Originally published on 14 April 2024.
Last updated on 11 July 2024.
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, Season 1:
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, Season 1:
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, Season 1:
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, Season 1:
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.
2025 Q2
Agatha All Along (2024, Season 1)
Captain America: Brave New World (2025)
Daredevil: Born Again (2025, Season 1)
Death of a Unicorn (2025)
Get Out (2017)
Materialists (2025)
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning (2025)
Mond (2024)
Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019, Portrait de la jeune fille en feu)
Praten met de Nachtwacht (2025)
Sinners (2025)
The Bear (2022, Season 3)
The Life of Chuck (2024)
Thunderbolts* (2025)
Warfare (2025)
What If...? (2021, Season 3)
Death of a Unicorn:
Pretty much the definition of “a movie I wouldn’t watch if I didn’t have a Cineville pass”, this is a spin on the “monster attacks people in secluded area” formula. A father (Paul Rudd) and his estranged daughter (Jenna Ortega) travel to his employers so he can get a coveted position. On the way there, they crash into a unicorn. Turns out, unicorns aren’t the rainbow-farting creatures they’re depicted as now — they’re terrifying creatures that resurrect.
The shock moments are gnarly but rarely surprising. Rudd, Ortega and Will Poulter deliver good performances but there’s too few emotional stakes and it takes too long.
Warfare (2025) on Warfare:
That’s the second movie in a row with Will Poulter in it. It tells the story of a dangerous mission in Iraq, told from the memories of the Navy Seals that participated. It’s exactly what the title suggests: a movie about the horrible reality of (urban) warfare. There’s no glam, no polish, and barely any plot. It’s a factual re-telling of the mission which unfolds in real-time. As the audience, we’re part of it, in all its intense blood and thunder and misery.
Agatha All Along:
The long-awaited sequel to WandaVision, by the same head writer. It plays with genre homages like WandaVision, but gets it out of the way much more quickly. That takes care of my main gripe with its predecessor. Agatha All Along is a smaller-scale story and probably won’t have the same kind of ripples in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It’s worth your time though, if only for the delight that is Audrey Plaza hamming it up. Moreover, leads Katherine Hahn and Joe Locke are killing it.
Praten met de Nachtwacht:
This drama comes with an ingenious premise: what if we could interview the main subjects of one of the most famous paintings in the world? What would the artist himself say, or his first wife? This results in an entertaining and didactic 74-minute “documentary” which is about vanity, a prickly genius, the vagaries of life and even about the privacy of an artist. I’m very much the target demographic and I’d love more like this!
Parasite (2019) on
Re-watch: Parasite:
Watching this was homework for the course “Film Analysis, Part 2” at the Natlab that I attended. Knowing the twist in advance doesn’t really diminish the movie. On the contrary, foreknowledge and the analysis in class made me appreciate the movie even more. While I was unsure about the exact level of excellence when I first saw it, I’m now convinced that yes, this movie deserves its accolades.
Get Out:
This was also homework for the course. I saw the movie over two sessions on my tablet in a plane, so that was hardly the best viewing experience. The movie still held up and I can see why it made a big impact. It’s a great horror movie, expertly told and well acted (especially Daniel Kaluuya in the lead role). The message is still relevant, even though I deplore the bluntness with which it is delivered here.
Portrait de la jeune fille en feu:
One of those films where on the surface, not a lot happens, but there’s a lot below the surface. In 18th century France, free-spirited painter Marianne must paint young Héloïse who is soon to be wedded. Beautifully shot, excellently acted, it’s pretty much the platonic ideal of a French arthouse movie.
The Devil Wears Prada:
Tired as I was, I needed a low-effort diversion during the return flight from Korea, so no new content. Instead I decided to watch the first scene of this movie again, while applying the stuff I’d learned during the film analysis course. Before I knew it, the movie was halfway done and we were landing at Warsaw Chopin Airport. (A day or two later at home I finished the movie.) It’s still very much a fun movie, although this time around I had less sympathy for the female lead (Anne Hathaway) and her boyfriend. Also, supposedly there’s a sequel in the making?
Re-watch: The Godfather:
More homework for the film analysis course. I’m now a bit unsure if I still prefer the original over Part II to be honest — there are some awkward scenes that don’t fully mesh. Anyway, more about The Godfather and why it’s an evergreen movie for me can be found in this article.
Thunderbolts*:
An amusing action romp in which Florence Pugh does a lot of the heavy lifting and the big bad is somewhat surprising. The whole “unlikely group of (anti-)heroes bands together to become unlikely heroes” setup inevitably gives strong Guardians of the Galaxy vibes, but the movie doesn’t reach the same levels of greatness. Admittedly, that’s a high bar to clear, and Thunderbolts* is still an enjoyable action movie.
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning:
Somehow this isn’t named Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two, but it’s very much the direct sequel to Part One. It’s a worthy closure of the series — hah who am I kidding, they’re totally going to continue / reboot this. There’s a lot of references and flashbacks to earlier installments and I can forgive it for I feel this series has earned it. Moreover, we’re still getting what we came for: a ridiculous, convoluted plot with a macguffin, a likeable team lead by Tom Cruise saving the world (and cinema) one action set piece at a time.
Sinners (2025) on Sinners:
“What would be better than a movie with my muse Michael B. Jordan in the lead role?” celebrated director Ryan Coogler asked himself. Fortunately, the answer came to him quickly. “I know! A movie with two Michaels B. Jordan in the lead roles!”
I kid because I love. Coogler delivers a nice twist on the vampire yarn, one embedded in the segregated 1934 South and the systemic racial injustices thereof. Jordan plays a double role of the Smokestack Twins, recently returned from a stint in Chicago, back in the bayou to (re)make their name by creating a juke joint the likes these people have never seen. Their past is waiting for them, as it is wont to do.
Also features one of the most beautiful scenes I’ve seen in quite a while: the big dance at the joint is a work of art and worth the price of admission by itself.
What If…?, Season 3:
Supposedly the final season of this Marvel animated series, it’s indeed probably for the best if it stops. Delivering exactly one episode with an interesting premise (what if some of the Marvel superheroes were in the 1872 American West?) it’s clear that the series has run out of ideas and squandered its potential. If that sounds somewhat bitter, I guess it’s because I am.
The Life of Chuck:
A sentimental science fiction drama that, while not necessarily great, still hit me in the feels in a good way. It’s based on a short story by Stephen King, which I didn’t read so I don’t know how the movie compares to its inspiration.
As in Sinners, the dance in the middle of the movie carries a lot of weight and is lovely to behold. I just wish we could spend more time with the likes of Tom Hiddleston, Karen Gillan and Chiwetel Ejiofor: the movie is divided into three acts that have different actors, leaving us with precious little quality time with each one.
Materialists (2025) on Materialists:
What would an A24 rom-com look like? The South-Korean writer and director Celine Song answers that question with Materialists, a modern take on the genre. Dakota Johnson’s Lucy is a high-end match maker in the Big Apple who thinks in terms of numbers and the ‘market value’ of her clients. How old are you, how tall are you, what’s your family background and how much money do you make? Love doesn’t figure into this equation.
But then Lucy meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), a so-called unicorn, scoring 10 out of 10s across the board, while seeing a relationship as a business deal — like Lucy does. And of course her old boyfriend, always-broke but soulful and attentive struggling thespian / caterer John (Chris Evans), re-enters the picture again at the exact same event. Who will she choose?
There’s a lot in the movie to recommend: sharp wit, good lines, lovely cinematography. It capably plays with the genre conventions. One thing I’m not certain of is Dakota Johnson’s stance: she plays the calculating Lucy well, but somehow fails to have any chemistry with either Pascal (who’s having a busy few years and is probably the most-coveted celebrity at the moment?) or Evans (who is somehow still pulling of the honest-Captain America boy-next-door heartthrob role with verve). I can’t help but wonder how this movie would’ve felt with another actress in the lead role.
Daredevil: Born Again, Season 1:
I really liked the first season of the original Netflix series. Heck, I liked the 2003 movie with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner! Unfortunately, the second and especially third season became less engaging and, frankly, rather messy.
This sequel series apparently got retooled in 2023 after Marvel/Disney saw the initial version and didn’t like it, so (part of) the original show runners and writers were fired and new blood was brought in. This shows, as there are pacing issues and mood swings. Still, this is easily as engaging as anything else that Marvel put out through Disney+. It’s a joy to see Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio and other familiar faces inhabit their characters again. The basics of the series are the same: Matt Murdock is a blind lawyer from Hell’s Kitchen by day, and the vigilante Daredevil by night. Our Catholic hero struggles with guilt and responsibilities, and especially in his “normal life” is a hot mess.
Mond:
Short drama about Austrian MMA fighter Sarah (Florentina Holzinger) who, with her career on the ropes (hah!), accepts a job in Jordan to train the three sisters of a wealthy prince. Along the way she discovers there’s more than the glittering facade of a wealthy estate at play.
Holzinger does her utmost best to make something of her role as our point of view character. She does a lot in conveying her bewilderment, frustration and internalised trauma, deconstructing the “white saviour” trope. This is in theory interesting, but we barely get to know the brother and the three sisters who are basically walking stereotypes.
The Bear’s third season seems like an example of “careful what you wish for, lest it come true”. All the fans wished for more of their darling TV series, and the network was happy to oblige. There was a small problem though: it was originally planned for three seasons, so what to do? It seems like the answer was “let’s stretch the originally planned third season into season 3 and 4”. While I previously praised the series for being lean and effective in its storytelling, that is no longer the case here. It feels bloated and threading water, setting things up without any resolution. Hopefully that’ll arrive in the fourth and final season, which I haven’t seen yet.
Don’t get me wrong: sub-par The Bear is still enjoyable TV and a level of craft most series can only dream of. The characters are still intriguing and human, the acting impeccable. There are still experiments in form and style (like the impressionistic opening episode), and there’s a bunch of music by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross which is used to chef’s-kiss perfection. Unfortunately the writing doesn’t really move the plot, and often goes for the “obvious” choices.
Captain America: Brave New World:
I saw this one after Thunderbolts* while it was released earlier, but it doesn’t really matter. While I liked The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, this movie didn’t do it for me and it felt very flat. Anthony Mackie unfortunately can’t save the material, and neither can stunt-casting Harrison Ford. It’s fun to see the MCU plot point that’s been open for the longest see resolved (from 2008’s The Incredible Hulk), and the biggest one see some progress (Eternals’s Celestial). There’s also some chemistry between Mackie and Danny Ramirez (playing Cap’s side-kick Joaquin Torres), but ultimately the plot is uninspired, the cinematography flat and some of the CGI terrible.
It’s saying something that one its highlights was the cameo of Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier, which lasted for about a minute. As an IMDb review says, this film could have been a special episode (or two) in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
