Tag: horror

My Viewing and Reading Picks for 2025

Another year of complex viewing and reading

Another year comes to an end. A new one gets ready to begin. 2025 felt less complex than 2024. Lines weren’t as blurry with one exception that I’ll get to later. In a year when the rush to redefine and compete for the lowest common denominator felt like a three-legged sack race over broken glass, complexity again drew my attention and stuck with me. There’s a great leveling happening, whether intentional or not. But as long as we can advertise against whatever the content is, it seems to matter less and less what the content is or how it’s made.

When it comes to viewing entertainment it was a year when the quality line between movies and streaming TV blurred even more as excellent series work competing with the big screen for some of my favorite viewing. The Pitt and Adolescence were two of the finest things I watched this year.

There are a number of titles in these lists that would qualify for what is being called Resistance Cinema. Each one is deserving of inclusion in that list for immediacy. Any lasting impact will only be determined with the passage of time and all of what we’re currently resisting either cements or cracks.

I don’t believe in “best of” lists. There’s good stuff being created amidst all of the mediocrity and my judgement on what’s good is probably not yours. I pick what attracts and holds my attention. I also don’t see or read everything and the holiday release schedule geared to coming in under the wire for awards recognition is a silly game for insiders and not for me. There also may be a title or two that I didn’t catch until 2025 even though it was released in previous years. Goodness knows there are books waiting to be read.

If there’s a link with a title, I took the time to write about it. I should have done that more. So here’s a list in no particular ranking order of what I found most intriguing throughout the year.

Movies
Streaming TV
Books
  • 1929 by Andrew Ross Sorkin
  • The Mission by Time Weiner
  • Apple In China by Patrick McGee
  • The Director by Daniel Kehlmann

Have a Happy New Year!

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Final Trailer for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein Released

Looking forward to this

I’m looking forward to the release of Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein on Netflix perhaps more than any other film to be released this fall. The movie hits theaters on October 7 and streams on Netflix beginning November 7th. The official trailer has now been released. 

Mary Shelly’s tale of the monster who created a monster has been so twisted around in so many different incarnations it’s hard to separate the takes from the original fiction. That’s not a complaint, it’s just what it is. I can imagine this one will offer up a unique twist or two given Guillermo del Toro’s previous films. 

I’m really looking forward to this and hope it lives up to its promise.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sinners: A Review

Worth sinking your teeth into.

I saw Ryan Coogler’s Sinners in a movie theatre when it was released in April. I rarely go to movie theaters these days, but in this one instance I was certainly glad I did. Now that Sinners has reached streaming on the 4th of July, I hope anyone who didn’t have a chance to see it on the big screen will take time to view the fireworks it provides at home. I’m looking forward to a second watch. It is excellent. It’s not perfect. But it is sublime in its imperfections.

Sinners01 978x652.Ryan Coogler knows how to tell stories. He knows how to tell stories in big ways. He knows how to tell stories that entertain and unsettle. He knows how to weave the various strands of history, culture, and popular story tropes together in ways that spin out a fresh new cinematic delight that redefines the old and refreshes the tired. He may get a bit carried away here and there, but in the end he delivers as a filmmaker of note.

In Sinners he ties Southern-gothic, vampire horror, and depression era gangster styles together along with a musical storyline that literally burns down the house. Working with his familiar actor collaborator, Michael B. Jordan, playing a set of twins, Coogler creates something brand new, dangerous and in the end just damn dandy. I fully expect Sinners to be quite popular in the Best Picture categories when awards season rolls around. Even with its imperfections, it’s at the top of my list for best films of the year.

Jordan and all of the actors are superb. The music is red hot. The vampire gore is plenty gory. There’s a raw, violent, sexual tension throughout that’s heightened by the rawness of the blues music that infuses the storyline. The sequence when the fateful evening’s dancers are intermingled with ghosts of African and African-American pasts and premonitions of musical genres of a future yet to be is a highlight, even if it is a bit too precious.

Coogler also plays with some larger themes among the music, horror, and history. Questioning why Blacks cleave to Christianity (“Blues wasn’t forced on us like that religion,” and who counts as Black when everyone doesn’t have the same black skin or heritage, cut through many of the myths so easily consumed and assumed about the Black South.

As to the flaws, perhaps the biggest is also its biggest strength. Coogler stretches out a wide canvas to paint this story on.  Perhaps too wide, and even so he often paints outside the bounds of that canvas. And once the delicious and setup is accomplished, the violent confrontation we all know is coming at times feels more rushed than we want it to, certainly when it consumes characters we’ve invested in.

Even with those flaws, Sinners yields a bounty that often borders on the rapturous. It is more than worth your time.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.