{"id":14572,"date":"2026-01-11T13:24:38","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T18:24:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=14572"},"modified":"2026-01-11T13:24:38","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T18:24:38","slug":"weekly-movie-roundup-148","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=14572","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Movie Roundup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I watched 7 movies last week:<\/p>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt30446847\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1-1-240x300.jpg\" alt=\"Jay Kelly\" width=\"240\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-14565\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1-1-240x300.jpg 240w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1-1-819x1024.jpg 819w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1-1-768x960.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1-1.jpg 1080w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 240px) 100vw, 240px\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0128232\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2-1-212x300.jpg\" alt=\"Ghostkeeper\" width=\"212\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-14566\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2-1-212x300.jpg 212w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/2-1.jpg 502w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 212px) 100vw, 212px\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0065636\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/3-1-198x300.jpg\" alt=\"Diary of a Mad Housewife\" width=\"198\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-14567\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/3-1-198x300.jpg 198w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/3-1-675x1024.jpg 675w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/3-1-768x1165.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/3-1-1012x1536.jpg 1012w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/3-1-1350x2048.jpg 1350w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/3-1.jpg 1483w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 198px) 100vw, 198px\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0086312\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4-1-192x300.jpg\" alt=\"Silkwood\" width=\"192\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-14568\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4-1-192x300.jpg 192w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4-1-654x1024.jpg 654w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4-1-768x1202.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4-1.jpg 965w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 192px) 100vw, 192px\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt30446847\/\">Jay Kelly<\/a> is frustrating, because while it&#8217;s reasonably well written and acted, it&#8217;s also very shallow. Clooney coasts on his charm, and he&#8217;s well paired with Sandler, but the movie doesn&#8217;t have a lot to say beyond &#8220;famous people are kinda weird, huh?&#8221; There&#8217;s potential here, to actually invesigate the sadness beneath that charm\u2014I don&#8217;t want to disqualify the movie simply <em>because<\/em> it maybe asks you to feel sorry for a wildly famous and rich character\u2014but the movie stops short of really doing that.<\/li>\n<ul><\/ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0128232\/\">Ghostkeeper<\/a> doesn&#8217;t make a whole lot of sense, and you really have to guess at what&#8217;s happening near the end, but it really turns its cheapness and simple location into real virtues for a while, with a surprisingly creepy and haunted feel.<\/li>\n<ul><\/ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0065636\/\">Diary of a Mad Housewife<\/a> wouldn&#8217;t work at all without the central performance by Carrie Snodgrass. It doesn&#8217;t always work very well even <em>with<\/em> it\u2014the movie is dated and often cartoonish\u2014but she&#8217;s easily the best reason to watch.<\/li>\n<ul><\/ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0086312\/\">Silkwood<\/a> doesn&#8217;t fall into any of the traps or cliches of a thriller, and that&#8217;s dow to Mike Nichols&#8217; direction and the peformances, espeically Meryl Streep, which just allow us to observe these characters and this story.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<table>\n<tr>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0113492\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5-1-203x300.jpg\" alt=\"Judge Dredd\" width=\"203\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-14569\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5-1-203x300.jpg 203w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5-1-692x1024.jpg 692w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5-1-768x1136.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5-1-1038x1536.jpg 1038w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5-1-1384x2048.jpg 1384w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/5-1.jpg 1531w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 203px) 100vw, 203px\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt19403516\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/6-1-204x300.jpg\" alt=\"Hallow Road\" width=\"204\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-14570\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/6-1-204x300.jpg 204w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/6-1-698x1024.jpg 698w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/6-1-768x1127.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/6-1-1047x1536.jpg 1047w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/6-1-1396x2048.jpg 1396w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/6-1-scaled.jpg 1745w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 204px) 100vw, 204px\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td><a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0042369\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/7-1-199x300.jpg\" alt=\"D.O.A.\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-14571\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/7-1-199x300.jpg 199w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/7-1.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/a><\/td>\n<td><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/emptymovie-1-206x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"206\" height=\"300\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-12502\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/emptymovie-1-206x300.jpg 206w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/emptymovie-1-704x1024.jpg 704w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/emptymovie-1-768x1117.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/emptymovie-1.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 206px) 100vw, 206px\" \/><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<ul>\n<li>Stallone&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0113492\/\">Judge Dredd<\/a>  isn&#8217;t very good, but it also isn&#8217;t bad enough to be very interesting. It&#8217;s 90 minutes of a lot of shouting, some decent but underused set design, and not much else.<\/li>\n<ul><\/ul>\n<li>Give <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt19403516\/\">Hallow Road<\/a> credit, it&#8217;s very tense for most of its runtime. And that might have been entertaining enough, if the movie had just been a short claustrophobic psychological drama. But, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rogerebert.com\/reviews\/hallow-road-film-review-2025\">as Matt Zoller Seitz<\/a> writes, the movie then swerves into &#8220;trying on various genre identities to see how they feel,&#8221; and none of them feel particularly good. There&#8217;s a taut thriller wrestling with moral decisions hiding underneath it all\u2014not necessarily a novel morality play, but an entertaining one, at least\u2014but it crashes into whatever it is by the end.<\/li>\n<ul><\/ul>\n<li>Eddie Muller reportedly said that Edmond O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s performance in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0042369\/\">D.O.A.<\/a> &#8220;had more animation than Daffy Duck.&#8221; He wasn&#8217;t wrong. I don&#8217;t think the character or story work at all, beyond the basic twist of a man investigating his own murder, but O&#8217;Brien&#8217;s over-the-top performance is the main compelling reason to keep watching.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I also re(re)watched the delightfully gory <a href=\"https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0089885\/\">Re-Animator<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I watched 7 movies last week: Jay Kelly is frustrating, because while it&#8217;s reasonably well written and acted, it&#8217;s also very shallow. Clooney coasts on his charm, and he&#8217;s well paired with Sandler, but the movie doesn&#8217;t have a lot to say beyond &#8220;famous people are kinda weird, huh?&#8221; There&#8217;s potential here, to actually invesigate &#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/?p=14572\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14572"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14573,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14572\/revisions\/14573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unreality.net\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}