Wednesday, 22 April 2026
The Bling Ring (2013, dir. Sofia Coppola)
Sofia Coppola’s The Bling Ring is a crime film based on the true story of a group of Valley teenagers who broke into celebrity homes and stole cash and property. I was totally turned around by the end of this movie as I became more accustomed to its stylistic choices and ultimately appreciated them.
The reason this stylistic element stood out to eventually positive reception on my end was its ability to precisely depict the exact environment of its characters—an affluent suburban background. The effect was created by pinpoint sets with characteristic echoey sound and a true eyesore fashion lineup. The bedrooms in particular felt slightly sparse, but overall lived-in. I was obsessed with the kitchens, though, which felt catalog-plucked for their horrendous taste. Budget and star power aside, much of the audio-visual experience of this film was surprisingly nostalgic for me as it reminded me of making home movies with friends in middle school (in the best, most complimentary way).
In contrast to the realism of the production design was the stiff dialogue. It was comedic but also engrossing, earning an equal amount of laughs and eyerolls. The dialogue style definitely contributed to the effect overall—insubstantial and imprecise, yet so, so idiosyncratic. Emma Watson’s California-accent delivery was my favorite, and the uncanny of the put-on accent emphasized the more performative qualities of her character.
That said, I was annoyed with the migrating focus. We begin and end with Watson’s character, but shift to others in the middle as we learn how this habit came to be. It serves to make the cast more ensemble and provide context to their actions, but it simply felt a bit uneven to me. This is definitely a stranger watch, but a fun sleepover flick for sure.
Monday, 20 April 2026
My Sister’s Keeper (2009, dir. Nick Cassavetes)
There’s this phenomenon in the shifting of internet things to be so largely reliant on short-form video in which clips of movies and television shows are posted in one-ish minute increments focusing on the engaging drama of a scene or work of art. If you’re lucky (or unlucky, perhaps), it’ll be more than just this out-of-context moment posted and will in fact be the entire show or movie posted in order. There’s a really specific vibe of all of the things selected to be posted like this. A good example is the show Young Sheldon, which in my experience most often has any and every scene with the titular young Sheldon in them, edited out. It becomes this slightly soapy, dramatic study of a family that, as far as I understand it, does not accurately reflect the tone of the show.
2009’s melodrama My Sister’s Keeper is the frequent subject of these posts, and not without good reason. Its melodramatic tone and captivating premise draw the hobbyist scroller’s attention; its format largely centered around a series of vignettes really lends itself to short-form video. In these bite-sized increments, the movie and its premise (based on a novel by Jody Picoult based on the real-life story of Marissa and Anissa Ayala) are certainly worthy of attention. However, the actual movie does not live up to the concept it promises.
The film promises first a story of the young Anna Fitzgerald (Abigail Breslin), a child conceived to be a donor for her sister Kate (Sofia Vassilieva), who suffers from promyelocytic leukemia. The two are surrounded by their loving family, comprised of mother Sara (Cameron Diaz), father Brian (Jason Patric), older brother Jesse (Evan Ellingson), and aunt Kelly (Heather Wahlquist). After Kate goes into kidney failure, Anna reaches out to an attorney (Alec Baldwin) to represent her in suing her parents for medical emancipation. Most of the movie deals with various perspectives on the whole situation, focusing attention on Kate’s first love and experience and Anna’s case under Judge Joan De Salvo (Joan Cusack).
As mentioned, the movie takes on this vignette format, moving through time and perspectives reflected in voice over narration that’s soon abandoned and never necessary. It is a strange format and not one I think adds much to the movie. It makes it feel aimless and meandering—a fine choice in description, but disjointed against an opening and closing related to a court case. That court case never quite has the presence its introduction demands, the movie focusing instead on the melodrama.
I don’t want to imply that the movie has no interest in its premise—rather, the focus on the melodrama is the answer to the question Anna sets up. I am perhaps putting too fine a point on it, but I’m just not a fan of melodramas. Like in many, you get really strong performances but they speak to a whole I find myself bored by, keen to poke holes in. I think negatively of the thesis and feel worse about the execution. They feel, as the genre demands, full of flat characters and overly moralistic themes. A movie like this, which proposes or implies a complex story about bodily autonomy, duty to others, and care for one’s loved ones, instead becomes an attempt to elicit tears and sentimentality. I struggle to even give it the goodwill of catharsis due to how poorly and/or generically it handles much of its conflict.
Sunday, 19 April 2026
Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen (2026, created by Haley Z. Boston)
In what is turning out to be a year of sentence-long titles, Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen is a horror limited series that follows Rachel (Camila Morrone) as she visits her fiance Nicky’s (Adam DiMarco) family cabin for their wedding. What she finds when she arrives is a family full of characters and a hereditary curse on her wedding. The tragic thing about limited series is that I am in constant want of one, yet they are over in like a weekend. This is one of those cases, where I’m left wanting more by the end, even while I’m satisfied with the story—I’d say that’s a good sign.
The show opens with my favorite episode. Soon-to-be-married Rachel and Nicky are making the drive to the picturesque, rural area of Nicky’s family cabin—an area with a deceptively sweet yet tragic past. It’s a road trip out of I’m Thinking of Ending Things, full of uncanny yet weighty encounters. Time and crime seem to be folding in on themselves, repeating some patterns and leaving others to be breadcrumbed throughout the rest of the show to various levels of ability. It’s truly a remarkably strong start. Morrone and Rachel brings a very realistic feeling of anxiety to the horror, although whether she is the only person reacting sanely or creating this terrifying ambience in her head, is unclear.
At the end of this episode and the start of the next, Rachel finds herself receiving warnings about her marriage to Nicky and a strangely resistant family to welcome her. There are the standoffish Jules (Jeff Wilbusch) and Nell (Karla Crome), the glamorous and controlling Portia (Gus Birney), and the secretive yet most level-headed parents Victoria (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Boris (Ted Levine). This is where Rachel’s anxiety really makes the horror stand out—in the awkward and surprisingly scary mundane interactions. This moment also explores some of the lore of the wood around the cabin and Nicky’s brother Jules’ trauma around it. Though that briefly pales in comparison to the dysfunctional family drama that characterizes the next episode.
As the show goes on, mysteries are revealed—namely introducing the curse on Rachel’s family. The middle of the show is discomforting and freaky. It’s not as check-behind-your-back scary as the first episode, but it is enrapturing. Then comes a major shift in the middle of the sixth episode to a suddenly campy “final act”. It is a very surprising turn, though fortunately one I liked as all three types of horror that the show covers are very much my style. The final episode drags a touch, and we see a truly baffling set of reactions to the frightening mysteries still left open. The climax of that episode is particularly hard to follow as the rules we’ve established, while consistent, are just weirdly applied. And ultimately, it fails to wrap up some of the threads it established in the first and early episodes.
But with that said, the ending, in all its confusion, is ambitious and meaningful. It’s attempting to do a lot and I found that I was delighted with its earnestness. I got the gist of what it was going for, the feeling that the emphasis on aesthetics didn’t fully realize, and that made me ultimately really happy with this show, despite its flaws.
This show was really what I needed. Horror in television can be challenging, but this show actually used the episodic format really well to keep it scary. Although it was a shock, the shift into camp near the end actually complemented the themes and events in a nice way. It’s made me so curious to check out this crew’s other work and will go in my uncanny road trip horror opening list with ardent favor.
Wednesday, 15 April 2026
The Drama (2026, dir. Kristoffer Borgli)
Wow, this movie has been the hot topic the last few weeks due a variety of things, perhaps most prominently the disjunct between its marketing and its content. It elicits a warning to myself I have not and will never follow: to never read comments. The topic of this film and its marketing produces this surprisingly noncommittal moral posturing focused on feelings of discomfort while watching rather than actual analysis. But dare I say: that exact discomfort is pretty unambiguously what the film is going for. I’ll save my thoughts on the marketing for subjecting people in my personal life to, and instead focus on my utter appreciation for this movie. In short, I really enjoyed it. I’ve seen it twice and loved it both times. I can’t recommend it enough.
The Drama, leaning into big spoilers I’m sure many people are already aware of, is a romance movie about a couple, Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson) just a few days away from their wedding. At a dinner with the best man Mike (Mamoudou Athie) and maid of honor Rachel (Alana Haim), the group reveals to each other the worst things they have ever done. In Emma’s case, her secret (that she planned a mass shooting while in high school) is received poorly, and the movie details the fallout, primarily between Charlie and Emma as their wedding approaches.
Subtle the film is not, but not distractingly so. This is a movie about two big ideas: how we treat other people after knowing the worst side of them and American reactions to mass violence. And it treats those ideas with a lot of complexity that I really appreciated.
I’ll start with the first idea: knowing the worst side of someone. This is baked into the main romantic plotline as Charlie reckons with Emma’s confession. The movie blends thoughtful yet minimal character work with the broad idea of Charlie’s perspective. The first time I watched the film, I thought it adhered closely to his point of view, but it felt broader the second time through. He orients the story, including many of the imagined scenes and shots that skillfully blend anxiety, rumination, and (sexual) fantasy. But another watch proved to highlight another layer: conspiratorial glances and reactions we’re not sure if Charlie sees.
We see it further in the careful detail present in the very long confession scene: the threads of conversation, small yet intentional remarks that lead to Emma’s decision beyond her plenty of drinks. It’s a microcosm of the rest of the movie, though particularly concentrated, and I think it’s part of the reason this film has garnered so much attention. I could point out the obvious—the content of the other secrets, in particular maid of honor Rachel’s—but there is such an interesting momentum to this scene, I think only seeing that particular detail is a loss. You see a similar sense of idiosyncratic detail in the three separate instances of one-off run ins with a dance instructor, florist, and DJ. These scenes are all really funny: they got the most consistent laughs in both showings when that was otherwise contentious. But they also serve as a glimpse into full lives outside of the main characters’—and not just that, but they act as moments where people are perhaps not being their most charitable or at their best. It’s a small detail that went a long way in broadening the ideas present in the conflict of Emma’s past.
The second idea, American reactions to mass violence, is considered with three main arguments: the cultural outsider Charlie being the focus of the film, Emma’s identity as a Black woman, and the later inclusion of anxieties over gossip. Charlie’s exterior perspective speaks to how the movie conceptualizes ideas of forgiveness and action. It’s called into question when he asks a coworker her take on the situation, starkly bringing up an idea that has until this point been primarily explored in the visuals and flashbacks: that Emma is a Black woman, and thus not the prototypical figure for contemplating such violence. And finally, in what I’d actually argue is a weaker point of the movie, it reduces this idea that characters are initially taking quite seriously into gossip. As an example of this idea, Rachel, a very important figure in this movie, is affronted and horrified by Emma’s confession, but still performs with some level of decorum at her wedding—however messy she is being (and she is being messy). It works in initial contrast to her earlier reaction, but also complements it.
Aside from the lofty ideas this film presents, it is skilled elsewhere. I was majorly impressed by the casting and performances feeling so perfect and just the right amount of ridiculous to be real. I was fortunate to see it in 35mm, and it is a very gorgeous movie. Although I think my eyes are not quite expert enough to see a real difference. On my initial watch, I found myself struggling to catch up with the rapid-fire editing style, but the second time through I was not bothered at all.
One of the most interesting parts of the movie to me was the audience reception and the differences between the two showings I went to. At the first, on opening day, there had been content leaks but perhaps not yet as mainstream. The audience was engaged and reacting at first but at a certain point (involving a red shirt), the movie lost them almost entirely. In contrast, the second crowd a week later didn’t start laughing until well into the movie as it took a moment to get them on board. This was just a fascinating difference and part of the reason I think the cultural idea of this movie is so intense right now, and also why it works.
Thursday, 9 April 2026
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (2026, dir. Matt Bettinelli-Olpin & Tyler Gillett)
The first Ready or Not movie is one of my most rewatched movies—it’s fun and witty and tense, tying together action horror with more significant commentary, delivering these iconic visuals steeped in cultural relevance and aesthetic appeal. I love literally everything about it and was so surprised yet excited to see a sequel coming out. For so many years, I’d praised this stand-alone classic, and lamented that the movie leaves little room for a sequel. And how right I was.
As much as I’m tempted to, I can’t divorce this movie (or its sequel) from the cultural spot it takes up in my mind. Following the late-2010s trend of overtly socially conscious horror, the first film in this series boasts explicit ideas about marriage and class and wealth (some if not all of these tragically difficult to depict with any sort of finesse or novelty), but does so very firmly rooted in the comedy horror space and taking so much of its foundation from the supernatural-slasher subgenre. There’s this iconic visual on many of the posters and the trailer of Samara Weaving in this lacy white wedding dress with an antique shotgun and bandolera and in this gold-tinted lighting and it truly so well captures this film’s vibe… and attempts to capture this film’s vibe as well.
Yes, the iconic bloodied wedding dress returns in 2026’s Ready or Not 2: Here I Come, a choice that symbolizes my plethora of issues with it. What once was a stunning costume choice reflecting a lovely production design choice becomes a sequel’s best effort at continuing a legacy it cannot carry on. That’s the thing about this movie: it is doing nothing new.
Ready or Not 2: Here I Come picks up exactly where the first film left off: Grace MacCaullay (Samara Weaving) on the steps of the burning mansion of her dead (ex?) husband’s family. She’s rushed to the hospital where her estranged sister and emergency contact Faith (Kathryn Newton) visits her. Meanwhile, the collective of families who made deals with the devil for wealth plans to hunt Grace down due to some clauses in their rules. Leading—by the film’s focus and not in so successfully in practicality—the collective are twins Ursula and Titus Danforth (Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy). Along with five (and quickly four) other families, they chase Grace and her sister across a golf course, mostly, in aims of killing her for their own gain.
Highlighted by an early flashback to the first film, the actual visual style of the sequel is totally different—the yellow tint removed, the costumes vaguely wealthy but mainly nondescript, the setting an eternal blue sky on a bright green golf course (and the occasional casino). But then there are these half-hearted attempts to echo the first film: the antique weaponry, for one. This is one of many efforts to reference that film, remind you every time Kathryn Newton’s katana exchanges hands that this film has character, if only you have the eyes to see it.
Another more egregious instance of this: the introduction of a half-dozen rules to orient the film. I get it, the first movie was about a board game empire and the title refers to the hide-and-seek game’s chant, so the second has to have the same concept. Only the best explanation we get is tradition (speaking in a Doylist sense here; there is an in-universe explanation) and the execution leaves you counting. This film relies on this list of rules to kind of give the action some structure and emulate having character, but instead they guide the narrative with so few teeth that conflicts have little gravity and the ending is underwhelmingly predictable. There are further attempts at other writerly things that amount to very little: lack of specificity in the characters, foils and parallels leaving much to be desired, and a fumbling idea of a thesis. In short, it’s incoherent and generic (though certainly not the most incoherent or generic movie written in part by Guy Busick release this spring).
One of my main points of praise for the first film was the commitment to fleshing out the wealthy characters, though this film makes hardly any effort to do the same. There’s some Busick-typical sibling parallels that don’t hit here at all. The exceptions were Samara Weaving’s charming reprisal of main character Grace and the always lovely Kathryn Newton bringing just an excellent energy amidst all this blandness. There are some stand outs in the cast of the families, like Maia Jae as Grace’s dead husband’s jilted fiancée, but she’s given little time to shine amidst a huge cast. It was entirely too many people we knew little about and the world felt all the emptier for it. This doesn’t even take into account that for so many of these characters, the majority of their scenes were watching the action on a security feed and commentating. Riveting character work that allows.
This movie feels like someone who has only ever watched sort of bland action movies got a summary of Ready or Not, placing nonsensical references to the first film over the just such generic visuals. It’s trying to do way too much at the same time it’s not doing anything at all.