No spoilers for those who haven't seen it yet: I really liked Spider-man: Brand New Day. With the amount of quality dips and missteps from Marvel after Endgame, Spider-man really dodged some creative bullets and managed to maintain a quality run. I can really only describe the movie as "finessed". There's a lot of really good small moments, and between those small moments are wonderful nuggets of detail.

A great example (non-spoiler still) is a passing 'b-roll' shot of the city with a lit up billboard of Spider-man's mask. Except you don't see the billboard itself, but instead the reflection of the billboard eclipsed by an office building that is bouncing off another building. It's just this awesome 1-2 second filler shot and yet it clearly had a lot of thought behind it. I haven't seen anything else from Destin Daniel Cretton, but I'm definitely going to seek out past and future projects from them.

Evil Dead Burn 2026

Liked:

The dread, delayed gratification
Direction and practical effects
Cinematography with proficiency

There seemed to be a lot of inspiration here, felt some homage to resident evil VII biohazard, like when the family has dinner and the patriarch is almost bursting at the seams; father often responsible for crashing through the walls, either he or throwing his living son through them. An Amityville father ramping up his annihilating ambitions, disgustingly stabbing a dog with the only sharp instrument around, a fork. There was some interesting commentary on hiding domestic abuse from the family, and a grieving one at that. One of the kettles that personally has affected my life in explosive ways.
Could be the minority, but a lot of repulsive sequences in this movie that I actually loved, lol. Drinking the hot candle wax, straddling on the knived-up dishwasher, and the absolute howling I did when the deadite took grandma's retainer/denture from her mouth, licked it clean, and put it back. I scrammed a mighty scream.

Disliked:
Inconsistencies with deadite infection
Impotent urgency to reach exposited silver bullet
Overstated thematic ending

Grandma's denture felt obvious, but only because it was exposited that way. Grandma's infected because she gets the denture back and is left alone for a few minutes. But it's never really agreed in universe if getting covered in blood or swallowing some or getting cut or bit does the trick. This one felt like it played fast and loose with the "infection." The mom briefly fighting back the deadite within was confusing. She seemed to return to herself slightly when she began fighting to keep her living son alive, away from the patriarch deadite. But it was telegraphed as both deadites having their own strategies and styles for getting information from the boy, one thru brute terror and one thru emotional appeal. But...when the MC brings her into a room to safety and after a story beat, "gives up" and clearly has a "transition" back to being a deadite. It all just kept me more puzzled than intrigued.

Main characters taking too long to make it to the attic where they know the magic dagger is.

The living son eventually dies and becomes a deadite -- so could they not read his memories and know which knife is the right one? Why did it keep provoking her to try then if the 4th or 5th knife ended up working?

The final baddie being the abusive ex husband in all CG was pretty poor, and as some others on the reddit thread pointed out, running up to him immediately with the knife and cutting him short rather than including the 15 minute bookend at the construction site would have made for a more satisfying ending and felt more in service to the rest of the movie.

I'm hungry for this kind of movie, so I still liked it. But it wasn't as good as Evil Dead Rise in my opinion.

Post credit scene was kinda fire though, albeit has the same inconsistencies with how deadite transference occurs.

There's a video going around of a recent interview Jenna Ortega did. Which has generated similar comments to what we're seeing with Ariana Grande. But, that's not what I'm gonna focus on.

I wrote this back in 2024 when she had already been in the spotlight for two years and it seemed like her career was just gonna take off. And the following year she had a ton of misfires release. Coincidentally Sydney Sweeney also had those misfires with Americana, Eden, and Christy.

I got the sense that Ortega wanted to do artsy films, but none of her choices every reflected that. Her working with Taika Waiiti was probably the closest to a smart move she's made since Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. But, apparently, the film she made with him as a misfire. She also recently signed on to a Leos Carax film, he directed 2021's Annette. Which is, fine, Carax is certainly well liked in euro circles. But, it's weird she never circled anything more substantial. Sean Durkin (The Iron Claw) for example has a movie coming out where a character is half-Mexican and half-Jewish. Odessa A'Zion was originally signed up for it, but because she was the wrong half she dropped it after online outcry. That seems like a perfect role for Ortega to have swooped up, but she didn't. Or even just suff she shouldn't have done like Hurry Up Tomorrow or Miller's Girl or Death of a Unicorn.

And with Inde Navarette coming up out of nowhere. With this sleeper hit that's going to result in her getting an Oscar nomination and, if rumors are true, going to be Mystique in X-Men. She's already got a leg up on Ortega. Because, as we know, there's only one Latina allowed at a time. But, it does seem like she's going to be taking her place. Even if Navarette does an equal amount of bad movies, she'll still have that Oscar nomination and still have what is presumably a big franchise.

Although, another interesting thing is how they blew up. Ortega blew up in the early 2020s on a TV show and Navarette on the latter half of the decade with a theatrical film. Which shows how much it does seem like cultural relevance shifted from TV back to film.

The End of Oak Street

David Robert Mitchell directed It Follows and hasn’t made a film since 2019’s Under the Silver Lake. Technically that premiered at Cannes 2018 but had to go through re-edits before it sold since it got a negative reception. I loved It Follows at the time and was mixed on Silver Lake.

This is coming to us from Warner Bros because Michael De Luca was a producer on Silver Lake and is friends with Mitchell. The only caveat Mitchell had was that the film had to be commercial.

And it largely is that. It’s funny that his commercial film got significantly better reviews than his attempt at an artsy thing.

It’s basically an homage to Spielberg and those 80s/90s types of films. Like how ten years ago we got a lot of that like Stranger Things and It. So in a way this feels out of step with the current era of nostalgia.

It’s really good. It’s really entertaining and fun. It looks incredible, the CGI looks good and they use miniatures. The story and characters are simple and fall into typical archetypes we’ve seen. But it’s effective. The main couple are going through a divorce, which is a Spielberg-ism.

The craft on display is undeniable.

Anne Hathaway looks really good.

Niu Lai

I watched half of Niu Lai, the terrible Chinese animated film that has become a viral hit, earning more profit per cost than even Obsession on its paltry production. It looks terrible. It has awful character models and stiff animation. It should not succeed. And yet, much like how The Room won its cult status despite its obvious shortcomings, Niu Lai wins over its audiences by presenting themes that reward continued watching despite hammy dialogue and wooden, inexpressive faces.

I don't know what it's called, but there's a specific sub-genre of Asian filmmaking in which story and dialog take a backseat to the feeling of scale. There'll be these long, faraway shots of a beautiful, lush jungle; the protagonist is there way off in the distance, allowing the audience to contemplate the inconsequence of man and the impermanence of time. Niu Lai is kind of like that, but it doesn't have the budget for beautiful vistas or high detail textures (or any textures at all, really); instead, it keeps this feeling in its back pocket as it the camera lingers on a shot where nothing happens for too long, or follows a dialogue that goes nowhere.

This may sound funny, but Niu Lai is very spiritual. It is very philosophical in how its weird-ass talking cow with a human face protagonist tries to find his identity and place in the world. But it's not overt in how it does it, instead allowing the audience to experience these ideas as themes, the same way The Room is able to put together a coherent, resolving theme in a movie with incoherent, terrible components of a film.

To me, I think the creator of Niu Lai may not be a genius, but he certainly had a true vision for this movie. He had a specific story to tell, and despite all the shortcomings (oh my god the lighting, the PS1 textures), he was able to do it. Most importantly, this vision conforms with China censorship laws, meaning that there is not one part of this movie that anyone can criticize for being anti-society or subversive. It has talking animals; the animals do not live in China, nor do they reflect at all as metaphors for culture and government. But to me, this is a very Chinese movie that is made for Chinese audiences that are used to government-approved slop and are willing to test the limits of their taste ironic appreciation.

I could be wrong about Niu Lai. I've only watched half of it. I'm not inspired to watch the rest. Maybe something will happen at the end to change everything around. And yet, Niu Lai has the tiniest semblance of a plot, making for following its narrative the same way you aren't able to retell a Bob & Dave Mr Show episode from top to bottom.

As good as this is for the creator, this must be embarrassing for a Chinese film industry stuck on obligatory anti-Japanese war films and influencer stunt casting that usually experiences box office success by running bought-out screenings in completely empty halls in the dead of night. Well, if not that, then at least a Chinese audience member can look up the grotesque, inexpressive face of a half-man, half-cow and contemplate upon the nature of the universe.