One way I noticed that the couple rubbed off on each other in that pivotal time was their propensity for a busy, all-over abstraction that tends to give off an aggregate grayscale effect. As much as I appreciate that many of those works reward closer inspection with smaller prismatic bursts, I prefer the works whose bold color is more readily apparent, like the one above, and like my favorite of Pollock’s famous drip paintings, “Convergence: Number 10, 1952.”

I’m not sure I had gotten to see this one in person before, and I can’t overstate how looking at a smaller version now simply does not do justice to the effect of seeing this mammoth painting up close and at scale.

• Tagged: October 2026, art, review, travel, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
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I realize that attempting to appeal to a population’s human decency may be hopelessly naive, that this misguided accelerationism may instead inflame the nation’s bloodlust and further empower the proudly ignorant strongmen who’ve already brought us so much ruin. But I don’t know; maybe this country really does need to properly hit bottom before it can begin to heal. And to be clear, I believe it does deserve to heal. We all deserve to heal.

• Tagged: October 2026, politics
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• Alice, Sweet Alice
  Alfred Sole, 1976, ★★★½
• Wildwood, NJ
  Carol Weaks Cassidy and Ruth Leitman, 1994, ★★★★
  PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia, PA
• The Mosaic Project
  John Sjogren, 1994, ★★★
  PhilaMOCA, Philadelphia, PA
• Curtains
  Richard Ciupka, 1983, ★★
  PFS Film Center, Philadelphia, PA
• Dark Night of the Scarecrow
  Frank De Felitta, 1981, ★★½

• Tagged: October 2026
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I initially decided against Dr. Giggles tonight in favor of watching Dark Night of the Scarecrow, but when the doctor himself, Larry Drake, showed up in the very first scene in Scarecrow, I took it as an omen and made it a double feature. I got slightly more than I expected from Giggles (his demented giggling is truly infectious!), a video store staple I never got around to seeing in its early-90s heyday. I wonder if my rating might have been even a half-star higher if I hadn’t accidentally watched a version on Shout! Studios’ YouTube channel that awkwardly edits the goriest and sweariest bits.

• Tagged: October 2026, film diary, film and television, review, robtober, Manny Coto
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More than a few moments in Marina Herlop’s Dja Dja tempt me to call it the best Björk album since Vespertine, but Herlop packs far too compelling a range of ideas into this record to just leave it at that. Among other things, from my somewhat limited frame of reference for this sort of thing, I hear bits of the choir in Kenji Kawai’s Ghost in the Shell score, the vocal experiments of Mike Patton’s Adult Themes for Voice, and the glitchy brass samples on Liturgy’s The Ark Work, though I doubt she’s actually quoting any of them. Dja Dja is my introduction to Herlop, and the art-pop/avant-classical/whatever thing she’s doing is really speaking to me. It feels at once both meticulously constructed and like some naturally-occurring phenomenon, and it’s the kind of monolithic record that simply won’t abide background listening. A thrilling discovery!

• Tagged: October 2026, music library, music, review, Marina Herlop, Björk, Kenji Kawai, Mike Patton, Liturgy
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I always assumed Lady Terminator was trying to piggyback on the success of James Cameron’s iconic film without bearing any real resemblance to it, so imagine my surprise when I witnessed a big chunk of its runtime explicitly copying scenes from The Terminator. But don’t worry, it’s a totally different movie because the Terminator is a lady this time, and she trades in the cyborg part for some Indonesian folklore involving vagina dentata.

I’ve wanted to see this movie forever, and now that I’ve finally experienced what an insane, rollicking crowd pleaser it is, I’m truly stunned that it’s so hard to come by. Highly recommended, grade-A trash!

• Tagged: October 2026, film diary, film and television, review, robtober, H. Tjut Djalil, James Cameron, PFS Film Center, Philadelphia, PA
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Yes! Fumbling through the dark; ears twitching at every unidentified sound; scanning the environment for weapons, ammo, keys, exits, and most importantly, threats; hoping upon hope you’re prepared to face whatever misbegotten grotesquerie comes next in this spiraling nightmare. This movie gets it, making little reference to specific Resident Evil lore but still feeling very much like a Resident Evil game, without forgetting to be cinema in the process. And its quest-oriented plot is an interesting hyper-linear turn for director Zach Cregger, whose last film was anything but. I wouldn’t mind if it were just a little less jokey, and I would love to flip the ratio of practical to digital effects. But whatever, this makes two years in a row that a Cregger joint was the most fun I had at the movies.

• This post is part of a series
• Tagged: October 2026, film diary, film and television, games, review, robtober, Zach Cregger, Shinji Mikami, PFS at the Bourse, Philadelphia, PA
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Of all the villains I’ve encountered in fiction, I’m struggling to think of one more loathsome than Strangers on a Train’s Charles Bruno. I don’t feel great about it, because any mid-century, gay-coded character deserves at least some empathy, but this spoiled momma’s boy is simply the worst. I don’t begrudge the movie version’s drastic simplification of Strangers, but Robert Walker’s portrayal of Bruno is so spot-on, I kind of wish Hitchcock could have let him take it to the extremes Highsmith’s novel does. I also find it extra fascinating that Bruno presages defining aspects of two very different future Highsmith characters: the acute, forbidden, queer longing of The Price of Salt’s Therese Belivet; and the ambitious, deadly sociopathy of the Ripliad’s Tom Ripley.

• Tagged: October 2026, reading diary, books, review, Patricia Highsmith, Alfred Hitchcock
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Indy the dog is indeed a very good boy. But everything else about the movie is pretty meh.

• Tagged: October 2026, film diary, film and television, review, robtober, Ben Leonberg
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The many hours I spent with the first two Resident Evil games didn’t do my college GPA any favors, but the sweet spot they found between the immersive dread of a good zombie movie and the adrenaline rush of a good action/adventure game was a revelation. Two great tastes that taste great together, and they even threw in some fun puzzles while they were at it.

The series lost me when it veered into convoluted storylines and conventional third-person-shooter gameplay, and while Paul W.S. Anderson’s loose RE film adaptations have their defenders, the first two left me cold and I didn’t bother with the rest. So by the time a new RE film trailer started making the rounds in 2026, I was more than two decades removed from any interest in the franchise. But I got curious when I saw Weapons writer/director Zach Cregger’s name on the thing, and even more curious when the early reviews were positive.

So as I prepared for reentry into RE’s undead phantasmagoria, a reasonable appetizer seemed to be 2021’s Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, a reboot said to be more faithful to the source material than Anderson’s films. And Raccoon City is indeed careful to highlight many of the narrative particulars of the first two games, with familiar characters green-screened into meticulous recreations of some of the games’ most memorable environments. What it unfortunately leaves out is the games’ extensive variety of horrific creatures, apparently due to drastic budget cuts, and at that point, they really should have just pulled the plug.

What makes the games successful is the escalating terror of exploring vast locations with unnerving atmosphere, holding your breath with every door opened and corner turned, wondering what new mutant horror awaits. The first game in particular has a good cinematic premise, with an elite paramilitary squad lured into a secret lab as unwitting gladiators battle-testing the efficacy of a corrupt pharmaceutical company’s biological weapons. Little of that made its way into the film’s final script, and the various easter eggs referencing other moments from the games are mostly empty gestures at best, as is the wannabe John Carpenter ambience. Incredibly, even with all the best stuff missing, the film, tasked with adapting not one but two sprawling games, is still overstuffed with scenarios and characters, almost none of whom are meaningfully developed.

Cregger has shown himself capable of much better, so I don’t expect his film to be a dud like this one. His film is also reportedly unconcerned with fan service, which is fine with me. The contours don’t matter nearly as much as the feel, and I’m looking forward to seeing if he can nail the alchemy of fun, scary, and dumb that made the original Resident Evil games rightful hits.

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• Tagged: October 2026, film diary, film and television, games, review, robtober, Johannes Roberts, Zach Cregger, Shinji Mikami, Tokuro Fujiwara
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