I agree that it is weird, the plot is convoluted and sometimes hard to follow. But I enjoyed it. Creator Lisa McGee also created Derry Girls and parts of this show are even funnier than Derry Girls.
Fackham Hall [2025] I get what this movie was trying to do by being over the top ridiculous. However, I think it was a bit too much over the top, which made only a few scenes enjoyable and laugh out loud funny.
Love and Basketball ~ G. Prince-Bythewood Monica moves next door to Q in 1981 and they both love basketball and are competitively committed to the sport. The film follows them through high-school, college, and the pros as a romance develops between them but is challenged by their dreams. There are good parts, but the central romance is a bit of a mess. Spoiler (Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content) Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler I was a little disappointed that the romantic ups and downs all hinge on Q being a toxic jerk. I know it was a 2000 film, but still hoped that she would reject his BS. That wraps my February challenge to watch 10 films by black directors. I think my favorite or at least the biggest surprise was Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash. I'm thinking March will be 10 films by women directors for Women's History Month with some extra challenge added.
Side-note, but I feel kind of increasingly bad for Malin-Sarah Gozin, who was the showrunner on the original Flemish version of what later became the remake Bad Sisters (the Flemish show did only do one season). At the time it felt like a fresh new voice in Belgian/Flemish TV and I would have thought she would have done two or three other, equally well-received shows since then but it's really only been Tabula Rasa until last year her Dood Spoor was also released. Neither of which has gotten the reception Clan (Bad Sisters) did.
Shelter (2026) Dir. Ric Roman Waugh Jessie, a teenaged girl, alongside her uncle, make weekly delivery runs in their boat, to a remote little island off the Scottish coast. A reclusive man lives there, whom Jessie tries to socialize with, in spite of his stand-offish nature. The man in question is forced interact with Jessie after all when her uncle's boat sinks near the island and he is forced to save Jessie. Taking care of the wounded girl also means going to the mainland for medical supplies, where a video camera picks up his face.He is soon flagged by MI6 software that is using face recognition to track high profile targets. When armed men show up on the island, he has to flee together with Jessie, his dark past having finally caught up with him. I actually enjoyed the first thirty-five or so minutes of this, which was confined to the island, essentially a two-hander between Jason Statham and Bodi Rae Breathnach, the young actress who portrays Jessie. This opening sequence is more reminiscent of something like Ondine than an actioner. When the action does start, it sort of devolves into a Bourne Identity clone. Features Bill Nighy in a villainous turn, and a Harriet Walter cameo as a shady Prime Minister. Reliable Statham action vehicle in the end, though the first act had me thinking it might be slightly more interesting than that.
Another flight...i'm running out of movies to watch. 1. Gridiron Gang [2006] Y'all know I'm a sucker for sports movies, so I was looking forward to watching this. And while this was based on a true story, I didn't find the movie very well made. The Rock was his usual self, but I just didn't enjoy this all that much (compared to Remember The Titans, or Rudy, or many others in this genre). 2. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World [2003] I can't believe I haven't seen this movie before. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Both Crowe and Bettany were excellent and overall, the movie was rather enjoyable.
The Bluff (2026) Dir. Frank E. Flowers Mid 19th century, pirates are becoming a dying breed, not counting some stubborn hold-outs. Among the fiercest is the outfit led by Captain Connor, who attacks and captures a civilian vessel, taking great interest in a gold bar he finds on board, as it used to be part of a large cache of similar bars he lost after his old partner betrayed him, years earlier. He takes the imprisoned Captain back to his home island in the Caribbean, where the man's wife, child and sister are waiting. The wife of Connor's hostage is of interest to him, as the woman in question was not always a homemaker. Once upon a time she was one of the most feared pirate captains in the world, and the very person who betrayed Connor. Connor wants his gold back, and revenge. Ercell, the reformed pirate in question, wants to protect her family. A different kind of 19th century maritime tale, more Pirates of the Caribbean than Master and Commander. Enjoyable to a certain extent. I am not usually a huge fan of Priyanka Chopra, she is a decent enough lead here, though Karl Urban is far more impressive as the evil pirate captain Connor. Temuera Morrison, of Star Wars fame, plays Connor's quartermaster. Decent enough action, without doing anything overly original with the material. Does reveal how indestructible the charm of pirate fiction is to this day, that even imperfect iterations can be enjoyable (to me anyway). And one of the most enduring tropes in all of fiction is the one where a hero dusts off his or her old weapons and equipment to do the Bugs Bunny trope:
******** it, I'm sharing one of my favorite examples of the trope, from 'Valdez is Coming': https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8k05w5?start=2205
1. Friday Night Lights [2024] Continuing on the sports theme. So the movie was ok, but I'm so glad the show was made after this movie was done. The show was 10x better. And while I like Billy Bob Thornton, he sucked in this role. 2. The Long Walk [2025] Never heard of this movie and never heard this was based on Stephen King's book. The idea was pretty original and I was curious how well it would be executed. I can't say it was very well done. Probably b/c it was super low budget, but I kept falling asleep. I'm glad I now have another King book to read, but pass on the movie.
Ah, good to know. Still, I think the show is now a sort of a classic in the sports genre, almost a cult show for high school students.
King published the book under his pseudonym Richard Bachman. Some people think he did that because the book wasn’t up to his standards. Most likely, he didn’t want to glut the market with new-ish Stephen King titles. It’s not bad, when you consider the plot is just a bunch of young men walking and trying to maintain a four MPH pace in order to avoid being eliminated from the competition (and everything else). I actually undertook that challenge a while ago. Made it for almost seven hours. Everyone in the book does better, but they were all young men of military age and I was 61.
I'm giving myself a new challenge for March 2026. Watch 12 films by women directors during Women's History Month. My bonus challenge is to watch 2 films from directors from each continent along the way (sorry Antarctica, not counting you). I'm Not From Here (Yo no soy de aquí)~ M. Alberdi, G. Zickyte (Chile - South America) A short-form documentary about an 88 year-old woman with Alzheimer's disease in a Chilean nursing home. She can't remember from day to day that she's been in Chile for 70 years, and still thinks she's just arrived from the Basque region of Spain. It's an interesting format for the documentary in that the directors are not obviously directing the action. The camera is largely static observing her conversations with other patients of the nursing home. There's an overheard phone call with her daughter that explains the situation, but the documentarians don't audibly or visibly interact. There's obviously a tragic aspect as confusion crosses her face, wondering why she is there, but a warm humanizing aspect in her recalled memories. While perhaps illuminating to understand the affects of Alzheimer's, there's a part of me that felt uncomfortable watching knowing she wasn't able to consent to being the subject.
3mph is about where most humans can handle it. In the 100mile ultra races: 18hr is elite 24hr is serious amateur 30hr is good 36hr is the cut There’s a huge swath from 28.5-33hrs.
Three Wisest Men - 2025 (Hallmark) The three Brenner brothers are back at it. There's a grumpy potential father in law, a runaway bird, a fight with a mall elf, an 80s/90s style battle for the hot Christmas toy of the year, lots of mayhem and destruction, and several fun cameos from the first two films. B+
Shadow Play (2007) Three people without memories wake up in a room without windows or doors. The only thing in the room is a silver box, occasionally displaying some random letters. This doesn't really feel like a movie. It feels like experimental theatre. Every other time I've said that, I meant it as a compliment. Not this time. It's like the first work of a student playwright, probably one that never made another. The mystery of the place is just so one-note and simple and we know what's going on way before the movie thinks it knows we know what's going on. The dialogue as written and as delivered feels stilted and meant to be heard in the cheap seats. I was entertained enough by the interplay of the characters so this wasn't a total loss.
Panic Button (2011) Usually being terminally on-line only wins you a life of regret, but four English users of a Facebook-like social network site win a trip to New York on a very nice private jet. Or at least they think so until they get the first of the games on the airplane - a tell-all series of embarrassing questions where the social network representative already knows the answers. The games get worse, and the punishments for not obeying are horrific. Low budget British horror, usually compared to Saw because it's similarly a complicated contrivance taking way too much work for one guy to serve some possible moral goal on people that won't benefit from the lesson. It's an unbelievable premise, and I didn't like that the people had so little chance to change their fate (which is what I guess separates horror from action). I did appreciate that there was very limited gore and no scares, and I really liked the scene where the master of ceremonies reveals his motivation and he gets a proper and pointed answer, for all the good it does either party. The ending was decidedly disturbing and unnerving, so if that's what you look for in a horror movie you will get it. I commend the quality of the acting, but since most of it was despair and panic I didn't enjoy seeing its enacting.
Because of You (1952) Dir. Joseph Pevney We open on the eve of Christine's marriage to the smooth but shady Mike Monroe. Monroe is accosted by police, having slipped stolen merchandise into Christine's purse moments earlier. It's enough to earn Christine a conviction too, meaning she spends the next few years in prison. Inside, she becomes a model prisoner and ends up learning enough to get a job as a nurse in a VA hospital, after being paroled. There she meets Steve Kimberly, a traumatized Air Force pilot who is afraid his mental and physical injuries will prevent him from returning to active duty. Christine for her part has to come around to the idea that Steve is very much in love with her. Only he has no idea about her status as a recently paroled ex-convict. When he proposes to her, the problem complicates further. Whilst Christine's parole officer insists she informs Steve of the truth, Christine instead wants to wait until the end of her probation period, after which she would not be legally required to inform a prospective spouse of her criminal past. Unfortunately, her delaying telling the truth makes the lie by omission only ever greater. Melodrama with a story that spans from the early 1940s to the early 1950s. Loretta Young's presence convinced me to watch this - I am a fan - and she was easily the best thing about the film. It's not that Jeff Chandler is bad as the slightly dour husband, just a bit too one-note. I liked the middle section where she becomes a magician's assistant and wished they had spent more time on her in that world. It's not too long and never truly drags at a little over 90 minutes, though it does pause a bit too much in the sequence following the final moment of conflict and just before the happy resolution.
Cold Storage (2026) Dir. Jonny Campbell In the late noughties, biochemist Dr. Hero Martins gets a strange call, from a man claiming to be stuck in a town in Australia, where all the townfolks have gone sick after an old NASA oxygen tank, which came down when the Skylab crashed into earth, started to leak. For the past twenty-five years and counting, the old piece of space junk had been a tourist attraction. Martins knows various scientific experiments were conducted on the Skylab and thus knows the possibility, even remote, that a dangerous pathogen might indeed be leaking out of the space station fragment. She flies over to Australia and meets up with U.S. Army bioterror experts Robert Quinn and Trini Romano. They find the townsfolk missing and some kind of fungus growing out of the NASA relic. Then things go sideways, leaving it to Quinn and Romano to clean up, in rather dramatic fashion. Quinn ends up choosing an underground army facility in Kansas to store what remains of the samples they took of the deadly fungus. Unfortunately, a little under twenty years later, the U.S. army has decommissioned said facility and sold it on the private market. It is now a storage facility. Unbeknownst to the security guards manning the graveyard shift, there is something other and far more dangerous than old junk stored at their place of work, and it is about to break containment... I don't know if this movie just caught me at the right time and in the right mood, but I was thoroughly amused and entertained by it. The cast is the very definition of eclectic and includes the likes of Joe Keery, Liam Neeson and Vanessa Redgrave (!). The film shamelessly leans into Keery's talent in terms of playing charming doofuses, and it even recreates the dynamic with Maya Hawke in the third season of Stranger Things: here too he is bonding with a female co-worker (Georgina Campbell) as they are both trapped in an extreme situation together. Neeson plays the older, wise hero character adequately, but most of the fun is happening to the graveyard shift wage slaves at the suddenly quite dangerous storage facility. Dumb fun in the tradition of movies like say, Tremors.
Downfall. Year: 2004 Platform: Tubi Rating: 9/10. Summary: Traudl Judge, one of Hitler's personal secretaries recounts his last days in the bunker. I only know of this movie through memes. In high school, a friend and I went to the movies quite a bit. I don't think was on our radar. Just for the heck of it, as it's March which means rain and gray, I picked this. I have a lot of feelings about this. I'm struggling for words how to describe this. But, enthralling. If I had to use one word, it'd be enthralling. I was hooked right from the start. You can just feel the frustration, sense of doom, and so much more in this movie. The anger you'd feel at certain scenes, the obvious breakdown as some people are just going on like Berlin isn't being razed to the ground. Needless to say, I had to take a minute to compose myself.
Klute Year: 1971 Platform: Tubi Rating: 8/10 Summary: A company executive who sends nasty letters to a call girl goes missing. A private detective is tasked with finding him. This one was solid. Classic 70s detective story with all the fixings. The grit, aesthetic, and the overall eeriness that is pervasive in anything 70s noir. The music especially. For some reason I hear that kind of music and I just assume some sketchy people are walking down my street. I don't think any type of music has captured that feeling well. Both Donald Sutherland and Jane Fonda are great in this. Decent story all around.
Hamnet ~ C. Zhao (China - Asia) Agnes and Will meet in 16th c. England and quickly move through courtship to parenthood. Will is a playwright who works in London and is absent when tragedy strikes the family. This is a incredibly well-crafted and told tear-jerking period drama. I'm not sure it becomes something greater, but it is a stellar example of the genre. Jessie Buckley is excellent.