Recent Movies and shows
Jan. 30th, 2026 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
glaurungFor some reason, I am watching less and less media these days. Just yesterday I realized that I am two whole seasons behind on Strange New Worlds. I'm even further behind on Doctor Who. Part of it is that Morgan isn't around anymore to remind me that a new episode has dropped and ask me to queue it up, and that watching stuff alone is a lost less fun than watching it with her. But that's only part of it, the rest is a mystery. That said, I have watched some stuff in the past several months. This isn't everything, as just the ones that I can remember watching or that I noted down in my very incomplete list of stuff I watched.
Utterly forgettable fluff: The Old Guard 2. Immortal band of mercenaries versus evil immortal with evil plan involving nuclear power? I forget. Ends in a cliffhanger, part 3 may or may not ever appear. The good part was the tortured, centuries long lesbian love affair between frenemies Andromache and Quỳnh. The bad part was the mythology and worldbuilding.
Good, no notes: The 6 triple 8. Just watch it if you haven't already.
Weird, quirky, did not stick the landing: Harold and Maude (1971). I was 100% onboard with this weird early 70's dark comedy about a teenager with morbid hobbies and horrible parents discovering joie de vivre through his friendship with an old woman who shares his passion for attending the funerals of strangers. Then in the final act heterosexism reared its ugly head and they become lovers, because the writers were unable to imagine a man and a woman just being friends.
Red Sonja (2025). What if a leaden script constructed entirely out of theadbare cliches held together with sad old tropes was handed to an OK director, cast and crew, none of whom had the power to change said script? This movie. Unlike the original 80's Red Sonja, which is bad in a fun sort of way, this was bad in a sad sort of way.
Fantastic Four First Steps: By virtue of being set in a different universe entirely than the rest of the Marvel movies, this actually managed to be fun. Sadly, the characters are doomed to be dragged into the mainline universe of Marvel extruded superhero product for the next Avengers instalment.
Ballerina: A movie consisting of many fight scenes in which the heroine gets smacked around, smashed into objects, and so on, but never acquires any bruises, cuts, or scrapes. My appreciation of the excellent action sequences were dampened by the feeling of unreality this created. The sexism of action heroines not being allowed to ever stop *being pretty* while action heroes almost *required* to emerge from the same kinds of action scenes covered in dirt and blood was really really obvious in this one. That said, this was a decent enough action movie, but the worldbuilding left me very confused, so I watched the John Wick films afterward.
John Wick tetrad: I watched the first one several years ago and decided to give the sequels a pass. Then after seeing Ballerina I thought watching them might clarify some of the confusing parts of that movie, so I watched the entire series... and... good grief the worldbuilding makes no sense whatsoever.
How is it that there's anyone left alive at all in this world where murder for hire is such a huge business that basically *everyone* John Wick encounters on the street in the later instalments has gotten a text message promising millions of dollars to whoever kills him?
How the hell do all the huge rooms in the Continental hotel fit inside the skinny little flatiron building? The foyer alone is much wider than the entrance we see outside on the street, and it only gets more ridiculous from there. And while Wick himself can be hurt, and gets hurt often, he is also somehow an invulnerable superman who can survive a multiple storey fall onto pavement, then get up and walk away with no bones broken.
The entire John Wick franchise is are basically all empty shells of nonsense, a thin narrative tissue that doesn't stand up to any examination whatsoever, which exist only as a wrapping around a series of extremely well executed fight scenes.
Finally, two documentaries:
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010): Chauvet Cave and the ancient paintings on its walls are fascinating, but this documentary is not a good way to learn more about it.
And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine. An incredibly shallow documentary about photography and film, about the fake reality created by film/video, and so on. After tracing the history of film and video from the beginning into the 21st century, touching on various incidents of movie fakery and illusion over the decades, it finally becomes a documentary about instagram, influencers, and people so eager to get more views they do harm to themselves/others. But instead of interrogating the algorithm, the internet giants that created a market for likes and views, and the the monetization structure created by those corporations that pushes people to strive for ever-more shocking video content in order to make a living, it blames all of the evils brought about by viral videos on dopamine and evolution and how our brains are wired.
That said, the footage in the documentary includes a lot of very interesting and compelling outtakes, of talking heads sitting down in front of green screens so they can pretend to be speaking from somewhere they aren't, of people talking their way though a script, trying to get it right without flubs, and so on. Come for the interesting footage, and heap your scorn on the bullshit message the narrator is pushing.
Utterly forgettable fluff: The Old Guard 2. Immortal band of mercenaries versus evil immortal with evil plan involving nuclear power? I forget. Ends in a cliffhanger, part 3 may or may not ever appear. The good part was the tortured, centuries long lesbian love affair between frenemies Andromache and Quỳnh. The bad part was the mythology and worldbuilding.
Good, no notes: The 6 triple 8. Just watch it if you haven't already.
Weird, quirky, did not stick the landing: Harold and Maude (1971). I was 100% onboard with this weird early 70's dark comedy about a teenager with morbid hobbies and horrible parents discovering joie de vivre through his friendship with an old woman who shares his passion for attending the funerals of strangers. Then in the final act heterosexism reared its ugly head and they become lovers, because the writers were unable to imagine a man and a woman just being friends.
Red Sonja (2025). What if a leaden script constructed entirely out of theadbare cliches held together with sad old tropes was handed to an OK director, cast and crew, none of whom had the power to change said script? This movie. Unlike the original 80's Red Sonja, which is bad in a fun sort of way, this was bad in a sad sort of way.
Fantastic Four First Steps: By virtue of being set in a different universe entirely than the rest of the Marvel movies, this actually managed to be fun. Sadly, the characters are doomed to be dragged into the mainline universe of Marvel extruded superhero product for the next Avengers instalment.
Ballerina: A movie consisting of many fight scenes in which the heroine gets smacked around, smashed into objects, and so on, but never acquires any bruises, cuts, or scrapes. My appreciation of the excellent action sequences were dampened by the feeling of unreality this created. The sexism of action heroines not being allowed to ever stop *being pretty* while action heroes almost *required* to emerge from the same kinds of action scenes covered in dirt and blood was really really obvious in this one. That said, this was a decent enough action movie, but the worldbuilding left me very confused, so I watched the John Wick films afterward.
John Wick tetrad: I watched the first one several years ago and decided to give the sequels a pass. Then after seeing Ballerina I thought watching them might clarify some of the confusing parts of that movie, so I watched the entire series... and... good grief the worldbuilding makes no sense whatsoever.
How is it that there's anyone left alive at all in this world where murder for hire is such a huge business that basically *everyone* John Wick encounters on the street in the later instalments has gotten a text message promising millions of dollars to whoever kills him?
How the hell do all the huge rooms in the Continental hotel fit inside the skinny little flatiron building? The foyer alone is much wider than the entrance we see outside on the street, and it only gets more ridiculous from there. And while Wick himself can be hurt, and gets hurt often, he is also somehow an invulnerable superman who can survive a multiple storey fall onto pavement, then get up and walk away with no bones broken.
The entire John Wick franchise is are basically all empty shells of nonsense, a thin narrative tissue that doesn't stand up to any examination whatsoever, which exist only as a wrapping around a series of extremely well executed fight scenes.
Finally, two documentaries:
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010): Chauvet Cave and the ancient paintings on its walls are fascinating, but this documentary is not a good way to learn more about it.
And the King Said, What a Fantastic Machine. An incredibly shallow documentary about photography and film, about the fake reality created by film/video, and so on. After tracing the history of film and video from the beginning into the 21st century, touching on various incidents of movie fakery and illusion over the decades, it finally becomes a documentary about instagram, influencers, and people so eager to get more views they do harm to themselves/others. But instead of interrogating the algorithm, the internet giants that created a market for likes and views, and the the monetization structure created by those corporations that pushes people to strive for ever-more shocking video content in order to make a living, it blames all of the evils brought about by viral videos on dopamine and evolution and how our brains are wired.
That said, the footage in the documentary includes a lot of very interesting and compelling outtakes, of talking heads sitting down in front of green screens so they can pretend to be speaking from somewhere they aren't, of people talking their way though a script, trying to get it right without flubs, and so on. Come for the interesting footage, and heap your scorn on the bullshit message the narrator is pushing.