It is a very good week for new Blu-ray/4K releases. There are tons of cool stuff to choose from but I had to go with a bit of a nostalgic choice. I have very fond memories of watching those classic Charlie Brown specials when I was a kid and this new boxed set includes 40 different specials/movies, most of which I haven’t seen but I’d love to dig into them.
You can read all about it and more by clicking here.
Yorgos Lanthimos is one of the most creative, strange, and incredible directors working today. Dogtooth was his second feature film, and it might be his strangest.
It is about a man and a woman with three adult children. The children have never been let out of the house/garden. They are regularly taught false meanings to everyday words. They believe they have a fourth sibling, whom was bad and thus was sent to live outside of the yard and to whom they regularly talk to and throw gifts (but who doesn’t actually exist.) Etc. Basically the parents had children to experiment on them.
It gets even weirder but that would spoil the film. It is utterly bizarre but like all Lanthimos films there is something deeper going on behind the strangeness. I loved it, but I don’t know that I’ll ever want to watch it again.
You can read my full review here.
Three best friends come together one year after a terrible tragedy. It has been a difficult year, not only because of that tragedy but because it ripped their friendship apart. They have gathered in the Appalachian Mountains, along with three other women, for a little spelunking adventure, and hopefully to mend their friendship back together.
As one might surmise, things do not go that well for them. As some of the girls are not hardcore cavers the initial plan is to take a relatively easy expedition. Not too easy, mind you, as all the girls are adventurers and like a good challenge, but nothing too difficult or dangerous. As you might surmise, that plan is dropped. One of the girls, without telling the others, leads them to an uncharted and unnamed cave.
After a brief introduction of the characters and the setup, director Neil Marshall literally drops us into the main action. To get into the cave, they have to drop a good hundred feet straight down. The film makes great use of the setting’s darkness. Things are only illuminated by flashlights, the red glare of flares, and occasionally phosphorescent rocks. It uses the tight, claustrophobic spaces to great effect as well. There are times when our characters must squeeze through the tiniest of openings, or avoid falling into dark pits. The danger is palpable.
A cave-in pushes them into desperation. With no map or guidebook, they’ll have to use their wits to get out. And then something even more terrifying occurs. They realize they are not alone. The last chunk of the film moves into more gore-centered slasher territory, which I found to be a letdown. But until then, The Descent is one hell of a thrill ride.
An interesting side note. I originally watched this when I was living in Shanghai, China. About the only way to see films there was to buy bootleg DVDs. With those, you never knew what you were going to get. Sometimes they were cam rips, created by literally filming it inside a movie theater. Other times you’d get some old VHS rip. It was difficult to watch non-English films because the subtitles were often translations of the Chinese translations of the original language.
Usually they were rips of the DVD releases, and even then you never knew what you were going to get. I watched a copy of Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake, and when I went to read the reviews, I realized the film I watched was not the same film everyone else was talking about. I had some kind of alternate cut.
While watching The Descent on the Criterion Channel, I realized the ending was different from my memories. Looking it up, I found there is an American version and a much bleaker European cut. I guess I originally watched the European cut.
Robert Zemeckis had an incredible run in the 1980s through the 1990s. It started with Romancing the Stone in 1984 and ran through the Back to the Future Trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Death Becomes Her, and Contact. I was a big fan. When I learned he was making a thriller with Michelle Pfeiffer and Harrison Ford, I was completely on board. I believe I saw it opening weekend in the theater. I was highly disappointed. I’ve not seen it since.
The Criterion Channel is currently running a bunch of horror films from the 2000s. This is one of them. Lately, I’ve been revisiting films from my youth that I didn’t much care for at the time to see if the decades since might have made me more attuned to their wavelength. This is especially true for films that my critic friends seem to like.
So, I figured it was time to revisit this one and see if I’ve changed my mind. Friends, it still stinks. Well, okay, it isn’t that bad, but it is a bit of a mess.
This is basically Zemeckis doing Hitchcock, but that’s not really a thing in his wheelhouse.
It begins like a Rear Window homage. Claire Spencer (Pfeiffer) and her husband, Norman (Ford) live in a big, beautiful, lakeside house in Vermont. He’s a fancy researcher at a fancy college. She gave up her musical career to be a mom. As the film begins, they are saying goodbye to their daughter, who is headed off to college. Claire is having a hard time with this. She’s lonely and bored.
She notices the new neighbors are often fighting. Loudly. One rainy night she spies him loading something (a big covered something) into the trunk of his car. Did he just murder his wife? Suspicions run even higher when she stops by with a welcoming package and realizes that the wife’s car is in the garage, but she seems to be gone. And the husband is being cagey.
But just as that idea gets going, the film shifts gears. Now Claire is seeing ghosts. She hears whispers, the front door keeps finding itself open, and the bath is filled with hot water when nobody’s home.
All of this works well enough. Ford and Pfeiffer are too good of actors, and Zemekis too talented a director for it not to, but it never rises above. It never quite thrilled me. I never really believed the ghost angle, and without that there isn’t much more to the story. I kept half expecting the neighbor to show back up and to be an actual killer. I think I would have preferred that to what we actually get.
The trailer for the film famously spoils half the movie and the big twist towards the end. I won’t do that in case you haven’t seen it. The first time I watched the film, I felt the ending really killed the film’s momentum, but this time I found the final act to be the most interesting. That’s when Zemeckis goes into full Hitchcock mode, allowing himself to move away from the problematic script (by Clark Gregg!) and into pure direction. Although, I’ll still admit there are some really silly bits to its conclusion.
It isn’t a terrible film, just not a great one. And with the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see how this marks the beginning of a downside to the director and his two stars.
One Battle After Another (2025)
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio Del Toro, and Chase Infiniti
When their evil enemy resurfaces after 16 years, a group of ex-revolutionaries reunite to rescue one of their own’s daughter.
Rating: 8/10
I’ve been hearing raves about this film, and I really wanted to see it in a theater, so when I got off work a little early today, I went to a matinee. The show started at 3, and I arrived about 7 minutes till. I bought my ticket and my snacks (Junior Mints and a Dr. Pepper – a rarity for me, as my wife always makes me get popcorn).
The guy behind the counter told me the theater number, but I didn’t pay him much mind, as they have posters up in front of each entrance. I wandered down the hall one way, then the other, and finally found my theater.
It was completely empty. Surprisingly, they didn’t have any commercials or trailers playing on the screen. It was completely dark. I figured since I was the only one there and I had just bought my ticket, they weren’t bothering with the usual pre-movie nonsense.
Time passed, and soon it was five minutes past three. Then ten. Still no movie. And it was hot. I was literally starting to sweat. I got up and went back to the guy who sold me the ticket. I politely explained the movie wasn’t running and asked if he could turn down the air. He said he’d tell his manager, and I went back and sat down.
Another five minutes rolled by, and now I’m getting annoyed. The movie is a long one, and I don’t want to be here all night.
Then the guy comes in. He sheepishly says he’s figured out the problem. I’m in the wrong theater. Those posters in front of the entrance are digital displays, and they’ve got them all wrong. It is now fifteen minutes past the hour, and I’m afraid I’ve missed the start of the movie. I curse, then rush to the correct theater. Luckily, they are still showing previews, and I’m good to go.
Paul Thomas Anderson is a director I really like, but I find his films difficult at first watch. They are usually long and dense, and their points of view are off-kilter, which can make them difficult to grasp.
I usually have to sit with them for a while and then maybe watch again before I decide to really love them.
And so it was with One Battle After Another. I liked it a lot, but I’m not ready to love it. I need to think about it for a bit.
Leonardo DiCaprio is very good as a former revolutionary who seems to have really gotten into it for a girl and who isn’t all that bright. Years after a big dustup between his group and a racist Army dude (played to perfection by Sean Penn) pass, and he’s now a slack-jawed stoner trying to raise a teenage girl. The Sean Penn character comes back into the picture, and things get wild.
Really wild. The name is apt because this is a film that very rarely lets up. The performances are all top-notch, and there is plenty of black humor, crazy absurdities, and more. I really did like it, but like I said, I need to sit with it a bit.
As the title of this post implies, I’m back with the idea of writing little mini-reviews of all the movies I watch. Let’s see how long I keep up with it this time.
I just wrote my new Five Cool Things for Cinema Sentries which you can read here. Of course I’ve written lots of other things for Cinema Sentries since I started taking a break on this blog. I’ll try to regularly post those and then go back and post all the other things I’ve written for them and never posted here. Plus some new stuff as well.
Hello, friends. It has been a long time. Obviously, I haven’t been doing much writing in these pages of late. Before I disappeared, I talked a little bit about how my hit counter for this site was abysmal. People just don’t come here anymore.
There are probably lots of reasons for that, most of which are out of my control. The few things that I could do to get me more readers would feel more like work than fun and probably wouldn’t garner that many more visitors anyhow.
However, I find I still love this site. I still like writing about movies and music and whatever else I’ve got on my mind. I’ve been thinking about returning for a little while now, but the calendar rolling over to October has pushed me to just start writing again.
One of the first movie themes I created was 31 Days of Horror, and I just can’t not write about horror movies in October. I’m not sure how much I’ll do. I’d like to return to doing the Friday Night Horror Movie and my Picks of the Week. I’ll probably write at least a few horror movie reviews and maybe a few other things. I imagine I’ll post stuff I’ve written for Cinema Sentries here like I used to.
I’m sure I’ll stick around for Noirvember as well, but after that…well, we’ll just have to wait and see.
But I don’t know what the future holds. I may get fed up with this again and drop completely out. Or I may find some alternative place to post my words. Probably I’ll just keep writing things here whenever I feel like it.
I want to say that I’ll only post when I want to, that it will be a casual thing. That I don’t want to push myself to post things because then it becomes unfun. But the truth is I need a little bit of a push. If I don’t, then I get lazy and don’t do anything.
I’m also in the process of moving all the posts on the music site back to this one. It just seems silly to keep that music site if I’m not going to post any more music. But I’d hate to lose those old posts and the many comments you all left on them. I actually have some ideas about doing some music posts again (without download links), but I’ll save that discussion for another day.
Anyway, here I am, back for now. Since September just ended and I haven’t yet watched any horror movies, I thought I’d begin with my monthly wrap up. And here we go.
I watched 32 movies in September. Twenty three of them were new to me. Eight of them were made before I was born. My theme for the month was The Seventies in September, and I watched ten movies from that decade.
I’ve now watched 337 movies this year. Twenty one of them are from 2025. 73 percent of them have been new to me.
Willem Dafoe is tied with Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant for first place in my most watched actors category. The latter of which are due to me watching a full season’s worth of their Doctor Whos.
Johnnie To and David Lynch remain at the top of my director’s list with four films watched.
And that’s it. I do hope to keep writing, just for fun. Maybe I’ll get more readers, maybe I won’t. But if you enjoy my words, please do leave a comment, as that helps a great deal. And here’s the full list.
Ballerina (2025) ****
Dogtooth (2009) ****
Mystic Pizza (1988) ***
Rebel Ridge (2024) ****1/2
The Rapacious Jailbreaker (1974) ****
Mark Strikes Again (1976) **
Practical Magic (1998) **
The Raven (2012) ***/12
Peking Opera Blues (1986) ****
The Man Who Cheated Himself (1950) ***1/2
The Great Gatsby (1974) **
The Thursday Murder Club (2025) ***
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1980 (2009) ***1/2
Honey Don’t! (2025) ***1/2
Dracula (1958) ****
The Fog (1980) ****
When a Stranger Calls (1979) ***
The Craft (1996) ***1/2
Red Riding: The Year of Our Lord 1974 (2009) ***1/2
5 Fingers (1952) ***1/2
Alucarda (1977) ***1/2
The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) ***1/2
Highest 2 Lowest (2025) ****
All the President’s Men (1976) ****1/2
Sisters (1972) ****
City of Ghosts (2002) **1/2
Blithe Spirit (2020) **1/2
The Devils (1971) ****
Winter Kills (1979) ***1/2
The Crow (1994) ****
Sorcerer (1977) ****1/2
The Witch: Part 1. The Subversion (2018) ***1/2
The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil (2019) ****
On July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan plugged in and performed live with an electric guitar and an amplified rock and roll band for the first time ever. It would be stretching things to say this moment forever changed history, but its impact on the folk music scene and its influence on popular music cannot be overstated.
For the 60th anniversary of this momentous occasion, the Bob Dylan Center sponsored a concert at the historic Cain’s Ballroom in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on July 26, 2025.. An all-star cast of musicians performed songs by Bob Dylan from that era.
Led by musical director Lee Renaldo of Sonic Youth, the house band featured Nels Cline (Wilco) on guitar, Ethan Miller (Howlin’ Rain) on bass, Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth) on drums, and Mikael Jorgenson (Wilco) on keyboards. Rotating through was a selection of guests, including John Doe (X), Robyn Hitchcock, Emma Swift, Sunny War, Dean & Brita (Luna), plus Joy Harjo, the current artist in residence at the Dylan Center, and Doug Keith, the musical director.
There were actually two shows performed this night, an early show that started at 6:30 and a late performance starting at 9:00. The wife and I opted for the early performance. It would be nice, we thought, to get home from a concert before midnight. And they had seats (a rarity for the Cain’s), and we are old. We’ve attended many concerts at this venue, and while it is one of my favorites, I have to admit its usual standing room only status leaves my back aching by the end of the night.
Things got started with “Most Likely You Go Your Way (And I’ll Go Mine),” an odd choice since Dylan didn’t debut the song in concert until 1974, but a rollicking one. They played it like those electric songs at Newport – fiercely, like it could veer completely out of control at any minute.
Emma Swift then came out to sing a lovely version of “The Times They Are A-Changin'”.” I gotta admit, folks, I teared up at that one. There was something electric in the air (pun intended, I guess). Everyone seemed to know this was something special. To hear these amazing musicians playing these amazing songs, songs that everybody there knew and loved, was incredible.
There were a couple of more times when the band played the songs like Dylan and his Band back in the early days, but mostly they made them their own.
I didn’t keep notes, so I won’t go through the setlist one by one. I’m not likely to remember who sang what. But I’ll try to give a good overview.
Everyone was clearly excited to be there. These are all busy, working musicians with their own songs to sing, their own tour to play. But they took time out to come celebrate Bob Dylan. Renaldo especially seemed to be having the time of his life. You could see him lip synching along, off-mike, to many of the songs as someone else took the vocals.
I’m a very casual fan of Luna, so I wouldn’t have been able to pick Dean & Brita out of a lineup, but as soon as he started to sing, I realized immediately who they were. They did their songs like duets. Their version of “Just Like a Woman” was especially sweet and beautiful.
I’m not particularly well-versed in John Doe or X, but he exuded an old-school cool on his two songs, and he was one of the only ones who actually spoke to the audience.
I’m not familiar with Sunny War at all, but she laid it down for “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” the only one of the night to do any kind of Dylan impression. She seemed quite shy, slipping on and off the stage like she hoped nobody would notice her.
I’m sure Joy Harjo is a fine poet, but she’s not a great singer. She was way off key, loud, and honestly, just bad. She sang like a poet, using her own rhythms and phrasings. I’m not opposed to that, Dylan often messes with the phrasings of his songs, but she couldn’t seem to quite get all the words out of her mouth before the music had moved on. And in songs like “Mr. Tambourine Man” when there are a lot of words, that just came out awful.
All of the other guests came out on a rotating basis, but the legendary Robyn Hitchcock played his two songs one right after the other. He played a terrific version of “Highway 61 Revisited” and then absolutely nailed “Desolation Row” with just him and Nels Cline on the stage. He called it one of the greatest songs ever written and “also one of the longest.” But he got all the lyrics just exactly perfect, and I never saw him once look at the teleprompter. Again, this was a group of musicians who just love the songs of Bob Dylan.
MVP of the night was Nels Cline. I’ve seen him multiple times with Wilco (several times at this venue) and at least once in those shows I’ll turn to my wife and say “Nels Fucking Cline!” – usually just after a mind-melting solo. The man is an absolute beast on guitar. This night he was more subdued, and more nuanced. On the big rock songs he jammed with the best of him, but on the softer ballads, he added beautiful textures and on “Desolation Ro,w” his took an acoustic guitar and made perfect Spanish sounding melodies. He was the only musician to stay on state the entire night.
But really the entire band was first-rate – world-class musicians filled with joy, playing music they love. This was not necessarily the greatest concert I’ve ever attended but it was probably the most fun I’ve ever had.
Everybody came out at the end for “Like a Rolling Stone.” It was an obvious choice – Renaldo even said so, while Hitchcock quipped (at least its not “Forever Young”). It was a fine version with everyone getting a verse and with faces filled with joy.
You can see the full setlist here.
Horror often relies on putting characters in unfamiliar places. They might be somewhere remote and isolated, where help cannot be found. Or maybe they are in a different culture where they do not understand the language or customs. Putting our protagonists somewhere they do not feel safe gives us an immediate sense of dread.
Get Away falls in the tradition of films like The Wicker Man (1973) or Midsommar (2019) where are protagonists are both isolated from the outside world and surrounded by a strange and unfamiliar culture. It then plays with those conventions, subverting them in interesting and fun ways.
Richard (Nick Frost, who also wrote the script) and Susan (Aisling Bea), along with their two children, Sam (Sebastian Croft) and Jessie (Maisie Ayres), are taking a holiday on a tiny island off the coast of Sweden. They are looking forward to the island’s annual celebration of Karantan (where islanders nearly starved to death, resorting to cannibalism due to some forced quarantining).
Before they even arrive at the island, they are given the side-eye by the locals who warn them they won’t be welcomed there. They barely make the last ferry (which naturally won’t return for several days) and arrive on the island where they are greeted by scorn.
The one friendly face, Mats (Eero Milonoff), is the one who rented them the Airbnb, and he turns out to be a pervert, spying on Jessie and stealing her undergarments.
For the first hour, the film relies on the tropes of these sorts of films – miscommunications over cultural differences, an increasing sense of unease – and then it takes a big twist. I won’t spoil it, but unless you really aren’t paying attention, you’ll probably figure it out long before the film wants you to. It is a bit strange that it takes the film so long to get to that twist, because what comes after is where everybody seems to be having the most fun.
At that point, the unease turns into a straight-up gore fest with loads of well-done practical effects and very fun kills.
It is a film that isn’t nearly as clever as it needs to be, or funny, but it isn’t a bad cinematic experience. I like Nick Frost quite a lot, and it’s fun to see him just being weird and having a good time. I just wish I enjoyed myself as much as he seems to have.
My daughter has gotten into Manga and Anime in a big way, so I try to watch some of that with her. We’d both heard of the Evangelion series, but neither of us really knew anything about it. It is a confusing franchise as there are numerous series and movies, with reboots and rebuilds thrown into the mix.
We more or less randomly decided to start with this film, which is essentially a retelling of the original Neon Genesis Evangelion TV series. That series isn’t available on our streaming services, but this film is on Crunchyroll, and since it basically retells the original story, we figured it was as good a place as any to start with.
Having now seen the film, I’m not so sure that was true. I found much of the story quite confusing, and it very much feels like I’m missing a large part of the lore.
The film drops you right into the middle of it, without explanation. Best I can figure is that sometime in the past, these giant Kaiju creatures known as Angels came to Earth, nearly destroying it. Humans have now built Mech-Warrior-type robots, called Evangelions, to fight back.
For reasons that are never really explained, the head leader dude taps his estranged 14-year-old son to pilot one of the Evangelion robot thingies. Though he is very young and has had zero training, they pop him into it and ask him to fight an incoming Angel.
He fumbles at first, nearly destroying the machine and killing himself, but miraculously, he recovers and destroys the angel. After some unspecified amount of time, another Angel arrives, and basically the same thing happens. Shinji is placed back into the Evangelion; he has no idea what he’s doing, but after taking some losses, he somehow finds a way to destroy the angel. Rinse, repeat.
In between these battles, he talks with his guardian Misato and becomes friends with Rei, another Evangelion pilot who was previously injured. Shinji only pilots his machine reluctantly, being essentially forced to do it, but Rei willingly takes it on with a sense of duty and honor.
It ends with a cliffhanger and some weirdness.
I seriously don’t know what to make of this film. I understood the basic plotlines, but so much of it was left unexplained. It felt very much like I was supposed to have watched the original series, even though this seems like it was designed as a straight retelling of it with updated animation.
There is a lot of mythology built into it that I simply don’t understand. I kind of hated it, but I also want to watch more. There is something about it that is truly interesting and I’d like to dig into that, but I’m not sure whether to watch the next movie or go back to the original series.
themidnightcafe.org 