Viewing Journal: 9/28/2026

391) THE WEIGHT

(2026 dir. Padraic McKinley) Date Seen: September 28 2026

A remarkably assured directorial debut that plays like an action-oriented riff on TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE.. Ethan Hawke & Russell Crowe are golden.

Viewing Journal: 9/27/2026

390) FORGOTTEN ISLAND

(2026 dir. J.Crawford / Mercado) Date Seen: September 27 2026

"We are our memories, we are that 

chimerical museum of shifting shapes, 

that heap of broken mirrors." 

— Jorge Luis Borges

Excellent. And i'm surprised I enjoyed it as much as I did, because I found the ads to be too visually overstimulating & they sorta made me dread that the movie was going to be another hollow wave of skittle barf like THE SUPER MARIO GALAXY MOVIE. Audiences don't need anymore sensory bombardments as faux profundity. What FORGOTTEN ISLAND is is a great story about love (specifically for one's friends) & the tragedy of memory loss. The themes of ETERNAL SUNSHINE re-spun through the optical energy of SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE. + better use of the Lisa Frank color palette than RUBY GILLMAN) & btw, the movie's also a landmark for Filipino representation.

389) AVENGERS: ENDGAME

(2019 dir. Russo bros.) 2nd Viewing: September 27 2026

"Encore" 7th Anniversary

notes from repeat viewing:

• Opening shot is a curious bore to start a film on; Closeup up of aiming a bow & arrow. Especially if you're into theorist neat construction things, like the first & last shots being spiritual bookends (like INFINITY WAR's first & lasts).
• Many thought twas ugly, but I like the way the interior of the stranded "Benatar" is lit gloomy like a crawlspace or tomb. Works good w/ Danvers showing up as an ever-brightening light.
• Every early exposition scene is shot & blocked like tv. Law & Order office scenes.
• I still don't really understand what Thanos thought he'd accomplish w/ his Malthusian "snap". Wouldn't many of the same problems still exist?
• Tony's a whiny bitch when he first gets home. It's like a Jerry Lewis moment when he pulls his reactor heart out in protest & immediately collapses.
• Yo-hansson is smokin' with the blonde short bob hair.
• Thanos seems like the type of douche that would eat durian fruit on public transportation.
  
• Cap leading group therapy is heartwarming.
• cool scene outta nowhere of masked Hawkeye cutting down Yakuza in Tokyo injects much-needed energy into dour proceedings.
• Actually scene above leads into the stretch of the film that works best for me --all the planning & executing of the time-travel heist.
• LOVE the frame-within-a-frame that the barn slats make when Hawkeye first tests Quantum Tunnel.
• Got first glimpse of that hideous digital backdrop w/ "Battle of Earth" fight approaching. & I think i understand the Russo & VFX team's decision to have it be lit that way in theory, but yuck. Problem is, filmmakers were already cross-cutting to 2 parallel action scenes before it that are born out of James Cameron set pieces; the trapped in rubble flooding (TITANIC, ABYSS) & Hawkeye battling Outriders in the corridor (ALIENS), so to have a third sequence take place amongst scenery visually indebted to Jim would've maybe felt too derivative?? & then adding that glimmer of sun peeking out served 2 functions: to help differentiate it from the TERMINATOR 1 & 2's Future War nightmares (short of human skulls, it's the same expressionist rubble)
  
  
  & also maybe they felt the distant sun would make the audience feel more hopeful? Whatever the reasons, it makes the whole scene have tacky light - so thankfully the big war that plays out over it is silly enough & fun. I personally would've been tempted to conceal / reveal everything via thunderstorm, à la the Agent Smith "Showdown in Mega City" fight MATRIX REVOLUTIONS.
  
  that's allz i got..

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 very 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.