A Sexy Blog

There are films that amuse and films that aspire, and then there are the corporate offspring, movies conceived in committee meetings, designed to be clicked, not felt. A Minecraft Movie isn’t just brand extension, it’s brand substitution: a video game adaptation that doesn’t so much build as prefab, a film that wears the pixelated mask of Minecraft but, beneath the surface, runs the codebase of something else entirely. It is, in the argot of the very medium it adapts, a reskin. Or, to use a more distressing analogy from contemporary gaming: Fallout 4 on the bones of Skyrim, everything familiar, just differently textured.

If you’d told me, in the braying wake of too many rote horror films recycled through streaming services, that a movie called Barbarian would come bearing wit, ambiguity, and a genuine chill, well, the laugh would have been yours. That laugh, sharp, startled, delighted, is precisely what Zach Cregger’s Barbarian delivers, teasing the nerves and tickling them, too, as if the genre itself were a basement door just waiting to be wrenched open.

The Residence, a captivating new series on Netflix created by Paul William Davies and produced by Shondaland, emerges as an outstanding addition to the murder mystery genre, effectively blending political satire, character-driven drama, and intricate plotting. Inspired by The Residence: Inside the Private World of the White House by Kate Andersen Brower, the show reimagines the inner workings and secrets of the White House staff with inventive flair. This review will explore the series' compelling elements—its adroit narrative structure, remarkable performances, meticulous set design, and its ability to weave humor seamlessly into dark intrigue—across clearly delineated sections to promote analytical clarity.

There’s something to be said for the kind of movie that doesn’t so much ask for your suspension of disbelief as it hustles you aboard, pumps the cabin full of intoxicating nonsense, and dares you to care how, or whether, the plane lands. Fight or Flight, James Madigan’s boisterous midair free-for-all, gives us the cinematic equivalent of a B-grade cocktail: fizzy, shallow, and exactly right after a long week of seriousness. In other words, it’s a film that understands the difference between “original” and “necessary”, and, frankly, doesn’t trouble itself about either.

Oh dear, it’s always a little heartbreaking to watch a film trundle out its aspirations with confetti and sashes, only to trip over its own parade float and land face-first in the mud. Founders Day wants so much to be a cheeky contribution to the crowded boudoir of holiday slashers, a genre already thick with gore-soaked in-jokes and severed limbs of irony, but the result is the sort of limp, confounding spectacle which leaves you dazed at the exit, wondering whether you’ve seen a movie at all or simply sat through a particularly aggressive PTA meeting with unfortunate casualties.

Of all the ways an already mediocre American Western might earn its place in the history books, Rust, Joel Souza’s 2024 genre exercise, had the misfortune of being immortalized by catastrophe rather than by the merits it so earnestly (and so transparently) seeks. Released under a pall as heavy as Wyoming’s own lowering skies, Rust cannot be written about, really, in isolation; the fatal shadow of Halyna Hutchins’ death seeps into every frame, blurring what might have been a straight-plodding piece of entertainment into a cultural memento mori.

Zero Day is a Netflix miniseries released on February 20, 2025, positioning itself within the political thriller genre with a contemporary, cyber-oriented narrative. Created by Eric Newman, Noah Oppenheim, and Michael Schmidt, and directed by Lesli Linka Glatter, the series explores the aftermath of a devastating nationwide cyberattack that results in mass casualties and widespread chaos. The series seeks to intertwine themes of political power, personal trauma, and societal paranoia, all set within a framework that aims to reflect timely concerns about cyber warfare, disinformation, and governmental conspiracy. Despite its ambitious premise and high-profile cast led by Robert De Niro, the series ultimately struggles to translate its ideas into a cohesive and impactful narrative.

There’s something very contemporary about Companion, that sense of ordinary people, lacquered in anxiety, stumbling into catastrophe by way of a Silicon Valley fever dream. Drew Hancock, no hack, has made a movie that wants to stare at the icy void where technology and human vanity collide, then crack a joke so the void doesn’t stare back too hard. It’s a science fiction thriller in horror makeup, but with the nervous giggle of a dinner party gone off the rails.

The war film has always been something of a contract with the audience, a pact that says: come, and I’ll show you the heat of heroism, the terror behind the steel, the struggle of boys made old by violence. What Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland have dared, in Warfare, is to tear up that contract and write something new and starker in its place: this is what it feels like to be trapped in someone else’s war, to be battered by noise and confusion, to never quite know who your enemy is or why you’re here, beyond some abstract equation of duty and disaster.

Say what you will about Martin Scorsese, the man can squeeze new blood from a dead body, even when that corpse is the gangster film itself. With Casino, he revisits the operatic, violence-soaked terrain so memorably realized in Goodfellas. But this is no mere retread. Here, in the sun-baked, gaudy playground of Las Vegas, Scorsese paints with brighter neons and darker shadows, as if the moral decay is more lurid for being so thoroughly lacquered in gold. And, confession time, this is the one that tops my list, staking a claim even above Goodfellas in the Scorsese firmament.