Recent Movies, TV, and Other Media

A non-exhaustive list of notable media (movies, TV, books, music, etc.) that I’ve watched, read, listened to, or otherwise ingested.

Movies

Ghostwatch (1992) – Ghostwatch ran so Late Night With the Devil could walk. Everything Late Night tried, this already accomplished a thousand times better. I can only imagine tuning into what you think is a regular Halloween special on your favorite news broadcast, and then seeing this unfold. What an experience, even now knowing it’s all fiction. What a blast!
Trick ‘r Treat (2007) – The platonic ideal of a Halloween movie. Fun, spooky, adventurous, and sharp. Could and should easily fit into any annual Halloween rotation.
Rebel Ridge (2024) – What’s the point of Netflix pumping so much money into movies and talent when it barely advertises the existing of anything remotely approaching quality? Does Netflix even want people to watch these? This movie rips. Tight and tense throughout with a lot on its mind; imagine if Jack Reacher had a no-kill rule.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2023) – There have been a lot of attempts to merge the coming-of-age genre with the supernatural. Some are fun enough, like Warm Bodies. Others, not so much. This one easily takes the crown. Cute and heartwarming without ever approaching twee. Real stakes: not life-or-death (though some of that is here), but things personal and close to the heart. A real emotional payoff.
I Saw the TV Glow (2024) – Sometimes you see a movie as an adult you know would have had a profound and lasting impact on the trajectory of your life had you seen it when you were young enough. Just like We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, this captures such a hyper-specific wavelength. It’s incredible to feel so seen.

TV

Reacher – This 250-pound neurodivergent gorilla’s special interest is killing bad guys and doing the right thing. And he never runs out of bad guys. Good pulpy fun.

Books

Heading Home With Your Newborn (Laura A. Jana MD FAAP, Jennifer Shu MD FAAP) – Title self-explanatory. There is a newborn around. 🙂
Hyperion (Dan Simmons) – An SF adventure that serves as an elaborate frame around a series of short stories. Dan Simmons dips his toes in various short story forms and genres throughout. Some hit better than others. Does the Star Trek thing where a character mentions two classical artists / scientists / persons of renown, then one or two fictional, which once you notice the pattern can get a little tiresome. Still, these are nitpicks. It’s a great read and a genre classic for a reason.

Music

Raye – My 21st Century Blues (2023) – Every once in a while an album comes along to remind us how important the album listening experience can be. You could take any track from this album and listen to it alone, and it’s still remarkable. But not as great as the album listened from front to back. Raye dips her toes in a half-dozen genres on an introspective journey through seven years of songwriting that can’t be missed.
Joy Oladokun – Proof of Life (2023) – Another collection of great songs, excellently produced, impeccably arranged. The kind of album that’s so good you’d swear you’ve always known these songs; they were just waiting to come back to you.
Oxygène – Jean-Michel Jarre (1976) – Having grown up listening to Vangelis, I’m amazed I’d never heard of Jean-Michel Jarre before. But this is right in that neighborhood. Prescient and still futuristic 50 years later. A soundscape that artists are still unsuccessfully aping.

Alien: Romulus

I’ve written before about the creative bankruptcy that fuels the Disney engine. Whether driven by cynicism or fear, it’s become clear that Disney won’t let any of its properties stand on their own legs. Instead, they need to be propped up by references, homages, allusions, self-awareness, or multiverses.

I grew up watching and loving the Alien movies, and have always enjoyed the installments that tried something new. A franchise doesn’t need to be a formula. It can be a framework. I was really looking forward to Alien: Romulus, despite all my instincts warning me to temper my expectations — instincts I should have listened to.

Spoilers ahead¹, so reader beware.

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Recent Movies, TV, and Other Media

A non-exhaustive list of notable media (movies, TV, books, music, etc.) that I’ve watched, read, listened to, or otherwise ingested.

Movies

Longlegs (2024) – Dripping with dread, this movie lingered with me on the drive home. Bleak, slow, with some delightful spooks, but ultimately empty and lacking substance. I really liked this leaving the theater, but it soured over time — still, there are some stretches in here that are top-notch compared to its contemporaries.
Late Night With the Devil (2023) – Overall a decent descent into madness. A late night talk show host on the outs accidentally brings the devil on air. What’s not to like about that premise? Unfortunately, the production team decided to use AI for a few interstitial images instead of, you know, paying a real artist to make real pictures. Especially insulting after sitting through what felt like 10 entire minutes of production logos at the movie’s opening.
The Player (1992) – Very noirish. A man, fearing his own demise, sets out to escape his fate — meanwhile blundering right into that very same fate. The ending is so cynical, so biting, it retroactively made what was still a very enjoyable movie into something else entirely. It was fun to watch a movie about people who make movies, and feeling their love for The Movies bleeding through every frame.
Nowhere (1997) – I can’t really describe this, except for stealing the byline: 90210 on acid. Wild, queer, colorful, anarchic, angsty, surreal. It took a second to click, but once it did, I was locked in for every minute.

TV

Preacher (2016) – Based on a comic book series, a criminal-turned-preacher gets an extraordinary power and stumbles onto a world of vampires, crypto-fascist organizations, angels, the Saint of Killers, and a Hitler escaped from Hell. Among other things. I really liked the first season, which was all about people fighting with themselves to be better people. Can you change your nature? Is it even worth the struggle? In subsequent seasons this fell to the wayside in favor of plot-heavy storytelling, which was still fun, just less so.

Books

Night Work (by Thomas Glavinic) – A man wakes up one morning and finds he’s the last person on earth. Scratch that, last living animal. No birds, no dogs, not even any insects. There’s a dread that suffuses the first hundred or so pages that I won’t forget. While I appreciate the direction the rest of the book took, it wasn’t entirely for me, but I understand it’s partially my own expectations dragging me down. I wanted a little more of the surreal, weird, spookiness that was promised and hinted at in the beginning.
Unconditional Parenting (by Alfie Kohn) – While I am generally not entirely supportive of “gentle parenting” for nebulous reasons I won’t get into here, I still found a lot of wisdom in this book. It communicates clearly how to get across to a person (not just your children!) that your love for them is unconditional, and how to make a relationship feel less transactional in the process. And I’m all for any modern book that pushes parents to improve (as people and as parents), be more self-reflective, and foster healthy attachment with their offspring.
Worm (by Wildbow) – I’m not even remotely finished with this. It’s long. 7,000 pages long. That’s 1.6 million words long. But the chapters are in neat, popcorn-sized bites, easy to chew through in those random stretches of day when I don’t want to watch something but still have some time to kill.

Music

The Menzingers – On the Impossible Past (2012) – This has slowly transformed into a no-skip album for me. Nostalgic, but not pining. It’s not just about who we were, but who we could have been.
The DSM IV – New Age Paranoia (2024) – Retro sound, new age angst. Synthy, sometimes operatic, gloomy and gothy. Definitely not for every mood but still a good listen.

Review: Bird Box

During New Year’s Eve I had some friends over who berated me for dismissing one particular movie—Bird Box—out of hand. Rightly so. All movies deserve a chance. But after seeing more than the normal share of memes and retweets, I grew skeptical and contrarian. I cynically assumed the movie was the product of The Algorithm, designed and churned out by The Netflix Machine for maximum meme-ability and profit (and even more cynically, I assumed the memes had been bought and paid for and propagated by some mysterious group of meme machines).

After a few drinks one of my friends challenged me, with money, to actually watch the movie and record my thoughts on it. I typically refrain from writing movie reviews because, to put it simply, the last thing the Internet needs is a straight white man spewing his opinions about movies into the ether. There’s not much I could say, in my opinion, that would truly add to The Discourse, so I usually don’t say anything at all. Just this once I’m obligated.

For a quick seat-of-the-pants summary of my thoughts, you can see my Letterboxd review here. For an even quicker review, I would say Bird Box is a perfectly fine movie, decent for streaming on a quiet Friday night, but don’t expect to it to leave any lasting trace.

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