Watched and Read - June 28, 2026

 Here's what I watched and read this past week...

 

MOVIES

Toy Story 5 (2026), directed by Andrew Stanton, is a very good film that focuses on technology and children. The animation is great, with some nice moments that explore the themes of connection, friendship, play, and imagination. We did not see the 3D version. But you can tell there were some shots made specifically for 3D. Toy Story 5 is not as great as the first three movies, but it is definitely worth watching.

Pavements (2024), directed by Alex Ross Perry. I am not really a fan of Pavement’s music, but I thought it would be interesting to learn about their history, particularly how they became a big indie band in the 1990s. The documentary seems to oppose this approach. I felt it was very indie rock snobbish. These were the people I avoided in the 1990s.

Talk Radio (1988), directed by Oliver Stone. This film is often overlooked in Stone’s body of work. But it may be one of his best, especially given the rise of social media. I wrote about the film in my book Cinema of Confinement, discussing how Stone creates a space of paranoia within the confined setting of the radio station. Tension lies between Barry and his listeners. Who are his fans? Who are the threat? My book is available through open access and can be downloaded if you want to check out the chapter.

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983), directed by Jack Clayton, is a good atmospheric horror film based on Ray Bradbury’s great novel. I was skeptical about watching it because I love the book so much. Johnathan Pryce and Jason Robards give great performances. It is a quick watch and is available for streaming on Disney.

The Sheep Detectives (2026), directed by Kyle Balda, is a very good whodunit movie with some very nice moments. I loved Nicholas Braun (aka Cousin Greg from Succession) as Denbrook’s only police officer. The CGI sheep worked, but I would rather see real animals. However, given the complexity of the plot, it makes sense that they took the CGI route. Nevertheless, the film gave me some Babe vibes. I highly recommend it.

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TV

The new Lord of the Flies is a pretty good series on Netflix. Although, I personally prefer the black and white version from 1963. I thought that some of the episodes could have been shorter. There were also many unnecessary close-up shots of characters looking directly at the camera. I am unsure what that was all about. It is hard not to think of the great TV series, Lost, which I am guessing drew some inspiration from Golding’s novel.

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BOOKS

Ghost Town by Tom Perrotta is a good and very engaging coming-of-age book, involving Jimmy, a thirteen-year-old growing up in an Italian American community in New Jersey in the early 1970s. Perrotta strongly captures the time period with some very interesting characters. The story reminded me of the collection of short stories he wrote in Bad Haircut: Stories from the Seventies.

Bradbury Speaks is a great collection of essays written by Ray Bradbury. I enjoyed reading all of them, especially the ones on Los Angeles and Paris. Other standouts were, “How Something Wicked Came,” “Mars: Too Soon From The Cave, Too Far From the Stars,” “Mouser,” “Lord Russell and The Pipsqueak, and “Any Friend of Trains is a Friend of Mine.”

 

 

Watched and Read - May 3, 2026

 Here's what I watched and read last week...

 

MOVIES

A Colt is My Passport (1967), directed by Takashi Nomura, is a very good Japanese noir. It has a Hollywood B-film feel, mixed with a Spaghetti Western. Great performance by Joe Shishido. Super cool ending.

Cruel Gun Story (1964), directed by Takumi Furukawa, is another great Japanese noir. I really enjoyed the film’s setup, which reminded me of Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing. I am starting to become a fan of Shishido. I highly recommend this one.

The Rise of the Red Hot Chili Peppers: Our Brother, Hillel (2026), directed by Ben Feldman, is a great documentary on the band’s emergence in the early 1980s. It is very tragic and sad about what happened to Hillel Slovak.

Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game (2022), directed by Austin Bragg and Meredith Bragg, is a very enjoyable film based on a true story. I liked how they structured the film, intercutting Roger Sharpe (not the real Roger Sharpe) talking to the filmmakers throughout the story. It reminded me of American Splendor, which mixes real footage of underground comic book artist, Harvey Pekar, and the fictional account of his story. Pinball is streaming on Hulu. 

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TV

Pistols (2021). I finished the series and thought it was excellent. They crammed in a lot in the last episode, but overall it was a lot of fun to watch. There is a lot of humor, mixed with gritty realism. Boyle brilliantly captures the feel, energy, and excitement of a punk rock show. I would definitely put this up there as one of Danny Boyle’s great works. I highly recommend it.

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BOOKS

I finished reading Ray Bradbury’s collection of short stories in I Sing the Body Electric! And Other Stories. Lots of great stories, especially “The Burning Man,” “The Lost City of Mars, “The Utterly Perfect Murder,” and “Punishment Without Crime.”

“The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson is a classic short story. Miss Strangeworth is what we would call an online troll. There is no evidence in the mean letters that she sends anonymously to the people of her small town. All she is doing is stirring up trouble. In her view, it is because people need to open their eyes and be aware of the evils lurking in the world. The brilliance of Jackson’s story is that good and evil are not dualistic but dialectical. That is, they are intertwined with each other. The idyllic fantasy is always threatened by something that wants to undo it. I am teaching this alongside Hitchcock’s Shadow a of Doubt. Both are examples of evil within small places.

 

 

Watched and Read - Februrary 22, 2026

 

Here’s what I watched and read last week…

 

 

MOVIES

The Aviator (2004), directed by Martin Scorsese, is an excellent film about filmmaker and aviator Howard Hughes. Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance powerfully captures Hughes’s obsessive-compulsive disorder. The scene in which Hughes locks himself in the projection room is probably the most unsettling moment in the film. Cate Blanchett’s portrayal of Katharine Hepburn steals the show. This film, along with Gangs of New York, marks Scorsese’s turn toward epic filmmaking.

The Color of Money (1986), directed by Martin Scorsese, is a follow-up to The Hustler. The performances are outstanding, especially Paul Newman, who finally won an Oscar for his role. Only Scorsese could create such energetic and cinematic pool scenes. The score by Robbie Robertson is very good, and of course there’s the song “It’s in the Way That You Use It,” performed by Eric Clapton, which I remember MTV playing constantly in 1986. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel were hard on the film, and I don’t think their analysis was entirely fair. I think it’s definitely worth checking out.

Nirvana: Up Close and Personal (2007), directed by Bob Carruthers, is an okay documentary about Nirvana. Most of the film focuses on Kurt Cobain, featuring interviews with people who knew him in Aberdeen, Washington, including his grandfather and former guitar teacher. Much of the information about the band and Cobain was already familiar to me, but it was still interesting to hear from those who knew him before he became a rock star.

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TV

American Prince: JFK Jr. (2025) is a three-part series created by CNN. It offers a largely surface-level account of JFK Jr.’s life in the 1990s, focusing on the launch of his magazine, George, and his marriage to Carolyn Bessette. It’s not a bad documentary, but I wish it had explored his life in greater depth.

Ray Bradbury: The Illustrated Man is a 1980 documentary produced by the BBC. It’s an excellent film that explores Bradbury’s thoughts on writing, technology, and the importance of reading. I especially enjoyed the segments in which excerpts from his short stories are read aloud and acted. It’s available on YouTube and well worth checking out.

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BOOKS

Martin Scorsese: The Iconic Filmmaker and His Work by Ian Nathan is one of the best books of his that I’ve read. He gives particular attention to films such as Taxi Driver and Goodfellas, though the book provides strong coverage of Scorsese’s career overall. It’s an excellent read and made me want to revisit several of his films.

Widow’s Peak: The Complete Haunting, written by Richard Chizmar and Billy Chizmar, picks up where the 2025 novella leaves off. I very much enjoyed the book. The story has more room to breathe than the novella, though you do have to pay close attention to the slug lines to keep track of where you are. The novel definitely has a Blair Witch vibe. Most of the characters are unlikable (except for the professor) but that makes sense, given what typically happens to the main characters in found-footage horror. I would definitely recommend it.

“I Sing the Body Electric!” by Ray Bradbury is one of my favorite short stories, and I’m excited to teach it in my writing class this semester. I’m pairing it with discussions of utopian and dystopian depictions of technology and science in speculative fiction. This story leans more toward the hopeful, particularly in the way the electric grandmother is embraced by the two boys and their father.

However, the emotional center of the story is Agatha, who is initially skeptical of the electric grandmother but eventually comes around after the grandmother saves her from a car. Cars are often depicted negatively in Bradbury’s work, and it’s no surprise that he himself did not drive.

Reading the story closely, it feels especially relevant today, prompting us to reflect on artificial intelligence and the question of human intimacy.