Round-up 27: Let's Talk About Movies Instead

My lack of consistent writing, especially when it comes to my round-ups, has primarily had to do with the introduction of school back into my life. It’s hard balancing a film project, mindless busy work from elective classes, and continuing my progression in my career when it comes to work. I find myself desperate for sleep while I chase all of these leads down. Selfishly, another aspect of this is the college football and NFL season returning as well. I wasn’t always a big sports fan, but as I’ve grown a bit older, I’ve really come to appreciate the event at the end of a long day. It’s something to look forward to. I’ve combined this with a quasi-regular schedule of planning specific movies on nights where there are no games, which keeps the time full and my attention off the horrors of the world. Furthermore, I’ve made a point of focusing on my own interests in the moment, allowing myself more freedom of control. That’s something that’s very important to me, and I’ve found the more I allow that for myself, the better I feel in general.

When it comes to the movies I’ve watched since we last connected, I’ve actually had quite a good run. I started with a viewing of a simple, stripped-back low budget comedy that came out a couple of years ago called Fist Fight (2017), starring Charlie Day and Ice Cube in the leads. The story follows Day’s character, a passive pushover of a high school English teacher who finds himself in an awkward encounter with Cube’s more aggressive and outspoken history teacher character. There’s not a whole ton to say about this one; it was short and sweet, and quite surprisingly laugh-out-loud funny. Not a perfectly constructed comedy, but worth the time, especially if you need a lighter watch. The biggest takeaway for me was the surprising chemistry between Day and Cube. I did not expect them to work as well as they did together, but I sure damn well appreciated it.

I have a friend who strongly recommended a documentary to me, and while documentaries are not typically my speed, I am trying to venture out to different genres I wouldn’t otherwise watch. Paris is Burning (1990) is a documentary drama surrounding the lives and lifestyles of the drag scene in New York City in the late 1980s. If you’re at all familiar with the time period, you’ll know that openness and acceptance for people of this community were not common. Reagan’s sociopolitical landscape created a tense and often physically unsafe world for them to live in. The film juxtaposes many of the different souls of the time and place while they prepare for and participate in “balls”, their equivalent of the common man’s football game, if you will. What could have been a standard, run-of-the-mill interview-based doc instead takes a flashy, exciting approach that fully held my attention from start to finish. I am not a particularly “woke” individual, and I found so much love and humanity behind the people involved with making this film. I cannot recommend this enough, especially in a confusing time such as now. Art takes forms in many ways, and this was definitely an eye-opening experience for me.

Next, I watched my copy of Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low (1963) in anticipation of Spike Lee’s newest adaptation, Highest 2 Lowest (2025), which just came out on Apple TV streaming. Having seen a handful of Kurosawa films now, I hold this one in the highest regard for its technical prowess as well as the execution of its plot; seamlessly merging the genres of crime, drama, and psychological horror together in masterful fashion. And then Spike Lee adapted it for the new age. This was an absolute dumpster fire of a film, a complete mess if you ask me. I know Lee has been pretty hit or miss since his early days, but this was so painfully “mid” I don’t even know where to place it in his filmography. I think a leading part of my frustration when it comes to this film is in the clear potential to be something much better than it ended up being. 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. A$AP Rocky was also in the movie. I will leave my comments for him up to your imagination. This was… really, really disappointing. My feelings are subject to change, but that was quite a painful first viewing, especially given the source material.

Another new release I finally got around to was Zach Cregger’s Weapons (2025). I recently rewatched his directorial debut from a few years back, Barbarian (2022), and was surprised by how much fun I had with it. Weapons builds on everything I loved about his first film and expands it into a new world and story that feels more grounded. The story follows an ensemble cast of characters in a small suburban town; one night, an entire classroom of elementary students runs out of their respective homes and are never to be found. One child remains, as well as the teacher of the class, being put under immense scrutiny and suspicion.  Cregger splits the story into vignettes surrounding each of the main characters as they try to make sense of the tragedy and the horrors that still linger. I would never forgive myself if I gave away any more than that, because this film goes all over the place in the best possible way. I did not see the ending coming, nor many of the narrative shifts. The other leading aspect that separates this from the majority of mainstream horror flicks is its insistence on being absolutely hilarious. This is a black comedy, almost more than it is horror; the number of times I laughed out loud left me pleasantly surprised. This is a joint effort between Cregger and his leading actors, particularly Alden Ehrenreich, who steals the show in almost every scene he’s a part of. Brolin and Garner also deliver fantastic performances. Possibly my new favorite horror movie of all time.

Being a fan of the original Naked Gun (1988), and more specifically Leslie Neilson, I was looking forward to the reboot with Liam Neeson in the lead. I liked the idea of him branching out and potentially utilizing his dramatic skills in a comedic fashion. This, unfortunately, just didn’t work for me. I don’t have a good reason for why, just that I went in with higher expectations for the humor and left feeling cheated. It was in no way bad; I still enjoyed it. I loved seeing the comic and romantic chemistry between Neeson and Pam Anderson, and I think we are all rooting for them off-screen, too. Worth a watch, but don’t expect too much.

For my film class, which I’ve been really enjoying, I got exposed to some new artists I hadn’t really known of before. The structure of the course is that we read some material and then occasionally watch an adaptation. We switch between text and the visual medium. Our first assigned text was Franz Kafka’s short story A Country Doctor, which we then watched a short animated film adaptation of. The short film was made by Japanese animator Kôji Yamamura and takes the already very disturbing and surrealist story by Kafka and elevates it with a dream-like vision. The second film assignment was Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien Andalou (1929). I had a tremendous amount of fun watching this. It’s a short film conceived of by Salvatore Dali with Bunuel behind the camera as we explore a collection of avant-garde imagery. It is very disturbing, and the effects surprisingly hold up today in my opinion. It is pretty obvious that this was a huge inspiration for David Lynch, which makes me want to go back and rewatch some of his films, too. I will be exploring more of Bunuel’s work in the months to come, as I really connected with his vision. Especially interesting that Dali was involved. All this to say, I’m excited to see what comes next from this class, but at the same time, I’m a bit disappointed by what happened within those classroom walls last week.

That film class, my favorite class this semester, is where I was when the news of Charlie Kirk’s assassination broke. I sat in silence towards the back of the room, quietly reading the live CNN updates online. I’ll be the first to say I didn’t agree with everything Charlie had to say, but dammit if I didn’t respect his balls and ability to communicate with those he disagreed with. That’s the kind of guy you just don’t find a lot of these days. Always respectful.

It wasn’t long before the class broke off into their own little groups, whispering and giggling to one another. The professor broke it up to ask what was going on. One student in the center of the auditorium shouted through stifled giggles, “Charlie Kirk just got shot”. The professor began laughing. The remainder of the class was spent in laughter, cheering, and jokes from the professor about his upcoming memorial. A father and a husband died, and they celebrated. I lean conservative on some issues, liberal on others, but something told me that wouldn’t matter if I said anything in support of Charlie Kirk. For the first time in a long time, I felt scared for my physical safety. It was very clear in that moment what the mob had decided, and they had decided this was something worth celebrating. When I got home, not an hour later, he had been pronounced dead. And the internet celebrated. I’m not here to put this into a left or right issue, because that’s not productive. But I will say that it’s very clear there is a subset of this country that has become so radicalized against conservatives that now political violence is accepted. Let me be clear on what I’m saying: the death of Charlie Kirk set a terrifying precedent that if someone has a differing opinion or worldview from you, then they can shoot and kill you, and receive public support.

I don’t know what I can do for anyone who supports his death. I have lost friends and followers. That’s okay. I’d rather be on the right side of history here, and I’m telling you, if we continue down this path of encouraging and inciting violence of difference of opinion, we are going to collapse as a society. This will be the beginning of the end. That being said, I see a flip side to this coin. There is a version of this where I think we’ll be okay. America survived the ‘60s; we can survive now. If both sides can agree to disagree again, if both sides can come back to the table, if both sides can cast their hatred for one another aside, we can get through this and come out stronger on the other side. But more than that, let’s take some steps back and not talk about politics at every chance we get. I’m more than guilty of this myself. Let’s try to find common ground through our shared interests. Like movies. Maybe, when we get together and hang out, we can talk about movies instead.