Viewing Journal: 9/30/2026

394) TWO PROSECUTORS

(2026 dir. Sergei Loznitsa) Date Seen: September 30 2026

Wasn't for me, but YMMV.. A hard film to sit through & deliberately so: cold, sad, washed-out, with a visual style that's supposed to make you feel the characters’ crippling paranoia (Stalin's "Great Terror" 1937). Constant fear that clearly mirrors what it must be like to live as a critic under Russia’s present authoritarian / permanent president. Claustrophobia and drained colors aren’t supposed to be a treat for the eyes. The filmmakers are trying to translate a very specific type of worry into picture form. Occasionally the compositions would have a slick, sinister film-noir look or a Jean-Pierre Melville cool —but then at other times they look as if the camera is sitting there because it was simply the only place it would fit on a cramped set. Super dull & not riveting.. Trying to think of other times I struggled with a film's impulse to be depressifying & conjure bleak realism; Where the filmmakers attempts to synthesize misery & dread actually starts killing a project's ability to function as a movie. UNITED 93 off the top of my head, is probably my nightmare example of this: an ugly joyless mess that doesn’t thrill anyone & just lies there (shakes there) dead. & I guess I had a similar problem with SON OF SAUL with its intentionally suffocating visual language, though at least there was a kind of perverse curiosity & voyeurism that could pull some viewers through to the end. There’s a lot of TWO PROSECUTORS where I just got bored. But that’s kind of the point.

Viewing Journal: 9/29/2026

393) 

THE HISTORY OF CONCRETE

(2026 dir. John Wilson) Date Seen: September 29 2026

Color me transfixed. deeply human doc that uses all manner of PCC material as a jumping-off point to explore unexpected corners of everyday life, connecting seemingly random encounters in cool ways. (Hit me the way I thought THE BALCONY MOVIE would in 2022).

[Related in name only; I wish someone would finally make a film or tv show of Paul Chadwick's Concrete]

392) BLACK ZOMBIE

(2026 dir. Maya Annik Bedward) Date Seen: September 29 2026

Seek this out asap if you love Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman & her brilliant Horror Noire! (+ the nice little Shudder documentary riff on it).. I wish Marlon Riggs was still with us 'cause I'd love to hear his ideas on this & so many other horror concepts post 80s.

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. They were stuck w/ a dilemma: 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.
  

• Paltrow's face showing up in an Iron Man suit still always gets one laugh from audiences I've seen it with.
• It'd be so funny if as Tony was dying he looked at his teammates & said "we really had some old-fashioned fun, didn't we?"
  
• Last 20 mins of the film is mock-somber eulogizing of Iron Man lol. "Freedom Isn't Free" part of TEAM AMERICA came to mind.

& 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.

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 in post 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.

Viewing Journal: 9/16/2026

376) 

THE END OF OAK STREET

(2026 dir. David Robert Mitchell) Date Seen: September 16 2026

If you were grading a film solely on directorial craft, you could say this was Mitchell's best work even over IT FOLLOWS. There's complex & ultra-precise spatial choreography going on in virtually every single scene in OAK STREET and it's obnoxiously good. + the movie has the emotional weight I felt THE LAST HOUSE was oddly missing, considering the talent involved there. This movie gets surprisingly existential (& melancholy) about the fragility of life & the passage of time.

Viewing Journal: 9/15/2026

375) 

OVER YOUR DEAD BODY 

(2026 dir. Jorma Taccone) Date Seen: September 15 2026

Right off the bat; I feel Samara Weaving is miscast in the Noomi Rapace role from the original or even as some reimagining of it. Ain't nobody buying that Margot Robbie’s funnier spunkier little sister could be "washed-up" or not in demand.. Jason Segel, meanwhile, may actually be a little too good for his part. But Aksel Hennie played the same basic misery with something deeper behind the eyes (come to think of it, so did Rapace), which only made the dark comedy in that one funnier. The original pair really just understood the "pathetic-yuppies" assignment better. I do feel like I need to point out that this English-language version is curiously much better lensed & lit (Matt Weston) than the Swedish byorn-byörg one —Unexpectedly handsome visual textures & focus pulling. and Idk why the screenplay for OVER YOUR DEAD BODY feels less adapted than hurriedly localized. Both the dialogue & actors’ deliveries of said dialogue seesaws between actual funny & irritating like obvious sketch comedy. Sometimes even within the same scene.