Alexander Wales

In the Hand of Dante, 2025 – ★★

zapier — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 05:32:40 +0000

The first two thirds of this movie is pretty good, with the mob violence elements set against the works of Dante being entertaining and interesting. Unfortunately, the movie sucks when it pivots into the romance aspects, and that swallows up more and more of the movie. Also unfortunately, it involves Gal Gadot, who cannot hold a candle to any of the other actors in this movie.

It's a movie with high highs, but they're focused on the front half of the movie, and then it's a complete slog that makes me feel like I'm completely wasting my time. It's a shame, and maybe I'm marking it harshly because of its failure to live up to what it seemed like it might become.

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Just got back from a Weird Al concert, part of his Bigger and Weirder tour, which I went to with my…

zapier — Sat, 27 Jun 2026 04:45:43 +0000

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Clue, 1985 – ★★★½

zapier — Fri, 26 Jun 2026 04:34:37 +0000

Denoument runs a little long, even without there being three different endings. The cut that's available for free on Youtube right now plays them all in sequence, which is fun, but the "trick" of having three different endings did its work during the original theatrical release, and is not really replicated here.

It's funny, mostly, though suffers from some of the slow pacing of an older film, which is more of a killer for a comedy than a drama. And it's a terrible mystery, which it virtually has to be in order for the three endings thing to work. It ends up with different red herrings that are given far too much weight, and contrived reasons for murder that are revealed too late into the movie. But it's mostly a comedy, so ... I don't know, what matters is that it's funny, in a sense, but it would have been great to have it all.

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The Dig, 2021 – ★★★★

zapier — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 20:58:36 +0000

There's a subplot in this movie where a pair of married archeologists arrive and having an end to their marriage because the husband is gay. It's an odd choice that I think is probably explained by the fact that this movie is adapted from a book, where this subplot has more time to breathe. Everything else is more centered on death; Sutton Hoo is a burial site, the woman who owns the land is a widow and dying, World War II is impending and death is in the air. But while this subplot plays into the pervasive melancholy, it feels like it's out of step with the rest of what the film is going for thematically. And because it has so little time to breathe, we get relatively few scenes about it, which makes it feel threadbare and underdeveloped, left to the imagination rather than an actual story.

Overall though, I quite liked it, and whatever distaste I have for historical characters wondering about their place in history was softened somewhat by this at least being in line with archeology as the study of the past. The score felt a little overdone though: too much stirring strings.

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Contagion, 2011 – ★★★★½

zapier — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 03:41:31 +0000

This was my third time watching this movie, with the first being in 2011 and the second in 2020. It's one of the most accurate pandemic movies, which is startling given that it was made a decade before COVID, though when I look closely I can see a lot of things that aren't quite right, visible only with hindsight. There are all kinds of things in this movie like social distancing, equipment shortages, hodge-podge PPE, Jude Law's fraudster blogger character, etc., that speak to how thoroughly thought through and researched this movie was.

I'm not entirely sold on the style of filmmaking, where we have this ensemble cast that never interacts or really meets with each other, but Soderbergh keeps it from feeling like we're watching an anthology series, which is the biggest risk here.

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Spaceballs, 1987 – ★★★½

zapier — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 00:26:46 +0000

It's funny, but there are definitely parts that haven't aged well, particularly all the reference humor that got lost to time, or for a Millennial like myself, is something that's known only as a reference to a reference, leaving me saying "yeah, I get it" but not laughing. There are also some scenes that just don't work, or feel shoehorned in, rather than arising from the characters or situations. The diner scene at the end of the movie is a particular offender here, as iconic as the chest burster singing "Hello by Baby" is.

It's also much more horny than I remembered it being, sometimes to its detriment, but definitely in way that made me think "they don't really make them like this anymore, do they". Maybe I noticed this more because I was watching this with my 10-year-old son, and while there was nothing that I objected to him seeing, I did think "huh, PG rated".

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S.W.A.T.: Firefight, 2011 – ★

zapier — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 05:29:33 +0000

I only watched this because the logline made it sound like it would be a roaring rampage against the S.W.A.T. team, and it is that, in a sense, but as written by someone who loves cops and wants to show that love on the screen, but also sucks at making movie. Terrible acting, terrible writing, total waste of time, which I guess I could tell from the opening 15 minutes.

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Found the guy who’s been tipping over our garbage …

zapier — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 03:20:18 +0000

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What did you think of Obsession? I’ve gone to see it twice now (may have become a little obsessed)

zapier — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 19:43:47 +0000

I liked it a lot; it's been a while since a horror movie has scared me that much.

To me, it's a movie that's largely about the horror of being in a relationship with someone who is mentally unwell. It was really hitting my "borderline personality disorder" flags, I guess, but a very heightened version of them. Every tiny sign that he might not love her is a betrayal, she's extremely clingy, and the transgressions and horrors are matched with this manipulation, social pressure, and excuse. He says, "why would you do that, you're freaking me out" and she says "oh I'm so so sorry, I'll never do it ever again". And obviously her having some kind of psychotic break is brought up multiple times in the movie, making it at least somewhat an endorsed reading by the text.

And obviously it's not all that, because it's also a very funny movie in parts, and there are layers to it; it would probably have been a failure if there was a single straightforward reading. Bear is a coward as one of his defining features, and goes along with way too much because of that, unable to stand up for himself, to state what he's feeling, particularly susceptible to this kind of monstrous torture. Naïve too, in a way that makes it all worse for him.

I made the mistake of reading some Letterboxd reviews, and it's definitely one of those movies that makes me feel like other people watched a different movie from the one I did. There are parts of the movie that feel to me like they were 5% of it, and seem to be getting all the attention, and ... I get it, people have different preferences and priorities, but it's difficult for me to read the movie in those ways. I don't think that it was largely a movie about autonomy, but that element is definitely there . It's just not where I felt the focus was, so I feel like it's a movie I'll end up talking past people about.

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Since you’ve recently watched the RE movies, the upcoming one by Zach Cregger seems to be trying to adapt the mechanical and gameplay arc of the games, as opposed to taking any of the actual story beats, with the protagonist going around having to gather weapons and items to survive the situation. Do you think this is a better approach to adapting the franchise to film than trying to work with the actual story beats?

zapier — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 17:34:21 +0000

I guess I'll have to see how it works in practice. When watching the movies, one of the things that I've noticed a lot is how plentiful ammo seems to be, and counting bullets is one of the main things I remember from having played the early installments in the series, along with solving the puzzles and opening up the game. I think a movie where you get that Dark Souls style "open a path back to where you were" might be cool, and I definitely think bullet-counting is underutilized. Maybe you don't need to go full Dirty Harry with it, but there's drama and tension to be milked there, and it's definitely something the games play into; it is, in fact, one of the key elements of what puts the "survival" in survival horror.

However, I did watch Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City last night, the forgettable 2021 installment, and it felt in some ways like it was trying to be more faithful to the games ... to its detriment, though some of that has to do with it having way too many characters. Still, they did the "single isolated location" thing, and the mansion in particular did feel like a Resident Evil location.

I'm cautiously optimistic on Zach Cregger, so I'll definitely check it out.

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