tact

Mixed feelings. I liked the Gilliam flavor and the dark, odd tone. Rockwell is pretty darn good. But the story sags with all the doodads they attached, and the supporting characters are mostly incoherent plot paddlers. I laughed at how brazen the satire was, but it was too malevolent and extreme to really land. The last act falls apart for me. It's a brash message movie first with some cool ideas second, and I thought it could have done better the other way around.

66 _19%

Black Bag (2025) - Rated 09 Aug 2026

It was fine. It played like a stage play, and it seemed too pleased with itself; I think it was the mix of small scale and the relentless cleverer-than-thou character games. Everyone just brazenly hates everyone else, I guess? I don't think the spy couple factor offered as many interesting turns as it could have.

67 _21%

Loki (2021) - Rated 09 Aug 2026

I was a bit disappointed with Loki. Based on the trailer, I was excited to see some surreal time travel. But it's a pretty standard-feeling superhero side quest with a neat setting. The plot is chock-full of systems and mechanics that the show stops to explain, and the story is too slight to carry so much baggage and runtime. I found it tiring. Hiddleston and Wilson do a great job, though I struggled to feel for Loki. The sets are incredible, and I love the color scheme of the TVA.

78 _46%

Project Hail Mary (2026) - Rated 07 Aug 2026

Solid fun with some complaints. In general, it's better than the book. The movie mostly abandons the book's science gab and puzzle story to emphasize the miracle adventure and Disney vibes. The apocalyptic stakes seem even more muted than they occasionally did in the book, and they rush the ending. The annoying millennial tone remains and even infects Rocky more. I'm not sure the flashbacks work as well in the movie.

77 _43%

Thor: Ragnarok (2017) - Rated 04 Aug 2026

Fun, breezy, good but not great. Ragnarok has that common Taika quality where it's easy to like, but it's also working extremely hard to be likeable. I find there's a ceiling to my enjoyment of that.

74 _33%

Ronin (1998) - Rated 29 Jul 2026

Ronin was good and bad. There's the barest, pointless whiff of a high-concept thriller tacked on, and there are fewer twists than the movie would claim there are. Ten minutes in a car is apparently all it takes to mint a love interest. The chase sequences feel raw and dangerous.

78 _46%

Weapons (2025) - Rated 28 Jul 2026

I watched it, so it can't have been that scary. This was a cool blend of horror, comedy, and mystery that seemed built to prioritize entertainment.

48 _8%

Caught Stealing (2025) - Rated 28 Jul 2026

I would guess something got lost in translation from the book. This is a mediocre Richie-Tarantino-Coen?-like with the staying power of Fruit Stripe gum. Acts stylish; isn't. My friends and I were mad that the club scene wasn't filmed as a one-shot from the steering wheel. This movie is fun at turns, but mostly I felt like it was cribbing guilelessly from more iconic stuff.

39 _4%

Hamnet (2025) - Rated 28 Jul 2026

I did not enjoy Hamnet. It lopes through surreal, dreamy vignettes with awkward and stifling self-importance. It's pretty, and the sets are great. The cinematography is off-kilter like a horror film. Buckley expends impressive effort to be a strange forest sprite. The last scene is powerful, and I think for some it rescues the film. To me, it just borrowed the quilt of a better story and attached its extraneous, mystical, dolent patches for hours. And what did we learn? Art heals grief??

46 _7%

The Gorge (2025) - Rated 09 Jul 2026

Edgy military dude meets manic pixie dragunov girl and they do a bad 2000's action flick together. I thought The Gorge might go somewhere interesting with the setup, but it just writes all its trope checks directly to cash. The cinematography seems cheap, and there is entirely too much monster show-and-tell. It's a difficult sell even as dumb fun; it's just dumb.