August/September 2026 [31-6]
Unorthodox. Hackers, Ghost in the Shell, Vampire Hunter D, Is God Is, Old Henry, The Guest, Dust Bunny
- Unorthodox [2019] - 84
Based on Deborah Feldman’s autobiography, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, Unorthodox follows a young woman who seeks escape from her arranged and suffocating hyper-Orthodox community. While the miniseries has its moments, its largely missing any sort of contextual information for viewers who aren’t familiar with the situation it tackles, which gives most of the show’s elements a sort of “yep, I can recognize that’s bad” energy, rather than actually making you feel them. Certainly not true for all of its pieces, however, as the final episode of this four-part emancipation is incredibly powerful. Similar to my critiques of Spider Noir several weeks ago, I think that Unorthodox is a show that can be almost entirely understood simply by watching its final hour, which makes sitting through the rest of them a little bit difficult.
- Hackers [1995] - 63
A clear progenitor of the currently popular cyberpunk aesthetic, 1995’s Hackers is simultaneously horrendously cringe and a briskly refreshing time capsule. Everything about the world built here by Iain Softley and Rafael Moreu is exactly what you’ll envision if you think of a “1990’s computer hacker”, and I absolutely loved being a part of it. It’s silly, it’s incredibly stupid, and if the middle hadn’t lost every piece of momentum that the beginning had built, this would easily be up there last year’s watch of 3 Ninjas as a “must return to” film for anyone that lived through the era. I still had an excellent time with this, but the story really does just fall right off its own hard disk after the first act, and spends the entire second trying to successfully boot to POST for the third — Something it does manage successfully, I just wish we didn’t have to flash our CMOS to get there.
- Ghost in the Shell [1995] - 54
From one cyperpunk film to the next, Ghost in the Shell is another clear influence for all things scifi dystopia… And goddamn man, I’ve tried so hard to get into anime… I just cannot. I’m interested in checking out some more of the media around this series because I think the setting is incredibly cool, but I really struggle with so much of the way that anime often executes its stories. At just over 80-minutes long, this was such a slog that I nearly didn’t finish it, and likely wouldn’t have if there was anything more pressing that I had to do. The story is simultaneously super rushed and very empty somehow, seemingly just wanting to evulse its headier ramblings on life and consciousness onto the viewer without doing any of the actual narrative work to earn all those moments that will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
- Vampire Hunter D [1985] - 33
Yeah… I largely don’t get this medium. I love animated films, and there’s certainly things firmly within the “anime” genre that I deeply love, but there’s just something about how wonkily these stories are told, and the very cringe thirst traps almost all of them are, that I simply cannot abide. Vampire Hunter D is something that should be a favorite of mine: gothic, horror, scifi, action… What’s not to love? Well, an 80-minute runtime that feels like 80-days, for one thing. Similar to Ghost in the Shell above, this story feels like its trying to compress 70-something issues of its narrative into a single movie, which gives both the impression that everything and nothing is happening all at the same time, making any singular narrative point meaningless to even attempt to care about. I’m sure as a show this would have kicked ass despite the unnecessary anime-tiddies shoved into each frame but, as a movie, the only blood this sucked was… All of mine. So… Vampires 1, Me 0, I guess.
- Is God Is [2026] - 57
Is God Is, the directorial debut of Aleshea Harris, is… Fine. This film has a really strong visual style and sense of identity to it — two things I love above most others — but it doesn’t seem entirely sure what it actually wants to say, portray, or mean outside of its hyper-polished exterior. I love every single frame of this movie in terms of visual artistry, composition, and execution, but as good as all of this glitz and glam are, the narrative itself severely lacks any sort of bite. It’s never impossible, of course, that I simply don’t relate to a lot of what it wants to say, but it really feels like, for every moment one of Is God Is’ plot points tempts to teeter towards profundity, there’s fifteen more that want to make a funny joke or portray the same sense of sibling rivalry/companionship that we’ve already been shown thirty-five times. If this wasn’t so competently shot and edited I definitely would have marked this down as “DNF” but, as is, I’m still excited for whatever Harris puts out next.
- Old Henry [2021] - 38
Now, I cannot spill any of the same praise for Potsy Ponciroli’s Old Henry, despite it being the exact same runtime, and also a theme and presentation that I generally like. A classic “shoot out at a ranch” western led by the always excellent Tim Blake Nelson? Sign. Me. UP… Except wait, sign me up for something different, because this one was really just very boring. None of the characters are particularly believable [and are somehow even less interesting], the events of the story itself manage to make drying paint seem like the second coming, and the whole thing culminates into this starry eyed “revelation” that the movie basically does nothing at all to earn, does nothing with, and does nothing to move the audience. Unless you have some deep love for Billy The Kid, or the old-west runs in your veins, I’m really not sure who to recommend this movie to.
- The Guest [2014] - 42
You ever watch something and think, “I should have known better”? Yeah… Me either… Except this time I should have. From the team that brought us the buddy-cop snooze-fest, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, and even starring Dan Stevens again [though is it really “again” if this movie came first?], I don’t know why I thought anything about The Guest was going to motivate me. This is just a very standard and uninteresting twist on “X isn’t who you think they are”/ “home invasion” that might be somewhat interesting if you either love those genres, or have never seen another movie before. I, unfortunately for this film, do not particularly care for those tropes and I have, in fact, seen one or two movies in my time. There really isn’t anything particularly wrong with The Guest… It just also doesn’t do anything even vaguely interesting with its premise or characters, and everything turns out in the most linear way you could possibly imagine it.
- Dust Bunny [2025] - 62
Another movie this week with absolutely impeccable visual styling, Dust Bunny, from Pushing Daisies’, Bryan Fuller, has all the makings of an incredible YA action/fantasy… But absolutely none of the wherewithal. Featuring some seriously brilliant chemistry between the always excellent, Mads Mikkelsen, the charming and stern, Sophie Sloan, and the sharply effervescent, Sigourney Weaver, Dust Bunny should have been a film that soared over any and all obstacles in its path… Instead, it feels more like the version of Pan’s Labyrinth that nobody wanted to watch. While Fuller maintains his sense of whimsy and charm, the story here needed a lot more gristle to actually amount to anything other than a small pile of laughs, and the whole thing winds up feeling less like a plot that has anything to say, and more like I just paid for a front row seat to the the year’s biggest summit on orchiectomy.
