|
About This Author
I am SoCalScribe. This is my InkSpot.
|
Blogocentric Formulations
Logocentric (adj). Regarding words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality (especially applied as a negative term to traditional Western thought by postmodernist critics).
Sometimes I just write whatever I feel like. Other times I respond to prompts, many taken from the following places:
 "The Soundtrackers Group" 
"Invalid Item"
"Blogging Circle of Friends "
"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
"JAFBG"
"Take up Your Cross Blog Forum"
Thanks for stopping by! 
August 3, 2025 at 12:33pm August 3, 2025 at 12:33pm
| |
To qualify for my Watch List every month, the following has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, but it can't be reruns or rewatches of something I've already seen. So if I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish.
Movies
 Deep Cover
Eddington
The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Fountain of Youth
G20
Heads of State
Sinners
Superman
Let's get the bad out of the way first: G20, Fountain of Youth, and Deep Cover were all pretty forgettable streaming titles that were fine to watch but didn't really impress all that much. Of all the streaming titles, Heads of State was probably my favorite and while not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination, re-teamed John Cena with Idris Elba. Their not-so-friendly competition was the best part of 2021's The Suicide Squad, and they picked up right where they left off, this time as a President of the United States and British Prime Minister that detest one another. There was a solid amount of comedy and the action was well choreographed, which helped offset the fact that there wasn't much character development or a sophisticated plot. It was a fun way to spend two-hours if you don't think about it too much.
The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Superman were both pretty good. I'm partial to the first, for obvious reasons, and I'm glad to see it doing pretty well. This one was really, really challenging to make (owing to a lot of last-minute decisions and changes), so it's always nice when something you worked really hard on is well received, as opposed to working hard on something only for it to bomb. Superman was probably the best movie out of DC Studios in a long time, but I think it kind of highlights the limits of James Gunn as a filmmaker. I think he has a high floor and a low ceiling as a director (i.e., rarely makes a truly bad movie, but doesn't have many really great ones either), and I think he sacrificed his greatest asset (his sense of humor) trying to make a more "serious" movie this time around. I think it's definitely a step in the right direction for DC Studios (it'd be hard not to improve over the more recent offerings), and I'll be curious to see how the rest of the franchise unfolds. Supergirl should be fun next summer.
My highs and lows of the month were Sinners and Eddington, respectively.
I thought Sinners was a really creative, fun take on vampires from Ryan Coogler who continues to impress as a filmmaker with a unique point of view, and the soundtrack was incredible. I've been listening to it a lot on its own even after finishing the movie. The performances were all great (especially Michael B. Jordan, who plays dual roles as twins), and the ending with the time jump really made the film. I'm not normally a horror movie guy other than on Halloween, but I really thought this one was great.
Eddington, on the other hand, felt like a complete mess. I went to see it without knowing a whole lot about it other than that Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal play a small New Mexico town sheriff and mayor, respectively, at the height of the COVID-19, and compete against one another in the mayor's race over differing views of how to handle the pandemic (Pascal's mayor being in favor of mask mandates and other safety measures, while Phoenix's sheriff thinks the whole thing is overblown). Honestly, the first half of the film was really compelling and did a great job of capturing what a bizarre time that was in all of our lives. But the second half went completely off the rails when... spoiler alert... Joaquin Phoenix gets COVID and is humiliated to the point where snaps he kills Pedro Pascal's character (and his teenage son). And his wife joins a cult. And Antifa militants associated with the corporate interests trying to break ground on a new AI data center in town are dispatched to blow up the sheriff's deputies and run through town shooting everything up.  There was literally a point during the movie where I leaned over to the friend I was watching the movie with and whispered, "Is this whole thing going to be a dream? Like, Joaquin is going to wake up on a ventilator or something and we're going to realize this is all a COVID hallucination?" But nope, that's actually how the story of the movie played out. It was so absurdist and divorced from the hard-hitting realism of the first hour that I found it jarring and completely bizarre. And maybe that was the point, but if that's the case, it wasn't a good choice for the film, in my opinion.
Television
Ballard (Season 1)
Blindspot (Season 1) — DNF
Dept Q (Season 1)
Hightown (Season 1) — DNF
Poker Face (Season 2)
Slow Horses (Season 1) — DNF
Lots of DNF television this month. Blindspot definitely felt like a show from the 2010s where it has a great premise that probably would have been better as a movie because they just seemed to be dragging it out episode after episode. The actual episodic stories in the show weren't particularly interesting, and after watching a half-dozen episodes and seeing how many seasons of this show they made, it seemed pretty clear it was going to be a "let's see how long we can string this out" situation and I figured I would just read the Wikipedia plot summary rather than sit through another 100 hours of programming.
The other two DNFs this month were Hightown and Slow Horses, neither of which were bad; they just weren't very compelling either. Hightown was sort of interesting (and very clearly a show where Monica Raymund was looking to do something more risque after more than a decade on a network procedural) but the characters and the storyline just didn't really grab me. And Slow Horses was good — maybe I'll even go back and finish it at some point because I like the concept of a bunch of spy agency rejects working a case — but the show was aptly named because "slow" is exactly the word to describe it. After three episodes, it seemed like the story was only just getting started with the main plot. Sometimes I'm in the mood for a slow-burn show, and this month I just wasn't.
Dept Q was okay; it feels like they've remade this book series from Jussi Adler-Olsen, but every single time they start with the same book: The Keeper of Lost Causes. I haven't read any of the other books in the series, but it makes me wonder if they're any good because this is the same specific book they keep using every time they reboot the franchise. I guess we'll see what happens if they get a Season 2, now that they've used their most popular and prominent storyline for Season 1.
The second season of Poker Face was a real miss, in my opinion. Twelve episodes and only two or three of them were interesting or even connected to the main narrative. The rest seemed like one-offs where a bunch of famous guest stars would show up for an episode completely unrelated to the main story. It's really a shame because the first season of this show was excellent, and it seemed like they were really coasting for this one, relying on the charm of Natasha Lyonne (who I don't find that charming) and the appeal of the sheer number of stars who would show up in episodes. If they make another season, I really hope they put as much effort into the story as they do the casting.
Ballard was easily my favorite show of the month. What can I say? I'm a sucker for Michael Connelly's characters and the world he's created. This is the second spinoff of Bosch, and I'm kind of fascinated by the idea of having a world of shows that run for a handful of seasons before a "new" show starts, spinning off with a different character and main cast, while still bringing others back in for cameos from time to time. It doesn't hurt that Michael Connelly has a lot of books with great plots, so this seems like a franchise that will continue for some time. Probably three or four seasons of Ballard, and then maybe they'll spin it off with a Ballard: Legacy show, or move on to one of Connelly's other protagonists like Terry McCaleb, Rachel Walling, or Cassie Black. I'd love to see the last of those; Void Moon was one of the first Connelly books I read and still one of my favorites.
TOP PICK:
Sinners
|
© Copyright 2025 Jeff (UN: jeff at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
Jeff has granted InkSpot.Com, its affiliates and its syndicates non-exclusive rights to display this work.
|
Comment • View 2 comments 
