• Prey (2022): This was just fantastic. Excellent action movie, good characters, great writing, the stakes are set correctly. No notes.

• Predator (1987): Aside from the monster design, this is really not very good. The first hour is macho bullshit posturing, and it is a liiiiiiitle bit self-aware about that, but not much. The last half hour is muddy Arnold being slightly smarter than a machine gun, but it still drags.

I skipped Predator 2 and both Alien vs. Predator movies because even after all of these years I still remember quite clearly that they are absolute shit.

• Predators (2010): Another ensemble band of idiots in a jungle. Not many surprises, but it's not bad. There are a few "wait... what? Why?" moments like "Why did the predators airdrop these people using Earth-manufactured parachutes?" and why even bring up that "big predator vs. little predator" subplot at all which went nowhere?

• The Predator (2018): Another ensemble band of idiots, this time in an office park. This one is quite a bit better because the characters are more interesting, funnier and have better lines. And the effects are pretty good. This movie would have been improved by a factor of 5 by just omitting the last 10 minutes, the sequel-bait epilogue with the Tony Stark armor.

• Dave Made a Maze (2021): Guy builds a cardboard maze that accidentally becomes a pocket dimension and attracts a cardboard minotaur, like you do. It's funny and the sets and effects are amazing -- very Michel Gondry.

• Day Shift (2022): Plot-wise it's your absolutely standard vampire hunting movie, but it has some great fight scenes. This movie was full employment for every spider-walking contortionist in LA, and the stunt director was, I'm gonna guess, a Jackie Chan fan.

• Moloch (2022): It's kind of exactly the same predictable plot as every other "folk horror" movie, but it's nice and moody.

• The Gray Man (2022): Ok first of all that's not what "gray man" means at all. But it was a big dumb action movie where manly men punch each other and make wisecracks. Captain America had a hilarious porn stache. I've already forgotten everything that happened.

• Diabolik (2021): I am an enormous fan of Danger: Diabolik! (1968) so I was extremely skeptical of this going in, but it's awesome! It's actually a prequel, more of a story about Eva than Diabolik. It's much less campy than the original, but they did a fantastic job on the look of it: not just being set in the 60s but (mostly) looking very much like it was shot in the 60s. It was a little weird that instead of Diabolik being a charming rogue, in this one he's just a straight up psychopath Dirtbag Batman.

  There was a lot of heavy construction for his various underground lairs. I know we're supposed to just overlook this kind of stuff, but, I dunno, were 60s Italian heavy earthworks contractors noted for their discretion?

• Sandman (2022): Watching the first half of this was a constant repeat of: "Oh, I remember this scene from the comics... No, I'm remembering an earlier, better version of this same scene from Moore's run on Swamp Thing." Was reading Sandman the first time around like this? Probably. I wish those short-lived Swamp Thing and Hellblazer shows had been given a proper chance, because while they both had some rough spots, they were both better than this!

  The Hob Gadling half-episode was great. Everything else, especially all the Rose Walker stuff, was a complete snore. If we're going to let elderly sad goth 80s comics writers continue to get high on their old supply, at least give Grant Morrison more TV, you cowards. (They can never take Flex Mentallo away from us.)

  Also the single half hour episode of Harley Quinn that featured Swamp Thing and Constantine was better than the entire 6+ hours of Sandman.

• Doors (2021): A series of short stories set in a world where some incomprehensible aliens dropped weird gateways onto the planet that drive people nuts. It has a bit of a "cosmic horror" feel, and it is a bit reminiscent of Annihilation. It's ok but it doesn't really go anywhere. Which it also has in common with Annihilation.

• Better Call Saul (2015-2022): I loved everything about this show, and they stuck the landing on the series finale. I also enjoyed Breaking Bad but Better Call Saul was so, so much better.

• Atomic Blonde (2017): Just want to mention that I've watched this for like the 8th time and it's still just absolute fucking perfection. Has there been a better spy movie? I even bought the soundtrack, and that was only like 80% for that Health cover and 20% just out of respect.

• Lord of the Rings, The Rings of Power (2022): I am surprised to report that I am quite enjoying this so far. I say this as someone who did not have the constitutional fortitude to even finish watching Return of the The King, let alone any of The Hobbit.

  (I keep thinking Galadriel is iamamiwhoami.)

• She-Hulk, Attorney At Law (2022): Absolutely loving this. It is so dumb and fun.

  Though I am disappointed that She-Hulk is not more buff and even taller.

  (Fun fact: it is Marvel canon that hulks import their extra mass from a pocket dimension filled entirely with striated green meat.)

  Also we can thank this show for bringing Law and the Multiverse back out of retirement.

• Harley Quinn S03: Perfect, no notes. See Sandman, above.

• Only Murders in the Building S02: Not as good as S01 but still fun. They kind of loaded the entire plot into the last episode, but it was still fun to watch the three of them bumbling along.

• Tales of the Walking Dead (2022): This is crap. They tricked me by having one good episode, the one with Parker Posey, but the rest of it is crap. Like all Walking Dead shows, it is full of deeply stupid, unlikable people, but at least as an anthology, you only have to put up with each of them for less than 42 minutes.

• House of the Dragon (2022): Apparently the entire show is going to be about selling little girls into marriage/slavery? The other series was largely about that too, but it at least had other sub-plots. And did the writers learn everything they know about uncle/stepsibling dynamics from PornHub?

  Also the big dragon fight at the beginning was shot so dark I couldn't tell WTF was going on. You had one job! It's in the title of the show!

• Blood & Treasure S02: Still enjoying this one a lot. It's less globetrotty than S01, but the characters are great.

• The Resort (2022): A couple at an all-inclusive resort stumble on a decades-old mystery -- but they're idiots. It's pretty funny. The ending goes kind of off the rails.

• Nope (2022): I love Peele's other movies but I wasn't really crazy about this one. It's got a bunch of different plots going on that only barely tie together, and the whole "monster" plot was just kind of a let-down.

  I enjoyed this (spoilery) Nope fanfic far more than Nope itself.

• The Bear (2022): Dysfunctional boneheads try to run their restaurant. So much yelling! I enjoyed it, but watching this is not what you'd call a relaxing experience.

• Paper Girls (2022): I was looking forward to this because I enjoyed the comics it was based on, but the show didn't really grab me. It's alright? Somehow I missed that it had even been released, and it has already been cancelled. One of the interesting things about the comics was that the time travel cosmology is really weird, but they didn't get into that in the show, and now they never will.

• The Imperfects (2022): Some folks get superpowers and go looking for their mad scientist to make him take them away. It's pretty fun, and it's a nice take that they never even consider superheroing, they just think of themselves as monsters.

• The Munsters (2022): This was not great. It's all schtick, though. It's like if someone said to Kingfish of Hubba Hubba Revue, I am going to give you half a million dollars, and you are going to make me a Munsters movie. You have exactly 3 months. Go!

  "And that's how I cast my brother as the Werewolf."

  The actors nailed it and the sets were great, but that didn't make it work. It felt like the first 2 episodes of a TV series, and in that context, I would probably still be giving it a chance to find its footing.

  Also, as a prequel / wedding, it was the same plot as the absolutely terrible Addams Family cartoon that came out a couple years ago. Which is stragely appropirate, Munsters biting Addams' style.

  Every movie now has to be a prequel that explains everything. Let me tell you the backstory of that little spaceship toy Luke played with in the garage for 5 seconds! Hey, where did Han get those fuzzy dice? Who gives a shit!

Previously.