Movie Diary
Thursday, April 23, 2026 
a) Outcome
I didn't think much of Jonah Hill's directorial debut Mid90s, and when I saw that a guy who's had some mild online backlash wrote and directed something about movie stars getting canceled, I really expected the worst. But Hill knows comedy and he made one of the funnier Hollywood satires I've seen in recent years, going a little over-the-top with his supporting role but at least making it entertaining (with a great Kanye joke to kind of respond to Kanye making Hill part of one of his non-apology apologies for antisemitism). The oddest part of Outcome is Keanu Reeves playing a guy with a pretty similar career to his but maybe a little better (his character has 2 Oscars). But whether it's bad acting or just too different from how we think of Keanu Reeves, it's neither convincing nor funnily ironic when we see him act like a paranoid, insecure diva, it's really one of the only aspect of the movie that just completely falls flat, there's a scene where he loses his temper that just rings so hollow.
Bradley Cooper is another actor-turned-director whose films tend to be about show business, and Is This Thing On? feels like kind of scaled-down and intimate after the other two big Oscar-friendly movie he directed. It has a bit of the same feel as A Star Is Born, Cooper is great at capturing a certain kind of quiet realism, but Will Arnett shines by playing someone who isn't as hilarious as we know Will Arnett can be and doesn't have overnight success, and instead finds something he wants to work at and get better at to express himself, which is actually more poignant.
c) HIM
There was a buzz and anticipation around this movie, in part because Jordan Peele is an exec producer, that dissipated the moment people started to actually see it, everyone seemed to just hate it, which made me pretty curious. It was pretty dumb, I didn't hate it, but it just felt like a half-assed attempt at a disturbing Midsommer-type horror movie in the context of pro sports.
d) Roommates
I don't like many Happy Madison productions that star Adam Sandler, but the ones that don't star Adam Sandler are the ones you really have to beware of, and this one also stars his daughter Sadie Sandler. It's got such a promising supporting cast (Sarah Sherman, Natasha Lyonne, Janeane Garofalo, Steve Buscemi) and there's a little seed of a decent comedy in there, but the writing is just horrible and unfunny, Nick Kroll is the only person who made me laugh in this movie.
e) Thrash
2019's Crawl, about a young woman who has to evade alligators amidst a flood during a Category 5 hurricane, was one of my favorite thrillers in recent memory. Thrash, about a young women who has to evade sharks amidst a flood during a Category 5 hurricane, is not nearly as good, but it had a couple decent moments.
f) War Machine
It would not surprise me if Alan Ritchson becomes the Schwarzenegger of his generation, but this feels a little too derivative of Predator.
g) Omni Loop
There are so many 'time loop' movies now, and this one starring Mary-Louise Parker and Ayo Edebiri succeeds in not feeling like a knockoff of any previous one, and in fact goes for emotional resonance surprisingly well instead of being all knowingly silly and post-modern.
A documentary that opens with the Live Nation logo feels a little too cleanly engineered to sell concert ticket. But I like Billy Idol, I'm happy for him that he made the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this year, and this doc packages his story well with some great footage and interviews. I just wish there was a little more about his records and a little less about drugs, they act like he was just more addicted to heroin than anyone in the music industry had ever been and that's what makes him interesting.
It's funny to think that the events of this film and most of the footage is from forty-something years ago and Attenborough just got around to turning it into a film recently, pretty fascinating stuff though.
j) Red Joan
This 2018 drama based loosely on the life of a British woman who was a KGB spy was pretty good, I just put it on one day while trying to find something to watch. Judi Dench plays the main character in the 21st century, but Sophie Cookson plays her in the 40s, and I was surprised that she really carries the movie more than Dench, it's not just occasional flashbacks, she's great and deserves more lead roles.
k) Denial
Timothy Spall gives a great, infuriating performance in this as David Irving, a Holocaust denier who sued a historian for calling him a Holocaust denier in the early 2000s.
