Thoughts

The story follows Timmy Chamalet as Marty Mauser, a young Jewish man struggling to get by in early 1950s New York City as a hustling ping pong player. The opening act shows him overseas in London almost winning a major table tennis tournament, but losing embarrassingly in the final round to a stoic Japanese man with far superior skill than him.

As a self-proclaimed “film nerd”, how is it that I hadn’t seen the masterpiece that is La La Land (2016)? This is rhetorical, of course, as I would only have the true answer, and now having finally seen it, I can say that confidently: I am an asshole. I’m a big Damien Chazelle fan, especially after Whiplash (2014), and this being his sophomore project that almost won best picture, what the hell, man?

You’d think with all the glazing I’ve been doing of the man with the recent release of his generational masterpiece One Battle After Another (2025) that I would’ve seen this already. Uh, apparently not. There is so much I could say about this film that it deserves its own dedicated breakdown, when I have the time or energy. But until then, let me first say that this has some of the greatest dramatic performances of all time.

Now, allow me to guide you through my descent of horror over the past week or so. I truly didn’t expect myself to go as deep as I went, as fast as I went, but hey, here we are. I started off easy, with my yearly rewatch of the Wes Craven classic, Scream (1996). Every year I make an effort to sit down and watch this one, especially with it being one of my best pals’ most favorites of all time for the holiday.

The performances by Denzel Washington and Jeffrey Wright steal the show. Fantastic comedic and tense moments are offset by a majority of cringeworthy dialogue and the most awkward scoring choices I’ve ever heard. It felt like watching a soap opera at more than a handful of moments. Going off of that, the police dialogue had to be some of the worst I’ve ever seen. The redeeming moments are within the tense action scenes, led by the direction of Lee with Denzel on the move.

I have seen almost all of the Coen Brothers’ films, but Barton Fink (1991) continued to slip under the radar. And how? This is easily their most creative and inventive story! It follows John Turturro as the titular character, a neurotic young man who writes plays for the theater in the 1920s.

In Eddington, Mr. Aster takes the thrilling components of his horror efforts and reshapes them into a contemporary Western black comedy. A wild departure thematically from his other work, but it utilizes a lot of the tropes that he’s become famous for. The story surrounds the small town of Eddington, New Mexico, where a liberal mayor and a conservative sheriff go toe-to-toe over the political strife of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The story has been adapted to the screen at least twice, most famously by Spielberg in 2005. This time, they took the overdone “everything is on the computer screen” approach and stuck Ice Cube front and center to put on a show. But he does anything other than put on a show, he practically sounds like he's reading the script for the very first time with his finger dragging across the lines as he reads.

Since Whiplash (2014), Damien Chazelle has been at the top of my list when it comes to watching new releases. So, when it came out that he was making a three-hour epic about the pre-sound era of Hollywood, I was more than sold on the experience. That was until I actually got around to watching it and got to that fateful opening scene with the elephant. If you haven’t seen the film, I won’t spoil it here, but just know there is fecal matter involved.

All this to say, I did start the week off strong with a viewing of each of Gregg Araki’s entries in his Teen Apocalypse Trilogy from the mid-to-late 90s. The trilogy includes Totally F***ed Up (1993), The Doom Generation(1995), and the conclusion to the saga, Nowhere (1997). The films are loosely connected by themes of queer alienation, rage against the establishment, and an inherent nihilistic perspective on life and the future.

The story follows Kyle MacLachlan as a young man back from school in his small, idyllic American suburb when he stumbles across a severed human ear in a field. After taking it into the local police station, his curiosity gets the better of him as he sets off into the secret underworld of a town once thought to be innocent.

The film follows Jordan, portraying twin brothers, gangsters who have been holding out in Chicago, and are now returning home to the South to open a juke joint. The story takes its time getting us acquainted with not only the twin brothers, Smoke and Stack, but their friends and family who unite under the roof of their new bar for the turning point of the film, when the vampires come out…

Nathan goes above and beyond this season in analyzing the issues behind cockpit communication between pilots and their first officers. He opens the season incredibly honestly, not making jokes or trying even to make something overtly funny at all, instead, establishing the key problems he has been studying from plane crashes around the world.

This one I hold close to my heart just due to the immense weight of its emotion and how it digs its claws into your soul and carefully dissects it by the time the credits are rolling. The story follows Charlie, a young high schooler who doesn’t have any friends and is simultaneously dealing with some harsh personal trauma. What strikes me about this film is the direction by Chbosky, who clearly had a vision for this novel coming to life prior to his making it.

Hess’s semi-live-action film adaptation of the famous game is not a letdown. It is a recurring event of corporate greed dominating creativity. Which is pretty ironic given the game’s structure. As of writing this, the movie has raked in close to seven and a half million dollars worldwide.

I started with the brand-new release on MAX that is Companion (2025), starring Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid in the lead roles. This is a black comedy, horror, thriller film that delves into the world of artificial intelligence and how our relationship with it is likely to evolve.