Heretic (2024)

I hadn't heard of this title when I found it in the library, but a summary mentioning Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, the same directors as A Quiet Place (not Part II), convinced me to give it a try. Given the religious focus, I opted out of inviting a friend, in case we strongly disagreed on it.

On a rainy day in Boulder, two young adult Mormon missionaries, Sister Paxton (Chloe East) and more experienced Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher), visit the home of one Mr. Reed (Hugh Grant), who previously expressed interest in discussion of their faith. They gradually realize that despite his amiable demeanor, he'd rather proselytize to them, albeit remaining cagey about "the one true religion." More importantly, he's dishonest and manipulative. Then they discover that the old-fashioned house is designed not to be exited easily or allow phone signals. Reed claims they're free to go; they just have to make careful choices first....

Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms (2018)

It had been surprisingly long since my last anime movie that was unambiguously a fantasy. All I knew about this one was the cover image, but it seemed promising as a departure from my latest viewings.

In what I'd call a flintlock fantasy, Maquia belongs to a human(oid?) race called the Iorph, who stop physically aging in adolescence. They live in a secluded utopia until an invasion by the Mezarte kingdom, bent on learning how to replicate their longevity. In the commotion, Maquia, then age 15, rides a Renato (read: six-eyed wyvern) and ends up far away. She discovers and adopts a newborn orphaned boy, whom she dubs Ariel. Over the course of decades, she must find her place with regard to Mezarte society, the surviving Iorph, and Ariel.

Hamnet (2025)

Of the year's Academy Best Picture nominees I hadn't seen, this was the one I most wanted to see. I hadn't heard that Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes were among the producers, nor that it got more Oscar nods than anything else directed by a woman. I just like Hamlet and take interest in anything related to it.

The story begins shortly before William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), then a teacher of Latin in Stratford-upon-Avon, meets Agnes/Anne Hathaway (Jessie Buckley) while she tames a hawk in the woods. Despite disapproval from both their families, they go on to get married and have three kids. William spends little time around them, because he works far away. He'll regret not being there when his only son, Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), is in critical condition....

Beasts of No Nation (2015)

For all its plaudits, this bombed at the box office. Some theaters declined to play it because it also went straight to Netflix streaming. Plus, I suspect that many prospective viewers were reluctant to watch such a dark story in an immersive environment with no pause option. Well, there's no better time for me to check out something bleak than right after a fun flick.

The film was shot in Ghana, with some lines in Krio and Twi, but honors its title by not specifying where in West Africa it's set. The decade is hard to guess too. Amid a civil war, prepubescent boy Agu (Abraham Attah) gets separated from some of his relatives and witnesses the killing of the rest. He runs into a rebel battalion, whose unnamed Commandant (Idris Elba) recruits him with an almost fatherly approach. That's not much if any better than wandering the wilderness alone....

Bugonia (2025)

Nobody on screen says the title. It's a Greek type of ritual sacrifice once thought to produce bees, which appear sometimes herein for an analogy. That's about the only reason I felt the need to look at the movie's Wikipedia page, because the plot's easy to remember.

Cousins Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis) kidnap pharma CEO Michelle (Emma Stone) and hold her in Teddy's house. Teddy is fully convinced that she is a high-ranking alien from the Andromeda Galaxy responsible for the slow ruination of many things for humanity. He demands that Michelle arrange a meeting between him and the Andromedan emperor on the lunar eclipse, which comes four days after the kidnapping. The longer Michelle doesn't do as Teddy bids, the less inclined he is to choose civility over rage. Slightly complicating matters are periodic check-ins by deputy Casey (Stavros Halkias), Teddy's former abusive sitter.

Walking Tall (1973)

I didn't recall hearing about this cult movie when YouTube suggested it, but it got two sequels, a TV series, a TV remake, and a big-screen remake trilogy starring Dwayne Johnson. It also takes inspiration from real events, tho they've since been disputed enough that I won't add my "true story" tag. Indeed, last year, investigators accused the long-deceased protagonist of uxoricide. That would not affect my feelings about the film version.

In 1964, ex-wrestler Buford Pusser (Joe Don Baker) moves back from Chicago to Adamsville, Tennessee, with his wife (Elizabeth Hartman) and kids (Leif Garrett and Dawn Lyn Nervik), planning to work as a logger for his dad (Noah Beery Jr.). His mom (Lurene Tuttle) cryptically warns him to ignore changes in town, but that's not easy when an old buddy (Ed Call) invites him to a casino. He catches the staff cheating, and they beat him within an inch of his life and steal his car. Then he discovers that the sheriff he used to look up to (Gene Evans) is worse than useless and the local judge (Douglas Fowley), while apparently staying within the bounds of the law, is not much better. So much for Buford's promise not to fight anymore....

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

I saved this for one of my last viewings of Best Picture nominees from 2022 because, well, just look at the title. Only recently did I learn that it's partly comic. Netflix will stop streaming it soon, and I had 147 minutes to kill, so I obliged.

Few films have such an explicit three-act structure. First we get a few scenes involving models Carl (Harris Dickinson) and Yaya (Charlbi Dean), who are dating but prone to argumentation over financial matters. Part 2, on a luxury yacht in an unspecified waterway, splits the focus among many customers and staffers. Carl and Yaya get a little more central again when they are among eight castaways on an island, shaking up the social order. (The title is what someone in the modeling industry calls an area of the face, but it works on multiple levels.)

Sinners (2025)

I don't recall ever going to a theater two nights in a row before. But I was getting tired of knowing so few Best Picture nominees ahead of the Academy Awards. This one makes four for me, and it has the best shot among them at winning.

Sammie (Miles Caton), against the wishes of his preacher dad (Saul William), decides to use his blues singing and guitar skills at a new rural juke joint run by his older twin cousins, "Smoke" and "Stack" (both Michael B. Jordan), who are thuggish yet charismatic to anyone they don't rob or attack. This being 1932 Mississippi, it's only a matter of time until the Black-centric establishment gets unwelcome attention. Well, the Ku Klux Klan shows up in force only near the end, but an even worse menace plagues opening night....

The Secret Agent (2025)

No, nothing to do with the Joseph Conrad novel by the same title, just similarly big on corruption and tragedy. It wasn't high among my priorities for watching before the Academy Awards, but it was the only Best Picture nominee showing at a convenient time and place last night.

Most of the scenes take place on or near Carnaval 1977 in the vicinity of Recife, Brazil. Yup, it's under that government. Armando, once a researcher, has adopted the alias of Marcelo because of his dissidence, and his allies help him get clerical work in an ID office. He tries to live as normally as possible, reconnecting with his young son, who has been living with the parents of Armando's dead wife. He also reluctantly accepts protection from a corrupt civil police chief, for what that's worth when a personal enemy hires a hit man.

Deepwater Horizon (2016)

Wow, it's been that long already? ...Since the depicted incident, I mean. I don't recall the screen adaptation from an article being advertised when new, which may explain the poor box office performance despite rave reviews and award wins and nods. Regardless, I got curious to learn more.

In 2010, technician Mike Williams (Mark Wahlberg) says goodbye to wife Felicia (Kate Hudson) and starts work on the titular oil rig off the Louisiana coast. He and manager Jimmy Harrell (Kurt Russell) soon discover lots of problems, such as a nonfunctional phone system, and persuade the visiting stingy BP managers, Donald Vidrine (John Malkovich) and Robert Kaluza (Brad Leland), to approve more testing. The real trouble begins with a cement bond failure....

The Children's Hour (1961)

This adaptation of a Lillian Hellman play got mixed reviews and did not cover expenses at the box office, but when YouTube suggested it to me, I noticed the high ratings on modern boards. Besides, I was in the mood for an Audrey Hepburn piece, and this one sounded quite different from the same year's Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Karen (Hepburn) and Martha (Shirley MacLaine) run a girls' boarding school. For the first half hour, their struggles include some unruly students; Martha's annoyance at her conceited Aunt Lily (Miriam Hopkins) on staff; Karen dragging her heels about marrying the school's go-to physician, Joe (James Garner); and Martha worrying what will happen to the school when they do marry. But all those troubles get overshadowed when every student suddenly gets pulled out of the school. What rumor could be so ugly that the headmistresses take forever just to hear an explanation?

Train Dreams (2025)

Had I realized that this was a Netflix movie, I wouldn't have seen it in a theater. But I'm kinda glad I did, partly because I supported my favorite local theater and partly because a large screen and loud speakers enhance the dramatic experience. We don't usually think about that for mere dramas.

Despite copious narration by Will Patton, I had to look up the Denis Johnson novella to tell when the story begins: the 1910s. It ends in 1968, and I'm not sure how many decades in between are represented. In any case, Robert Grainier (Joel Edgerton) works first as a railroad builder, then as a lumberjack, and eventually as a carriage driver, all in rural Idaho. In trying to make ends meet, he doesn't get to spend as much time with wife Gladys (Felicity Jones) and cute young daughter Kate as they'd all like. And he sees far more deaths than he'd like.

Frankenstein (2025)

When I learned that I hadn't seen any of the Academy Best Picture nominees for the year, I chose the first one I could find. Ordinarily, I save arguable horror movies for October. I say "arguable" because Wikipedia characterizes it as "Gothic science fiction drama." That's fair enough.

The movie begins near the end, when 19th-century Danish sailors find a nearly dead Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) in the Arctic and try to protect him from his raging creation (Jacob Elordi). In the captain's cabin, Victor tells Captain Andersen (Lars Mikkelsen) the first half of the story. Then the creature shows up and takes the narration from there. In the small chance you don't know the gist, Victor stitched together parts from different corpses and brought the gestalt to life but didn't raise him properly, leaving him put upon by society and violently resentful.

Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993)

I know it hasn't been long since my last superhero movie, but this one promised to be rather different. Besides, people have long told me it's one of the best Batman animated features, if not the best ever, and I never saw it offered on Netflix when I looked. When YouTube suggested it, I couldn't resist for long.

A creepy new vigilante (masked voice by Stacy Keach) has been hunting down and killing unthemed Gotham mob bosses. Unlike Holiday in The Long Halloween, Phantasm keeps getting mistaken the superficially similar Batman (Kevin Conroy). Commissioner Jim Gordon (Bob Hastings) doesn't believe it, but City Councilman Arthur Reeves (Hart Bochner) sends the police after Batman with authorization of deadly force.

The Hunger Games (2012)

After all the post-apocalyptic horror movies I watched in October, I thought it'd be a while before I tried another dystopia. But when YouTube suggested this one to me, I thought it was a pretty big hole in my cultural education. Besides, at least the dystopia is legalistic and orderly for a change.

In the future nation of Panem, an annual televised competition has two 12- to 18-year-olds from each of 12 districts live in a rigged woodland until only one survives, with an expectation that some deaths will be at each other's hands. They're usually drafted by lottery, having greater odds of being picked the more they accept government rations, but Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), 16, volunteers to replace her younger sister (Willow Shields). The other "tribute" from her district is her friend Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), who has wanted to be more than a friend to her, but the rules have erased his hope. Katniss, however, does not adopt a loner attitude....

I'm Still Here (2024)

Not to be confused with the 2010 Joaquin Phoenix flick of the same title. I've been dragging my heels about watching the latest Academy Best Picture nominees, because few of them look like my type. I finally decided to go ahead with another when it came up on Netflix, not knowing much about it.

In 1970, military-run Brazil faces a lot of unrest. The Paiva family in Rio de Janeiro gets a taste of it when officers thoroughly search motorists for suspects. More importantly, Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) has been supporting expats, which his wife, Eunice (Fernanda Torres), and their five kids don't seem to know -- until plainclothesmen arrest him. Asking about him yields incomplete answers at best and follow-up punishment at worst.

Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992)

A quarter century ago, I saw the second half of this thanks to my roommate. I felt like I'd seen enough, but more recently, I've wanted the complete picture. It was one of the most popular Netflix horror offerings I hadn't seen in full and one of the last influential and arguably great works of Francis Ford Coppola, with only The Rainmaker for competition since.

Toward the end of the 19th century, the Romanian count (Gary Oldman) gets help from suspicious English lawyer Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) to move to England. Dracula sees a picture of Harker's fiancée, Wilhelmina Murray (Winona Ryder), and is strongly reminded of his own bygone wife. He sees fit to let his harem restrain Harker by exsanguination while he goes off to court Mina, in addition to satisfying his infamous other appetite. When Mina's friend Lucy Westenra (Sadie Frost) exhibits strange physical and mental symptoms, fiancé Arthur Holmwood (Cary Elwes) reluctantly turns to the expertise of Professor Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins), who quickly determines the cause....

28 Days Later (2002)

The series got a threequel this year, so I thought I'd finally give the original a go. Had I known that Danny Boyle was directing, I'd've braced for more grossness, but whew, there's no excrement scene herein.

Animal rights zealots release a chimp from a lab, ignoring a warning that it's "infected with rage." After the titular period, courier Jim (Cillian Murphy, younger than I'd ever seen before) awakens from a coma induced by a bicycle accident to find that the hospital and, indeed, London are almost completely abandoned. The first people he meets have the rage plague, but holdouts Selena (Naomie Harris) and Mark (Noah Huntley) rescue him. Later connections include Frank (Brendan Gleeson) and his teen daughter, Hannah (Megan Burns), who relay a report of a military outpost. It exists, but whether it's the salvation they need is another question.

I Am Legend (2007)

Warner Bros. packaged this DVD with The Book of Eli as a "double feature." I had never seen such a set before; the two movies are unrelated, not involving any of the same actors, the same director, or even the same production companies. They just came out a few years apart and center on a lone Black man in a post-apocalyptic America, each with someone claiming to have been guided by a mysterious, potentially divine voice toward a cause for hope. That's about where the similarity ends. IAL actually merits a horror classification.

A scientist (Emma Thompson) reengineers a virus to cure cancer. It appears to work beautifully at first but quickly mutates, killing 90% of the world's populations and turning 9% into "Darkseekers," who are like fast zombies with the appearance and light allergy of vampires. Colonel Robert Neville (Will Smith) volunteers to remain in a cut-off Manhattan as the only known uninfected human survivor, accompanied by his dog, Sam, as he hopes to find a way to give the Darkseekers his immunity before he succumbs to either them or insanity from isolation.

Train to Busan (2016)

This was one of the most popular recent horror movies I hadn't seen yet. I would have saved it for later in the month, but I was in something of a hurry to find a Halloween-appropriate movie, and this was the main one left on my Netflix list.

In Seoul, Seok-woo (Gong Yoo) has devoted more of himself as a fund manager than as a husband or father. He reluctantly agrees to take young daughter Su-an (Kim Su-an) to Busan so she can spend her birthday with his ex-wife. But news reports of random riots turn out to have been an understatement: Everyone who gets bitten turns just as berserk, and one such victim boards their train....