Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004)

  

Detective Togusa (Kōichi Yamadera) is assigned to work with cybernetically-enhanced Batou (Akio Ōtsuka) to investigate a series of murders.  Female sex-bots are killing their owners and then self-destructing.  The cops trace the bots back to a company called Locus Solus which may have ties to organized crime.

This continues the what-is-a-soul-and-who-gets-to-have-one philosophizing from the first movie.  I found it a little hard to follow, but that could be because I was expecting more plot.  I kept waiting for it to be something more, but it's pretty straightforward as a crime story because it would rather ask questions about morals and ethics when dealing with consciousness.  That's fine.  It's a choice.  Batou is a less interesting character than Major Kusanagi was and the movie suffers a little from her absence, if only because he clearly hasn't moved on.  

Also, and this is purely personal, I hate the term "gynoid."  I understand that it is technically correct, since the robots are female and the andro in android means male but I don't like it.  Probably because it's too close to a dumber version used by incels.  It just set my teeth on edge every time they said it in the movie.

This is streaming in its entirety on YouTube but I could only find the dubbed version, not the original Japanese audio.  

The Thursday Murder Club (2025)

  I thought this was a series.  Even when I saw the runtime was an hour and a half long, all I thought was "oh, a British series."  Nope.  It's a movie.  

Joyce (Celia Imrie) is very enthused about moving into the Coopers Chase retirement community.  Even more so when she gets invited to be a provisional member of the Thursday Murder Club, a group of retirees of varying backgrounds who solve cold cases.  As a former nurse, Joyce brings a wealth of medical knowledge to the team, which includes Ibrahim (Ben Kingsley), a psychiatrist; Ron (Pierce Brosnan), a union organizer and general blue-collar guy; and Elizabeth (Helen Mirren) who did shady Cold War shit that she can't talk about.  The group finds itself sidetracked by a much more recent murder, however, when one of the owners of Coopers Chase winds up dead while the surviving partner (David Tennant) plans to sell the property and kick all the old folks out.  Now they have to solve the case before they lose their home.

This is ridiculously cute.  Everyone involved is phenomenal and it is a breezy, cozy murder romp.  If the Great British Baking Show hunted Paul Hollywood for sport, this is what it would look like.  Cannot recommend enough.  It's streaming on Netflix.

Horro Watch 2025 - Day 31- The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016)

  Holy shit, we made it to Halloween!  Honestly did not think it was going to happen this year.  Content warning:  blood, gore, medical horror/autopsy, organ removal, animal death (cat)

A father (Brian Cox) and son (Emile Hirsch) coroner team try to determine the cause of death of an unidentified young woman (Olwen Kelly) found half-buried in the basement of a crime scene.  The more they discover, the less they know as they come face-to-shotgun-blown-off-face with evil.

This was so fucking cathartic, I can't even begin to tell you.  Initially, I was really hoping it would turn out to be about vampires (side note:  did not get a single vampire or werewolf movie this month.  Disappointing.) but this was honestly just as good.  Hirsch and Cox are seasoned pros, great actors, but Olwen Kelly lay naked and motionless on a table for an hour and a half and commanded the entire screen.  Incredible work.  You know the gif of Louise Belcher laughing maniacally in front of flames?  That was me in the last 20 minutes of this movie.  Even though she killed Stanley the cat.  RIP, Stanley.  I love you, Jane Doe, you cold-hearted bad bitch.  An inspiration to us all.

Happy Halloween to all the bad bitches, good witches, and everybody else in the back of the Dragula!  The Autopsy of Jane Doe is streaming on Shudder, Kanopy, Tubi, and weirdly, The CW.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 30 - Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (2018)

  I was really worried that I was going to go the entire month without a single Asian horror.  Content warning:  blood

A Korean YouTube crew called Horror Times decides to livestream their investigation into an abandoned psychiatric facility with a very sordid past.  Gonjiam was once a beacon of mental health but closed under mysterious circumstances in the late '70s after a bunch of patients died.  Since then, intrepid ghost hunters have tried to solve the mystery of Room 402, the only locked room in the building.  Horror Times is hoping to get one million views by sending six crew members armed with GoPros inside.  Half the crew knows the real secret:  they're faking the haunting to boost view numbers.  But as they progress further up the levels, they realize it may be real after all.

Ah, solid supernatural horror!  You just can't beat it.  And despite the fact that nearly all the camera work is handheld, there's not nearly as much shaky-cam as you'd expect.  The end gets a little silly, almost over-the-top, but that is a very minor complaint.  Great performances, especially from Moon Ye-won, who played Charlotte.  This is an excellent ghost movie.  It's streaming on AMC+, which I get through Amazon.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 29 - The Rule of Jenny Pen (2024)

  Ah, a new sub-genre:  Old People Horror, where the horror is you're old and disabled.  We'll consider this an off-shoot of Women's Horror.  Content warning:  urine, abuse, sexual assault, small amount of blood

Judge Stefan Mortensen (Geoffrey Rush) is recovering from a stroke in a nursing home when he runs afoul of the resident psychopath (John Lithgow) and his puppet, Jenny Pen.  Trapped in a failing body, Mortensen rails against the petty tyrant, but soon discovers that it is nearly impossible to succeed when no one likes you.

This is like the third (fourth?) movie I've seen this month that involves someone pouring urine on someone else as an act of psychological warfare.  Very odd.

Lithgow I get, he's done horror before, but I was absolutely stunned to see Rush.  He does a great job, though.  It is basically One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest but in an old folk's home, so it's solid material to work with.  Made me wish we took horror seriously as a genre.  Lithgow is completely unhinged here.  You love to see it.  The New Zealand accent probably could have used some more work but I can forgive.  

No supernatural element, no jump scares, no gore; if psychological thrillers are more your bag, this is an excellent entry.  There is a cat that can sense death (nothing happens to it), but I feel like most animals can do that.  I was not bored or annoyed at any point.  Really well done, all around.  It's streaming on Hulu.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 28 - The Old Dark House (1932)

  Shout out to Gabe from Movie Club for the suggestion!  

Five strangers are stranded in a terrible storm at the only house for miles.  They are a fairly jolly bunch but their hosts, the Fremm siblings, are morose, weirdly fanatic, and dour, while their creepy butler (Boris Karloff) is handsy when drunk.  As the night progresses, romance blooms and the dark secrets of the house are revealed.

This movie is great!  I'm a huge fan of Golden Age Universal horror and this is by the same director as Frankenstein.  I can't believe I'd never heard of it before.  The cast is stacked.  Melvyn Douglas in particular is a scene-stealer.  Karloff is silent once more and not nearly as tall as I had thought he was.  He does have really beautiful hands, though.  Definitely wins the month for most romantic horror movie.  It's streaming on Kanopy.  Highly recommend, especially if you like '30s horror.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 27 - The Invitation (2015)

  I thought this was going to be about werewolves.  It was not.  Content warning:  dead child (off-screen), suicide attempt, dead animal (coyote, very much on screen and making the sad dog noises)

Will (Logan Marshall-Green) is bringing his new girlfriend, Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi), to a dinner party at his ex-wife Eden's (Tammy Blanchard) house.  It is hideously awkward because Eden re-married and disappeared to Mexico for two years and this is the first time anyone in their friend group has seen either her or Will.  Worse, she and her new husband, David (Michiel Huisman), brought some of their weird new "spiritual retreat" friends to pitch The Invitation, a grief counseling/wellness/cult-type thing.  

This is a movie about weaponized social contracts.  Even though everyone is uncomfortable, no one tries to leave until it's way too late.  As an autistic person, that made no fucking sense to me.  So I was already annoyed by these people.  And the dialogue is weirdly stiff and stage-y.  Also, no werewolves!  

Admittedly, I am judging it a little harshly because of my own expectations.  Don't do that and you'll likely enjoy it more than I did.  It's streaming on Kanopy.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 26 - I See You (2019)

  This was so lame.  Ugh.  We have not been on a winning streak here for the last few days.  Halloween is less than a week away so things better start picking up soon.  Content warning:  blood, violence, child abduction/murder

The Harper family is experiencing some stress.  Jackie (Helen Hunt) had an affair, which has completely wrecked her marriage to Greg (Jon Tenney), a cop who has just had a child in town go missing in a way eerily reminiscent of child abductions and murders fifteen years ago, and strained her relationship to her teenage son, Connor (Judah Lewis).  On top of all that, things around the house are going missing, pictures disappearing from frames, electronics turning on seemingly by themselves, escalating to violence.  

This was so boring that I immediately forgot the ending even though I just watched it.  I had to look it up on Wikipedia.  It seems like it wants to be smarter than it is but really, nothing made any sense.  Nobody's character motivations seemed plausible and the middle third is basically a repeat of the beginning but from a different POV so you're watching the exact same movie twice.  I've seen that done well, but not here.  Helen Hunt is completely wasted.  I kept waiting for her to have a bigger part.  Hugely disappointing, but that's just me.  If you like procedurals grounded in human-on-human violence, rather than supernatural, you might enjoy this.  It's streaming on Paramount+.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 25 - Creep (2014)

  I'm counting this as Women's Horror.  There's no blood, no gore, only one violent scene, but if you're a woman, this might still be pretty triggering.  Proceed with caution.

Aaron (Patrick Brice) gets hired to do a day of videography for Josef (Mark Duplass), who has terminal cancer and wants to record a video diary for his unborn son.  As the day progresses, Aaron gets more and more uncomfortable with Josef's overly affectionate behavior, weirdly intimate questions, and sudden attempts to startle and scare.  

This is just a horrible blind date.  If you are a woman attracted to straight guys, you have likely had a fairly similar experience at some point in your life of a dude being overly familiar, unwilling to accept the word "no," and disrespecting your boundaries while claiming everything is a joke.  If you were very, very unlucky (a little more than 1 in 100,000), it ended exactly like this.  So this movie will feel exhausting.  If you are a dude, this is what you look like when you do this shit.  Stop.  No one likes it.

It's not found footage, technically, but there is a lot of shaky-cam and we all know how I feel about that.  Duplass and Brice are solid performers; I just didn't care for this at all.  It's streaming on Netflix.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 24 - Heretic (2025)

  I was worried this was over-hyped and it definitely was.  Lower your expectations, kids.  Content warning:  blood, mild gore

Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East) are Mormon missionaries.  That's not the horror part, calm down.  They are nice young ladies who just want to share their beliefs.  Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant) indicated interest, so they go and knock on his door.  He, too, wants to share some deeply-held beliefs.  Unfortunately, his beliefs tend to be a little more ...visceral.  

In principle, I believe that religion --like all things-- should be mined for horror.  There's a lot of really valuable stuff there!  But this feels like some smug-ass r/philosophy post that somehow got Hugh Grant money.  And sort of feels like it's punching down at Mormons?  Which is bizarre considering the Church of Latter-Day Saints is a very large Christian denomination that rakes in billions of dollars!  Maybe it only seems like that because the personification of the Church is two young, naive women that spend a good chunk of running time standing helplessly mute.  It just kind of made me feel icky for watching.  It's streaming on HBO Max and a lot of people really, really liked it.  I just wasn't one of them.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 23 - Halloweentown (1998)

  More family-friendly fare from Disney.

Marnie (Kimberley J. Brown) has always felt like something was off but didn't know what until she overhears her mother (Judith Hoag) and grandmother (Debbie Reynolds) arguing one Halloween night.  Grandma wants Marnie to embrace her powers as the latest in a long line of witches living in the sister world of Halloweentown while Mom wants her to become fully human like Marnie's father was.  Marnie and her two younger siblings follow their Grandma back to Halloweentown and learn that Grandma is trying to fight an evil being that has started stealing people.  

This was a Disney Channel made-for-TV movie, which explains why I've never heard of it.  The story feels very rushed but also extremely half-assed.  There's almost no world-building but there are a ton of people walking around in foam rubber costumes.  The only truly entertaining thing is the interactions between the child actors who play Marnie and Dylan (Joey Zimmerman).  Their energy feels like real siblings, even if the script lets them down.  If you grew up with this --and it has at least two sequels so some of you did-- then I'm sure there's a lot of nostalgia.  I didn't so this was a miss for me.  But it is completely suitable for children to watch.  No blood, no jump scares, nothing.  Safe as houses.  It's currently streaming on Disney+.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 22 - Caveat (2020)

  This was such a fun surprise!  Right now, this is this year's Oddity.  Content warning:  blood

Isaac (Jonathan French) had an unspecified that left him with some short-term memory issues.  He has blackouts but they're mostly harmless.  They do keep him from finding real employment so when his old friend Moe Barrett (Ben Caplan) offers him a grand to do some light babysitting, Isaac is hard-pressed to say no.  Even when it turns out that the assignment is on a remote island and the charge is Moe's schizophrenic niece Olga (Leila Sykes) who falls into catatonic stupors and has chronic nosebleeds.  Oh, and her father (Conor Dwane) committed suicide in the basement and her mother (Imma Pavon) has been missing for eight months.  And Isaac has to wear a vest attached to a chain that restricts him from going in Olga's room.  For her safety.  Uh-huh.  

At no point did I know what was going to happen in this movie.  Do you have any idea how rare that is for me?  And not "oh, I thought it was this but I was wrong."  That happens to me a lot.  Genuine *shrug* "who knows??"  Every choice he made was fascinatingly wrong!  

Did I love the musical cues tied to jump scares?  No.  But I will say that it used the geography of the house to really good effect, like a well-set-up game of Mousetrap.  Also, best use of a tea cozy in a horror film.  A++.  It's streaming on Tubi and I feel like it's seriously underrated.  If you like Gothic thrillers but wish they were a bit more rustic, this is for you.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 21 - Ghostwatch (1992)

  Absolutely phenomenal movie.  Especially considering the budget and time period.  Content warning:  blood, verbal description of animal death (dog), off-screen assault of a child

A BBC program does a live feed from "the most haunted house in Britain" as a television special for Halloween but the crew gets a little more than they bargained for as mysterious phenomena begins to happen.  

This has become quite notorious in a War of the Worlds kind of way.  It aired precisely once on TV, presented as a real documentary and not fictional, and has never been re-shown in the U.K.  Frankly, that is world-class commitment to the bit.  Wikipedia says an estimated one million people called in to complain/praise the broadcast, though it does say that number is dubious.  Regardless, this was impeccably done.  If you liked Late Night with the Devil, you should definitely see Ghostwatch.  

I do want to add that how they describe the ghost's identity at the end felt a little transphobic and if that is your read, I will absolutely not argue with you about it.  I decided that it was more about possession, but that is only my take.  Not to be spoiler-y, but a word of caution.  

It is streaming on AMC+ and Shudder, which I get through Amazon.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 20 - I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025)

  I am starting to despise the term "legacyquel".  Content warning:  blood, gore

A group of friends accidentally cause the death of a stranger on the 4th of July and decide to cover it up instead of coming clean.  A year later, one (Madelyn Cline) receives an anonymous note stating that someone knows about their indiscretion.  Guilty and afraid, the group digs into the past of their town, discovering that a similar incident took place in 1997, where a vigilante in a fisherman's coat carved up that year's hot twenty-somethings.  They reach out to a survivor (Jennifer Love Hewitt) for advice before the bodies start piling even higher.

I never watched the original or any of the sequels so some of this was probably wasted on me.  It's still pretty decent.  I was a little annoyed at how indiscriminate the killings seemed to be but the Evil Monologue actually tied it all together, so I will give it points for that.  Overall, a solid enough slasher.  It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 19 - Cutting Class (1989)

  The 80s are responsible for a lot of garbage.  Content warning:  blood

Creepy kid Brian (Donovan Leitch, Jr.) is finally released from the mental institution where he spent the last five years after killing his father to finish his senior year of high school.  He has a crush on Paula (Jill Schoelen) who is unfortunately dating his ex-best friend, Dwight (Brad Pitt).  And then the murders start up again and wouldn't you know?  Brian is suspect number one.

There is a kernel of a very good horror comedy here and I bet it was probably better in 1989 (it feels like Scream especially owes a debt to Cutting Class) but holy shit, this has not aged well.  Paula's character giggles every time a male character sexually harasses her and has very little agency.  She mostly just gets pulled from one scene to another, usually half-dressed.  The tension between Leitch and Pitt is very strong and if the movie were a little braver, that subtext would be actual text.  Make that triangle a pyramid, you know what I'm sayin'?

I can't dismiss it out of hand because it does have something but I am issuing a strong word of caution.  It's streaming on Tubi, Freevee (or whatever nonsense Amazon is calling their free shit now), the Roku Channel, and Crackle with ads or on Kanopy with a library card.  I would actually suggest you lean into the trashy sleaze of it and watch with ads.  

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 18 - A Nasty Piece of Work (2019)

  This is actually part of a horror anthology series called Into the Dark produced by Blumhouse for Hulu, with each episode centering on a different holiday.  I didn't know that when I clicked on it.  I'm still counting it.  Content warning:  blood

Ted (Kyle Howard) is desperate to get ahead at his venture capitalist firm but his boss, Steven Essex (Julian Sands, RIP), is almost impossible to please.  So Ted jumps at the invitation to Essex's home for a Christmas party, only to discover that Essex also invited Ted's rival, Gavin (Dustin Milligan), and is treating the evening as a fucked up interview for an executive position.  As the games get nastier and bloodier, Ted has to decide the cost of success he is comfortable paying.

Sands and Molly Hagan are absolutely, gloriously evil as the jaded, rich Essexes.  If you liked Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf but thought it needed more gunshot wounds, this is for you.  Milligan again shows some excellent comedic timing, as does Natalie Hall.  The dialogue is nice and sharp, if a little predictable, and the end is a satisfying inevitability.  All in all, a solid Christmas horror comedy.  It is episode three of season 2  of Into the Dark if you are looking, streaming on Hulu.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 17 - The Collector (2009)

  This was a nasty, filthy little movie and I'm not mad at it at all.  Content warning:  blood, gore, animal death (cat, dog), torture, homophobic slurs

Arkin (Josh Stewart) needs money by midnight so he decides to rob the house of a rich family because he knows they are out of town.  Unfortunately, a serial killer (Juan Fernández) has also targeted them and Arkin is not invited to the vicious little games he has planned.  The thief-turned-rescuer must figure out how to save this family while remaining undetected and avoiding the shockingly elaborate traps set up throughout the house.

On God, how much prep time did this dude have?  This is Kevin McAllister levels of fucked up booby traps.  I would have loved to see a little more whimsy in the design but that is a personal preference and I am never going to knock the hustle.  Also, can I tell you how much I loved the Collector's whole design?  The mask, the eyeshine, the silence?  Iconic.  Leave them wanting more, queen.  

It's streaming on Paramount+ if modern horror is a little too in your feels.  

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 16 - Presence (2024)

  Content warning:  sexual assault

Chloe (Callina Liang) and her family have only just moved into their new house when she becomes convinced that they are not alone.  She believes it is the spirit of her friend, Nadia (Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Film), who died of a drug overdose, but the only person who is willing to listen is her dad (Chris Sullivan).  Her brother (Eddie Maday) thinks she's making it up and her mom (Lucy Liu) barely pays attention to her at all.  Is it just a manifestation of teen grief and neglect?  Nope!  Stuff flies all around and outside help is called.

I didn't love the ending of this but I had the same problem with The Haunting of Hill House.  Otherwise, this is a solid ghost story.  All the camera work is shot from the ghost's POV so there's this sense of fluidity unmoored from time and the family dynamics felt realistic and natural.  Personally, I hit my limit on the amount of drama --some of this was a little overwrought-- but your mileage may vary.  Lucy Liu is full-on Tiger Mom here in an understated supporting role, but the standout to me was the gloriously named West Mulholland as Cool Kid/Teenage Heartthrob Ryan.  

This is directed by Steven Soderbergh who I am generally not a fan of but I know a lot of people like.  It's streaming on Kanopy and has no blood, no gore, just a couple of really tense moments if you're more into atmospheric horror.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 15 - Companion (2025)

This is my 3000th post!    I loved this so much.  I'm sad it took almost half the month to get to it, but better late than never.  Content warning:  blood, gore, domestic violence, sexual assault

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) is nervous about traveling with her boyfriend, Josh (Jack Quaid), for a weekend at his friend's "cabin", which is actually a huge lakeside house.  And it doesn't really belong to Josh's friend, Kat (Megan Suri), but to her shady Russian boyfriend, Sergei (Rupert Friend, looking damn near unrecognizable).  Things get worse when Sergei tries to sexually assault Iris and she has to kill him, but then she finds out that she's actually just Josh's fuckbot: a literal companion android, and that he's planning to shut her down and turn her over to the manufacturer.  Suddenly, Iris is experiencing a whole new range of important internal directives, like self-preservation and righteous anger.  

This might become my new litmus test for whether or not dudes are okay to date.  With whom do you sympathize in this movie?  There is a wrong answer and a right answer.  Between this and The Menu, I've got my traps all set.  

If you watched Ex Machina, and thought, yes, more, please, this is for you.  Also, if you have ever dated a dude who treated you like an emotional support robot that they could fuck.  

Ultimately, this is a feel-good movie about empowerment and liking who you are.  It's currently streaming on HBO Max and I highly recommend it.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 14 - Found Footage (2025)

  Disappointing.  Content warning:  some blood, some (not enough) gore 

A professional documentary crew decides to follow an amateur independent filmmaker, Chase (Brennan Keel Cook), as he tries to make a found footage horror film about Bigfoot.   Unfortunately, the only budget-friendly (i.e., free) location available is a cabin time-share owned by 1st Assistant Director/Chase's girlfriend Natalie's (Erika Vetter) parents.  The crew accidentally knocks over a decorative ash circle in the basement while trying to store some gear and frees something that damn sure isn't Bigfoot.

I love a good mockumentary and I hate found footage so I thought this was going to be a slam dunk but it's not.  It's not funny enough to be a comedy, not witty enough to be a satire about film-making, and not bloody enough to be good horror.  Swing and a miss.  It's streaming on Amazon Prime.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 13 - Perfect Blue (1997)

  This is cheating a little bit because it's a pick from Movie Club but it ends up on horror lists so I'm counting it.  Content warning:  blood, some gore, sexual assault (simulated), sexual assault (real), dead animals (fish)

Mima (Junko Iwao) is trying to shed her pop idol persona to become an actress but between the FOMO of the girl group doing better without her, the stalker website pretending to be her while posting insane amounts of personal data without her permission, and the violent rape scene she has to shoot over and over for her movie part, her psyche is pretty much at its limit.  Oh, yeah, and then there are the murders of people around her.

Ah, Animated Women's Horror!  A new sub-genre!

This movie has a lot to unpack about the commodification of women's bodies, internalized misogyny, the male gaze, and the patriarchal concept of purity being used to infantilize women.  That being said, it's also pretty exploitative, so I will not judge you if you want to skip this one.  It's good, but I don't know if I'd ever watch it again myself.  

It's considered a classic anime film so it's currently playing in theaters.  Someone gave me the DVD ages ago but I just hadn't gotten to it before.  

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 12 - Host (2020)

  Okay, the first thing you need to know is that this poster is wildly overselling this movie.  It is not the scariest film of the past decade.  Not even close.  Content warning:  blood, violence

Bored in quarantine, six friends get together on a Zoom call to have a seance.  Only Haley (Haley Bishop) is a true believer; the rest are just there for a good time.  But when Jemma's (Jemma Moore) joking angers an entity, all the participants are suddenly fighting for their lives.

Before I delve too deeply, let me say that I enjoyed watching this.  It's not a bad movie.  Better than Paranormal Activity but not quite as good as Unfriended.  Maybe because I saw Unfriended first.  I had to get my praise in early, because the rest of this is probably going to sound super negative.  

This was filmed during the pandemic and it is not subtle.  All of the characters are isolated, forced to watch their friends suffering, unable to help or even help themselves as an invisible force invades their homes and kills them.  It is 56 minutes long, so it barely even qualifies as a feature-length film but that works to its advantage.  There's no time to really establish them as characters unless you have been part of a similar kind of friend group.  Then you can do some mental shortcuts.  Should they have spent more time fleshing them out?  Eh.  I was good with just the bare bones, especially since that meant there was more time to focus on the supernatural shit happening.  If anything, I would have put extra into the ending, since that did feel very rushed and unsatisfying.  Can't hate the hustle, though!  It's currently streaming on Netflix.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 11 - Stay (2025)

  Man, if you think relationship counseling sucks, imagine if your therapist was a spirit.  Can't even escape your problems in death.  Content warning:  drowning, suicide

Kiara (Megalyn Echikunwoke) and Miles (Mo McRae) were a couple once.  But now they are separated, estranged, and trying to move the rest of their stuff out of what they thought was going to be their forever home.  Desperate to feel some kind of connection, Kiara performs a spell to reach back to the spirits of her ancestors, but frees something else instead, trapping her and Miles in the house.

This is like the sweeter, kinder version of Bring Her Back.  There's no gore, no blood, just a lot of crying and watching a couple Go Through It.  It's steeped in West African folklore, which is great to see.  I would have like a sharper script but honestly, I'm not mad at it.  It's nice.  This is a ghost story for people who don't like horror.  Which is fine!  Baby steps are still steps!  Maybe you just want a little something spooky  that isn't going to raise your blood pressure.  This is for you!  It's streaming on Hulu.

Horror Watch 2025 - Day 10 - Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Meyers (1988)

  It's not a Halloween horror watch without a legacy franchise sequel.  Also, I ran out of streaming services really quickly so we're back to my TBW list.  Content warning:  blood, some gore

Michael Myers (George P. Wilbur) was confined to a state facility after murdering a whole bunch of people in 1978.  Now, a decade later, he is being transferred to a different one.  It seems safe since he's in a coma after being shot and set on fire by his former psychiatrist, Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance).  But one of the transfer doctors casually mentions that Myers has a 7-year-old niece, Jamie (Danielle Harris), living in his hometown, which snaps him out of it pretty handily.  Refreshed and looking to once again end his family line, Myers powerwalks to Haddonfield.  Loomis knows Myers is Evil Incarnate and is not looking to add another tiny victim to his conscience.  He reaches out to the Sheriff (Beau Starr) as well as the local drunk vigilante group, because he is taking no chances.

This movie does not overstay its welcome, I can tell you that.  It is a tight 88 minutes and it gets right to the point.  It's also a lot more tame than I was expecting.  There's violence, sure, but not nearly as graphic or lurid as other entries.  There is a lot of crying, though.  Like a LOT.  

It's streaming on AMC+ which I get through Amazon.

2025 Horror Watch - Day 9 - Organ Trail (2023)

  This one is just a victim of its own marketing.  How are you going to call yourself Organ Trail and not have cannibals??  I don't even feel bad about it.  You did this to yourself.  Content warning:  dead animal (rabbit), blood, dog/wolf whimpering (not on-screen, but audibly a dog/wolf/coyote gets caught in a trap and chews its own foot off, then leaves a blood trail.  It's not part of the plot and is never referred to again so if you are sensitive, I would fast-forward about a minute before pressing play.)

A family in the wilderness come across another covered wagon that had its inhabitants murdered.  They take in the survivor (Olivia Grace Applegate) only to learn the hard way that she is not what she seems.  Now Abigale (Zoe de Grand Maison) must find a way to survive and avenge her family from the gang of murderers who would deliberately injure a woman to use her as bait.  

Ah, the return of Women's Horror proper.  This isn't terrible, but it's also not very good.  It's fine.  Clearly, a lot of effort and thought went into it.  It's just that the characters aren't compelling and the story is basic.  There's nothing about it that makes it unique or special.  It's not a rape-revenge, thank God, and it was written by a woman (also a plus) who gave her female characters agency and recognized that Black people existed in the Old West as landowners and contemporaries, not just slaves and servants.  All good.  I just don't think it went far enough.

If you like a little smashing-the-patriarchy with your Halloween candy, it's currently streaming on Paramount+.

2025 Horror Watch - Day 8 - Bring Her Back (2025)

  I know this is supposed to be the new hotness this year but I think it's wildly overhyped.  Content warning:  blood, dead animals (chicken), vomit, child endangerment

When Andy (Bill Barrett) and his blind step-sister, Piper (Sora Wong) are orphaned, they are adamant that they not be separated.  The system puts them with Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former child counselor, who seems like an ideal match.  She even had a daughter (Mischa Heywood) who was also blind so she knows the accommodations Piper needs without coddling her.  But when the kids arrive, Andy finds that Laura isn't all that she seems and the other foster child in the house, Ollie (Jonah Wren Phillips), a selective mute, is almost unbearably creepy.  The more he tries to figure things out, the more isolated he becomes from Piper, who is literally and metaphorically blind.  

This is an A24 film and it's trying really hard to be an A24 film.  Honestly, I think Hereditary ruined some people.  Like, do they know it's okay to make horror movies that aren't about the grieving process?  There is some really cool imagery here and the makeup design for Ollie is excellent but it's so sad and just drags on forever.  Very disappointing.  

It's currently streaming on HBO Max or whatever the hell it's calling itself now.

2025 Horror Watch - Day 7 - Haunted Mansion (2023)

  This is not the one with Eddie Murphy though they are both based on the same Disney ride.  Content warning:  Jared Leto

A widower (LaKeith Stanfield) takes a substantial payout from a single mother (Rosario Dawson) to do spectral photography inside her new mansion.  He thinks the job is bullshit until a watery ghost follows him home and he learns that the hauntings only stop once he returns to the mansion.  Now, trapped inside with a priest (Owen Wilson), a medium (Tiffany Haddish), and a local historian (Danny DeVito), he must discover what kind of spirit is behind the truly shocking number of murders committed on the property.

Stanfield is just one of those ridiculously charismatic actors.  Even in this shameless cash grab, he was riveting.  Far better than the movie deserved.  He almost single-handedly elevates this from "annoying, gimmicky schlock" to "mostly fun, if a little forgettable and corny."  The child actor, Chase Dillon, was also very good and has a promising career ahead of him.  There are a bunch of cameos from Jamie Lee Curtis, Daniel Levy, Winona Ryder, Jo Koy, and Marilu Henner.  Dawson never gets the credit she deserves but she put in her time here and I respect it.  

If you really, really like the Haunted Mansion ride or your kids have seen pretty much all the other family-friendly Halloween movies already, this isn't bad.  It's streaming on Disney+.

2025 Horror Watch - Day 6 - Dead of Night (1945)

  Okay, I cheated a little bit to break that weird streak.  This one is from my TBW queue.  Content warning:  ventriloquist dummy, suicide

Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) keeps having a recurring nightmare about meeting six people at a country house and having something horrible happen.  He tries to convince them that his dreams are real, but Dr. Van Straaten (Frederick Valk), a psychiatrist, disbelieves.  So several of the guests take turns recounting their own brushes with the supernatural.  

This movie is great.  The framing device is a little weak but the cast is phenomenal.  Each story feels fully fleshed out, like its own full episode, but doesn't drag the movie down.  Now, not every story is a winner.  The golf one irritated the shit out of me, personally.  But I can recognize that it was meant to be a mood lightener.  Obviously, the final one is the standout with an incredible performance by Michael Redgrave.  And Hugo, of course.  People talk about "dream logic" in films, which never lands for me, but the nightmare sequence here is actually quite jarring.  There are some great makeup effects in the crowd scenes.  

It's streaming for free on Kanopy, if you have a library card and it's definitely worth checking out if you like your horror more atmospheric and British.

2025 Horror Watch - Day 5 - Match (2025)

  As the poster says, this is Tubi Original, so I did not have high expectations but it turned out to be really fun.  Content warning:  gore, blood, vomit, attempted sexual assault, dead animal (rat), maggots, some body horror (fingernails, toes, penis)

Paola (Humberly González) is braving the online dating scene when she finally finds what she thinks is a true match in Henry (Luke Volker), who is hot, smart, and likes all the same Turner Classic Movies that she likes.  Against her sister's (Shaeane Jimenez) advice, Paola accepts an invitation to dinner at Henry's house, only to be greeted at the door by his mother (Dianne Simpson), the first of many rude awakenings she is going to have over the course of the next couple of days.

Ah, Millennial horror!  This is a nice complement to Women's horror, which is again just stuff that happens to women.  As someone who is newly single myself, it was very easy to relate to the character early on because the dating scene has always been exactly this bleak.  Catfishing has always been a thing, as far back as Cyrano de Bergerac.  Still, this was a highly entertaining horror romp, even if it verged a little far into overt grossness for me.  There's some queer representation, a lot of disability representation, and most of the cast was people of color.  If this is checking any of your boxes and you don't mind ad breaks, give it a shot on Tubi.

2025 Horror Watch - Day 4 - CAM (2018)

  I do think it's very funny that so far I've been alternating between 2025 and 2018.  I don't know why it worked out like that but I'm not mad about it.  Content warning:  suicides (gun, knife), blood

Alice (Madeline Brewer) works as a camgirl.  As Lola, her popularity is rising, especially as she does more extreme shows, but she can't quite break into the top ranks.  One day, she opens her computer to see that her channel has been stolen by someone who looks exactly like her.  IT support is useless, the cops are worse, and Alice is growing increasingly concerned that she's not the only one being replaced.

When this came out, it was probably really interesting as a concept but now we have Tilly Norwood so the horror of real life has once again eclipsed the horror of imagination.  This future is stupid.  It doesn't ever come out and say what or who is behind the fake account, but we know.

I feel terrible saying it but Brewer will forever be Janine from Handmaid's Tale to me.  The whole time I was watching this, I was like "mmm-hmm, this is why Aunt Lydia hated you."  But bless her, she was very game, considering the entire movie rested on her performance.  

The movie is pretty positive towards the cam performers, which I am not well-versed enough in to know if it's an accurate portrayal of the industry.  Some shit seems pretty universal, though.  It's more of a thriller than straight horror.  There's no jump scares or supernatural flourishes.  If that's your bag, you'll probably enjoy this.  It's streaming on Netflix.

2025 Horror Watch - Day 3- House on Eden (2025)

  Another goddamn found footage movie.  I should have known better.  Content warning:  mild gore

A trio of ghost hunters get a tip about an abandoned house off Eden Road.  When they arrive (30 minutes into a 78-minute long movie), they discover a fully furnished, immaculately clean Victorian house and immediately break in.  They deploy all their various ghost-hunting paraphernalia and make contact with something.

This is every bad found footage trope you can imagine.  It's lazy, derivative, and wastes a potentially cool demon/entity by not doing the most basic research.  And the shaky-cam!  Horrendous.  At one point, I was praying a ghost would take the camera because then it would at least be steady.  And possibly in focus.  There is zero reason to waste your time on this one, but nonetheless it is streaming on Shudder which I get through Amazon Prime.

2025 Horror Watch - Day 2 - The Meg (2018)

  There's no theme this year.  It's whatever pops up first on whatever streaming service I happen to be running.  Unfortunately, since I now have to pay for my own Hulu account, I lost all the curated recommendations and this was what the new one offered.  Content warning:  dead sea animals (inc. whales :(, sharks, and squid), moderate gore, some dismembered human limbs.

An investigative sub is exploring previously uncharted depths in the Mariana Trench and discover a prehistoric shark that they accidentally release into populated waters.  So they hire Jason Statham to rescue everyone.

I forgot he started out as a professional diver.  Every time he jumped in the water, I was like "damn, that was really clean."  

This is a big dumb action movie, not a horror movie, but it's still pretty entertaining.  It did drag in the middle, because it's trying to do that lull-you-into-a-false-sense-of-security thing, but it mostly just felt like the movie was about to be over and then it just kept going.  I checked and there was still 45 minutes left on the runtime!  

If you like Jason Statham, this is a slam-dunk.  He bounces between charming rogue and steely-eyed hero like he always does, but still has time to give Boyfriend Material vibes to the hot single mom (Bingbing Li) by being nice to her adorable moppet (Shuya Sophia Cai).  It's streaming on Hulu.

2025 Horror Watch - Day 1 - Weapons (2025)

  I thought Barbarian was good, but this is great.  Zach Creggar is who I wanted Oz Perkins to be.  Content warning:  gore, blood, cannibalism, vomit, clowns

An entire schoolroom of children vanish overnight, leaving a town's worth of parents angry and grieving.  One, Archer (Josh Brolin), is convinced the kids' teacher, Justine (Julia Garner), knows more than she's saying so he begins stalking her.  Justine is sure that the only boy left behind, Alex (Cary Christopher), is the key but she's been forbidden from talking to him directly by the principal (Benedict Wong), who is rightly concerned for her physical safety.  Neither Archer nor Justine is prepared for the truth:  something much older and darker.

Movie Club had a special group watch as soon as this dropped on digital because some people had seen it in theaters and knew there would be massive spoilers posted as soon as people could get screenshots.  And they were right.  The etiquette is that everyone mutes themselves, which is also the right decision, because no one needed to hear me absolutely cackling over this film.  It is outright hilarious, especially the last 10 minutes.  Instant classic horror comedy.

I am cheating a bit because I did watch this a couple of weeks ago but it's been a difficult year for me and I'm not entirely sure I can do an entire month of horror.  I'm going to try really hard but don't expect much of a theme this year.  

Weapons is still only available to rent or buy but it is 100% worth the rental, especially if you're planning to watch with friends.

Miami Vice (2006)

  This movie sucks.  

Miami cops Sonny Crockett (Colin Farrell) and Ricardo Tubbs (Jamie Foxx) go undercover as drug runners to try and bring down Yero (John Ortiz), only to learn that he's actually just a middleman for a much more dangerous cartel leader named Montoya (Luis Tosar).  

Haha, that synopsis makes this movie sound like it's not a chaotic mess with more loose threads than a moth-eaten poncho.  There are so many sub-plots that go nowhere, which is insane since this movie is somehow almost two and a half hours long.  Oh, but we have time for both male leads to have separate shower sex scenes.  (Not with each other.  That might have accidentally improved it.)

This is directed by Michael Mann and features an incredibly stacked cast that could do NOTHING to save it.  The Jaws of Life couldn't save it.  Not E.T.'s magic finger, not a fairy godmother's wand, not the golden ichor of the gods could have saved this movie.  And you know the worst part?  It's not even entertainingly bad.  It's a generic, poorly-written, half-assed police procedural that you could have slapped any title on and been exactly the same movie.  The show Miami Vice takes a lot of crap for being dated and cheesy but it is legitimately iconic.  The movie?  Instantly forgettable.  

It's streaming on Amazon Prime.

Total Recall (1990)

In honor of Movie Club, I'm reposting this.  Originally posted 08 Jul 2012.    I know, it's practically a crime for me to have never seen this film, especially since the remake is coming out in about a month.  I remember flipping channels when I was a kid and seeing the part where he cracks his facemask on Mars and his eyeballs bug out and it completely creeped me out so I changed the channel.  The image stayed with me, though, as my young brain filed away moments like this for a later date when I would be able to understand them.  Now I know that scene is literally right after the opening credits and is nothing more than a nightmare of the protagonist.

Doug Quaid (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is an average dude with a blue-collar job and a smoking hot wife (Sharon Stone).  He keeps having recurring dreams, however, about mountain climbing on Mars with a brunette.  His wife thinks it's a reaction to watching constant news of the Martian colonies struggling with rebellion and advises him to turn the TV off for a while.  But when Doug hears an ad for Rekall, a company specializing in implantable memories, he can't resist taking off for a little faux vacation.  He signs up for the deluxe "secret spy on Mars" package and next thing he knows is that he's been dumped in a cab with no memory of where he was.  Then a co-worker inexplicably tries to murder him, telling him that his life has just been a cover-up implanted over his real memories which had been erased.  Which are that he's a secret spy from Mars.

No wonder he sounds like he's gargling rocks.  The man's had so much brain work done it's amazing he can walk without drooling all over himself. 

Doug escapes by yelling and swinging wildly at the stunt people until they all fall over and runs home.  He tells his wife the whole story and she immediately also tries to murder him because, wouldn't you know it, she's an evil secret agent too and she's really married to some other guy (Michael Ironsides).  Doug manages to escape and pick up a briefcase containing a video message from ...himself, or the self he used to be named Hauser.  Hauser was a secret agent who turned on his boss, Cohaagen, the governor of Mars (Ronny Cox), and got caught.  But before his brain got wiped, he made this video tutorial for himself about how to stop Cohaagen's evil plans. 

Doug/Hauser goes to Mars and meets up with the rebellion in the form of Melina (Rachel Ticotin), a prostitute who looks remarkably similar to the woman he keeps dreaming about.  They get shot at a lot but such is the business of trying to stop an evil corporate overlord, right?  Except that there's no guarantee that this is anything other than the stay-cation Doug paid for. 

When I heard they were remaking this movie, I thought "oh, great, Conan wasn't enough?  We gotta have another Total Recall too?" but after seeing it, I think it's ripe for a reboot.  This version did the best it could with practical effects (by the legendary Rob Bottin) and some early blue screen but we can take it so much further now.  From what I've read, it looks like the new one is dropping the Mars angle completely, and also going back to the original source ("We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" by Philip K. Dick) for inspiration. 

I can see why this version has its fans because it's fun in a completely campy way but I'm now looking forward to seeing what the new one will be like.

Wilson (1944)

  This has been in my queue for ages as unavailable but fortunately, someone put the entire thing on YouTube.  Content warning:  blackface portrayal of Teddy Roosevelt for some ungodly reason

This is a lavish, borderline hagiographic biopic of President Woodrow Wilson (Alexander Knox) that follows his political career from President of Princeton University to Governor of New Jersey to President of the United States, but also as a Wife Guy and a Girl Dad.  Turns out having three daughters amply prepares you to stand against Congressional hawks and foreign military engagement.  But Wilson is no mere shrinking violet.  He only wants what's best for the country, in a sternly paternal and professorial way.

I don't know if I can adequately express how bizarre this movie feels.  It's so morally upright and virtuous it's almost a miracle Knox didn't achieve apotheosis during filming.  Between the tearful martyrdom of his first wife (Ruth Nelson) and the whither-thou-goest puppy eyes of his second (Geraldine Fitzgerald), there's enough stand-by-your-man energy to power Tammy Wynette like a dynamo.  And the inspiring stump speeches!  Hope you don't get sick of hearing "Hail to the Chief" every 15 minutes.  But it is surprisingly progressive for 1944.  There's Black people in it!  One of them even has a speaking role!  He's a butler waxing nostalgic about how his family served the First Lady's family, but you know.  You can't have everything.

This won five Oscars, which makes sense, but it didn't win Best Picture (lost to Going My Way) and according to Wikipedia, producer Daryl F. Zanuck was livid.  Apparently, he spent a fortune on promotion only to see it lose out to Bing Crosby in a Roman collar.

Watching this in the Year of Our Dumpster Fire 2025 is especially surreal.  Every single one of Nobel Peace Prize-winner Wilson's policies, ideals, and principles has been eroded, gutted, or sold to the highest bidder.  It's funny in a ha-ha-we're-all-going-to-die kind of way.

Anyway, it's a cool 2 hrs and 33 minutes long so pack a snack but it's free on YouTube if you want to absorb some great costumes and righteous propaganda.

Pokemon the First Movie (1999)

Happy Labor Day!  Here's a movie about gladiatorial combat with cute, fuzzy creatures!  I am not the target audience for this movie.  I was too old when Pokemon came out.  But my partner is a huge fan.  He collects the cards, has all the games, goes to conventions, all the things.  Everything I know about Pokemon, I have learned through osmosis.  It's a surprising amount, though, because I was well-prepared to watch this movie.

Junior Pokemon trainer Ash Ketchum (Veronica Taylor) is having a picnic with friends when a mysterious invitation is delivered.  Someone calling themselves The Master is holding a grand tournament on a private island to see who can Be the Very Best, Like No One Ever Was.  Ash is very excited and heads out right away, only to be told that a massive storm has disrupted the ferry to the island and no one can cross.  Several other trainers see it as no obstacle, using their Pokemon to brave the hurricane.  Ash, Misty (Rachael Lillis), and Brock (Eric Stuart) do the same.  When they arrive at Kindergartner Kumite, they learn their host is actually a genetically engineered Pokemon named Mewtwo (Philip Bartlett) who has become obsessed with world domination.  He has staged this tournament in order to isolate the best Pokemon genetic sequences that he plans to clone and turn into his own private army.  The children are very upset by this because apparently forcing Pokemon to fight their clones is bad, despite it being the basis of their entire society.  Unsporting because it's an existential crisis, maybe?  Anyway, a literal actual demigod named Mew shows up, and everyone learns about the power of friendship.

This movie has a 17% on RottenTomatoes, which isn't really fair.  I don't know shit about Pokemon and I thought it was okay.  Actual fans probably really enjoy it.  I know my partner remembers seeing it in theaters at 10-years-old.  You can't tell him this isn't a cinematic masterpiece.  Anyway, Pokemon is a cultural juggernaut and you probably know at least one child who is super into it.  This is for them.  It's not currently streaming anywhere but the Blu-ray triple-feature with all the movies is like $10 on Amazon.

Blind Vaysha (2016)/4.1 Miles (2016)

  Here's a couple more shorts.  

First up is Blind Vaysha, an eight and a half minute long animated film based on a short story of a girl whose left eye can only see the past and whose right eye can only see the future.  She can never experience happiness because she has no present.  

I found it overly moralizing and not nearly as clever or provocative as it thought it was being.  Would rather read the folklore, honestly.

  4.1 Miles is a documentary short produced by The New York Times.  It follows a Greek Coast Guard captain who rescues Afghani refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea in overcrowded crafts not designed for the journey.  

I want you to open another tab on your browser and pull up a map.  Find Afghanistan.  Now find Greece.  Consider the level of desperation you have to have to consider crossing that amount of distance with absolutely nothing but a backpack.    

There was a different doc short called Lifeboat from 2018 that covered the exact same thing, except they were a German non-profit.  It was a whole-ass humanitarian crisis and I have no idea if it is still happening because there have been like 20 other whole-ass humanitarian crises since then.  I'm so tired, y'all.

Both films are available on YouTube.

Pear Cider and Cigarettes (2017)

  Finally getting around to some of the Oscar nominated shorts from 2017.  Still working through my burnout.  

A narrator (Robert Valley) recounts the story of traveling from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada to China in order to get his childhood friend to stop drinking long enough to have a black-market liver from a death-row prisoner transplanted.  

This is not a fun or happy story.  The animation is slick, anime-inspired, and completed entirely in Adobe Photoshop.  It is an adult animation, so there's some nudity but nothing super egregious.  It's about half an hour long and available on YouTube or Vimeo.  I'd never watch it again but it was very pretty to look at.

Barbarian (2022)

  For my birthday week, I got to pick the selections for Movie Club and I picked The Adventures of Prince Achmed and Barbarian.  Didn't have a theme in mind, but they worked pretty well together anyway.  Content warning:  sexual assault (off-screen), violence, some gore

Tess (Georgina Campbell) booked an AirB&B in Detroit for her job interview, but when she arrives, she finds that it has been double-booked and a strange man (Bill Skarsgaard) is inside.  A tense night is made worse by strange occurrences in the house, leading to the discovery of a hidden door in the basement.

I laughed so hard during this movie.  I don't want to spoil anything for you but this was one of the most delightful movies I've seen this year.  Wildly entertaining.  It has a triptych-style story with tonally jarring edits at the breaks that could have felt like being bludgeoned but if you just go with it, I promise it's worth the whiplash.  Cannot wait to inflict this on everyone I know.  

It's currently streaming on Netflix but they are taking it off at the end of the month (31 Aug) so hurry or you'll miss your chance.

Thunderbolts (2025)

  It's my birthday weekend!  And I have spent it going on ghost tours, wearing incredible outfits, watching aerial silk performers, and having a great time with all kinds of friends, near and far.  I also watched some movies.

Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh) has been just existing since her sister Natasha died.  She's been doing freelance "cleanup" work for CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) but feels like she's drifting without purpose.  She takes one final job, catch a thief at a top-secret research facility, and then she plans to quit.  But the job is a trap to tie up all of Valentina's loose end covert operatives that she's been running like her own private death squad:  John Walker (Wyatt Russell), the disgraced Captain America replacement, Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), who can barely stay on this plane of existence without technological help, and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), the tragic Red Room experiment.  While arguing over how to escape, they also discover Bob (Lewis Pullman), who has apparently been stuck in the facility for however long.  Turns out Valentina had a plan for a new post-Avengers world by creating her own superhero, Sentry, and Bob was the only test subject that survived.  Barely limping away from the trap, the misfit antiheroes are "rescued" by Alexei, the Red Guardian (David Harbour), and then almost immediately captured by freshman congressman and permanently tired dude Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan).  Bucky has been trying to get Valentina removed from her position but the wheels of justice are moving a little slowly.  And his resources consist of a team of fuck-ups and war criminals and an inside source with a wavering conscience.  But hey, everybody's got problems.  Especially when Valentina's control over Bob isn't as strong as she thought.

Marvel has been on a decline in popularity but this was a solid entry and I'm a little sad it's not getting the levels of praise it would have in a pre-Endgame world.  I get it.  It's hard to build a replacement team after your all-stars but --Oh holy shit, have I just discovered why sports people are they way they are??  Oh no.  I...have to go re-evaluate some things in my life...

Currently, it's only available for rent, but it's dropping on Disney+ Aug 27.

Divines (2016)

  This is a super cute female friendship movie right up until the Trauma.  Content warning:  sexual assault, violence

Dounia (Oulaya Amamra) and Maimouna (Déborah Lukumuena) are best friends in the Paris projects.  They idolize Rebecca (Jisca Kalvanda), a hardcore girlboss drug dealer, for her flashy lifestyle and badass demeanor.  Dounia especially sees Rebecca as a stand-in maternal figure and becomes ever more desperate for her approval.  

I have straight up not been having a good time this month so the whole time I was watching this, I kept anticipating something bad happening to one or both girls but I didn't guess the specific thing which still sucker punched me.  I'm not going to do spoilers but FYI, not a happy ending.  It definitely lessened my enjoyment of the film, which sucks because the three actresses were phenomenal.  Kalvanda was menacing and charismatic and Lukumuena's face was so expressive.  I hope both have incredible careers ahead.  But this was Amamra's movie and she took every scene.  A tiny powerhouse.  

So if you're in the mood for a depressing, feel-bad character drama, Divines is streaming on Netflix.

Fargo (1996)

  I didn't post last week because I had a couple of deaths in the family.  I can't believe I've never posted a review of Fargo but it got picked for Movie Club so I re-watched it.

Car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) has a problem:  he has committed fraud and needs almost half a million dollars or he'll get caught.  He knows his father-in-law (Harve Presnell) has the money, so he comes up with a scheme to hire two criminals (Steve Buscemi and Peter Stormare) to kidnap his wife, Jean (Kristin Rudrüd), and hold her for ransom.  Things do not go to plan and as the body count rises across multiple jurisdictions, police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand) begins pulling apart the various strands leading back to Jerry.

This was pretty much an instant classic when it came out and it continues to be held in high regard.  I have had my ups-and-downs with the Coens but I can't deny that Fargo is a great movie.  It's got the alchemy of a great cast, great writing, and great direction.  Sometimes you can have all three and still not work out, but when you do, it really is movie magic.  There are still some things I would change (because I'm an asshole) but not enough to even talk about.  If you've never seen it, you definitely should.  Also, the TV show is very good as well.  It's streaming on Kanopy with a library card or Tubi and Roku for free with ads.

Superman (2025)

  I wasn't going to see this but my friend got tickets and I'm glad she did.  This was much better than I thought it would be.

Three years after revealing his existence to the world, Superman (David Corenswet) has engaged in his first globo-political controversy.  He intervened in the annexation of poor, underdeveloped Jarhanpur by its overpowered neighbor, Borovia, going so far as to threaten the Boravian president (Zlatko Buric) with bodily harm.  Superman knows Borovia has nefarious intentions, but doesn't know that they are being bankrolled by billionaire whiny man-baby Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult).  Luthor has poured uncounted amounts of money into this scheme, which involves tearing small holes in the fabric of reality because fuck everyone on the planet if it means he can kill Superman.  

Thank God it's not another origin story.  Also, it is in very bright colors!  Like it was filmed in daytime and everything!  

It is recognizably a James Gunn film.  Your mileage may vary on that depending on how burned out you are after the sheer volume of work Gunn has produced within the superhero genre on film and TV, for Marvel and DC.  I enjoy the banter, snappy action scenes, deep-cut soundtracks, and style of humor.  For me, the standout performance was Edi Gathegi as Mr. Terrific.  His line delivery was so perfect.  Also, Rachel Brosnahan made a great Lois Lane.  She was smart, determined, and reminiscent of Margot Kidder's performance without the neurotic edge.  The whole movie felt like a throwback to Richard Donner's Superman down to using the iconic original score (complimentary).  It's currently playing in theaters.

Kpop Demon Hunters (2025)

  This movie is so fun.  Even if you're not into K-Pop.  

Huntr/x are pop stars by day and demon slayers by night, the latest in a long line of singers that maintain a magical web keeping the Demon King, Gwi-Ma (Lee Byung-hun), from stealing the souls of mortals.  But Gwi-Ma has a plan to destroy the girls before the web becomes permanent.  He sends Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop), a human turned demon, to form a rival boy-band to steal all of Huntr\x's fans.  Lead singer Rumi (Arden Cho) is pissed but believes there's still some good in Jinu, especially after he refrains from revealing her own terrible secret.  

I found the animation a little off-putting.  There's just something about it that doesn't gel for me.  But the whole movie is so freakin' cute, I stopped caring about a third of the way in.  It is fizzy bubblegum for your brain.  Utterly charming.  And the soundtrack is phenomenal.  I'm not a big K-Pop person (I like BLACKPINK and that's about it) but I immediately bought this one.  So good.  It is streaming on Netflix.

UHF (1989)

  I didn't have anything to post yesterday because I DNF'd a bunch of stuff.  I've been having a hard time finding movies to watch lately.  Probably the aforementioned burnout.  Content warning:  some gore, animal death (dogs), child endangerment

George ("Weird Al" Yankovic) keeps getting fired from menial jobs for daydreaming until his uncle (Stanley Brock) lets him run the local UHF TV station, U-62.  George stumbles upon Stanley Spudowski (Michael Richards), a janitor fired from an evil network affiliate, and gives him a chance as host of a kid's show.  Stanley is an overnight success and catapults U-62 to the top of the ratings.  Evil Network Affiliate Boss (Kevin McCarthy) vows to crush the tiny upstarts.

Like a lot of 80s movies, there are aspects of this that have aged like milk and others that have remained staggeringly current.  If you saw Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, you probably already know if this style of humor is for you or not.  I liked it but I've been a Weird Al fan since I was in middle school.  

I'm not going to get super sappy about it, but it struck me that all of George's success comes from being kind and all of the villain's nastiness contributes to his downfall.  That sounds really simple, but a lot of modern shows and movies have moved away from direct narratives and more into post-modern and fatalistic "this is just how the world works; you can win for a little while but you'll eventually be ground down" mentalities.  Again, could just be the burnout talking but it was great just letting good guys win because they're good.  

Anyway, UHF is streaming on Kanopy for free with a library card.