Trying something new! These are the things I experienced within the last calendar week.

Movies

The Backrooms (Kane Parsons, 2026)
I’m not a big Liminal Spaces guy; I’ve seen Backrooms imagery in passing but never sought it out. Still, I had to check out A24’s highest opening film ever (literally tripling Civil War), and ya know what? Good movie! It’s such an unnerving setting that is realized so freaking well (props to the production and also VFX teams: I dunno where one ends and the other begins and that’s how it should be).

I’m less impressed with the character work. Despite being written by an actual adult (Will Soodik, who has zero features to his name despite credits going back 13 years), it feels like a child’s impression of what e.g. the dissolution of a marriage looks like. Director Kane Parsons turns 21 this month and would have been a minor during pre-production and that's where I would have expected this from.

Fortunately for everyone, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve are excellent performers and doing their best to blunt the badness, but ya know there’s this big moment where the latter yells and I actually cringed at the words coming out of her mouth.

Still, that Christmas bit is scary as hell.

Tuner (Daniel Roher, 2026)
I have looked into buying custom-fit earplugs that I could wear while walking around New York City, because it's very loud here and I already wear noise cancelling headphones or earbuds anyway (and if more than one other person is in any interior space with me, I wear not-custom-fit earplugs).

So I was immediately connected to Niki, a guy so allergic to loud noises that he must wear at least custom earplugs at all times and sometimes even more than that, and I felt that super hard. But on the other hand, he has perfect pitch and I do not.

Which is rude.

In any case, I liked Tuner quite a lot, but that like never even threatened to turn into something stronger. It's one of those fundamentally competent movies where everything is firing on some or even most cylinders not never all. I enjoyed my time in the theater and would suggest you give it yours as well, but also I had to look up Niki’s name despite having seen it ~4 hours ago as of the time of writing, so that’s not great. Though I’m happy to see a crime-y drama that goes in some genuinely unexpected directions starring a guy with a genuinely unique quirk, in the end it just fell a bit… flat.

Ha. Tuning joke.

Is God Is (Aleshea Harris, 2026)
It’s very brave to shoot action in profile, because if there’s a mistake you have nowhere to hide. I’ve done it before: in the final scene of my college thesis — a martial arts psychodrama — there is a 45-second shot in which I am punched in the face in profile and knocked to the ground, where I am then punched in the temple in a medium close-up, then kicked in the stomach, and finally slapped a few times. Different pieces worked better in different takes — an early one ended with me saying “No you have to hit me in the head” — and I ultimately went with 10 of 12: the slaps were a bit weak, but the rest looked good.

Point is: I have the right to say that the action in Is God Is mostly sucks, because the bravery to shoot action in profile was not met by the capabilities of the performers. When during the final fight there is more than a foot of visible distance between two characters who supposedly just made violent contact, it’s impossible to feel anything but disappointment.

Which is a shame because Is God Is has a lot going for it: memorable characters and cool style. It's genuinely funny while also having some real emotional heart. I wanted so badly to love it.

But you can't have a truly good revenge thriller with bad action.

A Better Tomorrow III: Love & Death in Saigon (Tsui Hark, 1989) AND Bullet in the Head (John Woo, 1990)
Two movies with arguably the opposite problem that sit in fascinating conversation with each other. Tsui Hark and John Woo are two absolute titans of action cinema who worked together for many years, but they had a falling out during the development of the third A Better Tomorrow film, a prequel set partly in Saigon during the Vietnam War. Woo took the original script and reworked it into Bullet in the Head while Hark developed a different script in the same setting.

They are very different films, but the shared DNA is unmistakable: Hark’s visual style is more immediately arresting, but his skill as an action director was never in gunplay, and you can feel that e.g. people jumping through the air while firing dual pistols just isn’t as natural in front of his camera. There is some excellent action (I’ll be thinking about that tank vs ambulance sequence for a while), but the bullets aren’t loud enough and the squibs aren’t squibby enough to make it all truly land. And following it immediately with Bullet in the Head you really feel Woo’s mastery of that particular craft.

Still, it’s their treatment of Vietnam itself that really sets them apart. Bullet in the Head is really akin to Apocalypse Now as it goes deeper into the jungle while everyone loses their fucking minds. Saigon is a setting but it’s more like dressing than it is for A Better Tomorrow III. Like, both films depict the same “America Out” peace rallies, but Hark’s version just hits harder.

In the end, I prefer Woo’s version because I prefer Woo’s action, but both of them are worth your time and have inspired me to look deeper into Asian depictions of this particular conflict.

Buying Tickets for The Odyssey in IMAX 70mm at AMC Lincoln Square
Utter nightmare, but I got em!

(I felt bad for every other movie, considering the AMC app went down for hours nationwide even though there are only three AMC-based IMAX theaters in the country that can project IMAX70 film.)

Other

My Heart Is a Chainsaw (Stephen Graham Jones, 2021)
Perusing Redditors’ opinions on author Stephen Graham Jones is illuminating. There’s a sharp line between people who connect to Jones’ writing style and those who don’t… and there’s an additional subset of those who think it works in some of his books and not in others.

This is the first of his novels that I’ve read: a story of a girl obsessed with slasher films who finds her town under siege by the kind of monster she’s been dreaming of her whole life. Though it’s written in third-person, it reads like first as the omniscient narrator follows her down the rabbit holes of who could be doing this and how and what role she is supposed to play in the slasher story and who is The Final Girl (because it can’t be her) and etc etc. this thing is surprisingly dense and I never totally got into the flow… but I still enjoyed it quite a bit even as I had to re-read portions or even pages when my eyes glzed over a bit.

Turns out I’ve only seen 32% of the 177 movies that are referenced across these 400 pages. Should get around to a few more, I think.

And also the two other books in Jones’s Indian Lake trilogy.

Faouzia - Unethical (MAPHRA Vocal Cover)
MAPHRA is a vocalist who blew the heck up a few months ago with her cover of Bring Me the Horizon’s “Doomed.” I watched at least ten different vocal coaches react to that performance as well as her small number of other covers, all of which show just incredible vocal talent. She has a phenomenal clean range and incredible distortion. The Plot In You’s “Silence” came next, and damn she does it so good. But I saw a reaction headline that said “MAPHRA introduced me to Silence. The Plot in You made me feel it.” I don’t really agree with that take, but when I heard this latest song, I finally understand what she meant.

I’m new to Faouzia’s music, but I’m sad that tickets to see her at the Warsaw in August have sold out already because damn I’d love to see her do this stuff live. “Unethical” is a phenomenal song that I’m going to listen to an unhealthy number of times (per Deezer, I’m already at 23 and that obviously doesn’t include watching the music video).

So I understand why MAPHRA picked it, because it shows a different side of her voice in a different way than we’ve heard to date. Her voice is as beautiful as ever and that little bit of grit she adds to the final chorus is real chefskiss stuff… but her bassier base doesn’t complement the music like the music complements Faouzia. I think MAPHRA’s choice to cover songs with the original backing is the fault here: it’s just a piano and a few strings, and those notes were played to match a voice rather than just a vibe.

(Also, the artificial camera shake she uses across her videos is really weird. Either film the thing handheld or let it be stable… another thing I speak to from experience!)

All this said, the top comment on MAPHRA’s video is Faouzia saying it made her cry so what do I know.