HAMNET is not transparently manipulative, as its haters led me to believe. Rather it is the quintessential movie of a culture commandeered by the self help, “ethical AI,” lymphatic drain, post-Burning Man petite bourgeois. It’s a profoundly 2025 product

This thread but especially this: There are dwindling opportunities for early-career journalists (and honestly mid-career people trying to progress) right now which is awful for people trying to enter the field and also very bad for media in the long term.

Marathon is hilarious. What if we made the first multiplayer shooter with cool vibes and gave it the worst menus of all time in the least appealing, most bland subgenre around. Yeah man great idea

For @papermag.com.web.brid.gy I had the great honor of interviewing Jafar Panahi: www.papermag.com/jafar-panahi...

WUTHERING HEIGHTS is rancid. So what? open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...

Everything about Highguard discourse, and by extension Horses discourse, really feels like we are trapped, even in the corners of the internet made on their rejection of Elon/Trump/what have you, in a perpetual, decaying 2016.

I wrote about my new habit of compulsively rewatching POSSESSION, and how awesome it feels to love a popular movie in the exact same way as everyone else: open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...

Good thread

This is the heart of the game, I think, and sits alongside LAKE MUNGO and UZUMAKI as being one of the Scariest Things I Have Ever Encountered. The most upsetting thoughts spring forth from the lips of drunk coworkers. youtu.be/THFxLLcM3aM?...

I think about the game Mouthwashing all the time - its fandom, its form, the ways it is subtly singular even in the indie horror boom of the 2020s. It feels like a great injustice, rhetorically, that we discuss that game as being *about* sexual violence when, to me, it is about something far messier

Beat a run of sektori. Like seeing God tbh

I wrote about visiting my grandfather. one of the more fragile pieces I’ve penned of late~ open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...

All I do is play Sektori now.

Kristen Stewart’s THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER opens tomorrow. It’s an impassioned, weak debut, but I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about Imogen Poots - the greatest working actress in the English language. open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...

MARTY SUPREME is the monoculture. It is Great Entertainment, a black hole that consumes all of American cinema. Went long on its virtues and vices for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social lareviewofbooks.org/article/made...

“Focus, M” this video is so mean games might legitimately change forever

some thoughts on racist trainwreck pt.3 boxd.it/c7EZbD

The Best Films of 2025, from yours truly. I promise, something about this list will surprise you :) open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...

went to the beautiful and noble Cameron winter chapel concert tonight. started praying and everything lol

Cameron Winter is incredibly funny on-stage. Before “Nina + Field Of Cops” he adjusted a live mic for a full 90 seconds

I’m not Catholic but when I play a video game that’s really nerdy I imagine trying to explain it to a beautiful woman and feel immense shame

FUCKTOYS is the best undistributed film of the year and a modern camp classic. As part of my end-of-year round-up, I spoke to writer/director/star Annapurna Sriram about tarot, angels, and solidarity: open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...

I want to pay more money for movies made by people who got paid more to work less for a longer period of time and I’m not kidding

pricing for LB movies is certainly high, and high enough that it might have been the wrong calculus. but tbh I don’t think it’s unfair; you SHOULD be paying this much to support indie films without distribution. streaming oligarchs have just convinced u otherwise

Helmet Girl Year in Review kicks off w some reflections on the newsletter’s first anniversary, my favorite music of 2025, and a list of every single book I read: open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...

It is flat out embarassing that the conversation around the transparently fascistic, implicitly anti-queer censorship of a video game (I.e. the vanguard of every social movement for the past 15 years) has been derailed by a smug debate about the nature of art.

just connected two and two re: the casting of a side character in MARTY SUPREME that is probably the most galaxy-brained thing in a movie this year in a way that is like lowk maddening

I wrote about being hot your whole life open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...

i am going completely insane watching gamers make up shit about horses and interrogating every single thing the devs have said for inconsistencies and then deciding well it probably had cp in it. this is the easy mode version of the kinds of censorship that are to come and you're failing like babies

finally saw FUCKTOYS after almost a year of anticipation. Has more life in its pinky finger than most movies have in their entire body. cannot imagine *not* being head over heels for this. movies with VISION >>>>

just ran a half marathon in a blizzard 👍👍

Everyone who suggested I watch this is in recommendation jail sorry

happy thanksgiving 🦃🍁🍂

Dave Chappelle (suddenly getting serious 50 minutes into a special): On November 27, 2025, Hamnet died. He fucking died.

This week’s newsletter is about PLAYERS, the Kiarostami-esque e-sports melodrama only available via unlisted YouTube videos: open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...

I offered some words for "Jack the Modernist," the book I wanted to be when I grew up: open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...

Sandy Peterson thinks he’s John Romero. John Romero thinks he’s John Carmack. John Carmack thinks he’s J. Robert Oppenheimer

saw MARTY SUPREME…I have tapped into the grindset….I am ready to abandon my loved ones and blow up my life in pursuit of my dreams…five stars

I’m seeing Marty Supreme tonight, nothing can touch me

Expedition 33 is the most normal video game of all time. The enemy design is great and the combat is fun to break. The story is charmingly terrible. It is shiny and expensive-looking and ugly. The music is hilariously bad. It is, in many ways, exactly what we deserve.

the hamnet marketing is really misleading btw. the kid doesn’t even die she just transitions. but Jessie Buckley keeps saying “it FEELS like I’ve lost a child.” she has a panic attack seeing a man playing Ophelia on-stage too. rly unfortunate stuff :///

it’s genuinely awesome that the LUMINES ARISE team spent like decades of research and incessant iteration on the dream of a truly metaphysical artwork, only to wind up building Major Lazer: The Video Game.

if I speak

I wrote about the ludicrous/tedious/amazing DIE MY LOVE: open.substack.com/pub/cchelmet...

not only will your health insurance costs double next year, it will also be worse!

In Super Mario Galaxy, the stars on the letters of the logo spell "u r mr gay", while for the movie it says "he mr gay". This is because you are watching Mario, not playing him.

I used to post thirst traps all the time what happened to me

thing I cannot stop saying when I’m working, as if it is a common phrase that we all know and love and use,

New on the site, @strida.bsky.social writes about Silent Hill f. bulletpointsmonthly.com/2025/11/10/m...

live footage of me discovering that because of a government screw up I have to make phone calls about my health insurance for 10 hours tomorrow