Viewing Journal: 9/26/2026

388) UNION COUNTY

(2026 dir. Adam Meeks) Date Seen: September 26 2026

Poulter's first Oscar nom?? Kinda slow at parts but ultimately a moving portrait of addiction & forgiveness --& one that understands recovery is not absolution, but the painful business of learning to live with things that can't be undone.. Would make good post-viewing material for Debra Granik's DOWN TO THE BONE (2004).

Viewing Journal: 9/25/2026

387) PRIMETIME

(2026 dir. Lance Oppenheim) Date Seen: September 25 2026

At least for his first feature narrative here, I wish so many of Oppenheim's set-ups weren't so visually boring & obvious to me; & in that way only Michael Haneke-clones manage to be (a lot of Antonio Campos' films are guilty of this too). Also people who are acting like Pattinson's Chris Hansen is the second coming of Gyllenhaal in NIGHTCRAWLER are deluded. We're all boobs in our own way; but let's not be feckin' eejit boobs (Merritt Wever's incredible performance as the producer in this honestly gets much closer to Gyllenhaal's "Bloom" brilliance).. btw I wanna praise the film editing on display in every scene in PRIMETIME, 'cause it's some spicy expert level splicing & weaving. Daniel Garber's work even brings to mind Oliver Stone's 90s dream team editors. I think now it's high time i find & watch Oppenheim's prior documentaries.

387) PREDATORS

(2025 dir. David Osit) Date Seen: September 25 2026

Part of me wants to praise all the formally solid Errol Morris-esque technical sophistication surrounding this more, but the content within is all just so damn icky & troubling.. Cringing hard during my viewing like CAPTURING THE FRIEDMANS

[viewed in prep for my viewing of PRIMETIME]

Viewing Journal: 9/24/2026

386) HA-CHAN, 

SHAKE YOUR BOOTY!

(2026 dir. Josef Kubota Wladyka) Date Seen: September 24 2026

The narrative's tonally fragmented in detrimental ways, but at least the actual images carrying us through all of that are sumptuous. And they move

Viewing Journal: 9/23/2026

385) 

LAST TRAIN TO FORTUNE

(2026 dir. Adam Rifkin) Date Seen: September 23 2026

kinda torn on this one.. On the one hand, Malcolm McDowell is Oscar-worthy as "MR CHIPS Goes West" + the film has a compelling story.

--but on the other; lots of the production feels cardboard and stilted. & the uneven supporting cast doesn't breathe enough life into things.

384) 

LESBIAN SPACE PRINCESS

(2026 dir. Varghese / Hough Hobbs) Date Seen: September 23 2026

Obviously very cute, thoughtful, & visually creative. Lots of animation kids currently coming up creating worthwhile pilots + indies -- so i wish fewer of their characters would automatically default to imitating that Pendleton / Horvath / Jelenic-speak. Their type of quirky meta banter & deliberate awkwardness only worked because there was actual comedic voices underneath the bits; Otherwise it feels like someone twee repeating the cadence of a funny person without understanding what made the jokes funny.. There is also an ongoing linguistic study at MIT examining whether Aussie and Kiwi accents measurably amplify annoyingness.

383) TEXAS RIVERS:

   DEEP IN THE HEART II

(2026 dir. Ben Masters) Date Seen: September 23 2026

Love my beautiful home state.

Hate that we're run by greedy theocrats, that would gladly frack every natural place we have for quick profit

Viewing Journal: 9/22/2026

382) RUNNER

(2026 dir. Scott Waugh) Date Seen: September 22 2026

so if you wandered into this for its final 15mins (roughly from the moment the characters steal an ambulance), you’d be pardoned for assuming you’d missed one of the better action flicks of 2026. That segment contains the best stuff Scott Waugh's ever done: It's urgent, physical, & lucid + has a scruffy digitally stitched faux-"oner" that barrels along with a playful momentum the rest of the movie cried out for. The trouble is there's another 80-odd minutes attached to that last chunk. I actually like the core ideas at the spine of RUNNER's script & general plot outline. Humanist & unfashionably earnest about its belief in sacrificing everything for the innocent & sick. It’s in the business of turning that sentiment into drama where everything goes to shite. Whenever there's not action on screen it always devolves into Lifetime channel "Disease-of-the-Week" corniness. I really shouldn’t be holding back laughter during scenes involving a child facing death, but pathos ladled on that thick feels like parody. The musical scoring is funny bad & obvious too, but the classic rock covers on the soundtrack make that stuff sound tolerable. There’s also an early marketplace skirmish that's one of the ugliest action sequences I've personally witnessed. Shaky-cam deluxe & cuts that reduce everything to audiovisual mulch. You don’t experience this fight so much as understand that one seems to be happening somewhere inside the frame. RUNNER has the additional misfortune of arriving in a year that’s already raised the cinematic action-movie bar so g.d. high *ONSLAUGHT*, *HOPE*, & *FURIOUS*?! So maybe it just looks shabby propped up next to those. (Which only makes its last fifteen minutes more frustrating & out of place).

Viewing Journal: 9/21/2026

381) RESIDENT EVIL

(2026 dir. Zach Cregger) Date Seen: September 21 2026

A modest triumph for us "Show-Don’t-Tell" nerds. The whole thing plays fun like a neatly constructed ride: Maybe not as tightly written as Cregger’s previous two features, but dude's directorial instincts remain riveting. There is a brief moment at the beginning of the 3rd act where I was worried the movie had become pictorially unsure of itself. (within an elevator shaft) Some staging there felt anomalous within RESIDENT EVIL’s larger visual grammar —but the film thankfully soldiers on from there quick,

↓possible spoilers below. highlight to read↓

& to an absolutely revolting natal ward scene. Babies First Pustule Bag.. One part of the movie my mind keeps chewing on post viewing (this isn't a gripe as much as rumination on decisions in visual pov) is the final shot. & I think i understand the note of fatalism + overall jarring sting Cregger was going for with it; pushing us directly into an agonized face followed by a smash-cut to title card. But I was actually surprised he didn’t go in the opposite direction. By going wide, with a big frame to emphasize ruin & desolation while the cam slowly pulled away. Like the existential gut-punch shot that closes Inside (2016), another video game this movie’s increasingly Cronenbergian ending stretch emotionally brought to mind.  

Similar to what Capcom did with R.E.7 Biohazard (2017), I appreciate when game devs & film producers take large creatively risky swings like this. More bold attempts to inject new life-blood into franchises, please.

Viewing Journal: 9/20/2026

380) THE MUSICAL

(2026 dir. Giselle Bonilla) Date Seen: September 20 2026

Too much annoying. & in that very particular way only a Sundance hit can be.. Rob Lowe's pretty good though.

Viewing Journal: 9/19/2026

379) THE UPRISING

(2026 dir. Paul Greengrass) Date Seen: September 19 2026

Working poor audiences across most of the Western hemisphere are carrying a palpable appetite for stories of revolt -- decades of scorched-earth austerity policies in our countries can do that. & despite the movie's faults, UPRISING gives all that accumulated fury a cathartic outlet. It helps that the cast is also exceptionally good. (+ As far as Greengrass films go, this was a significant improvement over his last disaster picture). I do sorta wonder how the director would've handled this material circa 2002 around the time of BLOODY SUNDAY / pre-Jason Bourne.

Look, it ain't no BATTLE OF ALGIERS but it's gonna have to do for now.. The neo-feudal class of corporate sovereigns that puppet our states feel too safe.

Viewing Journal: 9/18/2026

378) 

SHAUN THE SHEEP: THE

BEAST OF MOSSY BOTTOM

(2026 dir. Cox / Walker) Date Seen: September 18 2026

A wicked little clockwork of cotton ball ovines, monsters, & shadows + easily my favorite movie in the SHAUN series so far.. It also stands as proof that Aardman are still masters of visual narrative. They can wring more comedy from one cocked eyebrow than lesser animations manage with thousands of words & optical noise. 

Viewing Journal: 9/17/2026

378) HOT SPOT

(2026 dir. Agnieszka Smoczyńska) Date Seen: September 17 2026

critical reception to this is reminding me a lot of what greeted Richard Kelly’s SOUTHLAND TALES at Cannes in 2006: completely unloved and misunderstood.. But thankfully I can already hear the distant rumblings of a cult reappraisal. There's a raw nerve of real a.i. anxiety for the future of our species at the core of almost every image in HOT SPOT. Where Kelly's film was narratively tapping into Godard's absurdism though, Smoczyńska is operating in the high-voltage, subconscious terrain of Jodorowsky. That's right I said it! It's a type of surrealist filmmaking meant to deliver a kinetic charge through raw poetic imagery rather than simply just telling you how to feel about everything via conventional storytelling.

377) BATMAN KNIGHTFALL 

       PART 1: KNIGHTFALL

(2026 dir. Jeff Wamester) Date Seen: September 17 2026

Aight & cool. but it is wild how so many moments of these DC animated things can be truly cinematic one moment like a theatrically released feature and then an action scene will happen that, while looking decent, will clearly resemble a series' finale episode of streamlined tv animation. Complete with the faux shake of handheld added via After Effects w/ fewer cuts between backgrounds. It can't just be a budget thing, right?.. I was also surprised I didn't mind the digital shading & lighting on many 2D figures in this. It actually looked fairly kick-ass. (technique has come a long way in animation since the gross frosted haze look on the two ULTIMATE AVENGERS vids).

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES is still my favorite thing former storyboard artist Wamester has done.