Come In From The Cold

It’s the first month of 2026. Everything is more expensive than it used to be. Our county is being run into the ground by a pants-shitting Austin Powers villain. AI is being pushed down everyone’s throats despite no one wanting or benefiting from it. It’s cold and wet and dark outside. I’m currently participating in dry January, I guess in some asinine pursuit of being healthier and living longer. Which seems like a pretty foolish thing to want given the rosy picture I just painted. And yet, merrily we roll along. At least there were things to watch and play to take our minds off of it. So let’s talk about that. Is there a more depressing opening paragraph I could’ve started off with? We’ll find out when I write next year’s list.

Movies:

The Fine, The Forgettable, The Meh:

Thunderbolts* – For those who haven’t seen this yet but still want to, I’m not going to spoil why the asterisk is in the title even though Disney couldn’t even wait a week to do so themselves. Those post-Endgame box office returns must really not be hitting the way they used to. Marvel has certainly been in a lull ever since that phase of the MCU wrapped up. Feels like the last few years have been pretty aimless. There’s still been some fun entries and bright spots like Shang-Chi and Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and some real lowlights like Ant Man 3 and another movie further down this list. A lot of the 2020s output though has just been more or less ‘fine’. Including this one. I don’t think anyone really expected much going into it. From the description and trailers it sure looked like this was trying to be Marvel’s answer to DC’s Suicide Squad. You know, a bunch of former villains and fuck ups are thrown together haphazardly and while they don’t get along at first, they come together and realize they’re not so different after all. Cue emotional speeches, a flurry of fisticuffs and using the power of friendship to defeat the bad guy. You kind of know what you’re getting with this one. It’s certainly not bad but nothing here is going to elevate it beyond being just solid. Which could be a lot worse. I mean have you seen Thor 4? Woof.

Tron: Ares – This is pretty much what I thought it would be from the trailers. Like most people I think Tron: Legacy was a good but not great movie with excellent visuals and a killer soundtrack. I was bummed that it didn’t do well enough to warrant a true sequel. Oh well, it happens. But then word came out that they were making a third Tron. “Awesome!” And it’s gonna star Jared Leto. “Nevermind!” Hot off the heels of Morbius, I don’t think that’s the news that any of us wanted. But oh well, compromises must be made. Then more news came. Daft Punk, having broke up in the intervening years between films, would obviously not be back. Instead, Nine Inch Nails would be composing the soundtrack. “An inspired choice, I can get behind that.” Then the first trailer and synopsis came out. It’s dealing with a familiar Tron fight between the forces of good and evil. “Sure, keep it simple.” And they’re gonna be fighting in the real world. “Uh, why?” Yeah the big gimmick here is that instead of going back into the world of Tron and having an interesting audiovisual experience there, now those digital soldiers and vehicles are coming into the real world to fight here instead. Not the story direction I would’ve chosen but points for changing up the formula I guess. To the movie’s credit everything here is taken seriously which helps. Jared Leto is front and center as Tron Man but what could’ve been a Ryan Reynolds-esque fish out of water quip-factory is instead just a straightforward performance of someone taking this material seriously. It’s not anything special aside from the stellar visuals and propulsive soundtrack but the previous film wasn’t anything special in the story department either. Oh and Jeff Bridges shows up and does a Dude impression again for one scene and probably got $5 million for one day’s work. I told that to the guy sitting next to me in the theater and he didn’t laugh. Some people.

Mountainhead – A direct to HBO original film from Succession creator Jesse Armstrong, Mountainhead follows four billionaire friends in a mountain mansion weekend retreat while the rest of the world falls into turmoil. The four friends, played by Steve Carell, Jason Schwartzman, Cory Michael Smith and Ramy Youssef, are of course massive assholes with egos that threaten to block out the sun every time one of them opens their mouth. If you’ve seen Succession, you know what to expect. Verbal, passive aggressive sparring matches. Denouncing third world societal collapses as “good for the markets.” Infighting, backhanded compliments, biting social commentary and idiots thinking they’re modern gods. Set in an insanely huge Utah mansion, you’ll go room to room with these dipshits as they prick and prod each other and pretend they’re way smarter than they are. It’s basically a bottle episode of Succession stretched out to two hours. It’s a good time with a killer setting but spending a couple hours with such unlikable characters might be too much for some people. Especially knowing that while this should be a comedy, it’s starting to hit way too close to home.

Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning – For the record I liked this movie when it first came out. Hot off the heels of a Mission Impossible marathon, me and my girlfriend were excited to see the 8th(!) and final entry in the series. And for the most part it didn’t disappoint. Let’s start with the good. After what I considered to be an overly convoluted and weirdly paced previous entry, I thought this one did a good job of landing the plane as a series finale. Props to the producers and Tom Cruise for knowing when to call it quits. Now approaching his mid sixties, it’s kind of a miracle he hasn’t died shooting one of these insane stunts yet. And they are still spectacular in that department. The submarine sequence alone is worth the price of admission, a tour de force of staging, set design, sound design and tension. I loved it. The biplane sequence got the majority of the marketing attention and for good reason, it’s a bonkers setpiece and worthy of being the last one in the series. Almost every major character from the previous films gets something to do here, including ones we haven’t seen since the first entry. Onto the bad. The film is simply too long. I don’t know why every filmmaker thinks that they’re making the fucking Godfather out here but they’re not and unless they are, I don’t need to be in a movie theater for three hours. It’s not because I have TikTok brain and a short attention span, I can binge watch movies or shows all day or game from morning to midnight. But only truly epic films need to be that long and the bang bang, shooty shooty, get the USB drive before the world goes boom movies just don’t warrant it. In addition to the length, the main story is reheating the leftovers of that last film which is also not the best story. Get the key to get the thing to stop the bad AI from nuking the world. Do you think Tom Cruise is up to the task? Take a wild guess.

One Battle After Another – Someone’s gonna have to explain this one to me. Me and my girlfriend watched this in theaters a couple weeks after it came out. We felt compelled to see it after hearing the universal and unanimous praise for it coming off that first weekend. “Not just the movie of the year, but the movie of the decade” one podcast I listen to expounded. Well we watched it. We both thought it was pretty okay. So what the fuck did everyone else see? I’m not saying it’s bad but ‘movie of the decade’? Are y’all fucking high? Did the movie cure your child’s blindness or something? I simply don’t understand. The Christmas Adventurer’s club? Cute, amusing. The town raid and escape sequence? Very well directed, I genuinely enjoyed that 20 minute stretch. Del Toro saying “a few small beers”? Perfect, it’ll make an excellent meme going forward. Sean Penn being a disgusting asshole? Not really acting but sure a fine performance. Outside of all that, what am I missing? DiCaprio’s last few performances of playing a bumbling fool is really wearing thin for me. His character has almost no bearing on the plot which irks me since he’s the FUCKING PROTAGONIST. For all the talk about how prescient and timely the film is I sure didn’t care about what was happening. And for all the talk of its three dimensional characters and how deep they are, a lot of them really come off as having no character development and a plot that doesn’t do anything for them. I just remember sitting in that theater and thinking “did we watch the same film?” Because it really doesn’t seem like it. If this goes on to have a huge awards season it’s just further proof that you really shouldn’t equate what wins films awards with what are actually good films. I’m not putting it on the bad list because it’s not a bad film but everyone putting it on the decade’s best list can fuck right off with all that.

The Bad:

The Phoenician Scheme – This one hurts. I love Wes Anderson. He’s one of the most unique American directors to come up in the last 50 years. He has an unmistakable and meticulous look and feel to his films that’s become so well known it’s often parodied. His 20+ year run from Bottle Rocket in 1996 through Isle of Dogs in 2018 is full of certified classics like The Royal Tenenbaums, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Fantastic Mr. Fox. The run has almost no blemishes aside from The Darjeeling Limited and arguably The Life Aquatic with Steve Zizzou, which is a flawed favorite of mine. He’s one of my favorite auteurs working today. The problem is his last five years have left me rather cold. The French Dispatch, a period piece anthology full of his typical hallmarks, was the first sign of him getting too high on his own supply and didn’t hold together well as a cohesive package. I enjoyed Asteroid City more but aside from an incredible Jeffrey Wright monologue and some fun set design, left me more confused than fulfilled when its credits rolled. And now the Phoenician Scheme. A movie substantially worse than the sum of its parts. All the typical Wes Anderson actors are here and seem to be having fun, especially Michael Cera who’s probably offended he wasn’t offered entry into the Anderson-verse sooner. But it’s all for naught. You can have all the talented actors and quirky gags and usual Wes flourishes but if the story sucks then I don’t want to watch any of it. It’s either moving super slow or at breakneck speed, with editing to match. It’s hard to follow, it feels long even though its only 100 minutes and by the end I came away worried that we’re witnessing a director become a victim of their own style. After 30 years I think he needs to try something new because this really grated me.

Captain America: Brave New World – This was the last movie I was able to watch on a friend’s Plex server that gave me hundreds of hours of joy over the years before he shut it down. I will remember it fondly. What I will not remember fondly is this piece of shit movie. It’s bad. You know how bad a movie has to be for “Jetpack Captain America fighting Harrison Ford Hulk” to come off as lame? This is a pretty direct follow up to the Falcon and Winter Soldier show on Disney Plus which is one of the more boring and badly put together productions that Marvel has put out. No one liked it. But Chris Evans moved on and we promised Anthony Mackie that he could be Captain America next and we’d look racist if we reneged on that so on with the show. This movie went through several rewrites and reshoots and that really come across when you’re watching it. They’re trying to do the Winter Soldier thing again with political conspiracies, secret bases, double crosses and yada yada yada. Only this time the action is stale, there’s nothing to ground any of the story beats and the characters are sauceless. That goes especially true of its Captain America. Anthony Mackie has always struck me as someone who feel like he deserves to be higher up in the food chain. Like he thinks he’s the most charismatic person in the room and oozes movie star appeal. And if that read on him is true, I think it’s very off base. Whereas Chris Evans always played Captain America as a dorky boy scout, Mackie is always feels like he’s actively trying to be cool. And the very worst thing you can do if you want to be cool. The villains here don’t help him have anything to bounce off of. Harrison Ford is at least not phoning in his performance here and seems game for the material but it’s pretty shit material. Tim Blake Nelson shows up as the mastermind or the leader or something stupid like that, reprising his MCU character from 2008’s Hulk. Did that callback do anything for you? Of course not. They also added Giancarlo Epsosito as Sidewinder (*sigh*), who’s playing the same typecast villian character Espositio has been stuck playing since Breaking Bad. It all adds up to an embodiment of the worst aspects of post-Endgame Marvel. Relying on old callbacks and fan service, bad and rushed writing and a movie that feels like it was only made to fill a release date slot on the calendar.

Until Dawn – More like Until Yawn am I right? Moving on. Until Dawn is loooooooooosely based on a decade old Playstation 4 title of the same name because studios have recently realized that they can adapt video games for quick horror movies churnouts. At first I was worried this meant we must be running out of Stephen King stories to adapt but since there are multiple of those further down the list, my fears were obviously overblown. Back to the movie. I say it loooooooooosely adapts the video game because that title was a choose your own adventure horror game with teenagers stuck in a snowy mountainside retreat beset by a serial killer and wenidigos. Instead of going that route the movie instead chooses to do a fucking horror movie Groundhog’s Day set in the middle of nowhere. It completely abandons one of the best parts of that game, the pulpy B movie setting, in favor of a completely forgettable one. While I disagree with doing this, something interesting could’ve been done with the timeloop mechanic but you know what to expect here. Happy Death Day did it first and better. I don’t know why so many Groundhog’s Day ripoffs are coming out these days but if you’re gonna go that route at least do something original within that constraint. Instead it’s a cast of nobodies getting killed again and again with some amusing kills but nothing else on offer. Even Peter Stormare showing up late can’t save this D+ snooze fest.

The Electric State – I think we have our first indisputable piece of evidence that Netflix is openly money laundering. That’s the only way I can rationalize how this dead on arrival, misaligned project could cost them $320 million. That’s just below the budget of the two most recent Avatar films and right in line with Avengers: Infinity War. Make it make sense. The movie certainly doesn’t. Set in an alternate timeline where a failed robot rebellion left them exiled in the American Southwest, our hero must journey into this wasteland in hopes of finding out what happened to her brother and uncover the conspiracy behind it all. If that sounds interesting, yes it could’ve been. In practice, watching it is like like sledding down a pile of rocks on your bare ass. It doesn’t help when you cast Millie Bobby Brown in the lead role, who’s being pushed as the face of Netflix even though her own keeps changing from year to year. She’s never been a particularly engaging actress and she certainly doesn’t level up in any meaningful way here. Luckily she’s flanked by Chris Pratt, who’s doing a bang up job of taking the goodwill built from Parks and Rec and Guardians of the Galaxy and completely shitting all over it. He either needs to fire his agent or his agent needs to fire him because wow his choice of scripts is puke inducing. At least he’s going against type this time, playing a quippy and sarcastic rogue who’s not interested in helping the cause but just might have a bigger heart of gold than he lets on and I’m totally fucking kidding this is the same role he always plays. Good god. His sidekick is a robot called I Literally Can’t Be Asked To Look It Up and I wondered why I found him so annoying until the revelation that he’s voiced by Anthony goddamn Mackie. Good lord. To round out the cast we’ve got Stanley Tucci slumming it for a paycheck and saying lines like “our world is a tire fire floating on an ocean of piss.” They also needed someone to play the Giancarlo Esposito role and luckily Giancarlo Esposito was available because he was in between Giancarlo Esposito roles. What luck. There’s not a single part of this movie that works, any irony about corporate greed and evil completely flies over the heads of the people who made this for NETFLIX and if you can’t guess at least five lines or actions in the movie right before they occur, you should probably sterilize yourself at the earliest opportunity. This is a movie that was designed in a lab to kick me in the balls and try to eradicate any faith I have in the movie industry going forward. And it did an admirable job of both. It deserves The Electric Chair.

War of the Worlds – Finally some actually delicious garbage. This movie sucks. Like it sucks so hard and so deep you’d think it was angling for a presidential cabinet position. Filmed back during the pandemic, the entire film takes place on Ice Cube’s computer screen as he works his shift at the Department of Homeland Security. Pretty inventive right, taking place all on a screen? No? It’s literally never been interesting and is an insipid gimmick every time it shows up in a film? Well you got me there. I hope you like shots of Ice Cube looking shocked because you’re going to see it about 30 times at least. This is the perfect movie to watch while playing a drinking game and a very bad movie in almost any other context. There are some CGI shots that are so bad you’ll be out of breath from laughing. There’s a photoshop of Clark Gregg looking villainous that sent me into the stratosphere. The movie also not only features tons of Amazon product placement, but the climax features the world being saved by an Amazon delivery drone dodging fucking laser blasts. It is a complete dumpster fire of a movie and I wish I could get five of these a year. We need something to consistently laugh at now that the studio comedy has been almost completely eradicated.

The Good:

The Naked Gun – Speaking of studio comedies, we did get at least one this year. And not a hybrid one like a romantic comedy or a horror comedy or anything resembling a comedy that had to be Trojan Horse’d as something else in order to make it into theaters. This was marketed as a legitimate back to basics parody comedy, taking direct cues from the Leslie Nielsen movies that came before it. The movie itself is hit or miss. The central plot, as much as there is one, isn’t super compelling and like all comedies of this ilk, it has its fair share of jokes that fall flat. And I couldn’t care less. Being in a movie theater again, laughing at stupid jokes with a room full of strangers was a feeling I’d very much missed and was just happy to experience again. This simply isn’t a thing that exists anymore. It helps that Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson are so game for the material and aren’t doing it tongue in joke. These movies work best when everything is being played serious and so many of the ones that fall flat seem to forget that. I could just list all the jokes that knocked me out but the snowman sequence is the crown jewel and I won’t discuss it any further for anyone who hasn’t watched it yet. I looked into it recently and it seems like this won’t be getting a sequel which is a shame but also unsurprising in the current hollywood landscape. We’ll get Scary Movie 6 this year so looks like we’re down to just a single straightforward and dumb comedy a year. It’s a shame, I’d take 20. Maybe comedies will come back one day and if so I look forward to that.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps – The third Marvel entry on this list, this one seemed to come and go without much fanfare. I liked it more than most but can understand why people weren’t blown away by it. The casting didn’t do it any favors. No one here screams like a first choice on the casting call, probably due in large part to the previous adaptions being so snakebit. Pedro Pascal is not someone who comes to mind when you think of Reed Richards and he’s been a bit overexposed lately, appearing in 8 movies over the last two years while also starring in one of the biggest shows on TV in that same timeframe. Vanessa Kirby is not exactly an unknown after starring in Mission Impossible, Fast and Furious and The Crown, but also isn’t someone you’d expect to be leading a Marvel movie. The same goes for Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach who have certainly risen quite fast in the last few years but still are unspectacular names in the grand scheme of things. For me though, that works in its favor. It seems like everyone here isn’t trying to hog the limelight and they weren’t cast because they had the most name recognition, rather they focused on what each could bring to what have traditionally been pretty underserved characters. From the moment this film was greenlit it was clear it was going to be the best Fantastic Four movie. That’s extremely faint praise considering the 2000s movies were forgettably average at best and Fan4stic is one of the best examples we have of a miscarriage crawling onto the screen and still being able to call itself a movie. First Steps smartly endears itself with its 1960s retro futuristic world design, immediately setting itself apart from everything else in the MCU. The second act, a spacefaring adventure to establish the stakes of its villian, is legitimately fantastic and the movie struggles the rest of the way to live up to it. Of the main cast, Kirby is easily the standout here, projecting strength and calm while the world threatens to fall apart around her. It’s a far cry from what was just a lame sex object of a character during the Jessica Alba days. The film is far from perfect and I wouldn’t call it essential MCU or anything but on the post-Endgame grading curve, it’s easily in the upper echelon.

Mickey 17 – I’m in the bag for anything Robert Pattinson these days. Batman, Tenet, The Boy and The Heron, The Lighthouse, Good Time. No one’s had a more interesting past decade of work than this guy and he’s got The Odyssey and Dune: Part 3 dropping this year. He constantly looks for roles that allow him to be the little weirdo he is and to work with the biggest and best directors around. In the case of Mickey 17, it was with Parasite director Bong Joon Ho. The movie was shot back in 2022 and apparently sat on a shelf for years because Warner Bros were either too broke or too incompetent to know what to do with it. They ended up dumping it in March of this year where it struggled to break even and connect with audiences who weren’t sure what kind of movie they were getting. Which makes sense if you watch the film. Sometimes it’s a romantic comedy, sometimes it’s a sci fi epic, sometimes it’s a political commentary and sometimes it’s a psychological horror film. Its juggling a lot of balls in the air, trying to have as much fun as possible while also lambasting the state of our world’s political theater. I think Bong mostly lands the plane on this stuff and Pattinson is having a blast being a lovable loser who just wants to stay alive on a ship and planet that deems him time and time again to be imminently expendable. Still, I understand why so many people took issues with it and I do agree that Ruffalo’s Trump/Elon satire is a bit heavy handed. I don’t know why between this and Poor Things that Ruffalo has steered so hard into comedy but I think we have other actors better suited for this type of role. Yet for all people want to take away from it, I really like that Mickey 17 is really going for it and Bong used his blank check to make something wacky, out there and consistently entertaining. I’ll take weird and flawed movies every time over something safe and easily packaged to cretins.

Predator: Killer of Killers – This animated Predator anthology had been on my list since it came out earlier this year but after seeing Predator: Badlands I felt compelled to dive in. I don’t know why I didn’t sooner, I love animated adult Sci-Fi. Love, Death & Robots, the Animatrix, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, they’re all fantastic. Killer of Killers, helmed by Dan Trachtenberg who also directed Prey and Badlands, is lean and mean at just 85 minutes. Yes, more of that please. Split between three eras and fused together by an overarching plot, we see different type of Predators throughout history take on Vikings, Samurai and World War II fighter pilots. Such a slam dunk idea for an anthology movie that I’m surprised no one else has done it before now. But at least they finally wised up and made one. The animation is gorgeous, the music is thunderous and the fight scenes are sick. Not sure what else needs to be said. I know I keep saying it but I’ll literally take as many of these as they want to give me. Since Fox got absorbed into Disney the world is really their oyster. Predator vs. Sith, Predator vs. Marvel, they can even have them fight the Na’vi. Or just crash his ship into Disneyworld and let him go wild. I bet he could tear his way through almost half of Magic Kingdom before succumbing to the airborne diabetes down there.

Companion – After putting out their most prestigious films in the run up to Christmas for awards eligibility, January is often cited as the dumping grounds for studios. Yet within this cold and dreary month, you can always find something awesome. This year it’s 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple which will no doubt be on this list a year from now. For 2025, it was Companion. There’s a reason horror has become such a juggernaut for studios over the last decade plus. You don’t need a huge budget. You don’t need established movie stars. You don’t need a ton of post production. Just hire a young director, give them a shoestring budget and let them play around in genre filmmaking. Companion works for the same reason a lot of these low budget horror films work in that they don’t have lofty goals or try to be anything they’re not. Instead it just focuses on a single interesting idea and stretching that over 100 minutes while being a blast the entire way. Companion has one of the better plot setups I’ve seen in this type of low budget thriller genre and for those who aren’t aware of it yet, I won’t give it away here since I think it’s a really fun film to watch on a Friday night. Just don’t go in with any crazy expectations and I think you’ll have a great time.

F1 – I’ve seen people calling this the Top Gun: Maverick of this year. And I can see why. It comes from the same writing and directing team of Ehren Kruger and Joseph Kosinski. It stars an aging Hollywood movie star as a protagonist who was once considered a bright young up and comer in their respective career but accidents and attitude problems have since derailed them. It looks and sounds great with practical effects and state of the art cinematography capturing what would otherwise be impossible to witness in terms of vehicles flying around at insanely high speeds. But that’s where I would say the comparisons end. F1 is not nearly as good as Top Gun: Maverick. That film almost single-handedly resuscitated movie theaters coming out of Covid and left everyone who saw it supremely satisfied with a film that completely dwarfed the original. F1 does not soar nearly that high but that’s alright, it doesn’t need to in order to succeed. And succeed it does. Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a racer who was once considered the future of F1 until suffered the mother of all crashes, shattering his body and his confidence and leaving him in a solitary life as a lonely mercenary driver for hire. Pitt is unsurprisingly really good in this role, looking world weary from the moment he steps on screen but with enough charge left in that thousand watt smile to win over every scene he’s in. The film itself is steeped in cliches. Let’s count them all. An aging protagonist who’s old friend shows up to offer him one last chance at glory. He says he’s too old for this shit and to find someone else. (He accepts.) A young teammmate who doesn’t like or respect Sonny even though they need to work together to make this crazy arrangement work. (They do.) Sonny is attracted to the chief engineer on the team and tries to flirt with her even though she rebuffs him and says that they should keep their relationship professional. (They sleep together.) It all comes down to one last race to determine if the team will be sold to the villain and everyone will be mired in failure. (Take a guess.) I still consider Rush to be the better Formula One film but still think this one works on its own. Just don’t go in expecting any twists and turns besides the ones on the track.

Superman – Alright let’s talk about Superman. I saw this three times in theaters and I’m still trying to formulate my thoughts on it because while I definitely liked it a lot, it’s far from a perfect film. Let’s start with the negatives. For starters, I wish the world looked a little more fantastical than what we got here. I grew up on the animated series of Batman, Superman and the Justice League and those have apparently spoiled me because every time I see a normal ass looking city in these live action films I get a little bummed. I hope one day I still get to see the art deco Gotham and Metropolis I was shown as a kid watching Saturday morning cartoons and instead we keep getting movies that look like they were shot in Cleveland. That’s because this was shot in Cleveland and it shows. As the official fresh start of the DCU and how wacky James Gunn got with the Guadians of the Galaxy movies, I thought we’d be getting something a little more out there but instead the set design left me pretty unimpressed for a lot of it. There are exceptions like the pocket universe that is at least more visually interesting but in that lies another issue. It seems like in Marvel for the last five years they’ve all been doing the multiverse thing because they’re running out of ideas and ways to write a good straightforward superhero movie. By having a pocket universe here and making it such a central part of the plot, it also doesn’t assuage my fears that a down the middle superhero film can’t get off the ground anymore without keys to jingle at the audience. The other major plot point, the Israel-Palestine stand in conflict, feels totally out of place here. I get that it’s James Gunn’s way of grounding the story in a way that modern audiences can draw parallels to but after how fucking bleak a year it’s been I really didn’t go to the movies to have an Israel-Palestine plot shoved into the middle of a Superman movie. So suffice it to say, there’s a lot here that feels uneven and out of place. But there’s also a lot of great stuff here. First off, they nailed the casting. David Corenswet is immediately the best modern Superman by a mile, conveying innocence and purity and actually being able to convey human emotions, something the Henry Cavill’s never even really attempted to do. Same goes for Rachel Brosnahan who actually plays a character here instead of just being an exposition machine in scenes without Superman and a damsel in distress when he’s around. Jimmy Olsen actually has things to do here. Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor might just be the best casting of all of them, lavishing a shit eating grin whenver he’s winning and an angry toddler’s indignation when he’s not. So good job, you nailed the castings. The fight scene choreography and flying is great, constantly moving the camera around to get a sense of the velocity and force behind the movement of these characters. There’s also actual moments of levity and humor, a welcome change of pace from a character who’s previous outings had him sulking and making diatribes about whether it’s impossible to stay as a good man or not. There’s none of that here. Superman saves a squirrel at some point and it’s awesome. Overall I’d say it’s a mixed bag of a film that gets the things right that it needs to and left me wanting more of these characters going forward. Lucky thing too since the sequel just went into pre-production. I’ll definitely be there to see what comes next.

Rental Family – What a sweet little film. Amidst another year of superheroes, serial killers and action stars, it’s nice to have a movie that’s much calmer and quieter than everything else on offer. Brendan Fraser plays Phillip, an American trying to make it as an actor living in Tokyo. After initially starring in a series of commercials that brought him to Japan, he’s now down on his luck and scrounging for any role he can find. After answering a casting call for a “fat American”, he stumbles upon a company that specializes in Rental Family work. Instead of acting in shows or commercials, they play roles in people’s lives. Anything from spouses to parents to just a friend of someone lonely and wants companionship. While initially hesitant to get engaged in this morally questionable line of work, Philip eventually relents and goes down the rabbit hole, finding enjoyment and fulfillment in helping people find their own. Things get trickier when some of the roles eventually get a little too close to home and he wonders whether what they’re doing is helping or hurting people. It’s a movie about finding connections in lonely places and trying to be a good person while being dishonest. It definitely brought me to the precipice of tears a couple times and I hope other people find and connect with this film. It’s a strong recommendation for me.

Marty Supreme – What a stressful time at the movies. I saw this a couple weeks ago in theaters and I probably winced about a dozen times over the course of its runtime. This joins Good Time and Uncut Gems in the New York Safdie Brothers trilogy of total shitbags trying to get money fast and screwing anyone and everyone over to get it. While those other two films were co-directed with his brother Benny, Josh Safdie takes the reins solo here and delivers a nails-on-chalkboard experience of desperation, unchecked ego and slimeball antics. Timothee Chalamet is undoubtedly terrific here, all oily hair and acne and willing to sell anyone down the river to get what he’s after. For most of the film that’s getting money to fund his ping pong tournament trips. For anyone going into this that thought this was a movie about ping pong, you’re in for a much different experience. For it’s 150 minute runtime you’ll see people get punched, shot, crushed, beaten, spanked and murdered. Marty is a completely unlikable son of a bitch and the movie’s greatest triumph is that in the final match you’ll still be rooting for him. I don’t know how and I don’t know why but you will. The score here is also one of the best of the year, fueling the aggressive and claustrophobic air from one scene to the next. Will Chalamet win the Oscar this year? Probably not, most years it’s a just a career achievement award. But no one else has positioned themselves to be a more exciting movie star going forward. As long as he stays award from drugs and capes, the next phase of his career should continue to be thrilling as the era of the movie star continues to dwindle.

28 Years Later – Such a weird movie and I say that as an ultimate compliment. What I thought was going to serve as a simple legacy sequel to the first two films in the franchise instead became something much more heartfelt and thought provoking. It’s lovely to have a deep dive into the profound end of the pool which serves as an excellent palate cleanser to watching a man have his spinal cord ripped out of his body. As every zombie movie is required to have, 28 Years Later has a literally killer open. One second you’re watching Teletubbies and the next you’re watching the rage virus tear apart a Scottish village while the local vicar euphorically welcomes the arrival of the end times. From there we’re thrust into a coming of age story as young Spike and his father travel from their safe and idyllic island onto the mainland so the boy can engage in his first hunt. The movie is shot entirely on iPhones and I can’t believe how good it looks. There’s a chase scene on the star adorned causeway at the midpoint of the movie that had me completely mesmerized at how good it looked. It’s the single most indelible image I’ve seen all year and a scene I still can’t get out of my head. For all the zombie fighting and deft handheld camera work, there’s still big themes to tackle in the second half as Spike has to deal with his mother’s deteriorating health, his loss of faith in his father and how to live in a world this mired in chaos. It’s a film without easy answers. And then a bunch of psychopathic killers in blond wigs and track suits show up.. Like I said, a bonkers film. As someone who’s already seen and really enjoyed the sequel, I hope we get the third film in this trilogy and that it keeps up the level of quality that these first two have had.

The Top 10:

10. Bugonia – Just watched this late night and am getting it under the wire but had to talk about it after my initial viewing. Yorgos you absolute mad lad. Yorgos Lanthimos is a very divisive director. Even my favorite movie of his, The Lobster, is a tale of two halves and walks the line between absurdist comedy and depressing dystopia. I think Poor Things has some really incredible art design and some pretty fun performances but watching Emma Stone get fucked endlessly really wore out its welcome. Bugonia is still absolutely divisive and I expect it has generated a wealth of different opinions on it. I for one loved it. Jesse Plemmons is utterly spectacular here and it’s pretty outrageous he didn’t get nominated for best actor. By all accounts it’s a stacked field this year but I challenge you to watch him in this movie and not think he should be one of the favorites for the award. Emma Stone is typically great here in her 4th collaboration with Lanthimos, using her bug eyes to maximum effect as a kidnapped CEO accused by Plemmons’s character of being an alien. Covered in white lotion, her head shaved, you can kind of see why. The story takes some weird and interesting turns, none of which I’ll spoil here. This is a real “see it for yourself and get back to me” type of movie. I will say that as someone who loves and appreciates weird and out there films, we need people like Yorgos who is never interested in making something you’ve already seen. I’m just glad he keeps getting the funding to do so. At a budget of around 50 million, this is Lanthimos’s most expensive film yet. It’s shot primarily in VistaVistion and it shows. The film is bursting with color and juxtaposes this with stark black and white sequences to maximum effect. It’s one of the best looking movies this year. See it, enjoy it, stay weird Yorgos.

9. Black Bag – Finally got around to watching this last week to mark it off my list and wow am I glad I did because yeah, this rocks. At first I wasn’t sure about it and even had to turn on subtitles which I hate to do but found it necessary given how incredibly British it is. It’s also filmed with enough bloom on the lighting to make you think you were swimming in a pool all day before sitting down to watch it. Written by David Koepp and directed by Steven Soderbergh, this incredibly stylish spy thriller finds Michael Fassbender’s George and Cate Blanchett’s Kathryn as a married couple both working for the UK National Cyber Security Centre. When a top-secret software program is stolen and George is given a week to find out who took it, he works his way down the list of possible suspects that includes Kathryn. From there it’s a cat and mouse game between the couple and their work colleagues who comprise the other suspects. In another timeline this movie could’ve played out as an action movie with gunfights and bloody double crosses layering each act. Instead, all the fighting is done through dialogue and in well written scenes of characters across from one another at dining tables and in therapy sessions. It’s a lot cooler than it sounds. It’s also the sexiest movie of the year, not there’s much competition these days. The ensemble cast is superb and it will have you second guessing who you think the guilty party is right up until the reveal. I’ll definitely be coming back to this one down the line, it really worked for me.

8. Final Destination: Bloodlines – I didn’t expect this movie to make my top 10 but after going through the list of everything I’ve seen this year, yeah it definitely does. This isn’t a list of what I think the 10 best movies of the year are, just the 10 movies that I’d count amongst my favorites and how much I enjoyed them. And Bloodlines is a damn good time. This has long been one of my favorite running horror franchises so I’m very happy it’s still around and still having fun entries added onto it. For anyone uninitiated, Final Destination films follow a character who gets a premonition of a tragedy occurring which would otherwise kill them and everyone else involved in it. Think a plane crash, highway pile up, roller coaster disaster, etc. By surviving this incident and cheating their demise, death comes for them one by one for the rest of the film’s duration. Same premise here except this time it opens in the late 60s with a couple on a date to the grand opening of the Sky View, a high-rise restaurant tower. As you can guess things don’t go according to plan and everyone dies in the premonition. Which is an awesome, 20 minute set piece of blood and gore and people dying in fantastic ways. And of course, our hero prevents it all. Fast forward to present day though and she’s been dodging death for 55 years. In that time her outside family has grown in size and once she dies, all of them are marked for death since they should’ve never existed in the first place. It’s a fun spin on the normal Final Destination formula and knowing who is marked next since it’s going in chronological order through the family bloodline. I love a movie where you know what’s going to happen but are still having so much fun and being invested in HOW it’s going to happen. And there are some deliciously decadent kills on display here, fans of the series are going to have a ball with it. A sequel has already been announced after this one went on to gross over $300 million and as always, I’ll be there when it drops.

7. The Long Walk – Ah yes, the feel bad movie of the year. Another one I watched just last week to mark off the watch list, I was captivated by it from start to finish. It’s not a particularly showy movie, no big special effects or crazy action scenes or anything along those lines. It’s much more of a somber character study, set against a morbidly depressing world with cinematography to match. Set in a dystopian 1970s alternate timeline in which America is now a military police state and the entire country is in the throes of a severe economic depression, the “Long Walk” serves to inspire patriotism and work ethic among those it’s broadcast to. The walk itself involves fifty teenage boys, one from each state, who must walk hundreds of miles nonstop while escorted by armed soldiers. They are able to replenish water and rations but cannot stop for any reason. Anyone who falls below 3 miles per hour or stops walking receives a warning. After the third warning they are executed. The walk only finishes when there’s only one boy left and they are given a cash prize and a wish of their choice. Things start off alright with the boys talking amongst themselves and building bonds and friendships, knowing that things will descend into tragedy and get bleaker the longer they forge ahead. And of course, they do. The first few executions hit you like a kick to the stomach. There’s a scene set on the first night where the boys are walking up a hill that’s more terrifying and upsetting than most horror films I watched this year. At the core of it are Cooper Hoffman’s Ray Garrity and David Jonsson’s Pete McVries who form a special connection and help each other out along the way from falling into depression, into sleep or into suicidal machinations. The walk is an extreme exercise in both physical and mental exhaustion and it’s written all over their faces every step of the way. Cooper Hoffman has risen quickly into a great actor who would make his late dad proud and David Jonsson once again puts in incredible work here after completely owning the screen in Alien: Romulus. It all makes for one unending gut punch of a film, one I won’t be forgetting anytime soon.

6. Predator: Badlands – When Prey came out in 2022 it was immediately the best Predator film since the Arnold Schwarzenegger original. Which wasn’t the highest of bars to clear since Predator 2 is the definition of a mixed bag, Predators is good but not great, The Predator (2018) is a hilarious abomination and we don’t talk about the Alien vs. Predator movies. It also gets points for having a title that’s easy to differentiate itself from the other films in the franchise. Everyone unanimously praised it for being awesome but were also surprised it went straight to streaming instead of into movie theaters. After all it had a sizable budget, a real director in Dan Trachtenberg and universal acclaim out of the gate, not to mention we were mostly out of the pandemic by then and movies theaters had already been rejuvenated earlier that summer by the arrival Top Gun: Maverick. Two years later another Disney film that was originally intended to go straight to Hulu, Alien: Romulus, released in theaters and became a massive hit with over $350 million at the box office. Realizing they had massively underrated the value of the Alien and Predator franchises after gaining control of them in the Fox acquisition, Disney quickly course corrected and fast tracked Predator: Badlands for a theatrical release with Dan Trachtenberg back at the helm. The lesson as always: studio executives are fucking morons. I’ve already talked about how much I enjoyed Killer of Killers, the animated Predator anthology earlier on this list. Think of that as an appetizer for Badlands. Whereas that film and most others in the series has the Predator hunting humans on Earth, Badlands dares to ask the question that terrifies studio heads the most. What if we did something different? And that’s what’s so cool about Badlands. Instead of a dominant and veteran Predator, we get a Yautja (Predator species) who’s a coming-of-age runt of the litter. Instead of being sent to Earth to bring back human skulls for trophies, he’s sent to the equivalent of space Australia where everything from cyborgs, monsters and even the grass is trying to kill him. He’s also hunting the most dangerous game in town. It’s always a smart move to flip things upside down when a franchise like this risks becoming stale and by showing how a young and hungry Yautja goes from being prey to predator, Badlands pumps new life back into the series. And I have to call out the final fight which showcases one of the coolest and most inventive Predator melees I’ve ever seen. I’m glad Dan Trachtenberg keeps knocking these out of the park and I’m sure Disney is too. As long as he’s at the helm, the franchise seems poised to keep delivering hits.

5. The Monkey – It feels like I’m alone on an island with this one. The Monkey kind of flew under the radar with its February release and even I didn’t see it until it hit streaming later in the year. But man did this surprise me with how much I enjoyed it. Based on a Stephen King short story, The Monkey comes from writer-director Osgood Perkins who’s previous films like The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Gretel & Hansel and Longlegs have all had an air of cold, sinister foreboding. There’s not much levity to go around in between shots of sealing demonic pacts in depressing remote locations. So imagine my shock when The Monkey turned out to be the funniest film of the year. There are line readings in this movie that had me genuinely laughing out loud. Perkins has major comedy chops and didn’t have to ditch any of the demonic pacts or hellish foreboding in order to do it. From the moment Adam Scott shows up in a bloodied pilot outfit with the creepiest toy monkey you’ve ever seen, you know you’re in good hands. The kills on display are maximalist and gonzo and won’t be spoiled here. Tatiana Maslany is sensational and it’s clear why he immedately cast her in the lead of his next film Keeper, which is still on my to watch list. Theo James pulls double duty as the careful, paranoid Hal and his psychotically chaotic twin brother Bill. I know Michael B. Jordan is getting all the twin acting praise this year and for good reason but James really should’ve gotten more flowers for what he’s doing in this film. The Monkey also has my favorite ending of the year, one that filled me with utter joy and complete satisfaction at the fucked up events I just witnessed. I know this one is clearly not going to be for everyone but man oh man The Monkey gave me exactly what I didn’t know I wanted. Please let Osgood Perkins do more horror comedies.

4. Wake Up Dead Man – I had the pleasure of watching this one in theaters earlier this year which makes me one of the few sickos who can now claim to have seen the entire trilogy in a cinema instead of on Netflix. It shouldn’t be this way. For all three movies I got to sit in a near full theater and enjoy a fun film alongside other strangers while we had a great time. And of course in order to do so, I had to act fast. Netflix only puts these out in theaters for a week or two at most and even then it’s on a limited number of screens across the country. It really shouldn’t be this way. The irony of Netflix being one of the movie theater industry’s biggest antagonists while also being one of the few companies still in town that will write an auteur director a blank check to make whatever they want is not lost on me. And now that they’re in line to buy Warner Bros, my faith in the industry is circling the drain. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandros has said they’ll be committed to a 45 day theatrical window (which is still insulting as hell) if the acquisition goes through and I have no doubts he’ll wipe his ass with that commitment at the earliest available opportunity. All that to say, Wake Up Dead Man is a pretty damn good film. It might be my favorite of the Knives Out trilogy. And I really didn’t think it would be early on. After a fun opening, the movie downshifts into scene setting for the first act as we learn about Father Judd, his background and his new and unenviable task of being assigned as an assistant pastor to Josh Brolin’s fire and brimstone deacon Wicks. It was during this 40 minutes or so where I wondered if Rian Johnson had lost his fastball. And that’s when Benoit Blanc walked back into the trilogy like a lightning bolt and sent things into high gear. Daniel Craig is fantastic as always, inhabiting a character he clearly loves playing far more than he ever did 007. But here he’s not even the main character. That would be Josh O’Connor’s Father Judd. As a down on his luck but earnest priest, O’Connor emits such humanity, empathy and earnestness that he completely walks away with the movie. The same thing happened when I saw him for the first time in last year’s Challengers and he’s just as good here. Together O’Connor and Craig form a very fun Holmes and Watson as they try to unravel the deacon’s murder and the machinations and motive behind it. It’s so good that many have speculated if Johnson would bring back Father Judd to keep the chemistry he has with Blanc going in future films, though I doubt this will be the case. Not everything needs a direct sequel, especially with how well this one wraps up. Not everything is perfect here though. The ensemble cast is a mixed bag. Josh Brolin, Glenn Close and Cailee Spaeny are all great. As is the limited Jeffrey Wright screentime. On the other hand, Mila Kunis and Andrew Scott are both miscast and poor Kerry Washington draws the short straw and doesn’t get to do much here. None of it holds the movie back from greatness and I think I’ll like it even more when I get around to rewatching it again down the road.

3. Sinners – You know you’re in the hands of a good director when the movie is awesome before the vampires even show up. I’m sure there are some people who didn’t watch the trailers and were surprised when a vampire fell out of the sky and into frame an hour into their slice of life southern drama. Ryan Coogler could’ve just made this a horror movie the whole way through and the film would’ve been that much worse for it. Instead he grounds the movie in a sense of place, showing us the entire 24 hour cycle of the SmokeStack twins return to their hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi after years of working in the Chicago criminal underbelly. I’m an absolute sucker for an all-in-one-day movie like this. Their arrival and intention to open up an old mill as a juke joint sparks interest from everyone in town, some of which they have former relationships with and others they’d come to wish they’d never met. This includes the vampire Remmick, an Irish immigrant with eyes for their cousin Sammie. Sammie’s time bending blues performance in the juke joint which catches Remmick’s attention is one of the most out of left field, “holy shit we’re doing this?” scenes of the year. The film really uses music better than any other film this year, from Ludwig Göransson’s sublime score to the vampire’s rousing and terrifying rendition of Rocky Road to Dublin. By letting the movie slowly build to the dread-filled and bloodthirsty third act, Coogler allows the audience to get to know and connect with the likable and lived-in characters which makes the juke joint’s ultimate demise hit all the harder. A simple scene of Smoke going into town to get groceries and supplies for the club’s grand opening is as good as any 10 minute stretch of film you’ll see all year. Speaking of Smoke, Michael B. Jordan’s performance as both Smoke and Stack is as good as advertised and his Oscar nomination is well deserved. He’s so good that you can clearly distinguish each brother from one another without needing any visual cues to tell them apart. The rest of the cast is also phenomenal with Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku and Delroy Lindo being standouts for me. I will say that I wish the actual club assault with the vampires was handled better. The whole movie is building up to it and I found the choreography a bit lacking, as is the credulity of a handful of people successfully holding off what felt like a hundred vampires by that point. It mainly stands out because the rest of the movie is so strong. This is just a setting you want to spend time in, even when shit is hitting the fan. Make sure to stay through to the mid credits scene. The fact that some people missed a fantastic and essential epilogue is an absolute travesty.

2. Weapons – This was the best time I had at the movies this year, bar none. I know I’ve talked a lot about watching some of these movies in an actual theater but that’s because I’m a huge proponent of the medium and think seeing films on your TV versus on a movie screen is a very different experience. How many times have you shown someone a movie you really like at home and they’re on their phone or distracted and at the end they say that it either wasn’t that good or that they thought it was confusing? Because it’s happened to me for sure. Hey dickhead, if you actually watch the movie and give it your full attention you’re probably going to enjoy it more. Unfortunately even the theaters aren’t safe from this anymore as I’ve had to tell multiple people around me to get off their phones and one girl was even Facetiming someone when the movie started. I think if someone pulls some shit like that you should legally be allowed to break their nose with no repercussions. Because who the fuck raised you people. ANYWAY. Luckily for me, I didn’t have any issues with my fellow audience members when I saw Weapons on opening weekend. And it’s not because people were quiet. Quite the opposite. There’s one scene relatively early on in the film that features a character slowly walking from their house towards another character sleeping in their car. I’ll never forget it. As the horror violins began to creep in and the character got closer and closer to the other, the audience couldn’t hold back their anxiety. I heard several “oh fuck no”s, some “oh my god oh my god”s and several people let out sharp yelps of fear. I was in heaven. Feeling the energy in the room completely shift during this scene was euphoric. It’s why I go to the movies. When the film was funny, and it often is, we all collectively laughed. When it was scary, which it often is, you could feel it in the air. And when shit finally, totally hits the fan in the final 20 minute stretch, everyone in the theater including me was audibly and collectively losing their shit. When the film was over we clapped and exhaled and looked at each like a rock concert had just finished. I was so satisfied I wanted to go outside and smoke a cigarette. I haven’t really talked about the movie itself much but as you can probably guess, I really enjoyed it. It’s an ensemble piece about a town dealing with the fallout of an entire class of kids going missing. Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Alden Ehrenreich and Austin Abrams are all exceptional here, raising the ceiling of what could otherwise have been just a pretty good film. Everyone buying in so hard and the film going from serious to bonkers in a moment’s notice makes for an absolute blast. This was a runaway hit for Warner Bros who capped a killer movie summer that included Minecraft, F1, Sinners, and Superman. Writer-Director Zach Cregger has now been given carte blanche to make a new Resident Evil film which will re-team him with Abrams and I can’t wait to see what kind of wacky shit they’ll cook up together. I loved Weapons as a movie and as a movie theater experience, it’s a high I’ll be chasing every time I go back to the cinema.

1. KPop Demon Hunters – That’s cute Sam and it’s a fun movie but you’re not supposed to have the animated movie about Kpop stars who fight demons as your number one film.

Because I absolutely do have this as my favorite film of the year. Like everyone else I’d heard it was good but wasn’t exactly bumping other things out of the way on my watchlist to make it a priority. Then one night me and my girlfriend were looking for something to watch and I suggested it because it seemed low stakes and we could always pivot to something else if we didn’t like it. And then we watched it. And got hooked. And started playing the soundtrack round the clock. And watched it twice more that month. Because holy crap, what a breath of fresh air. I was so surprised by how well it nailed every aspect of what it set out to accomplish. The visuals? Gorgeous. The songs? Catchy as all hell. The characters? Likeable and fleshed out. The plot? Fun and imaginative. The themes? Weighty and relatable. I don’t have anything bad to say about this film. It feels like the work of a collection of talented individuals working together at the top of their game. This movie came out on Netflix in June and almost immediately converted everyone who watched it who had previously written it off as cotton candy background fodder for kids. As someone who’s been critical of Sony in the past, their animation division is on an absolute heater right now. The two Spider-Verse films are total artistic and crowd pleasing juggernauts and The Mitchells vs. The Machines was far better than it had any right to be. It really brings into focus just how much they’re eating Pixar’s lunch right now. That once dominant studio seems totally out of sorts right now, delivering box office clunkers like Lightyear and Elio, with a safe slate of sequels like Toy Story 5, Incredibles 4 and Coco 2 on the horizon which indicates a waning belief in their ability to create new, original films that will strike a chord with audiences. Contrast that with a movie like KPop Demon Hunters which is such an out of left field smash hit and has seen critical adoration from audiences of every age group. I loved it and hope they allow this same team the time and budget its sequel deserves. Which it sounds like they will since that’s not coming out until 2029.

This marks the third year in a row I didn’t watch my favorite movie in theaters. In 2023 I saw Infinity Pool on streaming and it completely blew me away. Didn’t even think to see that one in theaters. My 2024 mistake of not seeing Challengers in theaters was completely my fault. It looked awesome, I heard the score was sick, I wanted to see it and no one else did. I should’ve just gone alone but since I rarely do that I missed out on a probably awesome experience. Hopefully going forward I’m more willing to go see awesome movies solo if anyone else isn’t interested. Then this year KPop Demon Hunters was a Netflix exclusive. They actually did put it out in theaters for limited time sing along showings. And while I could’ve gone to see it and sing along and have a good time, I couldn’t bring myself to be a guy in his mid thirties taking away a seat from a kid who’d love it more than I would. Besides, I have a reputation to uphold. What does it mean that I’m such a proponent of the theater going experience and yet my favorite film for three years running wasn’t seen in a movie theater? I don’t know. For now I’m just going to chalk it up as a coincidence. If it happens again this year I’ll look into it further. At the same time it means that great movies can be enjoyed more easily anywhere now which seems like a win. Hopefully you all found some this year that really struck a chord with you as well.

And now an impromptu ranking of the KPop Demon Hunters songs. I will not be taking comments on this list at this time.

7. Takedown

6. What It Sounds Like

5. Golden

4. How It’s Done

3. Sodapop

2. Your Idol

1. Free

TV Shows

Once again I didn’t really watch that much TV this year. Another year of saying “Andor got really great reviews, I should get around to watching that” and just not doing so. It probably doesn’t help that as a society we’ve moved away from monoculture so much. The last TV show that felt like appointment viewing was Game of Thrones. Halfway through it’s run it had reached a point that you’d feel fairly confident that at least half the people in your life were also keeping up with it. Now there’s been two Game of Thrones spinoffs but because the main series ended in such a wet fart, they weren’t able to grab hold and dominate in the way that their predecessor did. Stuff like Breaking Bad which saw incredible viewership over the final couple of seasons also had a spinoff that while hailed critically, did not strike the same chord with mainstream audiences, myself included. What is the closest thing we have to a super popular TV show now? I’m genuinely asking. I can’t think of a single one where you’d feel confident that over 25% of the people in your life were also watching it. I watched 4 seasons of Stranger Things and I couldn’t even feign interest in seeing how it concluded. From everything I’ve heard, I didn’t miss out on much. The Mandalorian was once seen as the next big thing but season 3 was largely forgettable to the point where a lot of people I talked to fell off of it. There’s a Mandalorian movie coming out this year and it’s the least anticipated Star Wars movie of all time. I have Star Wars posters hanging in my living room and I couldn’t care less. There’s also just so much TV right now which unfortunately is tied to what feels like 20 different streaming services. I don’t care how good a single show on a service is, I’m not paying $12 a month with ads to just verify its quality for myself. And with the crackdown on password sharing, I think these companies are going to see even less subscribers than ever. Netflix making it so I can’t use a friend’s account doesn’t motivate me to get my own account, it motivates me to say sayonara to Netflix. Which is a bummer but if the future keeps getting bleaker on the content front, that’s just how it’s gonna be from now on. Now onto the shows.

Severance – My girlfriend really likes Severance and wanted me to try and get into it ahead of the season 2 premiere in early 2025. Given the onslaught of films of questionable quality that I make her watch, this seemed only fair. And I tried, I really did. I think I fell asleep watching it with her on three separate occasions and I am not the kind of person who dozes off watching stuff. That felt like a pretty damning mark against it and I decided it wasn’t for me. Cut to a week later sick in bed and I was determined to knock it out with the extra time I had quarantined in my room. And knock it out I did. The series is very cold, slow and mysterious. And it’s very proud of all three. What’s really going on at this company where employees sever themselves into separate entities? Well they can’t just tell you, that would defeat the purpose. So instead you’ll watch a pretty likable cast of characters try to unravel the stonewalled secrets of Lumon and see just how far the rabbit hole goes. I’m all for a good mystery but Severance feels like it’s taking far too much pleasure in drip feeding you the answers. While it kept my interest enough to continue, I was pleasantly surprised by the Season 1 finale which has one of the best cliffhangers I’ve seen on TV in a while. Thus, I was legitimately excited for Season 2. Did it live up to the finale? No, not really. There are standout episodes and moments but they’re the exception, not the rule. Often times it’s weird for weirdness’s sake, not in a way that feels like it’s serving the story. The pacing also continues to be an issue. To its credit, Season 2 does actually eventually hand out answers to some of its more central mysteries. The problem is that these mostly come in the form of flashback and one off episodes that completely derail any forward momentum the show had going up until then. At one point one of the characters who we hadn’t seen in a while takes a drive up to Exposition, Alaska to pick up the Heavy Handed Backstory she left in her house there. None of it made me hate the show and it once again set the table for a pretty entertaining season finale that really seems poised to shake up the status quo going forward. Then again I thought the same thing about the previous season finale and they were back at status quo central by the time the next episode’s opening credits had finished rolling. I will most likely watch season 3 in no small part due to the sunk cost fallacy. But if turns out to be more slow burn enigmas going nowhere fast, consider my interest in this show severed.

Pluribus – Pluribus comes to us from Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan who’s never met a wide shot of Albuquerque he didn’t fall in love with. Apple TV has been making a name for itself by putting out high concept, big budget shows with no guardrails or interfering notes for the studio. The premise of Pluribus is what if 99.99% of Earth’s population all became connected by the same hive mind via an interstellar virus with their only goal being to make the Earth a better place and work towards common goals like preservation and accumulation of natural resources. Doesn’t sound like a bad deal compared to most alien invasions. That is unless you’re one of the poor souls who perished during the takeover event. Or if you’re the biggest asshole left on Earth. Which our main character, Carol, now is. After she witnesses her partner die during the virus outbreak and her world flip upside down, Carol is left angry, paranoid and completely revolutionized against the hive mind. They do their best to assuage her at every opportunity, to no avail. Early on she finds out there are a handful of other humans that remain unaffected by the virus like her but after connecting with them, it’s clear that she’s the only one not happy with with the post-Virus state of the world. Everyone else likes the hive mind and since they’re incredibly nice and wait on them hand and foot, why wouldn’t they? Undeterred, Carol forges ahead with finding a way to reverse the virus and bring the world back to the way it was. I did like how different Pluribus is from everything else on TV, I don’t think I’ve ever seen another show like it. There are long stretches with no dialogue where they let the camera tell the story of the show through just visual language. The scenes of the hivemind acting in perfect unison are a masterclass in staging and blocking. And that’s great. The problem is there’s not a compelling narrative here that really kept me on the hook. The show has a really unique and fun concept but it doesn’t seem like it knows what to do with it. It doesn’t help that Carol is such a stick in the mud bitch for most of its runtime that I’m shocked Rhea Seehorn’s face wasn’t stuck into a permanent scowl by the time filming wrapped. I know shows need time to find their foot footing but this is an awful lot of table setting and time spent with a main character who I genuinely, actively disliked pretty much the whole way. I’m glad Apple is taking so many big, weird swings. I just wish there was a little more substance to them and that they felt more like entrees than appetizers for something better promised down the line.

The Studio – The last Apple TV show I want to discuss is The Studio which comes from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Set in contemporary Hollywood, Seth Rogen’s Matt Remick finds himself as the new head of floundering film company Continental Studios. As someone who fancies themself a true cinephile, Matt struggles with the new responsibilities as a modern day studio head and the constant struggle to balance IP driven, corporate think tank strategies with his own ambition to produce and put out quality, respectable films. As you can imagine, this is fervent ground for some hilarious send ups of modern day Hollywood and allows the entire cast to get off a bunch of topical barbs aimed at the shameless nature of the current status quo of modern day film studios. And what a cast it is. Just in the main cast you’ve got Rogen, Ike Barinholtz, Catherine O’Hara (RIP) and Kathryn Hahn. There are long scenes of just the main cast all in a room talking that are some of the best bits in the show. In addition to this you’ve got Bryan Cranston hamming it up as the soulless and bottom line driven CEO of Continental, as well as a revolving door of guest stars all playing an exaggerated version of themselves. Watching Zoe Kravitz and Dave Franco trying to deliver a speech on stage amidst their drug bender is very funny stuff, as is Ice Cube telling Rogen to go fuck himself after finding out they planned to use AI on the Kool-Aid film. The show is shot in a series of long one takes which is impressive but also doesn’t really enhance what’s going on here. It felt like they were just making fun of directors who insist on this kind of long form filmmaking and just over committed to that bit for the entire season. Also, your enjoyment of the show is going to vary based on your opinion of Seth Rogen who’s at the center of most of it. There are several episodes where a couple minutes in it’s very clear the runtime is going to be committed to embarrassing his character’s need for validation as he digs his own grave deeper and deeper. The crown jewel of the season is the Ron Howard episode involving the main cast trying to break the news to him that his movie needs to get cut down. It’s phenomenal stuff. I will definitely be watching and looking forward to season 2.

Invincible – Speaking of Seth Rogen, Invincible came back for another season last year after a much shorter break in between seasons. Rogen produces the series and also voices Alan the Alien, one of the best characters on the show. There’s not a ton for me to say here. If you were here for and enjoyed the first two seasons I think you’re also going to like this third one as well. It excels at longform storytelling much more than most superhero shows which default to monster of the week episodes more often than not. This season has a clunker episode or two but it all feels like it’s building on what came before it. Everything leads to a super action packed final three episodes, where the budget and fight scenes clearly make a noticable jump up in quality. It’s beautiful, brutal, funny and never made me feel like I was wasting my time by investing in it. I just saw that the fourth season premieres next month. I was stunned. ‘But we just had a season last year’ I thought. It’s pretty fucked up that I was shocked that a new season of television was coming just a year after the previous one but that’s how modern TV has conditioned me to think. We’re a long ways past the days of your favorite show dropping a new season every fall and spring. Thanks algorithms.

The Last of Us – Goddammit I forgot to write about The Last of Us. I completely forgot Season 2 aired this year until seeing the news of Catherine O’Hara’s sudden and tragic passing. RIP Catherine, you left us far too soon. So yeah, The Last of Us Season 2. Seems like a mark against it that I completely forgot it aired in 2025 despite watching the entire thing. Season 1 of the show did a pretty good job overall of adapting the first game which was more of a straightforward road trip affair and hitting all the main story beats it needed to. It also took artistic liberties with things like the Bill and Frank episode which was a completely new show invention. It turned out to be the best episode of the season and remains the high point of the series. Season 2 had a much tougher time adapting the second game which unfolded in non-linear fashion and is bisected by watching the same three days happen from each protagonist’s point of view. Both the story and how it was told was extremely divisive when the game came out in 2020 and its most ardent critics and defenders of it haven’t softened their stances since then. Personally I liked both and think the people who hated the story are a bit dense but do understand the criticisms for telling it out of order and am curious to see how it would’ve played out as just a straightforward narrative. Season 2 follows the first half of the second game, following Ellie’s quest for vengeance that takes her from snowy Jackson to wet and worn torn Seattle. As you can imagine, there are trials and tribulations along the way as the show struggles mightily to adapt a much longer and more personal sequel into a much shorter timeframe featuring an ensemble of new and old characters. At just 7 episodes on the season it felt like the showrunners were speedrunning the Ellie section of the story to the point that big moments have no weight to them. This is because they weren’t built up to and the new characters got very limited screentime leading up to them. I think the season being so short really hurt the overall quality and makes everything here feel like cliff notes when it’s at its worst. The assault on Jackson in episode 2, another complete show invention, once again turns out to be the best of the season. Part of the problem is how fast we got here. There were 7 years in between the original Last of Us game and its sequel and that time really helped out the narrative. Characters looked and felt older and there’s a weight to the flashbacks and figuring out what happened between games. Since Season 2 of the show came out just two years after the first, all the characters look and sound the same. Sure you can add some grey hair and wrinkled makeup to Pedro Pascal’s Joel but there was nothing they could’ve done about trying to age up Bella Ramsey’s baby face. Her older Ellie’s battle hardened and more cynical nature is often told instead of shown. The game’s demanding and perpetual ultra violence packs much more weight when you’re doing the killing, that was the point. So much is lost in translation when you’re just watching it unfold on screen. I like Kaitlyn Dever and think she’ll do a good job as we see Abby’s side of the game in Season 3 but if it’s anything like Season 2 I think it’s setting itself up for more disappointment.

Alien: Earth – When I heard FX was making a big budget Alien TV show I was stoked. I love the Alien franchise and Noah Hawley (Legion, Fargo) is a great showrunner so I was in the bag for this one. Then they announced it was gonna be called Alien: Earth and that kind of confused me. Unlike the Predator franchise, Alien has always set it self apart by taking place on derelict ships, distant planets and overtaken settlements beyond the Milky Way. It’s funny that in 2025 the Predator finally left Earth for the greater cosmos and the Alien crash landed on Earth for the first time. And crash land it does. The show hits the ground running as a Weyland-Yutani ship carrying the eponymous Alien crash lands on Earth, sparking a competition between the various Biotech companies to see who can get their hands on the creature first. Weyland-Yutani rightfully wants their property back but so does Boy Kavalier, the Mark Zuckerberg-esque CEO of Prodigy who sends in his young cadre of hybrid super soldiers to track it down. From there things get…messy. Like Prometheus, the show is not really about the Alien and mainly just uses it as a jumping off point and occasional agent of chaos. Instead it follows in that movie’s footsteps and uses the setting to hash out grander themes about creationism, man vs. machine, nature vs. nurture and so on. It’s obvious fairly early on that the concept of Cyborgs, Synthetics and Hybrids is far more interesting to Hawley than the Alien and he plays around with them all as a way to delve deeper into the themes he’s exploring. And it’s understandable why. Unlike Pennywise who also got a show this year, the Alien is essentially a murder machine on four legs that doesn’t speak, not really the most interesting creature to build a narrative around. It gets shoved so far into the background for most of the season that it’s not even the most interesting killer creature by the halfway point. The show peaks in Episode 5, a standalone Alien mini movie on the doomed spaceship Maginot that pays incredible homage to the original 1979 film and ends up as one of the best episodes of television this year. The cast all are strong with Babou Ceesay as the cyborg Morrow and Timothy Olyphant as the synthetic Kirsh being the standouts for me. Ceesay is not an actor I’m familiar with but he owns the screen every time he’s on it. On the contrary, Olyphant has been one of my favorite underrated actors for a while now and I’m glad he gets such a sizable part here. The rivalry between these two characters becomes the backbone of the show down the stretch even if it didn’t pay off how I hoped it would. I think all in all Alien: Earth had a more than solid first season, even if it loses its footing a couple times. Just go in expecting more Prometheus than Aliens because that’s what you’ll be getting.

Landman – Oh Landman, I can’t quit you. For the uninitiated, Landman stars Billy Bob Thornton as beleaguered and world weary Tommy Norris. As vice president of M-Tex Oil, his job mainly involves driving from Midland to Fort Worth while constantly making phone calls and detours to put out fires literally and figuratively that spring up from both his professional and personal life. This is one of the dozen shows Taylor Sheridan has created and writes for and is still the only one of his I’ve started and kept up with. While season 1 felt more mapped out and cohesive as a whole, season 2 struggles with maintaining an overarching plot and keeping a consistent tone. When I read that they were writing on the fly and shooting episodes out of order this time around, everything started to make a bit more sense. Season 1 had the tonal issues as well but they feel more jarring this time around. One minute you’ll watch a grueling hospital scene of characters breaking the news to their coworker that he might blind for the rest of his life after suffering an on the job accident. Then immediately you’ll shift over to Ali Larter teaching her adopted senior citizens the intricacies of how to play Roulette while everyone laughs and cheers. It’s pretty all over the place. So are the characters. Some are consistently entertaining like Kayla Wallace as the company lawyer. She’s clearly everyone’s favorite character to write monologues for outside of Thornton and you usually won’t have to wait for more than episode or two before she’s tearing someone a new asshole. On the other hand, some are consistently grating like Cooper Norris’s widowed love interest. Her job on the shows seems to be saying outlandish bullshit and ordering Cooper around like a lap dog, only to tell him afterwards that he should’ve done the opposite of her orders. It’s not a character anyone could make likable and you won’t look forward to any of her scenes. Andy Garcia was teased as the big addition at the end of last season but after the fourth or fifth scene of Tommy walking into his office and the two of them trading “fuck you”s, you’ll wonder why they brought him on. Still, all the tonal inconsistencies and odd plot lines don’t matter as long as Thornton is at the middle of the show and chewing someone out. The show is built around him and he’s the only person who could play this part. I’m not gonna call Landman a great show. It’s closer to trash than it is to prestige. But it’s still incredibly entertaining and when the season finale ended on a higher note than I expected, I was completely satisfied. I’ll watch as many seasons of this ridiculous show as they end up making and I wish I felt that way about more shows.

Video Games:

Brotato – As in previous years I continued to go back to the same well of casual games that have been in constant orbit whenever I need a mental break. My favorite games have always been story driven single player games. Always will be. I love playing something that feels like a curated experience from the team who made it. But sometimes I just don’t have the attention span to pay attention to cutscenes or read endless amounts of plot-crucial text. Sometimes I just want to play something with my brain in low power mode or as a secondary experience while I listen to a podcast or YouTube video in the background. Casual games are perfect for that and I collect like them infinity stones. FTL, Hades, Balatro, Forza and now this year Brotato has joined the elite club after a friend introduced me to it. I was getting ready to leave and he suggested we play a round of it first, just to see what I thought of it. We ended up playing it for hours on end and having a blast doing so. As gaming continues to grow and evolve I’ve lamented how it’s led to a dearth of couch co-op games. I fell in love with that style of local co-op game, beating Halo campaigns at 3 in the morning, burning through Rayman stages and going through Portal 2 with friends. Now it feels like multiplayer has gone mainly online and only a handful of couch multiplayer games are left. Well Brotato is one of the great ones. And the gameplay couldn’t be simpler. All you need is a joystick, that’s it. As your run around the map with either ranged or melee weapons, your character will do all the fighting themselves as long as you’re in range of the endlessly spawning waves of enemies. There are no abilities to manually activate or anything to focus on besides not being killed and collecting currency which is used to upgrade your build in between rounds. The rounds usually last no longer than a minute, creating a fast and rewarding gameplay loop as each successful run typically clocks in at around half an hour of real time. Including DLC there are over 60 playable classes and over 200 items and weapons. Many of these are locked when you start out and you’ll gradually unlock them as you progress the game which is one of the funnest parts. I feel like an old man yelling at a cloud but games were so much better when they allowed you to unlock additional features through playing the game over time instead of locking them all behind microtransactions and pay walls as corporations attempt to monetize every facet of a game that’s not nailed to the floorboards. Balatro has given me countless hours of fun in both solo and in 2-4 player co-op and best of all you can get it and the DLC for under $10 on pretty much every storefront. I implore everyone who misses the golden age of couch co-op games to give this a try.

Hogwarts Legacy – I picked up Hogwarts Legacy for $10 around Black Friday because I was in between games and figured I could knock it out in a month or so. That’s exactly what ended up happening. During my 50 hour playthrough I completed every main and side mission and ended up knocking out most of the optional open world content as well. That must mean I loved it right? No, not really. I did like it though. Hogwarts Legacy is the embodiment of a 7/10 game. It has good presentation and doesn’t really fall flat in any key area but never comes close to greatness in any of them either. Going in I expected it to be a Ubisoft-style open world collectathon with dots littering the map to artificially inflate the world and length of the game. And that’s pretty much true. By the time you get your broom the map will be strewn with icons for you to spend time striking off the to do list. Some are fun, most are tedious. A lot of these are combat related and while I’ve seen worse combat systems in a game like this, it really never rose about the level of being fine and at worst hovered around the agitating end of the spectrum. You learn more spells than you have mappable buttons for and while you can switch between hotkey layouts, the combat eventually boils down to dodging or parrying attacks while you cycle through and fire off spells while waiting for your others to cool down. Again, could’ve been worse but this is pretty uninspiring stuff. It doesn’t help that the enemies are all leveled which means the higher ones are damage spongy as hell so even if you’re whooping on them it’s still gonna take forever to wear down that health bar. This insipid artificial difficulty system is what killed the Assassin’s Creed franchise for me starting back in Origins and it needs to be eradicated from the medium altogether. As far as the story goes I was expecting a very family oriented, defeat the bad guy using the power of friendship type narrative. It’s actually a little more three dimensional than that and touched on darker subject matter than I was expecting for a game like this so I’ll give it credit there. Overall though the game just has no hook or something to separate itself from the pack besides the Harry Potter license. For people with Deathly Hallows tattoos that’s going to be more than enough but I don’t see this converting anyone who’s not a Potter fan already. I’ll probably never play this one again but don’t feel like I’m owed my time back either. A very polished, sexless 7/10.

Hades II – I LOVE the first Hades game. Between save files on Xbox and Switch, I’m at well over 300 hours combined. I was incredibly thrilled when they announced a sequel a couple years back and while it’s been available in early access for a while, I held fast that I wouldn’t play it until the full version came out. The wait mercifully ended when Hades II came out in September, almost five years after its predecessor. So given that time and the expectations that came with it, does the sequel live up to the hype? That’s a hard question to answer and mine is somewhat complicated. The first Hades is all about escaping Hell and getting familiarized with the roguelike gameplay loop as enemies and bosses continually wipe the floor with you. Each time you return to the House of Hades you’ll spend time the likeable characters, buy upgrades and set out on another run. As someone who had no experience with roguelike games, I found this gameplay loop incredibly addicting. It’s the type of game where you’ll say “okay one more run” a dozen times before you actually turn it off for the day. Hades II features a near identical gameplay loop, mixing up the formula by having you break back into Hell this time around to defeat the titan Chronos who has usurped your kingdom and imprisoned the friends and family you knew from the first game. The joy of getting a little further each time and finding out what’s happened to the characters you loved in between games while also familiarizing yourself with new ones is as satisfying as ever. The artists, sound designers and voice actors who worked on this game are second to none and it’s a complete audiovisual feast from start to finish. I just wish it took me longer to reach that finish line. Whereas I didn’t defeat Hades until what felt like around 30 runs or so in the orignal game, I defeated Chronos in half that amount or less. Obviously this is due in no small part to the overabundance of experience I have playing the first game but I still expected it to take longer than it did. Of course, beating him once isn’t enough to roll credits. Even defeating him 10 times doesn’t do the trick, instead revealing the huge trick Hades II has up its sleeve. Which turns out to be two Hades games for the price of one. Around the halfway point of the game, you’re instructed to head above ground to aid the Gods in the fight against the forces of Chronos who laying siege to Olympus. At first this just seems like a fun diversion until you realize this is legitimately a second full fledged half of the game. You can essentially start a run on either the Heaven or Hell side of the game at any time although the Olympus route will absolutely pound you into dust if you haven’t cut your teeth on the Hell route first. When I fully grasped the scope of everything the developers had stuffed into this game I was stunned. Even now at 80 hours in, I still have yet to even come close to unlocking everything or approaching what’s surely the true ending. The feeling I can’t get away from is that this is just more Hades though. I know that “more Hades” sounds like an insane criticism from someone who’s sunk in so much time to the games but I just don’t think Hades II is the kind of revolutionary title that the first game was. At the end of the day the gameplay loop is still great but not demonstrably different in any big way. Which is fine. It’s an incredible gameplay loop without a lot of room for improvements. I was just surprised the developers clearly thought so too and stuck so close to the formula of the original. I still love Hades II and legit got carpel tunnel from playing it so much that first week that I still completely recommend it to anyone and everyone. I’m glad Supergiant Games emptied the clip with this sequel. It really feels like they’ve left it all on the table with this one and I don’t see them making Hades III. Which is fine by me. I’m ready for something new and I bet they are too.

Hollow Knight – I’m not the biggest 2D gaming fan. I’ve never completed a 2D Mario and all 2D Zelda games turned me off rather quickly. There are some exceptions to this. Fighting games like Street Fighter and Smash Bros are more or less in their own category under fighters. I beat Cuphead which feels like it’s own thing, a mix of grueling platforming and boss fights that set itself apart with its fantastic hand drawn art style and big band soundtrack. The only traditional 2D platformer I’ve ever really connected with is Celeste, a simple and short game about a girl trying to climb a mountain that almost immediately became one of my favorite games of all time and one that I replay every few months. I adore Celeste but it’s always been the exception, not the rule. For whatever reason I don’t really gel with 2D games. Maybe it’s because I grew up with the Nintendo 64 which is where 3D games really exploded and it’s always felt like playing 2D is like going backwards. All this to say that I’d heard about how good Hollow Knight was and believed the general consensus but never felt compelled to verify it for myself. Once its sequel Silksong was confirmed for a 2025 release though, I figured this was as good a time as any to hop in and see for myself if it was for me or not. Turns out it was. From the moment you step into the first area, Hollow Knight envelopes you in its bleak and decrepit world. It’s set in Hollownest, a once prosperous insect kingdom that has long since fallen into ruin and become overrun by disease and enemies. In this world you are alone, outmatched and with just your trusty nail standing between you and an early grave. As you explore Hollownest and familiarize yourself with its layout, you’ll meet memorable friends and foes along the way. A beetle becomes your fast travel system. A married weevil sells you maps if you can track his humming to his location in each area. The hostile mantis village becomes a friendly place of respite if you can defeat their lords in combat. For a game with no spoken voice lines it’s absolutely brimming with atmosphere and memorable characters. This is also very much owed to the excellent soundtrack which lends each distinctive area of the map a real sense of place. The first time I walked out into the City of Tears and that track played I just had to sit and admire it. While you could get lost in appreciating the setting of the game, Hollow Knight is consistently incredibly hard, requiring several attempts to get past some of the harder bosses. There were times I got absolutely roadblocked and took a break to explore the world and upgrade my character more before re-attempting certain fights. Like Dark Souls, you may be better off referring to a guide if you’re not sure where to go next or where to find upgrade materials as the game does not hold your hand or yellow paint your way towards the next place to go. My playthrough of Hollow Knight and defeating the true final boss clocked in at around 40 very well spent hours. If you’re fine with bashing your skull into walls for certain stretches of the game I definitely think you’ll find this to be a super rewarding experience. From everything I’ve heard Silksong is Hollow Knight with the difficulty turned up to an outrageous degree. While I do plan on eventually playing it, right now that just sounds like a broken controller waiting to happen. Maybe you’ll see it on here in a list or two.

Astro Bot – Astro Bot is so freaking good. It’s so good I even opted not to curse there to preserve its purity. I started playing it in late December and immediately blew through it on my way to 100% completion. I just kept wanting to see more of what it had to offer. Everything about this game oozes polish and charm. This really feels like it was made by a team who loves making games and that they get to do it for a living. Unlike a lot of titles we get these days, nothing about this feels cynical or like a cash grab. Instead of personifying everything that’s wrong with the current state of gaming, Astro Bot is constantly showing off the best parts of it and celebrating all the Playstation titles that came before it. While the goal is to get to the end of the level like in every platformer, each level contains a number of Astro Bots for you to find and add to your collection. These range from being obvious and right out in the open to being well hidden in nooks and crannies that I’d have never thought to look in. It’s a game that really wants you to explore everything it has to offer and have a great time doing so. It definitely helps that everything feels incredibly smooth and your character’s movement feels as good as the 3D Mario games. This is also the best use of the PS5’s haptic feedback that I’ve experienced so far. The levels are broken up into big and small levels. The big ones will often pair you with a new ability like a jetpack, superpunch, or slo mo device which the level is built around. Here is where you’ll also find the most collectibles with 6-8 bots and 2-3 puzzle pieces being strewn through each of them. There’s also bite sized levels which just involve getting to the end without being hit. A successful run should only take about a minute or so but stringing together that perfect run often took longer than I expected. Being able to tackle these different level types in pretty much any order you want really helps the pacing out, as does returning to your central hub periodically to see all the characters, skins and areas you’ve unlocked there. As someone who didn’t own a Playstation until the PS4, I think the callbacks are definitely going to hit people with more of a Sony background that much harder. Still, I can definitely say I had a great time with stuff like the Ape Escape level even though I only had a passing familiarity with those games. Astro Bot is a constant love letter to video games as a whole, a historical chronicle of the games that came before and a total pleasure to experience. If you have a PS5 and don’t plan on adding this to your library at some point, I don’t know why you even own one.

Clair Obsur: Expedition 33 – The indisputable Game of the Year. Allow me to set the scene. Early in the year I had been wanting to replay The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Turns out I was in luck because Bethesda ended up dropping a full blown Oblivion remaster in late April. It arrived on Xbox Game Pass the same week as another RPG, Clair Obsur: Expedition 33. Hailing from the small French studio Sandfall Interactive as their debut title, the game was generating some early buzz but had the misfortune of being overshadowed by The Elder Scrolls remaster. I downloaded both but given that I’d been jonesing for some Elder Scrolls, I dove right into the remaster first. I spent the better part of an hour making my character, watched Patrick Stewart get shanked in the imperial sewers and set off to relive the 2006 glory days. Within a couple hours though I had already grown bored. Despite the graphical facelift, Oblivion remained the same. For better, and definitely for worse. Which is a bummer. My time with it was over before I even closed an Oblivion gate. “Oh well,” I thought. “I’ll try out that Expedition 33 game and maybe come back to this later.” I did not. From the moment you boot up Clair Obscur and wander through the fractured and doomed Lumiere, it’s clear the development team at Sandfall did not want their first game to be boring or safe. Within the first half an hour the stakes of the world are laid out before you in beautiful and haunting fashion. From there you explore a vibrant, painted world of wonder and monstrosity. Each new biome is packed to the brim with something you’ve never seen before, in this video game or any other. The art design on display is simply out of this world. Whereas so many games now are born out of algorithms or noted to death by profit margin focused producers, Expedition 33 feels like something constantly raging against those soulless ideologies. Your rag tag expedition all feel like real people and are written consistently, bouncing off of and clashing with each other as each leg of the journey challenges them mentally and physically. They’re all soooo good. Even the villain, played with withered anguish by Andy Serkis, is someone you come to understand and empathize with over the course off the game. Ben Starr and Jennifer English deliver knockout performances as Verso and Maelle and I’m glad both have been given such adoration and accolades for them. As far as the combat goes, it might be my single favorite combat system ever in a video game. Not just for RPGs, not just for turn based combat, my single favorite combat system ever. It’s so incredibly satisfying. Each character has their own unique set of mechanics which I didn’t even fully wrap my head around during my first playthrough. This is combined with a hybrid turn based combat system that allows you to select to moves and then enhance them by nailing the timed button prompts for additional damage. On defense, every enemy attack in the game can be either dodged or parried. Every single one. You can complete this game without taking a lick of damage. That’s insane. If that sounds too easy, trust me it’s not. Enemies vary their combos with different speeds and attack patterns and you’ll need to learn all of them to survive and thrive in the bigger fights in the game. Early on I committed to only going for parries which have a smaller frame window than dodges but result in a devastating counter if you can parry the enemy’s entire attack combo. And if you do, the feeling hits like crack. When you’re fighting a late game boss and he’s throwing out a 20 piece combo and you nail every parry and hit him with the battle-ending counterattack, it’s *chef’s kiss*. Absolute cinema every single time. It helps when the music is going absolutely bonkers in the background. God, the music. I could talk about it all day. This is an all timer of a soundtrack. I instantly bought the 6 LP box set as soon as it was available. The first time I fought Monoco and his theme started playing, I ascended to a higher plane of existence. The fact that they found the composer Lorien Testard on a random gaming forum after he linked his SoundCloud is nothing short of a miracle. So let’s see. The game gets A+ marks for writing, story, voice acting, art design, music and gameplay. Did I miss anything? Yes, I missed a lot actually. During my first playthrough I reached the third act and instead of going and finishing up all the optional content, I just forged ahead straight to the end of the game. Once I finished it and got the emotional ending I knew was coming, I put the game down and moved on to something else. But I didn’t stop thinking about it. As the months went on and I eventually found myself in between games again, I pondered what to play next. After going up and down the list of candidates, I decided I wanted to replay Expedition 33. That is not normal for me. I’m currently replaying Persona 5 and Red Dead Redemption II. This is only the second time I’m playing Persona 5 after I originally beat it in the late 2010s. This is my third run through of Red Dead II, the last one being in 2021. I’m the type of person to let things breathe and wait a few years between playthroughs so that things feel all the more fresh when I come back to them. But I didn’t feel like waiting years this time around. And I’m glad I didn’t. The second playthrough was even more rewarding than the first as I was able to fully wrap my head around combat mechanics that I didn’t totally understand the first time through. The story also takes on a completely new context the second time through when you know what to look for and have that additional background. This time through I also completed and absorbed every possible piece of side content available, including everything in the third act which I completely passed over before. There’s so many beautiful story beats that are saved for this final act. New areas to explore, harder fights, satisfying character moments all the way through. Turns out I’m still not done. During the Game Awards when Expedition 33 was completing it’s near sweep of collecting accolades, game director Guillaume Broche announced a new, free DLC available that day. So it looks like whenever I return for my inevitable third playthough, I’ll have even more new content to explore. This is definitely one of those games I’ll be replaying every few years, a certified instant classic that’s destined to stand the test of time. I can’t tell you how good it feels every time we get to add one of these to the small club of masterpieces. Unfortunately, Clair Obscur has started getting some blowback after its incredible awards season run. It feels very similar to when everyone watched and enjoyed Everything Everywhere All At Once and then social media turned on it once it swept the Academy Awards. It very much feels like the same thing is happening here. I couldn’t care less. The people who seem to hate it the most are the ones who haven’t played it and I honestly feel bad for those people. They’re missing out on a masterpiece of a game, a piece of interactive art made by a small and dedicated team. They’re also charging less for their landmark debut title than most AAA games on the market. Play it, love it, experience it, I couldn’t heap enough praise on it if I tried. For those who come after.

Let’s Review

Was 2024 an amazing year for movies, games or TV? No, not really. I would say 2023 was stronger at the top in all categories but you can’t have a great year without some down ones.

Let’s start with films. Here’s a quick look at last year’s Academy Award nominees for Best Picture:

You’ve got comedy, you’ve got auteurs, box office smashes and indie darlings, domestic and international. Movies that people actual saw and talked about were represented.

Now let’s take a look at this year’s nominees:

You’ve got a bit of the same here but it’s a bit underwhelming as a total package. Emilia Perez just got the second most nominations of any film ever and I can’t name a single person who’s seen it or wants to. Dune: Part Two was a monster of a film but has been largely forgotten so far in the awards races. You haven’t seen The Brutalist or Nickel Boys or the I’m Still Here. Maybe you will but I’d be willing to be you’re not racing out to do so. Which is fine. Do these award races even matter at all? Not at all. The average Academy Awards voter came out west in covered wagons so we really shouldn’t use them or any other awards body as a barometer of a film’s quality. Sometimes they get it right, way more often they’re not even in the same ballpark. It’s always up to each person. So here’s everything I saw this year and what I thought of them.

Movies:

The Fine, The Forgettable, The Meh:

This is the worst thing a film can be. Give me awful and shitty any day over something that elicits just a meager shrug when someone asks you how it was. It doesn’t even mean the films in this section were bad, I just don’t feel much thinking back on them and won’t be returning to them anytime soon. I’ll keep this section brief cause I’m not writing paragraphs about movies that barely take up a crawlspace in my memory.

Argylle – It’s okay. Those who were promised a Henry Cavill spy thriller will get it in the first 10 minutes and there only. From there it descends into silly, twisty, C Grade Matthew Vaughn schleck, full of high octane action scenes that will have you checking your watch until the credits roll. Sam Rockwell is having a lot of fun and does his best to save this but it’s a plane movie through and through.

Drive-Away Dolls – The Coens should get back together. They’ve struck oil more times in their career than most of the other directors on this list put together. But this one’s just from Ethan and it feels like a script he had lying around the trunk of his car and put it to film to have something to do. Margaret Qualley is as charming as ever but this isn’t even the best lesbian crime drama this year. Skip it.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire – The new Godzilla x Kong movie isn’t an instant classic. You’re shocked, I know. I give it points for having Godzilla sleep in the Roman Coliseum like a curled up cat, Dan Stevens performing a skyscraper sized root canal and Kong using a baby chimp as a baseball bat but that’s about where the positives end.

Monkey Man – This got marketed as Indian John Wick and that’s not really what it is. Coming from star and first time director Dev Patel and produced Jordan Peele, I was prepared for balls to the wall fights and kills. And while you do get some great stuff in that department, it’s bogged down by a lot more political drama and flashback heavy soul searching. The action and handheld camera work is really fierce and fiendish when it’s actually happening, but that’s too little and a bit too late. I suspect this is due to the shoestring budget they were working on so I’ll give credit for what’s there, I just wanted more action in my action movie.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – Yeah this was a big disappointment. The previous 3 Planet of the Apes movies were way better than they had any right to be and form arguably the best and most consistent trilogy since The Lord of the Rings films. I think that’s in large part to Rise which set an excellent foundation and Matt Reeves who came in and worked magic with the next two. Kingdom on the other hand feels like a film that was only made because those movies were hits and they wanted to cash in again. At two and a half hours it’s way too bloated and the finale copies the homework of the previous film to the letter. If you don’t have a good script or a good story to tell, don’t make a movie. That’s exactly how Star Wars got where it is now.

The Watchers – Hey a new movie from a Shyamalan! It’s set in a high concept weird place and features a cast slowly going a bit crazy and with a twist near the end that’s not as smart as it thinks it is! Is it a good movie? No. Is it fine? Sure. The perfect Shyamalan film.

Twisters – No one wanted to like this movie more than me. I’m here for Glen Powell as one of our next big stars. I’m here for indie directors making the jump to bigger budgets instead of giving this to Roland Emmerich. I’m here for legacy sequels if there’s a good reason to return to them. This one just didn’t do it for me. The cast are all good and the idea to invert the scientists and rowdy storm chasers from the first film is a smart move. But I wanted more, I wanted better action, less CGI and a reason to separate it from its predecessor. As it stands that one’s still head and shoulders above this for me. I’ll return to it at some point and give it another chance.

A Real Pain – This isn’t a bad movie at all and I waffled on whether to put it in the good category but it’s a movie I don’t think I’ll ever return to. As an acting showcase it’s great and might win Keiran Culkin the Oscar for Supporting Actor which is dumb because he’s the lead but that’s award navigating for you. It’s a very showy performance where he gets to go big and small, revealing all the layers of pain within him that he can’t win against. If you’re anything like me you’ll watch half of this through cringing away from the next meltdown you know is coming. It’s killer for an acting reel but as a movie I’m gonna leave this one alone. Also makes me never want to go to Poland.

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim – It has one cool scene. That’s my enduring memory from seeing this in theaters. One cool scene where Brian Cox brings out that Logan Roy rage once more and fucks people up. Which is still better than Rings of Power.

Gladiator II – Now THIS is a movie that defines this category. A legacy sequel to a film which won Best Picture and Best actor, filled with new and old movie stars and from the same great director Ridley Scott. It had everything going for it and yet it came and went like a fart in the wind. No one’s talking about it, it had zero cultural or awards impact, it barely registered. I walked out of the theater thinking “that was the most mid thing I’ve seen this year.” And nothing topped it. Congratulations to Gladiator II, the most meh film of the year.

The Bad:

Joker: Folie à Deux – I think we made it an hour before we turned it off. It’s the only movie on this list I I didn’t finish so take a bow Todd Phillips. I’m no fan of the first Joker film and don’t get what people like about it so I feel pretty vindicated that everyone and their grandma universally agrees that this one sucks donkey nuts. It’s boring, it’s full of musical covers that add nothing, I don’t know what it’s trying to say and I frankly don’t care whatsoever. Good riddance.

The Beekeeper – Holy shit this movie’s so stupid. Jason Statham plays, you guessed it, a beekeeper. But lo and behold, that has a double meaning. Because in addition to actually tending to his beehive, the Beekeepers are actually a group of highly-skilled special forces that operate independently from the law or government jurisdiction. It’s as dumb as it sounds. This is a movie where Jason Statham walks into a crowd of SWAT team members and defeats them all with punches because they forgot they were carrying guns. It also features iconic lines such as “I’m a Beekeeper. I protect the hive. Sometimes I use fire to smoke out hornets.” I felt myself actively sending brain cells off to live on a farm while watching it. It’s the worst thing I saw this year. David Ayer and Statham are re-teaming for another “regular guy with regular job is actually ex special forces and hurts people” film and it seems like a threat. But I’m going to watch it. No way I could pass up a shoe in contender for dumbest film of 2025.

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver – I know, the title sounds like it was written by an edgy teen who thinks slow motion kills are badass and the coolest people around all have six packs. And it was, that edgy teen’s name is Zack Snyder. I’ll give credit where it’s due. Zack Snyder, like J.J. Abrams, is a very talented visual director. I believe that. But neither of them should ever be allowed within 50 yards of a writer’s room ever again. We’ve seen the disastrous results it yields with movies like Justice League and the Rebel Moon films. Actually probably just the former, almost no one else I know has actually watched these films. Well I have. They’re long and they’re bad and they’re stupid and it’s the closest we’ll ever see to a child getting hundreds of millions of dollars to make bad Star Wars fan fiction. Netflix even doubled down and allowed him to put out his now-standard extended cut of both entries now so make sure to fire those up if your Ambien prescription just isn’t getting it done.

Madame Web – Yeah, Madame Web is really bad. I can’t believe this isn’t the film that shut down the ill-fated Sonyverse. The prestigious honor belongs to Kraven which I still need to see. So I can only speak for this one. It sucks. It has no reason to exist. There is no plot. Dakota Johnson plays a total prick who awakens to the ability to see the short term future, which plays out with her processing this revelation in badly acted disbelief the five or so times it happens over the course of the film. The other Spider girls are here too. Why? So they can put them in Spider costumes for one micro scene and put it in the trailers. There’s also a villain, technically. He’s the guy in the black spider man suit. What is his backstory and goal? I don’t know. All his lines are ADR’d. It’s one of those movies you can tell got duct taped together in the editing bay. No one outside of the Mensa members over at Sony knows why this actually got made. It’s like watching the world’s most expensive two hour car crash. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Moana 2 – I was a little inebriated seeing this one but that definitely goes for a lot of other films on the list and they aren’t half as forgettable as this one is. I can’t name you one song, one plot point, one new character. It was as if someone hit me with a neuralyzer as soon as I walked out of the theater. And I like the first one a lot so I certainly didn’t want this to suck. Apparently this was supposed to a be TV series that got scrapped and rolled into a theatrical sequel instead at the last minute and it shows. Anything to hit those margins on time Disney. You corporate, soulless fucks.

Red One – This one’s kind of funny in that I have no idea who the target audience is. Is it for kids? That’s what I assumed but it’s rated PG-13 and has a fair bit of cursing which seems totally out of place for this kind of thing. I’m pretty sure parents wouldn’t be thrilled if Buddy the Elf let out a “what the shit?” out of nowhere. So is it for adults? Maybe if they’re the arrested development Disney Adult kind who seek out movies where Santa Claus delivers all the presents just in time and saves Christmas to give themselves the warm and fuzzies. Is it for teenagers? I kind of doubt it. Teenagers want to see something cool and for adults, not something aimed at their demographic by shameless and out of touch studio execs. So I don’t know who this film is for. It doesn’t have a single original idea going for it and I feel bad for every actor in this who should be making something better.

The Good:

Loves Lies Bleeding – The other, better lesbian crime drama on this list. A bodybuilding drifter rolls into town and hits it off with the girl who runs the local gym, only to be caught up in a web of steroids, domestic violence, dirty cops and taking care of business in the New Mexican desert. Throw in some trippy visuals and some of the worst haircuts I’ve ever seen on screen and you’ve got yourself a really good time. Katy O’Brien, Kristen Stewart and Ed Harris are all having a lot of fun with the material and it’s just a unique premise and style of movie I haven’t seen before and I’ll always take weirdness and originality over something banal and tread to death. Great black comedy ending too, love those.

Road House – Did we need a Road House remake? Of course not. Why remake a movie if the original is already good? Let alone one where Patrick Swayze ends a fight by ripping a dude’s throat out. But we live in the era of dwindling original ideas and safe studio decision-making so if we’re gonna get remakes whether we want them or not, they might as well be good. And I think this one is. Set in the sun drenched Florida Keys, Jake Gyllenhall’s Dalton takes the job as a bouncer not because he wants to, but because he’s a disgraced UFC fighter living out of his car with no better options. Even if he’s not having fun, the movie is. It’s a movie that knows that this is not material to be taken seriously. This gets amplified when Connor McGregor’s joyfully psychotic enforcer joins the film near the midpoint. Doug Liman has made some of my favorite action films including Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Edge of Tomorrow, both of which know that you’re allowed to have a lot of fun with this type of material and this one is no different.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare – Henry Cavill leads a merry band of lovable killers on a secret mission to sabotage the Axis U-Boat supply chain and murder a dick load of Nazis en route to their goal. This is the most charming and likable Cavill has ever been, finally being freed from a string of playing morose, reluctant do-gooders. He and his team take absolute pleasure in their mission and Guy Ritchie can direct something like this in his sleep by now. The standout is Alan Ritchson’s Anders Lassen, the Danish gladiator who looks like the Hulk every time he’s on screen tearing Nazis apart with knives, arrows and hatchets. I think we could all use a little more Nazi killing reverie these days and if you need a fun barn burner to watch on a Friday night, you could do a lot worse than this.

Abigail – Radio Silence, the writing-directing team behind this movie made one of my all time favorite films in Ready or Not a few years back so I was very much looking forward to another original film from them after they’d spent the intervening years making Scream 5 and 6, both of which are fine. It also stars Dan Stevens who’s my favorite actor working today so yeah I was in the bag for this. It’s not as good as Ready or Not but it gets the most out of its premise. I wish the “twist” had been kept out of the marketing entirely but when it’s basically what the entire movie is about, I get why they had to steer into it. If you don’t know what this movie’s about I implore you to go in as blind as possible, don’t even look at a poster. Just know it’s about a bunch of mismatched criminals stuck in a house on babysitting duty, slowly turning against one another as the body count piles up in typical horror movie fashion. Major props to Alisha Weir as the titular Abigail, turning in one of the best child actor performances I’ve seen in a while. And of course to Dan Stevens for one of the best line deliveries of the year.

Longlegs – It’s really creepy. A serial killer film not as cut and dry as conventional wisdom would allow us to think it is. Not the scariest film of the year but super dark and tense throughout. If you watched Oz Perkins’s previous films The Blackcoat’s Daughter and Gretel & Hansel, you know this guy likes to live inside dread and make you scan the edges of the frame for evil. Maika Monroe does her best Clarice Starling impression here, obsessed and too close to a case which will ultimately hit her where she lives. Nicolas Cage does Nicolas Cage things, enlivened by excellent makeup and prosthetic work he clearly enjoys melting into. I dare you to watch this film and not do a Longlegs imitation afterwards. Bet you can’t.

Conclave – Conclave is the kind of movie that would’ve put a younger version of myself to sleep. A film about the political war of the different cardinals vying to see who will become the next Pope as they’re sequestered inside a conclave until the election is concluded? Yawn. But this actually kept my interest pretty well. This is an elderly white guy smorgasbord. Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, John Lithgow, all bringing it. I am certainly no fan or the Catholic church but peering into that world and how petty and political scheming is prevalent everywhere kept my interest until the end. I’ve heard that the movie’s ending “twist” comes a bit out of nowhere and turns some people off. While I can understand why they’d feel that way, I didn’t have an issue with it and I thought it was handled well. Not my favorite film this year but it’s well made, well acted, well written, well shot. A movie of exceeding competence.

Cuckoo – If Longlegs is the reserved and thinking man’s mediation on evil and satanism then Cuckoo is the eerie and batshit mediation on European horror fuckduckery. Set in a secluded resort in the Bavarian Alps, Hunter Schafer’s Gretchen has to contend with isolation and the grief of her mother’s passing as she acclimates to her new environment and cold shoulders of her father and stepmother. And since this is a European set horror movie, you know she’s not going to arrive at catharsis without some thoroughly messed up speed bumps along the way. This movie will give you puzzling questions and great payoffs before the credits roll on its tight 100 minute runtime. Schafer is excellent here, giving a real physical and emotional anguished performance as she runs, bikes and slashes her way towards the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s really weird and you know how I feel about really weird. Gimme more.

Transformers One – I’m not a Transformers fan. Didn’t watch the show growing up, didn’t have the toys and didn’t watch the Michael Bay films because I thought they looked like visual diarrhea. But I heard this was good and if I can confirm that in under two hours then I usually will give it a try. This is definitely super watchable at the very least. It’s still a bit too kiddie for my liking and the characters arcs are rushed to get where they want to end up by the end but I’d be willing to bet 7 year old Sam would’ve loved this. I can acknowledge a film is good even if it’s not really for me and that’s this one for sure.

Rebel Ridge – A Netflix film that doesn’t go straight to the forgettable list, what a treat. As a big fan of writer-director Jeremy Saulnier’s previous films Blue Ruin and Green Room, I was excited to get another grounded and gritty entry from him. And this one delivers. A marine veteran rides his bike into a sleepy Lousiana town to post a much-needed bail for his cousin but is roughed up and accosted by a couple local cops who ‘legally’ seize his bail money and leave him high and dry and desperate. When his attempts to plea with the sheriff and to go through the legal system fall flat, he stops playing nice and puts his marine training to work to take back what’s his. I’d never heard of Aaron Pierre before seeing this and now I’m very much looking forward to what he does next, especially after he got cast as Jon Stewart in the new Green Lanterns show. The British are gonna take all our best American roles if we’re not careful.

Sonic The Hedgehog 3 – A better kid’s movie than Transformers in my opinion, I was surprised to learn after watching it that the film clocks in at 110 minutes. I was prepared to lavish it with praise for what I presumed was closer to 90 minutes but it moves briskly and each fun setpiece feeds right into the next one so it feels shorter than it is. It’s really amusing that Jim Carrey has all but retired from other acting roles but continues to give 110% in these films, there is not a hint of phoning it in in his performance(s) whatsoever. I thought the original Sonic film was just alright but this franchise has only gotten better with each installment and this is definitely the best yet. So sure, keep it going with Sonic 4. I’ll be there.

The Substance – This one had been hyped up for me a lot with talk of how wild and crazy it was. Did it live up to that billing? Oh yeah, it’s definitely a thoroughly fucked up ride. But I didn’t love it like I expected to. If you’re unfamiliar with the premise, Demi Moore’s aging fitness guru gets laid off by Dennis Quaid’s devoutly disgusting network executive but she’s offered a chance to become young again via an anonymous benefactor. By injecting herself with THE SUBSTANCE, she’ll be able to trade a week of herself for a week of a younger, hotter version of herself played by Margarett Qualley. Following the rules is very important she’s told, so naturally following the rules quickly goes by the wayside as the younger version craves more time as her fame grows and her older version pays the price. This is all a metaphor for how Hollywood chews up and spits out women and trades them in for prettier and younger models as soon as the old one has outlived its usefulness. But to even call it a metaphor is generous. Whereas most films try to outline and unveil such hypocrisies, The Substance bashes you across the face with it like a sledgehammer. This may be the least subtle film I’ve seen in a while, all fish eye lenses and ass shots to pound you over the head with “isn’t this gross!?” It’s maximalist film making and while it’s undoubtedly effective, I don’t think it’s as smart as it thinks it is. I enjoyed it and both actresses are fantastic in it but I would not call it a favorite this year.

The Fall Guy – Did anyone else see this? It looked poised to be one of the biggest hits of the summer but it seems like it kind of came and went without much fanfare. It had arguably the best action director working today in David Leitch, bonafide move stars in Ryan Gosling and Emily stars who actually have chemistry and an overqualified supporting cast. Fun premise too. But nope, seems like it lost the studio money and disappeared. For what it’s worth I thought it was pretty good. Not amazing, but pretty good. Between this and Blade Runner 2049 I guess some of Gosling’s big swings are just going to be misses for the general public but they’re good movies so I hope he doesn’t change. He’s being talked about for a role in a Star Wars movie right now which just sounds so incredibly mismatched. I won’t be upset if I’m proven wrong but again, weird and original beats safe and well tread every single time.

Saturday Night – A movie about the fraught final hours leading up to the first ever broadcast of Saturday Night Live in October 1975, up and coming producer Lorne Michaels is going crazy trying to balance cutting down sketches, managing his egotistical cast and host, placating the producers who would just as soon cancel the whole thing and trying not to let the weight of it all drag him down into a psychotic abyss. The best part of the movie is the ensemble cast, some of which really look like future stars John Belushi and Chevy Chase and some who don’t but are very game. It’s an amusing but albeit unrealistic portrait of the manic hours leading into what became a pop cultural phenomenon which has endured into it’s 50th anniversary this year. It’s a solid hangout movie if you want to spend some time at NBC studios and see a fictionalized account of how it got onto the air.

Smile 2 – I’ve spent my January racing to clear up at least some of my 2024 backlog before writing this post. I’d heard Smile 2 was one of the better horror films of this year so I suggested to my girlfriend that we watch Smile 1 and 2 back to back since we’d never seen either. What a fun ride. While the first film is a novel premise that’s a meditation on trauma and how it’s passed down, the sequel opts for the bigger, better, funner route. Instead of a therapist slowly losing her mind to a demon that opts to torture with jump scares and smiling people only she can see, this time we’ve got a pop star who unfortunately gets the curse passed to her after trying to score painkillers for a chronic injury. Nearing the start of a new tour and already cracking under the pressure, the added mental anguish the curse brings quickly unravels her into fits of shouting, crying and alienating those around her. While they all chalk it up to either stress or falling off the wagon again, Naomi’s Scott’s virtuoso performance sees her completely go insane and lash out as the demon tortures her and us with increasingly high concept jump scares. It’s a movie that’s having a blast with the more bombastic tone it’s going for this time around and I enjoyed it immensely from the start to its big finish that left me eager to see what’s next for the franchise.

The Top 10:

10. I Saw The TV Glow – I’d heard a lot of great buzz about I Saw The TV Glow coming off the festival circuit so I was eager to see what the fuss was about in the months waiting for it to reach a streaming platform. All I knew was that it was a psychological horror film that was also a metaphor for the trans experience from relatively new writer-director Jane Schoenbrun. When I finally did see it, I was a little underwhelmed. It’s not exactly plot heavy, instead focusing on a teenage boy who bonds with a classmate over their shared love of a young adult show, The Pink Opaque. Their mutual obsession with it seems like the only positive thing they have to latch on to, as they struggle to find joy in their unpleasant home lives. When the credits rolled, I could see why critics liked it but chalked it up to it just not being for me. And yet in the months since that viewing, so much of it is still stuck in my mind. The dreamlike atmosphere that the movie is bathed in. The incredibly well worn and creative world of The Pink Opaque, something I could definitely see myself staying up late for as a kid after everyone else had gone to bed. The feeling of not belonging, the isolation, the enduring hope that you will someday find that supernatural door out of this place and into a better world. The color palette and ethereal quality of this film completely left its mark. Something I thought was just okay at first has really endured for me and I wouldn’t feel right leaving it out of my top 10.

9. Juror #2 – Billed as probably Clint Eastwood’s final directed film, Warner Bros. decided to give the old man one final fuck you by burying this with a limited release and little to no marketing. This is the same inept studio that’s been axing completed films for tax write offs and pissed off Christopher Nolan so much with their handling of Tenet that he left for Universal so their idiotic decision here is just par for the course. But I just can’t fathom why they left this out to dry. It’s the best courtroom drama I’ve seen in years. Nicholas Hoult plays the eponymous Juror #2 who suffers a crisis of conscience after realizing the case he’s been selected for might actually have more to do with him than he could’ve ever anticipated. It’s one of those movies where the central moral dilemma is so good, you’ll go back and forth in your mind about what you would do in this situation a dozen times. It’s a movie about how our legal systems are fallible and what the cost of doing the right thing is. It definitely deserved more than what WB gave it so yeah, check this one out.

8. Nosferatu – It’s nice to see Robert Eggers get a bonafide box office hit. The indie darling who debuted with the incredibly creepy The Witch and followed it up with the gonzo masterpiece The Lighthouse had a bit of a stumble when The Northman did not get the same love or box office numbers that was expected with the higher budget of that film. But now with Nosferatu, Eggers is seeing his brand of pain-staking gothic horror reach new audiences unfamiliar with his period piece proclivities. Set in the early 1800s, a young woman is marked for doom when her pleas for an answer to her loneliness is answered by a vampiric parasite who forges a psychic obsession with her and vows to make her his own. There are sequences and shots in this film that are absolutely breathtaking. The carriage scene and ride to the Translyvanian Castle is a wordless bravura piece of hauntingly beautiful in-camera filmmaking. Nicholas Hoult does some of the finest acting of his career when he first meets Orlok, his eyes conveying the immense terror he’s feeling more than any vocal communication could. The vampire’s clawed shadow, growing and reaching out over the town, is a shot that will stick with me for a while. Eggers was interviewed recently and said he’ll never make a modern day movie and if his films of old world dread are going to continue to be this good, I’m completely in favor of that.

7. The Order – Our third straight Nicholas Hoult film, take a bow sir. What a year for this guy. For those unfamiliar with The Order, Hoult plays the charismatic leader of a group of white supremacists who have splintered off from the main branch after being tired of talking about revolution and are now ready to start one. In order to do that they’ll need funding which means knocking over banks, armored cars, anything they hit with precision and escape before the cops arrive. While the local cops can’t do much to stop them, Jude Law’s hard drinking and hard smoking FBI agent shows up in town ready to trade blows, looking like he just crawled out of a True Detective pilot. The movie gets the most out of its 1980s Pacific Northwest setting as the two leads play cat and mouse with one another as the plot thickens over several months before reaching its inevitable boiling point. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

6. Oddity – There were a lot of great horror films this year and I did my best to see all of them. I saw a trailer for this before Longlegs and didn’t think much of it. When I finally did sit down to see it with a couple friends, we were all shocked at how good it was. The opening sequence had me the most scared of anything I’ve seen in a while. I was ON EDGE. The rest of the film has the tough job of following this scene up but it delivers. This is a movie that earns its frights, jump scares and otherwise. It’s smart, it’s well shot, the ending is awesome. Get ready to be scared.

5. Hit Man – What a pleasant surprise. Re-teaming with Richard Linklater after their excellent work in Everybody Wants Some!!, Glenn Powell goes from charming handsome guy to full blown movie star in this stellar dark comedy based on a true story of a college professor turned pretend hitman. This is played out over a series of fake assassin-client meet ups where Powell is having a blast getting them to incriminate themselves as he puts on increasingly silly disguises and characters. While that’s an amusing premise and getting to see his glow up from jorts-wearing dork to leather jacket lothario is beat for beat on point, the movie kicks into high gear when he begins his tryst with Adria Arjona’s Madison after she attempts to hire one of his alter egos to kill her abusive husband. From there it’s a balancing act of trying to continue to woo her as the would-be assassin she knows him as, and not letting the police force he’s working with know that he’s keeping up his acting charade after hours. As you can imagine, shit eventually goes sideways. This culminates in my favorite scene of any movie this year which I won’t spoil here but you’ll know it when it’s happening. It’s also far and away the sexiest film of the year. If you didn’t get around to seeing this one yet, add it to your list.

4. Deadpool & Wolverine – I know, only one MCU film came out this year and I put it this high on the list. What a Marvel shill I must be. But no, this is here because it was the best time I had at the movies this year. I saw it multiple times there. It just worked for me. The jokes landed, the song choices landed, the cameos were actually used smartly and I had a smile on my face the whole time. It’s certainly not perfect but I’m not here expecting a Deadpool film to be Citizen Kane. All I needed from this film was just to have a good time at the theater, laughing and enjoying my night. And it delivered that in spades. The MCU is definitely on the downswing the last few years and it feels like the lights are going to turn off soon but I’m glad we got one more really good time before it wraps up.

3. Alien: Romulus – I have one major, major complaint about this movie so I’m just going to get it out of the way now. We really need to stop bringing actors back from the dead using creepy CGI face technology. It’s in poor taste, it looks like shit and it completely breaks immersion and takes me out of whatever I’m watching every single time. Stop doing it. Just re-cast at that point or use a different character. It’s that simple. That way one of my favorite films of the year wouldn’t have a giant flashing asterisk next to it every time I watch it. And I do love this one. There’s so much else to like here. The set design and recreation of the retro-futurism look of the original Alien is wonderful. This world looks grimy, lived in and a horrible place to be stuck in. The slow build up is used to great effect here, I don’t think we even have an action scene for the first 40 or so minutes. The film takes its times to setup the world, the stakes and the characters before tossing them into hell with a ticking clock to propel them forward. It all looks and sounds fantastic, with an emphasis on practical effects that works like gangbusters. But you know a movie’s great when an audience makes audible gasps the way they did in my theater during the film’s final act. THAT is why I go to the movies. I wish I could bottle that feeling. I still wish they hadn’t gone the CGI resurrection route I spoke of before but it’s not nearly enough to overcome everything else this film does so right. I loved it.

2. Dune: Part Two – Dune: Part Two is the best film from this year. Why that’s been forgotten by awards voters just because it came out 11 months ago is simply beyond me. It has not gotten any worse since it came out, in fact it may be getting better still. While Part One had to do a lot of the heavy lifting of introducing this cold universe and the rules and characters who inhabit it, Part Two gets to hit the ground running and deliver amazing moment after amazing moment, all under the careful guiding hand of an elite director, cinematographer and composer. That’s to say nothing of the cast, which might be the most stacked of any blockbuster ever. Chalamet devours his transition of Paul from a desperate and out of place exile into the monstrous conqueror of Arrakis. This is juxtaposed by Zendaya’s Chani who turns from his loyal paramour into the glaring anti-zealot as everyone else around her falls into his planet-crushing orbit. I can’t believe how good some of these scenes are. The attack on the spice harvester, Paul’s initiation into sandworm riding, the Coliseum fight on Giedi Prime in inverted black and white. You watch something like that and realize we’re still capable of putting things on screen no one’s ever seem before and that’s exhilarating. From top to bottom, Dune: Part Two stands tall as the best film of the year.

1. Challengers – But it’s not my favorite, this one is. Zendaya sure can pick ’em. If only her characters’ could too. Presented in non linear fashion, Challengers tells the story of a tennis obsessed triumvirate who fall in love and fall apart from one another. This plays out via the framing device of a Challenger event where two former best friends play each other in the final match, while the girl who came between the watches from the stands. As we flash back and learn more about the characters, the film keeps returning to this final match which plays out over the course of the film. It’s an ingenious framing device, if not an entirely original one for a sports movie. But I don’t care. This movie has the juice. Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist are two actors I was totally unfamiliar with before this movie but they both inhabit their yin-yang characters so incredibly well and their chemistry with each other is absolutely essential, the movie doesn’t work at all without it. To that end, you can totally see why Zendaya’s Tashi Duncan would be the girl to drive a wedge between them. She’s ruthless in all aspects of her life and plays the friends against each other, making sure to get what she wants from each one as long as they’re useful to her. It’s this interplay between the three of them which gives the movie it’s beating heart. That and the absolutely sick propulsive score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross that tears through this movie like a tornado. I’ve never heard a score used in a movie like this and it’s the soundtrack of the year hands down. Throw in some of the coolest camera work I’ve ever seen in a sports movie and this is just the total package. I feel like an absolute dunce for not seeing this in theaters but I will absolutely rectify that if it ever comes back. What a movie.

TV Shows

I didn’t watch a ton of TV this year. With so much new content constantly being vomited out by the streamers to try and push ahead of each other for your interest, it feels like there’s only so much bandwidth a person has and I personally prefer movies and videogames as my primary forms of entertainment consumption. Still, I did make sure to watch at least some of the good stuff even if I never could make myself sit down and watch Shōgun. Here’s what I watched instead:

Landman – Watch Landman. If there’s only one recommendation you actually follow through on from this section it should be this one. It’s created by Taylor Sheridan who transitioned from writing screenplays like Sicario and Hell or High Water to becoming a Paramount powerhouse by developing Yellowstone (and its spinoffs), Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King and Lioness. The guy must’ve taken the Limitless pill or something, there’s no other way to explain how you’re churning out a new show every year and writing and directing for all of them. But hey, it’s working. Landman might be his best yet. Starring Billy Bob Thornton as beleaguered oil company manager Tommy Norris, the show follows his daily juggling act of babysitting oil crews, trading threats with the cartel, sweeping lawsuits under the rug and balancing the most fucked up family life this side of the Lannisters. Thornton can probably play this role in his sleep by now, still looking like the pissed off, world weary, beat to shit alcoholic he’s mastered since his time as a Bad Santa and coach of the Bad News Bears. And there’s no one else I’d rather see do it. He gets some of the best monologues on TV and always makes a meal out of it. Ali Larter plays his jack rabbit ex wife who comes home to roost midway through the season and she’s having an absolute blast as the psychotic firecracker constantly throwing his world in and out of chaos. The rest of the cast are all very game for this material as well, even if some get the spotlight much more than others. Demi Moore has about six lines through that many episodes but is set up for a bigger role in season 2, and a bigger paycheck if she strikes Oscar gold for The Substance. This is a show that more than any other recognizes the need to be entertaining first and foremost, even and sometimes purposefully at the risk of losing the realism. Has it been a couple episodes since something blew up? Time to correct that. No one’s gone to the hospital in a minute? Welp, now they have. This show might be funner with some army guys now that I think of it. Great, they’ll be here next episode. And don’t get me started on the old folks strip club arc. Every person I recommended this show to got completely absorbed in it and I’ve gone through it twice already. I don’t even give a flying fuck about oil & gas and the idea of living in Midland makes me want to pop my kneecap off with a crowbar. But it sure is a fun place to visit.

X-Men ’97 – The only other show on this list I will unequivocally ride for, X-Men ’97 is a legacy sequel series to the X-Men animated show that played on Saturday mornings when I was a kid. If you’re like me and only caught a handful of those episodes or none at all, you don’t need to worry about being familiar with it in order to enjoy this modern update. Sure an overall knowledge of the X-Men and Marvel characters in general will only add to your enjoyment of it, but this is a perfect place for newcomers to start. Me and my friend started this on a Sunday afternoon expecting to watch just a couple episodes and ending up burning through the whole thing in one sitting. There’s a lot of praise to heap on this. It does an excellent job of balancing and swapping characters in and out, something a show with as large of a cast as the X-Men needs to do well. The core characters all go through some form of character development over the course of the 10 episodes, even if some storylines and character arcs are rushed to be able to fit everything in. The animation style which blends 2D and 3D animation, is one of the most gorgeous and colorful I’ve ever seen in an animated show. It’s just nice to actually have a superhero show that really pushes color to the forefront and not try to look muted or saturated in the vain pursuit of being grounded. Which this is not at all. It’s pure, pulpy comic book zaniness. Cloning, time travel, intergalactic politics, telepathic romance, it’s all here. And the show is better for it. Like most people who saw it, I’m eagerly awaiting season 2 even if I am a bit worried after the showrunner for the first season was axed due to alleged workplace misconduct. But even if the future seasons don’t live up to this one, it’s still a near perfect single season of television that is far better than most of the superhero content that’s come out over the last decade.

The Penguin – Your mileage for the Penguin may depend on how much superhero stuff you need in your superhero adjacent companion show to The Batman. Because there’s none here. This show has much more in common with the Sopranos than it does something like Loki. It’s all moody, gangster noir here. Colin Farrell is unrecognizable in makeup and in accent here, completely disappearing into the oily, odious, backstabbing Oz Cobb who would sell out anyone and everyone to make it just one inch closer to the top. He’s an utter scumbag who only looks out for himself and yet he’s so nakedly honest about his ambitions I couldn’t help but root for him. On the opposite side is Sofia Falcone, played with deranged abandon by Cristin Milioti, turning in career best work here as the prodigal mafiosa daughter whose back in Gotham and ready to make a (new) name for herself. Her wide, icy eyes consume every scene she’s in and she almost walks away with the show just by herself. If you’re someone who likes gangster shows and enjoyed The Batman, I think you’ll find a lot to like here.

Ted – I liked the Ted movie when it came out like everyone else. And I grew up on Family Guy and American Dad so I’m indebted to Seth McFarlane for tailoring my sense of humor. Naturally I had to at least see why he was compelled to keep this character going in the form of a sitcom style prequel series set in the 90s. And I’m so happy I did. The show is warmer and funnier than anything in the Ted movies. Max Burkholder is stellar as the younger version of Mark Wahlberg’s John Bennett and he and McFarlane as the voice of Ted have a real winning chemistry. There’s times where your brain will forget that the CGI bear isn’t real because of how good the interplay these two have is. At only 7 episodes, this feels like a side project Peacock was willing to take a chance on given McFarlane’s track record but also as a favor to him given his love of the character. But since then it’s become their most watched orignal program and the second season has already wrapped filming. This is the funniest pure comedy show I saw last year and I can recommend it to anyone and everyone.

Creature Commandos – The official first installment in the brand new DCU ahead of Superman coming in July, Creature Commandos is basically grungier Suicide Squad but with monsters instead of humans. Entirely written by James Gunn, the show follows a covert group of commandos tasked with the usual comic book motivations he’s been employing since the Guardians of the Galaxy. Gunn clearly loves playing with his broken toys, with every character getting a tragic backstory folded into the back panel of each episode. Clocking in at only 7 episodes and under half an hour each, you can knock this out in an afternoon like I did. Gunn excels at writing loveable misfits placed into impossible situations and its more of the same here. Watch his 2021 The Suicide Squad before foraying into this, it will help you understand the world and characters better.

True Detective: Night Country – As the 4th season of the ongoing series, it doesn’t nearly come close to the immaculate first season of the show, which is still a high water mark for any television show ever. Still, this is the first season since that debut to really keep my interest from week to week, following the interconnected mysteries at the center of a remote Alaskan town. The show uses its setting to great effect, showing the day to day lives of its characters who are now without days, only one long, everlasting night. It kept me guessing until the final episode, weaving in supernatural elements and twists along its jagged edges. It’s a perfect winter show so catch up now before it warms up.

House of the Dragon – I don’t think there’s much to say here. At this point you’re either fed up with the Game of Thrones HBO experience or are eagerly awaiting more. I’m in the latter camp but it does suck that with a lot of these shows we have to wait years between seasons. House of the Dragon so far has not lived up to the highs of the early seasons of Game of Thrones but thankfully it’s certainly much better than the lows of those later seasons. It sounds like they’ve sketched this show out to be about 4 or 5 seasons and the story is all known well ahead of time, thankfully. At this point it seems like George RR Martin will definitely be dead from a twinkie overdoes long before we finishes the final two books of the mainline series but as long as this show can land the plane on a storyline that’s already established, it will have done a better job than the original show by staying at a high level of quality throughout. Even if we do need to watch a YouTube recap every few years just to remember what happened.

Video Games:

2024 wasn’t an amazing year for gaming in my opinion. The AAA lineup just wasn’t there, evidenced by The Game of the Year nominees coming down to a card game, a DLC and a 10-15 hour platformer. I spent a lot of the year replaying old games I’ve beaten several times before including The Last of Us 2, Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag and Ace Combat 7, not to mention the hundreds of hours I continued to sink into Hades, FTL and Rocket League. There were only a handful of new things I played this year that are worth discussing and some of them aren’t even from this year. But nowadays I play new games based on what comes on game pass or what goes on sale. The entry point for new games is just a much higher price point than seeing new movies, which will all find their way to an available streaming service much sooner than later. With that being said, here’s the new stuff I played this year:

Persona 3: Reload – A full top-to-bottom super stylish remake of Persona 3 with the Persona 5 approach and quality of life improvements in mind, Reload is the perfect place for anyone new to the series to start with. The game oozes polish, from the re-recorded excellent soundtrack to the gorgeous art style and graphics. This is a game that will have you happily spending time in its menus, given how joyous they look and sound. I can’t say that for many other games, if any at all. With that being said, I was looking forward to a shorter adventure this time around compared to Persona 5 and this one still had me clocking in at well over a hundred hours by the time I completed it which is simply going to be too much of a time sink for some people and I get that. Persona 5 is still the high water mark for the series for me given the music, the story, the personalized palaces and it being my first entry in the series but there’s so much to love here and this may well be my favorite cast of characters in the franchise. JRPGs can be a tough genre for a lot of western audiences to get into but I hope some people take a chance on them if they’ve never tried before.

Cyberpunk 2077 – The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is my single favorite video game of all time so whatever game Polish studio CD Projekt Red decided to put out next, I was going to buy without hesitation. When it was announced that their next game was going to be a futuristic Cyberpunk open world game that looked like nothing we’d seen before, expectations were through the roof and future E3 presentations only fueled the hype train even more. Thanks Keanu. True to my word, I bought the title the day it came out for my Xbox One back in 2020. And it was a buggy, unfinished mess. Made for both the newer and older console generations at the time, Xbox One and Playstation 4 owners were left with a basically unplayable game, complete with pop in, a depleted frame rate and ugly, unloadable graphics. I returned the game almost immediately for a full refund and vowed to play it again when I upgraded to a next gen console and a few years down the line so that the developers could have time to fix all the issues with it. It’s sad that this is the state of gaming these days. Developer puts out broken game, everyone derides it, the developer fixes the game down the line through patches. It shouldn’t be this way but it is. After waiting several years playing other things, the studio had been patching the game routinely and winning back fans to its game which was slowly looking more and more like the original game that was promised. When they announced they’d be putting out one final patch in conjunction their Phantom Liberty DLC which would add a whole new wealth of content, it felt like the perfect time for me to jump back in and give the game another try. And boy was I right. This game dominated months of my time. I completed every side quest, every piece of content, upgraded my character to the max, basically devoured every piece of content this game made available. Which isn’t unusual for me to do in an RPG since I want to get the most out of it but still, I’ll only pour in that kind of investment if the game is worth doing so for. And this one definitely is. Playing the main game and Phantom Liberty back to back, my final playthrough clocked in at around 150 hours. It’s one of those games you just don’t want to put down and features an excellent main story, memorable characters, fantastic, fluid gameplay and a totally unique world worth losing time in. I’m so happy I enjoyed it as much as I did, and I know one day I’ll come back for another tour of Night City.

The Hitman Trilogy – I never really played any of the Hitman games until this year. I tried one when I was a kid but since it wasn’t Splinter Cell style gameplay like I was used to and I couldn’t understand how to engage with its systems, I quickly gave up on it. Well I tried the latest trilogy of games that have been put out the last few years and I had an absolute blast. The story is not much to speak of. Shadow agencies, corporate espionage, mysterious pasts, blah blah blah. It’s very by the numbers. The gameplay is the star here. Each mission sets you in a unique locale in a different part of the world. A fashion show in Paris, a snowy spa retreat in Hokkaido, a wine vineyard in Argentina, a skyscraper in Dubai. Every mission drops you in a wonderfully realized sandbox with a single goal: kill your target by any means necessary. Some missions add side objectives or task you with taking down multiple targets but the game is called Hitman for a reason. Find your mark and take them out. How you do that is completely up to you. Sure you could walk into their mansion and shoot them in the head and try escaping before you’re gunned down by their security detail but where’s the fun in that? The real fun of the game lies in getting close to the victim and taking them down without anyone knowing you were even there. Disguise yourself as their personal chef and poison their meal. Sabotage their automated surgical procedure and let them machine dice them up. Loosen the screws on their F1 car before they take off for their next lap and let them expire in a fireball on the track. The choices are completely up to you and that makes these missions endlessly replayble. Toss in a scoring system and a boatload of DLC and you can be murdering CEOs like Luigi for hours on end. Happy hunting.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC – It’s just DLC but everyone else is treating it like a full game and it’s certainly the length of one so sure I’ll add it here. Not much to really say about it though. Do you like Elden Ring? Well then you’ll like this. If you’re on the fence about playing Elden Ring then go ahead and take the plunge, I don’t know what you’re waiting for.

Helldivers 2 – Helldivers 2 is a blast and the closest thing we have to a Starship Troopers game. Jump online and join up with your sqaud as you blast your way through hordes of bugs and automatons across the galaxy as you spread democracy with pulse rifles and precision airstrikes. Definitely a game that’s better with friends so I’d recommend enlisting if you know other people to play with.

Balatro – Balatro is the kind of game that comes along every couple years that seems like such an amazing, slam dunk idea that you can’t believe no one thought of it sooner. A deck-building roguelite that will have you staying up til 3am trying to win another run, the game relies on you playing different poker hands to beat increasingly higher score thresholds in order to move on, improve your build and make it to the end of 24 rounds in order to win. Along the way you’ll improve your run by adding Jokers, colorful modifier cards which will be the difference between success and failure. How you approach each run is up to you. Will you go for the high risk, high rewards of trying to play straights? The less lucrative but more abundant flushes? The ever-safe two pair? Or go in without a hand in mind and see what the game gives you? Everything is on the table every time you start a new run. I bought this for my Switch because it seemed like a good game to be able to play handheld and boy was I more right than I ever could’ve imagined. I’ll play Balatro when I’m watching sports, Youtube, laying in bed, wherever. My friends got it too and there are times where the 3 of us will be chilling on the couch, all playing it on our different devices. I’ve declined to purchase it for my phone because I already spend enough time on it and I don’t want a digital crack pipe in my pocket everywhere I go. If you do buy it and even have a passing knowledge of poker, be prepared to lose hours and hours of your life to it. It’s a phenomenal game, one I can see myself playing over and over again for years to come and becoming the Solitaire for a new generation.

That’s all for 2024. I’m currently playing through Metaphor: Re Fantazio which is just fantasy Persona and getting my shit pushed in by Ninja Gaiden Black 2 which just dropped. The former I can recommend if you like JRPGs and the latter I can recommend if you have too many controllers lying around and need to break some. On the TV front I’m watching Severance season 2 with my girlfriend and I’m enjoying it, even if I found getting through the first season last month a bit of a slog. On the movie front we’ve got a couple cool horror flicks coming out soon with Companion and The Monkey from the creators of Barbarian and Longlegs respectively if those were up your alley. I hope you all enjoy an excellent 2025 watching and playing awesome stuff amidst your other hobbies. Have a great year everyone!