Round-up 6: Spring Break 2025

This past week was most productive! Spring break turned out to be a good one this year. Despite and perhaps because of some crappy weather, I found myself inside binging some new movies and content. There is something special about hiding indoors amidst the cold. Trying to remain positive here. Before I get into the films and whatnot for the week, as always, I encourage you to engage in the comments section with your own opinions and thoughts on any topic!

            Upstream Color (2013), an independent film written and directed by the elusive physics boy Shane Carruth, was my first viewing of the week. I am a diehard fan of his breakout hit Primer (2004), having seen it close to thirty or more times. It’s one that I will be making a standalone analysis for at some point, but Upstream Color takes the physics element of its predecessor and goes an extra mile or two. An extremely hard film to follow as it revolves around the lives of two people, a man and a woman, and their shared experiences through other people’s lives. That’s the best summary I can give without getting into spoiler territory and making myself sound dumb. It’s a blending of color, scenes of contemporary life and society, and the struggle of our protagonists revolves around the mystery of how they all connect. Just like Primer before it, it requires several viewings to fully grasp, so I’ll be returning to this one very soon to give it more thought.

Next, I finished out the third installment of the John Wick saga, Chapter 3: Parabellum. It is so rare that with each iteration of one series, they get better and better. On Letterboxd, I gave Chapter 1 a 3.5/5 and Chapter 2 4/5; Parabellum continued on the train with a 4/5 as well. These are some of the best contemporary action films around. The director is clearly getting more confident behind the camera with each outing, upping the ante on the intensity of the action scenes. Some of them are so well paced they don’t require lines of dialogue for almost minutes at a time, entirely filling the space with gory hits and punchy gunshots. The cast grows into an ensemble at this point, and despite some being killed off over the chapters, I’m excited to see where they take things from here. Chapter 4 is top of my list! (When I can find the time and money).

A friend of mine recommended They Live (1988), a John Carpenter sci-fi-horror flick following Roddy Piper and Keith David as they discover a secret plot by aliens to control humanity and the world as we know it, all through government control. Through a pair of sunglasses, the protagonist can see the faces of those non-human entities. The action is absurd. The wonky implementation of anti-Reagan political messaging is fun, if not rushed at times. Overall, it was not just a fun time (and a new comfort film of mine) but a great way to translate an important message about the power and authority of governments everywhere. It has the ever-immortal line, delivered by Piper, “I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of bubblegum.”

            On Tuesday evening, I watched Kyle Mooney’s directorial debut, Y2K (2024), which was not great. This is disappointing to admit because, even despite the negative reviews and media coverage, I wanted to like it. It has a really uniquely 90s color palette and aesthetic that it achieves, but that's about the end of my complimentary attitude. The acting is awful but the writing is worse. Kyle Mooney obviously was not ready for this, as it feels like an overly long SNL sketch in all the worst ways. Somehow, despite it only being an hour and a half long, it feels like an eternity to get through. Rachel Zegler is also now impossible to enjoy in any capacity.

Rewatched Seth MacFarlane’s Ted 2 for a little pick-me-up. There's not much to really say about this one other than it has its moments despite being nowhere near the originality of the first. Revolving around Teddy’s fight for legal status as an entity, the best addition to this was Amanda Seyfried as the young lawyer fighting for her place in the cutthroat legal world. The contrast between herself and Wahlberg’s man-child character is about the best part of the movie besides Ted’s shenanigans. Good inebriated watch, not much more.

            On Thursday, March 27th, I celebrated Quentin Tarantino’s 62nd birthday by watching through some of my favorites of his. I’d just rewatched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood a couple of weeks ago, so despite that being my go-to for recency bias, I decided to go into his most exciting work, Django: Unchained. This masterclass in cinematic action and drama culminates in arguably his best final act to date. I followed it up with another healthy dose of his historical fiction run with Inglorious Basterds, another bloody, action-packed romp through Tarantino’s perspective. Nightcap was a re-viewing of Pulp Fiction, which, not surprisingly, I can still recite almost bar for bar. Will always have a special place in my heart for his work, and for that reason, especially, I went through the effort to do a ranking of his films, you should definitely go check it out if you haven’t already. I go into more detail on each individual film and its merits. Despite the many controversies that he brings up with his work, I’ll always stand by the genius of his writing and overall creative mind.

            I capped off the week with a rewatch of one of my favorite sci-fi films of all time, mentioned at the top of this roundup, Shane Carruth’s Primer (2004). Carruth, an undergrad in mathematics at the time, heavily infused his deep understanding of physics and math into his directorial debut. Refusing to dumb it down and having a tight runtime of 77 minutes, the film wastes no time getting into the gritty details. Sincerely feels like you could earn a degree from understanding this film alone. I have seen it more times than I care to share, and I still haven’t fully wrapped my head around it. It follows a pair of young technicians who accidentally discover time travel and are quick to abuse its power without considering the ramifications. Given how in-depth the film and its plot, and also the cult-like underground following, it’s remained a very relevant piece of cinema throughout the years, and for those reasons, it’ll be getting its very own detailed analysis sometime soon.

This was the best spring break I’ve had in a while. Crappy weather didn’t keep the man down, not this time around. It’s rare for me to get to have some extended period of time to binge movies and television, so this was a nice deviation from the norm. Back to the baseline next week. A weekly reminder to share your thoughts and opinions on these films! I want to know what you think and what you’d like me to cover next.