By now, this should be familiar to most of my readers. If you’re new here, don’t worry. It’s very straightforward: every three months I briefly discuss all the movies and TV series I have watched in that trimester. It’s all very subjective and while I try to give a bit of context, background and reasoning, I didn’t do any film studies. The length of each entry doesn’t reflect my esteem for it: just the fact that some movies or series are easier to say something about.
If you’re looking for recommendations: the entries with a poster next to them are topping my “you should watch this (for various reasons)” list.
The complete list of all the movies, series and documentaries I have seen is here.
2025 Q1
A Complete Unknown (2024)
A Real Pain (2024)
A Thousand Blows (2024, Season 1)
Arcane (2021, Season 1)
Babygirl (2024)
Becoming Led Zeppelin (2025)
Companion (2025)
Dead Poets Society (1989)
Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)
Echo (2023)
Marvel Studios: Assembled (2021, Season 1)
Mickey 17 (2025)
Nosferatu (2024)
September 5 (2024)
Sing Sing (2023)
The Return (2024)
What If...? (2021, Season 2)
X-Men ’97 (2024, Season 1)
X-Men (1992, Season 3-5)
You might notice two themes in this uncommonly long list. On one hand, that’s a lot of Marvel stuff. I’m still catching up on everything they put out since I was exploring HBO. On the other hand, there is a lot of recent arthouse fare. This is the result of my now-former (😭) colleagues gifting me a Cineville movies pass, an amazing present that lets me visit screenings at the two arthouse movie theatres in Eindhoven for free.
Let’s see if I can make this reasonably snappy. (Narrator: “It wouldn’t be snappy…”) In order that I watched them:
Babygirl:
I opened the year with a movie written and directed by “our” Halina Reijn. Nicole Kidman plays Romy Mathis, the CEO of a robotic process automation company. (Did Ms. Reijn ever visit Vanderlande Industries?)
Sexually unfulfilled, she begins an affaire with Samuel, a much younger intern (Harris Dickinson) at her company. The affaire is steeped in explicit dominance / submission elements and as Samuel pushes the boundaries of the relationship, Romy loses control.
The finale undercuts the stakes, but it’s certainly an interesting movie nonetheless.
X-Men, season 3:
Unfortunately, it felt like the already-not-great animation was actually getting worse. The season is dominated by two story arcs focused on the cosmic force known as the Phoenix, also known as “make Jean Grey more interesting”. (Somehow the season’s episode listing is different between IMDb and Disney+, for once I’m using the latter’s.) Everything else I mentioned last quarter still holds: these are the X-Men that I grew up with and it’s speedy and dramatic and glorious.
A Real Pain:
Road movie in which two cousins (Kieran Culkin, Jesse Eisenberg) visit Poland to do a “Holocaust tour” to honour their recently-deceased grandmother. The sharp script (Eisenberg) and good direction (Eisenberg again) are helped by an acting masterclass by Culkin. Both deservedly won various awards. Don’t watch this movie if you don’t like either Culkin or Eisenberg — they lean hard into their “usual” personas.
Nosferatu (2024) on Nosferatu:
I’ve never watched the original 1922 version, nor the 1979 version — but apparently this version pays homage to these in various shots.
Gorgeous cinematography, great mood and strong performances. This interpretation of Dracula Orlok is a horrific, primal force of evil, not a debonair romantic. Takes its time (2 hours and 12 minutes) and could use a little bit of a trim, but easily worth it just for the opulent Gothic atmosphere.
What If…
continues its look at alternate histories set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
There’s a comfort in revisiting parts of the MCU, seeing the familiar characters, hearing their voices. (I’ve missed Cate Blanchett’s sass as Hela!) This season offers some inspired twists (Nebula as a film noir private eye, the Avengers as swashbuckling heroes in the 1600s) and there’s even an entirely new hero (the Mohawk girl Kahhori). Not sure why we need so much of Captain Carter though, and I’m saying that as a fan of the character. And I still can’t shake the feeling that this is very much redundant and an exercise in market research.
Sing Sing:
A movie in which the actual protagonist is the Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA) programme in the United States, and how it affects change in its participants. (I wasn’t familiar with the programme: it brings inmates in certain high- and medium-security prisons in contact with the arts.)
Colman Domingo plays “Divine G”, an inmate who’s found a purpose in the programme. His status quo is shaken up when a new inmate joins the group and starts making waves. It’s from this simple setup that the challenges for the characters spring. We see the troupe in their daily routines and how they blossom during the acting sessions. We see them in a lot of intense close-ups, It’s almost claustrophobic — much like the prison the characters are in.
Afterwards I learned that a lot of the supporting actors are graduates of the RTA programme themselves, and that scenes were shot on location in actual prisons. I can’t imagine how that must have felt.
Marvel Studios: Assembled:
This is a collection of “The Making Of” / “Behind the Scenes” episodes covering the MCU’s Phase 4, so WandaVision to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Obviously, this is just self-promotion disguised as Disney+ content. Fortunately I’m very much its target audience: a Marvel mostly-fan interested in how the sausage gets made. I like to watch these as it gives me a greater appreciation of the craft — even of the “failed” movies. Companion (2025) on
Not everything has aged as well. There’s an irony, for example, in Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige and director Chloé Zhao gushing about the enormous impact that Eternals would have in the MCU. (Spoiler: it didn’t.)
There’s a lot of common topics, which is to be expected with so many episodes. Examples: shoot as much as possible “in camera” which will help your actors, the fighting styles represent the characters, and fight scenes should tell a story and move the film forward.
In pretty much every episode the stunt teams, and the art and costume departments all get a moment to shine and deservedly so.
Easy winner is the episode on Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness as it is hosted by Bruce Campbell.
Companion:
Sharply written, brisk “young people in a secluded location” thriller with good twists. I didn’t expect much but was pleasantly surprised. This one delivers, and is first real recommendation of this list.
The trailer spoils one of the biggest reveals, so do yourself a favour and go in without watching that.
Deadpool & Wolverine:
Self-aware fan-service of the highest order means that this is better than it has to be, and still entirely inconsequential. Of course it’s fun to see the familiar faces of some of the “forgotten” heroes/variants of the characters, like Elektra.
It’s probably not fair to post this YouTube clip, but I’m doing it anyway because it’s relevant:
Dead Poets Society:
This ’89 classic features a very young cast led by the late Robin Williams. He plays (with admirable constraint) an English literature teacher who encourages his wards “to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life”, to seize the day, and to express themselves. Inspirational feel-good Disney fare with some memorable scenes.
Dog Day Afternoon:
According to my list I’d already seen this but I didn’t remember anything from this. A rerun in the theatre gave me the opportunity to watch it properly. Great screenplay, very tense while also very funny — but because it’s so tense and the stakes are so personal, you almost feel guilty for laughing.
While I can admire the acting and the screenplay, I’m also a bit confused for all the accolades this movie has received. Probably because it’s very hard for me to imagine the impact the movie made almost 50 years ago.
X-Men, season 4:
There’s some good stuff here, including two multi-part time-travel stories, multiple parent-children tales, a lot of Wolverine backstory, and the introduction of one of my favourites, Nightcrawler. If you liked the previous seasons, you’ll like this one, too.
“Interestingly the story, despite the classic music-biopic tropes that Mangold did so much to popularise, does not conform to the classic rise-fall-learning-experience-comeback format. It’s all rise, but troubled and unclear.”
This Bob Dylan is an enigmatic person who we barely get to know, as his girlfriend complains in the movie. He’s obsessed with his music, a jerk to his friends and colleagues, and a cheating asshole to his girlfriends. It’s also hard for us to understand how his performance with electric guitars at the Newport Folk Festival was so shocking to the folk community. Still, I enjoyed the movie and it kept me engaged. A large part of that are the songs and the stellar performances by Timothée Chalamet (Dylan), Edward Norton (Pete Seeger) and Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez), who did their own singing to boot.
Becoming Led Zeppelin:
Continuing the theme of ’60s music, we arrive at this documentary. Not sure who the intended audience is, but as a fan-but-not-die-hard-fan of Led Zep, I enjoyed this immensely. It tracks the lead up to the formation of the band, its rise up to the release of their second album. I don’t know why, like with A Complete Unknown, we stop so early in their journey. The focus is squarely on the four band members, anybody else barely gets a mention. There’s a wealth of old footage, which is combined with recent video interviews with the remaining band members. John Bonham is present through a previously-unreleased interview.
The interviews’ setup and the decision to stop at Led Zeppelin II avoids any criticism, let alone any controversy. It also leaves the story arc rather flat: after initial struggles, the band breaks through to immense success — roll credits.
Some neat things I learned: John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page worked on the song Goldfinger as session musicians, and Page deliberately made it hard to take singles from the albums.
X-Men, season 5:
Unfortunately, the series runs out of steam in the final season. There are only 10 episodes, and apart from the opening two-parter, none of them are really any good. Due to a change in the animation studio, the animation style also changes dramatically, and not in a good way either. A pity it had to end this way. Or did it? (Bear with me, this is foreshadowing.)
Mickey 17:
Bong Joon Ho’s latest doesn’t reach the level of Parasite, but it’s still a good, fun and funny movie. Robert Pattinson plays Mickey 17, an awkward guy that had to become an “Expendable” on a 4.5 year trip to Niflheim, a planet being colonised. When (not “if”) an Expendable dies, they are reprinted and are given their soul and memories back. There’s a lot of fun had with this premise, while the movie at large takes shots at capitalism and colonialism. It’s a bit uneven and doesn’t really commit to one genre: is it a parody, a satire, a science fiction thriller or an action movie?
A Thousand Blows (2024) on A Thousand Blows:
Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight turns to 1880’s London, in particular the East End. We follow starry-eyed newcomer Ezekiah (Malachi Kirby) and his friend Alec, fresh off the boat from Jamaica. He wanders into the East End, territory of Erin Doherty’s Mary Carr (The Crown’s Queen Anne) the leader of the all-woman band of thieves and pickpockets, and Stephen Graham’s Sugar Goodson, bare-knuckle boxer. There’s a heist, there’s boxing, there’s class struggles and a lot of discrimination against the people of colour and the women. All three of our main characters are played expertly by their actors. I particularly liked Erin’s sassy leader, a smart lady made tough by her upbringing and surroundings, smart and swaggering but also barely holding it together.
September 5:
A movie about the hostage-taking of Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Olympics in Munich, but seen from the perspective of the American sports broadcasting team. Unexpectedly tense, it raises some interesting dilemma’s (like “should we give these terrorists a podium in the name of informing the people”) but doesn’t really engage with them in a meaningful manner. The timing of its release raises some eyebrows, as you could view the movie as supporting Israel’s current stance and actions.
Arcane (2021) on Arcane:
This animated series is based on the world of the game League of Legends. I can probably count the number of League matches that I played on 2 hands (Dota 2 was my poison of choice) so I have no idea how “accurate” it is. And I don’t care, as this is a good story in an intriguing world. The plot gets a bit convoluted at points, and there are a bit too many characters to keep track of. Most of them are vivid and well-rounded, though.
The world is a crazy mix of steampunk and magic-powered Victorian industrialism and I want to know more about it. Moreover, this is a beautiful series. From the backgrounds to the striking character designs to the stylish animations, it all fits together. More than once I thought “this is a beautiful shot”. Much like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, it leverages the possibilities of animation and uses them to push boundaries. Apparently, Arcane was the most expensive animated series ever made, and it shows.
X-Men ’97:
You could argue that X-Men ’97 is a nostalgia-fueled exercise in content-production by Disney+/Marvel. And you might be right! It’s a direct continuation of the X-Men animated series that ended in 1997 — hence the name.
On the other hand, this is seriously good stuff, made with obvious care and reverence for the original. It reassembles pretty much the original’s roster (with the originals’ characterisations), and continues its speed-run of the most important X-Men storylines from the comics. A lot of the old voice cast return, while the animation is how you remember the 30-ish-year-old original to look. In other words: it looks like a modern show while still having an old-school vibe.
There was absolutely no reason for this to go so hard, and yet it does, occasionally delivering genuine, heart-tugging moments.
The only reason I’m not recommending it wholeheartedly is that I’m unsure how understandable it is if you’re not at least somewhat familiar with the originals series or the X-Men in general.
The Return (2024) on The Return:
A retelling of the last part of the Odyssey, from the moment Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) washes up on the shores of his beloved homeland Ithaka. In this version there is no hint of meddling by the gods, but instead Odysseus is a man traumatised by the horrors he saw (and very much committed) during the Trojan war. He doesn’t know how he can face his wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche) again.
Beautifully shot on location, director Uberto Pasolini and his cinematographer Marius Panduru give this a lovely earthy weight. Overall it’s a bit dull until the explosive finale. Until then Binoche and Fiennes give a masterclass in understates acting. Certainly an acquired taste, but certainly one that lingered.
Re-watch: Eternals:
When I first watched this, I was intrigued. Where did this arthouse superhero movie draw its inspiration from? I’ve since read the original 19-issue series, written and drawn by Jack “The King” Kirby. I also read the 1985, 2006 and 2008 runs and while there are some interesting ideas, there’s also a lot of dull characterisation and uninspired slugfests, topped off with some convoluted retcons. In other words, it’s a small miracle that the resulting movie was coherent at all, with mostly three-dimensional characters and a clear throughline. Too bad it was received badly and we haven’t seen any of the loose ends used in the MCU.
