minute yearning for: a life as a human with two feet planted firmly on solid ground.

“Bet you on land, they understand — bet they don’t reprimand their daughters. Bright young women, sick of swimming, ready to stand.” She’s been barred by her father from ever going to the surface again, as he demands that as long as she lives under his ocean, she will live under his rules. She’s a young woman, ready to take on the world with everything she has in her heart and soul. She’s ready to stand on her own, away from her powerful father, away from everything she’s always known. She’s a teenaged girl who is sick of seeing what she’s already seen, and sick of doing what she’s already done.

Ariel wants to feel a world she’s never been a part of — a world she’s been forbidden from ever even tasting. She wants to explore. She wants to feel things she’s never felt. She wants to learn. She’s “ready to know what the people know. Ask them my questions, and get some answers. What’s a fire and why does it burn?”

With all the feeling her body can muster, she looks up through the hole in her secret cavern, at the moon’s light refracting through water, and she cries, “When’s it my turn? Wouldn’t I love to explore the shore up above? Out of the sea. Wish I could be part of that world.”

Approximately five minutes later in the film, Ariel spots a grand ship sailing under the giant moon, with colorful fireworks blasting into the air. What better way to present this boat to this very girl? She chases it down, ignoring Sebastian’s desperate calls. She reaches the boat, climbs up the side, and peeks through a slit near the floorboard. Her blue eyes widen at the sight of all the men dancing on board, as the long shadows of their legs fall on her. She stares at what her father had warned against, calling them barbarians and fish-eaters with hooks. This is also when she lays eyes on Prince Eric for the first time. She says that she’s “never seen a human this close before.” She’s instantly enchanted by him and his beauty — and like a normal sixteen-year-old girl with a crush, she appears to be hopelessly love-struck.

There is nothing that the universe can offer Ariel that she wants more than being a part of the world that she is observing now — a world that takes place outside of the ocean she had spent her first sixteen years in. There is nothing that she desires more than being a part of that world. Nothing. But as much as she wants this, she still feels trapped — she’s still yet to do something about it. Because what can she do? She’s a mermaid with a tail, who breathes under water, not a human with legs, who breathes oxygen through the air.

That is until she’s given the opportunity to change all that. She’s given the opportunity to trade everything she’s ever known for a life on land — a life she’s never known, but wants more than anything. After all these years, she’s given her chance and she wasn’t going to let it slip away. Ursula, the Witch of the Sea, offers her the possibility of remaining human in perpetuity, and Ariel beams at the image of her running on two legs as its being offered. She’s beaming at the silhouette of her body prancing on two feet.

So, she takes Ursula up on her offer. She signs the contract, gives up her voice, and her home, and her family, and gambles away her life as she knows it. Did she give all of this up for a chance to be with this man she had just seen for the first time a few minutes earlier? Or did she agree to this deal for a chance to live on the surface as a human with legs?

The better question may be: Would she have given everything up if Ursula had offered her a chance at a life as a human before she laid eyes on Prince Eric? Ursula could have made this offer before Ariel saw Eric, but she didn’t. She waited until she had the chance to add a difficult time crunch to an already arduous task. Ursula’s eels saw that Ariel was in love with Eric, and they saw that Eric was enchanted by her and her voice. Ursula saw her chance to trap this impulsive, infatuated sixteen-year-old girl who wants nothing more than to be a human — to seal her fate in a task that appeared to border on impossible. Ariel had three days to make Eric fall in love with her. If he kisses her before the sun sets on the third day, she gets what she’s always wanted: to become human, permanently. This was enough of a reason for her to agree to this deal, even if failing this challenge meant she would “belong” to the Witch of the Sea. If Eric wasn’t in the picture, no matter what she was going to have to give up, Ariel would have agreed to any deal that would result in her becoming human.

Ariel didn’t give everything up because she fell in love with Eric. She gave everything up because she finally found a way to become human. She gave up everything for a life on land at the first opportunity she had to do so. The fact that she got her legs after she met Eric had nearly nothing to do with her and had almost everything to do with Ursula. The Witch of the Sea thought she had a sure-fire way to get what she wanted and she acted on it, only when her plan felt fool-proof. And, in fact, Ursula’s plan worked to perfection. All of the pieces fell into place, and she got everything she wanted.

The timing of these events lead some to argue that Ariel gave up the sea, her titles, her voice, and her family, all for a man — that she only acted on her yearning when she fell in love. It was established that Ariel wanted to live on land, be a human, be a “part of that world” before she ever laid eyes on Eric. Ariel’s desire in life wasn’t to find a man and settle down with him, it was to look down at two feet as a human, instead of looking up at the moon through the ocean’s water as a mermaid.

When Ariel finally gets her legs and she makes her way to the surface with Flounder and Sebastian, she wiggles her toes, glowing like she hadn’t up to that point in the movie. Sebastian loses his mind, claims this is a catastrophe, and threatens to go to King Triton to tell him what his daughter has done — to force him to find a way to reverse this sequence of events. He says, “Maybe there’s still time. If we can get that witch to give you back your voice, you can go home with all the normal fish, and just be…” He gazes into her wide eyes as they look seconds away from filling with tears before he finishes his thought. “Just be… Just be… Just be miserable for the rest of your life.”

Up until Ursula’s offer, Ariel’s dream was impossible. She would spend the rest of her life wishing she was something else — someone else. Her goal for the rest of the movie was to make Prince Eric fall in love with her. But making the Prince fall in love with her for the sake of having a Prince fall in love with her wasn’t the goal at all. Making Prince Eric fall in love with her would make her dream come true — only because her dream was to be human, and making Prince Eric fall in love with her would make her human for eternity.

Ariel had a clear want. The journey to getting what she wanted was not a straight line. There were obstacles put in the way — both pleasant and unpleasant. But the destination was always the same. The destination was always to become human. And when all was said and done, Ariel got what she wanted: She escaped the life that sucked her of joy, and she fell in love along the way. She fell for a man — mere flesh and blood — who put his life in grave danger to keep her from falling victim to the now all-powerful Ursula, shouting as he rowed away from safety, “I lost her once, I’m not going to lose her again.” He was the only thing standing in the way of Ursula getting everything she ever wanted. And this led to Ariel getting everything she ever wanted, and more.

As King Triton and Sebastian gaze at Ariel, who sits atop a rock as a mermaid once again, they agree over the fact that Ariel truly does love the human that washed up on the shore. The crab says, “Children have got to be free to lead their own lives.” Triton realizes that he is no longer looking at a helpless child. He’s learned that she’s ready to lead her own life. She made a poor, impulsive decision, gambling everything away to Ursula, but she survived and came out the other side, as headstrong as ever. She may be his youngest daughter, but she’s no longer a guppy. Looking at her now, King Triton sees a bright young woman, sick of swimming, ready to stand. He releases a deep sigh, then says, “I guess there’s just one problem left… How much I’m going to miss her.”

With her wedding gown on and tears filling her eyes, Ariel says goodbye to her father, turns to her husband, who bows low before the King of the Sea — and then, standing on two feet, she shares a true-love’s kiss with the man who saved her life from the witch that plotted to take it all away, allowing her to live the life that, as a mermaid, she could only look up through the hole in her secret cavern and dream of.

And if everything I just said was not enough to convince you of these points, allow me to use the 2023 live action remake to further solidify my argument. And before you argue with your screen, saying “Of course the 2023 live action remake took a more feminist route”, I’m going to stop you right there – the 2023 live action remake did not take a different route; the live action remake doubled down on what was already established because there still seems to be a loud majority that think Ariel gave up the ocean for a man.

The remake makes clear Ariel’s motivations using two characters in particular. It is good writing that parallels the journeys of side characters with that of the protagonist. These parallels show us where the characters diverge in philosophy, in motivation, in how their minds are wired. Paralleling also helps make the theme of the story abundantly clear, as multiple characters are devoting their lives toward a similar goal. Keep that in mind as I proceed, because I may briefly go down a couple tangential paths.

The first of the two characters I mentioned is Ursula, as it seems as though the writers used the Sea Witch as a mouthpiece to make sure the audience understood why Ariel was doing what she was doing. The first time we see her, she’s bemoaning the fact that her brother, King Triton, kicked her out of the family, forbidding her from celebrating with the rest of them on this Coral Moon. “Now look at me,” she says, “the family pariah, wasting away to practically nothing, banished and exiled, driven halfway to madness, in this dim little crevice for fifteen long years.” That sounds to me like somebody who wishes to be somewhere other than the place she is at. That sounds to me like somebody who is tired of looking at the same things, doing the same things, living the same day over and over again. That sounds to me like there may be a parallel between the antagonist of this story and the protagonist of this story.

Later in this scene, she states that she has figured out a way to exact revenge on her brother. “I may have finally found Daddy’s weakness,” she says. “Red’s fascination with humans might be just the opening I’ve been waiting for.” In other words, the villain of the story has found our hero’s fatal flaw. Based on what the text is telling us, let me ask you: Is Ariel’s fatal flaw that she fell in love with a man, or is it that she is desperately fascinated with the human world?

Less than twenty minutes later, Ursula watches Ariel save Eric and realizes that the young mermaid has become infatuated with the Prince. As Ariel sings to Eric, Ursula cackles, saying, “It’s too easy. She’s already in love with the human world, and now she found her soulmate.” The events of the plot are the same as they are in the animated classic, but it’s the dialogue that’s been added for the Sea Witch that is important here. It’s not an accident that she mentioned Ariel’s love for the human world before she mentioned the fact that it appears the girl has seemingly found her soulmate.

I will point to the screenplay one final time, and then we’ll move on to Character #2. At around the hour mark (also known as the film’s midpoint, where the story should turn on its head in some way or another), Ariel agrees to meet Urusla in her little crevice to discuss how the Sea Witch can help her. Ursula says, “I wouldn’t choose to live like this, believe me. Daddy’s been so unfair to both of us, controlling everything we say and do. In a way, we’re the same, you and I… We never did get along. He always got what he wanted, and what did I get? Nothing! Sound familiar, hon?” There’s the antagonist directly bringing to light parallels between their stories, wielding it as a weapon against her prey.

“I’ve been watching you for a long time now,” says Ursula. “What you really want is to be up there in the above world.” She goes on to mention the subject of Ariel’s infatuation, but not before she mentions what Ariel quote-really wants. When Ariel decides against taking the deal, too unsure of whether or not to trust this malevolent aunt of hers, Ursula throws one final piece of bait at the mermaid. The bait wasn’t Eric. It wasn’t true love. With Ariel swimming away from her, Ursula utters, “Fine then, forget about the world above. Go back home to Daddy, and never leave again!” Ariel gasps, spins around, and her decision has essentially been made on the spot. It was the threat of never seeing the world above, never leaving her father’s home that pushed her to sign her life as she’s always known it away to Ursula.

With that, this court allows the Sea Witch to step down. I now call to the stand, none other than Prince Eric himself. The 2023 remake does wonders with this character, and in doing wonders with this character, they do wonders with the eponymous little mermaid. Eric is given a real backstory, as well as wants and dreams of his own. How this helps Ariel is in the ways I mentioned earlier: His wants and dreams parallel Ariel’s, making hers clearer, embedding them further in the story being told.

Early in the movie, in an argument with Grimsby, Eric says he doesn’t want to be like his father, “cut off from the rest of the world.” He’s told that his responsibilities are at home. He refuses to be “trapped inside that castle, in isolation and fear.” He grabs Grimsby’s full attention and tells him, “We have to stay open to what’s out here.” He moves to gaze out into the sea. “I can’t explain it, Grims. It’s in my blood. I feel there’s something out here calling to me.” Eric expresses all of this before being saved by Ariel. His desires to explore uncharted waters were within him before he fell in love.

Speaking of uncharted waters, that is where I will finally rest my case. I will conclude this tirade exactly where I started it. This live action remake did a lot of things well. One of the best things it did was give Prince Eric his very own Want Song. It comes moments after his mother forbade him from taking any more voyages at sea, crushing his dreams not unlike how Triton crushes Ariel’s. The first lines of the song go as follows: “All I ever wanted was the open sea and sky, freedom from the life I always knew.” Swap those lyrics from open sea and sky to solid ground and sun, and this could have been the beginnings of another want song for Ariel. He goes on to describe how he wants Ariel to find him again, but not before he mentions the dreams he had before meeting her.

The man who composed Eric’s Want Song is called Alan Manken. He also happened to compose Ariel’s Want Song all those years ago. Manken says of his lyricist partner, Howard Ashman, “He had this unbelievably ability to bring the contemporary inner life of a modern person into fairy tale characters.” It is not only in fantasy that a teenaged girl would want to explore a world outside of the figurative four walls that her family or society had designated for her. It’s not far-fetched to think a young woman would want something more from her life than only what she’d always known. It’s within us all to want more, to want new, to want different.

So, no, Ariel did not give up the sea for a man. Did she fall in love with a man as she endeavored to step foot out of those waters? Yes, there’s no denying that. But there’s also no denying that the life she wanted was one that she wanted before that man ever came into her life. Her hopes and dreams were there before he fell off of his ship, and they endured through to their happily ever after, and presumably, beyond.

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I read the book when it came out in 2017, so needless to say, it’s been a hot minute since I was exposed to this story. There’s no doubt that fact worked in this adaptation’s favor. I was never comparing the book to the movie. I was just familiar enough with its contents to enhance the experience. I’ve always loved John Green’s stories, so it had a leg up by default.

That said, I thought this was endearing in all the ways you’d hope it would be. It was also excruciating in all the ways a story like this should be — it’s so hard to watch Aza suffer. When the movie is giving you butterflies or when it’s making you squirm, it’s Isabela Merced steering the ship — she was nothing short of extraordinary in this.

9) CIVIL WAR

I can see people getting upset at the fact that this film wasn’t actually about a Civil War taking place in the United States, given the title of the movie and A24’s marketing efforts. I do, however, quite like the perspective the filmmakers chose to take: It put us on the ground, amid all the chaos and bloodshed, but it didn’t make us follow the soldiers on the field — which would have been the boring choice here. We feel the tension standing in the middle of a war zone alongside our unarmed protagonists. The explosions and gunfire are deafening, and what’s left in their wake is sickening. We feel it all, experiencing it through the eyes of civilians that aren’t trained in combat, through the eyes of people who want to be there, who want to see what they’re seeing, are eager to see what they’re seeing, no matter the costs. They don’t hide. They don’t run away. They want it to happen, so they can capture it. They want to experience it, even if it fucks them up.

8) THE FALL GUY

I was so prepared to write a quirky on-brand review saying that this film started off so hot and then fell off a cliff after the Taylor Swift song. I loved everything leading up to All Too Well so much that I thought, surely, the film will fall off a cliff once the inciting incident arrived and our stuntman protagonist set off on his journey.

I’ve left the cinema pleasantly surprised for two reasons: Firstly, my quirky on-brand review proved to be false but I was still able to use it because I thought of a quirky way to frame the original review so it still works. The second reason is that my premature review proved to be false; this movie is a lot of fun — Gosling and Blunt were delightful.

On second watch, I loved the quiet moments more and the loud moments less, which tracks with my general taste in stories. I do think, however, they did a good job balancing a lot of elements here. The romance feels great. The comedy is genuinely funny — Gosling continues to prove he’s money in that aspect. The action is required to showcase the stunt-performers, but doesn’t take up so much of the runtime that I would pitch this as an action movie to a friend. The climax felt like a bit much for me, but I could argue that’s the point, given what I just said regarding the stunts. Overall, this is an excellent big-budget popcorn flick, made to be experienced at the cinema.

7) ALIEN ROMULUS

I swear, the Costume and HMU departments were flagrantly taunting us over the fact that Cailee Spaeny didn’t get cast as Ellie for HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us. I think Fede might have been in on the trolling too, because he directed a moment between Cailee and Isabela Merced (who plays Dina in the series) where they’re on the ground holding each other, their faces touching.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this movie. I love the atmosphere and the setting we faded in on. I like how the motivations were set up for our protagonist(s). Once they’re in the ship, the tension and the horror kicks in and remains effective throughout. It was really well paced with evolving threats.

Weirdly, I feel like the fact that this was another installment in the Alien franchise held it back from being really great. Don’t ask me to explain what I mean by this — it’s just a vibe that I caught, and I’m running with it.

6) CHALLENGERS

I’m a sucker for a good setup/payoff, and this movie has a great one. It was excellently executed. They dragged out the payoff long enough for the entire audience to pick up on what was about to happen. The tension in the delayed catharsis made my heart pound in my chest.

The direction was sexy. The editing was sexy. The music was sexy. The actors were sexy. The performances were sexy. This movie was carried by the sexiness of all of the above. In the end, I just found myself wishing there was a bit more depth (either emotionally or thematically) in the story being told.

On first watch, I recognized that the characters were uniquely flawed, and that made them quite engaging. On rewatch, I realized that their flaws make them all uniquely pathetic, and that makes watching them torture each other even more pleasurable. In a movie so closely following a sport, all parties are losers, in some form or fashion.

5) LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL

This is one of those concepts that make you mad, as a writer, for never having thought of this, in some way or another. Lucky for me, as an audience member at the cinema, the filmmakers absolutely lived up to that really cool concept.

The characters have strong motivations and play exceptionally well off each other to mine for conflict. They're complicated, conflicted, easy to empathize with. The horror is deeply rooted in the setting and the people that are in the room. This story really feels like one that could only unfold in this studio, where the cameras are rolling on these specific people, during sweeps week in October of 1977.

4) I SAW THE TV GLOW

I fear I watched this at the exact right (wrong) time in my life. A movie has never done what this movie just did to me; I damn near had a panic attack in that theater.

The first 70% of this had me questioning why people loved it so much. It had me ready to say this just wasn’t for me. Then it all clicked in the final 30% and absolutely ruined me. I was filled with so much existential dread that I dare say this was probably the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.

3) WICKED

Usually, when you see an adaptation of an established work, people would say something like, “wait until you read the book” or “wait until you see the show on Broadway.” Whether you enjoy the adaptation or not, the implication is that the established work (in whatever form it takes) is the superior version of the work. As the credits rolled on this remarkably faithful adaptation, I had a thought: Dare I say the experience of watching this (admittedly first half of the story) was just as good as the experience of seeing this show on Broadway? In fact, could this experience be *pauses in preparation for the tomatoes surely already in flight en route to my face* better?

At over two and a half hours, you never feel the time going by. The songs are perfectly paced and flawlessly executed, never leaving you anxious for the next song to come or unsatisfied with how they were performed. The scenes without songs are snappy and dramatically effective. Ariana Grande was born to play Glinda — she fully embodied that character, her quirks and her complexities. Cynthia Erivo is one of the best singers of our generation, bringing her iconic character to life with so much soul, so much emotion — often remaining stoic in her physical performance and letting her eyes do all the work. Jon Chu directed the hell out of this massive film, with countless moving pieces, and musical numbers huge and intimate. I’d be remiss to not specifically point out how spectacular that final act ended up being. A lot of where I landed with those initial thoughts toward my feelings on this adaptation as the credits were rolling came about from how well Defying Gravity was executed. Using the word “well” feels like I’m underselling it — the execution of that song was utterly magical.

So, yes, more than 21 years after the show premiered at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, the masses now have access to an equally exquisite telling of this beloved tale (or the first half of it, for now — the far superior half, everyone knows it). Just like you would in a Broadway theater, apply a little suspension of disbelief, and allow yourself to be swept away by this story about the origins of Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.

2) DUNE: PART TWO

I would like to just dedicate this review to my feelings toward Dune’s place in the cinematic landscape of the 2020s. This is a blockbuster sequel by one of our greatest living directors. It’s absolutely enormous in scope, but not filled to the brim with battles and fight sequences. It doesn’t reek of studio interference. It takes its time – they didn’t sacrifice the exquisite pacing of the first film to the box office gods; they let the nature of the story decide how snappily the film moved. It dabbles in complex themes and character development. This isn’t a novel thought, I admit, but it bears mentioning here: This franchise feels like the offspring of television titan, Game of Thrones, and cinematic titan, Star Wars. It’s smart, big-budget Sci-Fi/Fantasy that’s being devoured by the masses at record numbers. The first movie gave me hope. The sequel has me praying they stick the landing on this trilogy. I will get on my knees and chant to the heavens like a zealot if I have to – don’t tempt me.

There’s so much to talk about regarding the themes explored in this film, but one that I’d like to briefly touch on here is the idea that if a belief system is ingrained within a people, everything they see and hear and feel will be seen, heard, and felt as proof in favor of that belief system – even if the things they’re seeing, hearing, feeling would be experienced as proof to the contrary by the unindoctrinated. In theory (and in practice, I suppose), this sort of cognitive dissonance keeps the believers hopeful, even when the world around them is falling apart. It will keep them motivated. It will keep them united. It will keep them strong. But as Paul himself bellows in the film, this is not real hope; this is dangerous, blind faith. That said, by the end, Paul needs his people motivated, and he needs them united, and he needs them strong, so this belief system that he was pushing up against for so long will now be the key to the engine of his ambitions. This is just beautiful, tragic storytelling.

1) ARCANE: Season 2

We see the problems the writers faced and how they decided to tackle them. We see how they prioritized, what they chose to lift up and what they chose to let slip. They constructed for themselves an impossible task — I do not envy them. I do, however, tip my cap and acknowledge that they did the best with what they had to work with.

As the conflicts grew in scale, the stakes rose, and the parties involved multiplied, the storytelling lost focus. The whole felt muddled, which left a sour taste in my mouth as Jinx bid us adieu and the credits started to roll. But the parts of that whole are as good as they’ve ever been. The emotions that those parts triggered in me, those character moments sprinkled throughout the chaos, fed my heart and soul just what I needed.

As I take some space and look back at this season, it won’t be the action set-pieces that I think of; it won’t be to wrap my head around what happened with Hextech, or the arcane, or any of the celestial elements; it won’t be to analyze the politics of how things got to where they ended up; it won’t be to figure out how events played out in alternate universes, or the repercussions of time travel. When I look back at this season, what will pop into my mind are the moments between Jinx and Isha, the moments between Vander and his daughters, the electric moments between lovers, the quiet moments between sisters. This season delivered the moments I needed. In those moments, I felt heartbreak, I felt bliss, I felt terror, I felt joy, I felt frustration, I felt peace.

This season delivered to me everything I could have asked for, even if the delivery system itself didn’t satisfy my impossible wishes for how the season would unfold and how those emotions would consequently be delivered. It is only with a bit of space and a concentrated eye that I can now focus my attention on the relationships and the people and see that all of the creative decisions made for these characters were made out of love for these characters. No matter how big and loud everything else got, the characters were at the heart of it all.

See all of my final thoughts on my favorite series here: Goodbye, Arcane

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The first half of this movie is so good; there’s no other way to put it. There are several lengthy scenes that feel like brilliant short films, going through a full story arc, raising the tension with every passing minute, building the drama up to a climactic crescendo that has you smiling at the screen, admiring the magic of cinema.

I think this film is going to be one I find myself revisiting often, and enjoying more with every viewing. It’s such an easy three hours. It’s a joy to experience, even in its lulls in the second half, as the movie business that has giveth to these characters begins to taketh away.

Previously Reviewed on January 8, 2023

LA LA LAND (2016)

I think it’s time for me to seriously consider calling this my favorite movie of all time. It checks all of the boxes for me — the aspiring artists, the setting, the romance, the comedy, the musical elements, the bittersweet ending, and other boxes I’d probably need a therapist to help point out for me. I just love it so much, everything about it.

Previously Reviewed on August 28, 2022

SALTBURN (2023)

Oliver mentions at the end of the film that people who don’t come from upper-class society have to work for everything they get, shining a spotlight on the class dynamics at play in this story. However, this “work” that he puts in downright undercuts that message. This isn’t somebody down on his luck. This isn’t a sympathetic lower-class citizen trying to do what he can to make ends meet. This is a full-blown psychopath doing psychotic things left, right, and center — getting more unhinged by the minute.

All of the above made for an incredibly entertaining two hours or so, however — not to mention the cinematography was so gorgeous I felt the need to pause the film to just admire the shots on screen for a moment or two longer. So, if nothing else, this film certainly kept me watching with rapt attention the whole way through.

MEAN GIRLS (2024)

If this was marketed as a musical, I would have seen it sooner. I went in expecting a mildly entertaining couple hours with a bunch of attractive people on screen being silly. I got all that, plus some good songs. I call that a successful trip to the cinema.

ALL OR NOTHING: MICHIGAN WOLVERINES (2018)

I watched all 480-ish minutes of this on my first day off since Jim Harbaugh agreed to become the new head coach of my Los Angeles Chargers.

Who’s got it better than us? Nobody!

ZONE OF INTEREST (2023)

One second you’re watching a beautiful family have dinner together or watching a couple laugh together in their beds, then the workaholic patriarch has to step away to ensure all is right with the concentration camps he’s overseeing.

One second you’re listening to birds chirping and kids playing in the garden, then you hear victims of the holocaust screaming from eerily close by, followed by gunshots that bring that screaming to an end.

One second you’re watching a father share a serene moment at a glorious flowing river with his children, then the ashes and bones of incinerated bodies flood the water he’s wading in, forcing him and his family out in a panic.

I can do this all day — I’m not kidding. This film rhythmically lulls you into a sense of comfort with its protagonist family and then bashes you over the head with a reminder of what it is you’re actually watching.

TED LASSO: Season 3 (2023)

By no means am I saying that this final season saw the show fall off a cliff in quality, but when you finish the last episode and let the whole season sit with you for a little while as you collect your thoughts on it, you realize just how big of a misfire it was.

The thing about shows like this, though, is that by the time you reach season three, you’re in for the ride with these characters, even if that ride is rather mediocre. There’s no world where somebody watches the first two phenomenal seasons of this show and then stops watching halfway through this middling final season — those people don’t exist. I can complain about how this season didn’t even sniff the heights of the first two, but all complaints aside, I love these characters and enjoyed spending a little more time with them before their run came to a somewhat premature end.

AMY (2015)

These filmmakers put together a gorgeous timeline tracing the tragic life of one of our generation’s otherworldly talents. Through home videos and interviews, we’re taken down the grim path that saw Amy spiral uncontrollably toward her seemingly inevitable demise.

SCORE: A FILM MUSIC DOCUMENTARY (2016)

As a film score lover, I thoroughly enjoyed this 90-minute documentary whose only goal was to get a bunch of composers together to gush about each other and to gush about this perpetually under-appreciated part of the filmmaking process. This was simply an unadulterated love letter to the art form.

SIXTEEN CANDLES (1984)

This movie really had me in the first third, when we were almost entirely with Samantha. I didn’t notice just how much it was losing me until we reached the climax and I realized I really didn’t care about any of it anymore.

Apropos of nothing, it was during this screening that I learned Netflix has commercials placed throughout a movie’s runtime now. I sat through six commercial breaks while watching this. What a sick world we live in.

Actually, come to think about it, the above statement isn’t apropos of nothing: I can’t imagine getting interrupted by six commercials within ninety minutes is beneficial for the retention of engagement for your film. I’m not saying I didn’t like the movie because it had commercials in its runtime — I’m just saying the commercials certainly didn’t help.

THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985)

I’ve long been fascinated by Ally Sheedy’s character, Allison. The character is interesting and there’s great depth in the performance. She’s strange, certainly, but she’s also an empath, quietly weighed down by the emotions of those around her. There’s pain in her eyes, tears sometimes developing for no good reason whatsoever. The actress brought so much more to the role than the script she was given to work with.

SHOWRUNNERS: THE ART OF RUNNING A TV SHOW (2014)

“It seems to not matter how often you can conquer a writing problem; the next time there’s a writing problem, that becomes the one that will kill you.” Pain.

I don’t remember how many times I watched this before I went to film school. This was one of a few documentaries I chose as my comfort watches as I was learning about what the film and television industry actually looked like.

THE GREATEST SHOWMAN (2017)

It’s not often that I watch a movie nearly 100-minutes long and feel it could’ve used another hour or so added to it. The songs in this are powerful, good enough to keep the movie afloat as that extra time is used to flesh out the characters and their relationships. You can’t flesh out all of them in that time, but this movie desperately needs at least a few of them to be given some depth. The already-great songs would have hit even harder if that time had been taken.

LES MISERABLES (2012)

I don’t care if the vocal performances aren’t of the caliber of Broadway. I don’t care if the filmmaking suffers because the songs need to be filmed live (and the whole film is song after song, opening to close). The story being told here is beautiful, and I will gladly suspend my disbelief so that I can enjoy it being told.

Previously Reviewed on May 17, 2020

DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS (2023)

I’ve written and deleted three separate reviews of this film. They were all critical of the storytelling, but they all came to the same conclusion: Sometimes, all a movie needs to be is an entertaining way to kill ninety minutes.

ALMOST FAMOUS (2000)

Some movies really benefit from having a director’s cut — this is certainly one of them. The “Bootleg Cut” adds about forty minutes to the runtime, and honestly, it just felt right. You don’t hit play on this film to follow a rip-roaring plot. You hit play on this film to hang out with William, Penny, and the band. That extra time with them is quality time.

Previously Reviewed on April 15, 2023

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (2007)

If this macabre musical adaptation was helmed by a dozen directors, you’d get a dozen different interpretations, all of which would’ve been inferior to the one we got by this specific director, who got this astounding cast to join him to tell this story for the silver screen. It’s a bloody good fit.

AMERICAN FICTION (2023)

A delightful film with a satirical premise so rock solid that a lot of this story probably felt like it was writing itself. In the hands of a lesser writer, that premise could have felt like a high concept gimmick with no meat to flesh it out. That isn’t what we got here, thankfully. This is a film with a rock solid satirical premise and some heart and soul.

DUNE (2021)

This whole movie feels like a fever dream. The visuals, the sounds, the way the story unfolds — it’s like a dream, like the lucid visions Paul is having all throughout.

It really does feel like the introduction to a fuller story, which is fine when the movie is this mesmerizing to watch. Soon, it’s going to become one of those films you schedule a whole day to watch because it’ll have to be scheduled alongside its sequel for the optimal viewing experience.

Previously Reviewed on October 24, 2021

DUNE: PART TWO (2024)

I would like to just dedicate this review to my feelings toward Dune’s place in the cinematic landscape of the 2020s. This is a blockbuster sequel by one of our greatest living directors. It’s absolutely enormous in scope, but not filled to the brim with battles and fight sequences. It doesn’t reek of studio interference. It takes its time – they didn’t sacrifice the exquisite pacing of the first film to the box office gods; they let the nature of the story decide how snappily the film moved. It dabbles in complex themes and character development. This isn’t a novel thought, I admit, but it bears mentioning here: This franchise feels like the offspring of television titan, Game of Thrones, and cinematic titan, Star Wars. It’s smart, big-budget Sci-Fi/Fantasy that’s being devoured by the masses at record numbers. The first movie gave me hope. The sequel has me praying they stick the landing on this trilogy. I will get on my knees and chant to the heavens like a zealot if I have to – don’t tempt me.

There’s so much to talk about regarding the themes explored in this film, but one that I’d like to briefly touch on here is the idea that if a belief system is ingrained within a people, everything they see and hear and feel will be seen, heard, and felt as proof in favor of that belief system – even if the things they’re seeing, hearing, feeling would be experienced as proof to the contrary by the unindoctrinated. In theory (and in practice, I suppose), this sort of cognitive dissonance keeps the believers hopeful, even when the world around them is falling apart. It will keep them motivated. It will keep them united. It will keep them strong. But as Paul himself bellows in the film, this is not real hope; this is dangerous, blind faith. That said, by the end, Paul needs his people motivated, and he needs them united, and he needs them strong, so this belief system that he was pushing up against for so long will now be the key to the engine of his ambitions. This is just beautiful, tragic storytelling.

THE HOLDOVERS (2023)

This isn’t a movie with characters. These were living, breathing human beings who will forever remember and look back at these three weeks for as long as they may live. The events of this movie are a memory for them now.

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (2023)

One benefit of this movie being so long is that it really gets you wondering how long these murders can continue to go on the way that they were. It gets you wondering how in the world this story could be based on true events.

You really feel submerged in Mollie’s dread and helplessness by the two-hour mark. Only then do we see some kind of action being taken. You’re still not hopeful at that point — the first two hours made sure of that.

TAYLOR SWIFT: THE ERAS TOUR (2023)

Listen, all I’m saying is that the wrong movie won Best Picture last weekend. I’ll leave it at that.

Previously Reviewed on December 31, 2023

LOVE LIES BLEEDING (2024)

I think there’s a scientific equation I can concoct that represents the dip in how engaging a film is based on how many dead bodies pile up during its runtime. A part of the equation has to include how deep in the runtime the first corpse is presented — I bet the deeper into a movie we get before seeing the first dead body, the steeper the drop-off with each successive corpse.

This is probably redundant at this point, but I’ll say I really enjoyed the first half of this. I was lukewarm on the rest. By the end, I was just glad it wasn’t a longer movie.

ED WOOD (1994)

Edward D. Wood Jr. was named the Worst Director of All Time, but he did it his way and didn’t waver, and he loved every facet of the filmmaking process, taking pride in being the second producer-writer-director in Hollywood.

This was an unadulteratedly joyous film about the unadulterated joy of being a filmmaker.

ENTOURAGE: Complete Series (2011)

This show has always been like crack for me. About once a year, on an evening that sees me struggling to find something to watch, I press play on the first episode of this. What starts as a way to kill time before bed always ends up being the beginning of a weeks-long binge where I watch the entire series from Episode 1 to Episode 96 in record time.

It’s the easiest watch in the world for me. By the time I get to the one genuinely unpleasant season — *cough* seven *cough* — I’m already in too deep to stop there. Especially after all these rewatches, I know that I just need to get through that season, then I can enjoy the show getting back to form for its final eight episodes of the series.

The crazy thing about my attraction toward this show: I just finished the whole series, but I could honestly press play on the first episode tomorrow and happily start it all over.

LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL (2024)

This is one of those concepts that make you mad, as a writer, for never having thought of this, in some way or another. Lucky for me, as an audience member at the cinema, the filmmakers absolutely lived up to that really cool concept.

The characters have strong motivations and play exceptionally well off each other to mine for conflict. They’re complicated, conflicted, easy to empathize with. The horror is deeply rooted in the setting and the people that are in the room. This story really feels like one that could only unfold in this studio, where the cameras are rolling on these specific people, during sweeps week in October of 1977.

IMMACULATE (2024)

This movie dares to ask: What if the Virgin Mary was a serial killer of religious figures? Sounds like blasphemy, right? But if this was not the will of God, then why did God not stop it?

BABYLON (2023)

My second viewing of this in a very young 2024. It’s swiftly climbing up the list of my favorite films, alongside another Robbie/Pitt led period piece that revolves around Hollywood and runs at about three hours in length.

MONKEY MAN (2024)

40% of this movie is shot in Close Up.
30% of this movie is shot in Medium Close Up.
10% of this movie is shot in Extreme Close Up.

I kept trying to analyze the reasons behind the decision to film the movie like this. Through to the end, I was searching for an explanation rooted in the story being told here. But alas, I was unable to come to a sound conclusion. Add in a healthy dose of shaky-cam and it’s no wonder why I was finding it difficult even deciphering what was being presented on the screen half the time.

DUNE: PART TWO (2024)

I bought a ticket in the back corner of a crowded IMAX screening so that I could experience this film in its full format before the theatrical run crawled to a close. The person who bought the wheelchair companion seat located dead center in the theater was nowhere to be found when the film started. Having already seen this movie, I felt comfortable closely watching that seat with one eye while watching the beginning of the film with the other eye. I respectfully waited fifteen minutes before joyfully snatching that seat and experiencing this masterpiece in the most optimal of viewing conditions. Praise be.

THE DYNASTY: NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS (2024)

Everybody hated the Patriots in the Tom Brady era — everyone outside of New England, that is. But I’m a die-hard fan of a team that always found itself at the bottom of this team’s boot in the time period being documented here, so Tom Brady’s Patriots were especially frustrating for me. Now that this era is well in the past and my team is officially way better than the New England Patriots, I can enjoy watching a documentary like this and actually appreciate everything it took (the hard work, the struggle, the pain and suffering) for this team to become the most dominant franchise that I will ever see in my lifetime (I hope).

Unless it’s the Chargers who become the most dominant franchise I’ll see in my lifetime — in which case, I’m really looking for Season Two of this exceptional sports documentary.

CIVIL WAR (2024)

I can see people getting upset at the fact that this film wasn’t actually about a Civil War taking place in the United States, given the title of the movie and A24’s marketing efforts. I do, however, quite like the perspective the filmmakers chose to take: It put us on the ground, amid all the chaos and bloodshed, but it didn’t make us follow the soldiers on the field — which would have been the boring choice here. We feel the tension standing in the middle of a war zone alongside our unarmed protagonists. The explosions and gunfire are deafening, and what’s left in their wake is sickening. We feel it all, experiencing it through the eyes of civilians that aren’t trained in combat, through the eyes of people who want to be there, who want to see what they’re seeing, are eager to see what they’re seeing, no matter the costs. They don’t hide. They don’t run away. They want it to happen, so they can capture it. They want to experience it, even if it fucks them up.

DAISY JONES & THE SIX (2023)

I highly recommend people watch this limited series before reading the book if possible. I remember enjoying this quite a bit last year, and I think general audiences would really enjoy this too. It’s a well produced version of the story being told in the novel that shares the same name. That’s the best way I can think of to describe the relationship between this series and the novel that I just finished reading. Watch the show, enjoy it. Then read the book — and because you’ve already watched the show, you’ll enjoy the book even more. The reverse order will not elicit an equivalent response.

This series is an extremely loose adaptation of the novel. The characters share the same names and share similar circumstances, but they are not the same characters — and the relationships between characters are sometimes unrecognizable. The plot of the show shares a few beats with the book, but for the most part, it’s a brand new story, with even the most important beats in the novel being changed to fit this alternate version.

I don’t want to complain about the show because I enjoyed it when I saw it before reading the book, and it was perfectly pleasant on rewatch. I simply want to mention all of the above and leave it at that — because these were the thoughts that were overwhelming me while watching these ten episodes.

Previously Reviewed on April 6, 2023

THE FIRST OMEN (2024)

I love when a major studio film makes me like I’m watching a crafty a low-budget film. Not only because of what I’m seeing done on the screen (and how), but also the steady, patient nature by which the story is being told.

It was distracting how much I was getting tripped out by the similarities between this film and another horror picture that came out just two weeks earlier: Immaculate. It’s astounding, the odds that these two films would come out a fortnight apart. For what it’s worth, I like this one more.

CODA (2021)

Holy shit, that audition scene would have hit so fucking hard if a better movie preceded it. It had so much to say that it didn’t say anything at all. Kudos to Emilia Jones though. She’s the reason this was watchable for me.

ED SHEERAN: THE SUM OF IT ALL (2023)

To me, this film is about the relationship between Cherry and Ed, and my only complaint is that the filmmakers didn’t seem to realize that. And if they did realize that, they didn’t spend enough time diving into it, structuring the story to revolve around it. The structure of this four-part documentary skipped around a few central themes, often lingering on Ed’s grief revolving around the death of one of his best friend in the world. It seems as though the filmmakers thought this was what the film should be about: Pop megastar, Ed Sheeran, traversing his massive career while dealing with tragedies and other hardships. This is promising, but if it were framed more firmly around his relationship with Cherry, it would have been stronger.

I don’t know why I’m rewriting a documentary about Ed Sheeran. Rant over. In the end, I quite enjoyed this docuseries. It felt like less like a documentary released by Disney and more like a behind-the-scenes YouTube video, in all the best ways. There is an incredibly loose style of filmmaking here that makes this a delight to watch.

Ed and Cherry often cut each other off to have a sub-conversation about the main conversation they’re having for the documentary. They’re sometimes distracted mid-interview by something or someone in the setting, and that’s all left in the final product. Sometimes they’re speechless, sitting together in awkward silence. Sometimes, they bicker. Sometimes, they’re clearly biting their tongues due to the fact that there are cameras rolling in their faces. The interviews seem to have been filmed on the fly, as if captured by a person with the couple most of the day, every day. This may have been the case, given the fact that Ed specifically names his videographer as a member of the core team he’s had around him for his whole career, for his whole adult life.

MONEYBALL (2011)

Is this one of the most underrated movies ever? At the very least, if I spent a few hours and made a list, would this be top five most underrated movies released in my lifetime?

They gathered a group of some of Hollywood’s most talented people and, against all odds, somehow made this movie downright electric.

Previously Reviewed in 2022 & 2020

ABIGAIL (2024)

The first act started the movie slowly, considering the marketing already spoiled the premise of the story. The second act was an absolute blast, riding the line of entertaining, gory silliness, keeping the audience guessing on how the story might unfold next. The third act of this film is where the story slips off of that line it was riding — it gets very messy, very fast (that is not a gore reference, for the record).

This cast elevates the film through the fun parts and keeps its heart beating through the mediocre sections — Alisha Weir was exceptionally great in her vampire form.

CHALLENGERS (2024)

I’m a sucker for a good setup/payoff, and this movie has a great one. It was excellently executed. They dragged out the payoff long enough for the entire audience to pick up on what was about to happen. The tension in the delayed catharsis made my heart pound in my chest.

The direction was sexy. The editing was sexy. The music was sexy. The actors were sexy. The performances were sexy. This movie was carried by the sexiness of all of the above. In the end, I just found myself wishing there was a bit more depth (either emotionally or thematically) in the story being told.

ALIEN (1979)

If there’s only one thing that I have in common with somebody living in 1979, it’s that we both got to first experience Ridley Scott’s classic science-fiction horror picture in a cinema, on the big screen.

BONES AND ALL (2022)

Let me tell you, this is the exact combination of fucked-up and beautiful that turns me on in my own writing. I absolutely adored this film.

The first forty or so minutes of this movie slipped its claws so far into me that nothing short of a cannibal storming into my room with an eight-foot long braid of hairs from his victims swaying over his shoulder could have pulled me out of this story.

THE FALL GUY (2024)

I was so prepared to write a quirky on-brand review saying that this film started off so hot and then fell off a cliff after the Taylor Swift song. I loved everything leading up to All Too Well so much that I thought, surely, the film will fall off a cliff once the inciting incident arrived and our stuntman protagonist set off on his journey.

I’ve left the cinema pleasantly surprised for two reasons: Firstly, my quirky on-brand review proved to be false but I was still able to use it because I thought of a quirky way to frame the original review so it still works. The second reason is that my premature review proved to be false; this movie is a lot of fun — Gosling and Blunt were delightful.

STAR WARS: THE PHANTOM MENACE (1999)

Hear me out: Delete every single frame that contains Jar Jar Binks from the edit and take the L on the gaps that leaves behind. Has anybody on the internet already done this?

I don’t think I’ve rewatched this movie as an adult. The number one element that stood out to me (other than the above abomination of a character) was just how likable Anakin is in this movie — they did a good job introducing the character we’d watch evolve in this trilogy.

I also found it interesting (not in a pleasant way) how little we knew about Darth Maul before the fates of our protagonists were placed in his palms during this story’s climactic sequence.

FALLOUT: Season 1 (2024)

As a show adapted from a popular video, you’d think this would be heavy in the plot department. There’s about three episodes worth of plot in this season. What makes this more than a show adapted from a video game, what makes this a story well told, is the fact that it is wholeheartedly character-driven.

The layers that each of the characters have been given is really quite impressive. They’re emotionally grounded in reality, not larger than life in this Sci-Fi setting; they’re human beings — even the one that looks like a monster. The depth of the character development is shown in the decisions they have to make, in the ways that their decisions are informed by the places they come from, the things that they’ve been through. The morality of this post-apocalyptic world is complicated, but their humanity is burning so bright with every move they make, no matter how horrendous.

I SAW THE TV GLOW (2024)

I fear I watched this at the exact right (wrong) time in my life. A movie has never done what this movie just did to me; I damn near had a panic attack in that theater.

The first 70% of this had me questioning why people loved it so much. It had me ready to say this just wasn’t for me. Then it all clicked in the final 30% and absolutely ruined me. I was filled with so much existential dread that I dare say this was probably the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.

KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES (2024)

At this stage in the game, I’m just really glad this wasn’t a money grab, looking to milk audiences with another trilogy, leveraging the popularity of the previous trilogy. This actually feels like the opposite of a money grab blockbuster in a lot of ways. The movie is almost two and a half hours long, but it’s not lazily action-packed by any stretch of the imagination — most of that runtime is slow and steady. That played a big part in making this an admirable introduction to this new story, many generations after Caesar.

THE FALL GUY (2024)

On second watch, I loved the quiet moments more and the loud moments less, which tracks with my general taste in stories. I do think, however, they did a good job balancing a lot of elements here. The romance feels great. The comedy is genuinely funny — Gosling continues to prove he’s money in that aspect. The action is required to showcase the stunt-performers, but doesn’t take up so much of the runtime that I would pitch this as an action movie to a friend. The climax felt like a bit much for me, but I could argue that’s the point, given what I just said regarding the stunts. Overall, this is an excellent big-budget popcorn flick, made to be experienced at the cinema.

TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN (2024)

I read the book when it came out in 2017, so needless to say, it’s been a hot minute since I was exposed to this story. There’s no doubt that fact worked in this adaptation’s favor. I was never comparing the book to the movie. I was just familiar enough with its contents to enhance the experience. I’ve always loved John Green’s stories, so it had a leg up by default.

That said, I thought this was endearing in all the ways you’d hope it would be. It was also excruciating in all the ways a story like this should be — it’s so hard to watch Aza suffer. When the movie is giving you butterflies or when it’s making you squirm, it’s Isabela Merced steering the ship — she was nothing short of extraordinary in this.

X-MEN ‘97: Season 1 (2024)

Modern animated shows aimed at adults have spoiled me with their deep character development and artistry in animation. Because of that, every time I go into a new animated series now, I place the bar at an unachievable height. My lack of enthusiasm for this is unfair, because the show is what the show is, and therefore shouldn’t be judged as something that it’s not. I guess, at the end of the day, what the show is was not for me. Like I said, I’ve been spoiled rotten by animated series as of late.

MILLER’S GIRL (2024)

I don’t think this story is at all what it thinks it is. It attempts to ride a fine line, but it’s either too much or not enough — I can’t quite tell. Most of the time, it feels like too much. But then we get a hint of something truly interesting, and that makes me feel like it didn’t reach far enough into the crazy.

HAZBIN HOTEL: Season 1 (2024)

Take adult animation (which has quickly become one of my favorite forms of storytelling), mix in a healthy dose of musicals (which has long been one of my favorite forms of storytelling), toss in a heap of flawed characters who are cursed by their circumstances, add in some comedy and some genuine heart, shake it all up and you get the first season of this exceptional new show.

FURIOSA (2024)

Shoutout to Alyla Browne for carrying the whole beginning of this film, as it is devoid of the actress on all of the promotional material. The chapters with Furiosa as a child hinted at what would be this film’s biggest, most pleasant surprise for me: a focus on character development.

This takes way more time and space on character and worldbuilding than I expected to see, it being a follow-up to Fury Road. The 2015 film feels richer and fuller now that this prequel exists. In terms of what you’d expect to see based on its predecessor, this movie absolutely delivers in a big way when the motors are revving and dust is kicking up.

MAD MAX: FURY ROAD (2015)

I was preparing to rewatch this film after seeing Furiosa when I saw that George Miller declared Black & Chrome is the best version of this movie. I can now attest to that being an exceptional viewing experience. The close-ups of faces and the night scenes were especially suited for black and white — just so beautiful to look at.

THE STRANGERS: CHAPTER 1 (2024)

I have a theory that this is Hollywood’s first attempt to deliver a movie written and directed by artificial intelligence. They hired a familiar actress and rebooted a previously successful IP in order to get people into the theater to test the market. Worse, they’re making it a trilogy to get a decent sample size for their experiment.

All jokes aside, there was only one interesting choice made in this entire movie. The rest really and truly could have been generated by GPT-4.

SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE (2018)

My familiarity with this film combined with the ever-improving viewing experiences on airplanes these days made this the ideal way to kill most of the time on a short flight from New York to Miami.

Previously Reviewed on July 4, 2023

WONDER WOMAN (2017)

The relationship between this movie’s setting and stakes does a lot of the heavy lifting toward making this one of the better films to come out of DC to date. It’s thematically strong, with interesting side characters who have their own motivations and act of their own accord. I’m consistently pleased with the amount of time this film takes to set up those side characters, the setting, and Diana before finally letting Wonder Woman go to work — decisions like that shows a commitment to good storytelling and that should be applauded.

Previously Reviewed on March 17, 2021

HARRY POTTER AND THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX (2007)

I’ve been fighting the urge to reread all the books for a couple weeks now (I don’t have the time), so I figured I’d scratch that itch by picking up where I left off with the movies this past December. I imagine this series of films will be cycled through, more or less in order, until I’m dead.

Previously Reviewed on July 9, 2020

CHALLENGERS (2024)

On first watch, I recognized that the characters were uniquely flawed, and that made them quite engaging. On rewatch, I realized that their flaws make them all uniquely pathetic, and that makes watching them torture each other even more pleasurable. In a movie so closely following a sport, all parties are losers, in some form or fashion.

Previously Reviewed on April 27, 2024

LOVE & MERCY (2014)

The film opens on Paul Dano’s Brian saying, “Sometimes it scares me to think where it’s coming from, you know? Like there’s someone else inside there, not me. Well, what if I lose it and never get it back? What would I do then?”

This serves as every creative’s worst fear, said by one of the great creatives in music from the 60’s. Those words also serve as an exquisitely-worded grim piece of foreshadowing for where this story and its protagonist would go over the next two hours.

SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING (2017)

I haven’t seen this movie since I watched it in theaters (seven years ago apparently), and I don’t remember what my thoughts on it were back then, but this really didn’t hit for me this time around. To be fair, the MCU fatigue had certainly kicked in between viewings. Maybe that’s why the only elements I actually moderately enjoyed here were the “Peter Parker being in a 1980’s teen movie” parts.

HIT MAN (2024)

It’s fresh, it’s smart, it’s sexy, it keeps you guessing (and therefore, it keeps you engaged). It’s funny when it wants to be. It’s suspenseful when it needs to be. I’m glad this movie is getting the attention it deserves as a straight-to-streamer release.

INSIDE OUT (2015)

I don’t mean to sound hyperbolic, but I think this is an example of the art form operating at peak capacity. Why do we watch movies? Why do we consume art? Why do we tell stories? I think this film answers all those questions.

Previously Reviewed on April 13, 2020

INSIDE OUT 2 (2024)

I think this movie’s biggest strength is also its greatest weakness. Anxiety was in this movie as she is in real life: Completely all-consuming. I’ll start by saying that they probably couldn’t have executed that character any better than they did — truly excellent work by everyone involved with bringing her to life. That said, the other characters (and the overall story) suffered by the fact that she was the end-all-be-all for this movie’s existence.

I’m really conflicted about this, because I do think it’s a good movie. It tells the story of the hockey trip where Riley was introduced to and overwhelmed by anxiety. This film tells that singular story of those three days, then rolls the credits. A part of me just wants more from the sequel to that 2015 masterpiece. Another part of me feels like there was so much left on the table to explore in terms of how complicated and complex emotions get for kid’s entering puberty — all lines of exploration were cut down by the potent force that is Anxiety.

If this was called Inside Out: Anxiety and ended up being the second in what would be five or six Inside Out movies, then I would like it so much more. But as Inside Out 2, the sequel nine years in the making, it left a lot to be desired.

HITCHCOCK (2012)

This feels a lot like one of those star-studded Netflix Original movies that don’t appear in theaters and don’t go for the awards. It’s tonally strange, narratively uneven, but it’s also an easy watch dipping into a subject near and dear to those smitten by the cinematic arts.

LIAR LIAR (1997)

A person must be genuinely detestable to the bone when you can’t tell if they’re a worse human being when they can lie or when they have to tell the truth.

Anyway, not the point. Jim Carrey is remarkable in this 90s classic — his talents on full display here, from beginning to end, through to the credits where we get the bloopers. He’s truly one of a kind, and we’re lucky to have him.

SEINFELD: Complete Series (1998)

This is the show that’s on repeat on my television as I’m getting ready to fall asleep every night. It’s been played on a loop, from pilot to finale, for something like eight years now — and I don’t plan on stopping any time soon.

Yes, it’s a comfort show. But it’s also really freakin’ good. Every episode is brilliantly structured. The comedy is genuinely funny. The characters are endlessly entertaining. It’s the perfect sitcom. It was the best in the 90s (the final episode attracting 76.3 million viewers, compared arbitrarily to that of Friends: 52.5), and it’s still the best sitcom to this day.

THE BIKERIDERS (2024)

I was watching this, seeing how cool Austin Butler and Tom Hardy looked, picturing myself being that cool — then Mike Faist kept showing up on screen with his camera, and I’m reminded of the fact that I’m him, not them.

KINDS OF KINDNESS (2024)

You absolutely love to see when a visionary filmmaker earns the right to do absolutely anything ( ! ) he wants following back-to-back critical and commercial successes.

MAXXXINE (2024)

The first two entries in this Maxine Minx trilogy were genuinely special films — Pearl was my favorite movie of 2022. Unfortunately, Ti West lost the plot in the making of this third and final film. Unless this one ages sensationally well somehow, I’m going to henceforth pretend X and Pearl are two parts of a complete duology.

REAR WINDOW (1954)

In my dream life — in a genuine fantasy — I see myself sitting with a beautiful woman (who would become my wife shortly after playfully uttering the words, “Okay, chief. What’s my next assignment?”) as we people-watch for hours on end, day after day.

I want to be L.B. Jefferies when I grow up.

PSYCHO (1960)

A lot is said about how this movie kills off its protagonist a little less than halfway through. That is one of the bigger, more extreme shifts in the film, but it’s only one of many shifts. “Shifts” doesn’t even sound like a strong enough term to describe how this narrative unfolds. “Transforms” feels better — this narrative transforms several times throughout, always keeping the audience on the edge of their seat as the source of the suspense continuously changes, ranging from the benign to the murderous.

LONGLEGS (2024)

You read this movie’s premise (in pursuit of a serial killer, an FBI agent uncovers a series of occult clues that she must solve to end his terrifying killing spree) and you watch the way the first half of this movie delivered on that premise, then you’d be certain you were sat for a cinematic banger.

Then, the film seems to forget what it was actually good at and devolves into something that thinks it’s getting scarier, but is actually only getting sillier, losing the characters and the story as it slides.

TWISTERS (2024)

Whether I like it or not, when I’m watching a monster movie in the year of our Lord 2024, I find myself wanting to understand the monster’s motivations — or at the very least, I want to get a tiny glimpse into its mind. If there’s a sentient being killing off the people I’m growing attached to on screen, I want to know why.

There lies the beauty of a monster movie where the Big Bad is Mother Nature. I don’t find myself searching for any rhyme or reason for why the characters are being hurt by this monster. Plus, there’s an added element of interest when our characters are actively chasing the monster, as opposed to the monster chasing them. They’re doing so eagerly, and we as the audience aren’t rolling our eyes at the screen, wondering why the people we’re being forced to follow are such idiots. These characters are far from idiots. They fight for the greater good, using tools they’ve ingeniously developed specifically for their enemy: the titular monsters — the twisters.

NORMAL PEOPLE (2020)

I’m a known sucker for a romance where two people who love each other don’t go on to live happily ever after. “We were meant to be, just not made to last” might be my favorite genre of storytelling.

What’s so beautiful about this story is that the main contributing factor toward the couple not working out is the fact that each of the characters’ fatal flaws make the desired outcome utterly impossible. These are two people who love each other deeply, but the way their minds are wired make a happy ending unachievable. A square peg and a circle hole. Their personalities, traumas, everything that makes them who they are, it all acts like a forcefield keeping them apart — or at least, keeping them from living happily ever after. It’s just phenomenal character writing — and I bet the book is even deeper and more layered; I need to get around to reading it.

P.S. The careers of both of these exquisite actors have taken off since this series first aired, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Previously Reviewed on May 4, 2020

PADDINGTON (2014)

Love a children’s movie that can make your heart feel like it’s getting a warm hug while also being a feast for the eyes. It’s delivering a powerful message while also having a lot of fun, being silly while it’s doing it.

PADDINGTON 2 (2017)

It’s a crime that there’s only two Paddington movies — the world is worse off because of it. If there were five of these, I would have spent the day watching every one of them, back to back. To follow such a beautiful soul, such a pure heart, for hours on end would be an absolute joy. There’s feel-good movies, then there’s these.

JOHN WICK (2014)

The film kicks off with his wife dying young, succumbing to a disease — that’s probably enough to get you to root for a protagonist. But then he’s robbed in a home invasion, and the puppy he was gifted by his late wife was murdered in cold blood right before his eyes — that’s certainly enough to empathize with a main character’s motivations.

So with that empathy established, they take his development to the next level: They make him interesting. I think the best thing this movie did was establish the titular character’s place in this world. Criminals fear him, repeatedly referring to him as the Boogeyman. Police see dead bodies in his living room, grin, then leave him be. John Wick is legendary, almost mythical.

This film does all of the above in the first thirty minutes.

DEADPOOL (2016)

Given how successful the opening weekend was for Ryan Reynolds’ fourth outing as Deadpool, it’s really something to revisit this film and remember how hard Reynolds fought to bring this character back to the silver screen, and to bring him back the way he deserved to be presented. They’ve done so much for each other. It’s kind of beautiful.

DEADPOOL 2 (2018)

The first movie was such a breath of fresh air, and that novelty goes a long way in making us think fondly of it. That said, I think this sequel is better in almost every way. It’s more visually appealing — David Leitch is good at this action movie thing. I’d say it’s equally funny. The script is deeper. The characters are much more interesting — Deadpool included, not exclusively (I wonder what Disney will do with Wade’s found family in the third movie).

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (2024)

As much as I want to ask what are we doing here, it’s tough to be critical when it’s so clear that the folks tasked with making this movie had the time of their lives, and audiences seem to be making it clear that they’ve received what they were hoping for. For those reasons, I’m just really happy for everyone involved.

BATMAN CAPED CRUSADER: Season 1 (2024)

A spiritual successor to the legendary original animated series. We follow Batman as he takes out a new rogue, pretty much on an episode by episode basis, with the help of the good folks over at the Gotham City Police Department. The more popular villains got multiple episodes of development, but I was happy to see that we got a good variety overall in terms of the notoriety of the villains being showcased here.

It’s tonally similar to the original series, if a touch darker. The pace of the episodes notably struck a good balance between staying true to what people are used to getting from the original series, but also making it snappier for the modern age. The animation looks great, and the performances are solid — after finding out Hamish Linklater was voicing Batman, I suddenly couldn’t stop thinking about it (make of that what you will).

THE BATMAN (2022)

This is an effective serial killer movie — the villain is menacing, unpredictable, captivating. It’s an effective mystery — one step forward, two steps back the whole way through. It’s an effective political thriller — corruption within a crumbling Gotham proves the apple is rotten to the core. Most of all, it’s a quintessential Batman movie — this is the closest we’ve gotten to seeing the character from the Arkham games on the silver screen.

Previously Reviewed on March 12, 2022

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON: Season 2 (2024)

The first half of the season (literally, the episodes through the Battle at Rook’s Rest) were spectacular — genuinely as good as Game of Thrones was for most of its run. As a family drama, it was delicious. As a political thriller, it was riveting. The show was firing on all cylinders.

But the tides seemed to turn after that battle at the midpoint of the season. The characters became stagnant, in terms of their physical place in the world but mostly in their development. In turn, the relationships between the characters stopped evolving, becoming stale, or in some cases, ceased altogether. The spark that made the characters interesting in the first half seemed to have died out once the dragons were unleashed.

I can’t help but feel as though they had an enthralling five episode story which they stretched out to fill eight. It’s funny, because this season was shorter than the first season, so clearly they knew what they were working with — but I guess having a season of television last less than eight episodes these days isn’t worth the outrage it would cause among general audiences.

Although this show remained a set appointment every Sunday night, I can’t help but feel disappointed with how this season fizzled out. The first half of it was making me giddy with joy over how good the writing was, how the characters were being developed, and how the relationships were progressing. I hold out hope that the series will continue to do what it’s best at in the future — the story of this season just seemed to be poorly structured.

ALIEN ROMULUS (2024)

I swear, the Costume and HMU departments were flagrantly taunting us over the fact that Cailee Spaeny didn’t get cast as Ellie for HBO’s adaptation of The Last of Us. I think Fede might have been in on the trolling too, because he directed a moment between Cailee and Isabela Merced (who plays Dina in the series) where they’re on the ground holding each other, their faces touching.

Anyway, I really enjoyed this movie. I love the atmosphere and the setting we faded in on. I like how the motivations were set up for our protagonist(s). Once they’re in the ship, the tension and the horror kicks in and remains effective throughout. It was really well paced with evolving threats.

Weirdly, I feel like the fact that this was another installment in the Alien franchise held it back from being really great. Don’t ask me to explain what I mean by this — it’s just a vibe that I caught, and I’m running with it.

LITTLE FISH (2020)

What if Alzheimer’s plagued the population of the world like COVID-19? This quiet, patient film explores what that would look like through the intimate lens of a couple holding on to their love for each other as tight as they can, at the same time steadily losing grip of it and using it to stay afloat.

STRANGE DARLING (2023)

Splitting the story up into chapters usually slows the pace of the film down for me (it periodically reminds me that I’m watching a movie), but this one split the film into chapters so that it could tell the story out of order. This story wouldn’t have worked as well had it been told chronologically — in fact, it might not have worked at all. So kudos to whoever decided to employ the measures taken to ensure this movie hit as hard as it could.

Give me a reason to nerd out about story structure and I will take it and run… The film was well made. It was pleasant to look at — shot on 35mm film, according to the full-screen card we got before the title and credits. The performances were great (especially Willa Fitzgerald). The twists and turns were well placed and well executed. It’s sexy, it’s violent. It’s a good time.

PRISCILLA (2023)

Elvis groomed her from the age of 14, kept her around, kept her interested, had a child by her, all while treating her like a hobby he picked up as a young man and only occasionally showed interest in. She was made to feel like an accessory, a neglected piece of jewelry, an afterthought.

Therein lies the problem: The narrative is so tight on our titular protagonist’s point of view that we as the audience also feel like an afterthought. We’re just sitting around, waiting for Elvis to come home, just like Priscilla is. In the end, this lack of weighty substance made it all feel very anti-climactic, hollow even.

MEAN GIRLS (2004)

This movie is one of pop culture’s darlings, and for good reason. Everybody has seen it, and everybody seems to agree on it — cinephiles and casuals alike.

We’ve seen half of this movie’s runtime in the form of memes and internet trends for almost as long as there have been memes and internet trends. It pierced the millennial zeitgeist in ways so few films have.

YOU CAN LIVE FOREVER (2022)

There’s quite a bit to like here. The filmmakers have a story to tell, and they were earnest in its telling. It seemed to me that almost every part of the telling, however, felt under-cooked. This includes the characters (central and otherwise). This includes the relationships (central and otherwise). Thematically, it leaves a lot to be desired. The dialogue isn’t quite there. The conflict and the tension and the stakes aren’t quite there. The film means well, but it falls flat in far too many categories to be effective.

BEETLEJUICE (1988)

It’s remarkable how fresh this film feels having come out in the late-80s. The script is clever. The score is extraordinary. The performances are delightful, legendary even. The vibrant colors, extravagant production design and practical effects are ingredients for a timeless aesthetic. It’s all so very good.

Six foot! Seven foot! Eight foot bunch!

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (2024)

The seasons are changing and a Tim Burton movie is Tim Burton-ing — the vibes were cozy (for Burton fans) and weird and everything else you’d hope they’d be upon buying your ticket. If you’re hoping for a good movie upon making that purchase, however, I fear you’re asking for too much.

MEAN GIRLS (2024)

The sheer existence of this film seems to be the prevailing criticism of this film. I’m confused by this, because I love musicals, and the original movie wasn’t a musical, and the original musical closed during the pandemic. This key point of difference also means it’s not a remake so similar to the original as to make this movie’s existence pointless. Oh, and Reneé Rapp is the Queen Bee of the Plastics. Many movies with fewer reasons to exist have come out this year.

Previously Reviewed on January 21, 2024

SPEAK NO EVIL (2024)

I guess there’s nothing more dangerous to polite society than a charismatic psychopath. This is a horror movie directed at adults — not for graphic content, but for the fact that it’s us adults that would find ourselves in such a predicament. It’s us adults that would make flimsy small talk with fellow travelers, agree to have lunch with them, develop a wispy friendship with them, all for the sake of being polite — after all, we live in a society.

James McAvoy is extraordinary in this. He’s a master at striking this exact chord. His charisma is overflowing, but behind those eyes at all times is something that ties your stomach in knots.

The first hour of this legitimately had me living on the edge of my seat. Just before the suspense overstayed its welcome, just before the film started to become tiresome, it kicked into the third act, when all hell broke loose. From that point, you can just sit back and watch it all burn.

WHIPLASH (2014)

I vividly remember seeing this movie in theaters when it came out in 2014, so you can imagine how bad it felt to pull up to the cinema to see it on the big screen again for its ten-year anniversary.

A decade has passed since Damien Chazelle announced his arrival to all of Hollywood with this incontrovertible masterpiece. This is just a spectacularly crafted motion picture. The scenes are tight, saying so much with so little. The performances are iconic by now. The themes are well-explored. I’m not saying anything you don’t already know — this film is as good now as it was ten years ago. And I imagine it will be as good in ten years as it is now. I look forward to the bout of depression I’ll be fighting after screening this movie on the big screen for its twentieth anniversary.

TICK, TICK…BOOM! (2021)

I had a hunch this would be true, but I had to do some digging to confirm it: I started logging every movie I watch at the start of 2018, and with this viewing, this film (which released in late-2021) became my second-most rewatched film on record. Obviously 2018 to 2024 isn’t an exhaustive record, but if nothing else, this statistic shows how much this movie means to me.

Previously Reviewed in 2023, 2022 & 2021

LITTLE WOMEN (2019)

This movie contains one of the most heinous acts of terror ever captured on film (the burning of the sole copy of an author’s work in progress), and contains the death of a sweet young girl stricken with an illness she couldn’t shake.

Still, this movie manages to be immensely delightful, carried by characters impressively well-realized considering how many of them this relatively modest runtime is juggling. The performances are magnetic and so full of life — each one is as good as the next, no matter how many lines they had in the script.

It’s a testament to the director, her cast and her crew, that a film was delivered that is just as proficient in warming your heart as it is in breaking it.

Previously Reviewed on January 8, 2020

A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST (2014)

Listen, it’s dumb. It wears its dumbness on its sleeve. So, how can I sit here and criticize the movie for that? What I can criticize the movie for is being as long as it is. There’s absolutely no reason why it’s nearly two hours in runtime. The jokes are funny more often than they’re not, but the story is nothing to write home about. This would have worked exponentially better if a half hour was cut from it.

Shoutout to the sound design team, by the way. I feel like half the laughs this movie got from me wouldn’t have occurred without their work.

THE WILD ROBOT (2024)

It’s common for people to describe great animated children’s movies as “fun for adults too” or something like that. This particular animated children’s movie doesn’t feel like a children’s movie at all — this feels like an animated adults’ movie that can be described as “fun for children too.” This one feels like it was made for the parents in the audience more than the kids they brought with them. New parents are sure to have a ball (bawl?) with this one.

THE HAUNTING OF BLY MANOR (2020)

Dead doesn’t mean gone.

That tagline is perfect in that it fits the genre, this initially being a story about a haunted house, as stated by the title of the show.

It’s perfect because it explores the idea that the people we love remain with us after they’ve passed, in the memories we still share with them, in the fleeting moments of day-to-day life where we can feel them, sense them.

It also touches on how even though we’re all sentenced to die, many sooner than others, we still have to remember to live in the days that we’ve been gifted with. We’re all dying, but we’re not gone, not yet.

The tagline can be threatening, sure. But it can also be a promise, words of consolation.

Previously Reviewed on October 10, 2020

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE (2018)

“I’ve seen a lot of ghosts… A ghost can be a lot of things: a memory, a daydream, a secret — grief, anger, guilt. Most times, they’re just what we want to see… Most times, a ghost is a wish.”

This moment from the first episode colors every scene of every episode of the series. We watch as memories and secrets take shape within the characters. We see the grief and the anger as it manifests. We witness horrific imagery, and sometimes we wonder if it’s what the characters want to see, deep down, if it’s a wish come to life. But why would they want to see their loved ones like that? Because it’s better than never seeing them again.

It’s remarkable how seeing the characters as children interwoven with scenes of them as adults somehow forces our brains to fill in the gaps on its own, making us feel like we’ve watched a full life drawn from scratch before our eyes. This sketch is never more potent than with the twins, Nell and Luke: Watching them together as children makes seeing them apart as adults so painful. For that reason, episodes four and five make for two of the most heart-wrenching hours of television I’ve ever experienced — the latter being in contention for my favorite single episode of a show ever.

Previously Reviewed on October 30, 2020

SATURDAY NIGHT (2024)

I’ve been on my fair share of sets in my life, and genuinely, there’s nothing quite like it — dozens of creative people gather in a small area to work toward a common goal. It’s mayhem, it’s chaos, it’s beautiful. This film takes that mayhem, that chaos, that beauty, and cranks it all to eleven. The kinetic energy is intoxicating (or anxiety-inducing). I don’t remember the last time I’ve mentioned a film’s blocking in a review, but it really deserves to be mentioned here — there are so many elements in every frame, so much movement (background, foreground, camera). Jason Reitman has concocted quite the cinematic experience with this one.

SMILE (2022)

I found very interesting the struggle between the terrifying visions and the professional who is extremely familiar with the ways the traumatized mind can play tricks on a person — which is a lot more than I thought I could ask for going into this popcorn horror flick. While this became less interesting as it became more about a supernatural entity stalking our protagonist, the movie never lost me.

SMILE 2 (2024)

Two movies in, this franchise has proven that the focus of their horror is rooted in character. The movies have had the same antagonist (the same rules, the same resolutions), which highlights the relationship between the demonic presence and the different protagonists. It’s the various pieces that make up the identity of our main character as a specific, unique human being that makes this second go-around feel just as fresh as the first.

WE LIVE IN TIME (2024)

Sometimes this feels like it’s lacking meat. Sometimes it feels like it’s lacking focus. I think if this story was told in order, those flaws would have been exposed to a fatal extent. But alas, it was structured in a way to inject the story with more life than it perhaps actually had. That said, all sins are forgotten in real time when Florence Pugh and Andrew Garfield are sharing a scene — the weight of this entire film rests on their backs, and they held it up with magnetism and charm.

THE AUTOPSY OF JANE DOE (2016)

I would really love to see how the movie that was promised in the first half ends. I was fully bought-in on the procedural stuff. We meet these two coroners and watch as they try to deduce the cause-of-death for a young woman that was killed in ways that were getting more tragic with every new discovery the father-son team made.

Right at the 45-minute mark, this movie suddenly veers off the rails, turning into something that betrayed all of the above and became utterly uninteresting.

SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK (2019)

This film rides an intriguing line in terms of content. It’s very obviously rated PG-13. Sometimes, it feels like it’s directed at middle grade audiences. Then, it seems to be testing the limits of its rating. Often, its dialogue feels childish. Then, it’s making you clench your teeth during a legitimately creepy (dare I say, scary) scene.

This feels like a great bridge for younger audiences to go from children’s horror to adult horror — I bet I would have loved this had I seen it at the right age. Even as an adult, I liked this quite a bit.

CORPSE BRIDE (2005)

We have a new seasonal favorite on our hands. I can’t believe it’s taken me so long to watch this gothic romance animated musical fairy tale — it checks so many of my boxes. Either way, I’m glad I finally got around to it. I look forward to getting around to it every year or two, as the nights grow longer and the leaves on trees burst with color as they die — not unlike the art style deployed in this film.

LISA FRANKENSTEIN (2024)

About an hour in, a zombie is playing a beautiful song on the family piano while Lisa is singing and dancing along to it with all her heart and soul —  Kathryn Newton having fun with Diablo Cody‘s script is where this movie is at its best. The rest simply didn’t do much for me. The violence and raunch were hindered by the PG-13 rating. The film hints at a desire to mine for depth here and there, but it never actually makes the effort.

YOUR MONSTER (2024)

I honed in on the allegory instantly and, therefore, had the pleasure of watching the entire film through that lens. I didn’t see it as a Beauty and the Beast story at any point. Instead, I got to watch Melissa Barrera’s lively Laura learn to love the parts of her she’d long hidden away to meet society’s expectations, the parts that could protect her and build her up against a cruel world.

ANORA (2024)

It’s rare that an ensemble cast filled with people you’ve never heard of is this good. Going in, I thought this was going to be a movie revolving entirely around Ani and Ivan, but for better or worse, this ended up being an ensemble piece with at least five characters given their time to shine, and the actors absolutely knocked it out of the park, every single one of them.

Allow me to explain what I mean by “for better or worse”: The first third of this film is the classic come-up that’s always so much fun to watch — it’s the stuff you see in the trailers. The rest of the movie, for all intents and purposes, is a wild goose chase for Ivan. The film becomes less about Ani at that point and more about the shenanigans the ensemble goes through to find this hedonistic son of a Russian oligarch. We still check in on Ani here and there, so we don’t ever lose her in the narrative, but the focus of the story does dramatically shift after the Armenians crash the party, figuratively speaking.

As I mentioned at the top, all of the actors involved in the wild goose chase were spectacular. This movie was already way funnier than I expected before they showed up, but once they were all sharing the screen, the comedy shot to a new level. I genuinely didn’t expect this to be one of the funniest movies I’ve seen all year. Credit to the performers, as well as Sean Baker for structuring and orchestrating it all so effectively.

WHEN HARRY MET SALLY (1989)

The fact that this script exists is astonishing, in and of itself — it could have been electric for the stage, or just as a casual read, frankly. The fact that they got these performers to bring it to life, on celluloid, preserved for eternity for people like me to watch every year or two without ever detecting any dip in the pure joy that it brings me? That’s nothing short of a miracle.

Previously Reviewed in 2022 & 2020

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (2012)

I don’t mean to brag, but I just achieved 100% completion on 2018’s Spider-Man game, and I’ve been craving more content revolving around this friendly neighborhood superhero. I had semi-recently rewatched Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man, as well as Jon Watts’ Spider-Man: Homecoming, so this film was the one I sought out.

Say what you want about the film that Sony produced — I have no interest in defending it. That said, when Andrew Garfield puts on that lifelike red and blue suit, shooting webs and quips in equal measure, I can’t help but feel like this is as good as we’ve gotten in the realm of on-screen Spider-Men. The voice-lines, the web-swinging, the mannerisms — it all just feels so right.

SPIDER-MAN: FAR FROM HOME (2019)

Peter is really starting to feel the weight of what it means to be Spider-Man. He bows out of a substantial mission led by Nick Fury because he wanted to hang out with his friends and be a normal teenaged boy for a change. He naively handed the multi-billion dollar tech given to him by Tony Stark to a complete stranger who ended up being the villain of this story who needed that tech to complete his vanity project. It’s easy to think about how cool it would be to be Spider-Man, but the burden must be truly incomprehensible. Take all that and add the fact that Peter is flying blind, without his mentor, facing a world that expects him to take up the mantle as the leader of the Avengers. This movie does a good job showing how close Peter is to crumbling under that meteoric weight.

CONCLAVE (2024)

I don’t know what I expected going into this film about film about the selection process of a new pope, but I know I did not expect the best political thriller I’ve seen at the cinema in some time. This feels like prime House of Cards if it took place in the Sistine Chapel and all the players were Cardinals of the church.

HERETIC (2024)

I kept waiting for the premise for this film to run out of gas, but it kind of never did. Every time I thought it would begin to sag, it zagged instead, going in a direction I didn’t expect, yet still building into something that would make sense as a whole by the end.

ARCANE: Season 1 (2021)

If you know me on any personal level, then I’ve probably already recommended this show to you. Arcane became my entire personality after I watched these nine episodes in December of 2021. To this day, Jinx is on the wallpaper for my phone and my computers. To this day, I think about this story and its characters, completely unprovoked.

Consuming media is never better than when you know you’re in the hands of master storytellers, when you know that everything that you see and hear is there for a reason, that it all adds up to be something greater than the sum of the parts on display at any moment. Sure, you can sit back, turn your brain half-off, and passively consume this exhilarating tale about feuding factions and broken families. But this show was meticulously crafted to be watched actively, paying attention to every line of dialogue, every shift in the characters’ expressions, the people and places in the background, the mise-en-scène in every room, the lyrics of the song playing in the soundtrack — everything has its purpose, everything has a part to play. There’s not a wasted scene, not a wasted moment.

Above all else, these nine episodes are a masterclass on writing character development. This show is a landmark achievement in constructing adult fantasy stories through animation.

Previously Reviewed on December 14, 2021

ARCANE: Season 2, Act 1 (2024)

I just finished watching the first three episodes of Season 2 and my instant gut reaction is that two somewhat contradictory emotions are at the forefront of my mind at the moment. First and foremost, I’m filled with genuine awe over how things are evolving, and as a massive fan of the lore of League of Legends, I’m veritably giddy over one specific character introduction (see Episode 3 — no explanation is needed). There is so much to be excited about. New relationships are forming, others are morphing. The stakes have never been higher for Piltover and Zaun, and the characters are forced to figure out their place in all of it. There are so many cogs in motion, and it’s been quite the spectacle so far, only a third of the way in.

The second emotion of the two I mentioned is the stronger emotion, because its a negative emotion — but I’m able to talk myself down from feeling it as strongly as I normally would because I trust the people in charge of delivering this show to us. The emotion is dread.

So far, this season is feeling like it may be falling into the trap that countless sequels before it have fallen into — I fear it may be spreading itself too thin, getting too big and too loud to allow the characters to breathe and to give the audience enough in those characters to hold on to and empathize with. The scene that cemented that dread in me was the one we’ve been waiting for: The fight between the sisters, in which Vi gave Caitlyn permission to deliver the kill-shot, and Jinx accepted her death at the hands of her sister. What could have been an emotional roller coaster for the viewer ended up feeling emotionally muted, because that scene was being intercut with the cosmic conflict that’s taking place surrounding Hextech. That nebulous story element is impossible to wrap one’s head around (to quote Heimerdinger in that very scene: It’s “inconceivable”), therefore, it’s impossible for it to stir up any strong emotions. To intercut that with the conflict between the sisters feels like an extraordinary mistake. The glitching that was caused in the weapons was not enough to justify the decision to throw a wet blanket over what was essentially the climax of Act 1, the climax of a story arc that tracks back one full season.

Since I’m writing these reviews as the episodes come out, I might as well spend some time expressing my hopes for the rest of the season, as far as all of the above is concerned. While the introduction of that mysterious character in Episode 3 excited me so, I hope she does not play an enormous role in the events to come. That character and everything she stands for is far too big a story element to be squeezed into this season — it would take too much attention away from everything that was set up with Season 1. I hope that character is more or less just introduced here and will be the main antagonist in the series to follow Arcane — I genuinely could not wish for a better place for the show to go after this story wraps up. I can absolutely see it playing out this way given what we now know about the Medarda family. Their conflict is the perfect bridge between story arcs.

And as far as my dread for how things are unfolding goes: I trust the writers; I trust the showrunner; I trust the people that crafted Season 1 to do right by all of us who became obsessed with Arcane after it released.

ARCANE: Season 2, Act 2 (2024)

The first season of this show made me feel a lot of feelings. Yes, it brought tears to my eyes once or twice — but it never broke me down into a cry. Well, I cried twice in the three episodes that made up Act 2 of Season 2. When I say “cried”, I mean there were tears falling from my face, splashing down onto my desk. And the best part? They were not all sad tears slipping from my eyes.

After Act 1, I expressed my fears over the possibility that the show might have been spreading itself too thin, sacrificing the characters while doing so. I also expressed my confidence in the writers to right the ship. Again, these are my snap opinions, mere moments after the credits rolled on Episode 6, but I think there are two episodes in this three-episode act that would go up there with the best episodes this series has delivered to date.

The character moments were aplenty here. After zooming out to show the big picture of what was going on in Piltover and Zaun in Act 1, we zoomed back in and let the characters move amongst each other again, breathe amongst each other. While it does seem as though a character or two are on shaky ground in terms of development at this stage, the primary characters really got their time to shine here. Not only do existing relationships continue to develop and grow, but a brand new relationship sits at the forefront of where a lot of the emotion in these episodes lie. In fact, it’s this new relationship that appears to be the catalyst for a lot of the beautiful character development on display with this season.

To address the rest of my reactions from the first act: I am still concerned over how cosmic and detached from the show’s divine humanity the Hextech elements have become — the figurehead at the center of this subplot is portrayed as a stoic, robotic, borderline emotionless character at this point. Everything is starting to collide and bleed into each other, so I still have some fears over that element taking time and space away from the heart and soul of this series. That said, once again, I trust the writers to stick the landing.

As far as the subplot about that exciting new character goes, I think they’ve basically confirmed that my wishes will be granted. We got very little screen time in this act exploring the character and what she stands for. This all but guarantees two things in my eyes: We will not be wrapping her story up in this season, which means the next story the brilliant minds behind Arcane will be exploring is that of this mysterious character from Noxus and all of the downright riveting elements that come with the world she comes from and the stories she’s connected to.

ARCANE: Season 2, Act 3 (2024)

It took three days to get my head on straight and my fingers prepared to write this review. I think it’s because I had a very conflicted reaction to viewing these three episodes. Or maybe it’s because writing a review of Act 3 means I have to come to terms with the fact that this show is over. Either way, I needed that time to see the trees for the forest (if you will), to see the parts that made up the whole, and to listen to the soundtrack for Season 2 over and over and over again — somehow, someway, they made this one three times better than its predecessor.

I guess I’ll start by trying my best to articulate why my response to these final episodes wasn’t the one I hoped I’d have — trying to create sentences made up of words to describe how I felt watching the third act has proven to be quite the herculean task for me the past few days. I suppose the best place to start is in the beginning: In my review of Act 1, I expressed concerns over how the fight scene between Jinx and Vi was handled. At the time, I thought it was a grave mistake that undercut the emotional weight of that scene. Much to my chagrin, the way that scene was handled was not a mistake; it was foreshadowing for how they would prioritize the rest of this story; it was a declaration of intention. The climax of this story will combine the larger, wider, more nebulous features of this tale with the quieter, more emotional features. The writing was on the wall.

Another such declaration of intent came with Episode 7, titled Pretend Like It’s the First Time. We spend half the episode with Jayce as he scratched and clawed to survive the dystopic timeline he’d suddenly found himself in — a world devoid of life as we know it, a future where the current events of the show might be headed. It was a warning, a bleak notice to the audience of the stakes back home. This brief storyline is essential for how things would play out in the end. But if you ask anybody — and I mean ANYBODY — to describe the events of this episode, their eyes will light up, and they’ll describe the story of what life could have been like for Powder if the events of her childhood had played out differently. The team behind Arcane decided to spend an entire episode in an alternate universe, with only three episodes left to tie up the countless threads flailing chaotically over our heads. They decided to intercut that episode with an important story arc that would immediately slip to the back of the viewer’s mind. They made the utterly consequential decision here to prioritize character moments over the grander plot of the story they’re telling. Ekko could have gotten done what he got done in less time (there’s no lack of hurried — I won’t say “rushed” — plot elements in Season 2), but the writers decided to keep us away from the main story for 33% of the time they had left to wrap things up, in favor of enrichening the audience’s relationship with these characters and further developing Ekko, lifting him into the upper echelon.

All of the above shows the inner workings of the writers. We see the problems they faced and how they decided to tackle them. We see how they prioritized, what they chose to lift up and what they chose to let slip. They constructed for themselves an impossible task — I do not envy them. I do, however, tip my cap and acknowledge that they did the best with what they had to work with.

As the conflicts grew in scale, the stakes rose, and the parties involved multiplied, the storytelling lost focus. The whole felt muddled, which left a sour taste in my mouth as Jinx bid us adieu and the credits started to roll. But the parts of that whole are as good as they’ve ever been. The emotions that those parts triggered in me, those character moments sprinkled throughout the chaos, fed my heart and soul just what I needed.

As I take some space and look back at this season, it won’t be the action set-pieces that I think of; it won’t be to wrap my head around what happened with Hextech, or the arcane, or any of the celestial elements; it won’t be to analyze the politics of how things got to where they ended up; it won’t be to figure out how events played out in alternate universes, or the repercussions of time travel. When I look back at this season, what will pop into my mind are the moments between Jinx and Isha, the moments between Vander and his daughters, the electric moments between lovers, the quiet moments between sisters. This season delivered the moments I needed. In those moments, I felt heartbreak, I felt bliss, I felt terror, I felt joy, I felt frustration, I felt peace.

This season delivered to me everything I could have asked for, even if the delivery system itself didn’t satisfy my impossible wishes for how the season would unfold and how those emotions would consequently be delivered. It is only with a bit of space and a concentrated eye that I can now focus my attention on the relationships and the people and see that all of the creative decisions made for these characters were made out of love for these characters. No matter how big and loud everything else got, the characters were at the heart of it all.

WICKED (2024)

Usually, when you see an adaptation of an established work, people would say something like, “wait until you read the book” or “wait until you see the show on Broadway.” Whether you enjoy the adaptation or not, the implication is that the established work (in whatever form it takes) is the superior version of the work. As the credits rolled on this remarkably faithful adaptation, I had a thought: Dare I say the experience of watching this (admittedly first half of the story) was just as good as the experience of seeing this show on Broadway? In fact, could this experience be *pauses in preparation for the tomatoes surely already in flight en route to my face* better?

At over two and a half hours, you never feel the time going by. The songs are perfectly paced and flawlessly executed, never leaving you anxious for the next song to come or unsatisfied with how they were performed. The scenes without songs are snappy and dramatically effective. Ariana Grande was born to play Glinda — she fully embodied that character, her quirks and her complexities. Cynthia Erivo is one of the best singers of our generation, bringing her iconic character to life with so much soul, so much emotion — often remaining stoic in her physical performance and letting her eyes do all the work. Jon Chu directed the hell out of this massive film, with countless moving pieces, and musical numbers huge and intimate. I’d be remiss to not specifically point out how spectacular that final act ended up being. A lot of where I landed with those initial thoughts toward my feelings on this adaptation as the credits were rolling came about from how well Defying Gravity was executed. Using the word “well” feels like I’m underselling it — the execution of that song was utterly magical.

So, yes, more than 21 years after the show premiered at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, the masses now have access to an equally exquisite telling of this beloved tale (or the first half of it, for now — the far superior half, everyone knows it). Just like you would in a Broadway theater, apply a little suspension of disbelief, and allow yourself to be swept away by this story about the origins of Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West.

MOANA 2 (2024)

This sequel to 2016’s Moana “has far surpassed our high expectations this weekend and is a testament to the phenomenon that Moana has become,” Disney Entertainment co-chairman said in a statement following the film earning the biggest five-day opening of all time this past holiday weekend.

I can’t help but feel like that statement says everything you need to know about the approach the studio took toward making this movie. They knew Moana would sell tickets and put butts in seats. They didn’t need to put any effort into telling an interesting story this time around or developing the characters any further.

In response to the (justified) criticism surrounding the generally mediocre songs in this film, the songwriter said, “Give it a month, all the kids will be singing it, and you’ll be tired of it.” Again, they’re shooting for the bare minimum here, with no desire to use the music (in this musical) to fortify the flimsy story, or to give us a glimpse into the souls of the characters, or to heighten the emotions in the otherwise stillborn scenes.

Moana is one of my favorite modern Disney pictures. So, it goes without saying that I’m disappointed and disheartened to see the character and the world be so flagrantly used as a lazy cash grab — and worse, succeeding MIGHTLY as such.

WEST SIDE STORY (2021)

By chance, I gave this a rewatch exactly three years after it graced cinemas nationwide. Three years have come and gone, so it’s safe to say by now that this film is genuinely underrated. This is a masterpiece, but it isn’t mentioned among the masses nearly as much as it should be — even when Spielberg‘s filmography is a topic of conversation.

Previously Reviewed on December 27, 2021

NOSFERATU (2024)

The idea of the Feel-Bad Movie of the Year coming out on Christmas Day just feels so, so right. Brothers and sisters, I mean it: This movie is grim. For more than two hours, it wades in the waters of diseases we don’t stand a fighting chance against — grave ailments of the body, of the mind, and of the spirit.

I think Robert Eggers’ tendency to make his films ice cold helps make this story filled with such pain and suffering enjoyable. We can observe the characters in excruciating emotional and physical turmoil, and appreciate the performances and the filmmaking without ever being overwhelmed ourselves. Eggers constructs an elegant, engrossing film with material that could easily be melodramatic and/or absurd in the wrong hands.

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (2024)

At nearly two and a half hours long, I don’t feel like I know Bob Dylan any more after this biopic than I did before I watched it — that is to say I still don’t know very much about him at all. Frankly, I don’t even know what this biopic was trying to say about him. He’s not portrayed as a particularly interesting character amid his rise to stardom, so watching him isn’t all that captivating. Sure, experiencing the songs being performed is fun, but is that because of the filmmaking or is it just because the songs are good? On that note, I didn’t really feel any connection between the character I was watching and the songs he was performing, as you’d think you’d feel in a biopic following the career of a musician.

Needless to say, this movie didn’t do much for me. I’d forget all about it if not for the awards buzz that Timothée Chalamet will (for some reason) likely get for this performance.

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You’ll see my highs and my lows. You’ll see my thoughts on how things unfolded. I try to make sense of everything, as equal parts a fan of the show and a writer. I’m glad I didn’t wait until the release of all nine episodes to review the whole. The ups and downs that I went through are now on full display because of that.

I do get dramatic and sentimental at the end. This show has had an effect on my life the likes of which no piece of visual media ever has. I couldn’t help it.

SPOILER WARNING: I do talk in detail about the events of Arcane (and there are pictures scattered throughout) so I highly recommend you read this after watching the show.

ARCANE: Season 1

If you know me on any personal level, then I’ve probably already recommended this show to you. Arcane became my entire personality after I watched these nine episodes in December of 2021. To this day, Jinx is on the wallpaper for my phone and my computers. To this day, I think about this story and its characters, completely unprovoked.

Consuming media is never better than when you know you’re in the hands of master storytellers, when you know that everything that you see and hear is there for a reason, that it all adds up to be something greater than the sum of the parts on display at any moment. Sure, you can sit back, turn your brain half-off, and passively consume this exhilarating tale about feuding factions and broken families. But this show was meticulously crafted to be watched actively, paying attention to every line of dialogue, every shift in the characters’ expressions, the people and places in the background, the mise-en-scène in every room, the lyrics of the song playing in the soundtrack — everything has its purpose, everything has a part to play. There’s not a wasted scene, not a wasted moment.

Above all else, these nine episodes are a masterclass on writing character development. This show is a landmark achievement in constructing adult fantasy stories through animation.

ARCANE: Season 2, Act 1

I just finished watching the first three episodes of Season 2 and my instant gut reaction is that two somewhat contradictory emotions are at the forefront of my mind at the moment. First and foremost, I’m filled with genuine awe over how things are evolving, and as a massive fan of the lore of League of Legends, I’m veritably giddy over one specific character introduction (see Episode 3 — no explanation is needed). There is so much to be excited about. New relationships are forming, others are morphing. The stakes have never been higher for Piltover and Zaun, and the characters are forced to figure out their place in all of it. There are so many cogs in motion, and it’s been quite the spectacle so far, only a third of the way in.

The second emotion of the two I mentioned is the stronger emotion, because it’s a negative emotion — but I’m able to talk myself down from feeling it as strongly as I normally would because I trust the people in charge of delivering this show to us. The emotion is dread.

So far, this season is feeling like it may be falling into the trap that countless sequels before it have fallen into — I fear it may be spreading itself too thin, getting too big and too loud to allow the characters to breathe and to give the audience enough in those characters to hold on to and empathize with. The scene that cemented that dread in me was the one we’ve been waiting for: The fight between the sisters, in which Vi gave Caitlyn permission to deliver the kill-shot, and Jinx accepted her death at the hands of her sister. What could have been an emotional roller coaster for the viewer ended up feeling emotionally muted, because that scene was being intercut with the cosmic conflict that’s taking place surrounding Hextech. That nebulous story element is impossible to wrap one’s head around (to quote Heimerdinger in that very scene: It’s inconceivable), therefore, it’s impossible for it to stir up any strong emotions. To intercut that with the conflict between the sisters feels like an extraordinary mistake. The glitching that was caused in the weapons was not enough to justify the decision to throw a wet blanket over what was essentially the climax of Act 1, the climax of a story arc that tracks back one full season.

Since I’m writing these reviews as the episodes come out, I might as well spend some time expressing my hopes for the rest of the season, as far as all of the above is concerned. While the introduction of that mysterious character in Episode 3 excited me so, I hope she does not play an enormous role in the events to come. That character and everything she stands for is far too big a story element to be squeezed into this season — it would take too much attention away from everything that was set up with Season 1. I hope that character is more or less just introduced here and will be the main antagonist in the series to follow Arcane — I genuinely could not wish for a better place for the show to go after this story wraps up. I can absolutely see it playing out this way given what we now know about the Medarda family. Their conflict is the perfect bridge between story arcs.

And as far as my dread for how things are unfolding goes: I trust the writers; I trust the showrunner; I trust the people that crafted Season 1 to do right by all of us who became obsessed with Arcane after it released in 2021.

ARCANE: Season 2, Act 2

The first season of this show made me feel a lot of feelings. Yes, it brought tears to my eyes once or twice — but it never broke me down into a cry. Well, I cried twice in the three episodes that made up Act 2 of Season 2. When I say “cried”, I mean there were tears falling from my face, splashing down onto my desk. And the best part? They were not all sad tears slipping from my eyes.

After Act 1, I expressed my fears over the possibility that the show might have been spreading itself too thin, sacrificing the characters while doing so. I also expressed my confidence in the writers to right the ship. Again, these are my snap opinions, mere moments after the credits rolled on Episode 6, but I think there are two episodes in this three-episode act that would go up there with the best episodes this series has delivered to date.

The character moments were aplenty here. After zooming out to show the big picture of what was going on in Piltover and Zaun in Act 1, we zoomed back in and let the characters move amongst each other again, breathe amongst each other. While it does seem as though a character or two are on shaky ground in terms of development at this stage, the primary characters really got their time to shine here. Not only do existing relationships continue to develop and grow, but a brand new relationship sits at the forefront of where a lot of the emotion in these episodes lie. In fact, it’s this new relationship that appears to be the catalyst for a lot of the beautiful character development on display with this season.

To address the rest of my reactions from the first act: I am still concerned over how cosmic and detached from the show’s divine humanity the Hextech elements have become — the figurehead at the center of this subplot is portrayed as a stoic, robotic, borderline emotionless character at this point. Everything is starting to collide and bleed into each other, so I still have some fears over that element taking time and space away from the heart and soul of this series. That said, once again, I trust the writers to stick the landing.

As far as the subplot about that exciting new character goes, I think they’ve basically confirmed that my wishes will be granted. We got very little screen time in this act exploring the character and what she stands for. This all but guarantees two things in my eyes: We will not be wrapping her story up in this season, which means the next story the brilliant minds behind Arcane will be exploring is that of this mysterious character from Noxus and all of the downright riveting elements that come with the world she comes from and the stories she’s connected to.

ARCANE: Season 2, Act 3

It took three days to get my head on straight and my fingers prepared to write this review. I think it’s because I had a very conflicted reaction to viewing these three episodes. Or maybe it’s because writing a review of Act 3 means I have to come to terms with the fact that this show is over. Either way, I needed that time to see the trees for the forest (if you will), to see the parts that made up the whole, and to listen to the soundtrack for Season 2 over and over and over again — somehow, someway, they made this one three times better than its predecessor.

Trying my best to articulate why my response to these final episodes wasn’t the one I hoped I’d have, trying to create sentences made up of words to describe how I felt watching the third act, has proven to be quite the herculean task for me the past few days. I suppose the best place to begin is back at the start: In my review of Act 1, I expressed concerns over how the fight scene between Jinx and Vi was handled. At the time, I thought it was a grave mistake that undercut the emotional weight of that scene. Much to my chagrin, the way that scene was handled was not a mistake; it was foreshadowing for how the writers would prioritize the rest of this story; it was a declaration of intention. The climax of this story will combine the larger, wider, more nebulous features of this tale with the quieter, more emotional features. The writing was on the wall.

Another such declaration of intent came with Episode 7, titled Pretend Like It’s the First Time. We spend half the episode with Jayce as he scratched and clawed to survive the dystopic timeline he’d suddenly found himself in — a world devoid of life as we know it, a future where the current events of the show might be headed. It was a warning, a bleak notice to the audience of the stakes back home. This brief storyline is essential for how things would play out in the end. But if you ask anybody — and I mean ANYBODY — to describe the events of this episode, their eyes will light up, and they’ll describe the story of what life could have been like for Powder if the events of her childhood had played out differently. The team behind Arcane decided to spend an entire episode in an alternate universe, with only three episodes left to tie up the countless threads flailing chaotically over our heads. They decided to intercut that episode with an important story arc that would immediately slip to the back of the viewer’s mind. They made the utterly consequential decision here to prioritize character moments over the grander plot of the story they’re telling. Ekko could have gotten done what he got done in less time (there’s no lack of hurried — I won’t say “rushed” — plot elements in Season 2), but the writers decided to keep us away from the main story for 33% of the time they had left to wrap things up, in favor of enrichening the audience’s relationship with these characters and further developing Ekko, lifting him into the upper echelon.

All of the above shows the inner workings of the writers. We see the problems they faced and how they decided to tackle them. We see how they prioritized, what they chose to lift up and what they chose to let slip. They constructed for themselves an impossible task — I do not envy them. I do, however, tip my cap and acknowledge that they did the best with what they had to work with.

As the conflicts grew in scale, the stakes rose, and the parties involved multiplied, the storytelling lost focus. The whole felt muddled, which left a sour taste in my mouth as Jinx bid us adieu and the credits started to roll. But the parts of that whole are as good as they’ve ever been. The emotions that those parts elicited in me, those character moments sprinkled throughout the chaos, fed my heart and soul just what I needed.

As I take some space and look back at this season, it won’t be the action set-pieces that I think of; it won’t be to wrap my head around what happened with Hextech, or the arcane, or any of the celestial elements; it won’t be to analyze the politics of how things got to where they ended up; it won’t be to figure out how events played out in alternate universes, or the repercussions of time travel. When I look back at this season, what will pop into my mind are the moments between Jinx and Isha, the moments between Vander and his daughters, the electric moments between lovers, the quiet moments between sisters. This season delivered the moments I needed. In those moments, I felt heartbreak, I felt bliss, I felt terror, I felt joy, I felt frustration, I felt peace.

This season delivered to me everything I could have asked for, even if the delivery system itself didn’t satisfy my impossible wishes for how the season would unfold and how those emotions would consequently be delivered. It is only with a bit of space and a concentrated eye that I can now focus my attention on the relationships and the people and see that all of the creative decisions made for these characters were made out of love for these characters. No matter how big and loud everything else got, the characters were at the heart of it all.

I love this show, deeply. We’re lucky to find solace in the fact that the creators of this masterpiece are hard at work on the next story in this universe that’s scratching at their souls. I have no doubt it will be incredible. But for now: Powder, Violet, it’s been a blessing to get to know you, to spend time with you, to cry with you, to love you. Goodbye.

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“I loved you completely. And you loved me the same. That’s all… The rest is confetti.”

After my most recent rewatch of this masterpiece, I stumbled upon a story that Mike Flanagan told on Tumblr back in 2022 regarding those final words and the context in which they were brought to life.

If you’re into the craft of storytelling, or just a fan of the show, the following is undoubtedly worth a read.

“Hill House was not a fun shoot. It was my first foray into television. I was absolutely terrified that I’d mess it up. So I’d opted to direct all of the episodes myself, figuring that - if nothing else - I’d have no one else to blame if it went south.

It was the most grueling professional experience of my career. The shoot was by no means a smooth one, every day was an uphill battle from a budgetary perspective, and between the three giant production entities involved with the production, I spent a lot of time fighting over the creative and logistical elements of the series.

I began losing weight. I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. By the end of the shoot, I had dropped almost 40 lbs.

I was very depressed. Every day was a battle, and for the first time in my career, I wasn’t excited to go to work in the morning. We were fighting for basic resources, fighting for the show we wanted, and even fighting amongst ourselves by the end. It was grueling.

We hadn’t written all of the scripts when we started production. I believe we had finished through episode 7, but the rest of the scripts had to be finished while we were already shooting.

We’d mapped everything out in the writers room, and I had great support on the other episodes, but I was writing the finale solo. I’d thought I’d be able to juggle it with everything else. I quickly fell behind.

I finally got to the script about halfway through production. I’d work on it between takes at the monitor, and then get home to our tiny rental house in Atlanta, where Kate was waiting with our baby son. (One of the rare bright spots of this shoot came when Kate found out she was pregnant about halfway through production. We even named our daughter Theodora, in honor of her origins.)

I’d typically fall down from exhaustion when I got home, but I had to push through it and work on the script. My weekends were spent shot-listing and prepping for upcoming episodes. We didn’t have enough time to stay ahead of prep, so every available day was used for that... I went three months without a single day off at one point.

I’d sit up late staring at the script. I was in a dark, dark place. Overwhelmed, exhausted, and feeling like I lived in an eternal present. Each day bled into the next and it didn’t feel like there was an end in sight. That feeling of unreality was heightened because we kept returning to the same sets, same locations, and even the same scenes throughout the 100 shooting-day production. Stepping back into the exact room we had shot in days or weeks or even months ago made the whole thing feel absolutely surreal. Making movies is always a non-linear experience, but this one felt particularly so... It was like the days of our lives were happening to us all out of order.

I remember feeling something like despair creeping into my daily experience on the show. And I remember dwelling on that when I got into the scene work of episode 10.

As I worked through the draft, I recall that despair coloring a lot of what was on the page. My filter was breaking down. There’s a monologue at the beginning of the episode where Steven’s wife Leigh (played by my dear friend Samantha Sloyan) spews out a torrent of eviscerating insults about Steve’s value as a writer. That is just me vomiting onto myself. She was voicing all of my deepest insecurities about myself at the time, and of what I was doing with this series.

She says "Is anything real before you write it, Steve? The things you write about, they’re real. Those people are real, their feelings are real, their pain is real - but not to you, is it. Not until you chew it up, digest it, and shit it out onto a piece of paper and even then, it’s a pale imitation at best."

This was the mindset I was in for a lot of the shoot. The writing became a reflection of a lot of that turmoil, and I knew who I was referring to in that monologue - I was talking about my family. I was talking about how much of their lives I’d used as building material for this show. I was talking about the fact that I’d lost two loved ones to suicide, and seen what it had done to my mother in particular. And I knew I was using - possibly even exploiting - those people for this series.

There’s a lot of despair in this episode. The Red Room, as we conceived it, was a place that would feed upon those emotions. Grief, sadness, loss... Those were the real ghosts of our series, and where our characters find themselves at the start of the finale. They’re being slowly digested - eaten alive - by those feelings.

So finally, it came time to write Nell’s final scene with her siblings. I knew from the outline we’d constructed in the writers room what this was supposed to accomplish - she was supposed to be their salvation. She was supposed to take all of these feelings that we’d been wrestling with and finally provide catharsis, finally say something that would free everyone.

I remember sitting with a blinking cursor for a long time. The Crain siblings had just turned and seen Nellie standing by the door, and suddenly were able to hear her speak. But what should she say? What would I say? What would I want someone to say to me?

What she ultimately says lays bare a lot of what I was thinking about when it comes to grief. It exists outside of linear time, much as I felt I existed at the time. That sense of eternal present, that sense of a nonlinear eternity of moments and memories - it all came out in her speech to her brothers and sisters.

I remember feeling, looking at my insane present and looking back at my past, how strangely overwhelmed I was by memories. That I wasn’t experiencing time in a straight line, and hadn’t been for a while - for the better part of a year, I’d felt more like I was standing in a whirlwind of moments. "Our moments fall around us like..." Nell said, and I recall sitting back and trying to find the words.

"Rain," for certain, but there was something too uniform about that. The moments of life as I experienced them weren’t that orderly, they weren’t that small. They didn’t fall the same way. Some sailed by, fast and unremarkable, while others lingered in front of me, twisting and stretching. So it was a good word, but not the right word. I left it on the page though.

"Snow" was my next attempt. Better, in that I imagined the snow blowing in the wind, swirling and dancing and feeling more organic. More chaotic. More like life. But for some reason, the word that stuck with me, the word I felt Nell Crain would connect with was "Confetti." And that was because I was thinking not of Victoria Pedretti at this point, but of Violet McGraw.

Violet played Young Nell, and I wondered what she might have said if she experienced time this way. As an adult, Nell was despairing. Nell was overwhelmed. But as a child there was an innocence to the word. There was a joy to the word.

I imagined moments falling around her, this little girl with the big smile and the wide eyes. Her moments would be colorful. They would be of different shapes and sizes, some falling fast and some falling slow, flipping and turning and dancing in the air, independent of the others. Sparkling, whirling, doing lazy summersaults as they sauntered down to Earth.

I thought of myself, and of the members of my family. I thought of those we’d lost. I realized what I hoped for them (and for us all) in the end was to look upon that mosaic of experience, that avalanche of days and minutes and moments, and to smile with some of the joy we had as children.

And this, I thought, was something that gave me hope. This gave me a glimpse of some kind of salvation for them. This was also how I hoped my life might seem if I was a ghost - a cascade of color and light and shape and movement, something I could dance in.

So Nell smiled and said... "or confetti."

It stuck with me. The rest of her monologue gets heavy again, and gets to the real point of the show - and that’s forgiveness.

I figured the only thing that would let the Crain children out of the Red Room was to be forgiven. I thought of the losses in my own family, and I thought of what I wished for my mother and for my aunts and uncles and cousins and I tried to pour that into her final words.

"I loved you completely, and you loved me the same," she said, "that’s all." And this was the point I wanted the most to make. That at the end of our life, if we can say this about each other, the rest doesn’t matter. The rest is that rainstorm, or that blizzard, that fell around this one central truth, and maybe built itself in piles around it, to the point we lost sight of it along the way.

And I thought again of that little girl, and almost as an afterthought, wrote "The rest is confetti."

I liked the way it sounded, but I was insecure about the line. I almost took it out, in fact. I remember asking Kate to read the scene and talking about that last line with her. "Is it too cute?" I wondered. She was on the fence. "Depends on how it’s acted," she said, and I figured she was right. We could always take it out if it didn’t work. The scene could end with "I loved you completely, and you loved me the same. That’s all."

Why not shoot it and see what happened?

I turned in the script, we published it quickly so that we could start breaking it down and prepping it. And the next morning I was back on set. I’d deal with episode 10 when it came down the pipe again, sometime in the coming months. We had a lot of shooting to get through before I had to worry about it.

I recall Netflix asking me to cut a lot of that monologue, and I remember them also having questions about the "confetti" line. I pointed out that it didn’t cost us any extra to shoot it all, it was only words, and fought to keep the script intact.

Ultimately, they insisted I make a series of cuts on the page. I begrudgingly agreed, but left Nell’s speech alone. I made superficial cuts around it, throughout the draft, and even considered changing the font size to fool them into thinking it had gotten shorter (I ultimately was told I wouldn’t fool anyone and not to risk starting a war). But Nellie’s final goodbye stayed intact.

It must be said - Victoria Pedretti SLAUGHTERED this scene.

By the time we got around to filming it, things had never been worse for the production. There was almost nothing left for a lot of us. Tensions were sky-high, resources had been exhausted completely, and we were all ready to give up.

Filming in the mold-ridden Red Room was depressing, morose, and led to a lot of arguments and unpleasantness. The room itself just felt gross, always, and we were in there for days at a time. The last thing we had to shoot in there was Nellie’s goodbye. Victoria came to set having to push through pages of monologue, and she did so with captivating bravado. I recall being teary-eyed at the monitor watching her work. And when we finally made it to the last line, I watched her deliver it with a smile. A sincere, innocent, longing, joyful smile. A smile informed by the sadness, grief, and loss of her own situation, of her own life... But a smile that finds forgiveness and grace after all. Pedretti knew how to say the line, and how that word would work.

And as she said it, I knew it would stay in the show.

Over the years, that sentence has become something of a tagline for The Haunting of Hill House. I’m always a bit mystified and touched when I see people approach me with the line on T-shirts, or even tattooed on their bodies.

I started signing it with autographs back in 2020 after enough fans asked me to. Now it’s my go-to when I sign anything related to Hill House. The line, for me, represents a lot of things. It’s about the insane, chaotic, non-linear experience of making that show. It’s about trying to find and hold onto joy, even in the grips of despair.

It’s about the way the moments of our lives aren’t linear, not really, and how we may be unable to understand them as we exist in their flurry. It’s about finding hope, innocence and forgiveness in the final reckoning.

And it’s about how, outside of our love for each other, the rest is just... Well, it’s fleeting. It’s colorful. It’s overwhelming. It’s blinding. It’s dancing. And, if we look at it right, it’s beautiful. But it’s also light. It’s tinsel. It flits and dances and falls and fades, it’s as light as air.

The rest is the stuff that falls around us, and flits away into nothing.

It’s the love that stays.”

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One of the best comedies I’ve seen in years (I don’t watch many comedies. I don’t like comedies). It got quite a few genuine chuckles out of me, and I found myself smiling through whole sequences.

I do feel the need to emphasize one thing though: This should absolutely be pitched as a comedy based on the popular doll, nothing more — and that’s okay. It has too much heart to be a classified alongside dumb comedies, but not enough cohesive thoughts strung together to be considered anything more than a big-budget, thoroughly entertaining, well-paced comedy.

9) NIMONA

“I don’t know what’s scarier: The fact that everyone in this Kingdom wants to run a sword through my heart, or that sometimes, I just want to let them.”

One does not have to be a shape-shifter or a mustache-twirler to be considered a monster or a villain. Those titles (and the like) are used as weapons against those society seeks to ostracize — needing nothing more than the slightest bit of slander to rally other people behind. And if labeled one of the above for long enough, knowing you’re not, knowing your heart is pure, one might feel this world was not meant for people like them — maybe they might feel it’s best to see themselves out of it, or maybe they might feel the need to prove everyone right out of weariness from resisting.

Stories like this aren’t made about such characters. People like this exist, and stories like this are told to make sure those that are pure of heart continue fighting the good fight, that they continue to believe that their place in the world is one that can make it better. I’m really glad stories like this exist.

8) THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER

For his five years with Netflix, Mike Flanagan has done with the horror genre exactly what makes this genre my favorite to explore and to exhibit. From what I understand, his run with the streamer ends with this tale of greed and legacy. Here’s hoping he continues making shows of this quality, in this genre, with whoever he works with next.

7) EILEEN

If I were to describe a couple things that are said to have happened or actually occurred in this movie, you’d be surprised when I say the following statement: I loved how this film seemed to consistently subvert expectations by being tame with creative choices, instead of choosing the most shocking or dramatic option available every time — and it’s due to this restraint that the choices made felt like so interesting.

These choices made this feel like it could have been faithfully adapted from a true story, this film about a mid-twenties girl desperate for some kind of meaning in her life.

6) GODZILLA MINUS ONE

By pure chance, I saw this film in the same week that I finished The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell. This movie really feels like the delectable dessert to the hearty entrée served by Gladwell. In fact, remarkably, this film almost picks up exactly where the book ended.

I think one of the biggest compliments you can give a monster movie is that you almost forgot about the monster while the movie was taking place. That certainly was the case here, as I was fully invested in this story of three survivors who band together to create a family in the aftermath of the destruction of their homes and everything they knew during World War II. Of course, however, Godzilla was pretty cool too.

I feel the need to mention the fact that this film was made on a budget of 15 million dollars, while Godzilla (2014) cost upwards of 160 million dollars. I really liked both movies. Do with this information what you will.

5) OPPENHEIMER

This is one of those three-hour movies that you feel every minute of. But that's not to say that watching it ever becomes a torturous experience. Quite the contrary. It's due to that plodding pace that you feel how subtly this passion project transformed into something so colossal and so destructive in so many ways. And while that's happening, our protagonist transforms too: from a scientist, to a professor, to a project manager, to a politician, to the destroyer of worlds. This biopic felt like a masterful limited series that I had the pleasure of watching in one sitting on a screen big enough to project the gravity of its subject matter.

4) PAST LIVES

I don’t remember the last time a film had me hanging on to every word the way this one did. The silences were excruciating: A million and one thoughts running through the characters’ minds as they calculate what they want to say, if they want to say it — and if so, then how.

As Nora’s husband lays in bed describing how beautiful the love story we’re all watching is, he’s describing it like one that would be written for a book or a movie. But the one that we actually got on film felt far closer to how things would play out in real life: Awkward moments, messy emotions, spiraling thoughts of what could have been, what still may be. There were no easy answers. There were no fireworks, in conflict or in celebration. And yet, there was electricity running through every frame. You felt the weight of the whole world between every sentence.

3) THE LITTLE MERMAID

They felt the need to repeatedly bash us over the head with Ariel’s motivations for her actions because there are still morons out there who think she traded the ocean and her voice for a man.

The first time I saw this movie, it triggered a full-blown existential crisis within me. I had to go see it again to confirm my findings — my feelings were not changed by the second viewing.

I really like this remake. Like, I really, really like it. I think I like it as much as I like the original. And the original is my favorite classic Disney movie of all time. I’m committing blasphemy by saying what I’m saying right now, I know. At least, it feels like I am. These thoughts are what started me down this mental spiral that led to my existential crisis.

Perhaps it isn’t the movie (The Little Mermaid, 1989) that I like as much as I do. Maybe it’s the story that I love so much. We all watch movies but we don’t often think of them merely as vessels with which stories are delivered. We think of all the other things that come with the motion picture: The acting, the directing, the cinematography, editing, music, etc. But these things are just the tools we use to get the story across. Sometimes we hear people say “story is most important”, but I don’t think we hear it enough. Story isn’t just the most important thing. The story is everything. There is nothing else.

How many movies do you press play on simply to admire one of its technical aspects. Do you ever kick back after a long day and say to yourself, “I’m going to grab a beer and watch La La Land for the cinematography”, or The Social Network for the score, or Silence of the Lambs for the acting. Only cinematographers would say the first. Only musicians would say the second. And only actors would say the third. I just used five Oscar winners to make my point.

This is a long-winded (and somehow not nearly long enough) way of saying that when we fall in love with a movie, I think we’re really just falling in love with the story being told. The story can be told poorly if the technical aspects aren’t firing on all cylinders, so having talented people in charge of helping to get the story on the screen is absolutely invaluable. But at the end of the day, the story is all that matters. Sometimes, something about the story is so near and dear to a person’s heart that the technical aspects don’t hinder the viewer’s experience at all.

I love the story of Disney’s The Little Mermaid. The original is my favorite of their classic animated motion pictures. The remake improves on it in many ways, and doesn’t quite live up to the original in some others. But the story wasn’t changed in any way that made me dislike the story being told here. So, in conclusion, I loved this remake. I’m glad I got to see it twice in theaters. I pre-ordered the digital copy through Apple, and I plan to watch it many more times in the future.

2) POOR THINGS

A renowned, beloved professor I had in film school once said that all films, in some way, are about identity. In the same vein, countless films are specifically about what it means to be human. Few films, however, investigate that line of inquiry quite as potently as this one does.

There’s so much to digest and dissect with this motion picture that I don’t feel as though I’m capable of doing the latter without first doing the former. Only God knows how long that will take.

1) SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE

It makes me so mad that this movie isn’t eight hours long. Honestly, I can’t imagine the fucking nerve. I had to go back for seconds during its theatrical run to spend another two plus hours in this world, with these characters. This film excites me in a way I can’t remember feeling in a long, long time. I don’t just like it. I don’t just appreciate the artistry on display. This film genuinely excites me.

I don’t know what I’m going to get when we cut to the next shot, but I know it’s going to fill me with pure unadulterated joy. The craftsmanship and care on display here is enough to blow the minds of casual moviegoers and film snobs alike.

Oh, I should also add that the story being told here is layered, emotional, deep, light when it needs to be and dark when it needs to be. I was incredibly frustrated when the credits rolled. I wasn’t fully satisfied, in the exact way you’re not fully satisfied when you reach the last page of the story in a comic book you’re enjoying (this was done intentionally, obviously). I just want more — so much more. I want to live in this universe for hours on end.

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So deftly, this film explores the power that art has over us humans, and how their art affects the artist. By this description, one would think that this teeters on the edge of self-indulgence on Spielberg’s part, but it simply never comes close. It’s subtle. It’s efficient. A master’s hand is at work here, telling his story with brushstrokes so smooth that they’re invisible in the portrait that he’s painting for us.

THE BLING RING (2013)

I had a single solitary thought the whole runtime: This cannot exist in the era of Ring cameras and dashcams.

The dialogue in this movie was so horrendous, it made the whole cast look like they’ve never performed in front of a camera in their entire lives — the sole exception being Taissa Farmiga, who looks like she may have some talent. These characters are not only infuriating, they’re unbearably obnoxious. If they entered one more home and that fucking dude said “we should get out of here” (done simply to add a crumb of conflict or tension to the scene) one more time, I was going to lose my mind.

I hated everything about this movie. But I’m not dense enough to miss the fact that that’s entirely the point.

THE BEGUILED (2017)

This movie had me feeling absolutely nothing until Colin Farrell snatched that turtle and chucked him across the room. That happened an hour in and lasted no more than five seconds. Then I went back to feeling nothing until the credits mercifully started rolling.