Mission Impossible (1996)
Crazy to think that this movie is thirty years old. Well, I say that, but so much of this movie is aged. From the dial up internet and bad technology, to the style and cinematography.
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Home Alone 1 and 2
It's hard for me to explain why, but I found myself greatly disliking the second movie's decision to further rely on slapstick and painful moments with the thieves. I haven't watched Home Alone 2 in a long time and so the rewatch today made me realize how far it trails the first in my overall enjoyment.
I realize they're kid movies and may as well be cartoons, but the painful moments definitely hit harder (no pun intended) and are less entertaining for me in the second movie than the first's, which I still find largely enjoyable and nostalgic.
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Running Man (2025) - 2 or 5 Hunters
An especially important and poignant commentary on society and modern entertainment, but nothing particularly life changing as far as movies go.
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Frankenstein (2025)
Overall, I quite enjoyed it. It didn't blow me away, but it was classic Guillermo del Toro doing what he does. Also, I restrained myself to only shouting out "It's Franken-steen!" once while watching.
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Thunderbolts* (2025)
I didn't love this one the way other people did, but it's still a decent MCU flick, and of the recent era it's great.
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Naked Gun (2025)
Okay, that movie was fucking hilarious. And so true to the vision and experience of the first. Liam Neeson killed it.
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Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)
I haven't loved an MI movie since maybe... 3? I don't know. Finally checked this one out and... woof. Good riddance to this series, maybe we can get a new action star series going..
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The Thursday Murder Club (2025)
Such a disappointing film with such a murderer's row of talent in the cast. I think some of what I attribute to low quality in the film is more of a purposeful schlock for the genre and feel they were going for.
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Superman (2025)
We finally watched this at home, never made it to the theaters for it. It was... fine. I think my expectations were too high going in.
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The Amateur (2025)
Just flat and ultimately slow moving. I should have loved it but I didn't.
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Nonnas (2025)
Put on Nonnas today and found it cute but overall nothing amazing. It's a feel good Vince Vaughn movie with a few notable faces and some delicious sounding and looking Italian food.
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Fountain of Youth (2025)
The movie is not amazing. It's the latest in the lineage of Indiana Jones, the Librarian, and National Treasure. But, it is not an amazing movie. I hope it does well enough they get to do another one and perhaps find their groove.
Also, I legit can't remember much of the soundtrack at all, but there is a Thai version of 'Bang Bang' at the start of the movie which is a banger:
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Chef (2014)
Still a fantastic movie. Makes me realize I really need to get a panini press.
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Mission Impossible (1996)
Crazy to think this movie is 29 years old. I remember seeing it when it came and even then thinking it was kind of hokey. I was also pissed off they killed Emilio Estevez.
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The 'Sinners' Movie's Syllabus
Looks to be an incredible list of resources and things to further research into key areas of the movie, from Jim Crow and the Mississippi Delta, to the blues, the great migration, and more. Wow.
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Sinners (2025) - 4.5/5 Cigarettes
I went and saw Sinners yesterday and ended up really enjoying it. The story was really really good and it kept me engaged the entire way through. What surprised me was how amazing the soundtrack was, including this song. But even more than the song was the cinematography in the movie during this song.
This movie also reminded Katie and I how much we like Blues music, so I added a bunch of blues music to our audio library. B. B. King, Robert Johnson, Albert King, Buddy Guy, and others. So much good stuff.
After seeing the movie and posting about it, my feed on TikTok and YouTube has since been inundated with content about the behind-the-scenes for the film, and interviews with Coogler and Michael B. Jordan. And, I'm not mad. This is a really good movie and I'm so thankful we're seeing it succeed.
As I said on my Bluesky post yesterday, I feel that calling Sinners a horror film is a disservice to it as it turns a number of people off from watching it. Myself included. Had it not been Coogler + Jordan in the movie, I likely would have let it pass. But I am a fan of both of them and so I did some further research and determined that it was within a sphere that I was likely comfortable with. I would call it a Suspense / Action movie.
To me, horror is the sphere of movies which are the SAW franchise, or "Final Destination" etc. (none of which I've seen.) And this is more of a supernatural action + suspense.
None of the jump scares were gratuitous just to generate a reaction from the audience. None of the gore was over-the-top. There was no drawn out grown sense of fear hammered into the viewer.
This led me to consider using radar charts for showing what a movie's horror is. Giving a better sense of how gory it is, or how much it's about the audience fear rather than the story on screen. I know a big part of horror movies is surprise and not knowing what's coming, but I don't think hardcore horror lovers gain much from a chart like what I'm talking about.
I haven't made any charts, and as someone who avoids horror films, I definitely don't know enough about the genre to even know how to adequately encompass the genre. But, it feels like an interesting idea.
This idea then jumped to the idea of using a radar chart for straight movie rating. And thus, this evening, after doing a quick bit of mowing part of my backyard until the mower's battery died, and after making dinner, I have come up with a function that can be used to generate movie rating radars.
I'll write more about it, the method, etc. But I really like this idea for how to rate movies. I can go back and start rating movies like this, and then even pull two movies and compare how their ratings are drawn. I'm still deciding on the scoring axes, though I feel pretty good about these ones.
However I'm going to start sharing it with friends and we'll see what feedback people smarter than me have!
Footnote:
[1] - Cigarettes are bad. Don't do them. They're used for this rating thematically based on the film.
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G20 (2025) - 3/5 Australian Accents
I love Viola Davis and will watch her in anything. Overall, this movie was fine and entertaining, but I doubt I'll ever watch it again.
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The Gorge (2025) - 2 out of 5 stars
This was... fine? Left me relatively unsatisfied. The ending felt rushed.
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Love Hurts (2025) - 2.5 of 5 Valentine's Day Cards
I posted on Bluesky yesterday after seeing the movie that it reminded me of Bullet Train. Not as good, but in the same vein as an action movie with absurdist humor interspersed.
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