Tag Archives: movies

Year-End Media Wrap-Up 2025

Posted by melydia on January 1, 2026 None comments

Shifting it up a bit this year. The books are in the order I read them; the rest are in alphabetical order. The Books Read list contains a whole lot of very short books; if you discount those, I finished 20 normal-length books this year.

Books Read in 2025:

  1. Quackery by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen
  2. Journal by Joyce Atkinson and Kristine Atkinson
  3. On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder
  4. Breasts by Florence Williams
  5. The Explainer by Slate Magazine
  6. So You Wanna Run a Country? by Kevin Holohan
  7. How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster
  8. Grunt by Mary Roach
  9. Pinball Wizards by Adam Ruben
  10. Manhunt by James L. Swanson
  11. Bone Dance by Emma Bull
  12. The Second City Unscripted: Revolution and Revelation at the World-Famous Comedy Theater by Mike Thomas
  13. Mutants by Armand Marie Leroi
  14. Creme de la Femme edited by Anne Safran Dalin
  15. How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein
  16. Brief Histories of Everyday Objects by Andy Warner
  17. El Deafo by Cece Bell
  18. A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown
  19. Starter Villain by John Scalzi
  20. The Gifts of Marriage by Helen Exley
  21. First Comes Love by Emily Thornton Calvo
  22. Packing for Mars by Mary Roach
  23. From the Very Big Desk Of… by Charles Barsotti
  24. Literary Starbucks by Jill Poskanzer
  25. Fingerpori from Finland by Pertti Jarla
  26. Heart and Brain by Nick Seluk
  27. Gut Instincts by Nick Seluk
  28. Body Language by Nick Seluk
  29. The Pull of the Ocean by Jean-Claude Mourlevat
  30. Off the Road by Elisha Cooper
  31. The History Of The World Through Twitter by Jon Holmes and Mitch Benn
  32. Shrinklits by Maurice Sagoff
  33. Greetings from Nowhere by Barbara O’Connor
  34. The Library Book by Susan Orlean

Audiobooks Listened to in 2025:

  1. System Failure by Joe Zeija
  2. Hex Hall by Rachel Hawkins
  3. Tricked by Kevin Hearne
  4. What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
  5. Light from Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki
  6. Trapped by Kevin Hearne
  7. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins
  8. Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree
  9. Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman
  10. Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman
  11. The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook by Matt Dinniman
  12. The Gate of the Feral Gods by Matt Dinniman
  13. The Butcher’s Masquerade by Matt Dinniman
  14. The Eye of the Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman
  15. This Inevitable Ruin by Matt Dinniman
  16. Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree
  17. Bourdain by Laurie Woolever
  18. Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
  19. I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle
  20. The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin
  21. The Genius Under the Table by Eugene Yelchin
  22. Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera
  23. The Cheese Monkeys by Chip Kidd
  24. Go Ask Ali by Ali Wentworth
  25. The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
  26. The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness by Paula Poundstone
  27. Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
  28. Winter by Marissa Meyer
  29. The Meaning of It All by Richard P. Feynman
  30. The Nineties by Chuck Klosterman
  31. Here and Now and Then by Mike Chen
  32. How to Think by Alan Jacobs
  33. The Library of the Unwritten by A.J. Hackwith
  34. The World She Edited by Amy Reading
  35. Onyx Storm by Rebecca Yarros
  36. The Book-Makers by Adam Smyth
  37. A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

Previous years: 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005

But wait, there’s more!

Video Games Played in 2025:

  • Core Keeper
  • Elder Scrolls: Oblivion
  • Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
  • Lego: The Hobbit
  • Liminal Space
  • Outer Worlds
  • Return to Monkey Island
  • Smite
  • Smite 2
  • Stardew Valley
  • The Stanley Parable
  • World of Warcraft

Movies Watched in 2025:

  • Argylle
  • Bedknobs and Broomsticks
  • Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
  • Captain America: Brave New World
  • Fantastic Four: First Steps
  • Happy Gilmore
  • Jurassic World
  • Kraven the Hunter
  • M3gan
  • M3gan 2.0
  • Pixels
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2
  • Superman (2025)
  • The Beekeeper
  • The Gorge
  • The Minecraft Movie
  • The Running Man (2025)
  • Thunderbolts
  • Trap
  • Wake Up Dead Man

TV Shows Watched in 2025:

  • DuckTales (2017)
  • Game Changer
  • Gastronauts
  • Ghosts (US)
  • Make Some Noise
  • Murderbot
  • Nyaight of the Living Cat
  • Peacemaker
  • Pluribus
  • Resident Alien
  • Saturday Night Live
  • Schmigadoon
  • Severance
  • South Park
  • Star Trek Lower Decks
  • Star Wars: Skeleton Crew
  • Ted Lasso
  • What We Do in the Shadows

Honorable Mentions from YouTube*:

*I watch a lot of the videos from these channels but they don’t really count the same way as regular shows. The TV shows listed here are ones I only watch specific clips of, not whole episodes. For example, I watch Stephen Colbert’s monologues and Meanwhile and a couple other things, but rarely the interviews.

Looking at this list, even considering it’s over the course of an entire year, you’d think I never got up off my butt. And, well, you might have a point. Shut up.

The Invisible Woman (1940)

Posted by melydia on September 26, 2013 1 comments

The Invisible Woman: The eccentric scientist this time around is Dr. Gibbs. (Amazingly, no one in the entire cast is named Griffin.) Broke playboy Richard Russell is his patron, and he plans to raise money selling Dr. Gibbs’s latest invention: an invisibility machine. Gibbs puts an ad in the newspaper for a human guinea pig, and is surprised to find it answered by a woman.

Kitty Carroll works as a department store model for a jerk of an employer. She takes the job as a guinea pig for the invisibility experiment so she can take revenge on him. Oddly, for all her talking, her boss doesn’t recognize her voice.

Meanwhile, a trio of gangsters are after the machine for themselves so their boss can escape Mexico, but when they fail to steal all the parts, their trials have some unexpected consequences.

The special effects are fairly minimal – some empty clothes here, some floating objects there. Something unique to this movie is that alcohol prolongs invisibility, and even can cause it to recur.

This movie is freaking hysterical. I’d gotten so accustomed to the dour horror-ish dramas that the silliness was quite unexpected. It’s fun to see some big names here too: John Barrymore, Margaret Hamilton, Charlie Ruggles, even Shemp Howard.

Now, I’m not being sarcastic when I say this movie is funny. Some of the dialogue is just classic. The butler is by far my favorite character, but they’re all pretty wonderful. And at only 72 minutes, it sure doesn’t drag. This is one worth picking up if you happen upon it.

The Invisible Man Returns (1940)

Posted by melydia on September 25, 2013 2 comments


The Invisible Man Returns: This claims to be a sequel to the novel, but it’s more like a sequel to the movie. Vincent Price plays Geoffrey Radcliffe, a man wrongly imprisoned for the murder of his brother. Through the help of his friend, Dr. Frank Griffin (brother of the original Invisible Man, whose tragic tale unfolded nine years before), he escapes and begins his search for the men who framed him.

Radcliffe takes the invisibility drug with the full knowledge that one of the side effects is madness. He worries that he’ll hurt those he loves, and of course once it he does start going mad, he doesn’t recognize it. His need for revenge upon the real killers gets the best of him.

Man, I love Vincent Price so much. And wow is he ever young – not yet 30! You don’t see his face until the final scene, as in the book, so this whole time I’d had middle-aged Vincent pictured in my mind, since that’s the era of his life I’m far more familiar with.

The re-visibility effect is an interesting mix of live action and what looks like an illustration from an anatomy text book. The other special effects are the same sort as we’ve seen before: the clothes superimposed upon the scene, with occasional glimpses of the actor shining through dimly. The wire work is much less obvious, though, which is nice.

I actually really enjoyed this one, but I think Price had a lot to do with that. He managed to play his madness convincingly, alternating between humorous and menacing, all while remaining quite sympathetic. The ending was honestly good, far less cheesy than it could have been, and didn’t drag out. This is one movie I’d watch again.

The Invisible Man’s Revenge (1944)

Posted by melydia on September 21, 2013 None comments

The Invisible Man’s Revenge: Robert Griffin has escaped from the insane asylum! He believes his old friends, Sir Jasper and Lady Irene, have cheated him out of great wealth. He’s also determined to marry their daughter, Julie. After they throw him out of their house, Griffin wanders the countryside until he finds himself at the door of eccentric Doctor Drury.

Drury is the inventor of the invisibility serum, and Griffin is his first human subject, eager to be invisible so he can have his revenge on his former friends. Use of the Griffin name (and the fact that the same actor played Frank Griffin in The Invisible Agent) is a little confusing, but whatever.

Here, the invisibility is cured (temporarily, as it turns out) by a complete blood transfusion from another person. Thus the murders begin. I kind of like this twist, and I wish the movie was longer so they could take better advantage of it.

The plot here doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Griffin’s lost some five years of memory, but it’s never explained what happened or whether his friends really did betray him. It’s hard to buy the moral at the end if Griffin really was the victim.

Ultimately, this is a pretty forgettable film. I do like the idea of the temporary visibility caused by blood transfusion; that could make a great story on its own. I’ve also noticed in these older films that the invisible man really likes to make himself known, by talking or moving objects or what have you. He’d be so much more menacing if he could keep his trap shut.

The Invisible Agent (1942)

Posted by melydia on September 19, 2013 1 comments

The Invisible Agent: The screenplay is “suggested by” Wells’s novel, which to me sounds like it’s even further from the original material than “inspired by”. And, indeed, here the invisible man fights Nazis. Yes, really.

Our hero is Frank Griffin, grandson of the original invisible man. He rejects requests for the formula from both the Axis and the Allies, until Pearl Harbor is bombed and he decides to give it to the US military and become a spy himself.

Peter Lorre! Yay! Playing a Japanese man. What?

I’m not sure how the invisibility effect was done in this one, but you can often see the actor faintly superimposed against the background.

Anyway, the plot is pretty simple: invisible man spies on Germans, learns of a plot to attack America, thwarts the plot, saves the day, gets the girl, etc. There’s no mention of things like invisible eyelids, but the invisibility drug does cause narcolepsy for some reason. It also wears off after a certain period of time, which is convenient since it’s exactly the amount of time required to complete the mission and wake up in the hospital with the Love Interest at your side.

All in all, it’s a pretty meh movie, but it’s nice to see the invisible man as a hero for a change.

Hollow Man

Posted by melydia on September 18, 2013 None comments

Hollow Man: Believe it or not, I’d never seen this film. This is not an adaptation of the novel, nor does it claim to be, but the invisible man concept very clearly stems from Wells. We begin with Sebastian Caine (Kevin Bacon), cocky scientist experimenting with invisibility. A lot of the film is “hey look at these nifty special effects” but that’s all right – invisibility is a pretty cool effect.

Here invisibility is described as a bio-shift in quantum phase, or some such gobbledygook. Still, I was pretty excited that they did the “invisible eyelids” thing just like in the book. What causes re-visibility, however, is weirdly inconsistent. Why would being electrocuted make you become partially visible again?

Mostly, this is about what a sociopathic sexual predator would do if he was invisible. At one point, a guy asks him if it was the power or the side effects of the experiment that drove him mad, which is kind of hilarious because he’s so obviously horrible from the very start.

I won’t lie to you: this is not a good movie. I mean, I guess if you like generic horror films and Kevin Bacon and a fair amount of partial nudity, you might like this one. But it’s certainly not a classic for the ages.

The Invisible Man (1933)

Posted by melydia on September 11, 2013 4 comments

The Invisible Man (1933): I’m kind of surprised more versions of this story have not been made. (Most of the film versions have used the invisibility concept but not the actual plot.) My husband thinks it’s because the special effects are a pain in the butt. I’m not so sure. Most of the full-body shots here were done with black velvet to superimpose the empty clothing onto the rest of the scene. Moving objects were mostly done with wires or off-screen manipulation, and one particularly inspired scene was a fake “empty bandages” head being unwrapped by someone’s hands reaching in from out of frame, to make it look like Griffin is removing his own head wrappings. Very clever.

Anyway, this film starts out pretty true to the book, with the bandaged stranger showing up at the inn and generally being a jerk to everybody. However, here Kemp is Griffin’s colleague, looking into Griffin’s disappearance. Another addition: Dr. Cranley, who also works with Kemp and Griffin, and his daughter Flora, who evidently had some sort of romantic ties to Griffin. The addition of Flora is hardly surprising, but her character was underused.

Thomas Marvel, the vagrant Griffin basically kidnaps to do his bidding, is gone, though Kemp does partially fill that role. The ending is very different, but I suppose the filmmakers didn’t think audiences in 1933 would take “death by mob” too well. Considering the amount of slapstick comedy from Griffin invisibly bothering everyone, he’s more of a trickster than a menace, a man driven mad by the very chemicals that turned him invisible.

I actually really enjoyed this film. Some of the overacting is unintentionally hilarious (like the innkeeper’s wife who never stops screaming, or Flora’s tearful dive onto the window seat), but in general it’s quite well done. My favorite character was probably Kemp, whose mannerisms were mostly of the “please pardon me while I go have a nervous breakdown” variety. With a run time of barely over an hour, this is definitely worth watching.

Movies in Fifteen Minutes by Cleolinda Jones

Posted by melydia on August 27, 2013 None comments

Movies In Fifteen Minutes by Cleolinda Jones: I’ve long been a fan of the original Movies in Fifteen Minutes blog, as well as Cleolinda‘s writing in general, so I sort of expected to enjoy this. That said, I was giggling almost nonstop through this book. I don’t know how much I would have appreciated had I not seen all the films being condensed, but now I want to go back and re-watch all these movies just so I can then go back and appreciate the m15m versions all the more. I loved the endless footnotes and the jokes that repeated through multiple films. And like most books I really enjoyed, I have basically nothing to say about it. Pick up a copy if you can find one – it’s a gem.

Pacific Rim

Posted by melydia on July 15, 2013 None comments

So I saw Pacific Rim, and it was boatloads of fun. You can’t really “spoil” this movie, since it’s basically giant robots versus giant monsters and you know in the end the giant robots have to win because that’s what side the humans are on. It’s Gundam versus Godzilla, if you will. Unlike Transformers and many other modern films of its ilk, both the robots and the monsters move in proportion to their bulk: that is, slowly. Also unlike most modern action films, the camera work is such that you can actually follow what’s happening during each battle.

I went into this thinking I hadn’t heard of anybody in the cast, but that’s not entirely true. It stars Idris Elba, whom I’d forgotten I’d seen in both Thor and Prometheus. I was also pleased to see Ron Perlman (Hellboy, etc.) and Burn Gorman (Owen from Torchwood). Most of the rest of the cast were people known for their roles in popular television shows I’ve never seen: Jax from Sons of Anarchy/Nathan from Queer as Folk, Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia/Michael from Third Watch, Ben from True Blood/Sean from EastEnders.

The multicultural casting was interesting. The Japanese woman was played by a Japanese woman, but otherwise it was a strange blend. The Australians were played by an American and a Englishman; the American brothers were played by a Canadian and a Englishman; the German scientist was played by an American-born Englishman. (Actually, I’m not sure if he was supposed to be really German or just English with a German name.) But you still had all the tropes: the asshole in need of redemption, the has-been and the rookie both trying to prove themselves, the veteran with dark secrets, the over-enthusiastic scientist who gets reckless, the stuffy scientist convinced of his own infallibility, the tough guy businessman only in it for the money, and so on. But you know what? It works.

This film does not pretend to be anything more than a popcorn flick, and that’s a large part of its charm. I thought the need for two mentally linked pilots to share the neural load required to control the giant robot was a nice touch.  The monsters were interesting to look at and reasonably realistic.  I also liked how most of the cool parts from the trailer were actually from the first ten minutes of the movie (the monster trampling the Golden Gate Bridge, for example, was from the prologue), so I didn’t feel like I’d seen the movie before seeing the movie.

In short: if you’re looking for something deep and thought-provoking, this movie is not for you. If, on the other hand, you’d like to see a giant robot hit a giant monster with a boat, then you’re in for a treat.

A Special Valentine from Batman

Posted by melydia on February 14, 2013 4 comments

My husband bought some Valentines from The Dark Knight Rises. Below is my personal favorite:

Yes, that actually says “fear is why you fail.” Happy Valentine’s Day!

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