Movie Diary
a) Weapons
I realize at this point I am just adding to the chorus of praise for one of the most popular movies of 2025, but man I fucking loved Weapons, totally knocked Zach Cregger's previous movie Barbarian down a peg as one of my favorite horror movies of the last few years. And as a fan of "The Whitest Kids U'Know" from way back, it means a lot to me that Cregger put a nod to Trevor Moore in there (the seven hot dogs) and apparently wrote the screenplay as a way to process his grief. But really I just loved everything about it, the George Harrison song in the opening, the cast, and especially the storytelling. It also felt a little darker than I expected simply because so many sympathetic characters wound up being killed, killing someone else, or not really getting a reassuring or happy ending. I am not the biggest fan of movies that break the story into chapters from different characters' perspectives, but the way it was done here was a best case scenario, really a smart and purposeful way of unveiling a story that would've been a lot less compelling if it hadn't been laid out so cleverly and carefully.
b) Friendship
Friendship seems to be pretty highly regarded by fans of "I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson," but I had more mixed feelings. A lot of Robinson's sketches feel a little slice of normal daily life has been exaggerated or shown through the eyes of a protagonist who's extremely immature or impulsive, and Friendship functions in the same way, but really stretching that approach over a longer canvas and spending time with that character for 100 minutes and seeing their family and friends deal with them inevitably becomes darker and even a little exhausting. Ultimately it kind of felt like a lesser variation on a movie like Cable Guy, and it was a little weird that Paul Rudd's character was so much like his character from Anchorman. Friendship has maybe the funniest, most unexpected "character trips on psychedelics" scene I've ever seen, and a few other moments I loved, but I almost wish those bits had been sketches that could be separated from this imperfect whole.
c) All of You
Brett Goldstein (best known as Roy Kent from "Ted Lasso") made a short film 10 years ago that took place in a near future where people could take a computerized test that matched them with their soulmates. In 2020, Goldstein made an anthology series for AMC, "Soulmates," with that premise, and I feel like I was one of the only people that watched it, it was decent, kind of a more squishy, romantic genre of "Black Mirror" episodes. And then this year Goldstein wrote and starred in All of You, which I guess is a feature-length adaptation of that original short, but when I put it on and realized he was doing the soulmates test again, it just felt like he'd managed to sell an unused "Soulmates" episode script to Apple TV. And honestly the test feels pretty incidental to the plot, the movie didn't really do anything with it at all, it was just a minor blip in this long, brooding story of a man and a woman who were college friends and then became on-again-off-again lovers. By the end of it I was just rolling my eyes at all the dramatic crying and yelling and sex scenes with Goldstein's thrusting buttocks, just a really painfully earnest, self-serious movie.
Sacha Jenkins was a great of the music writing world who co-founded Ego Trip and wrote for Vibe and Spin, and he very sadly died at only 53 earlier this year. So it was a wonderful surprise when a documentary directed by Jenkins came out on Netflix a few months after his passing, a wonderful look back at the Black performers on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and how passionate Sullivan was about the civil rights movement and about featuring racially diverse entertainment on his show. There's a great interview with Harry Belafonte, so I guess a lot of this was filmed at least two years ago, so I guess the Smokey Robinson interview was done before his horrible allegations came out. Really fantastic footage and an interesting angle I'd never really considered, most people just focus on the Beatles and Elvis when they talk about music on Sullivan's show. The filmmakers did use AI to simulate Sullivan's voice, speaking words he'd written, which is relatively responsible as uses of this technology go, but I'm still not crazy about it.
I'd always hear about Jerry Stiller and Ann Meara's old work as a comedy duo back in the '90s when their son Ben became a star and when Jerry had his classic run on "Seinfeld," but I never actually saw any of what they did back in the day. Now that both of his parents are gone, Ben Stiller made this beautiful documentary about how they basically saved everything, including rehearsal tapes of their routines, and every review of Ben's movies (including the negative ones). It ended up being a pretty thoughtful look at the ups and downs of being a famous showbiz family, it's funny and nostalgic at times but also grapples with with the complexities of them as individuals. Stiller and Meara really became stars on "The Ed Sullivan Show" and the movie had a lot of hilarious clips from their appearances, so it was fun to watch the same day I watched Sunday Best and just kind of live in that world for a few hours.
This documentary covers the last few years of Ozzy Osbourne's life, including the recording of Patient Number 9, his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Black Sabbath farewell concert. And it's a little intense to watch something mere weeks after his death that goes into great detail about his health issues and how hard it was for him to make his final public appearances. It's moving at times and has some great little moments I'm glad I saw, but it also made me feel like the Osbourne family got way too into living their lives on camera after the MTV show and probably didn't need to do this, I started to imagine that every member of the Kardashian family will someday have a miniseries about being in hospice care. And the ending felt a little abrupt, it felt like they had a complete cut of the film that ended with the Birmingham concert, and just tacked on 30 seconds of footage from a memorial after he died.
g) Stans
A documentary about "Stan" as well as Eminem fandom isn't the worst idea but it didn't really feel like they had enough there for an interesting feature-length film.
h) Elio
A nice little movie, feels like it was destined to be seen as 'lesser Pixar' from the jump but it was enjoyable.
i) Fixed
"Dexter's Laboratory" and "Samurai Jack" creator Genndy Tartakovsky wrote and directed Fixed, an extremely childish 'adult' animated film about horny dogs trying not to get neutered. I didn't find it offensive or anything, but at a certain point you just feel like you're watching hundreds of drawings of animals' buttholes and objects strategically blocking you from seeing their genitals, like the movie is so exhaustingly satisfied with itself for being moderately naughty.
An action movie where John Cena plays a movie star-turned-POTUS and Idris Elba is the also ripped Prime Minister of the UK is my kind of bullshit. At one point John Cena urgently presses the button to roll up the bulletproof car door window as a rocket launcher aims at his vehicle, just great physical comedy. And there's kind of an unexpectedly great little scene where Air Force One is being shot down and the pilot gives a little speech about how he's happy to sacrifice himself so that the President and PM can parachute to safety.
k) The Pickup
Like Heads of State, The Pickup is one of those Amazon Prime movies that feels so much like something that would've been moderately successful in theaters 10-15 years ago but is now just streaming service filler that doesn't penetrate pop culture in the slightest. Eddie Murphy is old and rich, why does he feel like he needs to do a mediocre heist movie with Pete Davidson?
One of the better discoveries I made while checking out movies for my 2018 list, I have no memory of this coming out but a western starring John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix is a good time.
m) Mandy
As far as late period Nic Cage vehicles go, I didn't like this as much as Pig or Longlegs, but it was alright.
n) Private Life
I feel like this really surpassed my expectations as a dramedy about a middle-aged couple with fertility issues, like there are a million movies like this but Tamara Jenkins put together a compelling story that didn't go quite as I expected and Kayli Carter was really impressive, held her own alongside vets like Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn.
o) Blackbird
Another dramedy with a good cast that I found a bit more overstuffed with characters and subplots and less memorable.
p) Fast Color
I really enjoyed this, felt kind of like Unbreakable in that it was basically a superhero's origin story that wasn't a comic book movie and didn't feel like one.
q) Freaks
A decent Canadian thriller, another kind of original movie that dealt with superpowers without feeling like a comic book adaptation.
The best 2018 movie that I just recently caught up on, I never got around to watching Barry Jenkins's follow-up to Moonlight at the time, although I'd become a big fan of Stephan James from the things he'd done since then, so it was nice to finally see his most acclaimed role. I'm also kind of more familiar with James Baldwin as an essayist and public intellectual so it was cool to see an adaptation of one of his novels and get more acqauinted with that side of his work.
s) His House
A strong debut from British director Remi Weekes, hope he has a second film sooner than later, and recommended as Wunmi Mosaku's breakout role before Sinners.
A really creepy horror movie, I don't think it lived up to the reviews it got but it was a reasonably fresh take on the exorcism movie genre.
A decent action movie, great cast led by Jeffrey Wright and Alexander Skarsgard, but not especially memorable.
I really liked this, I think the first thing involving Miranda July that I've enjoyed at all, very impressive debut performance from Helena Howard.
Very odd plot to this movie, didn't go at all where I expected it to, but one of the best Maggie Gyllenhaal performances I've seen.
I really have a lifelong loyalty to Michelle Monaghan off the strength of Kiss Kiss Bang Bang that I watched this Mark Wahlberg action comedy, might even watch the sequel.
One of Mads Mikkelsen's best performances and one of the movies he's made in his native Denmark that's made an impact over here, really shows what America's missing out on by keeping him in a villain/supporting role niche.
A decent horror movie, should make a note to check out more of Jim Cummings's stuff.
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on Thursday, October 30, 2025 at 10:52 AM.
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