November 2025 [10-16]

The Haunting of Hill House, Gladiator 2, The Last Duel, The Woman in the Yard, Dead Poets Society, Skinamarink, Civil War, Nightcrawler, I Believe in Unicorns, Animal Factory

- The Haunting of Hill House [2018] - 90

I had watched Flannagan’s inaugural television entry, The Haunting of Hill House, back in 2018 as it aired on Netflix. I remembered liking it, but not much other than that and, after watching The Haunting of Bly Manor and finding it entirely mediocre, having my soul entirely crushed by the most impressive dropping of any ball in the history of ever with the ending of Midnight Mass, and then being almost bored to tears by The Fall of the House of Usher, I began to wonder if maybe I had misremembered my time at Hill House. Come fall 2025, I finally got my ducks in a row to find out… And oh my good-ghosted-graciousness, I had not misremembered a thing. The Haunting of Hill House is not without its ghastly bumps and foibles, but it maintains itself as one of the best horror/dramas this side of the afterlife. For seven years I remembered the opening and closing lines of this show almost to the word, and for seven more, then seven times that, I will remember them still.

God, if ever there was any prayer of mine to answer, PLEASE let Mike channel this series when he finally begins work on The Dark Tower.

- Gladiator 2 [2024] - 54

Well… 24 years after the release of Ridley Scott’s epic, Gladiator, we finally get its sequel: Gladiator 2. Wait hold on, actually I’m just remembering that nobody on planet-Earth or planet-Anywhere-else asked for this movie ever, even once. So uh… What gives? Gladiator 2 is worthy only of being as unoriginal and boring as its direct-to-DVD name might suggest. I suppose some of the duel style fights were cool, but I can watch “cool” things on YouTube at a 12th of the time it took to slog through this cringe-fest. The worst part is that this could have been an OK movie if it was either bold enough to just be another roman battle film without feeling the need to associate itself with Gladiator, or if it had just stopped insisting on reminding us every 14 1/5 seconds of things that one character or another said from the first film in the most ham-fisted way possible.

What we do in life may echo in eternity, Ridley, but that doesn’t mean we have to do it all again every time we hear our own reverberations.

- The Last Duel [2021] - 74

Speaking of duels and Ridley Scott, I watched both of these movies in the same day just to honor his tantrum over millennials being on their phones and ruining his film’s success. Turns out, it was’nt millennials, The Last Duel was just really mediocre. An excellent cast and fun performances are mostly thrown away by a story that isn’t quite bold enough to challenge the viewer in interesting ways, but it manages to hold its head above water in the moments bravery swells somewhere in its cold little heart. It isn’t that The Last Duel’s story isn’t interesting or meaningful either, because it happens to be both actually, it’s just that the round-robin storytelling never quite commits fully enough to its own bit to be engaging or particularly virtuous. Let me save you almost 3-hours of your life, and just watch the fun part of the movie, then read this article.

The film is not entirely without merit, and there are things that it does well, it just doesn’t sell either its commentary or its characters nearly enough to be entirely worth its runtime.

- The Woman in the Yard [2025] - 66

The Woman in the Yard is one of those deeply inspiring movies for me: It’s both not very good and entirely derivative of another horror great, yet director Jaume Collet-Serra has sixteen titles to his name according to IMDB, with an average score of 6.15.

If he can do it, anyone can.

This was just… I don’t know. It’s a movie, it exists, and in a world where The Babadook doesn’t, it’s much more interesting… But even then, it’s just OK. We have so many good [and even great] horror movies that use the genre to mask discussions about difficult mental health topics that average ones really just don’t cut the mustard. This was close in a lot of ways and I’ve rated it as such, but when films like the above-mentioned Babadook have already been shown, and movies like The Swerve, When I Consume You, They Look Like People, and I’m Thinking of Ending Things also exist… The Woman in the Yard better be packing some absolute heat, or she may as well take her show on down the road and try again later.

- Dead Poets Society [1989] - 84

Shifting gears entirely here to a late 80’s classic, Dead Poets Society is no less poignant 36-years later than it was the day it released. Thanks to excellent early performances from both Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard as they’re led through a journey of self discovery and soul-searching freedom by the always tenacious-yet-tender Robbin Williams, Dead Poets Society is sure to make even the most timid amongst you feel right at home being exactly who you want to be. This is a great story that’s largely [and somewhat malformedly] coopted by 2003’s School of Rock, and one that so many folks still need to hear today. It certainly isn’t without its more… problematic moments, but these are easily waved away as a product of its era and they bear little-to-nothing on the story itself, which is touching, inspiring, and difficult all at the same time.

- Skinamarink [2022] - 35

Oh Skinamarink, you little scamp. Look, there are elements of this film that are genuinely horrifying, but they’re far better read than they are experienced. This is a film that I hope gets remade in a few years and in a less obtuse fashion, because there’s some really excellent ideas behind the unnecessarily oblique storytelling and minimalist trappings. I mean that, and I sincerely hope you click that link above and read the short plot summary on the film’s wiki page, because the plot itself is quite good… It’s just told in such a snobby, arthouse way that the film is next to impossible to enjoy. There’s merit in obscurity when it comes to storytelling, horror often especially, but in the same way that discretion is the better part of valor, clarity is the better part of simplicity. If your story is overly simplistic in its presentation, it quickly crosses the line from spartan, strange, or uncanny in the form of things like The Killing of a Sacred Deer or It Comes at Night, and ends up in a space where the audience has to interpret what the hell you’re trying to say at any given moment. Skinamarink could be great, could even one of the greats… It just has to get its head out of its own haunted ass and not confuse “indiscernible” for “artistic”.

- Civil War [2024] - 77

Alex Garland, Alex Garland, Alex Garland… The king of the “almost truly excellent” film. I love this man’s vision and I love this man’s ideas… I just wish he could get out of his own way sometimes or he’d work with someone who’d tell him “no”. Civil War is a brilliant and beautiful film about finding your calling, doing whatever it takes, the fragility of any one moment, and the pain of losing it all while retaining the coldness required to keep going. It also sells itself a little short by not committing entirely to a few of these ideas, but then makes up for it with some excellent sound design, cinematography, and visual effects; not to mention performances from everyone involved. Garland is a madman and, even though 28 Years Later was an atrocious pile of dogbones, I still respect his art immensely… I just also find it immensely frustrating.

- Nightcrawler [2014] - 86

2014’s Nightcrawler, an excellent addition to the annals of “Leo was super wrong the first time he watched this”. I saw this film when it was new… And I thought it was boring and dumb… Turns out, I was boring and dumb actually [not that any of you are surprised], and I’d love to be able to go back and have a conversation with then-me to see what it was that rubbed me the wrong way. Thriller-dramas often hold up fairly well overtime, but Dan Gilroy’s excellently horrifying nighttime-news creep-show feels like a movie that could have released yesterday, not 11-years ago. As he tends to do in these kinds of roles, Jake Gyllenhaal absolutely carries this film as a perfect cosplay of Patrick Bateman turned freelance reporter while he takes advantage of everyone around him and sounds just like the boss you’ll never forget how much you hated. Hugely worth your time whether you’ve never seen it or just haven’t in a while.

- I Believe in Unicorns [2014] - 83

Baby Natalia Dyer, baby Julia Garner, and first [and last] time writer/director Leah Meyerhoff work together to tell an excellently difficult coming of age story about a girl who follows her wants down a road trip with a boy she doesn’t even know, into a summer she’ll [for better and worse] surely never forget. A little minimalist, a little artsy, I Believe in Unicorns mostly does exactly what it intends to do and stands as one of the more unique titles within its well-crowded genre. I’m fairly shocked to see that Meyerhoff has exactly 0 works to her name following this film, and even most surprised to see basically no news of her online either. I thought this was pretty great really — using fun and engaging stop-motion shorts to elucidate some of Davina’s [Natalia] inner thoughts and feelings, and hiding deeper truths within teenage ramblings. The best stories within this sphere make us face things we’d rather not while giving us the sweet honey of remembering when we were just the same as those wandering around on the screen, and I Believe in Unicorns has very sharp pieces of both.

“There's so much I want to say, but I don't know where to start…
Maybe when I learn to breathe, we'll finally be able to talk.”

- Animal Factory [2000] - 55

Animal Factory is one of those movies that you feel like you should be moved by, but just aren’t for some reason. There’s plenty of movies where “nothing really happens”, but somehow they end up being interesting slices of life that make you think or feel or laugh or want or… Something. Steve Buscemi’s 2000 prison drama, Animal Factory… Is not one of those “nothing really happens” movies, it’s a “nothing really happens 🥱” movie. There’s some intrigue, there’s some theatrics, there’s stabbing and fighting and bleeding and lying… But at the end of it all there’s just kind of a halfhearted pat on the back and a softly mumbled “anyway” as time continues on. I supposed there’s some narrative and/or commentary on the forever sameness of prison life and the maddening regularity of how the system turns its gears and churns those within them, but the script just isn’t poised to deliver those messages, and so they really don’t come through unless you accidentally find yourself deep in some discussion board with people that feel the need to make their own websites to tell you about things writers and directors did or didn’t imply through their stories, despite having nothing at all to do with the creation of them.

Avoid those people and places at all costs.