#not a great year for films - I didn't watch that many - but a few gems!!!

[bethegaycowboy]

My favourite first watches of 2024!

thank you so much @seeraphina for tagging me :)<3

I'm tagging all the mutuals who want to do this, please tag me in your post so I can add all the films to the watchlist eheheh

[popculturebuffet]

Next up for Nickelodeon era of shows, who is your favorite character from each of the late 2000s to 2010 Nicktoons shows (notably the longevity of Nicktoons around this time began getting less with only a handful from this point onward getting more than 2 seasons, Nickelodeon getting more reliant on SpongeBob around this time, and Nicktoons often getting moved to the Nicktoons channel for burning off episodes if didn't match SpongeBob's ratings instantly became a frequent occurrence at this point) you've seen like: El Tigre The Adventures of Manny Rivera, Tak and the Power of Juju, Back at the Barnyard, The Mighty B, The Penguins of Madagascar 2008, Fanboy & Chum Chum, Planet Sheen, and TUFF Puppy?

Now that i knew but nick being shitty to their cartoons was a constnat. Something they ALWAYS did this is just where, with nicktoons in place, they started being way faster about it. Had to put up less pretense.

El Tigre: The boy himself. He has an intresting dynamic of not being a villian or a hero (more anti hero), that really could use more exploration in a possible revivial or fanfiction (Wink wink), as the show generally lead to the good side and din't have manny do crimes too often. But he's still charming, funny and likeable kid with an intresting power set. As for the show it's pretty good, a bit broad for it's concept, but it works, with nice over the top comedy and gorgeous animation. Jorge Guteirez always brings it and I need to watch his other show and his film at some point.

Tak: Hal sparks kid only because he's hal sparks. I have an attachment ot the guy since I watched him on I love the 80s , which I also need to rewatch. Tak.. not so much. I hear the games are geninely solid 3d colllectithons and nick could do to rerelease them or have updated versions ala rehydrated, but the show takes a possible epic fantasy show with some goofy humor.. and turns it into "Kid with a lot of power fucks up a lot"

I've watched cartoons up to present day and while I fell off nick due to lack of cable and previously being awful at putting stuff on streaming (they've gotten better), so you have to wait some time and they can spread a season over years in some cases (*cough* loud house *Cough), I did watch for a long time.. and I was just.. not intrested in this at all. I'd seen it so many times. Just above el tigre does it better, as the villian or hero choice lets Manny get away with more shit than say Otto Rocket. And thus it dosen't work here: everyone's either vaugely filled otu or a dick, the mythology isn't really well built, and any hope of another action show is gone... I don't mind comedy in my action, the golden trinity of superhero shows i've covered here and the previous CN list should make that very clear... but I mind wasting another good fantasy show on this shit, especially at a time when the bar was sky high.

Back at the Barnyard: This one I remembered as being.. eh. Pretty weak first season I noped out of the show after.. but any time I caught a later episode... I saw a changea nd wish i'd gone back. Just from out of context vids i've found while season 1 had it's gems that are featured it fucking lost it as it went, including a full on war with weird al (Who did a LOT of voice acting back then and should keep doing it, he was great as milo murphy). So a show I didn't think much of but seemed to get a lot better once it stopped being a bland imitation of am ovie few people saw but is apparently good and started just embracing i'ts looney tunes esque madness.

The Mighty B: Don't really have one. This one was eh. I know some hate it, I thought it was okay and like many of these shows it got better but no one got to see that because nicktoons. It was nice to see amy pohler in a cartoon, hope she does it again, but overall like Tak , and a lot of the weaker shows from here on out, it comes out as a weak copy of stuff the network had done better: grossout, hero whose goofy but isn't like by most people but a select few.. there just isn't anything to what I saw of mighty b that makes me WANT to go back versus barnyard, which geninely improved and simply shed it's more standard trappings for something far more fun.

The Penguins of Madagascar: A spinoff.. honestly better than the movies. At least the ones i've seen and I really LIKED 2 when I saw it one time in a theater, so it's a compliment. (I hear 3 is really good). Like most film based spinoffs Nick has done, it takes a second to get going but was a lot of fun in highlight. I can see why kiean carlyle (Fan animator and youtuber whose covered both suite life shows (with the new video finishing the saga having just come out), wizards of waverly place, mighty med, labrats and mighty med and labrats) did a retrospective on it and need to watch that. The show isn't one of my all time favoirites, but it works really well and honestly WAY more than it should. A spinoff that just has "the characters the audeince took to" (the lemurs and the penguins) and no real ties shouldn't work.. but it does because the penguins are that strong and them doing various heists or other shenaigans work. Jullian and Maurice work as comic relief and having seen their show, work well enough on their own too. And Marlene and the Zookeepr were great additions. They let marlene be the voice of reason/love intrest without having her be boring. Granted getting Nicole Suilvan to play her helps, but the show was really good. Top notch stuff.

Fanboy and chum Chum: Their crazy totally amazing MAKE IT STOP PLEASE MAKE IT STOP. Yeah this one has an annoying theme song and like about half the shows in this block is a poor xerox of stuff that worked better in other shows. yet... it's more mediocre than bad. This may be THE most hated nicktoon, with only our next contestant rivaling it from what I can tell.. but it's just.. okay. It's not good, it dosen't really have anything going for it and most of it's gimmicks are taken from other shows , but it's not so bad it's good or high tier awful either. it's just a lame copy of better stuff trying to be spongebob or ren and stimpy or even regular show without any of the pizzaz those had. It's what an AI would make if it made a nicktoon. It's not really wroth hating it's just... there.

Planet Sheen:

Now for the oppisite. Fuck this show, First off I found out later it was supposed to be it's own thing.. and woul'dve worked better that way, with a pizza dude getting shot up into space. That.. sounds more fun and most of the cast would've worked. Making it a jimmy neutron spinoff.. was a terrible idea. The show had more to tell so instead of just.. reviving that if they wanted more jimmy neutron with a revivial/spinoff, they instead shoved Sheen into a concept that dosen't really work WITH sheen. Granted part of it is, especiallya fter revieiwng the christmas special recently.. sheen is more layered than he tends to be remembered. Even I forgot his nice well of sarcasm. Sheen in Jimmy Neutron is fucking weird... but he's often the straight man in their comedy trio to a degree I forgot. Carl really is the weird as fuck one, Jimmy is a man of science and can be the straight man to his doofier best friends, but can also get caught in his ego. Sheen tends to be the one calling jimmy out when Cindy isn't present or calling cindy out when LIbby isn't early on. Here.. he has none of that. He's just an obnoxious idiot who cheats on his girlfriend, also wanted to make out with carl (which isn't innacurate but of all the tthings to pick up on form jimmy neutron, and didn't use carl because of executiv emeddling. This one is the worst nicktoon so far.. simply because Nick tried to cram too much generic bullshit into it. It COULD'VE worked. Idiot stumbles into glory isn't new, but it would've worked better with a protagaanist they didn't dumb down in a new property. I dont' know why Nick made a terrible spinofff to a show they clearly don't care about, and I wish they hadn't.

TUFF Puppy: Kitty and Dudley tie.. both because they purdy, and because they play off each other pretty well when the shows working at it's best. Overall this show is just.. fine though. Not a bad get smart reboot, doofus with some talent lead and cat suited sensible sidekick, but like , say it again A LOT OF THESE SHOWS, it feels like reheated leftovers. It's just not AS bad because there's some creativity. For as much as butch hartman sucks, and he does, he can make a decent cast. He was half assing it a bit more here, but I suspect it's also because he didn't have say steve marmel to help iron things out. But as a broad comedy it's fine. It's nothing amazing, but it's not AGRESSIVELY medidocre like the bulk of shows around this time. It's stuff w'eve seen before, idiot, woman as foil, weird techie, chief whose goofier than he lets on, but it's also not bad. Maybe it's the furry in me... probably ti's the furry in me, but it also just has a lot of fun stuff to it. I can't really hate it like I did planet sheen or eh it away like most of these shows. It did try a little. Not a lot and it shoudl've tried more as it could've been really great, a new darkwing duck.. but it wasn't half bad. again Grey and Jerry do a LOT of the lifting. THe voice cast for this one is fantastic. But i'll take "it's eh but it has really good perofrmances " over "let's make the generic ideal of what a kid wants" anyday. CN hit a rough patch too, we saw it, mostly trying to follow nick's footsteps.. but nick REALLY slid in quality as it went with only a few bright spots. And what good shows it did have it gave up on too fast. and it just won't stop doing it either.

[silver-and-shadow]

THANK YOU SO MUCH for introducing me to Studio Ghibli by the way. (through your reblogs :)) I have watched Howl's Moving Castle, Castle in the Sky and Arrietty so far and they're such gems!!!! Next will be Kiki's Delivery Service. I can't believe I didn't know these movies so far, they are so gorgeously and thoughtfully made...I LOVE THEM!!! Do you have any more recommendations?

Studio Ghibli films are magical, aren't they? I'm so excited I got to introduce them to you!!!

I stumbled across Only Yesterday years ago and it was a revelation! A beautifully animated slice-of-life drama about a 27-year-old woman contemplating her past and her dreams for the future?!? I’d never seen anything like it, quickly fell in love, and then devoured all the Studio Ghibli movies I could get my hands on (and they have been revisited many times since). I hope you enjoy your Ghibli rabbit trail as much as I did!

I’ll try to limit this list to works that evoke a similar feel/themes to Studio Ghibli films—or I’ll start listing every animated title that I’m attached to 😆

Hopefully there’s something new here for you to enjoy!

Cartoon Saloon's Irish Trilogy

THIS. STUDIO. The work this Irish animation studio puts out is always stunning, authentic, and full of heart. And their fantasy-folklore inspired Irish Trilogy (The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, Wolfwalkers) is great place to start for Studio Ghibli lovers. With their unique style and nuanced storytelling, these hand-drawn films will make you feel like you jumped into the pages of an old Celtic fairy tale.

Hilda

This is such a charming show! It feels like Scandinavia folklore by way of Miyazaki—and there's depth beneath it's beautifully wistful aesthetic. 26 episodes + 1 film follow the adventures of Hilda as she reluctantly moves to the city of Trollburg where she encounters new people, mysterious creatures, and magical spirits. Though it feels episodic early on, they weave into the larger story that shines in the final film.

Your Name.

I’m a big fan of Makoto Shinkai’s work—breathtaking animation and emotional storytelling that explores themes of love, loss, separation, and connection. His work always tugs at my heartstrings and Your Name. is one of my favorites (close second: 5 Centimeters Per Second). This modern slice-of-life sci-fi film (about two teenagers who long to meet after suddenly swapping bodies) is definitely worth a watch!

More favorite titles you might like:

Mushishi*

Kubo and the Two Strings

The Iron Giant

Tokyo Godfathers

Kids on the Slope

*Mushishi is one of my absolute favorite anime series—highly evocative and thought-provoking with an entrancing eerie/calm atmosphere. However, the horror elements might not be your cup of tea. If so, but you like this concept/feel, give Natsume’s Book of Friends a try—another favorite "chill" anime that's more on the heart-warming side.

A few Ghibli-esque films worth checking out:

A Letter to Momo

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Mary and the Witch’s Flower

Wolf Children

Summer Wars

(Also, if you don't mind older stuff, I'd definitely recommend doing a deep dive to Miyazaki's and Takahata's early Nippon Animation work like Future Boy Conan and Akage no Anne. They are charming in their own way and it's fascinating to see Studio Ghibli's roots.)

I'm sure there's a bunch I'm forgetting and even more on my to-be-watched list that might fit the bill. ...but that's enough of my rambling for now 😉

Have you already seen any of these? Anything new strike your fancy?

[iamacolor]

I'm feeling so conflicted. I love Homecha and want to be able to re-watch it without having the scandal at the back of my mind smh

Because at the end of the day, the story is written extremely well and Hong Dusik is a well written character (tbvh well acted too). This story is such a gem in the kdrama world. I feel really bad for the cast. They should be riding the success rn.

Do you think the scandal will overshadow its award season merit? Like I really want some recognition for the cast and writer

hi anon!

it is a very conflicting situation especially when, as viewers, we turn to fiction for escapism and homecha was such a heartwarming and cathartic show that to have it "tainted" in that way is very saddening, i know a lot of people felt comforted and represented in the show but i think it's important to remember that the characters' journeys can still be a source of comfort even if you can't rewatch it (right now or in the future). The quotes that touched you, the moment of love and care, the funny moment, the way a plot unfolded etc if that touched you, if that made you feel better well that can't be taken away from you! Personnally I know there's someone out there who's been so hurt by his actions (and probably more than one person if all that was reported about what he said about his co-stars and colleagues is true) that I feel like my own disappointment doesn't matter that much, because the worst thing is that i might not be able to enjoy it as much as I did the first around but that's it. Honestly you're free to skip his scenes or watch them, just do whatever feels most comfortable for you (and maybe that'll be different in a few months).

Tbh I am also a bit worried about wether the rest of the cast and crew's work could be overlooked because of this. Although they might not talk about the show much to avoid talking about him, they can still be recognised for their work and so many people have watched the show that they'll still benefit from being in it I'm sure. I'm sure people can still reward them for their work, it was one of the biggest drama of the year and it definitely wasn't all his doing, he was sharing the screen with some big names and very talented people, they've all done such a great job and deserve to be recognised for it. Even the town they filmed in became super famous thanks to the show so it really was about the story as a whole. I would honestly be surprised if it didn't get anything at all, i've seen people receiving awards for shows or movies despite being known as criminals or assholes so i feel like it's still possible for people who just happened to work with someone who behaved badly! Some shows have never been aired because of something like this (throwback to dear.m who never saw the light of day) but I remember that river where the moon rises literally casted another main actor to replace the one who had been revealed to be a bully and harasser and they kept on going with someone else and were praised for it. But also I haven't really followed wich other dramas got praised this year and could be nominated and so I don't know the chances of the homecha team in terms of competition etc

[madd-information]

I saw your advice of dipping one's toe to another anon...I unfortunately didn't do that & now I'm confused is it good or bad? A lot of the information is scary...for someone whose thinking spirals I started fearing I would develop every mental illness mentioned.

The thing is I've never considered my daydreaming weird or freaky till the internet.

My mdding hasn't stopped my life yet. I have one of my dream jobs & degree. I literally used to daydream & create story boards for this job as a little girl.

At this stage I still know how to shutdown & study. & I have to be an active listener & take notes & read material beforehand. I even put dense documents in word document & play "read aloud" while also reading, it keeps me focused.

It's hard but I can. I've always known I have to work harder for decent or great marks & my ambition & Faith has mostly driven me to put in that extra work. But I always thought that all the hard work I do is due to my lack of concentration I've never focused on the idea that my daydreams were to developed or taking over my life or at least attempting to. My cousins & my mom used to make fun of the fact that at night before sleeping I would just stare in the distance (daydreaming) until I fell asleep or that I would just be smiling randomly at times.

I am working on being more social so i can get friends etc. I honestly think that my lack of social skills has more to do with my personality than my mdding. I like being alone. I hate trying to fill awkward silences & I'm extremely shy. My sister is my current best friend cause she loves me no matter what.

Cause people tend to bully me in real life. The last time I had friends I loved was at age 10 (I miss them so much) & I'm in my 20s now. I feel like women become meaner the older we get. Ive tried making friends at work but people were abusive in different ways. But I'm actively going to work on getting friends this year. I've decided to push myself to join group things (I just need to find things that are safe during covid times). I watched a video of one of my fav youtubers & she said she zooms with her friends at least once a week. So that is my aim to find friends to zoom with once a week with.

Basically my question is, is mdding bad or good?

How do you know it's good or bad? It's just weird to me that when I was younger people encouraged things like imaginary friends so many TV shows had kids with imaginary friends etc. But now my imagination is bad & means I'm ill. I'm genuinely confused.

I never had an imaginary friend as a kid & thought I was weird for that but I had stories which I would write down or tell my sister. As I grew older I kept them to myself I thought of writing them down but grew to lazy. I should've cause I think I had at least one gem. My mdding now has become stale and is about my ideal husband, my future goals career wise, my dream home & dinner parties. On occasion & quite recently though I've been daydreaming about being the new Tarantino. So I've decided to join a writer's club in my area they are waiting for covid to slow down before restarting for 2021. I dont know if that would fulfill my mdding of writing a stellar film & debuting in Cannes. But hey it's worth a try. 😀

But I'm excited to join the writing group.

I've taken up painting during quarantine cause I daydreamed about being a painter. I have a year to get good.

I tried surfing cause a movie I watched made me daydream about my dream guy being a surfer. I need a few more swimming lessons to take up that daydream 😂

Besides Tarantino, I've also daydreamed I was a musician so obviously I'm looking for affordable guitar lessons & vocal lessons. I live in a small town but I'll find something. 😀 whether or not that would fulfill my desire to record an album & daydreaming about a tour I dont know.

Also daydreaming makes exercise bearable. I could probably be more productive & study while exercising but I prefer daydreaming while exercising it helps me forget the pain.

I just hate when my mdding sneaks up on me at work. But I then have to use my meditation tools focusing on being present. Headspace has a great series on Netflix. I can daydream all day if I have no work, school, church or not around others. Otherwise if I am doing any of that I need to be present & that's my goal for 2021.

This is weird. Definitely pathetic. Probably a sign of an unfulfilled life? But is it bad?

Anonymous said:

Also another weird thing I do is I imagine my fav podcasts as dinner parties where I can give input cause I'm extremely opinionated. I like the different personalities on the podcast & wish they were my friends.

“Basically my question is, is mdding bad or good?”

MD is inherently negative in some way.  The daydreaming itself isn’t the bad thing, but our relationship with it.  I tend to explain it as akin to a food addiction.  Food is good and it is needed for us to live as functional human beings, like daydreaming it is a normal part of life which cannot just be ‘quit’.  But our relationship with food can become disordered and lead us to unhealthy behaviour and negative outcomes. Knowing if your relationship has tipped into the realm of unhealthy is the tricky part, and is negotiable to an extent, like how we can indulge in junk food regularly and still consider ourselves healthy and happy with our habits.

This line is different for everyone and there’s no real this-is-exactly-when-it-becomes-bad answer. The best we can do is make an honest evaluation of our lives, speak about it to a therapist if possible, and make our best determination.  

Here are some papers you can read to give you a better understanding of MD.  And here are some measures which might give you an idea about where you stand.  (note: these are measures meant for clinical use and were not intended for self diagnosis, they are provided to give you an understanding of what MD might look like)

[weekendwarriorblog]

THE WEEKEND WARRIOR 4/2/21: GODZILLA VS. KONG, THE UNHOLY, OXFORD FILM FESTIVAL

I’m really not sure how I feel about doing the Weekend Warrior at quite the level I was doing last year. Even though the box office is slowly coming back, it’s still very frustrating to write about, and honestly, the Disney announcement last week about all the movies being delayed or dumped to Disney+ kinda brought me down. It just tells me that many studios are giving up on theatrical just as people have gotten so used to watching stuff at home, they don’t care about going out and being in rooms with other people, especially strangers. I guess I can understand that, but all the negativity that pervaded the narrative in 2020 is finally doing its damage as theaters reopen and some may have trouble even filling 25% capacity for some movies.

Then again, I’ve just come back from a weekend at the Oxford Film Festival, which became one of the first American film festivals to go in-person, although it is doing a bit of a hybrid in-person with virtual, so locals and a few out-of-of-towners (mainly me) were able to see all of this year’s great programming at one of the outdoor (and then indoor due to weather) venues. I was on the feature doc jury and got to see 11 terrific documentaries, some of which hopefully will get distribution and get out there, but why wait? While most of the movies are geoblocked to the United States (and some to Mississippi), there’s so much great programming to check out over the next month, and you can do so via OxFilm’s virtual cinema, which includes many great features and shorts. As far as the juries, I can highly recommend the Jury Prize winners, In a DIfferent Key, a fantastic film about autism directed by Caren Zucker & John Donvan, and the runner-up, Patrick O’Connor’s Look Away, Look Away, an amazing bi-partisan look at the fight to keep the Confederate-created flag of MIssissippi or change it, depending on your side of the fight. It’s a doc that really needs to be seen in other parts of the country. (Unfortunately, those are both geoblocked to Mississippi, as is Chelsea Christie’s Bleeding Audio, which tells the tragic story of the rise and fall of San Francisco’s The Matches and won for Music Documentary.) There are movies available everywhere in the United States though, and you can check out the full line-up of movies here.

Anyway, OxFilm gives me hope that there’s a future for theatrical moviegoing and as far as the box office, that hope comes in the form of the first holiday weekend since NYC and L.A. reopened as the Good Friday day off for most schools and Easter Monday that continues the vacation for others might persuade people to check out what’s happening in theaters, and fortunately, it’s a movie that’s so easy to market based on the fact that it has two of the biggest movie monsters facing off for the first time since 1963.

That’s right -- opening on Wednesday is the anticipated GODZILLA VS. KING KONG, starring… well, does it really matter who it stars other than Zilla and Kong? Probably not. The fourth movie in the Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. Monsterverse takes the star of 2017’s Kong: Skull Island ($168 million at domestic box office) and pits him against the title character of 2014’s Godzilla ($200 million) and 2019’s Godzilla, King of the Monsters ($110.5 million). MInd you, I just include those domestic grosses for reference, because even if we take into account that scary dip from Godzilla and its direct sequel, it won’t really matter when you take into consideration a little thing called…. COVID! We’ve already seen movies gross more than $50 million since everything shutdown

I already reviewed this over at Below the Line, so I don’t have much more to say in that regard. It’s good if you like giant monster fights but isn’t much beyond its amazing monster battles, which is why I won’t even mention the actors that appear in it or any of the characters.

Godzilla vs. Kong is probably going to be the widest release since COVID hit with 2,600 theaters on Wednesday and then expanded to 3,000 on Friday when Regal reopens many (but not all) of its theaters. While I expect it to do fine on Weds and Thursday, making probably $4 or 5 million, it should really explode on Good Friday, which should allow it to make somewhere between $18 and 20 million over the three-day holiday weekend, so let’s say $25 to 26 million before Monday.

Also opening theatrically, this one on Friday is the Screen Gems horror movie THE UNHOLY from Sam Raimi’s Ghost House Pictures, the directorial debut by Evan Spiliotopoulos (writer of Disney’s mega-blockbuster Beauty and the Beast live action movie and the Rock’s Hercules ), who adapted the story from James Herbert’s novel “Shrine.” The movie stars Jeffrey Dean Morgan as disgrace journalist Gerry Fenn who is trying to get stories for a supernatural tabloid when he comes upon a deaf teenager named Alice (Cricket Brown) seemingly praying at an oak tree in a rural community in Massachusetts. When she seemingly gets her hearing back and is able to talk, word quickly spreads that she’s able to communicate with a benevolent Virgin Mary-like spirit that gives her the powers to heal. Since this is a horror movie, you can probably guess that things quickly get ugly and scary. THe movie also stars the wonderful Katie Aselton as a local doctor, who doesn’t do very many doctor-y things.

Before we get to my review -- and I’ll blame the review embargo on it for this week’s column being so late -- let’s talk about the movie’s box office potential, because religious horror-thrillers have quite a significant draw over a certain audience going straight back to the ‘70s with movies like The Exorcist and The Omen (the latter one of my all-time favorites) and The Unholy does dip into the toe of both of those. It’s been a long since there’s been one of those which might make this a draw for audiences into theaters, especially over Easter weekend -- that may be meant as irony -- but there’s also a little movie called Godzilla vs. Kong, which is just way more of a draw even with it being on HBO Max, but also because it’s likely to get better reviews. I’m not sure how many theaters Sony is getting this into, but I expect it’s somewhere around 2,000 or so, and that might be enough for the movie to make around $4 to 5 million this weekend, but probably VERY frontloaded to Friday.

Now let’s get to that review…

The Unholy begins with a flashback scene to “February 31, 1845” with a scene right out of the Salem Witch Trials of a woman being mutilated and strung up to a tree. This plays a very important role in a story that involves a fairly ludicrous premise that mostly involves Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s character finding something called a Kern Baby, essentially a porcelain doll wrapped in chains that he decides to smash in order to create a fake supernatural story about how smashing the doll causes crops to fail. In fact, smashing it releases the spirit of the woman we saw in that opening scene possessing a deaf teen girl named Alice who starts to heal everyone in her rural community, while also releasing the evil that had that woman’s spirit bound into the doll in the first place.

There isn’t that much more to say about the plot to a stupid horror premise so full of religious hokum as more characters get involved with trying to figure out if Alice is actually healing people or not. This includes the benevolent local priest Father Hagan, played by William Sadler, and a Bishop (really) played by Cary Elwes, who is using such a bizarre accent, kind of like a cross between the Bronx and a heavy Irish brogue, that it’s impossible to take his character very seriously.

Just knowing what studio garbage Spiliotopoulos has written did not make me very hopeful for his directorial debut, which is just all over the place in terms of tone and pacing, dragging at times and then throwing the type of cheap jump scares and schlocky CG horror creatures at the viewer with very little of it actually being very scary. " (The creature version of "Mary" just looks silly.) Besides being highly derivative, ripping off almost every religious horror movie, both bad and good, some aspects of the movie are so laughably bad that it’s hard to take much of it seriously. Worst of all, it ends with just a really horrible climax that reverses any good will the movie might have created with the casual young horror fans that usually like this thing. Honestly, I wouldn’t be shocked if it’s another one of those unrare “F” CinemaScores we see whenever a studio horror film doesn’t bother matching up to the quality of something like The Witch or Hereditary. Horror fans definitely want more than the usual these days, and The Unholy just seems like a lazy waste of time.

A movie that I’ve been looking forward to seeing and just haven't had time to watch is Emma Seligman’s SHIVA BABY (Utopia) that stars Rachel Sennott as 20-something Danielle who runs into her sugar daddy (Danny Deferrari) at a shiva with his wife (Dianna Agron) and their baby, as well as her parents (Fred Melamed and Pollyw Draper) and Molly Gordon as Danielle’s ex-girlfriend. It’s actually playing at the newly reopened Quad Cinema, so who knows? Actually I did watch Shiva Baby and was kind of disappointed. It seemed very twee and precious, and Sennott's character seems like the type of spoiled Millennial white girl that I hate in indie movies like this. I also just didn't find it particularly funny. Oh, well.

Streaming Friday on Netflix is Ricky Staub’s CONCRETE COWBOY, starring Idris Elba, Caleb McLaughlin and Lorraine Toussiant with McLaughlin being a teenager who moves in with his estranged father (Elba) in North Philadelphia where he learns about his passion for urban horseback riding.

Opening in New York (at the Angelika and Village East) on Friday and in L.A.and other cities on April 9 is the Oscar-nominated International Feature THE MAN WHO SOLD HIS SKIN (Samuel Goldwyn Films), written and directed by Kaouther Ben Hania, and starring Yahya Mahyni, Dea Liane, Koen De Bouw and Monica Bellucci. Tunisia’s submission is the story of Sam Ali, a Syrian who leaves his country for Lebanon to escape the war with hopes of travelling to Europe to be with the love of his life. To fulfill that dream, he allows his back to be tattooed by a contemporary artist that actually brings more trouble to the poor young man.

Hulu will debut the doc WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn (Hulu), which I still haven’t gotten around to watching but seems like an interesting subject for a doc.

A little closer to home at the still-closed Metrograph, they’re playing Claire Dennis’ 2004 film L’Intrus through April 8, and on Friday will open Sky Hopinka’s experimental debut maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore (Grasshopper Films) which follows Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier as they wander around the Pacific Northwest, mostly speaking in the Chinuk Wawa language. The latter is free to digital members ($5/month, $50 a year!) and $12 for non-members… pretty easy decision there, huh? Ms. Dennis’ film is also available to members.

Not only that, but New York’s Film Forum is also reopening this Friday with the double feature of Almodovar’s remastered Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and his new short The Human Voice, starring Tilda Swinton; the fantastic doc The Truffle Hunters; as well as his Fellini’s masterful Oscar winner La Strada (Janus Films, 1954), starring Anthony Queen and the wonderful Giulietta Masina! (That’s what I’ll be seeing this Sunday!) On top of that, Film Forum will continue its fantastic Virtual Cinema programming, which will launch Eric Roehmer’s A Tale of Winter (1992) this Friday with Roehmer’s A Tale of Summer (1996) joining the Virtual Cinema starting Friday April 9.

Got exciting news that Film at Lincoln Center will be reopening on April 16, but this week, they’ll be launching the latest edition of Neighboring Scenes, its annual series of Latin American films done in conjunction with Cinema Tropical. It’s 10 films that you can watch with an all-access pass for the low price of $80, and it usually has some good movies in the program.

A couple others out this week, including Funny Face and Every Breath You Take (Vertical), which I don’t even have time to look up what they’re about. Sorry!

That’s it for this week. Next week, Neil Burger’s sci-fi coming-of-age thriller, VOYAGERS, will hit theaters.