Today at The Reveal: You can read me on TRAIN DREAMS (currently my favorite of the year) and PETER HUJAR'S DAY (also quite good) while @scotttobias.bsky.social takes on PREDATOR: BADLANDS (more reviews coming tomorrow, too):

We have the PREDATOR sequel PREDATOR: BADLANDS. Now we just need the BADLANDS sequel BADLANDS: PREDATOR.

FORCE MAJEURE (2014): Dir. Ruben Ostlund

I reviewed the excellent new Netflix miniseries DEATH BY LIGHTNING for TV Guide. Come for Nick Offerman's Chester A. Arthur talking drunkenly about sausages, stay for the history lesson:

Today at The Reveal: You can read me on TRAIN DREAMS (currently my favorite of the year) and PETER HUJAR'S DAY (also quite good) while @scotttobias.bsky.social takes on PREDATOR: BADLANDS (more reviews coming tomorrow, too):

I dunno, I still think the STRANGER THINGS cast could pass for high school students in an '80s movie.

Chicago all day every day now. I'm not even sure the rest of the country realizes what it's like here now.

I make no claim to any particular expertise in this regard, but Good Things and Good People beating Bad People and Bad Things feels like the sort of thing you want to get excited about and the sort of thing definitely worth repeating.

Ok. Reposting with some corrections (because it’s good to get the title of the film you’re writing about correct.) thereveal.film/the-awful-tr...

It might be my favorite movie podcast setup. A film from the past speaks to us and is in conversation with a new release. 8 1/2 meets DRACULA Bonus: I think I've never heard @tasharobinson.bsky.social @kphipps3000.bsky.social and @scotttobias.bsky.social talk about 8 1/2. Great episode!

Ok. Reposting with some corrections (because it’s good to get the title of the film you’re writing about correct.) thereveal.film/the-awful-tr...

Today at The Reveal: I wrote about THE WAR GAME and PUNISHMENT PARK, two films by the late Peter Watkins that simultaneously feel like product of their times and of ours:

One of those actors who instantly made any movie she appeared in better just by showing up. (Even CARNOSAUR.)

Out on patrol. ICE very active on the far North Side including Edgewater and Lincoln Square. Multiple abductions. Vulnerable folks should get off the street if they can. Street vendors should be bought out, landscapers warned. If you’re in Chicago and you’re not ICE watch trained, pls get trained.

In Netflix’s “A House of Dynamite,” Chicago is the target of a nuclear attack In real life, Chicago is also home to Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, founded in 1945 by people involved in the Manhattan Project to warn us about these very risks I talked with them about the movie’s themes Gift 🔗

Nine more innings?

For @vulture.com I ranked cinematic Satans:

I've left Substack for Ghost and I think this is a great way to give back to the community.

For @vulture.com I ranked cinematic Satans:

Our first trick-or-treaters included a kid in an MF DOOM mask. My heart is warmed.

For its 40th anniversary I did a big piece on the complicated, ever evolving legacy of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2: FREDDY’S REVENGE and talked to Robert Englund and director Jack Sholder www.indiewire.com/features/int...

Here's @kphipps3000.bsky.social speaking up in defense of the biopic as a genre, Walk Hard clichés be damned: slate.com/culture/2025...

Today at The Reveal: We've got a pair of reviews. You can read me on NOUVELLE VAGUE, Richard Linklater's charming account of the making of BREATHLESS and @scotttobias.bsky.social on DRACULA, Radu Jude's, um, unique take on the vampire classic:

I don't think there's been a weekend box office as filled with now-forgotten films as the one from October 21, 2005. (Putting aside WALLACE AND GROMIT and _maybe_ NORTH COUNTRY.)

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House. Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity. They are not the same.

Today at The Reveal: We've got a pair of reviews. You can read me on NOUVELLE VAGUE, Richard Linklater's charming account of the making of BREATHLESS and @scotttobias.bsky.social on DRACULA, Radu Jude's, um, unique take on the vampire classic:

I loved this from @kphipps3000.bsky.social on biopics, and how they can still provide value even amidst downsides. slate.com/culture/2025.... (H/T @briancgrubb.bsky.social.)

Today at The Reveal: @scotttobias.bsky.social ranks all nine of Kelly Reichardt's features from worst to best ("worst" being an extremely relative term given the quality of her filmography):

Today at The Reveal: @scotttobias.bsky.social ranks all nine of Kelly Reichardt's features from worst to best ("worst" being an extremely relative term given the quality of her filmography):

What the headlines feel like in 2025.

Here we go! My review of DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE: www.salon.com/2025/10/28/d... #springsteen

Last year I spent all of October at The Reveal watching horror movies I'd never seen before and writing about them. I wasn't able to do that this year, so I binged all four [REC] movies plus the American [REC] remake QUARANTINE and its sequel:

This is a real thing that a judge had to say to the Chief of US Customs and Border Protection.

Last year I spent all of October at The Reveal watching horror movies I'd never seen before and writing about them. I wasn't able to do that this year, so I binged all four [REC] movies plus the American [REC] remake QUARANTINE and its sequel:

This is a project that many many people will be contributing to but it’s @mereborders.bsky.social’s baby. Gonna be a BEAST. variety.com/2025/film/ne...

Area Bluesky User Astounded to Discover Not Everything is Free

Hey! You can read at @slate.com making an argument for reclaiming the term "biopic."

Hey! You can read at @slate.com making an argument for reclaiming the term "biopic."

I haven’t made it all the way through the Lily Allen album yet because it felt a bit like listening to the legal brief of a nasty divorce.

New goal: get World Series tickets behind home plate, purchase crazy-looking sunglasses, stare at my phone the whole game.

This morning I had seen no REC movies. As of now I have seen all four.

CHICAGO!: @scotttobias.bsky.social's New Cult Canon column comes to the big screen TONIGHT via a screening of the great UNDER THE SKIN at the great @davistheater.bsky.social in beautiful Lincoln Square. Tickets are still available:

Today at The Reveal: It's a day of reviews. You can read @scotttobias.bsky.social on SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE and read me on Yorgos Lanthimos' hostage drama (?!?) BUGONIA:

I think all biopics should get the SPRINGSTEEN: DELIVER ME FROM NOWHERE title treatment. CASH: WALK THE LINE ZUCKERBERG: THE SOCIAL NETWORK HUGHES: THE AVIATOR CHARLES: RAY LINCOLN: LINCOLN

Which comic is going to deliver a tight-five to warm up the crowd for this appearance?

At The Reveal I wrote about ALTERED STATES, a film about a man so haunted by the thought he might not be as cool as he was in the 1960s that he grows fur and terrorizes zoo animals.

A little news from home: @kphipps3000.bsky.social and I wrote about NEWS FROM HOME today as part of our Sight and Sound conversation series. Akerman was a big mover on the S&S 2022 poll, and this epistolary doc is a powerful, lonely impression of NYC in the mid '70s: thereveal.film/52-tie-news-...

I was skeptical about this New York Times look at Madison, but I see it includes B-Side Records and Le Tigre Lounge, so I can't hate it:

Really enjoyed having a conversation about all things TASK with Tom Pelphrey for @vulture.com:

Are these creepy doomsday prepper ads running in every market airing tonight’s ALCS game? Is this a Fox thing?