Thoughts

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.

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.

In the film community, the film is regarded as very controversial, with some sects praising its provocative nature, while others consider it a disgusting, borderline “snuff”-like piece of media. This polarization alone made me very curious. So, after much time of getting myself hyped up, along with an ice-cold six-pack of Miller Lite, I finally sat down to witness the endurance-horror that is Salo.

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.

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 Luke Wilson as a quite literal average Joe who gets roped into an army science experiment to be frozen, which, of course, goes wrong. He wakes up five hundred years later, as everyone has become insanely dumb through generations of inbreeding and bad traits passing down, he is the smartest man in the world.

Hazy recollection of the recent week’s days. It was a full and long week of work, and I was really feeling the monotony this time around. You know you’re cooked when you show up to work and immediately start creating checkpoints for yourself. “Okay, we just gotta make it to nine o'clock”… Then, “Now, ten”…

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.

With themes reminiscent of Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream (2000), this film takes a comic approach to the horrors of drug abuse and addiction. It follows four friends united by opium addiction and a life of robbery and crime overall to sustain the habit. Ewan McGregor leads the cast as Renton, a soul grappling with the harsh realities of his present and (lack of) future as he fights to find a way out of the vicious cycle.

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…

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.

A part of this modern remaster that I didn't expect was the comic relief. And was that a welcome surprise.