Stuff I watched in...April 2026

Sentimental Value

Directed by Joachim Trier, Sentimental Value is what I would call a very generous and humane film. It's a family drama about two adult sisters, Nora (Renate Reinsve) and Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), coming to terms with their relationship with their absentee father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgaard), after their mother passes away.

Gustav is a film director who divorced the girls' mother and left Norway to pursue his career when Nora and Agnes were fairly young. Nora grows up to be a stage actress and when Gustav returns to Norway for the funeral, he presents Nora with a manuscript of a film he wrote with her in mind. Nora is understandably pissed that her dad wants to make nice after all these years without showing genuine remorse. When Nora turns down the role, Gustav seeks out an American actress, Rachel Kemp (Elle Fanning), to be in the movie. 

The house that Agnes and Nora grow up in is a character itself, and we get to see the house's history. Gustav's mother grew up in the house and was a part of the Norwegian resistance against the Nazi occupation, which led to her arrest and torture in prison. It's implied that she passed her trauma to her son who then passed it to his daughters. The house bears witness to it all.

Sentimental Value treats all of its characters with empathy and humanity. Although Gustav is a selfish man who puts career above family, he's not a monster. The film doesn't make excuses for him, but it does show the context for his behavior. Similarly, Nora is deeply hurt by her father, but she also engages in selfish and self-destructive behaviors that, at her age, she can no longer blame on her father's absenteeism. I think the movie does a good job of holding space for how we are affected by our parents' issues while also pointing out that it's up to us as adults to actually deal with our own shit...regardless of whether or not our parents choose to deal with theirs.

This is a graceful, gracious, honest movie with a good heart and stellar acting. Highly recommended.

Grade: A+

***

The Rock

Here is a...less graceful film, but a damn fun one. The Rock is a Michael Bay film in which a Marine Corps General, Francis Hummel (Ed Harris), takes a group of tourists hostage at Alcatraz and threatens to release a chemical weapon which is lethal enough to basically take out all of San Francisco if his demands aren't met.

What are his demands? That the families of fallen soldiers received monetary compensation for the loss of their dead loved ones. So Hummel is one of those villains who is actually right (or at least righteous). However, in order to carry out his scheme, Hummel has hired mercenaries who are only committing treason for a large pay day. This turns out to be a mistake.

The Department of Defense brings two important men in to help with the rescue of the hostages: Dr. Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage), a chemical weapons expert, and John Mason (Sean Connery), a former British MI6 operative who was actually imprisoned at Alcatraz when it was a functioning prison...and escaped from it. Mason has been locked up since his recapture, but he is offered a pardon in exchange for helping the Department of Defense map out and essentially break in to Alcatraz without Hummel and his men discovering them. And can you believe it? Plans go awry. 

The Rock is a ridiculous film treated very seriously. A lot of crazy shit happens and the acting is mostly straight-faced, with the exception of Nic Cage and (to a lesser extent) Connery.  The film has relatively little humor, but then randomly Cage will yell a line like "How in the name of ZEUS'S BUTTHOLE did you escape your cell!?" (that's a real line). 

I enjoyed The Rock a lot more than I expected to, mostly because of Nic Cage. It's not great cinema, but it's a good film to escape into if you just want to watch things blow up. 

Grade: B-

***

Something Very Bad is Going to Happen

I watched this new Netflix series in three days: one episode the first day, one episode the next day, and then six episodes on the third day. It was nice to surrender to getting so sucked into a story that I couldn't stop watching. 

Created by Haley Z. Boston and produced by the Duffer brothers, Something Very Bad is Going to Happen accurately captures the experience of anxiety and obsessive thoughts. Just the name of the series alone is something that, as someone with anxiety, I could relate to immensely. The idea that something horrible is going to happen is one all anxiety sufferers live with, to a greater and lesser extent. 

Rachel Harkin (Camila Morrone) is getting married to Nicky Cunningham (Adam DiMarco). While Rachel's mother died in childbirth and she is estranged from her father, Nicky is part of a large, close-knit, rich, and very weird family. The couple is traveling to the Cunningham family home in Upstate New York, where the wedding will take place. Also, this is the first time Rachel is meeting Nicky's family, so...it's a lot.

Without giving anything away, weird shit begins happening on the way to the house and it just doesn't let up. The Cunningham family come off as weird and aggressive to Rachel and, of course, Nicky either isn't there or doesn't really see what the issue is. Over the course of the eight episodes, information is revealed that ups the stakes of the nuptials and puts Rachel in a position to make some very difficult decisions. 

This show fucking slaps. It's very scary and creepy and is clearly inspired by David Lynch. It's not exactly Emmy-winning material, but it is so fun to watch and pore over the symbolism and details. My recommendation is to watch it more slowly than I did and let yourself revel in the mystery--don't blow your wad in three days like me.

Grade: A-

***

The Pitt, season 2

Last year, The Pitt came out of nowhere and impressed us all. The medical drama was the "competency porn" we all needed in a world filled with fucking idiots. Watching intelligent people make life-saving choices under pressure was just so satisfying. And it helped that the acting is across the board excellent, especially Noah Wyle's lead as troubled attending physician Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch.

Well, Dr. Robby and crew are back for more punishment in season 2 and I ate it the up. The overarching plot is that this is the last day before Robby takes a 3-month sabbatical to go on a lengthy motorcycle trip across the country. But Robby keeps making oblique references to "not coming back", raising eyebrows among the Pitt crew who are afraid that the man might be on the verge of a breakdown. 

Robby is guiding new attending physician Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) through her first day at the Pitt and the tension is high. Robby doesn't trust anyone with "his" emergency room, least of all this upstart doctor who is into using an AI app to help her take medical notes. 

Returning are our favorite young doctors, residents, and interns from last season: Mel King (Taylor Dearden), Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell), Victoria Javadi (Shabana Azeez), and Trinity Santos (Isa Briones). They're guiding two new interns, Joy Kwon (Irene Choi) and James Ogilvie (Lucas Iverson). 

And of course who could forget Mama Bear Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), the charge nurse with the heart of gold and will of steel, who deserves to win an Emmy for her performance this season.

I could spend this entire review simply naming characters because this is nothing if not a character-driven show. And the beautiful thing is that the characters, no matter how small or large their parts, are three-dimensional human beings. The Pitt can admittedly be on the nose with its "woke" agenda, but it gets away with a bit of preaching because the characters are SO well-written. I pretty much avoid all discourse on this show because some of the fans are real weird about it, and that frees me up to just enjoy such a wonderful, compassionate, thrilling TV series where I give a shit about the characters--including the ones I don't particularly like!

If you've been sleeping on The Pitt, it's time to wake up: the show absolutely lives up to the hype.

Grade: A

***

Lee Cronin's The Mummy

Plenty of people have goofed on Lee Cronin for putting his name in the title of this film because it implies that Lee Cronin is a big name when he objectively is not. I think that he added his name to indicate that this mummy movie has little to nothing to do with other, more famous mummy movies.

And it's true that Lee Cronin's The Mummy isn't really about a mummy...although that brings up the question of "what IS a mummy?" In any case, the movie is about a young girl who is abducted and used as a vessel to contain a demon which has cursed a specific family for generations. When that girl is discovered, she appears to be...alive. Sort of. She looks and acts like someone who was kept bound in a sarcophagus for eight years and miraculously survived--in other words, she ugly. 

The unfortunate girl in question is Katie Cannon, the eight year old daughter of Charlie Cannon (Jack Reynor), a journalist living in Egypt with his wife, Larissa (Laia Costa), and son, Sebastian (Shylo Molina). Katie (played as a child by Emily Mitchell) is taken from her own backyard right under her father's nose. The authorities are useless. The film cuts to eight years later, when the Cannon family is living in New Mexico with Larissa's mother, Carmen (Veronica Falcon), and have a daughter, Maud (Billie Roy), who is about the age that Katie was when she went missing. The Cannons have preserved Katie's bedroom but generally seem to have moved on from the horrific tragedy of losing their daughter and never even having the closure of knowing if she is dead or alive.

Well, turns out that Katie is discovered--bound like a mummy in a lead-lined sarcophagus discovered in the aftermath of a plane crash. As I wrote above, she is "alive" (she has a strong pulse and is breathing), but she is all sorts of fucked up. The doctors send her home with Charlie and Larissa, who are horrified at Katie's state, but relieved to have their daughter back with them. That is, until Katie begins acting strange. 

By "acting strange", I mean crawling around the house at night and eating scorpions. I mean self-harming in disgusting and alarming ways. She's also super strong, which is WEIRD for someone who has been in a sarcophagus for nearly a decade. Clearly, something is wrong with Katie and it's not just that her brain is fried like the "Sloth" victim in Se7en. 

Katie wrecks insane, horrifying, and often very, very funny havoc on the Cannon family. Larissa's response is to mother Katie harder and Charlie's is to go into journalist mode to find out what happened to her. I will say that a really strong element of Lee Cronin's The Mummy is that the family acts like a real family--the actors have good chemistry together. I won't say that Lee Cronin's The Mummy has anything profound to say about family, or guilt, or grief. It's just a really gross movie about a possessed girl. 

Despite the fact that Lee Cronin's The Mummy ain't gonna win any awards, it was a hell of a lot of fun. I was screaming in delight at the grossest scenes and laughing my ass off during the mayhem (which was the director's intention, I'm pretty sure). As pure entertainment, it delivered. 

Grade: B-

***

Shelby Oaks

Shelby Oaks is the passion project of YouTube film reviewer Chris Stuckmann. It's a horror film about a group of paranormal investigators--the "Paranormal Paranoids"--who go missing while investigating the ghost town of Shelby Oaks. While the bodies of three of the four investigators are found, the body of Riley Brennan (Sarah Dunn) is never recovered, which means her sister, Mia (Camille Sullivan), never gets true closure.

That is, until a man shows up at Mia's house with a tape labeled "Shelby Oaks". Mia watches the tape and continues the investigation into what happened to her sister 12 years after she disappeared.

Shelby Oaks is pretty cheesy and derivative, but it's not unenjoyable. For a first time filmmaker, it's not terrible. But it definitely feels like a collection of horror tropes that Stuckmann has seen in other films more than a unique vision in and of itself. It has some genuinely chilling moments, but I was mostly left with a lot of questions about the timeline of events in the film. 

Shelby Oaks is worth checking out if you're a horror fanatic. For everyone else, you're not missing much if you skip this one.

Grade: C+

***

Language Lessons

Language Lessons is a screenlife film worthy of the medium. Taking place as a series of Zoom calls and video messages, the film follows Adam (Mark Duplass) and Cariño (Natalie Morales, who also co-wrote and directed the film). Adam's husband bought him 100 Spanish lessons from Cariño (a Cuban native who now lives in Costa Rica) as a surprise gift. Adam and Cariño get to know each other as they chat mostly in Spanish and occasionally in English.

A surprising turn of events deepens Adam and Cariño's relationship very quickly, and what begins as a student-teacher relationship morphs into a friendship based on mutual support (although not without its misunderstandings along the way). To say more would be saying too much, but suffice it to say that Language Lessons explores human connection and the idea that people come into our lives for "a reason, a season, or a lifetime". 

This movie is deeply moving due to the beautiful and empathetic performances of Morales and Duplass, actors who both excel at naturalism. The script is casual and loose and the emotions that play across both actors' faces are honest and subtle. Language Lessons truly feels like you're eavesdropping on Zoom conversations between two real people.

I highly recommend this life-affirming film about the power of platonic friendship.

Grade: A

Stuff I watched in...(the second half of ) March, 2026

Project Hail Mary

First of all, I kinda feel bad giving Project Hail Mary "only" a B+ rating since SO many people are finding it to be one of the best movies they've ever seen. And it is indeed a fun and beautiful movie. My rating is slightly lower only because I have not read the book and so much of the film felt like it was going way too fast and I wasn't fully comprehending the science of it all. The movie is 2 hours and 40 minutes long and felt like it could easily be another hour longer. So my "B+" is more about my experience watching the film as someone who was playing catch-up, if that makes any sense.

I shelled out the extra dough to watch Project Hail Mary in IMAX, which I think was the right choice. It's a film that deserves to be seen on a very large screen. Directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and based on the book by Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary is about a regular dude--a science teacher--who is sent to space to save the entire universe. No pressure! 

Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) is recruited by a government agent Eva Stratt (Sandra Huller) to work on a project to save Earth. Or, more accurately, to save the sun from being "eaten" by microorganisms called "astrophages" that have been recently discovered. These astrophages are eating every star in the solar system except for one. The goal is to send a small crew to that one star so they can discover what properties it has to resist the astrophages and then the crew will send that info back to Earth. Because this small crew will only have enough energy to get to the star and not enough to get back to Earth, it's a suicide mission.

Grace is only a middle school teacher, but he used to be a molecular biologist. He was booted out of the serious scientific community because his theories were so controversial. But he is recruited back into the scientific community because of his unorthodox way of viewing things. 

Without getting into too much plot detail, Grace ends up on the mission to the star and is the only surviving crew member. He is profoundly lonely until he meets an alien life form, which he names "Rocky" because, well, the life form looks like a rock with arms and legs. Rocky and Grace figure out how to communicate and realize they are both on the same mission. Alone in the middle of space, Grace and Rocky become friends. Grace, who sees himself as someone who is not brave and not extraordinary, finds someone to be brave for--and that's literally the entire point of the movie. All the science, all the dense plot...it just boils down to a friendship between two entities that are so different from one another but are both capable of caring for the other one. I won't lie--Project Hail Mary almost made me cry. 

So, yeah, I had some issues with the movie just being too much--too fast, too rushed, too much info...but that's not because the movie is poorly made. It's only an issue because it's adapting a dense and, from what I've heard, excellent book (which, yes, I will be reading). But I would 100% recommend this film because people who have read the book love it and people who haven't...also love it. It's a crowd pleaser and real epic--totally worth seeing on the biggest screen possible.

Grade: B+

***

The Plague

An absolutely brutal film about bullying and social isolation, The Plague is worth watching but is a very, very tough watch. It features some of the best child actors I've ever seen and it will uncomfortably remind you of your adolescence, whether you were a bully, the bullied, or a bystander who could have done more. 

The film takes place at a water polo camp in 2003. Ben (Everett Blunck) is new to the camp and quickly figures out the hierarchy. Jake (Kayo Martin) is the ringleader of a group of boys (these kids are all 12 or 13 years old) and he is downright Machiavellian in his ability to place the other boys exactly where he wants them on the social ladder. For example, he immediately picks up that Ben has a very small speech impediment where he can't pronounce the "st" sound--so "stop" sounds like "sop". Jake uses this to mock him, but never acts like it's more than just good fun with the guys.

Ben is lucky because there is a kid so low on the social ladder that the other boys don't even bother mocking him--they just completely avoid him. This is Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), a weird kid (we would probably consider him neurodivergent today) with an unfortunate skin disorder. The boys say that Eli has "the plague" and that if you touch him, you'll get it too. This leads the boys to scramble away whenever Eli is close. 

Ben is a smart kid. Smart enough to know that "the plague" isn't really real. He's also kind enough to have sympathy for Eli. But he's also invested in not being a pariah, so after he starts trying to befriend Eli, he finds himself on the outs with the other boys...Ben has caught "the plague".

When I say that The Plague is an excellent film, I mean it. It was 100% worth watching. But goddamn. As a 13 year old myself, I was Ben. I wasn't the social ringleader or bully, but I witnessed other kids get bullied and I knew it was wrong and I wanted to be nice to them...but part of me knew that if I got too close, I would be next. And the anger Ben expresses at Eli for being weird...oh my god, shoot an arrow into my heart! Yes, I've been there too. Even if you're a grown ass adult, The Plague will expose your deepest fears and deepest shame. This movie is a masterpiece and it will break your heart.

Grade: A+

***

My Own Private Idaho

As a fan of Sad Gay White Boy Cinema (tm), it's hard to believe I've overlooked Gus Van Sant's My Own Private Idaho for so long. In fact, I basically had no idea what the movie was about other than River Phoenix + Keanu Reeves + motorcycle. I assumed it was a road movie with a sprinkling of unrequited love. And it is that, but it's so much more. 

My Own Private Idaho is a much weirder film than I expected. Van Sant loosely based the movie on Shakespeare's Henry IV Part 1, Henry IV Part 2, and Henry V--plays I know next to nothing about. If I hadn't looked this detail up before watching the movie, I would have been extremely confused about the tonal shift that happens whenever a character named Bob Pigeon is on screen. Bob (played by William Richert) is an older man who, I guess, "mentors" street kids and hustlers. Scenes with Bob turn into Shakespearean rat-a-tat dialogue between Richert and Reeves. 

But once Bob isn't on screen, My Own Private Idaho goes back to being a normal movie, albeit with some interesting stylistic touches. River Phoenix plays Mike, a true and genuine hustler with a pack on his back and a fucked up brain (he suffers from narcolepsy, making him extremely vulnerable in an already vulnerable situation). His best friend is Scott Favor (Reeves), who is the son of the mayor of Portland and set to inherit a ton of money, but enjoys slumming it alongside actual desperate people. Scott fucks men for money, but he's not actually gay and believes that men can't love each other...a belief proven wrong by Mike's longing for Scott. 

My Own Private Idaho is about the intersection of class and sexuality. Scott can play at being poor and queer because he can return to money and heterosexuality at any time. Mike just is poor and queer. He has no safety net and even his best friend drops him the moment he meets a pretty girl he likes. River Phoenix gives a beautiful performance with almost painful vulnerability. It's sad to think about the art he could have given us if he hadn't died at the tragically young age of 23. 23 --just a baby. 

Really glad I finally got around to watching this sensitive and sad film.

Grade: A-

***

Ready or Not 2: Here I Come

Ready or Not was an extremely fun horror-comedy about Grace (Samara Weaving), a woman with an impoverished background who marries into an insanely wealthy family, only to find herself hunted by the very same family on the night of her wedding. You see, the La Domas clan sold their souls to Satan for ultimate power. The only thing Satan...or "Mister Le Bail"...asks of this family is the occasional sacrifice. And on her wedding night, Grace's card came up. Literally. 

But Grace prevailed and the entire La Domas family, in-laws and children included, died. However, Grace's trials and tribulations are only just beginning because in Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, Grace has to fight all the remaining heads of the families who, along with the La Domas', control the entire world. With the La Domas' dead, the high seat of power belongs to Grace...unless one of the other members of the powerful families can kill her before dawn. And, unfortunately, Grace's sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton), is along for the ride this time. Ride or die, that is.

Look, Ready or Not 2: Here I Come did not need to be made. In my opinion, it adds nothing to the first film and--frankly--takes away from it by adding more lore. Convoluted lore, at that. First we had one family running the world, now we have five families. First we thought it was fight to the death, now we learn there is a hidden clause to get around the whole death thing. It's not that this movie doesn't have its fun moments--it absolutely does--it's just like...why?

Additionally, there are more plot holes than Swiss cheese in this movie. There were so many times where I was like "Ok, the gate is open--why don't they take the golf cart and drive away? Oh right, because then there wouldn't be a movie". "Oh, this person was nearly beaten to death an hour ago and now they have a single cut on their face--ok, I guess I'll suspend disbelief". Eh, I'm asking too much of a movie about devil worshippers, aren't I? 

If you're a huge fan of Ready or Not, you will probably at least have fun with the sequel. But for most folks, you can feel free to skip this one or just wait until it's on streaming. 

Grade: C+

***

Summer of Sam

Directed by Spike Lee, Summer of Sam is the definition of a "hot mess". The film is loose, lewd, fairly directionless, weird, and occasionally very entertaining. It takes place during the summer of 1977 in New York City (the summer that the serial killer David Berkowitz, aka "Son of Sam", was active). Even with a deranged lunatic on the loose, the sexy people of the Bronx still go disco-dancing, get coked up, and get laid.

The film mostly follows Vinny (John Leguizamo), a hairdresser who regularly cheats on his lovely wife, Dionna (Mira Sorvino). He cheats not because he doesn't love Dionna, but because he has a serious Madonna/whore complex. He can't bring himself to ask his wife to do stuff like anal sex and 69 because "you don't do that stuff with your wife"--you do it with your boss, and your wife's cousin, and a million other ladies instead! That's what we call respect. 

Another major player in the film is Ritchie (Adrien Brody), a guy who grew up in the Italian neighborhood along with Vinny and the others but starts affecting a punk look and it freaks out all the conservative men in the neighborhood. It doesn't help that Ritchie starts going out with "Ruby the Skank" (Jennifer Esposito). Ritchie and Ruby just want to dress weird and listen to punk rock, but their refusal to blend in causes a stir amongst the traditional men who used to be their friends. 

With a heat wave on and bodies piling up, the paranoia and tension begin to rise and reach a crisis point where violence is imminent. This is ground Lee has covered before, namely in the excellent Do the Right Thing. But Summer of Sam just ain't it. Where it should be weird it comes off as embarrassing and corny (check out the scene where Berkowitz's neighbor's dog directs him to "kill"--it's SO bad). Where it should should be sexy, it's decidedly unerotic (this actually might have been Lee's intention). Even the entertaining scenes are entertaining because they're bizarre, not because they're interesting. Google "Adrien Brody Baba O'Riley montage" if you want to see what I'm talking about.

I'm glad I watched Summer of Sam because I need to see more Spike Lee films, but this one was just not impressive--and it was overly long to boot.

Grade: C+

***

The Ice Storm

The Ice Storm was a favorite of mine in high school. So much so that I read the book it's based on and bought the soundtrack (which turned me on to this stone-cold classic). I found the movie titillating back then, but now I just see it as very sad. It's a suburban ennui film about how middle-class conformity leads to acting out, both for the teenagers and the adults.

Directed by Ang Lee, the film takes place over the Thanksgiving holiday in 1973 Connecticut. Two families are embroiled in each others' lives: the Hood family (father Ben (Kevin Kline), mother Elena (Joan Allen), son Paul (Tobey Maguire), and daughter Wendy (Christina Ricci)) and the Carver family (father Jim (Jamey Sheridan), mother Janey (Sigourney Weaver), son Mikey (Elijah Wood), and son Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd)). 

They're "embroiled" because Ben and Janey are having an affair and Elena knows something is up. Also, Wendy and Mikey are on the verge of fooling around every time they hang out, while Wendy also enjoys riling up the younger Sandy. Basically--they kids are mimicking the adults' behavior. Or maybe it's the other way around.

Things come to a head on the evening of Thanksgiving, when the adults all go to a boozy party that turns into a "key party" where the men put their keys in a bowl and then women pick them out and go home with whomever's keys they've chosen. Very 1970s. Ben, Elena, Jim, and Janey all have to face up to reality while their children get up to no good.

The Ice Storm is what American Beauty could have been if it had any subtlety. You can tell from the absolutely stacked cast that this is a well-acted movie, especially with regards to the younger folks. Christina Ricci is the perfect exemplar of pissed off, curious, smart, horny teenage girlhood here. She appears to give no fucks, stealing snacks from a convenience store and kissing one Carver brother while showing the other Carver brother her privates. But it's clear that she's not just rebelling, she's also dying for warmth and attention from the adults in her life. Not to boil all teenage rebellion down to a simple "need for attention", but the way she lets her dad carry her home after he catches her fooling around with Mikey is all we need to see to know that this is a young person who needs love and care in her life...and her parents are too busy with their own bullshit drama to notice.

Excellent film, and among Lee's best work. Highly recommended.

Grade: A