Blogocentric Formulations

October Watch List

To qualify for my Watch List every month, the following has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, but it can't be reruns or rewatches of something I've already seen. So if I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish.


Movies

          The Garfield Movie
          Get Out
          Happy Death Day
          MaXXXine
          Pearl
          Us
          We Summon the Darkness
          What We Do In The Shadows
          X

Since last month was Spooky Season, I decided to watch a lot of horror movies in October (plus The Garfield Movie, with my kids). Jordan Peele's first two movies (Get Out and Us) were solid; I can definitely see why people liked them. I don't think either one is perfect by any means, but I enjoyed both for different reasons and respect the fact that he has a different perspective and point of view in his filmmaking. I also had fun watching Happy Death Day which is basically what happens when you take the premise of Groundhog Day and apply it to a horror movie, where a character wakes up at the beginning of the same day, over and over again, always ending in them getting murdered by a serial killer. There's a sequel called Happy Death Day 2 U which I'll definitely be watching soon.

We Summon the Darkness was a completely forgettable 2019 horror movie about a religious cult which goes undercover at heavy metal concerts to murder other concertgoers in order to increase "Satanic panic" and drive more people to religion. And Ti West's Maxine trilogy was just okay. X was a decent first horror movie in the series where aspiring filmmakers rent a room from a remote Texas farm to shoot a porn film and end up getting killed off one by one. Pearl was the sequel (and actually a prequel showing how the killer became a killer) and easily the worst of the three, and MaXXXine is the third and latest installment which was pretty fun, if for no other reason that it embraced a real eighties slasher vibe.

The best movie I saw by far this month, though, was What We Do In The Shadows, a mockumentary by Taika Waititi and Jermaine Clement about a group of vampires who share a flat in New Zealand, and it's honestly one of the funniest horror comedies I've seen in a long time. There were so many great jokes and moments that made this an instant classic for me; definitely something I'm going to add to my annual October movie rotation.


Television

          Emily in Paris (Season 4
          High Potential (Season 1)
          The Irrational (Season 1) - DNF
          The Lincoln Lawyer (Season 2)
          So Help Me Todd (Season 1) - DNF
          Star Trek: Discovery (Season 1)

Getting the bad ones out of the way first, The Irrational (Jesse L. Martin plays a psychologist who helps the FBI solve crimes) and So Help Me Todd (Skylar Astin plays a private investigator who goes to work for his mom's law firm), both of which came highly recommended from different sources of both of which I watched about a half-dozen episodes of, and then didn't continue with because they weren't all that engaging. The fourth season of Emily in Paris was something I did happen to watch all of, and I kind of wished I hadn't because it's just gotten really tedious and boring.

On the plus side, the second season of The Lincoln Lawyer was pretty good (we watched it in preparation for the new season that's coming out), and High Potential is a good procedural that has an excellent cast.

The best thing I watched in television all month was the first season of Star Trek: Discovery, which just finished it's five-season run and was the first show in Alex Kurtzman's and Bryan Fuller's reboot of the Star Trek franchise. Honestly, it was really great. The first episode is pretty wild, and the rest of the season builds off of it as a narrative foundation, which is really different for a Star Trek show (which usually relies on an independent, episodic format). I decided to start watching Star Trek and figured jumping into the "reboot" of the franchise was the place to start... and I definitely wasn't disappointed. I can't wait for the second season, and the other shows beyond that.

TOP PICK:
What We Do In The Shadows
and
Star Trek: Discovery (Season 1)
(TIE)