Thursday, 1 January 2026
For the new year, I'm considering altering how I do these responses, perhaps making them a bit more like I do my book reviews, where I post them as I watch each movie or show. This would also allow me to review seasons of shows as I watch them, if that's something that ends up appealing to me in the future. I will also be attempting to improve the actual content/quality of the reviews. One method I've considered is removing the very clear first-person perspective as I attempt to learn a bit more about filmmaking and the context of each film. I'm not sure this is the best way to go about it. Other options include integrating the summary into the review, as you see with more professional reviews. These are definitely still meant to be amateur and hobbyist, but it would be a fun thing to try a new structure as I'm getting a bit bored of this formula, both practically and in terms of their effectiveness. I'm also not opposed to switching tracks entirely and doing more of a media log more generally. If you have any ideas, I'm all ears. Happy New Year!
킹덤 / Kingdom (2019–2021, created by Kim Eun-hee)
The television show Kingdom follows a series of characters in a fictional seventeenth-century Joseon as a zombie pandemic occurs around them; it blends horror and action with political drama. The primary cast we follow is comprised of crown prince Lee Chang (Ju Ji-hoon) and his right hand Mu-yeong (Kim Sang-ho), as well as the only two survivors of the initial outbreak, physician Seo-bi (Bae Doona) and the mysterious Yeong-shin (Kim Sung-kyu). They battle zombies across Joseon as back home, other political entities struggle for power.
This show is incredible. It is exactly what I was looking for—dramatic, quick, with a great concept and fun visuals. Its concept is what most drew me to it, as I'm attempting to enjoy more horror set in historical periods. This is a stellar example of that, as it beautifully blends the political intrigue with the horror action sequences, in terms of tone, narrative, and themes. Much of the success in this can likely be attributed to the very careful consideration of every aspect of how these distinct moments and elements of story fit together, from the bending of zombie rules to fit the context and create for a truly innovative set of obstacles, to the visuals and performances.
One of the things that really surprised me that I liked about the show was the distance and reservation from the characters—they remained largely archetypical in a way you see more often with historical dramas. This ended up being a strong choice as they got enough depth to keep them interesting but also enough distance to keep them topical. Similarly, you get a contrast between the beauty of the cities, the areas surrounding them, and the period costumes, with the gruesome visuals of the zombie hordes and their starving violence. I won't lie: I'm simultaneously excited and worried for the next season. The first two seasons did a great job exploring and wrapping up the story, so I'm curious to see where else it goes.
Whip It (2009, dir. Drew Barrymore)
Whip It is a 2009 sports coming-of-age movie about Texas high schooler and pageant competitor Bliss Cavendar (Elliot Page), who joins a roller derby team in Austin. There are three main groups of people in Bliss' social circle: friends and family back home (Alia Shawkat, Marcia Gay Harden, Daniel Stern), the roller derby team (Kristen Wiig, Zoë Bell, Eve, Drew Barrymore), and other people involved in the roller derby league (Juliette Lewis, Andrew Wilson, Landon Pigg, Jimmy Fallon).
This movie completed an incredible feat: it got me to enjoy both a sports movie and a coming-of-age movie, two genres I rarely give the time of day. But it does a beautiful job of really spending time getting to know Bliss and just being earnest and interested in its own premise. It is not the film's novelty that captured my attention, but the genuine excitement behind it. Page's lead performance with Barrymore's directorial style make it for a truly refreshing perspective.
I actually found one of the elements that stuck out most to me in the days watching the movie was Bliss' insistence on the potentially temporary nature of her interest in roller derby. She's undeniably been able to find herself through the sport and recognizes the social politics faced in her small hometown as well as in Austin. But still she and the film recognize the power that this hobby has given her and the other women who compete in it. It just gave the film this sense of optimism and genuine joy that really stood out.
Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (2025, dir. Emma Tammi)
Five Nights at Freddy's 2 is the 2025 sequel to Five Nights at Freddy's, a film adaptation of the video game franchise of the same name. Following the events of the first movie, the story of Vanessa (Elizabeth Lail), Mike (Josh Hutcherson), and Abby (Piper Rubio) continue as Abby misses her animatronic ghost friends from Freddy's and prepares to participate in the school science fair, much to the dismay of her science teacher (Wayne Knight). Meanwhile, teen ghost hunters (Mckenna Grace, Teo Briones, David Andrew Calvillo) visit a second location of the infamous entertainment restaurant, only to be killed or possessed by the ghosts residing there. There are many other plot threads and characters.
I'm not going to lie: I pretty much forgot everything about this movie the moment I left the theater (hyperbole), except for the incredible reactions of the crowd. Primarily I'm referring to the person sitting one seat away from me, who rotated between exclaiming how stupid the movie was and going "oh no!" at literally everything. It was vastly amusing and delightful. The thing about this movie is that I was not expecting it to be good, or even comprehensible. I am surprised it was somehow worse than the first one, but really my goal with watching it was to be amused and I was.
Of course, you likely don't need me to point out all the issues with the writing—the uneven pacing, the lacking character motivations, the simultaneous reliance on lore and feeling that there is absolutely nothing more to the story, et cetera. The thing about Scott Cawthon's screenplays is that they are structured really strangely, though not in a way that ever feels significant or interesting. Watching this film felt divided into two parts, the first that stretched on for days and the second that wrapped up in what felt like minutes. I walked out of the theater feeling like we had another hour to watch, but no. The issue is more than just pacing, though, as characters are underutilized, driving neither the plot nor responding to it. They're more blank slates, utterly interchangeable. In particular I was surprised by the dream sequence in which Vanessa confronts the dream ghost of her father, a serial killer and one of the creators of the Freddy's franchise (Matthew Lillard). There is relatively little exploration of Vanessa as a character in either film, even less use of her as a perspective character, and it comes quite early on in the movie. This sequence felt placed haphazardly and without much significance to the grander film—that is, I'm not sure it would've served the film better at a different moment. That said, the movie was about as entertaining as I expected it to be.
Wake Up Dead Man (2025, dir. Rian Johnson)
Wake Up Dead Man is a 2025 mystery and the third installment in the Knives Out series. After the mysterious death of Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), the priest Jud Duplenticy (Josh O'Connor) is accused of the murder. Monsignor Wicks was the central figure in a tight-knit and shrinking parish comprised of the devout Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), her lover Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church), town doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), aspiring politician and influencer Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack), wealthy lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington), and miracle-seeking cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny). World-famous detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) comes to solve the case.
I'll say right off the bat: I like these films (to different extents), but I'm not a die-hard fan. The first one was so fun and engaging, but the second really let me down. This one fell pretty in the middle, but I had a good time watching it. It straddles between these two parts of the story—the perspective of Jud, his faith, and attempts to make his new community better through that faith and love, contrasted with the much more subtle view of Blanc's sleuthing rationale, and the crime aspect of the story mainly involving a small town parish made smaller by their monsignor's descent into radicalism. I spent a lot of time in the summary detailing the players involved in that later story, but I actually felt that aspect of the story—the murder mystery and suspects aspect, that is—took a back seat to the dynamic between Jud and Blanc. This is not inherently a criticism, but it was such that the murder mystery was very easy to figure out, making the ideological center of the movie considerably more apparent. On the one hand, I'm fine with this: I've seen the other films and know what I'm getting into, plus that part of the story was developed enough to be satisfying. On the other hand, it's a bit disappointing. I've tried to explain it more than that, but at the end of the day that's about the extent of it. I appreciate that the films are trying something a bit different in their structure and focus.
The visuals, however, I felt strongly about. It was a beautiful setting of a small town and forest that just felt entirely too magical for the tone of the show. The forest in particular looked plucked out of a storybook and it was weirdly distracting to me. The scene where Blanc and Jud meet in the church was especially irksome, with the incredibly apparent color grading changing from cool to warm lighting with each verbal exchange between the characters. I didn't hate the visuals nearly as much as the second film, but in this case it was less a matter of personal taste—I'd love to take a weekend getaway to Chimney Rock, awful parish aside—and more that I found that parts of it didn't match the tone of the movie.
Straight Up (2019, dir. James Sweeney)
Straight Up is the 2019 directorial debut of James Sweeney, a writer-director-actor I've praised in the past with his film from this year, Twinless. This film follows Todd (James Sweeney), a probably-gay man with OCD, and Rory (Katie Findlay), an emotionally reserved young actress, and their unlikely romantic relationship. The film is essentially the progression of their relationship from start to finish, and then some.
The thing I've really come to like about Sweeney's filmmaking is his distinctive voice and style—he has this vaguely-cringey, dry wit that he uses to tell genuinely interesting queer stories that I've not seen anything like before. He uses this space between the wit and cringe to create such a great vibe for the films; you almost see it elsewhere, but it never reads as intentional as when Sweeney employs it. These stories that he tells really allow for a complexity of character and world, but they manage it by creating a distance between audience and character, even as you really get to the heart of them. This movie realizes all of that in a genuinely fun and engaging way. Seeing Twinless a couple months ago, he's surely honed in his craft, but this debut was a strong one.
The only real criticism I have of this film is the shift in Rory's motivation towards the end of the movie. It's strange, because the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. The pivotal moment comes in one of Sweeney's signature split-screen scenes, parallel moments that indicate where these two characters' storylines diverge. But it's given a strangely light amount of weight, such that her shift doesn't exactly feel earned. It's framed well in terms of filmmaking, so it's something else about this moment that doesn't add up. Despite that, the rest of the movie is really solid and I would easily recommend it to anyone who enjoys a complex story of the fluidity of sexuality and doesn't mind an intentionally awkward tone for a few hours.
아가씨 / The Handmaiden (2016, dir. Park Chan-wook)
The Handmaiden is a mid-2010s romantic/erotic thriller that begins with a young Korean woman Nam Sook-hee (Kim Tae-ri) who begins to work for a wealthy Japanese woman Izumi Hideko (Kim Min-hee) in the countryside of Japanese-occupied Korea. In a series of three parts, twists and turns are revealed about each of the main characters' motivations, including the two women, Hideko's uncle Kouzuki (Cho Jin-woong), and the duplicitous Count Fujiwara (Ha Jung-woo).
I was a little dubious of this movie through the first part, but by the second twist, it had me hooked. It took a bit to get used to the editing and cinematography style, but once I was in, I was in. The structure of starting with this fairly simple love story, then a devolution into complicated and interesting character motivations and betrayals, then a return to the love story, made for a fun set of unfolding plots as the film went on. Consistently, I felt as it the movie would wrap up soon, only to see we had over an hour to go. The reveals were always able to reel me back in to the intrigue and provide new meaning as we saw the same scenes from different perspectives.
The Gothic influences on the film were especially welcome, and I felt them most in those moments of unfolding, adding richness to the perspective even as the narrative was contained in this handful of scenes. This wasn't the final film I watched this year, but it was the last one I finished, and I really ended it with a bang. I cannot wait to check out more of Park's work.