The three movies I watched this holiday weekend:

• Zodiac (2007) - 5/5

  • Not to sound like a white girl who listens to podcasts, but as a white girl who listens to podcasts I recently listened to a podcast that made me think, wow. I am a fake Fincher fan and should really finally watch Zodiac.

  • I was prepared to think this was good. It was in fact really good. I was not prepared for it to make me feel mildly insane (positive? negative? I don’t know). It feels almost embarrassingly basic to be like, wow did you guys know Zodiac is a good movie? I have no idea how this movie would have hit in 2007, but it’s shockingly relevant in 2025.

  • The details of the Zodiac cases almost don’t matter in this movie, it matters people’s responses, their fear and paranoia, their obsession and theorizing. This is a movie about journalism and the truth, and how consumed we can become with the pursuit of it - even when no “justice” could reasonably be served. “Just because you can’t prove it, doesn’t mean it’s not true,” says Jake Gyllenhaal’s character and dang! I immediately thought of every book & podcast I’ve listened to while trying and understand people’s descent into conspiracy theories. Watching the movie, I’m on his side and I also know from the outside he looks like every QAnon redditer.

• Nope (2022) - 4/5

  • I put off watching this for a long time because I thought it was horror and I’m a scaredy cat. It has horror elements, but this was more of a sci-fi film than anything. And it did a lot of things I love about sci-fi - pushed boundaries & made us ask questions about ourselves.

  • This movie reminded me a lot of Aliens (1986) - another sci-fi horror film where the central relationship between human and alien animal who are trying to understand each other even as they hunt each other.

  • It’s also about spectacle and the obsession with watching and capturing horrific acts on tape. This is also really relevant to 2025 - but I think in a more expected way for me. Peele as a film maker is always sharp in his criticism of society and it makes sense for him to have chosen to focus on something so many of us have felt more and more the last few years. Everyone who looks at it gets consumed. But is looking away enough to save you.

  • People do not talk enough about how good Keke Palmer is in this movie.

• Freakier Friday (2025) - 3/5

  • This was just pure nostalgia. Cheesy, but the right type of cheese for me. I genuinely laughed out loud numerous times and listened to the original soundtrack in the car home like I was in middle school again.

  • Manny Jacinto is so beautiful, and should never be allowed to do a British accent again.

A newfound fear of Australia:

• This month I watched three tv shows set in Australia and together they created in me a new fear of that country. Yes, two of these shows were murder mysteries. One was a comedy. And in some ways, that is scarier.

• I think a large part of this fear is from how much Australia (at least in film) feels like an uncanny valley version of California to me. The landscapes, coastlines, and architecture remind me so much of where I live but… slightly wrong.

• Show 1: High Country (Hulu). Police sergeant Andie is transferred to a small town in the woods and realizes multiple missing persons cases might be related, and not just accidents. This show was scary because: the woods at night are creepy, the neighbors who are butchers are creepy, and also this is the second show I’ve watched about a lesbian Australian detective who chose a really poorly suited wife. What is happening to the poor Australian lesbians.

• Show 2: Fisk (Netflix). This show is a comedy, and honestly I would mostly recommend it. It’s very small in scale and has funny and heartwarming moments. Sort of reminds me of something like the Office, if the humor was milder and people weren’t as incompetent. Our main character (Fisk) is a down on her luck lawyer who gets a job at a small family run wills & estates firm. This show was scary because: working at that office would be my nightmare, they all love something called “mud cake” (sounds disgusting), there are too many jokes that are comprehensible but not actually funny to me and I know it’s because I’m American but they feel like they should be funny and it’s disconcerting.

• Show 3: Survivors (Netflix). A young man returns to his small hometown on the coast and decades old secrets start to be unveiled after a girl is found drowned. This show is scary because: the town reminded me a lot of where I live, there were underwater caves (caves are scary), and there was a truly despicable mother who never got her comeuppance and everyone seemed to just be okay with her verbal abuse and emotional manipulation.

Question of the Week: What was the best or worst thing you watched in August?