Black Mirror Season 7

Black Mirror is back in its seventh season, and as a fan of the show, I was looking forward to it. For those who don’t know, Black Mirror is an anthology series with a focus on technology and its possible negative effects. It is the general consensus that Black Mirror fell off seasons ago and is just not good anymore, but I am a firm believer that Black Mirror never got bad. Even though the later seasons had their bad episodes, like Mazey Day and Rachel, Jack and Ashley Too, there were always some gems in there, like Demon 79 and Smithereens. I think the best way to talk about the new season of Black Mirror is to go through it episode by episode, starting with the first episode, Common People. I did not like this episode at all and I think it is definitely the worst of the season. Its commentary was so on-the-nose and this episode failed to get any emotion out of me. There are moments where this episode’s attempts at humor hit, but every time they do one joke, they then repeat that joke many times and it gets so stale so quick. I found Rashida Jones’s performance to feel fake and unnatural in this episode, but Chris O’Dowd and Tracee Ellis Ross were pretty great. I really enjoyed the second episode of the season, Bête Noire. It was very funny when it attempted to be, and was very intriguing as well. There were some fantastic concepts in the episode, and I really enjoyed its ending. Rosy McEwen gave a great performance as well. Hotel Reverie was a fun, but very emotional time, with a very creative concept and a fantastic performance from Emma Corrin. I also think that Issa Rae was great in this episode and I don’t understand all the hate she has been getting for this performance. The fourth episode was Plaything, a sequel of sorts to the acclaimed Black Mirror interactive special Bandersnatch. I highly recommend experiencing Bandersnatch if you haven’t yet, but Plaything isn’t as good. However, I still liked it. I found it very fun and the ending to be delightful. It also had a great performance from Lewis Gribben, along with fantastic use of maximalist direction from David Slade and a interesting, memorable score from Brian Reitzell. The best episode of Black Mirror Season 7 is by far the fifth episode, Eulogy. It is one of my favorite episodes of the show period. It is an emotional, personal, human episode of television that has really stuck with me since watching it. The way it portrays the messiness of relationships and the memories you keep of them is so brilliant. What really elevates Eulogy to one of Black Mirror’s best episodes is the unbelievable lead performance from Paul Giamatti. Giamatti perfectly embodies loneliness, regret, and sorrow in one of the most poignant ways I have ever seen. He gives the best Black Mirror acting performance since Alex Lawther in Shut Up and Dance. The season finale was a sequel to the fourth season’s USS Callister subtitled Into Infinity. This episode was Black Mirror’s first official sequel episode, and I really enjoyed it. It had such a stupid sense of humor to it that worked because of how self-aware it was, and how committed the performances were. Cristin Milioti was great here, and Jimmi Simpson gave an absolutely phenomenal comedic performance. Overall, Black Mirror Season 7 was a solid season, and even though it may not be quite as good as it once was, I am still very excited for the future of Black Mirror. It has not lost me yet.

Drop

Drop is a thriller film directed by Christopher Landon of Happy Death Day fame. It stars Meghann Fahy, who I love for her amazing performance in the second season of The White Lotus, as a woman named Violet who goes on her first date in years since her ex-husband attempted to murder her. On the date with a man named Henry, played by Brandon Sklenar, at an upscale restaurant, she is sent a series of increasingly threatening AirDrops, which eventually threaten to harm her sister and child. As they were AirDropped to her, Violet knows that whoever is sending them to her must be in the general vicinity, and she must figure out who it is before any harm is done to her family. I had a blast with Drop. It was a gripping yet lighthearted thriller that never had a dull moment. The central mystery is so conceptually well-crafted and fun to follow. I really like the way the characters are set up, as from the beginning they introduce various characters inhabiting the restaurant that immediately become suspects in the mind of the viewer. The ending and the answers to the mysteries aren’t incredible or anything, but I definitely found them satisfying. There is some well-placed comedy in this film and it overall had a good sense of humor to it. The acting ensemble was pretty great here. Fahy and Sklenar both excel and do a great job of increasing the film’s tension with how natural their reactions to the events surrounding them feel. Jeffery Self gives a very enjoyable comedic performance, and Reed Diamond is really memorable in a smaller role as well. If this movie sounds interesting to you, make sure not to watch any trailers for it, as they spoil way too much about the film, but I would definitely say Drop is worth a watch.

Freaky Tales

Freaky Tales is an action comedy film from directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, who previously directed Half Nelson and Captain Marvel. It is an anthology film made up of four stories that all take place in 1987 Oakland, California, and are all inter-connected in various ways. The cast includes Ben Mendelsohn, Tom Hanks, in a cameo appearance, Pedro Pascal, and Angus Cloud. I absolutely adored Freaky Tales. From start to finish, this movie is a joyous experience to watch. It has so much heart and soul to it. It has such a unique personality and sense of humor to it despite its clear inspirations from people like Quentin Tarantino. I often criticize movies for having overly stylized direction when I don’t think it fits the film and the specific story it is telling, but when it comes to a movie as unabashedly wacky as Freaky Tales, I am a firm believer that you can do whatever you want with the camera as long as it’s cool and fun, and the movie’s direction is incredibly cool and fun. The action scenes are filmed in such interesting and unique ways that add to the delightful personality of the film as a whole. My favorite segment is the second one titled Don’t Fight the Feeling, which is a hilarious, absurd, and weirdly powerful story about two young women who perform in a battle rap competition against a popular rapper. The first story, Strength in Numbers: The Gilman Strikes Back, is a delightfully stylized story of the regulars of a music club deciding to fight back against the Nazis who often terrorize them. The action in this segment is so over-the-top and it’s so enjoyable. The third segment, Born to Mack, follows a man, played by Pedro Pascal, attempting to put a stop to his life of crime so he can raise his incoming child. This segment is by far the most dramatic segment of the film, and it is genuinely gripping. That doesn’t mean it is without its funny moments, because this is the segment that contains Tom Hanks’s glorious cameo appearance. Hanks’s scene is one of the funniest scenes of the movie and is full of so much charm. Hanks gives a great comedic performance here. The final segment is titled The Legend of Sleepy Floyd, a fictionalized story based on the real-life basketball player of the same name. This final segment is epic. It is a whacky, absurd, over-the-top, brilliant piece of action filmmaking. The movie ends in a very satisfying way that ties all the stories together pretty perfectly. The best acting performance has to be Ben Mendelsohn’s wonderful comedic performance, but Angus Cloud and Pedro Pascal are great here as well. Freaky Tales is definitely my favorite movie of 2025 so far, and the fact that it has been so under-seen is sad to see. There is a massive audience for this movie out there, and those people just aren’t watching it, unfortunately. It is the kind of movie that if it was released in the 2000s, would have influenced an entire generation of nerdy teenagers and altered their personalities and vocabulary forever, like Scott Pilgrim. So, please watch Freaky Tales. It is a one-of-a-kind hidden gem.

The Last of Us Season 2

The Last of Us is a television adaptation of the much beloved and acclaimed video game series of the same name that I have never played. Despite having little knowledge about the source material, I absolutely loved the first season, and I had been very excited for it to return. As of this article being published, three episodes of the season have been released. I was really impressed by this season’s premiere. I found the writing, especially the character writing, to be fascinating. I loved the scene with Joel and Gail. Gail is a character original to the show, and I found her writing very compelling. Gail is played by Catherine O’Hara, and O’Hara really knocked it out of the park with her scene in episode one. Her emotions felt so viscerally genuine. Pedro Pascal is also phenomenal in his scene alongside O’Hara. The scenes in the first episode with Ellie and Dina were great too. Bella Ramsey and Isabela Merced, of Madame Web fame, both gave brilliant performances in all three episodes that have been released thus far, but they stood out the most to me in the season premiere. I really loved how Ellie and Joel’s dynamic was written in this episode. It felt so genuine and realistic and was so saddening to see. The season’s second episode was not as strong in my opinion. The episode contained a lot of action sequences and I found them relatively uninteresting. The sequence with Abby and the fence was really tense and well-directed, but the rest of the action was just kinda dull and boring. Once again, the acting was great this episode, with Kaitlyn Dever being the standout. She chewed up her screen-time, and perfectly played the pain and rage of her character. I found most of the writing in this episode to be unremarkable to be honest, but the scene of Ellie talking about Joel near the beginning of the episode was really great. Episode three was similarly mediocre for most of its runtime. The scene with Ellie and Gail was good and so was the council meeting scene, but it took till the episode’s last twenty minutes or so for the writing to truly shine. Ellie and Dina have an incredibly compelling and endearing dynamic that is just a joy to watch. Once again, Ramsey and Merced were phenomenal in this episode. I really appreciated Gabriel Luna and Robert John Burke’s performances in the third episode as well. Overall, the second season of The Last of Us hasn’t been as good as the first season, but it has definitely had its moment and I have faith that I will be won over by the season by the time it comes to a close.

The Rehearsal Season 2

The Rehearsal is a HBO comedy documentary series created by Nathan Fielder. For those who don’t know of Fielder, he is an acclaimed and established television creator. He first gained recognition for his Comedy Central television show Nathan For You, a reality show where he “helped” struggling businesses by having them enact stupid ideas he said would improve their business. I believe Nathan For You to be the funniest television show of all time. Nathan Fielder also co-wrote, co-directed, and starred in the 2023 comedy-drama television show The Curse, which is a brilliantly strange season of television that I really love. Between Nathan For You and The Curse, Fielder created the first season of The Rehearsal, which I believe to be Fielder’s best work yet. By the time of me writing this, the first two episodes have been released of the show’s second season, and they have both been brilliant episodes of television. The concept of The Rehearsal is that Fielder,  using actors and elaborate sets, creates staged scenarios for people to use to prepare for future events in their lives. This season, Fielder is focusing on using role-play scenarios to improve airplane safety and it was filmed before that became such a relevant topic. Every idea in this show, every strange turn Fielder takes, is so creative and wacky and weird yet fascinating and profound. Fielder manages to use absurdism to comment on the human experience in such interesting and effective ways. This season so far has been much less comedy-focused than the first season, but it is still as entertaining. Fielder has a way of turning everything he does into something completely different than what it started as that I just adore. The second episode of this season ends as a commentary on something that had nothing to do with air safety at all, and I love that. It makes The Rehearsal such a fascinating watch. The final scene of the second episode legitimately made me cry. I firmly believe Nathan Fielder to be the creative genius of our generation. Please give any of his shows a chance, as they are all insanely brilliant and so unique. Nobody is doing it like Nathan Fielder.

Warfare

Wafare is a 2025 war film that depicts the true story of an 2006 encounter between a U.S navy platoon and the Iraq army. I am someone who has barely seen any war movies, but I was looking forward to this one because it was being c0-directed by Alex Garland, who directed last year’s Civil War. Civil War was a very flawed movie, but it was very well directed and the sound work was incredible, so I was looking forward to see Garland give a war movie another go. Garland co-directed this film with Ray Mendoza, a Navy SEAL veteran whose real life experinece this film is based on. The story of the movie was compiled from the memories of Mendoza and the other members of his squadron in order to make the film as accurate as possible. This film was a massive step-up from Civil War in almost every way. I heard many people talk about how stressful and tense of an experience viewing Civil War was for them, and I didn’t feel that with that movie, but I 100% felt that with Warfare, which was a ninety-six minute nightmare that felt like it was never going to end, and I say that lovingly. That movie creates tension brilliantly and is possibly the most stressful movie I have ever watched. This movie doesn’t have much in terms of character development, but I am very okay with that, because I think this movie takes the right approach to telling this story. We are thrusted into the horrifying world of war with a group of naive men, and despite this movie not attempting much character work, their innocence is conveyed to the audience very effectively. I have seen those critical of this movie call it “propaganda” and I completely disagree with that sentiment. I have never seen a movie that is more staunchly anti-war, and while it does focus on the pain that Americans fighting in the military felt, it is also very empathetic towards the innocent Iraqi civilian victims of the war. This is a film that showcases the horrors of war and how useless and meaningless it can be. The most impressive elements of this film were the same as the most impressive elements of Civil War; The direction and the sound work. This movie would not be the movie it is without its tense, deliberate direction that perfectly captures the chaos of war, and the movie would also not be the movie it is without it’s sound. The sound work is abrasive and unrelenting, and truly adds to tension of the movie in a colossal way. It is possibly the best sound work I have ever heard in a movie. I really hope Warfare does not get snubbed for a Best Sound Oscar nomination like Civil War did. This movie had a good ensemble cast overall. Cosmo Jarvis and Joseph Quinn are particularly fantastic, as they give some of the most visceral depictions of pain I have ever seen in a movie. Will Poulter also gave a great performance. At one point during Warfare, I started crying. Not because of an overly emotional moment or anything. It was because what I was seeing on screen was just too overwhelming, and for a movie about a something as horrific as war, that’s a win in my book.