Why would I deceive you?

You Can See Everything — 4/5

Is this good? I'm lost in the cultural fervor. I cannot identify my own opinion within everyone else's. I feel the pressure to fall in line. But also I enjoyed it heavily! Did I love it? I'm not sure. What I can know is true: it was exciting. My friends (friend), did I not merely a few months back say that the new metric was surprise? This movie is surprising. You don't know where it's going, and you have absolutely no idea who these people are; three hours later, you are no closer to knowing the truth. As much as I went in knowing it was a Nathan Fielder movie, I also had my guard down in terms of how much of a Nathan Fielder movie this was. It is still telling his long-term meta-narrative of 'am I autistic?' and 'looking for sincere male-female connection within what may or may not be a bit' and, I think more generally, 'how can I use my personal awkwardness to get to the truth of a person or situation?' He is a person who is nearly as impenetrable as Elizabeth Holmes and so who better to tell her story? Though that itself is the central mystery to this movie: why did these people choose, of all people, a comedian whom no one can separate the person from the character? It's a beautiful choice and, if calculated on their part, incredible, and fuck it, they're smarter than the rest of us. Fifth dimensional imps operate amongst us. Which I think, for me, is the larger takeaway — are these people telling the truth or not? Hard to say. But these are the people who are now running the world, and they do not behave like the rest of us. The new leaders of the human race are fucking weird. 

He did the deed so now you got to do the do.

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass — 3.5/5

It's so silly!! So few things have captured that 'Wet Hot American Summer' energy, and it's nice to know it can still be tapped into, without needing the same actors to do it. Needless escalation. Plots that just end. Feels like it's being made up as it goes along. A lark. Points to Zoey Deutch, this thing could have died on her shoulders.

Don't let your conscience get us killed.

The Americans S3 — 4/5

It's found this lovely little trick where the spies tell the truth, but only when lying to others. It's a lovely little trick.  

Not in the face, not in the face.

Mortal Kombat II (2026) — 1/5

Awful, corny shit. Homemade YouTube bullshit. You'd think with these bad actors and terrible costumes, that maybe they just hired people who were good at fighting? No! Karl Urban is trotted out to give the whole ordeal personality, and thus it's a slight improvement over the last. I guess I never wrote a review for the first one? Also bad. Also garbage. Irredeemable bullshit. It is, perhaps, our most true-to-video game adaptation in how stilted its motions, how overly dramatic its prose; a bunch of people just posing. 

Not for the mawkish, no truck for the sentimental.

Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald — 3.5/5

The doc pieces itself together exactly the way most people know Norm Macdonald: random YouTube clips that show his best bits. No talking heads talking to camera, just clips of people on podcasts talking about Norm. And 'about' Norm is over-stating it; they talk around Norm. Who he might be, how he might appear, because he doesn't really care to let himself be known. He's a liar for the fun of it. I think the ultimate secret to Norm is that he knows himself so well to know that who he is isn't as interesting as what he says, and how he lives in the world isn't as endearing as how he sees the world. Which makes for an interesting character, a knotty subject, and probably a difficult human. It almost seems like he's selfish, no? Only in the business of entertaining himself. But when he does trip and something true slips out, it feels beautiful. A selflessness behind the inhuman disguise. A light shines through the crack in the wall. 

Hadouken!

Street Fighter (2026) – 3.5/5

I saw a trailer, thought it was fun, and wanted to go watch the movie before reviews came in to tell me otherwise. Since the most recent Spider-Man, I've been entranced by the idea that the newest metric to judge movies is 'does it surprise me?' With information and opinions and critiques and criticisms so easily and eagerly arrived at, the possibility of just going into something blind and being amazed by the bright lights, to determine in real time what it is or is not, is my new luxury. This was fun!! I find this out mere hours before a cascading series of reviews tells me this movie is bad. Sigh. For me, this movie is the heir apparent to 1995's 'Mortal Kombat'; silly and serious, characters summed up by a name and cool costume, a mix of tortured backgrounds and just living for fun, and a not-quite-a-tournament where most of the cool fighting actually happens to the left and right of it. A childhood id relishing in its toys. I think we'll look back many years from now and see 'Kung Fu Hustle' as the ferryman of a new world of creators. Born on Looney Tunes, now anime, using the tricks of those forms and then just applying it to the real world because why the fuck not. If it exists within the realm of possible, bring it on. I see AI videos these days that delight in the fact that they could not exist in the real world, and I think "this is the new world of entertainment to come." Silly ideas, taken to their extremes, based in the world we know but absolutely not the world we know. Pushing against the walls of familiarity. The point is to see how far you can take it before it breaks. The movie does break; David Dastmalchian is wildly miscast, there's I swear like 5 to 10 minutes that are just straight up missing from the movie, and there's about three or four too many things than it can handle, but it treats the world of play as a serious endeavor, and I can do nothing but appreciate that. 

It's hard to get people excited about concrete, I'm finding.

The History of Concrete — 3/5

Though loving John Wilson, I didn't finish watching the second season of 'How To...'. Towards the end of the series, there's an episode that kind of exposed that there was a certain amount of fakeness involved in the show. It felt like breaking a bond, and I didn't want to keep watching after that. Something seemingly inherent in his style is the random puzzle piecing together of random shots and scenes and rabbiting down a crack in the earth until he/you don't know where he is, and then you somehow pop your head back out of the same hole, ending where you began, some point being made, like magic, out of the random spirals of the universe. The line between 'a trick' and 'I'm tricking you' is speaking the words. The difference between sleight of hand and lying is just saying out loud that it's a lie. Uhhh I guess this is a review of season 2, not his new movie, oops. Uhh anyway, by now I'd forgotten my previous criticisms. Forgetfulness is the best path to forgiveness! Whee! And thus I was excited for this movie! To see if he can do what he does, scaled up, made me feel curious. And the movie then just made me feel tired. It's long! "Let's see where this goes..." works great in 15 to 25m excursions, but dragging it out just made the random cuts that are the hallmark of his work linger longer, drawing too much attention to themselves, which to me is the bellwether that he didn't really have a story, he just had a lot of footage that he needed to make use of. 

We'll get used to it.

The Americans S2 — 2.5/5

You know, lost the plot a bit this season. I am meaning literally, as there were times I was confused as to what the fuck was happening. People pop up and they feel both important and unimportant as they don't really grab me the way that last season's people grabbed me yet are somehow essential to that day's plotting. The central premise of season 1 — a spy falling in love with America and the family they created, while the other still holds onto allegiance to the motherland — became reversed as he became harsher and she became softer, ships passing in the night as they fall in and out of love. I still really like that particular show, but it seemed to get side-swiped by the mysteries of international espionage. And though I didn't love how the season finale wrapped things up, I am excited to see what that means for the family. 

You and I have massively different definitions of the right thing.

Primetime — 2.5/5

What an ugly movie. Aesthetically, I understand its early '00s intentions, but the camera feels like it's been slathered with vaseline; it's oily to the touch. I understand its intentions to feel how it looks but, uh, I hate it? It's the nastier side of the coin to Wes Anderson, which is a ridiculous comparison, but I'll justify it as extreme art direction that does more work than the story. And that story is all over the place. There's three main characters who never rise to the place of main character, three stories that the movie doesn't know how to choose between. The disrespected reporter, the disrespected producer, the disrespected actor, all seeming to circle around the justification and the means, a moral validation that acts like a layer of clear packaging tape to hold together a jumble of character traits that don't quite make a person. Predator is prey to their own self-defense mechanisms. Or something? I dunno, I'm just saying words. When Alex Winter appears, the child predator seems to be the most realistic human we'd met so far. Generally speaking, all of the predators fell into that same schema; they felt like real people caught in the worst moments of their lives. I think I'd have preferred their stories being the focus, or Decoy Dan as their stand-in, but Robert Pattinson is famous and plays the famous guy so he takes the fore and his face just communicates a blankness. I look at the guy generally and see Patrick Bateman, easy charm and beauty. He moves like a man, but just wears that skin like a suit. But I'll wait for 'The Odyssey' to try to peddle my 'is Robert Pattinson actually a bad actor...?' thesis. 

The things that make you better

won't be the things that make you great.

I'm not fearless 'cause I'm brave. I'm fearless 'cause I'm broken.

Lanterns S1 — 3.5/5

In its way, the most Marvel thing that's come from DC. What I mean by that is that there's a lot of this show that does not survive scrutiny — so it's best not to scrutinize. What helps you throw a blind eye to its strange twists that don't quite make sense is that it coasts on the back of gen-u-ine characters. Kyle Chandler's Hal Jordan is someone I could follow forever and Aaron Pierre's John Stewart's uptight rule-follower is a good counter-weight to Hal's rakish behavior. As the show progresses, Hal gains more respectability, and John gains more humor, and it's a nice 'ships in the night' with Kelly Macdonald providing a lovely anchor between them. Damon Lindelof, between 'Lost' and 'Watchmen,' has earned an official 'I will watch whatever they do,' and you can tell there was an ambition of themes they wanted to play with that unfortunately don't really mesh together: what a parent's willing to do for their child, what it means to be fearless, what fear will turn you into, racism??, countering your programming, etc. It's only 8 episodes but feels bloated with 'things happening' and 'things I think the show is trying to be about.' As a show, with a plot, it's (places hand horizontally in front of me, shakes it back and forth), but as a show about characters, hell yeah, brother.

Да.

The Americans S1 — 3.5/5

I'm in my Matthew Rhys era, so sought out his older, also critically-acclaimed show. I have nothing particularly interesting to say other than I find it to be a compelling show and I'm excited to keep watching. Matthew has a 'fakeness' to him, which I think is inherent to his person, that works well in the show. Keri Russell is a far cry from Felicity, but I don't think holds her character's toughness that well. It's unlike her, which I appreciate, but it doesn't yet seem to be a part of her. Let's see where it goes from here. 

Someday you will wish to be

exactly where you are right now.

Are you at peace?

Or have you simply moved away from the things that brought you anxiety?

Flames, on the side of my face.

Clue — 2.5/5

A case study in interesting actors who are mostly muffled by the context they exist in. Tim Curry and Madeline Kahn, when given some freedom, are allowed to shine, but mostly seem to be contained by the plot mechanics of it all. I want to say the director's to blame? It feels like 'hire a bunch of interesting people, but don't let them be themselves.' It's a commitment to the script without the realization that that wasn't working. When Madeline Kahn is allowed her little bit of improv, right at the end, it damns the whole thing — what it could have been.