Normally I try to keep my reviews focused toward “these were good and you should watch them” but I’ve watched a lot of garbage in the last couple of months so this one has more complaining than usual. You’re welcome.
The Bluff (2026): An excellent little pirate movie. Which isn’t quite right, because though it’s about pirates, there’s not a lot of pirating, or even sailing. It’s more one of those “I was retired and you had to pull me back in” deal – you know, a Statham Situation. Bloody Mary’s ex wants the gollllllld. Anyway, fun characters, very good – and parsable – stunts, and the stunts felt very practical. I saw a number of Texas Switches going on, so I think a lot of it was done old-school.We Bury The Dead (2026): A decent road-trip zombie movie. The US accidentally nukes Tasmania with a zombie bomb, and people volunteer to clean up the corpses, including a bunch of people handling their grief in totally normal healthy ways, such as our hero who is looking for her husband and either hoping he is dead or hoping he is a zombie, it’s not clear.Greenland (2020) and Greenland 2 (2025): These are both stupid disaster movies with absurd physics and geology, but more than that, they are movies that hate people, and believe that people are fundamentally awful, vicious monsters. Their thesis is that if anything goes wrong, everyone will immediately fuck each other over as quickly and as hard as possible, and there’s nothing wrong with stepping on someone’s face if it gets you into the boat one second earlier. It does not brook even a second’s reflection. It was very hard watching this bullshit during the weeks when the people of Minnesota were presenting us a realtime rebuttal to this cynical, evil worldview. Besides that, it’s amazing how any time there are like, 10 people who made it into the boat/car/bus/whatever, the ones who are not the 3 main characters are just … absent … in the next scene. Did they vaporize? Did our heroes eat them? Such script writing wow. I hated the first one but I hate-watched the second one because I had to know if it got even worse and yes, it did. I need an intervention.Cassandra (2025): Instead of haunted house stories, now we get them re-skinned as “smart-home automation turns evil” stories. The twist on this one is that the evil smart home is implausibly-vintage 1970s/80s tech. The show is just ok, and I really only even go that hight because of the retro styling. Which is pretty. Since it is Netflix, there’s 90 minutes of plot dragged out to 5 hours over 6 episodes and it does the Episode Seven thing (but in ep 5) in the most predictable way. The writers for this definitely believed that you were half watching it while reading something else on your phone, so they have to repeat everything five times.The Damned (2025): Trapped in the ice, shipwreck, possible haunting. I dug it.
Then I went on a Ghost in the Shell binge, because it turns out there were like twice as many serieses as I realized and I hadn’t seen most of them:
Ghost in the Shell, Stand Alone Complex (2002): On a rewatch, this is still good! The animation is beautiful and the characters are well written. The Laughing Man is an interesting villain, and the signature move of being able to hide his face with a logo because every person and camera has mechanical eyes that are hackable is just epic. The eventual reveal of his identity is kind of weird and dumb, and overall the show suffers from several problems: A) it’s a cop show and ACAB; and B) these C truly are B and have never met someone who told them “no” who was not a “terrorist”; and C) they do a whole lot of straight-up domestic political assassination; and D) it’s weirdly racist for a cartoon where every character looks like a big-eyed Japanese pop star. You’re all Sneeches! Much of the plot is about “immigrants” and “refugees” and how much of “our” taxes should be spent on “those parasites” and the difference between the “good guys” and “bad guys” seems to mainly be “should we deport them” or “should we murder them”. So let’s say that it doesn’t age well.Ghost in the Shell, Stand Alone Complex, Second Gig (2004): Also a rewatch. Also still good, but kind of more of the same. Same weird anti-immigrant plot; the big bad “Individual Eleven” starts off as the same kind of maybe-hivemind as Laughing Man but then does a fake-out to something else which isn’t as clever as they wanted it to be. Much more fun stuff with the emergent-personality Tachikoma smart tanks, which was a fun sub-plot.Ghost in the Shell, Solid State Society (2006): This was fine. At least they stopped shitting on immigrants and focused on billionaire vampires kidnapping children instead.Ghost in the Shell, Arise (2013): I never saw this the first time around, and reviews led me to believe that the story and animation were both vastly inferior, a bullshit cash grab. But actually I think it’s quite good, possibly even better than SAC. It’s a prequel, “here’s how we got the gang together”. In SAC Motoko was what, 35 to 50?, so she was wearing a 25 year old big-boobed robot porn star body. In this one she’s 25-ish? (how old do you have to be to get promoted to Army Major?) so she’s wearing a 15 year old robot body instead. Oh, anime, never change. But since she’s not old and jaded she’s allowed to have emotions and make mistakes instead of just being an always-right killing machine. And they aren’t bottomless-funded cops just yet, so out of self-interest they have to actually care about consequences and accountability. They are still all temperamentally murderers, but without immunity, and that’s what passes for ethics I guess. Less immigrant hate. Not none, but less.
I hate that current events have made it impossible for me to enjoy stories about righteous vigilantes.
Ghost in the Shell, SAC_2045 (2020): I never even heard that this came out, and… it’s pretty bad. It’s much more “3d” so it just looks like a video game cut scene. Section 9 has been disbanded and are working as vigilantes in Los Angeles, and The Major looks like a teen pop star now. Also the environments and especially the cars look very contemporary and out-of-place in the GitS universe. Someone involved really loves cars. The plot is… maybe not completely terrible but I really dislike the look of this show, and the character writing is just off.
That said, S02 is better. The art is still jarring, but the plot is less “immigrants, amirite?” and more “super-cyborgs are freaked out by a secret society of even-more-super cyborgs.” The plot hooked me, despite. Also there were some quite well choreographed fight scenes. Which feels like a weird thing to say about a cartoon but I assume it was a lot of mocap. But as always the Tachikomas are the real stars. The ending is confusing and incoherent, which is how you know it’s a GitS show.
Ok, GitS diversion over:
Night Patrol (2025): What if the (real) gangs inside LAPD were actual monsters. Very strong first act! Bogs down a bit in the third. Mostly black cast and they start off setting it up as a “white savior” plot but (spoiler) then they’re like, “LOL no”. It’s fun. Not as good as Night Teeth, which I keep recommending.Primal S03: RAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!Shelter (2026): I have simple needs. “Jason Statham was in hiding but then the commandos found him” – shit man that’s all you had to say. This time he’s in a lighthouse.Monarch Legacy of Monsters S02: I continue to love everything about this show! Previously. Every time I tell someone this they say, “You’re kidding.” I am not kidding. It’s great.Whistle (2025): Aztec Death Whistle summons your fate. It’s basically a Final Destination movie, with the same dumb rules-lawyering. It’s alright I guess.Umamusume Pretty Derby (2018): Ok wait hear me out. We have this recurring event at the club that plays “anime music”, which is mostly indistinguishable from happy hardcore, and is some of the worst shit you’ll ever hear (and I include “riddim” in that) and at the most recent event, everyone was wearing horse accessories and they left carrots all over the club, so I had to look up what the actual fuck this was all about. Anyway I watched like half of the first two episodes of this and it’s some of the worst trash I’ve ever seen. It makes Sailor Moon look like Shakespeare. And like Rembrandt. Plot: sometimes genetic mutants are born with horse tails and once they grow into big-boobed teenagers they encounter a biological imperative to run in circles, very very fast; and then do karaoke. Oh anime, never change.The Beauty (2026): I started watching this knowing nothing about it, and the first episode was like: “Oh it’s X Files body horror, I’m down”, followed by, “This is a straight-up rip-off of The Substance, stop reminding me of better movies that I’d rather be watching instead”, and then I soon realized that it’s by the American Horror Story guy, and yup, by episode 2 he’s back on his usual bullshit: “The only way I know how to write women is as cunty drag queens, aren’t they just the worst? Girlfriend!” But, it had body horror and some billionaires get murdered so I kept hate-watching. The season ended with literally nothing resolved.Is This Thing On? (2025): Will Arnett and Laura Dern get divorced and he works out his trauma by doing standup. It’s kinda just a romcom but it’s really sweet.Young Sherlock (2026): This is some bullshit.
The first thing you need to know about this show, which should have been a damned title screen, is that it is not a prequel, it is an alternate history that in no way lines up with the books or any other Holmes story. And knowing that would have saved me so much frustration and annoyance.
But it’s still some bullshit.
I appreciate how some people might be here for “will twentysomething Sherlock and Moriarty fuck” but I can’t get past “they didn’t meet until Sherlock was like 35 and Moriarty was like 70, what even is this.”
I have been a Sherlock fan for a little while now. I still have the copy of Hound of the Baskervilles that I bought on a whim at a flea market when I was like 9 years old, and it imprinted on me hard. I assume I paid 10¢ for it. It is absolutely falling apart to dust but the latest copyright on it is 1904. The thing about Sherlock is, there’s only like 1700 pages total, that’s barely 5 novels, but it launched a thousand ships. This ship though, this “shipping”, this is some crap. I might have enjoyed this show if the characters all had different names like “Steve” and “Brian” instead of “Sherlock” and “Moriarty” but as-is, I JUST. CAN. NOT.
One of the things about being a lifelong fan of Sherlock is that when you are a child you think “This guy is the greatest guy ever and I love him” and then when you are an adult you think “This guy is an absolute piece of shit and I love him” and if you never made that transition, everyone else in your life has my sympathies.
Anyway, as movies and TV go, The Cushing movies – honestly I’m not into them.The Seven Percent Solution – pretty great and nuts.The Downey movies – first eh, second hard pass.House – yes to S01, strongly diminishing returns after. Probably didn’t age well.The Cumberbach shows – mostly fun, overall unsatisfying.Elementary – middling.Enola Holmes – Fun and I appreciate it as criticism.
It’s not a great track record.
Good Luck Have Fun Don’t Die (2026): A pretty fun low-budget riff on Terminator, but with the dirtbaggy lunacy of 12 Monkeys.Scream 7 (2026): This was definitely a Scream movie. It was fine. Always good to see [SPOILER] again. Has some AI hate.Scarlet (2025): King Hamlet’s daughter (?) dies and goes to hell, which is somehow the Middle East but underwater, gets a 21st Century paramedic as a sidekick, and goes on a revenge-quest, fighting an endless series of Deadites. And then, I dunno, the planet explodes into love or something. The animation is great; it’s a weird mix of photorealistic 3D-rendered backgrounds with cel-style anime characters, but the motion in the sword fights and dance routines (plural) feels rotoscoped, it has a twitchy Bakshi feel. Weird-ass incoherent movie, but pretty.
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