Movie Roundup

I prefer watching movies. There was a video rental place on my block back in the days before Blockbuster, and I made it my business to go there frequently. There was nothing more satisfying than to discover and scurry home with movies I’d never heard of. Now of course we have streaming. I can only imagine the wide-eyed worship of the future my past-self would have indulged in if she’d known.

Photo by Myke Simon on Unsplash

My favorite genres are horror, sci-fi and fantasy, but I find myself watching more horror than anything else. I love a good space movie, but those are expensive, and therefore far and between. I love a good fantasy, but those seem to be out of fashion, or they straddle genres. Horror seems to be the most stable and most prolific of the three.

Within horror, I’m most partial to found footage, possession and devil-made-me-do-it, subgenres. Ghost stories depend on the setting. Overall, I’m tired of slashers (murder porn), and movies designed to punish women.

I do watch other things on occasion. I adore Korean Dramas and movies—love how their tropes are entirely different—but watching those mean reading subtitles, which means sitting and focusing on the screen. Unfortunately, I’m not always in the mood to do that.

I watch few romances. I remain open, but they’re not my go-to.

I say all of this to say that while these Movie Roundups can contain any genre, they’re most likely to contain some flavor of horror.

I tried something similar a few years ago: Garden Gnomes of Terror, but running two blogs was more work than I wanted to keep up with. I created these Roundups specifically for my Substack newsletter, but as I mentioned, running two blogs was more work than i wanted to keep up with! 😂 But I like the idea, and moving everything to one place was a much better choice.

These Movie Roundups are strictly for fun, and my opinions totally run on vibes: Did I like it? Was I entertained? Did the movie make sense?

Sometimes I’ll talk about structure and characters, consistency, yadda yadda, but I’m not trying to do any serious film critiques. I just like watching movies and talking about them. My hope is that you enjoy this commentary. If you’ve seen any of these movies, I’d love to hear your thoughts!