Film & TV

I love film. I like to watch movies. I like to review movies I've watched.

The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)

Shakespeare is dense to read. Shakespeare is dense to listen to. To watch, to perform even. Some guy once said you can judge an actor by how accessible he makes Shakespeare to the public. Now, I know the story beats of Macbeth. I've watched an abridged Macbeth in highschool. The Tragedy of Macbeth starring Denzel Washington, directed by Joel Coen (one of my favorite directors and not an isfake simp like this brother) is my first time watching it on film, and as an adult. And boy howdy, is it dense. I used a free trial of appletv-whatever just for it. And I should have watched it a few more times. Washington and Coen do not exactly make Macbeth accessible- the language is impossible, still- but you can watch this movie and give yourself over to it and you will understand the story.
Coen's Macbeth uses a surreal style, shot in black and white with all the sets and all the outfits in black and white too. I think only one actor wears color in their costume (more on her soon). This, and the way the film is framed and shown to us, is to impart on us the visual of a dream. It is a dream story in a dream world, where the only "rules" that matter are told to us by the most unique interpretation of the Three Witches I've seen. I'm starting here because the visuals of this movie are, in my opinion, as masterpiece. It is breathtakingly beautiful even when it's obviously on a stage. This is accented by Denzel Washington's absolute powerhouse, potentially career-best performance as the titular Macbeth. You don't need to understand the words he says for him to get his message across, usually. He is imposing, charismatic, and sometimes scary. He embodies the arrogance and swordsmanship of his character well. Like, please even if you don't watch this movie, watch this scene. It's awesome. But he might not even be the best actor of this movie. Joel Coen's wife, four-time Academy Award winner Frances McDormand plays Lady Macbeth. What she brings is so layered within the performance and production that she certainly steals the show as it goes on, and the film lets her. She is the hardest piece of the puzzle for me, a pleb, to judge. And why I should have watched a few more times. Her role is a gordian knot that serves as the lynchpin to Macbeth and his tether to a "real" world.
This movie is very good and a very strong recommend from me! It's the kind of production that makes me love film and further soldiifed at least one of the Coen brothers as my favorite directors. Even from their incredible, must-watch catalog of movies, this one is surely near the top. And it being done during covid??? Constraints fostering incredible creativity. The only way I could sing more praises of it would be to watch it again and take notes- which hell, maybe this movie deserve.

Doom Patrol (2019-2023)

Doom Patrol is my favorite series that I've never finished. I love it and watched it intently as the first three seasons were released and then just... never watched the fourth and final one. I've since restarted it three times, once with my partner, and still have not made it through the second season a second time for various reasons. Someday I just need to start in season 2 and rip through it all. Anyways, 👏👏 TV Review;
Doom Patrol is a comic that started in the Silver Age with the characters Robotman, Negative Man, and Elasti-Girl, and their wheelchair-bound team leader, the Chief (☝️🤓️ Doom Patrol actually came out months before X-Men, wowie). As the Silver Age of comics closed, so did the Doom Patrol who never really broke into the mainstream. It wasnt until much later in the late 80s where Grant Morrison, the psycho they are, revived the team and made them weird. Doom Patrol became really the first mainstream comic to delve into the abstract and deal with sexual & gender identity and mental health. So much so that DC banished them to the Vertigo imprint with the other less-than-canon DC comics. Doom Patrol, here, was a hit even after Morrison left, and in time they introduced DCs first transgender superhero before the 2000s came, Vertigo died, and DC tried and failed to reintegrate the Patrol multiple times with the greater canon. So where does this all put the show?
The show is firmly based in the weird 90s era. It's a miracle this show got off the ground in the heyday of superhero slop. When I recommend this, it's with the grain of salt that you will probably cringe. The series, in the first season, follows Robotman (voiced by Brendan Fraser)- a former racecar driver who was a very shitty husband and father before an accident killed his wife and basically killed him (hes just a brain in a suit), Rita Farr- they don't call her Elasti-Girl in the show, but she's a washed up like 1930s actress who came into contact with goop thats turned her body to goop that she can manipulate if she really tries, Negative Man- a secretly gay air force all-star pilot who came into contact with Negative Energy and now is a radioactive ball of death with an alien spirit inside of him, (Crazy) Jane, a girl who has many multiple personalities each with their own powers, and Cyborg, of Justice League fame, of all people. And the Chief, who is missing and is the catalyst for the misadventures of the first season. The show introduces many characters from the series' history including one of my favorite superheroes Flex Mentallo the Man of Muscle Mystery, Danny the sentient, genderqueer, teleporting street, and Dorothy, the Chief's daughter who is a central focus of second season.
Doom Patrol doesn't really care to be a normal superhero show- sure there is a plot where superpowered people do superpowered things, but most of the time they aren't really saving the world- they're saving themselves. You watch the show for the exploration of the characters alongside their wacky adenvtures, as the discovery of how to live with themselves as they are now is the main plot of the show. Things get melodramatic and weird good and weird bad and perverse and frankly, not all the attempts at comedy land and sometimes the lower budget does show through. But there's a heart to the show that is difficult to put into words. Even though one of the primary antagonists across the seasons is a horde of butts. Regardless, Doom Patrol is inventive and it strange and it is out there and it is lovely. And I should really watch the final season. Obviously, I recommend Doom Patrol.

Hokum (2026)

My sister likes watching primarily horror films in theaters. Thankfully, some good ones come out- including Hokum. Hokum is the third, and first mainstream, film by Damien McCarthy in an unofficial trilogy. If there are two things to know about this director, it's that 1. he is very Irish and B. he hates skeptics. So far each film has had some degree of folklore in them, targeted at skeptics who are non-believers. Hokum is unique in that our non-believer protagonist is kind of thrust into the prescence of the Hokum. Which is a witch, I think. This movie will undoubtedly frustrate some as, in the same way this review so far has skirted around the horror, so does the movie. Because the horror in Hokum is not the Hokum. It isn't even Jack the Jackass, who may be the scariest thing in the movie. The horror within is the atrocities people will do just to avoid responsibility. I won't spoil anything because it's a very good movie, and also because there is not much to spoil. Man gets trapped in a basement room with a Hokum and confronts many things abouut the hotel and himself. There is a lot that can be dug into, like the main character's name being Ohm has to mean something and I'm sure theres plenty of Irish gobbledygook that I just don't get. For the film itself, everything looks great, the acting is solid, and the script is pretty tight- they tell you want they want to tell you and, at that, they tell you exactly what will happen pretty early on in the movie. It's like a parable or something. Outside of one cheesey scare early on and one like, studio mandated reminder flashback at the end I didn't have any complaints during my viewing. It's definitely the best horror movie I've seen this year.
This one is begging to be movie nighted, so I only recommend it to those of you who aren't gonna do a movie night with me.

Lee Cronin's The Mummy (2026)

Went to see this on a date night as my first theater feature film back in the real world at the movie theater I used to work at. My SO did not listen to the guy who drives everywhere and also used to work there and we ended up arriving 15 minutes into the movie and I bought a FIVE DOLLAR BOTTLE OF DASANI WATER- while this didn't matter to the movie because you can get the gist pretty easily, it did automatically set my mood to "violently shaking". The reason this movie starts with the director's name is that they really really do not want you to think this is related to The Mummy (2017) starring Tom Cruise as part of the Dark Universe, or that it is related to The Mummy (1999) starring Brendan Fraser. Which should be obvious, but in a world of remakes and legacy sequels I GUESS it makes sense. Regardless, this movie isn't as bad as the former or as lovable as the latter, landing as a dull movie with a poor script.
To not get ahead of myself, I should remind you that Lee Cronin's previous film was a legacy sequel, Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Which was good! It was basically just a modern Evil Dead movie. Apparently there are two more Evil Dead movies slated and neither are directed by Lee Cronin, so this movie feels like his attempt to make another Evil Dead. Or Exorcist. Because this movie is just those two movies slammed together with mummy wrappings. I am not the person to discuss the westoidism of taking history from brown people to use as a coat of paint on your unrelated works, but you can jeer at that if you want to as well. I am just the person to talk about this mid-at-best movie. Skip the next paragraph if you don't want my immaculate synopsis of the film.
In Lee Cronin's The Mummy, a family working in Egypt has their daughter kidnapped right under their nose because they didn't sniff out her arsenal of suspicious chocolates in the bathroom. Eight years later, a lead? box and plane fall out of the sky for reasons that aren't discussed, and the lead box is revealed to house their daughter. The family takes the daughter home, and boy howdy is she fucked up. She's basically catatonic. In a scene where everyone is gathered around her, Abuelita takes her rosary and cross and says a prayer over the girl who suddenly Exorcists up, busting Abuelita's nose and flailing around and nobody thinks this was a bad sign. That night, the family discovers the girl eating scorpions in their house's maintenance halls. Soon after, the mother decides to cut the girl's nails and in a very gruesome scene this basically splits the girls skin from toe to knee and sends her into an animalistic shock where she starts driving some sharp object into the open, bloody wound. Again- is this not a bad sign? From here my recollection gets fuzzy because I could not care less. The dad finds out that the daughter's skin is actually mummy wrappings with demonic bindings phrases on it, which he learns from a Random Specialist™ that plays an Evil Dead-esque tape recording for him. The daughter goes full monster and mind controls the youngest child to... turn her into a brat, I guess? she calls her teacher a cunt, idk. Mummy girl throughs grandma out the window then reanimates her body at her funeral, Evil Dead style. She possesses the middle child too, to make him smack his head against a wall. All throughout this some police officer in Egypt discovers that the daughter was taken by a cult to bind an ancient demon into her, because they have to do that and apparently the demon-binding only lasts so long so it works better with a child. This officer meets up with the family and shows them the proof of the binding and then in a climactic shitstorm of StuffHappens, the father sacrifices himself to be demon-bound. Which works, despite not having him mummified at all? like they dont have the mystical bindings or the lead sarcophagus or anything, he just conveniently has a sarcophagus he used as storage. And then after that they go back to being a big happy family, the daughter has her skin back, the middle child doesn't have brain trauma, and the youngest daughter definitely regrew all her teeth that she pulled out earlier even though only one was still a baby tooth.
Honestly, the biggest criticisms I have are all related to the above. Though there's still some to pull out- the lead actor, who portrayed the boyfriend in my most-hated Midsommar (2019), is stiff as a board. Which sucks, because the parental connections are basically the emotional crux of the movie. Lee Cronin has a mouth obsession, I think, after seeing this and Evil Dead Rise. Lots of mouth zooms. Some seemingly reasonless. Even with that, the movie looks good and all the creepy visuals are creepy and some are genuinely gnarly. The problem is that there's basically no tension from one to the next, and the highs aren't really high enough for it to even be a rollercoaster of scares. I walked out of the theater thinking "This was fine" but after writing this, it might be worse than I thought. It's definitely the worst movie I've reviewed here (so far).

Dark City (1998)

In my quest to watch more cult movies I heard of this film that partially inspired the aesthetics of House Delaque in Necromunda, alongside inspiring many scifi films after it despite predominantly living in their shadow- which makes sense, since this movie came out only a year before The Matrix and covers similar enough themes. That and a grand conspiracy at play were all I knew going into this- and I'm glad I didn't dig deeper. To keep your experience in line with mine, I won't be spoiling much of this movie as I do recommend it.
Dark City is about a man that wakes up with amnesia and a dead woman nearby. He receives an ominous phone call telling him that people are after him and he must not let them catch him. After this unfolds a story about memories being manipulated on a major scale and a city that can't fathom what happens in the shadows. Any more than that would get into spoiler territory. However, I have to talk about what I didn't like about the film because some of it is very apparent very early on. The pacing at the start is close to abysmal- things happen at breakneck pace without any time to sit or develop, such as the main character's identity not really being a mystery. I also have to mention that the climax of the movie feels very dated and cliche. It was over the top and almost unintentionally comical, and the ending afterward felt probably too over-explained. The acting is also... on the low end of okay.
With the negatives out of the way, I definitely want to mention what I like about the film- starting with the reason for the rushed setup. All of it was just leading up to reveal that something much, much bigger is at play than just a simple amnesia and stalking case. When the current case detective visits the former case detective, it really cemented how interested I was in the mystery. It felt very True Detective in the best possible way. This movie also oozes atmosphere. It's always dark and grimey and filthy, set in a constantly moving nightmare city who's architecture is equal parts Gotham and weird future art deco. The special effects are also, mostly, pretty solid especially with what they swing for in the film. It all comes together to form a very unique and genuinely cool scifi mystery movie.

Mulholland Drive (2001)

One of the Trifecta of the greatest movies ever made. Mulholland Drive tells the simple story of a young woman named Betty trying to make it in Hollywood. Unfortunately, this is David Lynch's Hollywood.
Betty, immediately after moving to Mulholland Drive meets Rita, who is wounded and has amnesia and has decided to make herself at home in Betty's apartment. The story of Betty and Rita searching for the latter's true identity is interspersed with seeming non sequiturs about a film director whose wife cheats on him with Billy Ray Cyrus, and a homeless person jumpscare. The search for who Rita is leads them both to a disturbing, dreamlike state where the truth is revealed to them, and in a way to us the audience.
Much of this is left to interpretation but all the pieces to the puzzle are at our disposal. Roger Ebert wrote "There is no explanation. There may not even be a mystery." Whatever we derive from the film is correct. It is about alternate realities and the Hollywood machine and the death of the American Dream. Each time I watch Mulholland Drive, I have a different takeaway. It has not gotten old in the decade since I first saw it, and I can't imagine it getting old later.

The Swimmer (1968)

I began the year watching a few "cult classic" films I had never watched for one reason or another, and my most recent one was The Swimmer. This film is based on a short story that was only 12 pages long and may be the first instance of a film adding elements to a story that don't feel like plot contrivances.
I think it is best to go into this movie knowing nothing, so I will spoil nothing except the barest synopsis: a man of apparent wealth swims in his friend's pool and decides he will swim in all of the pools between this home and his own. What unfurls through this journey is a tragic look into the American dream and the consequences of wealth. This is a hazy, dreamlike journey where you learn the deep flaws of the protagonist but cannot help to pity him by the end. All of this is bolstered by an absolutely fantastic musical score that adds so much value to the scenes. I think this movie was genuinely ahead of its time and I think more people should see it.

The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)

This was a movie I had been meaning to watch for a few years now but I never went out of my way to do so. Recently it was free streaming, thanks Tubi, so I was able to sit down and be entranced by it. So entranced that I immediately wanted to watch it again.
Matt Damon plays Tom Ripley, a chameleon of a man who basically makes a career off of playing as other people. Through one of these jobs, he meets the wealthy Mr. Greenleaf who thinks Tom went to school with his son, Dickie, and asks Tom to go to Italy to convince Dickie to come home. Tom obliges as his expenses will be covered, and he befriends Dickie- and Dickie's girlfriend- by posing as an old friend from Princeton. Through getting to know him, Tom becomes obsessed with both Dickie's extravagant lifestyle and Dickie himself. Through some great acting, you as the viewer also become accustomed to these characters before a second act twist changes the course of the rest of the movie- which I will not be spoiling here. There are a few places where I feel the movie drags a bit but overall the escapades of Tom Ripley are a great experience.

Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)

This movie inspired the aesthetic for Bloodborne and that was my entire reason to watch it. Honestly, outside of the beginning the aesthetic was not very present throughout the movie so, in hindsight, that was a terrible reason to watch it. However, I absolutely do not regret my decision to use two and half hours of my time to watch a French 🤢 film.
To start, I could only find this movie with an English dub and even though French is an abomination it goes without saying that this movie would be leagues better in its native language. That aside, this movie totally rips. It is set in the late 1700s, about a French naturalist, Grégoire, and his Mohawk tribe 'brother', Mani, being tasked by the French royal court to track down, identify, and bring back the mythical Beast of Gévaudan- which in the real world was probably a wolf but the legends of it and stories from the time basically put it on par with a werewolf and it is a very fascinating story. Throughout the hunts, Grégoire befriends a young Marquis and begins a romance with a Madame while having affairs with an Italian courtesan.
The first half is a monster hunt and the second half is a man hunt, when it is revealed that the beast has a master that it follows. I don't think the reveal of who the master is ends up being all too surprising, but the reveals surrounding it are pretty awesome and deeper than I anticipated. The movie has some flaws, like how it uses more slow-motion than a Zack Snyder movie and how Mani is severely underutilized, but it is a cool story, is visually interesting, and does have a pretty sweet aesthetic even when it's not Bloodborne- I am a sucker for the1600s to 1800s French aesthetic because of swashbuckling movies like the Three Musketeers and Count of Monte Cristo. The movie is sometimes hurt by the 90s to early 00s cheese, but in the final confrontation the villain pulls out the full "Roar Zabimaru" and it totally fucks. This movie is absolutely worth your time if you want a different action movie. It also makes me want to revisit the Mask of Zorro for some reason.

Rob Roy (1995)

In this period drama that google suggested was a swashbuckler, Rob Roy, Liam Neeson plays Scottish highlander Robert Roy MacGregor under 18th century English occupation. He lived his life and made a name for himself among the highlanders, and now just cares for his people. He decides to make enough to support them better by taking out a thousand-pound loan from the ruling Marquess that he will use to turn a profit in cattle sales. This, however, turns sour as his trust and honor are taken advantage of and lead to the misfortune of his people.
I love the highlands as a setting and honestly this might be the best Liam Neeson acting I've seen (still just kinda aight tho) but the real stars are Jessica Lange who plays his wife, and Tim Roth who plays the most easily hated villain I've seen in a while. If any part of this movie takes from swashbucklers, it's him. The film almost says something about masculinity and what honor means, but it also wants to portray Rob Roy in the most legendary way possible, so it does shy away from those bigger topics, though I don't feel this takes away from the movie too much.
The movie is a little long at two hours but it keeps things moving fast enough especially past the halfway mark and it ends with a fantastically realistic sword duel. Just a few film cuts, no music, no shakey-cam. Two men- pretty sure they aren't even using stunt doubles- and their blades going at it for a few minutes. It rocks, even if it might not be bombastic enough for modern audiences. I think the subdued nature only helps sell the realism. I'm probably going to rewatch The Northman now.

a Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (TV)

My only experience with Game of Thrones was watching two or three episodes on my friends couch before a party. All I remember was shirtless Jason Momoa. After the catastrophe of the ending of the show, I decided I probably just shouldn't bother with it- and I didn't. But from the start, this intrigued me. A limited series and a very grounded story about a knight. By episode four I heard only great things and decided to give it go. Overall, I'd say it's pretty good! It's pretty cliche in what it does, and the surprises aren't too surprising- even for a non-GoT knower. Everything in the show is small-scale, grounded, and for the most part well-shot. I wish the combat wasn't as messy as it was but it's supposed to put you in Duncan's shoes so it gets a pass. I think episode four was definitely the peak, and episode five was my low. By that point you're pretty set on Ser Duncan's side, so having like half an episode dedicated to his pre-knight backstory felt unnecessary- where he started doesn't matter here. And episode six started with a, in my opinion, very unfitting musical sting and was sent to credits with Sixteen Tons by Tennessee Ford?? which almost made me laugh out loud at how goofy it was but doesn't impact the story at all. If you have around 4 hours to kill I would recommend a Knight of the Nine Kingdoms.

Heathers (1989)

Heathers is one of my trifecta of perfect movies, imperfect as it is. It's a satirical black comedy about a girl named Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) who happens to be friends with (useful to) the popular group of girls, the Heathers. She meets an amazingly cringey anarchist named JD who likes to say a lot of things with no meaning and falls hard for him. With his planning, they "stage" the "suicides" of multiple popular students as pranks, in reality just straight murdering them. Blinded by JD's coolness, it takes Veronica a while to realize he's kind of messed up and needs to be stopped.
Heathers is a borderline mean-spirited black comedy that hates the ideals of small-town America and really hates the sappy teen movies of the 80s. It makes light of serious topics in the most absurd manner and is always funny. With one of the (attempted) kills, JD could find nothing wrong with the Heather's life so he just takes her copy of Moby Dick and just circles the word "eskimo" because it's mysterious and he's stupid- and the school faculty also buy into it. And who could forget "I love my dead gay son!" This movie just hits all the right buttons and everything is perfect. It even steals from Lynch with a blue-light dream sequence.
I feel like if I talk about the movie I should mention the musical- it's good. My favorite songs are Our Love is God and, of course, My Dead Gay Son. If you know any younger women of loose morals they probably like the song Candy Store. I like that the musical doesn't really change all that much, just adds some fun songs to it which in some places does really halt the pacing, because it tries to give everyone their song spotlight including the very much side character Martha "Dumptruck", which I had to fast forward through.
Before ending, I should also mention there was a reboot show made for I believe Paramount+ that had like 12 episodes all filmed but only got 3 of them aired before being cancelled because it was that bad. I recommend just watching a youtube video on that trainwreck because it is impressively bad. I should have mentioned it in my "the left isn't funny" post because it is a prime example of very liberal comedy people writing something that comes off practically redpilled because of how badly they handle satire. ANYWAYS Heathers the movie is good and is my most rewatched movie and I think everyone should watch it!

👏👏 MOVIE REVIEW