It has been a busy month for media here, including binging the entire first season of Chad Powers. Being stuck at home with a newborn baby means a lot of time spent sitting on a couch with literally nothing to do but watch a TV show or a movie. I ended up watching over 50 movies this month. Not all of them will be included in this wrap-up, partly because some of them didn’t stand out amid the masses, but also because writing up a review for all of them would be an insane time dump for me and you. With that said, here are the best and worst things I consumed this month.
Friday the 13th
It is honestly a little insane that this movie spawned so many sequels and became such a cultural thing. Friday the 13th is just not very good. I guess it’s iconic in a way, but it’s boring and slow for a slasher movie. The kills are occasionally fun, but this was not an easy film to get through. It’s saved by a fun twist (even if it was spoiled for me by Scream, ironically).
Score: 2.5/5
Inherent Vice
The world of Inherent Vice is pretty fun to be in, as Joaquin Phoenix puts on a strong performance dragging the audience through the shady, mysterious world of the 1970s. Unfortunately, there’s literally nothing under the surface, and the central mystery is both convoluted and pretty much meaningless.
Score: 2.5/5
A House of Dynamite
A House of Dynamite is such a frustrating movie. It’s got a pretty good premise, but it fails to say anything at all about nuclear warfare. It also shows the same events from different perspectives three times, not adding much to the story. Rebecca Ferguson is great, and the moments when everyone accepts their fate are very good, saving an otherwise bad movie.
Score: 2.5/5
Ballad of a Small Player
From Edward Berger, Ballad of a Small Player has a lot going for it. It’s got a good central conceit that is right up my alley, and it features a brilliant lead performance from Collin Farrell, who is really all-in here. It is also incredibly beautiful to look at. The color grading and cinematography are among the best this year. It’s just incredibly shallow and sometimes boring.
Score: 2.75/5
KPop Demon Hunters
I finally got around to watching one of the smash hits of the year, KPop Demon Hunters. It is decidedly not made with me, a 26-year-old man, in mind, but I had a good time with it. It’s cringy at times and has a pretty simple, predictable plot, but the animation is stunning and “Golden” is such an incredible song that I’m willing to let it slide.
Score: 3/5
Going Home in the Dark
Going Home in the Dark, a new book from Dean Koontz, is like a mashup of It and Scream, and I love Scream. I appreciated the meta writing in this one, with Koontz often talking directly to readers. There’s a fine line to walk when doing that, and this book sometimes steps over the line. It also ends up being a little childish, at least in how things play out. There’s a toe infection that’s running rampant as part of an alien invasion, which just sounds like something a child would come up with.
Score: 3.5/5
Under the Silver Lake
Andrew Garfield is fantastic as always, helping carry what is an otherwise pretty messy movie to a good outcome. Under the Silver Lake has a ton of subtext and symbolism that can sometimes get lost, and much of what Garfield’s Sam does means very little. However, it does work really well as a criticism of misogyny and of conspiracy theorists.
Score: 3.5/5
Interview with the Vampire
The first of many (not all of them included here) Tom Cruise movies I watched. I decided it was a good time to binge through much of his filmography since he’s my favorite actor, and this was a fantastic example of his range. This movie is genuinely very funny, with Cruise helping carry that. What I was most impressed by, however, was the fact that an 11-year-old Kirsten Dunst outperformed both Cruise and Brad Pitt.
Score: 3.5/5
Chad Powers Season 1
Chad Powers is a great way of taking a funny skit concept and turning it into an entire show. Eli Manning once dressed as a college kid to fool football players, so that’s what Glen Powell does as Russ Holliday in the show. It’s mostly pretty funny, but it also has a softer, more emotional tilt to it. The tone of Chad Powers can be all over the place, and it feels like a movie that’s been chopped into six pieces and doesn’t wrap up cleanly at all, though more is said to be coming. Chad Powers seasons two and three are possible, but nothing is guaranteed yet.
Score: 3.5/5
Coherence
Coherence is such a great example of small-scale filmmaking. The events take place pretty much entirely in one place with a cast that doesn’t include many actors you’d know or recognize. That allows it to ride the strength of the narrative, which involves some weird time-space issues that create infinite realities. It’s so clever, it just has a hard time presenting how everything is actually going down. That ambiguity can make for fun theorizing, but leaves the movie a little confusing.
Score: 3.75/5
Eyes Wide Shut
Eyes Wide Shut is such a fascinating movie, illustrating marital struggles, obsession, and impotence. Tom Cruise plays a man who gets so frustrated with his wife’s admission of a fantasy about another man long ago that he tries and fails repeatedly to cheat on her. The movie does gesture at some secret society things that might be relevant to our actual society, but it never really goes deep enough to make any sort of statement on that. The baggage surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s death and this being his final film add to the allure, but it just can’t quite live up to that.
Score: 3.75/5
The Lost Bus
The Lost Bus is such a fantastic depiction of wildfires in California that you often forget The Lost Bus is a true story. It’s harrowing, brutal, thrilling, and terror-inducing. Matthew McConaughey puts in a stellar lead performance, with America Ferreira nearly matching him beat for beat. The Lost Bus is so intense that, while you know it’s a true story and has a good ending, you forget that these characters do actually survive.
Score: 3.75/5
Evil Dead II
It’s honestly a good thing they didn’t have the rights, so they had to make a “requel” as Bruce Campbell described it. That led to a remake/sequel of the first movie, and Evil Dead II improves upon basically everything. It takes the good premise and the gory, campy fun of the first, but it streamlines it and makes for a much more interesting narrative. It does still sometimes sacrifice the story for the sake of the gore/practical effects, but given how good the effects are, it’s hard to blame them.
Score: 4/5
It’s What’s Inside
It’s What’s Inside features a brilliant premise that merges Freaky Friday with a thriller, mystery movie. In it, a group of people switch bodies and then play a game and try to discover who’s who now. Things go horribly wrong, and it gets a little convoluted and messy at the end, but it’s such an engaging watch that wraps up fairly neatly with a fun final twist.
Score: 4/5
Talk to Me
Talk to Me features a fantastic horror premise. While it isn’t saying much new for the genre (horror as a metaphor for grief is unoriginal, but it’s classic at this point), it does bring a really fun, exciting new way to consider things. It’s got really great direction, and the ending is extremely satisfying.
Hollow Knight: Silksong Act 1
Is it a little bit ridiculous that I’ve only recently gotten to Act 2 (after starting on launch)? Yes. Is it a little embarrassing to include that here when I haven’t beaten the game? Yes. But this is the hardest game I have maybe ever played because I don’t challenge myself in gaming. I prefer to be happy and not frustrated, so I have avoided games like this. Still, I can’t deny how great Silksong is, even if it’s taken me 60 hours to get halfway (or less) through Act 2.
Score: 4/5
A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
I watched five of this series, and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors might genuinely be the best. It doesn’t have Wes Craven’s sharp direction like the original, but the dream sequences are so creative and wonderful. It is also nice to see Heather Langenkamp return and breathe life back into the series after a complete dud in the second film.
Score: 4/5
Vanilla Sky
Vanilla Sky is more proof that Tom Cruise isn’t just an action star. He’s a genuinely great actor, too. Here, he portrays a rich womanizer who begins to struggle discerning dreams from reality until things go horribly wrong. It’s got twists galore and incredible editing to really put you into the movie.
Score: 4.5/5
Steve
If you’re scrolling on Netflix and come across a movie called Steve, that might not jump out at you. It looks simple, boring, and uninteresting, but it’s anything but. Cillian Murphy is fantastic as a headmaster at a last-chance school for troubled boys, and he helps guide one of the best Netflix originals ever. It’s touching, emotional, and enthralling. You need to watch Steve now.
Score: 4.5/5
Only Murders in the Building Season 5
Only Murders in the Building is one of my favorite shows, and it returned with a bang with Season 5. It has admittedly been coasting by on milking the formula a little bit (which in and of itself also plays into the satire on true crime in a metatextual way), but this season was a refreshing one. It takes on the rise of AI, gambling, and more, and those are two things I am passionately against, so this was always going to be a win for me. Plus, Logan Lerman was there!
Score: 4.5/5
A Different Man
Sebastian Stan continues to prove he’s not just a Marvel product. He continues to find interesting projects and put in excellent performances, and in 2024, he had two with The Apprentice and A Different Man. The latter tackles some difficult subject matter, but it does it so well and Stan carries the weight of all of it in such a brilliant, funny, and engaging way. He could’ve had an Oscar nomination for this, too.
Score: 4.5/5
There Will Be Blood
There’s not much I can say about There Will Be Blood, other than it is basically as good as everyone says it is. Daniel Day-Lewis is a genuine revelation, but I was more impressed by how well Paul Dano, at this point much more unknown, acted alongside him, looking capable against maybe the best actor ever. I’m shocked he didn’t explode after this role, but he’s here now, thankfully.
Score: 4.75/5
The Great Alone
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah is positively brilliant. It works so well as a metaphor for domestic violence, using that as a central plot device, but setting things in a remote Alaska town off the grid also serves as an illustration of how isolating it can be. It does a phenomenal job illustrating why some women can’t or won’t leave those situations while also painting, at least in this case, the perpetrator in a fair light since the antagonist is suffering from extreme PTSD here.
Score: 4.75/5
John Wick: Chapter 4
Action movies just don’t get much better than John Wick: Chapter 4. I’ll take a few of the Mission: Impossible movies over it (partly thanks to Tom Cruise’s epic dedication), but the list is very short. The action is breathtaking, but what really sets it apart is some otherworldly camerawork. There’s an overhead tracking shot in the climax that is jaw-dropping. It’s literally a perfect film.
Score: 5/5
Conclusion
It was an insanely full month of media consumption, led by the movies that I seemed to endlessly watch all hours of the day. It was a fantastic chance to clear out some of the old watchlist, and November seems poised to be much the same.
