I recently appeared on the Score This Podcast to talk about one of my favorite subjects: Upgrade (2018). Listen as we talk about Jed Palmer's phenomenal score, sound design, what it means to be a cult film in 2026 and so much more.
Click here to read my thoughts on Upgrade as well.
I had the pleasure of chatting with the legendary DJ John Doe of the 1200 Hobos. Listen as we talk about everything from music equipment and the recording process to movie & television samples and how they play a part in his themed tracks.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Guy Maddin a few weeks ago (this was supposed to happen last year but my second kidney transplant got in the way and we had to postpone). We talked about Eraserhead, L’Age d’Or, John Paizs, Canadian Patriotism, American patriotism, Kenny Omega and so much more.
This isn’t exactly movie-related but my experience at the Boards of Canada Inferno listening party was quite cinematic…
I enjoyed the album very much. I’ve had the chance to digest it a few times already as best as anyone can digest a decent quality phone recording of something (I recorded the audio in full for myself for the drive home afterwards and I won’t be sharing or distributing it).
What I found most interesting about this latest album is a handful of songs did not sound like Boards Of Canada at first. But after a few bars or 20-30 seconds in - a particular chord would play or a vocal sample would get dropped and it immedietly sounded like them. I liked that. They sound new while still retaining their signature sound (one song in particular sounded like a reworking of Aquarius). It should also be noted that the majority of Inferno was somewhere between mid 70-mid 80 bpm.
One signature sound/quality that was not present for me was nostalgia. Anyone familiar with BoC knows that nostalgia is often associated with their sound but I did not feel that. Everything felt current and present. Throughout the listening there was a flaming hexagon collage projected for everyone to see which sort of felt like a basic statement of “we’re are in hell together”. While it’s still very difficult to disassociate the imagery from the event with the sounds of the album - certain aspects of Inferno felt more cold, blue and icey than they did hot, red and hell-ish.
Not to sound too cynical and cliche, but as an American - the world does feel very troublesome right now (to me at least). BoC has mentioned real life events like 9/11 influencing the vibe of Geogaddi (2002) so this wouldn’t be the first time that the current state of the world dictated the sound of their music
There is definitely a light shoegaze quality to some of this album. If I’m not mistaken, BoC has name-dropped My Bloody Valentine in the past as an influence. Inferno might be the first clear/non-arguable example of this (I also hear elements of Silver Apples, Slowdive and Cocteau Twins). But if anything - it sounds like they drew influence from the sounds of their last album.
Inferno feels like the perfect response to BoC’s last album in terms mixing, “sharpness” and the overall vibe. If Tomorrow’s Harness was a warning of things to come - Inferno is just a confirmation that we’re living in the world the brothers predicted for us in 2013.l (if anyone listens to El-P, Tomorrow’s Harvest going in to Inferno feels like the perfect parallel to Fantastic Damage going in to I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead).
I had a fun time. There was a great sense of community. I met a couple of Reddit, IG and Discord folks in person and had some cool conversations. I’m looking forward to listening to a good quality version in less than a week!
Make sure to check out my Boards of Canada scratch videos and be on the look out for a very special BoC mix I have planned dropping very soon…
Instead of doing a semi-vague post on Tarkovsky’s influence on a director’s entire body of work, I decided to focus specifically on Starker and Konstantin Lopushansky’s post-apocalyptic quadrilogy.
Lopushansky was a production designer on Stalker early in his career and I genuinely think it left a lasting impression on him and his work.
Many critics ask Lars von Trier, Alexander Sokurov, me about his influence. It is inevitable, as he is the greatest representative of auteur cinema, his quintessence of auteur cinema ideology has been absorbed by many, including me. But if we speak about style, some critics who do not like auteur cinema attempt to pick things apart; they say that in my films the water is flowing just like in his films. I respond that water flows in millions of other films. This argument is very weak.
And so on. In fact his influence is spiritual, it is the understanding of art. I was lucky to make a first draft of his lecture. He lectured film direction, later he took me as an apprentice for Stalker, we had an opportunity to socialize and one day he asked me to systemize his lectures - Konstantin Lopushansky, indie-cinema.com
There’s nothing I hate more than someone trying to tell an artist bout their own work but there’s something a little disingenuous about this quote. He’s not wrong in that there are a million films with overhead shots of water. But in the case of Tarkovsky and Lopushansky, it’s not just two directors shooting overhead shots of water. It’s two overhead shots of water with the same color palette, panning over to the protagonist’s hand in said water with the a similar score/“soundscape” accompanying each scene. And, to reiterate, Lopushansky was a production designer for Tarkovsky. Is it out of line to assume an impactful film like Stalker would leave a lasting impression on a young production designer that would go on to make their own films eventually?
Stalker / Russian Symphony
Konstantin Lopushansky’s semi-evasive response to Tarkovsky’s visual influence could also simply be a director sick of being compared to the same person for 4-1/2 decades.
Stalker / A Visitor To A Museum
I still think when you take all these factors in to consideration perhaps you’ll see that the comparisons in this post are more than just basic similarities or coincidences.
This is certainly a list of "ranked" films in various categories but it's also a personal log of every new release I watched in 2025. I say this because my personal favorites don't really reflect the movies that you're supposed to have on your 2025 list. This might lead one to believe that I didn't watch many movies this year but I assure you I did. For the last half of 2025 I was out of commission and had nothing to do but watch movies.
I certainly thought Sinners was fun but I just didn't think it was the culturally defining movie that people are being bullied in to thinking it is. I was indifferent towards everything from Weapons and The Long Walk to almost every superhero/comic book movie. I absolutely hated One Battle After Another, and was let down or disappointed to varying degrees by personally anticipated films like Friendship and Highest 2 Lowest. Emma Stone gave it her all for a pretty bad movie (Bugonia), Johnathan Majors participated in a feature length humiliation ritual (Magazine Dreams) and the superhero fatigue is in full effect. I guess I appreciate the continuous theme of looking at America through varying degrees of cynicism (Eddington, Bugonia, One Battle After Another, Highest 2 Lowest, Sinners), but everyone's final executions mostly fell flat or couldn't stick a proper landing.
As disappointing of a year that 2025 was for movies, I still managed to scrape together a top 10 along with an honorable mention of other pretty good movies that the year had to offer. And with the exception of all the films in the last category, I was able to write about everything listed below. So if you're looking for some insight as to why I put each movie in to their respective categories - click the titles underneath the images to be taken to my review/thoughts/rants.
Other movies I saw this year that I just have no real strong opinion on and didn't have the motivation to write about:
Weapons
Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning
28 Years Later
Kraven
F-1
Frankenstein
Knives Out 3
Heads Of State
Caught Stealing
After The Hunt
The Long Walk
Bring Her Back
Fantastic Four
Bugonia
Superman
Random movie thoughts from 2025:
-Emma Stone gave it her all for that??? (Bugonia)
-The Bresson award: Ryan Bader (The Smashing Machine)
-This is what everyone thought The Beast (2023) was (Timestalker)
-It's always nice to see Shea Whigam show up in a movie (F-1 & Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning)
-The Terrence Malick award (Train Dreams)
-This seems to be the movie he always wanted to make (he's been making variations of it for years). Now that he's gotten it out of his system - maybe he can make a truly interesting movie (Frankenstein)
-Was I supposed to be laughing this much? (Magazine Dreams)
-People are weird about biracial identities and interracial relationships, aren't they (One Battle After Another, Sinners & Him)
-It seriously wasn't that bad (Thunderbolts*)
-A Hulk sequel without The Hulk? (Captain America: Brave New World)
-Lots of dumb decisions in horror movies this year (Weapons, 28 Years Later, Sinners)
-TAR-sploitation? (After The Hunt)
-Product placement award (War Of The Worlds)
-Finally a black horror movie that isn't trying to be Get Out (The Woman In The Yard)
If you read this blog regularly then you know I hate the term “Lynchian” or when any recent movie/tv show/online skit/whatever gets compared to the work of David Lynch. I’m saying this as a fan of his work. It’s not just that the comparisons are usually bad, but it always gets whittled down and simplified to something “weird” or “goofy”. I don’t deny that there are in fact weird and/or goofy moments in Lynch’s work or that he played a part in his own memefication, but there’s so much more to what he does. There is some thought and a lot of craft that went in to his films but it always gets over simplified to something random or surreal as if David Lynch is the only filmmaker to ever explore surreality. He’s not. And the more people call something “Lynchian”, the more I’m convinced they don’t actually pay attention to his movies and only go off of out of context clips they see on Twitter, TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
Recently I’ve seen a lot of people compare Tim Robinson’s The Chair Company to the films of David Lynch and I blindly protested against it in a very overly protective way on behalf of one of my favorite filmmakers. It’s not even that I dislike The Chair Company. I’m enjoying it so far. I love just about anything that Tim Robinson does even if I do feel the Tim Robinson fatigue slowly approaching. But comparing a comedy or anything that can be easily memefied to Lynch’s work always feels cheap to me.
But I went back and rewatched episodes of the Chair Company and now I’m starting to rethink my stance.
Wild At Heart / The Chair Company
The overall plot of the show isn’t really something David Lynch has explored, but isolated moments and sequences are starting to feel quite Lynch-esque.
I’ve compiled some visual comparisons below that I’ll be adding on to as The Chair Company isn’t finished yet. But for now I’d like to apologize for my cynicism and pushback. Maybe in this one particular case, the Lynch comparison actually makes sense…
