I'm not really interested in whether or not Mike Flanagan's Carrie is a good adaptation of the book. I loved it. To me, it's a series about kindness. His Carrie White has the sort of kindness that we don't often allow to exist. Really, that's the crux of the show.
Film & TV · Takes · page 2
Further down today’s ranking of Film & TV posts that are opinions and questions: page 2 of 5.
Laika studios is literally named for the dog we sent into space knowing she wouldn’t be able to survive, their films are almost always monetary box office “failures” They’re also almost always masterpieces. The point isn’t to make money, the point is to make art. Hollywood has never understood that
I watched The Invite last night and it's very good indeed, but something that stood out to me in particular was Seth Rogen's character. It's really interesting how film & TV used to frame such infuriatingly cynical and performatively unpretentious characters as "the voice of reason" that we ...
Saw Digger last night. Ignore everything you might have read, box office tallies, and most of the Internet dribble. Maybe just once, see something and judge for yourself. I thought it was brilliant. You may disagree. In the end, that’s your story and the movie’s. #Digger #Movies
This is a weird one from a business perspective because it looks dark (my older daughter who likes spooky stuff says it looks too scary to see in theaters) and is also PG-13. Aside from Coraline - which I think is a big evergreen moneymaker for them - the studio seems content (or resigned) to low BO
Stumbled across the film The Great Escape. Initially made me chuckle, memories of watching films on TV with my mum, who bloody loved a war film. The cast (all male, obvs) is amazing, so many familiar faces. It strikes me, these are the Tom Cruises and Ben Afflecks of my childhood. James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Coburn and, omg - Steve McQueen. 😍 Absolute corker of a film. 👌🏼 #MovieNight
Revisited Moulin Rouge tonight because the wife had never seen it. * John Leguizamo makes a lot of choices here. * The emotional core of this movie is carried by Ewan McGregor and his gorgeous eyes. * Satine has, like, no agency at all. Makes we want to watch Ex Machina as a cleanser.
I'm a little surprised that moronic Olympic breakdancer hasn't sued over the name: deadline.com/2026/10/ray-gunn-… also see bbc.com/news/articles/c938l80e…
Another great video from Ant dissecting The Green Inferno, a film from notorious hack and megadouche Eli Roth. It says something that his film manages to be more regressive and racist in its depiction of the cannibals than the film he’s paying tribute to (Cannibal Holocaust).
Toho committing in keeping Minus Zero King Ghidorah's design a secret is genuinely impressive and probably all due to Yamazaki pushing the secrecy. I was genuinely expecting his design to be revealed via a Bandai Movie Monster Series or S.H. Monsterarts figure by now.
As a documentary nerd, I couldn't help but wish this HBO miniseries was more stylistically daring. But as I wrote in my AVC review below, the milieu this doc explores is pretty rich.
Quick Review: The Wailing fantinel.dev/quick-reviews/the…
The Matchbox movie seemed like quite a cynical collection of things and people middle-aged men would have liked when they were kids: toy cars, gun fights, John Cena, Jessica Biel... And then it's also an ad for Leatherman utility knives, which I guess middle-aged men are supposed to like now.
Watching the new Netflix series "Below" and I love that even the fantastical is grounded a bit in history and reality. My Husband's maternal family side had to relocate their homes. Giant squid also have a history in the province with specimens documented back in the 1800s.
I finally sat down to watch Ex Machina with my wife and: • It's phenomenal • 10+ years later, the fictional extra techbro is the regular brand of techbro, and it hurts • Yapping for around 1h replaying parts of the film to discuss with my programmer wife was a balm I needed badly
Lakia to me is one of those studios that is more concerned of quality over profitability. Sure it would be nice to see Wildwood have a successful box office and who knows, maybe it will. But like Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link, they will be remembered for said quality regardless
finished mygo, I guess we could say.. it's my gone!!!!! sorry I've been sitting on this for a while I had to get it out band shows are practically alien to me outside of bocchi the rock (which I started a few years ago and never finished, I think I was tired of it being too on-the-nose? can't remember), but in spite of that I liked mygo I will admit most of the tension and interesting drama stemming from crychic and the mystery around it (at least not having watched any other bandori entry before mygo) was what hooked me most, but it's also just good to see how mygo's own members slowly manage to get on the same page after some extremely bad stumbles
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the characters all have some pretty big flaws (at least for a while) and it's cool how that leads to nobody outshining the others, you can't really side with anyone in particular at first as they all keep making mistakes honestly I think it's hard to find anything to bring up about the show, most of its value comes from the moment-to-moment character dynamics overall I liked mygo, it's kind of mundane? but in a good way and I'm continuing with ave mujica which I'm honestly more curious about (I'm totally not drawn to terrible tragedies) #driftiniwatches #bandori #bangdream #bangdream_mygo
Two things made 80s movies great: 1. Original concepts- not reboots, franchises. 2. Being played over and over again on VHS and cable channels, with minimal alternatives, until they were burned so deeply into your cortex that they became inseparable from your actual memories.
Finally watched #ToyStory5 and it's brilliant. Not as good as 3, obviously but probably slightly better than 1 and 2, which were brilliant anyway. 4 was a disappointment
Flip Flappers reminds me of a particular strain of 2010s original anime that was lost to history but took big swings even if they didn't fully connect. Shows like Shuumatsu no Izeta and The Rolling Girls have stuck with me over the years even if they weren't amazing. Flip Flappers is great though
PAPER TIGER - Probably the most conventional film I’ve seen in the festival so far, but also by some distance the best. Outstanding film.
Wildwood: Peyton Elizabeth Lee ventures into a magical Oregon forest when dowager Carey Mulligan steals her baby brother in Laura's hugely ambitious animation. Maybe slightly overlong, but an astonishing technical achievement and captivating storytelling. Their best film since ParaNorman. #LFF
The Autopsy of Jane Doe, or, Final Exam The movie so full of triggers, gore, and solid performances it can take a while to notice how it's kind of cheesy (mild spoilers) spectrecollie.com/2026/10/10/t…
Getting to the end of the second season of 12 Monkeys and it keeps being cool in ways I wasn't expecting. It's like the producers went, "okay, the job is to have as much fun as possible so anything goes just as long as we don't go overbudget!"
It’s so interesting to me that HBO created a whole generation of cult classics by running theatrical flops over and over because they were cheap to show but still had the cachet of “recent releases”.
Saw Coyote Vs. Acme the other day, which was delightfully done. It occurs to me that the Acme conglomerate of the film was an only thinly disguised Amazon.
Three episodes into Carrie. There's just no need for it to be like this. Mike Flanagan is Ryan Murphy's Wario. Both collecting ensemble casts of people I like and re-using them in shows, in 'horror' that is a lot of things but never frightening. Except they're both Wario.
I don't have much dog in this fight, but it feels a little weird to see people wave off criticisms of the Wuthering Heights adaptation (or rather, the liberties taken with it) and then lambast the Flanagan adaptation of...well, anything, but Carrie currently.
Somehow a single film is not going to bring down the World's Richest Man, it might take more effort... #ElonMusk #Musk
Watching the 2007 Golden Compass movie is a great chance to realize Roger Ebert gave this a perfect four-star rating, which he never did for any Lord of the Rings movie. (Ebert had an unexamined prejudice, I think, that fantasy was for children and should have that audience in mind always.)
Trying to think of any space horror movies or games that aren't a reimagining of Alien, and can't really think of any. 😕 Stuck on a dark and cramped spaceship or station with something that is taking out everyone one by one and turning some them into more monsters to deal with. Is that really it? #scifi #horror
“Movies used to have Casper Van Dien in them” I said wistfully to my spouse when his name appeared in the credits and then she had to deal with me muttering “I’m from Buenos Aires and I say kill them all” every time Brom Bones made his serious face.
Review: 4-hour "Musk" documentary feels like two different films smushed together. Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney’s provocative film is compelling but overlong, and there’s not much new material here. arstechnica.com/culture/2026/1…
Just seen the second part there and it was terrific. Both 1 and 2 of De Gaulle are intelligent, thoughtful, beautifully shot and acted and gripping throughout all SIX hours. (Even with a few historical errors) Bravo French cinema. Way better than disappointingly shallow Pressure (loved the play)
Watched Coppola's Dracula as a family last night and much hilarity was had. Hopkins' lines are so good. Oldman going for the Oscar. Bonkers good. #movies #halloween
Tonight’s movie was Hellraiser Bloodlines. Very rough one to get through. I fell asleep probably six times. This was a lot like the one Friday the 13th movie where they put it in space because this one also took place in space. It it has zero redeeming qualities. It was directed by the prolific Alan Smithee which is no big surprise. I can’t recommend this to anyone. It’s just so bad. 1/10
As a data point here, Inarritu literally developed Digger as a Netflix movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio before it got canceled bc it was seen as too similar to Don't Look Up. So when Keith says Inarritu hates Adam McKay, I 100% believe it.
Ready or Not (2019, d. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett) was a pitch perfect horror comedy, and a nice spin on the rich hunting the poor for sport subgenre. I was cackling throughout. The cast was great, in particular Samara Weaving, Adam Brody, and Andie MacDowell. #Film #Movies #Cinemastodon #Horror #Comedy
watched Persuasion (2007). truly a story of Anne Elliot being squeezed and wrung like a wet rag for 1.5 hours. great work all round tbh, despite the decision to rewrite the moment where (to be extremely general) Wentworth is prompted to write the final letter. still my favourite Austen
Super Dark Times is a fantastic film right up until it isn’t. I get going for the big dramatic finish works for most films but it didn’t mesh with the rest of this movie.
I remember people said Annika and I were overreacting when we said "absolutely not" when the premise of Hill House was revealed to be a reimagining, divorced from Shirley Jackson's work as filtered thru Flanagan.
A director with whom I constantly struggle is David Lowery. His films look great, have amazing imagery, but always reek of a smug pretension that turns me off in the end. The Green Knight (2021) has atmosphere in spades, yet I came away lightly disappointed. fictionmachine.com/2026/10/11/r...
People talk about lot about how good The Matrix. Not enough people talk about how good Keanu Reeves' performance is. Not good 'by his standard', but genuinely a good screen performance. However the Wachowskis chose to direct him was bang on the money.
Of all the movies Hollywood made about the nobility, kings and queens of England, Russia, and so on, there's not a single movie about King James. He wrote a book on Demonology, too. "Witches/Warlocks" were not burned alive. They were killed first for their crimes; bodies set on fire to prevent "resurrection." 🙄 Who put that into their heads?
Let us not assume anything is set in stone. Just keeping in mind this is the first Laika film not being distributed by Universal via Focus Features, likely not going to be as huge as other movies.
We’re not too far into Cellar Dweller (1987) for tonight’s #Hooptober, but seems like a waste of a perfectly good Jeffrey Combs thus far.
You know what's a movie "they couldn't make today" movie? Fast Times at Ridgemont High - positive depictions of drugs, teen sex both good and disastrous, abortion - and it's a comedy. That's a cultural Overton window movie.
After 4 years, I finally watched Matt Reeves’ The Batman, and that was much better than I expected. I particularly enjoyed that version of Selina, and of course Paul Dano was great.
Good grief. Shaun Keaveny has just plummeted in my estimation after playing Lena Martell on Sounds of the 70s. Haven't we had enough of that drivel on those 70s #totp episodes.
I thought THE SOCIAL RECKONING was very effective and very affecting. I can be hot and cold on Sorkin, but this film - while a different beast than The Social Network - really works well for what it is (a journalistic investigation drama). And the subject matter is important and urgent. Recommended.
