I opened the door and walked out onto the porch. I took a deep breath of the new, freezing air. It wasn’t an unexpected cold front, I knew it was coming, so I prepared. I was ready.
I stacked plenty of food and firewood. Deer meat and a half cord of live oak just a slipper shuffle away. The family aloof to their moods. The sun somewhere else.
My teenage son upstairs watching the last season of Stranger Things amongst Pepsi cans and popped Pringles tops. My daughter trying to understand Little House on the Prairie. My wife reads herself into another space. Mostly things that attribute to her college minor in Classic Civilization. I do a little of everything. Here’s what I took in during the freeze.
Train Dreams – 2025 Directed by Clint Bentley
A movie based on the Denis Johnson novel of the same name. Train Dreams, is my type of film. I didn’t read the book, and I must accept the fact I can’t read every book I’d like to. I’m going to have to watch some of the movies. The story is simple and tragic. It’s the tale of a man who wants to support himself and his family through honest labor. The timeframe is approx. 1920 to around 1960 in the Pacific Northwest. He starts as a railroad worker and then becomes a seasonal logger. Both occupations are dangerous and the film provides proof. The man marries and builds him and his wife a little log cabin by a river and they have a baby. Money is tight and he is gone for long periods of time during logging season. No one likes it when logging season comes around, but it’s like going to work on an oil rig. You can make enough money to live for the entire year by only working a season.
There isn’t a great deal of talking in this movie and we are left to explore what loneliness looks like after a man is no longer able to work and experiences tragedy. This is a wonderful movie and is beautifully shot.
Clint Bentley is going to become a very famous director.
Year 10 – 2024 Directed by Benjamin Goodger
I can’t remember how I stumbled upon this English film, but I’m happy I did. You wouldn’t know it was English because there is no dialogue. None. The most you get from anyone in the film is a bit of whistling. The movie received bad reviews and I’m certain it’s because there is no dialogue and therefore character development is thin. The story is one that you don’t have to know the characters, it’s enough to know the plot and watch it unfold. Also, the movie positions itself to be a cannibalistic horror flick. I told myself I’d start watching and if was too gruesome, I’d just turn it off. There was nothing in the film that was over the top. In fact, cannibalism is simply implied and I’d probably let my teenage son watch this. In an unframed post-apocalyptic future humans are fighting other humans for basic resources while living in the woods. The story starts when a father, son and the son’s girlfriend are attacked in their small, wooded shelter. The attackers steal some medicine needed to keep the girlfriend alive, so the boy sets out to get it back, but there’s 6 of them and only 1 of him. How’s he gonna do it? There’s more than enough action to keep you entertained for an hour and a half. Worth watching.
One Battle After Another – 2025 Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.
I kept seeing ads for this movie that touted it “The best movie ever made!” by Parade Magazine or USA Today or someone. I put it on my radar and when it finally streamed for free on Hulu, I watched it. Somehow, I’d managed to ignore what the movie was about. I’d seen clips of Leonardo DiCaprio running around with a rifle in a bathrobe and Sean Penn in a military uniform but hadn’t paid much attention. Be warned, this movie is long. Too long for what it does. It’s a spider webbed tale of a 60’s revolutionary gang that robs banks, blows up buildings and more. DiCaprio’s character (Bob Ferguson) is the bomber of the group, and the gang are being tracked down by the military and killed off, one by one, many years later. Throw in Bob’s bi-racial daughter being kidnapped, an underdeveloped karate instructor character (Benecia Del Toro) and an Illuminati overtone and you’ve got a stew of plots being stirred continuously. The movie has a very unbelievable feel especially with the frequent setting jumps. I heard this was pulled from a Thomas Pynchon novel that I’ve not read and while the movie is entertaining it’s not the best movie ever made. It’s not even the best Paul Thomas Anderson movie. Boogie Nights is way better. Licorice Pizza is better.
Match Point – 2005 Directed by Woody Allen
Woody Allen movies are hit and miss with me. I appreciate the patient pan shots, minimal cuts and camera angles and pandering overspeak. How much film have you spent getting a woman’s chewing right? Match Point is an A+ thesis at an expensive script school. This is an in-your-face philosophical tale about hard work vs luck. It’s in the opening scene, it’s pointed out several times during the movie, and it very much ends with it. I promise you won’t forget it. Throw in a young Scarlett Johannson for sex appeal in high society London, contrast that with a rags to riches tennis pro and you’ve got the vehicle to carry this philosophical twister. I wasn’t crazy about Johannson’s character, but the acting around her is extremely good. I think she was much better in Lost In Translation 3 years earlier. I think this movie is a very fine and typical love triangle thriller. A theme executed professionally. I would recommend it to someone who likes these type of movies.
Caught Stealing – 2025 Directed by Darren Aronofsky
Someone needs to admit that Austin Butler isn’t a good actor. Tom Hanks carried him in Elvis, Tom Hardy carried him in The Bikeriders and Callum Turner easily outshined him in Masters of the Air. Who is Callum Turner? No one, that’s who. (He’s the guy from Fantastic Beasts). I turned this movie on late one night and after 30 minutes fell asleep. The movie starts with Butler playing a washed-up pro baseball player now working in a bar. Action Bronson is at the bar playing a local and he’s a terrible actor. Someone tell Action Bronson that he’s a terrible actor and then go tell that same thing to Austin Butler.
Anyhow, Butler’s character is named Hank Thompson. Hank quickly gets with his hot girlfriend played by Zoe Kravitz. They start making out, while walking. Aronofsky really wants you to watch Austin Butler and Zoe Kravitz making out even though it does nothing for the film. The first 15 or 20 minutes may contain some of the worst and most predictable dialogue I’ve heard in a long time. Extremely uninspired. Which is surprising because Aronofsky usually impresses me with his story telling. Both The Whale and The Wrestler were wonderfully done. I fell asleep and woke up later to Vincent D’Onofrio in Hasidic Jew garb arguing with Liev Schreiber. “Okay, there are some actual actors in this movie,” I thought to myself. I turned the movie off and decided to watch it some other time as I’d missed a lot. I started the movie over a day or so later and couldn’t make it past the first 20 minutes. I may try again, but sometimes you must admit a movie isn’t for you.
TV Shows
Bad Thoughts by Tom Segura, 2025
Years ago, Tom Segura showed up on the comedy scene with his first rounds of material and killed it. It was the best of everything he’d been working on his entire life, and it was very funny. A deadpan, dark arsenal of annoyed observations that everyone could relate to made him a star. These days, his specials are still worth a watch, but it’s nowhere near what we saw with Completely Normal or even Ball Hog. I got half-way through his last Netflix comedy set, Teacher, and thought, “Eh, I’ll finish this later.”
Let’s talk about his Netflix series, Bad Thoughts though. I finally got around to watching it and holy shit is this show crazy. It’s as if a pervert started writing Twilight Zone episodes. Every single episode is over the top vulgar and creative. The first story is about a hitman who makes a mistake and then tries to erase said mistake by promising sexual favors. It was the least interesting of the stories but had its moment. Themes you’re familiar with are taken to places you don’t want to see them go. Segura stars in every vignette and he pulls it off. Make no mistake, Tom Segura is funny and he assembled a well noted writing team for this series. It was a quick watch and 100% of this is extremely inappropriate for just about everyone. I had to watch this late at night when everyone was asleep with the volume down. In fact, I was going to watch this on my phone while waiting in line for kid pick up one day and realized, “If somehow someone heard this show coming through my truck speakers in a school parking lot they may take me to jail.” I do wish I could be a fly on the wall in the writing room as they decide to angle a common plot point into some fantastical dark cellar of raunchiness. It would be funny, I’m certain.
Tires, Season 2 by Shane Gillis, 2025
Shane Gillis is another comedian who got his own show on Netflix. Not nearly as clever or funny as Tom Segura though. Gillis’s comedy style is a sort of right wing, bro comedy soaked in Bud Light and admitted idiocy. Tires is a comedy about a bunch of guys who work at a tire shop. I watched the entire first season and thought, “Maybe it’ll get better. Maybe once people see this they can hire some better writers.” They didn’t and it got worse. I just don’t think Shane’s fellow comedians are that funny. I don’t think Steve Gerben is funny. The timing is off. The rely too heavily on non-pc cliches and dick joke culture that are supposed to be funny because they are happening at work. One episode revolves entirely around Shane bringing a gun to work. Another is about an HR meeting that obviously goes wrong because everyone is inappropriate. It’s all too easy. This show could be much funnier as Shane Gillis’ big dumb guy approach is reminiscent of Home Simpson, Kevin Malone from The Office or even Brick Tamland from Anchorman mixed with Kid Rock. Maybe I’m putting too much thought into this and I’m not the right audience. I do admit that I don’t drink Bud Light. I do wonder how much Bud Light I’d have to drink to find this show funny.