Pizza Movie satisfies your stoner movie munchies Reviewing a stoner film when you aren’t one isn’t always an easy prospect. It’s difficult to enjoy a culture when you aren’t part of it. At least that’s how I typically explain my lack of…

On this blessed 420, @ungajje.bsky.social reviews PIZZA MOVIE, a nachos-dripping-with-hot-neon-orange-cheese film (complimentary).

Kontinental ’25 Is A Visually Precise Dark Comedy Treat Writer/director Radu Jude’s Kontinental ’25 begins with Ion (Gabriel Spahiu), an unhoused former athlete, washing up in a park surrounded by animatronic dinosaurs. From there, Jude’s camera captures…

@lisalamanfilmfan.bsky.social praises the darkly humorous Kontinental ’25 as another strong example of writer-director Radu Jude's commitment to depicting the modern world as Hell while still imbuing the feature with empathy.

Unhinged highs can’t stop Lee Cronin’s The Mummy unraveling It’s 1932. Filmmaker Karl Freund strolls down a sidewalk, happening upon a movie theater playing his directorial debut, The Mummy. He stops a moment, tilts his gaze upward at the marquee, and cracks…

LEE CRONIN'S THE MUMMY sometimes plays more like a gross-out dark comedy than a typical Mummy film, explains @lisalamanfilmfan.bsky.social. Sadly, it too often embraces familiarity and lore obsession over those creative choices.

Odenkirk can’t overcome Normal shortcomings Ulysses (Bob Odenkirk) has a lot going on. A marriage on the fritz. Heavy job trauma. In search of a break, he takes on an interim sheriff job in the small Minnesota town of Normal, a place of…

While @lisalamanfilmfan.bsky.social indentifies charms in NORMAL, particularly Bob Odenkirk's performance, but ultimately finds the film too complicated and talky for its own good.

Criminal Record Season 2 is a little bit of history repeating Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. So goes the expression, one with which DS June Lenker (Cush Jumbo) is apparently unaware. Why else would she again fall in with the disgraced…

While @ungajje.bsky.social has reservations about how the plot treats its initial victim, he can't deny CRIMINAL RECORD Season 2 is a compelling sophomore effort.

The Miniature Wife makes a surprisingly big impact Hollywood loves a good logline. Truth be told, many of us do. So let’s get this review started with one. The Miniature Wife looked like a Honey, I Shrunk the Kids riff with somehow worse comedy. What…

The advertising campaign did THE MINIATURE WIFE wrong as the series turns out to be an excellent surprise, says @ungajje.bsky.social.

Big Mistakes makes a couple of significant ones Everyone makes mistakes. We trust the wrong people, make bad choices, buy things we can’t afford. For most of us, the consequences are noteworthy but ultimately minor. A broken heart, a skinned knee,…

Taylor Ortega is excellent in BIG MISTAKES but the show itself is ill-formed, argues @ungajje.bsky.social about the newly released Netflix series.

Riz Ahmed breathes new life Hamlet in mostly solid adaptation To adapt or not to adapt isn’t the question. Rather, it is why adapt Hamlet, one of Shakespeare’s most famous plays. With over 50 film adaptations since 1900, clarity of vision and purpose grows all…

Not every choice works in HAMLET starring Riz Ahmed, but what does work makes the film worth watching, asserts @sgorr.bsky.social . buff.ly/UOT9h0h

Oxymoronically, Shrinking Season 3 grows When I say Shrinking Season 3 is the series’s best effort yet, it may sound a bit like a backhanded compliment considering my ambivalence about its prior installments, Season 1 in particular. But…

With SHRINKING Season 3 officially ending today, revisit @ungajje.bsky.social 's review of the full season.

Death is moving in in Your Friends & Neighbors Season 2 Your Friends & Neighbors’ theme, “The Joneses” by Hamilton Leithauser & Dominic Lewis, has always warned us, “You can’t keep up with the Joneses”. In practice, though, Season 1 struggled to land that…

@ungajje.bsky.social praises YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS Season 2 as an improvement over its debut with a clearer thesis on wealth and the wealthy and an eye towards all of our inevitable deaths. But still funny.

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice do the time warp Have you ever looked back on an earlier version of yourself and just absolutely hated who you were? You can’t believe you did or said that thing. Can’t even understand how you could have hurt that…

MIKE & NICK & NICK & ALICE isn't nearly as over the top as its premise suggests, but it is still plenty of fun, asserts @ungajje.bsky.social.

Tortured, shattered, and lonely: This is Julia Ducournau’s Alpha In hindsight, it’s appropriate that I was the only soul in my Sunday morning screening of Alpha. After all, this is a motion picture about pervasive loneliness. Witnessing that kind of story with…

Despite not reaching the heights of TITANE, @lisalamanfilmfan.bsky.social finds plenty compelling about Julia Ducournau's latest, APEX. Read her review now.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is an upgrade, but only marginally Before helming Illumination’s Mario movies, directors Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic headed the Teen Titans Go! series famous for its hyperactive sensibilities and absurdist comic impulses.…

THE SUPER MARIO GALAXY MOVIE is an Easter egg-filled improvement over its predecessor...but just barely, says @lisalamanfilmfan.bsky.social. buff.ly/F2toWva

SOMETHING VERY BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN starts with all atmosphere before the plot takes over halfway through the season. Despite quality production design, @ungajje.bksy.social thinks the whole thing would've been better served by just being a film. buff.ly/qNcrEjg

Forbidden Fruits succulent with dark comedy, terrific performances “Bless your heart.” Fellow lifelong Texas residents undoubtedly have heard that phrase countless times. It’s a trio of words epitomizing the bizarre paradoxes of Texan culture. Externally kind but…

@lisalamanfilmfan.bsky.social praises the contrasts in the new horror-comedy FORBIDDEN FRUITS, loving its mix of dark humor and toxic witchy melodrama.

New release OUR HERO, BALTHAZAR, has split The Spool staffers.

Imperfect Women lives down to its name When adapting a book for television, a smart choice may be devoting episodes to different characters’ points of view. It allows the viewers to experience familiar events through different eyes.…

With the newest episode of IMPERFECT WOMEN hitting streaming today, look back at @ungajje.bsky.social 's review of the whole series from last week. Find out why he argues the show is doomed by its insistence on trying to be two kinds of television at the same time.

Bisected The Madison can only muster love for half of its own story I don’t say this sort of thing often. In fact, this might be the first time I’ve ever said anything like this. But, here we go. The Madison would be better off if it had nothing to do with New York…

@ungajje.bsky.social struggles to reconcile THE MADISON's two halves. One is a deeply empathetic and insightful look at grief. The other, an ugly, reductive take on cities and the people that have the nerve to live in them. The series airs in final three episodes Saturday.

Project Hail Mary scores There is a certain temptation to compare Project Hail Mary to 2015’s The Martian. Both are, after all, Drew Goddard-penned adaptations of Andy Weir books that feature lone human beings unexpectedly…

Ryan Gosling has charm to spare in the energetic and entertaining PROJECT HAIL MARY, says @ungajje.bsky.social.

The craft of undertone undermined by scare struggles Horror cinema has wrung immense power from found-footage or uniquely filmed movies in which cameras accidentally capture something terrifying. The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and…

undertone tries to do for sound what so many good found footage films have done for the visual. Unfortunately, predictability and underwhelming scares diminish its craft, argues @lisalamanfilmfan.bsky.social . buff.ly/t7aXU4U

2026 Oscars Predictions: Who Will Win, Who Should Win Much like Palpatine’s resurrection, somehow, the Academy Awards have returned. This Sunday, they’re poised to capture the undivided attention of film geeks for a 98th time, celebrating 2025’s…

@lisalamanfilmfan.bsky.social is here for all your Oscars needs. Who will win? Who should win? How do you dance like an Irish vampire? Well, maybe not the last one. But maaaaybe.

Scarpetta struggles with work-life balance, past and present Two immediate thoughts emerge early on while watching Scarpetta, the new series that adapts Patricia Cornwell’s first Kay Scarpetta novel, Postmortem, and her 25th appearance, Autopsy. First, when…

SCARPETTA's scenes set in the past are excellent, says @ungajje.bsky.social . By contrast, the scenes in the present are frequently loud, chaotic, and overstay their welcome.

War Machine built from spare parts It is reductive to call War Machine “Predator in the scrublands if the Predator was a mech-looking robot alien”. And yet, that does feel like the most thorough summary of the whole endeavor. More to…

WAR MACHINE is a solid action sci-fi film elevated by practical effects and a strong direction by Patrick Hughes, says @ungajje.bsky.social . It sadly makes little room for personality, though.

Rooster hasn’t found its call It’s funny how things can sometimes start a micro-trend, purely by accident. Yesterday I reviewed Vladimir, a comedy set on and around the campus of a small liberal arts college, where a large facet…

ROOSTER doesn't yet seem to have figured out what show it is going to be, notes @ungajje.bsky.social . He's not sure how long it can afford not knowing.

This Vladimir impales, wink wink nudge nudge It is perhaps fitting that the titular Vladimir is both a cipher to the audience and the story’s protagonist/narrator (Rachel Weisz). In the same way that he (Leo Woodall) comes to life in her…

VLADIMIR gets plenty right about the motivating qualities and limitations of desire, but fumbles when it tries to make hot takes on issues of power, consent, and more, says @ungajje.bsky.social

Meaning lost In the Blink of an Eye When it comes to big-screen live-action features, Andrew Stanton has caught a bit of a raw deal. Multiple animated masterpieces of Pixar and several episodes of some of the best TV shows of the past…

Andrew Stanton's possible live-action comeback IN THE BLINK OF AN EYE is a disappointment on almost every level, reports @ungajje.bsky.social in his review.

DTF St. Louis is DTS (Down to Surprise) Take this by way of a public service announcement. There are moments in DTF St. Louis’s first episode that are utterly suffocating. The opener is frequently so quiet, soft, and still. Viewers can feel...

DTF St. Louis is a slow-motion suburban noir that suffocates and beguiles the audience, says @ungajje.bsky.social
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The Last Thing He Told Me Season 2 hones its storytelling Unlike far too many series, The Last Thing He Told Me provided a satisfying ending when Season 1 wrapped. There was a bit of a tease in the final moments. At a gallery, Hannah Michaels (Jennifer…

@ungajje.bsky.social admits THE LAST THING HE TOLD ME had no need for a second season, but its new go-round is nonetheless superior to the first, thanks in no small measure to Jennifer Garner getting to fight.

Think twice before skipping Paradise Season 2 When Paradise ads started running late in 2024, they seemingly promised a rather straightforward, if elevated concept, murder mystery. The President of the United States, Cal Bradford (James…

PARADISE is back! It isn't quite as strange Season 1, reveals @UnGajje.bsky.social, but it makes up for it with an overall deeper grasp of the characters' emotions.

Strap up and settle in for a ride with stunning dom-com Pillion Pillion’s premise sets out to turn as many heads as star Alexander Skarsgård did in his leather halter-top ensemble at the film’s BFI premiere. Playfully referred to as a “dom-com”, it’s a peek into…

PILLION is one of 2026's first must-watch films, argues @sgorr.bsky.social. Check out why in her review: