Month in ReviewApril 2026
"She's My Baby" by Mazzy Star
Films & TV
  • Bugonia, Yorgos Lanthimos (2025). As a certified "Yorg-head," I feel really bad that I didn't go to see this in theaters when it came out, but I'm glad I finally got to see it! This is a solid dark comedy/psychological thriller with all of Lanthimos' trademark qualities - strange characters, disturbing twists, explorations of control, power dynamics, the pressure to fall in line, and the things people are capable of convincing themselves to believe. The way this film goes from a rather tight, intimate narrative focused on just a few characters in more or less one location, to that ending... it's really something. And it's such a fucked up little story but the lighting and coloration and set design are all so.. warm? There's almost something weirdly comforting about it, up to a certain point, even as the tension and the stakes inch higher and higher with every minute. Also was just really entertaining to watch the clash of greenwashed-therapy-speak-girlboss-capitalist rhetoric with that of a Qanon-esque, delusional, self-aggrandizing-yet-simultaneously-horribly-insecure-and-sad conspiracy theorist. The addition of a third character who is genuinely just a nice guy doing his best watching all of this go down rounds the whole thing out nicely to represent what it's like to watch any political discourse these days. It could be said that it's on-the-nose but the tone, the actors' delivery and the overall direction of the narrative prevent it from getting overbearing or obnoxious.
    I will say, there's something about the ending that, while it appealed to me in how shocking, big, and well-executed it was, kinda bothered me on a philosophical level? I can't really get into it without majorly spoiling it, but it made me reflect on how Lanthimos changed the ending of Poor Things from how it originally ended in the book. Mind you, that's one of my favorite movies of all time, but I've long thought its biggest misstep was not that it changed the ending, but the way it changed the ending. And in both Bugonia's case and Poor Things' case, there's this kinda smug pessimism, almost an anti-humanism, which I don't think is wrong or bad to represent, and it's a feeling I get in my worst moments, but it also just kinda bugs me, y'know?
  • House, Nobuhiko Obayashi (1977). Man, I really wanted to like this more than I did, and my disappointment is for such a silly and small reason!! I love how this looks, I love how absurd it is, the crazy editing and shots, it's just bursting with creativity and fun and a pure love of film. But there is a single melody that's maybe around 30 seconds to a minute long that just plays over and over and over and OVER again throughout nearly the entire film and it drove me fucking bananas!!! Combine it with the near-constant high-pitched screaming (I know scary things are happening so naturally the characters will scream, but in all of the horror I've seen in my short life I don't think I've encountered nearly this much constant screaming at such awful pitches) and I'm sorry but this was just so hard to get through and I did not find it as fun as I wanted to. I am devastated.
  • Millennium Actress, Satoshi Kon (2001).
  • Sinners, Ryan Coogler (2025). ♥︎ Am I an entire year late to this? Yes. Was the hype deserved? YES!!! This is just a fucking great movie. The kind of thing I feel like I could recommend to everyone - from the coolest of my friends to the normie-est of my coworkers and also my parents - if it weren't for the fact that they've all already seen it. That one scene (if you know you know) made me so emotional about the beauty of music and dance and I've watched it on YouTube like 10 times since seeing the movie and it makes me cry every time lmao. Also omg I am in love with Wunmi Mosaku, how is this the only thing I've seen her in, she's amazing?!?!?!?!
  • The Pitt season 2, created by R. Scott Gemmill (2026). *Sigh* Ok, so, I had so many less-than-positive thoughts about this season but I've been watching the show with my friends and have already written essays-worth of texts to them detailing my criticisms so I'm not sure I want to re-hash it all here, but I'll try to explain my experience of watching this season as concisely as I can:
    The shift in tone and focus to be primarily about Dr. Robby and his ongoing mental health crisis did not initially bother me. I'm not particularly concerned about likability in fictional characters most of the time, so his cruelty and nastiness this season was something that I was initially intrigued by and I felt that many aspects of his behavior, such as his misogyny, were probably purposeful, for the sake of the purported "realism" that the show aims for (I find that goal both questionable in its intentions and execution, but that's a discussion for another time). While I immediately felt the writing, particularly the pacing and the balance of the various characters' narratives, to be weaker, I was still happy to be along for the ride. I gave the showrunners the benefit of the doubt and just kind of assumed that this may be a slight sophomore slump, a slower and quieter season as everyone tries to get their footing after the intensity of the first season's story and reception, but still a nice opportunity to learn more about these characters I've grown to be so absorbed in. But things just kept getting... worse. While the first season pulled off the epic feat of moving organically through the personal narratives of every character while simultaneously following an extremely intense main event, this season had so much less going on yet everyone somehow gets less of a story besides Dr. Robby. The first season felt like constant movement through everything happening in the ER, but this season just felt like a series of short pitstops in the characters' personal issues, while mostly being stuck on the highway of Dr. Robby's story. Which is mostly just him yelling at people, (more specifically, women) if I'm being honest. I feel like hardly any medicine is even practiced in this season, which is an issue for me, since one of my favorite parts of this show was seeing how these doctors dealt resourcefully and creatively with the huge range of medical emergencies they have to confront! This narrowed focus and poor pacing was compounded by the fact that, though I'd initially believed the show knew what it was doing with Robby's behavior, I started to feel like the show wasn't intending for Robby to be viewed as misogynistic or cruel or abusive, just a sad and damaged man. Which, like... he's all of those things, and that could be explored in an interesting and meaningful way, but by the end of the season, it never was. So I was like, well, okay, each season only covers a day, and that's a pretty short amount of time!! I feel a bit disappointed, but maybe the next season will address a lot of my concerns... but then I read Noah Wyle's GQ interview where he says he joked on set for them to "bring him another woman to yell at" and then staunchly denies that Dr. Robby is chauvinistic or abusive. So apparently the fact that Dr. Robby treats the other men on the show with quiet respect or, at worst, a cold shoulder, but then categorically berates, condescends, and/or yells at most of his female coworkers is just a coincidence? And his abusive/toxic behavior, which us viewers saw with OUR OWN FUCKING EYES, is apparently not abuse, because the writers said so?? I know what I saw, you motherfucker!!! Since Noah Wyle is not just the main actor, but also one of the writers of the show, any good faith I had vanished after realizing this was his interpretation of the character all along. No wonder it felt so dissonant and poorly explored. I also recommend reading the Substack post that I've linked elsewhere on this page about how the show handled the character of Dr. Mohan to get a further idea of why this was all so frustrating. Honestly, I got a lot angrier about this than I should have. It's just a TV show.
    I'll probably still watch season 3 because I'm holding out hope that I'll get to see more of my favorite characters (Al-Hashimi, McKay, Santos...) and I'm interested to see more of Ellis who will apparently have more screentime next season. But I feel pretty lukewarm about it. Maybe it will be better?? Please?? As a treat???
  • White Nights, Taylor Hackford (1985) This was pretty good! I think it's kinda under-appreciated. A political drama set in the Soviet Union but with dancing. Like, really, really good dancing. It could probably bear to be a bit shorter, but I thought the whole thing was quite well-done and enjoyable. Gregory Hines' performance was especially impactful to me.

"The horrible sight of the dark red, almost brown blood congealing on the stump forced him into painful ambivalence - to feel afraid, while also feeling a strange, indescribable fascination close to pleasure, far mightier than picking scabs off his knees, or teasing an already wobbly milk tooth. His chest was wracked by sorrow that could not change into weeping or relief of any kind, but just went on pushing from the inside, paralyzing his lungs. For there was a mysterious bond between him and the dead, headless duck as the blood dripped from it, a physical sensation, a feeling of faintness and weakness arising from total defenselessness."

- Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium, pg. 115-116.

Assigned Reading & Research for Personal Projects
a screenshot of a film with a disheveled woman standing in a yard while a man in a beekeeping outfit stands at a distance behind her.
Bugonia, 2025.
Books
  • The Night Always Comes, Willy Vlautin (2021). This was fine. Honestly, I found it a bit corny at times, with the way characters would literally monologue their entire life stories at each other (even when they presumably already knew each other for years?) Also kinda felt like a depiction of poverty based more on other fictional depictions of poverty rather than on any kind of reality. But it was quick and easy and it got me out of a reading slump so it's fine, I guess.

"And from the auguries of the tomb’s wires and conduits, I learned to transform myself into a thought, to transmit myself to distant layers and rooms. Through my will I made infinity smaller."

- Anne LeBlanc, "Oh Time Thy Pyramids."

a screenshot of a film showing a man in the middle of passionately singing
Sinners, 2025
On the Web
Albums
  • Love Is Not Enough, Converge (2026) I had the same experience with nearly every song on here. Felt just okay about them as they started, found them a bit too dense to really parse anything particular to latch onto, but by the time they wrapped up, I somehow ended up picking up what Converge was putting down. And I think I feel similarly about the album as a whole - the longer I listened, the more it came together for me. I still think I'd rather hear this sort of thing live because listening to it through headphones gives me a bit of a headache, but I quite liked this.
    Favorite tracks: "Gilded Cage," "Make Me Forget You," "We Were Never the Same"
  • The Mountain, Gorillaz (2026) I can see why everyone's enjoying this, it's not so much my thing for the most part but I do find it pleasant. Honestly, when it comes to Gorillaz, Demon Days is really their only project that I've fully connected with, and other than that, I tend to get a handful of good tracks with each new album release and go on my merry way.
    Favorite tracks: "The God of Lying," "Damascus," "Casablanca"
  • R-TYPE I, HEALTH (2026) A solid batch of remixes. Don't have much to say about it, except Jesus Christ, the Street Sex version of "Don't Kill Yourself" is genuinely awful, why is it even on here?
    Favorite tracks: "Still Breathing (Snakes of Russia Rmx)," "Shred Envy (Tokyo Rose & Alex Rmx)"
  • E.T.D.S., IDK (2026) ♥︎ I'd actually never heard of IDK before but this mixtape is really good! The flows sound effortless and the choruses & hooks are often quite catchy. The concept of a holiday-themed rap about a life of crime is bold and if somebody pitched it to me I would write it off completely, but it's executed so well in "SCARY MERRi" that it's actually one of my favorite tracks on the album. Anyone who can pull that off is quite talented, in my estimation.
    Favorite tracks: "CLOVER," "SCARY MERRi," "EVERYONE KNOWS :)"
  • Piss in the Wind, Joji (2026) Ahh, Joji. For better or worse, I've been a Joji listener since the Chloe Burbank days, when I was a chronically online depressed teen replaying "Thom" over and over again; I enjoyed (and still enjoy!) In Tongues and Ballads 1, appreciated many of his singles since then, but, eh, I just feel like the juice is runnin' out, y'know? There's 21 tracks on here but they all feel sorta half-formed. Many of them are very same-y. I would much rather there be less songs with more time and attention given to them, as this feels like a series of snippets. And it pains me to say it, but I also feel like Joji's sound has not really grown at all over the past couple of albums. His early music was very much of its time, and some of it is even era-defining for me ("Slow Dancing in the Dark" got so much play at my high school), but the result is that now his style sounds stuck in 2016-2020. I'm also maybe a little fatigued by the doomed relationship/sad breakup schtick, at least as long as he's not doing anything new or interesting with it on a sonic or lyrical level. But the tracks on here that I liked are really, really good!! "Sojourn" has really good energy and momentum to it, "Horses to Water" gets a bit eerie with its instrumental and takes cues from his lo-fi hip hop days while updating the sound with sleeker production, and "Tarmac" is a great example of how his laid-back energy can be really effective for a smooth, vibe-y song. I also don't mind songs like "Pixelated Kisses," but they're just so short and there's so many of them that they don't distinguish themselves from each other that much.
    Favorite tracks: "Horses to Water," "Sojourn," "Tarmac"
  • URGH, Mandy, Indiana (2026) ♥︎ Really vibing with this frenetic take on industrial rock. Its energy is infectious.
    Favorite tracks: "A Brighter Tomorrow," "ist halt so," "Cursive"
  • So Tonight That I Might See, Mazzy Star (1993) ♥︎ The whole thing feels obscured by a smoky haze, subdued yet full of love and romance of a very specific kind.
    Favorite tracks: "Fade Into You", "Mary of Silence", "She's My Baby"
  • EP1, Power Snatch (2026)
  • Choking on a Crunchwrap Supreme as the World Burns, Trigger Object (2026). ♥︎ Discovered this local artist through a little flyer at a local independent bookstore, and I'm glad I did, I don't think I'd have discovered them otherwise! Just a really enjoyable, delightfully dystopian project. Each track is doing something a little different, pulling from all sorts of different influences, keeping it all diverse and consistently interesting. Check it out on Bandcamp if it sounds like something you'd like! I think this deserves some love.
    Favorite tracks: "L. Ron Karesh," "Goodbye Beautiful," "Untoward Nauseating Unmotion of the Floor"
  • Petal Rock Black, WILLOW (2026) This is a uniquely frustrating album to me because I really, really enjoy what's here, but there's not enough of it. With a couple of exceptions, every song is cut short just as it's really hitting its stride. It's all so smooth and captures a very distinct summery feeling which I adore, but hardly any of it makes an impact because none of it is given room to expand or breathe. It's no surprise that my favorite tracks are the longer ones on the album. "Holy Mystery" is phenomenal, and this album was so close to being filled with tracks like that one. But, like I said, most of what's here is good, it's just not enough.
    Favorite tracks: "Holy Mystery," "Omnipotent"
Fragments
  • Taking better care of my garden this year. Radish, lettuce, and carrot sprouts all looking great. Somehow got some rogue pumpkin sprouts, probably from seeds in our compost. Replanted them in their own spot, I've never grown pumpkins before, but might as well give them a try.
  • Grandpa's sending me a book about Jung and astrology. We've been calling every Monday to go over our transits. It's neat to get back into astrology. I don't think it's magic or anything, just a good reminder that life is all about cycles and timing.
  • Been trying to crochet a pattern for a balaclava that I found online. Had to restart three times, even though it says it's a beginner pattern. The instructions are written really poorly. Finally found a video going over it so I can actually finish it. It will be nice to have in the winter.
  • My poem "Where I Live" is going to be in the next issue of Pile Press. People like the stuff I feel most self-conscious about because I feel like it's too navel-gaze-y. What's up with that?
  • Working on the third draft of my novella. Now that all of the action and imagery is set down, I'm researching every detail to make sure it's period-accurate. Learning a lot of interesting things in the process. Not all of it is helpful and I'm getting distracted, but it's fun.