• Mars Express (2023):
  Fantastic French take on Ghost in the Shell. This has a great economy of story-telling that is rare these days, with so much of the world being implied or shown rather than spelled out for you. If this was a series, there would have been a whole episode about how these three people knew each other in the war; instead, one character looks at a photo for 4 seconds and we understand the relationship just fine. They don't beat you over the head with the tech and the prejudices against cyborgs, it's just there in the story.
• Kaos (2024):
  Jeff Goldblum reprises The Grandmaster but as Zeus in a time-shifted version of Orpheus and Eurydice. It starts off strong, but bogs down about halfway through. It's basically Percy Jackson for grownups. I had so many questions about the world-building and time-shift, like: Medusa died in the ancient past, but Daedalus is a currently-living mortal, so... the Icarus tattoo that Orpheus has is not referencing an ancient story, but something he saw on the news no more than 30 years ago? And someone was listening to an Elastica song. Not like, it was on the show's score: it was an in-show thing that existed. How does this Greek world end up with the colony of Britannia producing an Elastica? I'll wait. Also there were a lot of empty seats at the table: why are there only 5 Olympians? Anyway, they didn't really stick their foot in it, but I kept waiting for the shoe to drop in a "Bright: The Apotheosis of Lazy Worldbuilding" kind of way. And, because it's Netflix, the least surprising thing in the world happened: it was summarily cancelled after one season, so we'll never know the answers to any of these questions.
• Venus (2022):
  A stripper robs a drug dealer and goes on the run, but meanwhile there's a whole new planet that appeared in the sky, and meanwhile, she's hiding in some kind of haunted apartment building, and meanwhile, there are some witches doing a Rosemary's Baby or something? It's all over the place, but pretty fun. It's Spanish, and I found it because it's produced by the guy who did the amazing 30 Coins.
• Night Teeth (2021):
  I rewatched this for the 3rd or 4th time. It's so great! Comfort food, really. The. I checked the wiki page to see what those folks are up to now and saw that this movie was critically panned. "Bad world-building", "no plot". WHAT? Did we not watch the same movie?? This is the best vampire movie since Blade.
• Blade (1998):
  Blade still kicks ass. Even though the whole "blood god" thing at the end sounds like they were writing it on a napkin on set. "And then like, a blood god or something, name TK TK".
• Apartment 7A (2024):
  I expected this to be terrible, because prequels are always terrible, but it's pretty good! It's kind-of a prequel to Rosemary's Baby but actually timeline wise, co-linear with about half of it. It has more explicit "magic" in it than the other. The hallucination dance routines are great. Someone really loved Suspiria and that's fine because I also really loved Suspiria.
• Rosemary's Baby (1968):
  So of course I had to watch the original. This holds up! Mia Farrow's progressively unhinged performance is fantastic. Once it goes Full Satan at the end, it gets kind of dumb, but that part is at least brief. (And yes, it hopefully goes without saying that Polanski is a rapist piece of shit. But Farrow is amazing in this.)
• Salem's Lot (2024):
  This was basically the same plot as the Buffy movie, without the charm or Peewee Herman. I didn't expect much going into this, because I hate everything Stephen King, but I did not expect that.
• The Penguin (2024):
  This show is shockingly good. It is not a Batman show at all. It's The Sopranos with the barest pinch of Bat-Salt on it. Even less bat-flavoring than Pennyworth had. Colin Farrell's physical transformation is unbelievable, and Cristin Milioti / Sofia Falcone is amazing. (I wanted more of this Penguin, so I rewatched The Batman (2022) and that was a mistake. I remembered absolutely nothing about that movie for a reason. I especially forgot that it is three hours long.)
• Agatha All Along (2024):
  Kathryn Hahn is always fantastic, and now Aubrey Plaza? You son of a bitch, I'm in. The story is.... Just ok. But the characters are great, and a special shout-out to the wig department, because I have never seen so much wig technology deployed in such a short show. They must have spent half the budget on wigs. Much like Wandavision, this is a great-looking show with interesting characters, and it just completely squanders the ending. With both shows, the last 3 episodes felt like a waste of my time. "Ok, psychological drama is over, here's some listless superhero shit."
• Azrael (2024):
  This is good and scary. Samara Weaving murders her way through the woods after The Rapture. There's no dialog.
• Killers Game (2024):
  Dave Bautista is an assassin in love. Absolutely relentless ass-kicking. Great fun.
• Wolfs (2024)
  Buddy assassins. Clooney and Pitt are funnier guys than most people give them credit for.
• Hellboy, The Crooked Man (2024):
  This really feels like a fan film. It appears to have had approximately the budget of Evil Dead. The first one. But it's a decent little fan film.
• Alien Romulus (2024):
  The set design alone makes this movie worth your time. Whoever built these sets was an obsessive fan of the original. The detail is incredible, right down to the C64 keyboards and on-screen typography. This is Typeset In The Future catnip. Plot-wise: the first 2/3rds of it is a pretty solid xenomorphy romp. It loses its way when it tries to introduce some bullshit from Prometheus, which I am still trying to forget existed, and a super-soldier serum or whatever. The use of a CGI-resurrected Ian Holm was nearly unforgivable, as were the several tag-lines inexplicably quoted from other, better movies. There was entirely too much "Look! Here's as thing from that other movie! You liked that other movie, here's that thing again!" The sets, though. The sets. And the creature design. Lots of lingering close-ups that give you a great look at Giger's designs.

So this is the third best Alien movie, which is kind of like being the third best Exorcist, or the second best Rosemary's Baby, or the second best Blade, or the second best Robocop, or the second best Casablanca (which is Algiers). * Sweetpea (2024):
Bullied nerd decides to start murdering bullies. I enjoyed that after a brief dalliance with justifying her actions, they lean way into, "No, she's just a psychopath." Starring Ella Purnell from Yellowjackets and Fallout who is great. * From S03:
Why am I still watching this plot-blocking trash re-tread of Lost. I hate it. Stage an intervention. * Darryl In Paris S02:
Season one was great, but season 2 has lost me. What I loved about the first one was the road-trip through a completely different apocalypse and all the weirdos they met along the way. Season 2 is just, "two tribes go to war" and it's back on well-tread ground that I don't particularly care about. Also why does it have this "Magical Christ Child is immune to Zombies" nonsense? That was the plot of The Last of Us. We've already seen it. * Tomb Raider, The Legend of Lara Croft (2024):
I wanted to like this, because Agent Carter's the voice, but it's kind of a snore. Were the video games 100% about her daddy issues? Because every filmic version is 100% about her daddy issues and that's boring. * Twilight of the Gods (2024):
Some vikings decide to murder Thor because he's as prick. Extreme ultraviolence and an animated style that reminds me of Primal. It doesn't quite wrap up the story, but almost; and it's Netflix, so don't expect them to. * The Substance (2024):
This is a surreal masterpiece. It's the most terrifying body horror I've ever seen. It makes The Thing and Videodrome look like wee little babies. It looked at Poor Things and said, "Hold my beer." I was blown away. It's a lot, but it's probably the best movie I've seen this year.

I don't want to give away too much, but... A friend criticized it for being just more "Hollywood climbing up its own ass, oh, how hard it is to be Famous", which is certainly the kind of script that I often hate. But while the plot could have been characterized (in an unreliable-narrator Ferris Club reading) as, "Actress gets old, has bad facelift, commits suicide" -- or something -- that's like saying Chicago has a thin plot. Yeah! It does! But there is much more going on there.

Also, I immediately recognized Margaret Qualley as being the dancer in one of the greatest music videos ever made, the Kenzo World commerical by Spike Jonze. (Watch the stairway mirror scene. Then watch it again.) * Chip 'n' Dale, Rescue Rangers (2022):
When this was recommended to me I was sure I was being pranked. But no, this is actually pretty great! It is basically a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit set 80 years later. Toons are still mostly actors, but now they're out in the suburbs instead of the ghetto. The animation is fantastic, lots of good physical gags, and the mixture of styles (cell, 3D, video game, etc.) is both funny commentary and plot-relevant. Anyway, two washed-up actors try to break up a kidnapping ring. Many of the jokes are of the form, "Hey, remember that thing, here's that old thing you recognize!", but they're pretty good jokes. The thing that's technically fascinating about this, though, is that because of the age of the various properties involved, this is the kind of movie that anyone could have made if we lived in a world with a functioning public domain. But since we don't, only Disney could have made this, because they do have a functioning public domain. If you're inside the event horizon of the Disney black hole, you have access to everything again, because they own it all. ("I'm so rich, everything's free.") * Time Cut (2024):
This is not good, but it's a time travel movie, so I was obliged to watch it. Girl goes back in time to the distant past of 2003 to stop a masked slasher. So it's exactly the same movie as Totally Killer but not as funny. Partly this was because I was supposed to be laughing at the crazy retro fashion in the makeover scene but I honestly could not tell the difference between the terrible 2024 fashion and the terrible 2003 fashion. "They're the same picture." Besides the clothes, the jokes are again mostly "you can't say that any more", but fewer of them. * Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1984):
If you want to know where The Phenomenauts got their entire bit, it's here. Presumably the best Pia Zadora movie? * Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024):
This was completely unnecessary. I'll just hand this over to Pitch Meeting. He was too gentle. * Wynonna Earp, Vengeance (2024):
This is definitely more Wynonna Earp. So if you were looking for that, this is that. At least, it delivers on that better than Beetlejuice Beetlejuice did.

Previously.