november

I played a lot of Vampire Survivor for about a week before I swore off it. Overall it was fun, but also a huge time sink. On the TV front, the Peripheral remains excellent, and 1899 just weird enough to get me to keep watching in between binging Andor and Better Call Saul.

Books

Road to Nowhere

A fantastic survey of the history of tech and transport, and how the US especially led the way in fucking the world up for people.

Pattern Recognition

A reread—this is a classic and I love it every time.

Movies

Knife + Heart

A fantastic blend of 70s gay porn and slasher that transcends into a love story.

Jujutsu Kaisen: 0

This made me want season 2 to come out soon. Fun.

Silent Hill: Revelation

Not as good as the first but weirdly fun.

There’s Something in the Dirt

An interesting COVID-era movie in a similar vein to Primer. I don’t know if giving these guys a big budget for film would help or hinder, but conceptually they make cool stuff.

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Very fun! I think this didn’t match the original but I would happily watch one of these every couple years and hope they get made.

Amsterdam

The number of actors in this film is completely unaligned with its quality. In an attempt to be clever and convoluted, it just ends up as a mess. I do love Christian Bale’s extreme Kramer energy though.

Alien: Covenant

Very charming still, with a+ Fassbender action.

Prometheus

This is an annual rewatch for me now, and it’s fun every time. I think it was unfairly panned, but has so many weird little scenes that it’s great.

Ad Astra

A second time through this left me much more satisfied. I think the first viewing I must’ve been grumpier, but this time the emotion from Pitt was clear, and the grim reality of long-term space travel well-communicated. So many gorgeous shots in this movie.

Man on Fire

Denzel in a Tony Scott film is exactly what I needed tonight. A comforting revenge rampage.

The Celebration

My first official Dogme 95 watch, though I’ve seen other inspired by Dogme films. The technical goofiness was fine, but fortunately the story and characters covered for the unnecessary restrictions. A great artist can paint with one color on a rock, but why? Danes get candles right but I don’t understand all the singing.

Gravity

Space palette cleanser. Watched this when it came out and it’s still thrilling and gorgeous.

Female Trouble

My first Waters. Are weird ladies with perms on Lex? “I don’t want any boy dates” Gater sounds a lot like Liberty Balboa. “Gonna find happiness in the auto industry”. I wanted to like this but the dialogue being exclusively yelling made it hard to watch.

Black Hawk Down

Somehow less stressful than watching election results come in. A good rewatch.

Disappearance at Clifton Hill

Cronenburg has an eerily NPR voice that I didn’t expect. Very Canadian (complimentary).

Hellbender

Kinda wild that this was made by and stars a family. If more families made metal together and horror films I think the world would be a better place. Parts of this hit and parts of it are too corny.

Enola Holmes 2

A fun romp. I like this cute, easy-watching Holmes reboot.

The Empty Man

I love that one of the main women in this has that boy from Stranger Thing’s terrible haircut. I’m a sucker for weird eldritch horror and this was much better than I expected.

Annihilation

A classic. Rewatched to test out my new Apple TV, and just kept watching. I love the book this is inspired by, and somehow the movie is a different and weird delight that I enjoy every time.

We’re All Going to the World’s Fair

Truly captured the sad weirdness of being alone online. Serial Experiments Lain but creepy pasta.

Godzilla

I love seeing 50s Japan on film because of fascinating lens it provides of a rapidly changing place reeling from a devastating war. On the downside the pacing of older movies is unbearable.

Asparagus

With the caveat that I’m not very fond of animated or short films, but this was fortunately visually bizarre enough to be kinda fun.

Smile

It Follows-esque, but it tried to do a bit too much.