Film #116 for 2026 is Toy Story 4 (2019). It's not without a significant share of charm and heart, but in an earlier era of Disney this sequel would have been direct-to-DVD. The Bo Peep redesign is its greatest strength; being unnecessary and redundant is its weakness.

Book #20 for 2026 is Dragon Pearl (2019) by Yoon Ha Lee. Even accepting this is a middle school / YA title, it's poorly written and poorly plotted. Yoon Ha Lee's pivot to barely-competent YA after the towering excellence of Machineries of Empire continues to be a great loss to readers everywhere.

Finished Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3 (by @colin.how) today. (Despite the name, it's the first game in the series.) It's got unchallenging-but-fun match-3 gameplay, a branching story with Metroidvania elements for unlocking the branches - but mostly it's got a ton of heart. Recommended.

Film #115 for 2026 is Toy Story 3 (2010). It succeeds by facing the sadness at the heart of its concept head-on. For the same reason, I'm sure it's given more than a few children nightmares. Genuinely great, though.

Stealing this as my response to basically all videogame and game design discourse.

Film #114 for 2026 is Better Man (2024), a re-watch because Kala wanted to see it. I still feel this Robbie-Williams-as-a-chimp biopic is a far better and more enjoyable film than audiences generally gave it credit for. It's emotional, it's funny, it's visually inventive, and it's charming.

Noting that I rarely see films in a timely manner and I won't see most of the best movies of 2026 until around Oscars time next year, my favourites so far are: 1) Wuthering Heights 2) The Bride! 3) Is God Is 4) Project Hail Mary ... and then probably Mandalorian & Grogu (sigh).

Just noting that KOSA and limiting Section 230 were actually explicitly part of the MAGA Project 2025, because their actual effect is to limit the speech and participation of women, queer folk, young people and minorities and restrict political speech and sexual expression generally.

Film #113 for 2026 is Toy Story 2 (1999), another re-watch. (After this, they're new to me.) The Jessie scene with the Sarah McLachlan song is peak Pixar; the rest is good (and frequently funny) but somewhat diminished returns on the first film, and the final act strains credulity.

where is your god now

Feeling memey, might delete later. #auspol #canberraliberals #canberra #act #cbr

If you're following me and you're someone I know in real life and I'm not following you back, you should reach out to me in some way because most of the time there is absolutely no way to tell on this app.

Film #112 for 2026 is Toy Story (1995), a rewatch with the intention of catching up on the franchise. I've seen it five times and I'm still finding new jokes, and the artistic direction makes the crude CGI surprisingly timeless. A genuine classic.

Film #111 for 2026 is Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). More ghoulish than I expected, frequently drop-dead hilarious - but Cary Grant is hyperactive here even by Cary Grant standards, capering at all times like he's just taken a big hit of cocaine. It's frankly a bit exhausting.

Finished reading the Temeraire books. It's a satisfying enough ending, but it's fairly plain Naomi Novik did zero planning of the long-term plot, and was growing bored by at least the sixth book. It suffers throughout from the characters observing events but rarely driving them.

I'm building a team.

Your regular reminder that the substantive lyrics of "Clint Eastwood" by Gorillaz end less than halfway through the track, followed by about a minute of chanting "My future is coming on", and then two minutes of instrumental. IT IS NOT A GOOD KARAOKE PICK.

Last four watched, US Friday but AU Saturday. Banshees and Is God Is are top tier, and they make up for the deeply tedious Disclosure Day. #filmsky #LetterboxdFriday #LastFourWatched

Pop culture has given me unrealistic expectations of how often life would just give me lemons. They're $5 a bag here.

Film #110 for 2026 is The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). A brutal, beautiful watch that pays the audience the compliment of permitting multiple readings, all of them worth debating. It works as a literal tale of two men who are destroying themselves for each other, but it also works as so much more.

"Critics are going to love it and influencers are going to hate it" is honestly a way better advert for The Odyssey than the trailer is.

Evergreen.

Finally saw the trailer for Nolan's Odyssey in the cinema last night and I have to say I am now substantially less excited for the film than I was prior to the trailer. It looks *dull*.

Film #109 for 2026 is Disclosure Day (2026). Spielberg does his best to dignify a script that would more normally find a home with M Knight Shyamalan, but there's only so much you can get out of showing people's amazed reactions to things the viewer hasn't seen yet. Emily Blunt is, as always, great.

Well played, Mrs Wang. I see you know your judo well.

Melanie Lynskey as the less-evil stepsister in Ever After has about three lines and still steals the show.

I don't know who I friended, or what cookie I picked up, to get so much Sonic the Hedgehog impreg and obese furry content in my feed but the "less like this" buttons aren't producing results. It's not even like I'm getting other adult content that I *am* into my feed, just this stuff.

Thanks to @flebpuzzles.bsky.social for "20 Small Mazes". Satisfying puzzling - and can you believe this game is FREE on Steam? Just crazy, it's worth $5 at least. store.steampowered.com/app/2570630/...

Born to Die has the bangers, but Norman Fucking Rockwell is the definitive Lana Del Rey album experience.

Benjamin Button is still kind of a meme for its premise, but I feel like it's otherwise vanished down the memory hole, and that's for the best because it was just *dull*. Not *good* like most of David Fincher's films, or even divisive like Gone Girl or memorably terrible like Alien 3. Just dull.

The power of Lilith Fair is such that whenever it dies, a new Chosen One will simply reinvent it. (For avoidance of doubt: good for her.) Also I have heard of this "Stevie Knicks" from a Taylor Swift shirt, and presume she is good at basketball?

Okay I'm not a Street Fighter guy but if this isn't already a Chun Li alternate costume it should be.

Occasionally I see a friendslop game that seems kind of fun (Meccha Chameleon, currently) but then I realise that voice chat with strangers is a thing and all my interest immediately vanishes. (Interacting with the average online multiplayer gamer in any way whatsoever is a turnoff, frankly.)

Nine underappreciated PC games I recommend. While most of these are narrative or puzzle, The Citadel is a boomer-shooter.

She was right to do it.

Film #108 for 2027 is The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act (2026). It's a good conclusion to the thesis and theme of TADC, as the show has consistently advanced it. My issue is that I reject that thesis. No backstory can excuse Jax's behaviour; Jax is the villain, not the tragic antihero.

Film #107 for 2026 is Is God Is (2026), and - wow. Uncompromising, inventive, exciting. Beautifully shot and wonderfully performed. It's not a horror film, and yet it will surely be classed as one of the best horror films of the year. Highly recommended.

Last four watched, on an Australian Friday. I couldn't love Hoppers, thanks to its muddled message (the same problem I had with the original Zootopia), but I've been enjoying my trip through the early films of Nicolas Winding Refn. #lastfourwatched #letterboxdfriday #letterboxd #filmsky

Film #106 for 2026 is Hobo With A Shotgun (2011). "I am tired need $ for lawn mower." Me too, Rutger Hauer, me too. There's some intentionally hilarious-bad dialogue here, but intentionality doesn't prevent it still being a deeply terrible film.

Film #105 for 2026 is Pusher 3 (2025). It's individually a strong film - and Nicolas Winding Refn still knows exactly where to find an ending - but after two earlier films with very similar plots it can't help but feel a little redundant.

You couldn't make The Office today because audiences accustomed to Rick and Morty and It's Always Sunny would complain that it wasn't edgy enough.

Damn, "comments closed" is so cold. If I can't correct a total stranger on misusing the word synecdoche then what is even the point of the internet?

Attempting to follow what's going on in Game 5 entirely through other people's reaction skeets is 150% more entertaining than actually watching basketball. It's been a pretty amazing set of reactions.

A good manifesto is a thing you can put on like goggles to see the world in an amazing new way that offers you transformative options for engaging with it, and then take off again because the goggles have, I don't know, six-inch-thick lenses or something and they're kind of bad. Therefore this.

I think a lot of people, deep down, feel like the week of their sixth birthday was objectively the high water mark of human civilization, but not everyone has such clear proof of it as this.

Putting aside incel basement goblins, your feelings about Ghostbusters 2016 are probably actually about whether you see the original Ghostbusters as a raunchy Saturday Night Live comedy or a seminal pop-sci-fantasy adventure, but both views are reasonable. (I prefer the Reitman sequels, personally.)

Oh hey the new Evanescence album is actually good, nice.

I'm not a fan of the Kelvinverse, but my favourite Kirk is absolutely the Kirk who is told to have reasonable expectations and accept limitations, and who then makes refusing to do so his entire personality. There's a reason Kobayashi Maru is such a great bit of Kirk backstory.

Setting my Windows cursor size to "large" because I'm admitting that occasionally a tiny white cursor gets lost against a white background on a 4K screen, and instantly feeling like an octogenarian when I see the chunky thing.

Last Cat in the Hat movie, the Cat was too much of an asshole. In the new trailer he doesn't look like enough of one. Do I need to have opinions about the correct level of assholery in this character? Probably not, and yet I do.