Just in time for the weekend, @wcp.bsky.social published its Top 10 movie list! If y'all don't mind me saying so, the picks me and @ctklimek.bsky.social made together ended up pretty dang solid.

My brain keeps saying AVATAR: FRANKLIN & BASH

I wish I hadn’t dutifully mailed back all those Netflix DVDs

Seems a little on-the-nose that JAY KELLY, on Netflix today, is accidentally an inferior version of SENTIMENTAL VALUE, which is still playing an arthouse near you, if you’re lucky. (I know JAY KELLY had brief, perfunctory theatrical run but c’mon.) washingtoncitypaper.com/article/7753...

Totally fine to cackle when Jeremy Allen White thumbs through a volume of Flannery O’Connor or catches BADLANDS on TV in the Springsteen biopic. I just wanna hear the same level of howling when Paul Mescal gazes into the moonlit Thames in HAMNET and is all “To be, or… dang, what comes next?”

One week after PREDATOR: BADLANDS, the *other* sci-fi action flick that future governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura appeared in together in 1987 gets an update. The new RUNNING MAN isn’t quite full Stephen King, nor is it uncut Edgar Wright, but it’s close. Gift link. wapo.st/47Vr0bQ

I fear I’ve let you all down by not publishing a thinkpiece exploring What It All Means that both of the Schwarzenegger / Jesse Ventura movies from 1987, PREDATOR and THE RUNNING MAN, a sequel and a remake (respectively) hitting cinemas a week apart from one another 38 years later.

My new dentist just took a detour into punditry: “Things with the government are not really kosher right now.”

Which of the ALIEN-ad’s “artificial persons” is the most human? I’m arguing it’s the one you barely recall. (RE: Call) www.vulture.com/article/alie...

Ask Me About My Warrior Ethos

I broke three (well-used, heavily worn) resistance bands in PT today! You reach an age where this is as good as athletic braggadocio gets, folks. It’ll happen to you, God willing.

Delighted to see how orifice-forward the visual presentation of my latest ALIEN thingy turned out to be in the Paper of Record. The advanced degree in xenobiology I’ll be paying off for the rest of my life was a prolonged adolescence well-spent. wapo.st/4mPmXDK

Many a reluctant plus-one has sat through a mostly confounding, very long Tolkien or Rowling adaption, or Star War, or superhero saga over the last quarter century. That was my experience with the biggest movie of 2025, NE ZHA II. Astonishing design & animation tho. wapo.st/460rttx

Rest in peace, Terence Stamp. Got watch THE LIMEY if you’ve never seen it. (This ain’t Stamp.) youtu.be/XYMrYXOglj8?...

Just imagine if Republicans could be persuaded that 20 elementary school students and 6 teachers getting slaughtered with a legally purchased, legally owned weapon of war was as dire an “emergency” as one rich 19-year-old Musk sycophant getting his ass whupped by some bored punks.

In four days it’ll make 20 years since I moved to DC, now an occupied city. It’s a fact my neighborhood has a lot of violent crime. Jan. 6, 2021 is the only time I’ve ever felt scared to leave my home, or wished for the National Guard to be called up. Blessed are the hoagie-chuckers.

(Double) jawin’ about ALIEN: EARTH, an attempt to implant a feature-franchise embryo into a prestige TV host body, on today’s Pop Culture Happy Hour. www.npr.org/2025/08/15/n...

I tried to take stock of how Clinton-era provocateurs Mike Judge and Trey Parker / Matt Stone (separately) deal with a satirical target whose more juvenile , crass, and insatiably attention seeking than they ever were or could ever be. wapo.st/45AXW8v

Hear, hear. OZ will remain one of the greatest films ever no matter what these jokers do to enhance/degrade it, but as someone who saw the U2 show at the Sphere 3x, I promise you the clips do not convey the visceral / sensory experience at all. Whether or not that sounds good 2 U is your business.

Never got to write about it, but I saw the U2 ACHTUNG BABY show that opened the Sphere in Vegas three times between September of ‘23 and February of ‘24 and those really were among the most extraordinary of the 500-ish rock shows I’ve attended in my life. FWIW.

Took a pal to SUPERMAN last night and it was cool to see a movie that’s been out for 3 weeks in a near-full house in which I was not the only repeat customer. When the marketing blitz has run its course, the FOMO crowd has moved on, & people are just there b/c they like film and/or heard it’s good.

Gunn’s SUPERMAN? Doggy. The franchise Donner’s SUPERMAN launched 47 years earlier? Dodgy — but still preferable to the Sturm und Drag of the Snyderverse, even though I like the non-genocidal parts of MAN OF STEEL. Anyway, here’s a history. Didn’t have room for the Donner Cut, sorry. wapo.st/44M1yFx

Gunn’s SUPERMAN? Doggy. The franchise Donner’s SUPERMAN launched 47 years earlier? Dodgy — but still preferable to the Sturm und Drag of the Snyderverse, even though I like the non-genocidal parts of MAN OF STEEL. Anyway, here’s a history. Didn’t have room for the Donner Cut, sorry. wapo.st/44M1yFx

Me on FIRST STEPS: When it comes to putting the First Family of Marvel Comics in the movies, the fourth time’s the charm.

I filled in for @scotttobias.bsky.social to talk SUPERMAN ‘78 with @genevievekoski.bsky.social, @kphipps3000.bsky.social and @tasharobinson.bsky.social on The Next Picture Show, and at no point did any one of us exclaim “Great Scott!” Negligence. Malpractice. Calumny. overcast.fm/+AAFjDyk8rXA

I’ve no idea how deep into the Oasis reunion tour we are but I gotta respect that each time Los Bros. Gallagher complete a full gig together without killing each other they issue a press release.

Still convinced he was cast at least in part on the basis of being named “Corn Sweat” (almost) the way Routh was cast at least in part for his resemblance to Reeve. I’m addition to the fact these are both very fine and capable actors, no disrespect intended, etc.

Since the stroke of luck documented below, I’ve been turned down for a job I was a candidate for for 7 mos. and desperately need, been hit with $23k in medical bills, & am now handling things for my folks while my *dad* is in the hospital. The karmic cost of a good Superman movie is too damn high.

Sneak peek at What’s Making Me Happy on our SUPERMAN episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour, funnily enough.

The fun part about these rates from my perspective, as someone who's been freelancing for 10 years, is that they almost never change!

Mr. Mxyzptlk isn’t in Gunn’s SUPERMAN, nor is the Bottle City of Kandor. But it feels like the kind of film where either one could show up, and that’s good. It feels more Richard Lester than Richard Donner, and I still think there are others better suited to this than Gunn, but I’m pretty happy.

Why can’t Hollywood just let Superman be trad Superman instead of trying to inject their woke lefty bullshit into wait what

I have a new favorite thing about Donner’s SUPERMAN ‘78 each time I revisit it and this time the thing is Supes’s habit turning around and saying “Bye!” with a wave as he’s flying off from whatever rescue or other good super-deed he’s just performed.

Tried to apply the driver’s auto insurance info to the $18k bill I just got from the Long Island ER that treated us after our expressway crackup two weeks ago. To add $$$ insult to $$& injury, their site’s drop down menu won’t accept the District of Columbia as my “state” of residence. This is new.

I remember how depressed I was *last* Independence Day, firmly convinced after President Biden’s debate performance that all of this was, like Judgment Day, coming. Anyway, I made a silly list of our ten most two-fisted movie POTUSes, every one of which now looks like Jed Bartlett. wapo.st/4ldVGL9

Includes my lengthy and even more sincere apology to Angela Bassett, kicker of so much ass in so many movies wherein she is not the president.

I can’t think of another songwriter with as vast a chasm between their best work & their worst as Bruuuuuuuce, probably because there are only a few other legends’ catalogs I know the way I know his. Taking stock of TRACKS II, his brand-new menagerie of brand-old music, was a trip. wapo.st/445FMfI

The too-bizarre-to-be-fictional detail of our brush with death 48 hours ago is that my pal of 30 years fainted behind the wheel on the Long Island Expressway after having a reflexive physical reaction to the Lou Reed song “Harry’s Circumcision.”

In a rare instance of having something nice to say about corporations, I’ll acknowledge I’m alive and (gingerly) walking b/c the safety systems on a 2020 Honda Insight all worked, & I got my luggage back after 2 hot days in the same clothes only b/c I had Find My Mac on my MacBook. Honda and Apple.

Probably unfair to judge the whole of Long Island on the basis of one highway crack-up, one predatory towing outfit, and one fleabag no-A/C nightmare motel, but Billy Joel and F. Scott Fitzgerald can keep this fucking place as far as I’m concerned.

If JAWS birthed the summer blockbuster, then its steadily diminishing-returns follow-ups birthed the sequelogy rulebook. (I received no hazard pay for watching JAWS: THE REVENGE again so soon after looking at it to prepare an advance obit of Michael Caine only a year or so ago.) wapo.st/4l6PVy8

If you need some light today check out this piece I wrote about a couple that tied the knot last Friday, on stage, before an audience of friends, family, found family, and friendly strangers. wapo.st/441pmDJ

This became a Unified Theory of Sequelogy, almost. I’m gonna need a bigger book.

Dance Macabre: I wrote about BALLERINA, a half-good Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern-style side-quel from the non-wizarding World of JOHN WICK. If you like a lady with a flamethrower, have I got a movie for you. washingtoncitypaper.com/article/7654...

This is an extremely Old Man Yells at Cloud post & I understand that language is fluid, but man it sure does chafe when people refer to plainly non-computer generated VFX techniques like miniatures, matte paintings, puppets, etc. as “CGI.”

To all y’all just discovering or re-discovering the gospel of Bruuuuuuuuuuce, welcome! There’s still time for us to stop this NEBRASKA-pegged biopic from happening, maybe!

Playing audio from your phone on public transit is rude, infuriating, Against the Rules, and ignores the natural law that humankind has yet to record any piece of music that doesn’t sound like ass coming out of a little phone speaker.

I've written a lot about U2, my — for better and worse — first favorite band over the years, but I've only just gotten around to diagnosing Bono Derangement Syndrome. wapo.st/43BTEwt

I have one-two-THREE (!) pieces in today's WaPo, like Pelham. But this is the one I'd most like for you to read. I was asked for something about MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and Washington, so I wrote about that but also about my dad. wapo.st/3ZIa05F

Dunking Booth: I wrote about MAD MEN creator Matthew Weiner’s play about a madman, JOHN WILKES BOOTH: ONE NIGHT ONLY! I’d like to see it again, would you believe. wapo.st/4jyURLi