Your Monster

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June 26

Rom Com- Horror? No way that is going to work.

Except it really does. Your Monster is a surprising film with some deeply troubled characters and an ending that is absolutely wild.

According to IMDB, “After her life falls apart, soft-spoken actress Laura Franco finds her voice again when she meets a terrifying, yet weirdly charming Monster living in her closet. A romantic-comedy-horror film about falling in love with your inner rage.“

Melissa Barrera is Laura Franco and Tommy Dewey is the Monster living in her closet. Unexpectedly, the pair hook up and seem to really get along. However, Laura is dealing with some deep seeded trauma from a relationship with Jacob Sullivan (Edmond Donovan), a writer/director of a play that he had originally written for Laura, only to recast when they broke up.

Laura has plenty of issues in the film, dealing with her own feelings of betrayal and anger. She is clearly not ready for any kind of relationship so, when she walks onto tryouts for the play, things were awkward.

The chemistry between Melissa Barrera and Tommy Dewey is off the charts and makes the weird story work. If that center relationship did not have the chemistry it did, the film would be a total flop. I was wondering about some of the characteristics of the character of Laura, but it all made sense in the end.

This was unexpectedly good and really became more of a character study. It is the type of film that might require a second viewing to see the subtleties in the story.

EYG Favorite Comic Covers of the Week

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June 26

Big week of covers this week. There are several this week that could have placed in other weeks, but they all came out on the same week.

Also-Rans: Dark Pyramid #4, News from the Fallout #1, Sleep #1 (Cover A), Minor Arcana #8, Hyde Street #7, The Thing #2, The Department of Truth #31, Out of Alcatraz #4, and Assorted Crisis Events #4.

Bronze Medalist

Absolute Batman #1 (7th Printing)

Absolute Wonder Woman #1 (6th Printing)

Absolute Superman #1 (5th Printing)

Cover art by Mark Spears

Okay, so this is cheating a bit. I put these three together since they are connecting covers by Mark Spears. They really look the best when together which is why I put them together. It also speaks to the quality of this week since these could easily have been the gold medalist. If I were choosing one of them, it would be the Superman cover.

Silver Medalist

Feral #14

Variant cover B

Cover art by Tony Fleecs & Trish Forstner

Another awesome movie homage cover for Feral. I love the black and white cover. When I saw this cover on Wednesday, I thought this would be the gold medalist this week. However, found another winner today.

Gold Medalist

Sleep #2

Variant Cover B

Cover art by Tim Seeley

The Sleep #2 A Cover was wonderful, but I saw this on the stand and I immediately grabbed it to buy as well. This cover really gives you the feel of this book, with the dark lines in the back and the red “sin” in the shadow. This is a great cover.

Art Spiegelman: Disaster is My Muse

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June 25

The second film for the June Swoon today is a documentary about the life and career of Art Spiegelman, a comic strip/book writer and cartoonist who you may never have heard about, but a man who has done more to elevate the perception of the graphic novel.

Spiegelman is most well know for his work on the graphic novels Maus I & II, which told the story of the Holocaust and the death camps through anthropomorphic animals. In Maus, the people of Jewish faith were portrayed as mice while Germans (and other Fascists) were shown as cats.

Maus is the first, and currently only, graphic novel that won a Pulitzer Prize and is one of the major factors that allowed a different perspective of graphic novels among the academia. It allowed people to see what kind of stories that was capable of being told in this format.

The doc looked at Spiegelman’s beginnings as a child inspired by Mad magazine and how he wound up working as a cartoonist. They showed his work through the times of the underground comics and included the work of people who inspired him, such as R Crumb.

They outlines how the work on Maus took him years, as he struggled through this very personal story.

I wondered as I watched the doc if it would address the recent controversies of how some schools and libraries have banned Maus from their shelves. The film did have a section on this topic, with Art Spiegelman’s own comments accentuating the fear of what this could mean.

We get several comments, words from Art Spiegelman himself, really showing us who he is as a person as well as a creative force.

4 stars

Chicken for Linda

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I have no idea where this one came from.

I had Chicken for Linda on my list of movies for the June Swoon, but I do not remember where I heard about it. I knew it was an animated movie, but that was about it. I had rented it on Fandango at Home, but when I started it, I realized that it is in French.

According to IMDB, “Linda is unfairly punished by her mother, Paulette, who will do anything to make it up to her. Even a chicken with peppers when she can’t cook. Linda absolutely wants to have the chicken that her father made that day…But there is a strike, a general strike.“

The film is unlike any animated film I have seen. The animation was very stylish and different than I had seen before which was a cool feature of it. The colors made much of the film stand out and each color had a purpose to the characters.

The story was very sweet, and surprisingly deeper than one would expect. It had a lingering sadness to it with plenty of humor and joy to go around. Ridiculous situations occur all around and the animation style served it well.

All this trouble for chicken with peppers?

Ironheart E1, E2, E3

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SPOILERS

Riri Williams returned from her appearance in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever to her own Disney + series. Six episodes total, three debuting this week and then concluding next week.

I find that a strange release schedule. After watching the first three episodes, I think this was interesting enough to spread the release out more than two weeks.

Riri winds up in a heist crew to make money after she was expelled from MIT. The crew was led by Parker Robbins, aka The Hood (Anthony Ramos). The Hood has a magical cape that gives him a variety of powers. Anthony Ramos is awesome and brought some serious chops to the show. He was especially great in episode three.

Where did he get this magical cape/hood? In the comics, this is tied to Mephisto, but will he actually make his long awaited appearance in the MCU? It seemed for sure that Mephisto was involved in WandaVision, but never arrived. There have been rumors that Mephisto would be showing up in this series, but, again with all the rumors during WandaVision, I’ll need to see Mephisto before I believe it. Mephisto was named dropped in Agatha All Along so I guess we’ll see.

Dominique Thorne is really great as Riri. The show is giving us an intriguing relationship between Riri and her AI N.A.T.A.L.I.E., based on her best friend who died in a violent shootout along with Riri’s step dad, Gary. There are questions about the AI but I really enjoyed this dynamic between these actresses. Lyric Ross played Natalie.

Alden Ehrenreich was great too as Joe McGillicuddy, who is revealed in episode three as being the son of Obadiah Stane, aka Iron Monger from the first MCU movie, Iron Man. I liked this little twist (and it was funny to have Stane’s ashes in a Ziplock bag in Joe’s kitchen).

These episodes were quite long, in comparison to some other MCU Disney + shows. Episode three was 50+ minutes long. I like that a lot more than those short 30-35 minute shows.

I liked what I saw so far. I expect next week to bring the goods even more as each episode got a little bit better this week. Episode three was definitely the strongest so far.

Revelations

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June 24

The second June Swoon film of the day was on Netflix and it was one that I had to read. What I mean by that is, of course, it is a Korean film and it had the English subtitles for the dialogue.

According to IMDB, “A pastor and a detective, driven by their beliefs, pursue a missing person case, with the pastor seeking retribution after a divine revelation identifies the culprit who abducted his son.“

This was wild. This had a ton of twists and turns as the characters involved all were crazy in some way. The strangest things were happening and I found myself truly engaged with the story. Each character flipped around during the story and I bought everything.

There were a lot of dumb choices made by characters, particularly the pastor, and it built a really strong story.

Like all good Korean films, I forget that I am reading the film as I became even more involved in the movie. It just seems to be natural.

Actor Shin Min-jae stood out among the others in the cast with his crazy performance. Ryu Jun-yeol was also great as the quickly descending pastor.

If you like Korean movies, Revelations would be a decent watch. I was into the film all the way through, even during the moments when I was yelling at the characters.

Tuesday

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June 24

I have not seen a movie start off with a bigger WTF in a long time than Tuesday, starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus.

A24 has used some bizarre concepts to deal with serious issues, from farting corpses to being transformed into animals if they can not find love. On the surface, it may seem absurdist at times, but there are always deeper undertones in the narrative than what you would expect.

This movie deals with death, but not just the grief and pain of the loss, but specifically the inability to accept the inevitability of the end and the strides someone will go to to avoid that acceptance.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus played Zora, the mother of Tuesday (Lola Petticrew), who is a 15-year old, wheelchair bound girl with an incurable fatal disease. Julia Louis-Dreyfus gives the best performance of her career, which is saying something, as she struggled with the denial, taking steps to avoid the loss unlike anyone has every done before.

I am trying to remain somewhat vague in my details of this movie, because I went into it with no expectations for it and I was blown away by the surreal aspects of the film. If you can go into this film without any knowledge of the way the story progresses, the better your experience will be.

Tuesday is a powerful piece that deals with something that everyone can relate to and does it in a poignant and emotional way. It is another winner for A24 and their amazing catalogue of films. It is available on HBO Max.

Duster S1 E6

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Spoilers

“Встречают по одёжке (Meet by the Clothes)”

Duster has started each episode with the old flashforward cold open, setting up something that will eventually happen in the episode. Some have been more interesting than others. This one was excellent.

Bringing up “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” set the tone for the scene extremely well and highlighted the characterization of Jim and Nina perfectly.

The scene where Jim, Nina, Ezra, Royce and Billy meet with the Russians was a tense scene. It really showed the cleverness of both Nina and Jimmy. Jimmy stepping in to cover for Royce who was having a reaction to his heart medication and the vodka was utter genius. Josh Holloway does a sensational job delivering the improvisation to the Russians in a huge spot.

The firefight afterwards was also cool, although it may not have been as improbable as they made it out in the first scene.

I am not sure there will be enough time for all the dangling stories that are available making me think that several of these plot holes will not be finished in season one.

The X-Files S10 E3

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Spoilers

“Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster”

My memory was that I was not a fan of this episode when I saw it for the first time in 2016. However, this rewatch was a totally different opinion. I found this to be extremely funny and very cleverly done.

This worked much like the previous comedic episodes such as “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” and “Bad Blood.” Mulder, doubting his beliefs in the previous monsters, was hilarious in his depressive responses to the different monsters he had investigated as an X-File.

Rhys Darby does a fantastic job as Guy Mann, the horned lizard who had been bitten by a man and finds himself transformed into a man. The episode made it look like Guy Mann was the monster killing people, but, instead, it was Kumail Nanjiani.

There were a ton of easter eggs too. My favorite line was from Scully who said, after Mulder chastised her for approaching a dangerous suspect without backup, “You forget… I’m immortal.” This was a great reference back to “Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose” when Clyde Bruckman, who was a psychic who could see how someone dies, told Scully that she did not die. Scully also alluded to her dog Queequeg, who died in the episode “Quagmire.” Also from “Quagmire,” the stoner characters returned, played by Tyler Labine and Nicole Parker-Smith.

This episode is a parody of the “monsters-of-the-week” style of X-Files episode that have been peppered through the first nine seasons. This falls right in with the classic comedic episodes that this show has shown is capable of providing.

Nonnas

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June 23

For the second film of the day for the June Swoon, I went to my queue at Netflix for a film recently released starring Vince Vaughn. It was a comedy/drama called Nonnas.

After the death of his mother, Joe Scaravella (Vince Vaughn) impulsively decided to open an Italian restaurant on Statin Island, using real life Italian nonnas as the chefs. He wanted their homemade feel of family for the restaurant, warm and loving.

Of course, there are a bunch of troubles that spring up for Joe in his attempt to create his dream restaurant that would honor his mother.

The four women the film cast as the nonnas have a fun chemistry together and their Italian flair truly is the strength of the film. The actors included Susan Sarandon, Lorraine Bracco, Talia Shire, and Brenda Vaccaro. They were as real as you could expect, right down to some of the same stereotypical flavors. Still, I think these ladies were the best part of the film.

I did feel like I was watching a sweeter version of The Bear in movie format. Many of the challenges that we saw play out on The Bear were also on display in Nonnas and I am certain that the reason this was made was to play off the success of the FX TV show. That is not a bad thing, but it does limited anything new that we could see.

The sweetness and warmth of the script and cast go a long way here, as some of the moments were very warm-hearted. Vince Vaughn played his role beautifully, holding everything together even when things were never going to work. I do think the ending is a bit predictable, and seemed to come out of nowhere quickly, but it does work for what we get here.

This may not be the greatest film ever made, but it is a very enjoyable watch with some characters that will make you feel good and a menu that might make you hungry.

3.5 stars

Nickel Boys

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June 23

Today’s June Swoon film is the final of the 2025 Academy Award nominated films for Best Picture that I needed to see. Nickel Boys was directed by RaMell Ross.

Nickel Boys tells the story of its two main protagonists, Elwood (Ethan Herisse) and Turner (Brandon Wilson), who meet at Nickel Academy, an abusive and brutal reform school in Florida during the 1960s.

The film is told through the first-person perspective of both Elwood and Turner, though never at the same time. The perspective of either Elwood or Turner is used as the camera, with the supporting actors looking directly at the camera. The technique makes this film different than most other movies that I have seen.

The story is also told in a nonlinear format with flashforwards to Turner’s future. There were some moments that were difficult to follow during the movie, considering the switching of the POVs.

There are several artsy scenes throughout the film including a few scenes from the Sidney Poitier film “The Defiant Ones” as well as clips with Martin Luther King Jr.

There are some powerful scenes during the horrors of the reform school. It is a long movie and I had some trouble focusing on it, but there is no doubt that this is an amazing piece of art.

The X-Files S10 E2

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Spoilers

“Founder’s Mutation”

This episode had some undercurrents that struck hard for Mulder and Scully. The investigation they were working brought them both to picture moments with their son, William, that they were unable to experience, and each of the daydream ended with a tragic circumstance that seeded the questions that they had about their son.

The scenes with David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson and the young boy playing William were very sad and poignant. Moments where normal parents have with their child that were denied to Mulder and Scully.

These scenes helped to give us hope that at some point our heroes will be reunited with their son. We know that William was sent away by Scully to protect him and we could see the pain that the decision brought to both of them, even though they understood that she did what she had to do.

The episode also brought us a pair of telepaths, Kyle and Molly, were were siblings that had been separated. The reunion between them became dangerous as Kyle popped the eyeballs of the doctor responsible for the separation. Mental powers are the most dangerous ones around and their exhibit of their abilities proved that they were formidable. Honestly, though seeing Mulder thrown across the floor was kind of humorous and not the greatest stunt I have ever seen.

The connection between Mulder and Scully was strong and this episode did a great job of showing that connection.