Ah thanks for the recommendation, haven’t seen that one yet! Will definitely check it out.
Another good tip is the mini series below, from the German vantage pojnt.
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Caught a morning matinee of Thunderbolts. This is probably the first really good Marvel movie in a while, although it deviates a lot from the comic book series. The bones are there, though. A lot of heart in this Bad New Bears group of anti heroes. Kudos in particular to Florence Pugh as Yelena, the “new” Black Widow and Lewis Pullman (I believe his dad is Bill Pullman) as Bob (“The Sentry”). Wyatt Russell seems to be relaxing into being on-screen, although it is impossible to not see him channeling his own dad (Kurt Russell) here and there. Sebastian Stan continues to find new angles in which to evolve Bucky, who is coming to terms with what it means to lead and how. And Julia Louis-Dreyfus continues to be the GOAT. Looking forward to eventually having this on physical media!
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Lewis is a spitting image of his dad.
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I think having your son watch a movie abt the war was a great idea. The only Vietnam war movie I ever watched was Apocalypse Now. I’m old enough that the subject of that war still brings me pain- pain for all the Americans who died needlessly and pain for what we did to their country and all that they lost. We have many Vietnamese in California and I’ve listened to a few of their stories. Hopefully the communities they have created in both the Bay Area and Southern California makes them miss home a bit less.
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To our eyes, the first episode of Mob Land veered in the direction of comedy; then we realized that none of the bad guys came off as convincingly menacing thanks to punk Eddie and cohorts who can’t really walk their talk. Harry the fixer does acquit his character as the episodes play out.
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Casting coup but it doesn’t work for me. Very unconvincing.
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I haven’t seen it, but being burned a few times has taught me that unless reviewed prominently otherwise, all Netflix original productions will be aggresively, almost freakishly soulless and ‘slick’, if you consider only the worst possible connotations of that word.
They contain stars, they have perfectly reasonable (if highly formulaic) plots, they are competently, (if blandly) photographed.
And 95% of the time they are just the worst. I would accuse them of being AI generated, but they’ve been like this since before LLMs and GenAI were actual things.
Netflix has always been open about the fact that they use EXTENSIVE viewer data to produce popular content. It doesn’t have to be good.
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Good to know about Mobland.
We didn’t even get 5 minutes into Havoc before quitting.
…
We started this Australian series tonight
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/arts/television/narrow-road-to-the-deep-north-jacob-elordi.html
@see The Gray Man.
at least they hit once in awhile, considering Cuaron’s Roma was a Netflix production.
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After Elizabeth II, Golda Meir, and Catherine the Great, what’s left.
We watched A Royal Affair on the plane, OG with subtitles. Are there any other Danish male actors besides Mads Mikkelsen to play the romantic lead in anything? 
I just realized it’s from 2012, which would explain his youthful appearance 
It was entertaining enough, if predictable.
Watched “Den of Thieves : Pantera” last night. not too shabby for a cheezy heist movie and way better than Havok.
On the plane to Chicago to see mom, Joker: Folie à Deux was available on the in flight entertainment. And frankly, that’s about all it’s worth. The first one was a fun alternate take on the Batman mythos and stole/paid well-observed homage to King of Comedy. But this mess of a picture is basically director Todd Phillips giving a huge middle finger to anyone that liked anything about the first. Its tone is utterly incoherent, its themes are simplistic and hammered home with all the subtlety of an after school special, and as a final kick, it makes a weird callback to Heath Ledger’s Joker from The Dark Knight, when the whole point of the first film was to do a different thing.
Bleh.
Also seen, after visiting with mom (who did not, in fact, remember my name) was Thunderbolts*, which is pretty good for a Marvel movie, though, as has become the way of these things, if you’re not already bought in to the whole MCU thing, there’s no particular reason that this film would change your mind. It also contains a trope I am coming to loathe more and more: the “but really, it’s about trauma…” (prominent in horror/thrillers). As with those genres, the ending to such stories tend to devolve into somehow physically/psychologically fighting a metaphor, cheapening any actual point they might make by suggesting that actual emotional healing is a matter of physical or mental ‘strength’, which is, honestly, no better than “well, have you tried NOT being mentally ill?”
Florence Pugh is putting in a way more layered performance than this deserves, and David Harbour hams it up amusingly.
It’s a well paced 2 hours and provided a little zero-brain-required relief from an emotionally exhausting weekend. You already know if you’re going to bother seeing this. There is nothing about this film that should make you reevaluate your current decision.
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I just found out the series finale was yesterday! Gonna check it out now. Still sad that will have been it, though 
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I thought it was a great ending.
Thoroughly enjoyed this, a nice change from all the cops & robbers shoot em ups I’ve been watching.
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While we enjoyed the gorgeous cinematography, I thought the movie (like most these days) was about 30 min too long. It also didn’t really improve on the original by Murnau.
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The flight from Chicago back to Sacramento had a better in-flight entertainment system, so we got something much better this time:
Companion (2025) -dir. Drew Hancock
Iris (Sophie Thatcher) states in the very opening of the movie that the two days she felt most purposeful, and most like herself, are the day she met her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid, who seems to be having a moment lately), and the day she killed him. We see the former, an adorable meet-cute in a grocery aisle. We then jump to some near future, as Iris and Josh head off for a couples getaway in their self-driving car, to meet up with Eli and Patrick, and owner of the lake house Sergey and his side-piece, Kat.
Even with one of the big initial twists being spoiled by early trailers, this is still quite a fun, even inventive thriller. It’s not just a dumb good time, either. There’s things to be said about controlling relationships and toxic nice guys. I mean, nothing groundbreaking, but still, there some depth to things. The acting, esp from Thatcher and Quaid, is all excellent, and the plot zigs and zags in unexpected ways, even once it becomes apparent the KIND of movie this is. It even manages to stick the ending. This fell out of theaters fairly early, but it deserves an audience.
3.5/5 robotic corkscrews
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