THE QUOTE 🎬 💬
“We might be through with the past,
but the past ain't through with us.”
hint: biggest movie to star frogs outside of The Muppets
THINK THOUGHTS 💭
Hey you. Here’s hoping your New Years Eve / Day was a delightful little snack. I wish I could say the same. There’s a reason I’m sending this outside my normally scheduled window. See, instead of enjoying snacks, I was hurling them into my toilet. In other words, I got food poisoning. But Latham, how do know it was food poisoning?? Good point! Maybe someone tried to poison me because I secretly know the answer to save the world and this is simply the start of my own action movie…
If I don’t send a newsletter next week, I guess we’ll have our answer. Because it means I’ll either be traipsing the sand dunes of the Sahara or I’m a terrible action star and the baddies killed me quicker than a red shirt in a Star Trek episode.
Although, I’ll be honest, while I was in the middle of it, I wasn’t really concerned about the origins of why I was blowing chunks through my nose. But now that I’m back at it, it’s fun to consider the possibilities. Just like many people are doin'g during these first few days of the 2025 calendar.
But in the likely event I did just eat some bad spinach, I’ll be here next week, just like I always am, bringing you that good good, and maybe some of the not so good. Until then, enjoy these couple of “soft start” days to the new year, because like literally every year, you can bet there’s a lot that’s going to happen. Some great, some not so great.
And hopefully, we can all enjoy some movies along the way.
NEWSY BITS 👾
Justin Baldoni Files $250 Million Lawsuit Against New York Times Over Blake Lively Story - this is in response to the story I shared last week. The plot is getting so thick in this story it’s turning into god damn cement. - Variety
EXTRA CREDIT MOVIE(S) 📝
The Damned - an Icelandic fishing village deals with the consequences of their decision not to immediately help the survivors of a ship wreckage. The reviews say it’s atmospheric and does work hard to create parallels to today, but it also becomes a bit repetitive at times. Playing in Limited Theaters Friday
NOTABLE NEW RELEASE(S) 🎟 & 📺
Wallace and Gromit: A Vengeance Most Fowl
If you’re unfamiliar with Wallace and Gromit by this point, it means A) you’re not British or B) you hate adorably hand-crafted whimsical stop-motion comedies. Ok fine, I gueeeess there’s option C) which is simply that in the deluge of media that exists in the world, a dopy yet lovable inventor (Wallace) and his mute newspaper reading canine best friend (Gromit) were a bit too amiable to breakthrough the noise.
If option C is the case, let this be the gentle hammer. Because while the duo is very British, they are also nearly universally loved by those who do know of them. I mean shit, they’ve been around since 1989, had four short films and two feature length films (not including spin-offs), this being the second. And in that time, there have been a total of 9 negative reviews out of many hundreds (and only on the first feature).
You might be most familiar with creator Nick Park’s Chicken Run, probably his most popular creation in the United States. If you’ve seen that, you can expect a similar style of humor, although again, a bit more Bri-ish. Lots of puns, sight-gags and nostalgic physical humor. I’d say this is a great choice if you want to head into the year with a warm fuzzy feeling coursing through your cornea.
Plus, it’s only 79 minutes, which is basically the second half of most movies these days.
Out: Friday
Where: Netflix
Details: 1 hr 19 mins | PG | 🍅: 100%
THE WEEKLY TRAILER PLAYLIST ⏯
Love Me - computers learn what it is to be human, using media left behind by humans, after we no longer exist.
Flight Risk - Mark Wahlberg plays a bald hitman tryin to kill his *ahem* mark (Topher Grace) mid-flight. Also worth noting it’s directed by Mel Gibson.