#10- The Rip
[Watched on Netflix]
I watched this just before watching Drake Maye take my New England Patriots to the Super Bowl, so needless to say the combo of Pats headed to the Bowl and watching my beautiful Boston boys Matt Damon and Ben Affleck together in a movie really plussed up this experience for me.
The Rip is a surprisingly fun cop drama that features conspiracies, corruption, and the best bromance currently in cinema and I found it all worked really well. It’s a Netflix movie so it’s kind of a “you get what you pay for” type of experience and I honestly don’t know that it would’ve been as enjoyable in the theater which I always hate saying, but some movies really do benefit from being streaming and as a streaming movie, I liked this one a lot.
#09- Cheetahs Up Close with Bertie Gregory
[Watched on Disney+]
Obligatory nature documentary here, I’ve said before that I’m a fan of Bertie Gregory’s work, I think he the best iteration of a modern Steve Irwin when it comes to television wildlife education. His use of technology as opposed to a hands on approach is commendable and he’s still very much able to capture great footage and connect the audience with the amazing animals he’s showcasing.
Cheetahs Up Close is a big step up from
Dolphins Up Close and
Sharks Up Close for the simple reason that it’s a hell of a lot easier to follow animals on land than it is in the water. This lets us return to a couple different groups of cheetahs periodically in a similar way that other nature documentaries do. It allows us to actually follow these cheetahs and see how they live their lives more than those other two docs did.
Either way though, I do recommend checking out all three of these docs and I anticipate any more that Bertie Gregory dishes out in the near future.
#08- Send Help
[Watched in theaters]
Sam Raimi’s return to horror has been something I’ve been eagerly anticipating for a while and like Tiki, I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve ever seen a Sam Raimi horror film on the big screen when it comes out. I’ve seen re-releases of
Evil Dead 2 (my personal favorite horror film) many times, but this was the first time I’ve gotten to see a new Raimi horror on the big screen and that was exciting.
This movie gets to be a ton of fun in that classic Raimi style blending gross goopy gore with genuinely hilarious moments. Now, I won’t lie, a bit too much of this ends up being more of a rom-com than a horror before its horror turn at the end of the movie, but when you have the leads of Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, I don’t blame them for going that route.
McAdams is a star, but we’ve been knowing that. She’s Regina f*cking George for crying out loud, but Dylan O’Brien is quickly rising in the ranks of young new coming white boy stars. He’s up there for me with people like Austin Butler, Timothée Chalamet, Jacob Elordi, Barry Keoghan, Josh O’Connor and Joseph Quinn where I truly believe they’re the 90s guys who will end up leading Hollywood into the future. These two leads together have excellent chemistry and I fully believed them in their roles (though you’ll never convince me that Rachel McAdams is unattractive, no matter how much tuna you smear on her lips) and when you go from the survival stuff to the third act craziness, it worked for me.
Ultimately I do agree, it’s a great January horror that I I’ll end up somewhere in the middle of my list by the end of the year, but high up there for January.
#07- Is This Thing On?
[Watched in theaters]
I think this is my favorite of Bradley Cooper’s three movies though I do think
A Star Is Born is a better movie overall. I just really enjoyed the dynamics at play here and I’ve always loved Will Arnett so I’m happy to see him be the lead here.
I did really enjoyed the story at hand with he and Laura Dern, but I do wish we had gotten more of the comedy honestly. I know Tiki has much more insight into that world and maybe it wasn’t entirely accurate to how well he’d be doing, but the little bit of suspension of disbelief I levied at the movie let me really enjoy him building these new friendships and growing as a person through the comedy and I do wish we had gotten more of that and less of Bradley Cooper’s weird little creep character he has going on. It’s a solid movie, I gave it 3.5/5 and I do think it’s worth checking out.
#a06- Disneyland Handcrafted
[Watched on Disney+]
I, like most of us on here, have probably seen a million and a half specials and documentaries about the opening of Disneyland to the point that I didn’t expect anything new out of this. After checking it out though, I’d say a good 85% of this is new between new archival footage or audio recordings and it gives you way more of an intimate look at the less than a year they had to build this thing.
A lot of the interview moments were with famed imagineers and people working on the park, but most of the footage was of the every day construction workers and landscapers and artists who actually did the building of the park and that was really cool to see. There are these intimate moments of people just goofing off at work like a dude in a big excavator picking an orange off a tree, or a bunch of guys racing these huge machines up a big dirt hill, it just made it feel so much more real.
I think a lot of us on these boards would really enjoy this one and if you haven’t already checked it out, I recommend it. It’s a well put together doc with some great insight into the park construction.
#05- Dead Man's Wire
[Watched in theaters]
Want a movie that I had zero expectations for? Here you go. I knew NOTHING about this movie besides Bill Skarsgård is in it and that’s about it. I figured he was probably doing a crime just looking at the weird box he’s carrying around, but beyond that, I knew nothing. It ended up being a really solid crime thriller that absolutely creates this fantastic ticking clock effect that ups the cortisol and makes you wonder where things are going to lead.
The craziest part is the movie makes you just straight up side with Skarsgård despite the fact he’s the one doing the crime because it’s against a private equity firm and f*** private equity. This movie is like the enviable future Luigi Mangione movie where the takeaway will absolutely end up being “yeah, but he did nothing wrong.” I really recommend this one, it was a very nice surprise.
#04- Vampire Zombies... from Space!
[Watched on VOD]
If you’ve ever seen stuff like
Plan 9 From Outer Space or any of the other things showcased at Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater at Hollywood Studios, then this is exactly one of those. It’s this insanely campy and fun black and white zombie alien vampire movie where a small town is invaded by Dracula, his 50s greaser son, and their legion of alien space vampires. The best part is it’s fully in on the joke too. It’s not like one of those movies that tries too hard to be funny, this one is funny just by embracing the genre it’s playing in. It’s a lot like a Mel Brooks movie in that way.
I really don’t want to give anything away, but I think on rewatch this could climb even higher for me and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is this year’s
Hundreds of Beavers except with less cult following. Highly recommend.
#03- No Other Choice
[Watched in theaters]
It’s a crime Park Chan Wook is so hated by the Academy Awards because what do you mean this missed out on best international feature??
This is a super fun black comedy about a guy going to extreme lengths to make sure he gets a job by eliminating his competition. That alone is funny and also dark and it really works in Chan-Wook’s style. My biggest issue here is that it does kind of drag a bit in the middle where it focuses so much on one particular guy, but by the end of the movie it all wraps up so beautifully that I can’t not recommend checking it out.
#02- Arco
[Watched in theaters]
I already said it but this was such a highlight of the month for me. I didn’t know anything about it going into it and kind of expected some kind of superhero movie just based on the poster. It is not that, instead it’s a super endearing and sweet coming of age story about two friends from different times who bond over trying to get one of them home. Then you add in three eccentric conspiracy theorist brothers who you fully expect to be the villains and they just end up actually being super redeemable and really empathetic themselves (they’re also voiced in the English dub by Flea, Will Ferrell and Andy Samberg and I loved all three of them in this role).
The ending to this movie genuinely got me to tear up and I’m hoping (though I know it won’t) for a
Flow or
Boy and the Heron style upset where this beats out
KPop Demon Hunters and
Zootopia 2 to take home the Oscar. This is such a sweet and endearing movie and I highly highly recommend it. Yes, it does wear its Ghibli influences on its sleeve, I’ll give you that, but man did I end up loving this movie.
#01- 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
[Watched in theaters]
I liked
28 Years Later, but I didn’t love it the way I wanted to. I think the experimental direction with the filmmaking, while intriguing, ended up detracting from the story at hand. That absolutely gets resolved in
The Bone Temple.
This movie takes the absolute best part of the first (third?) film in Ralph Fiennes and his connection to the alpha infected and expands on it making him arguably the co-lead of this movie. Then it takes the Jimmy Cristal cult, something that felt like whiplash at the end of that movie, and expands it into this sick and depraved dark cult led by Jack O’Connell in an even more sick and depraved role than
Sinners. I’ve seen people say they hope he doesn’t start getting typecast, but if he wants to just keep playing sick little freaks (one level up from weird little creeps) then I’m all for it.
This takes the elements I liked the most from
28 Years Later and expands on them while also being a rip rollicking zombie movie, fun horror, and having the single best needle drop in a film literally ever (good luck topping it 2026). I cannot believe this is a January movie, it’s that good.
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Well, now we’re into February and as Tiki alluded to, this weekend is a doozie. I may just stay home honestly because what the actual f*** is going on this weekend.
That said, February does have some movies I’m intrigued about though not many I’m truly excited for.
Goat looks interesting and if nothing else the animation style employed by Sony is really good looking and so I at least expect it to look good on the big screen.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is one of the movies I am genuinely very excited for, I’ve heard nothing but good things and it’s very exciting to see Gore Verbinski return to filmmaking. I’m stoked for
Wuthering Heights solely so I never have to see that trailer again.
Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie is one I’ve been hearing about since last year and I’m excited is finally getting released. Finally,
Psycho Killer looks interesting at least.
Scream 7 also comes out this month but due to their unjust firing of Melissa Barrera for her stance on Israel’s genocide in Palestine, I will not be watching the movie in theaters. I’ll sail the seas to watch it if and when I do, which sucks because I really love that franchise, but morals come first.
If none of this sounds good to you (fair) then check out
Splitsville which is coming to Hulu this month or
Eternity coming to Apple TV+ because both of those are some of the best of last year.
Beautiful little movie, the ending is a god damn gut punch. My only minor criticism is that it wore its Ghibli influences a bit too much on its sleeve, specifically with the music cues.