{"id":780,"date":"2021-12-27T20:01:57","date_gmt":"2021-12-28T01:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/?page_id=780"},"modified":"2026-02-21T15:57:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-21T20:57:17","slug":"recentreviews","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/recentreviews\/","title":{"rendered":"Recent Media Opinions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Film &amp; Tv<\/h2>\n\n\n<ul class=\"has-dates has-excerpts wp-block-rss\"><li class='wp-block-rss__item'><div class='wp-block-rss__item-title'><a href='https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/therem\/film\/paranoia-agent\/'>Paranoia Agent, 2004<\/a><\/div><time datetime=\"2026-09-20T19:13:20-04:00\" class=\"wp-block-rss__item-publish-date\">September 20, 2026<\/time> <div class=\"wp-block-rss__item-excerpt\">Watched on Thursday October 20, 2011.<\/div><\/li><li class='wp-block-rss__item'><div class='wp-block-rss__item-title'><a href='https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/therem\/film\/backrooms-2026\/'>Backrooms, 2026 &#8211; \u2605\u2605\u2605\u00bd<\/a><\/div><time datetime=\"2026-09-20T19:02:22-04:00\" class=\"wp-block-rss__item-publish-date\">September 20, 2026<\/time> <div class=\"wp-block-rss__item-excerpt\">The production design is outstanding, and the visual metaphors of what you might call &quot;generation loss&quot; are deeply resonant. My favorite sequence comes late in the movie when the therapist&#039;s own disturbing upbringing is portrayed with a slow pan down through floors of increasingly twisted and strange imaginings of her living room and front door, conveying how she too is being sucked into the netherworld.<\/div><\/li><li class='wp-block-rss__item'><div class='wp-block-rss__item-title'><a href='https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/therem\/film\/cuban-fury\/'>Cuban Fury, 2014 &#8211; \u2605\u2605\u2605<\/a><\/div><time datetime=\"2026-09-10T23:03:41-04:00\" class=\"wp-block-rss__item-publish-date\">September 10, 2026<\/time> <div class=\"wp-block-rss__item-excerpt\">Finally got to this 12 years after release. In the intervening years, Kayvan Novak made me laugh a lot as Nandor in What We Do in the Shadows, so I was happy to see him playing Bruce&#039;s Fanta-loving dance friend. On the flip side, Chris O&#039;Dowd was truly vile as Bruce&#039;s backstabbing sexist coworker &#8212; too vile to keep the tone light. Happily, he was banished before the nice dance scenes at the end.<\/div><\/li><li class='wp-block-rss__item'><div class='wp-block-rss__item-title'><a href='https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/therem\/film\/wolf-children\/'>Wolf Children, 2012 &#8211; \u2605\u2605\u2605\u00bd<\/a><\/div><time datetime=\"2026-09-06T23:00:36-04:00\" class=\"wp-block-rss__item-publish-date\">September 6, 2026<\/time> <div class=\"wp-block-rss__item-excerpt\">Owing much to Miyazaki &#8212; especially My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke &#8212; it has some really emotional moments that made me cry. But the ending feels inconclusive.<\/div><\/li><li class='wp-block-rss__item'><div class='wp-block-rss__item-title'><a href='https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/therem\/film\/master-and-commander-the-far-side-of-the-world\/2\/'>Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, 2003 &#8211; \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/a><\/div><time datetime=\"2026-09-06T15:20:33-04:00\" class=\"wp-block-rss__item-publish-date\">September 6, 2026<\/time> <div class=\"wp-block-rss__item-excerpt\">Rewatched in 4K with a friend this time.<\/div><\/li><li class='wp-block-rss__item'><div class='wp-block-rss__item-title'><a href='https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/therem\/film\/agatha-all-along-2024\/'>Agatha All Along, 2024 &#8211; \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605 (contains spoilers)<\/a><\/div><time datetime=\"2026-09-03T19:11:00-04:00\" class=\"wp-block-rss__item-publish-date\">September 3, 2026<\/time> <div class=\"wp-block-rss__item-excerpt\">This review may contain spoilers. I ended up really liking this show. I thought it did some interesting things. It turned out that Aubrey Plaza&#039;s character was the personification of Death, &quot;the original green witch&quot;, which totally fits with a lot of mythology about death and life being two sides of the same coin (Hades\/Persephone, for example). Amongst the actors, Kathryn Hahn and Joe Locke were particularly great.<\/div><\/li><li class='wp-block-rss__item'><div class='wp-block-rss__item-title'><a href='https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/therem\/film\/heartstopper-forever\/'>Heartstopper Forever, 2026 &#8211; \u2605\u2605\u2605\u00bd<\/a><\/div><time datetime=\"2026-09-01T22:28:08-04:00\" class=\"wp-block-rss__item-publish-date\">September 1, 2026<\/time> <div class=\"wp-block-rss__item-excerpt\">It compresses a whole season&#039;s worth of developments into less than 2 hours, which makes some plot arcs into mere sketches. But they are done well. Having just barely watched the three seasons of the TV show, I was totally in the flow with the characters and really enjoyed this ending.<\/div><\/li><li class='wp-block-rss__item'><div class='wp-block-rss__item-title'><a href='https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/therem\/film\/disclosure-day\/'>Disclosure Day, 2026 &#8211; \u2605\u2605\u2605<\/a><\/div><time datetime=\"2026-08-23T22:26:33-04:00\" class=\"wp-block-rss__item-publish-date\">August 23, 2026<\/time> <div class=\"wp-block-rss__item-excerpt\">It was absorbing, and Spielberg&#039;s film-making skills remain stellar (except for the bad CGI animals and too much lens flare), but I don&#039;t think he thought through the concept very well. I just don&#039;t believe that what happens at the end of the movie would solve anything, but he seems to be saying that it would? In any case, the end credits slammed down before any of the big questions could be dealt with. Hmph.<\/div><\/li><li class='wp-block-rss__item'><div class='wp-block-rss__item-title'><a href='https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/therem\/film\/teenage-sex-and-death-at-camp-miasma\/'>Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, 2026 &#8211; \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/a><\/div><time datetime=\"2026-08-23T22:20:43-04:00\" class=\"wp-block-rss__item-publish-date\">August 23, 2026<\/time> <div class=\"wp-block-rss__item-excerpt\">Funny, sexy, and thought-provoking. Me likey!<\/div><\/li><li class='wp-block-rss__item'><div class='wp-block-rss__item-title'><a href='https:\/\/letterboxd.com\/therem\/film\/nirvanna-the-band-the-show-the-movie\/'>Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, 2025 &#8211; \u2605\u2605\u2605\u00bd<\/a><\/div><time datetime=\"2026-08-07T23:21:57-04:00\" class=\"wp-block-rss__item-publish-date\">August 7, 2026<\/time> <div class=\"wp-block-rss__item-excerpt\">It spent too much time in sentimental silly land for me &#8212; especially as I am not a fan of the Back to the Future movies &#8212; but there was some real madcap humor that kept me amused. The 4th wall breaking with the camera-man (and the second one who appeared partway through) was especially fun, as were the interactions with various people who seemed to be clueless bystanders.<\/div><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Books<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<div id=\"w4b8265ff308121aab06c0caf4e7d7387\"><\/div><script type=\"text\/javascript\" charset=\"UTF-8\" src=\"https:\/\/www.librarything.com\/widget_get.php?userid=therem&#038;theID=w4b8265ff308121aab06c0caf4e7d7387\"><\/script><noscript><a href=\"https:\/\/www.librarything.com\/profile\/therem\">My Library<\/a> at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.librarything.com\">LibraryThing<\/a><\/noscript>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Film &amp; Tv Books My Library at LibraryThing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-780","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/780","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=780"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/780\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":921,"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/780\/revisions\/921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therem.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=780"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}