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.

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.

Viewing Journal: 9/14/2026

374) 

PINOCCHIO: UNSTRUNG

(2026 dir. Rhys Frake-Waterfield) Date Seen: September 14 2026

Like a better-than-average Halloween sleepover dvd we would have rented as kids. Directorially more Yuzna than Charles Band.. I've seen some not great horror re-tellings of Pinocchio (SILENT NIGHT DEADLY NIGHT 5 + PINOCCHIO'S REVENGE), so forgive me if it seems like i'm over coddling

Viewing Journal: 9/13/2026

373) ONSLAUGHT

(2026 dir. Adam Wingard) Date Seen: September 13 2026

I don't think i'm alone stating this is clearly team Wingard / Barrett's masterpiece. Both their careers have been headed towards it & if you have to make a few goofy Goojira cartoons to get the dough to produce an independent actioneer like this; So be it.. If you dug THE GUEST's regular NES, than this spiritual sequel is Super Nintendo chalmers.

372) 

THE TRIP [I ONDE DAGER]

(2021 dir. Tommy Wirkola) Date Seen: September 13 2026

Pretty swell & much more my bag than modern screwball things like the two WAR OF / THE ROSES movies. In a tonal sense this was like a lot of Martin McDonagh's stage work, more darkly comic than pitch black. The whole ensemble absolutely locked it in for I ONDE DAGER, but the main duo Noomi Rapace (swoon) and Aksel Hennie are especially golden. I did find it more than a little surprising that Tommy Wirkola handled confined space action /slapstick here even better than he did in his Santa Claus DIE HARD movie.. & poor Rapace's character in this gets clonked on the head so many damn times! She'd be in a coma in real life. lol

[viewed in preparation for Jorma Taccone's 2026 reimagining]

Viewing Journal: 9/12/2026

371) CHRONOVISOR

(2026 dir. Walker / Auen) Date Seen: September 12 2026

Pacing issues aside, this was honestly fascinating & one of the more original screenplays of the year. CHRONOVISOR accurately depicts what it feels like to fall down a rabbit hole via analogue research; When all your sources & reference trails go cold using conventional internet.. You'd think a procedural about archival research couldn't veer into psychological thriller territory so easily.

370) NITRATE KISSES

(1992 dir. Barbara Hammer) 2nd Viewing: September 12 2026

It’s like all these ghostly old images of bodies & passion were trying to touch something that heteronormative history wouldn’t let them keep. 💔 & somehow Barbara makes that loss feel almost physical; i.e. a phantom limb..

Still radical + radically moving all these years later. NITRATE KISSES in particular remains the only thing of hers that I've ever been able to track down! i wish I could find more of it in higher definition.

[watched in anticipation of BARBARA FOREVER]

Viewing Journal: 9/11/2026

369) DON'T MOVE

(2026 dir. Maclain Nelson) Date Seen: September 11 2026

Strikes me as an adaptation that needed much stronger casting, directing, & fine cutting. Thematically speaking (also based on what the lead gal goes thru), this could've been like THE DESCENT of giant spider movies; had there been tighter work in the aforementioned departments. Too many de-fanged scenes w/o genuine menace.. I did like the monster fx though & the deliberate choice not to show it that much.

368) ONE LAST SHOT 

(2026 dir. James Nunn) Date Seen: September 11 2026

Action didn't really decline too much in quality compared to the first 2 as much as this one's overall darker color palette & lighting were just visually uglier to adjust to.. I hope this isn't the note they go out on.

Viewing Journal: 9/10/2026

367) HOPE

(2026 dir. Na Hong-jin) Date Seen: September 10 2026

"Devil Hulk" from The Immortal Hulk & "Cooper" from SUPER 8 (2011) ain't got time for a bunch of provincial Earthling bumpkins. Arguably one of the more exhilarating pieces of action filmmaking for the whole of 2026.. I do worry though that Neon's marketing campaign for it is leaning a little too hard into horror. HOPE's clearly a horror hybrid, but I wonder if they're running the risk of genre-drift backlash with more mainstream audiences. (whatever gets arses into theatre seats I guess)

"I think Hope Davis starred in that -"

"THAT'S NOT HOPE!!"