Recent theatrical viewings

[M.10rda]

Yeah, the math is fuzzy w/ the passage of time. The German head scientist looks about 10 years older at the end of the movie, that's about it. I still liked it.

[Dr. Whom]

A Useful Ghost (2025)

This is a bait and switch movie. It starts out as a deadpan comedy about possessed electrical appliances, and then suddenly switches to commentary about the bloody crackdown on the opposition by the Thai dictatorship in 2010.
Other themes include labour conditions, homosexuality (with quite a bit of man on man sex), the pressure of family expectations and being a Thai with Chinese heritage. At times funny, touching and thought provoking.

If this movie is anything to go by, Thai people are very matter of fact about ghosts.

[Rev. Powell]

It's a bit ragged but I liked A USEFUL GHOST. Currently my 3rd-ranked film of the year overall and my top foreign film.

[Dr. Whom]

I liked it a lot, and we need more villains like Dr. Paul

[Rev. Powell]

LIFE HACK (2025): A team of young hackers scheme to steal millions in bitcoin from an obnoxious tech guru, with the scheme recalled "screenlife" style (i.e. everything is seen on either a computer or phone recording). Nifty high-tech heist movie that moves too fast to fact check. Blink and you'll miss it moment: when Kyle hacks Heard's email account, one of the messages is from "J Epstein." 3.5/5.

[Jim H]

Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) (2026) - Yeah what a title.  My wife likes Billie, I actually do too to a lesser extent, but what really happened is Jim Cameron co-directed it and she used that to get me to take her to it. 

But, it was still a fairly entertaining concert film.  We did see it in 3D, and as always it doesn't seem to work very well for me.  It's like I only partially see it in 3D - I hypothesize it has something to do with my right eye being very dominant and seeing color slightly differently.  But whatever.  That aside, the production is good, you get some well-crafted framing and camera usage, and Cameron himself appears and interviews Billie a little.  It's not exactly deep, but it's literally a pop star concert film, so not really expected.  One interesting thing is how they use the endless numbers of concert goers filming as part of the framing (I swear, it must be 1 in 3 people at any one time), probably the only choice these days.  But god damn, would that make her concerts utterly miserable for me!

[Rev. Powell]

IS GOD IS (2026): Two sisters swear revenge on the father who scarred them for life, then abandoned their family. This mixture of drama, comedy, and cathartic violence, adapted and directed by Aleshea Harris from her own play, juggles multiple tones deftly, delivering a well-told story that in its best moments suggests a southern-fried Coen Bros. gothic. 3.5/5.

[Rev. Powell]

I LOVE BOOSTERS (2026): A gang of shoplifters develop a vendetta against an arrogant billionaire fashion designer (Demi Moore), determined to ruin her. Boots Riley's followup to SORRY TO BOTHER YOU is in the same vein but pushes the vibe even further, starting as a polemical comedy that grows increasingly absurd, adding a sci-fi twist, and delivering sermons about unionization and dialectical materialism along the way. 4/5.

[Rev. Powell]

BACKROOMS: A frustrated furniture-store owner discovers a seemingly infinite maze of mysterious rooms in the back of his store, and invites his therapist to help explore them. Explore the labyrinths of the subconscious in this ambiguous and terrifying psychological horror. 5/5.

Audience notes: The theater was packed, which surprised me due to the surreal nature of the story, even though I had heard it was doing good business. There were a bunch of teenagers who probably were familiar with 20-year old director Kane Parsons from his YouTube series of the same name. Some parents took two boys to this, I would estimate ages 7-11. The younger one got scared and had to leave. The older one was pretty excited at the end and praised it as "scary and weird."

Also, I don't expect other people to like this as much as I did: it's very much "my thing." But I still think most people will find it scary and enjoyable, unless you demand having everything 100% explained to you.

[indianasmith]

BACKROOMS: A frustrated furniture-store owner discovers a seemingly infinite maze of mysterious rooms in the back of his store, and invites his therapist to help explore them. Explore the labyrinths of the subconscious in this ambiguous and terrifying psychological horror. 5/5.

Audience notes: The theater was packed, which surprised me due to the surreal nature of the story, even though I had heard it was doing good business. There were a bunch of teenagers who probably were familiar with 20-year old director Kane Parsons from his YouTube series of the same name. Some parents took two boys to this, I would estimate ages 7-11. The younger one got scared and had to leave. The older one was pretty excited at the end and praised it as "scary and weird."

Also, I don't expect other people to like this as much as I did: it's very much "my thing." But I still think most people will find it scary and enjoyable, unless you demand having everything 100% explained to you.

I just got back from spending the weekend with my daughter in Iowa, and I took both my girls to see it (my wife doesn't do horror films but all three of us love them). I had no idea of any of the internet lore behind it and was blown away by how creepy it was.  Excellent film!

[Rev. Powell]

BACKROOMS: A frustrated furniture-store owner discovers a seemingly infinite maze of mysterious rooms in the back of his store, and invites his therapist to help explore them. Explore the labyrinths of the subconscious in this ambiguous and terrifying psychological horror. 5/5.

Audience notes: The theater was packed, which surprised me due to the surreal nature of the story, even though I had heard it was doing good business. There were a bunch of teenagers who probably were familiar with 20-year old director Kane Parsons from his YouTube series of the same name. Some parents took two boys to this, I would estimate ages 7-11. The younger one got scared and had to leave. The older one was pretty excited at the end and praised it as "scary and weird."

Also, I don't expect other people to like this as much as I did: it's very much "my thing." But I still think most people will find it scary and enjoyable, unless you demand having everything 100% explained to you.

I just got back from spending the weekend with my daughter in Iowa, and I took both my girls to see it (my wife doesn't do horror films but all three of us love them). I had no idea of any of the internet lore behind it and was blown away by how creepy it was.  Excellent film!

I'm pleasantly surprised, I kind of assumed you would not like it because it was too weird. Creepy is the right word, those rooms just hit something spooky deep inside us.

[Alex]

Masters of the Universe.

Because Kristi is a huge fan of the previous movie, we went to see this. Since Jarod Leto is in it, I went in with very low expectations. I have to say though I actually really enjoyed it, although if I had to pick a fault, it would be with the CGI. Both Skeletor and Cringer looked rather shoddy to me (Skeletor in particular looked like he was wearing a body stocking with muscles drawn on). It was never going to be high art, but it is at least fun.

[Rev. Powell]

OBSESSION: A socially awkward young man will go to any lengths to get his crush to love him. A classic monkey's paw story heading to an obvious destination, but the young cast and some black comedy makes it fun to watch it play out. Packed theater again on a Monday night. Feels weird to me. Overheard teenagers leaving say "that was a lot," meaning, I think, they grasped the emotional implication of the final scene. 3.5/5.

[M.10rda]

I was going to post a positive reply to a previously reviewed new release but (with apologies) I'm in a bad mood today, so instead:

OBSESSION (2026):
Surprised to read the Rev's positive thoughts. Here's the few positive things I can say about this one:

* Two well-written (if brief) disjunctive/non-realist monologues by the female lead
* An effective/briefly moving moment where she wakes up in the middle of the night and begs the male lead to kill her
* Generally speaking, the female lead is highly committed, and I felt very bad both for her character and for the actress;
* The cinematographer and lighting crew sometimes do a cool job of leaving the female lead wholly unexposed, so that her features are invisible even in MCU. They pull this trick a lot, though, thus overdoing it - and often the entirety of certain shots are underlit/underexposed/muddy. (Okay, not a net positive then.)

Beyond that -
I have to say, I thought OBSESSION was, more often than not, AFTER LAST SEASON levels of idiotic and THE ROOM levels of both idiotic and offensive.  Hey, that's just me - but the producers got my twelve bucks and have made over a hundred fifty times the budget - so I think I have the right to list my every major grievance w/ this trash and I think the filmmakers can take it on the chin.

* TRIGGER WARNING for the first shot of the second scene of the movie - Dead Cat. To be fair, I should have just stopped watching there, but let's unpack further at the film's expense: the cat is dead because the cat a.) opened a bathroom mirror cabinet, b.) opened a prescription bottle, and c.) ate a plural/fatal quantity of unspecified/unshown prescription pills. That's three things that I absolutely guarantee a cat cannot and will not do. ONE of those three, POSSIBLY - all three, absolutely not, and most specifically, cats won't eat their own chalky white prescription medication, let alone those of their owners - they hate that $#!t, even if you crush those up and mix them w/ other food, and don't even get me started on the likelihood of a cat chewing up and swallowing one or more capsules full of medicine... so, w/d moron wanted to kill a cat in the first scene and couldn't even fabricate a plausible method of cat-death.

* Later, by the way (for the sake of animal lovers) I'll mention that the cat's corpse returns and is enshrined en memoriam in the guy's kitchen, then evidently days or weeks later the presumably rigor mortised and deteriorating cat-corpse is cooked and served to the guy in sandwich form, and he is unaware of this until it is revealed to him. Deeply gross, yes, but also - as someone who has been around (sadly) too many dead animals - profoundly unlikely.

* The four main characters are young (college-age) adults who work in a small, rundown, privately owned music store (run by Andy Richter!  ) and are all scheduled to work together at the same time in spite of no customers ever appearing onscreen.  When the female lead announces she intends to render her two weeks notice, it's because she feels trapped and wants to pursue her writing career. Jeez, couldn't Mr. Richter have just decided to lay off one or more of these unnecessary employees?!

* Finally (at large) - notwithstanding the poor doomed female lead - no character in this film appears or behaves realistically (let alone sympathetically or compellingly), leading me to believe the auteur is 18-22 years old and has little life experience and perhaps no serious or meaningful human relationships. This manifests in myriad issues onscreen: the best friend characters witness the female lead physically harming herself and having shrieking Zulawski-style meltdowns in one scene, then when they next reappear they will casually ask the male lead if there's anything wrong with the female lead or if she's "okay?"  ; the male best friend climactically is prompted by the male lead to make a magic wish, the best friend wishes for a billion dollars, a billion dollars then rains upon the two men - and then in the very next scene the best friend bangs on the male lead's door, yelling about how "the spell works" and telling the male lead that he just wished for a billion dollars and the wish came true - which of course we just watched the male lead witness; and that male lead - well, he's onscreen for nearly the entire 105 minute film and never once behaves towards the female lead in a fashion that one would expect someone would behave towards someone else they loved or thought they loved, and the entire film is him watching her unravel/self-destruct catastrophically, while he just whimpers that she's scaring him and offers her no comfort whatsoever. Now granted, criticism of self-involved toxic masculinity may be implicit in some part in the film's construction, but I spent the entire running time reflecting on how much more grueling OBSESSION would be if we were watching a truly empathetic character tormented over making one mistake which resulted in the eternal torture of his loved one, and not being able to comfort her (instead of appearing seemingly incapable of trying). The male lead is a truly $#!t actor, which isn't compelling and just made me hate his guts. Contrast this with Sam Neill's performance in POSSESSION and consider how poorly OBSESSION does its job.

Also, FWIW, the male lead's best friend looks/dresses/acts like a frat boy from the late 90s and I couldn't imagine why he'd spend any time at all w/ the male lead - so maybe the writer/director is actually a 40something incel w/ no friends?

The business with the Willow One Wish and its customer support is inherently ludicrous - and I think it was played for laughs, but again, there was potential there.

This is a deeply, deeply stupid movie, and a mean one. (The female lead urinating and defecating on herself onscreen - why?) Patrons were leaving my screening consistently throughout at regular intervals. Many also stayed. I stayed - I regret it, but at least I can $#!t-kick this crap w/ authority.

The one good thing I'll say about OBSESSION is apparently more than twice as many humans have been willing to buy tickets to watch (or walk out of) this terrible movie about a hateful man and his infernally emotionally-dead partner than were willing to do the same for MELANIA. 

[Rev. Powell]

My biggest complaint was the kids are supposed to be in their 20s but a) have the romantic proclivities of teenagers (you hit on that too) and b) work retail, yet all own their own houses. And as you said, there are way too many employees there.

The director is only 26. I think the script was not a winner in terms of believability, but as you said there are some good monologues and very funny moments. I thought of giving it 3/5, but I must admit everyone in the packed house enjoyed it, which influenced me into assuming I was being something of a jaded cinephile curmudgeon. I also thought the lead female was very good. It's not perfect, by any stretch, but entertaining flick with promising young talent. The 8.1 rating on IMDb is ludicrously high, and so are letterboxd reviews (my 3.5 rating made me look like a hater).