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 one of my favorite 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, and they’re built up so masterfully through long strings of dialogue, as well as 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, 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.
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
