HBO Max is the home for this sci-fi/thriller called Caddo Lake. I had no real idea what this movie was about, but I was intrigued by the synopsis I read on HBO Max. It read: “When eight-year-old Anna vanishes, her family’s broken history is forever altered by a series of past deaths and disappearances.“
I did not expect what we wound up getting from this film.
It would be difficult to go into much detail on this without spoiling it, so I am going to just touch on some things. In fact, the biggest reason this is a compelling story is a huge spoiler, so this may be a bit of a thin review. I will say that I really liked that bit that I can’t talk about without spoiling it. It was extremely well done, in my opinion.
Dylan O’Brien leads the cast that included Eliza Scanlen, Lauren Ambrose, Eric Lange, Dave Maldonado, Caroline Falk, Diana Hopper, and Sam Hennings.
The story truly grips you immediately and you want to know what was going on. My first thought of what was happening was completely wrong and I wonder if they did a specific scene with a dead alligator for a reason, as a bit of a red herring.
I recommend you go into this movie without a lot of details and enjoy the ride it takes you on. I do believe that it will be worth it. Pay attention though.
The film for today on the June Swoon is film I saw on Fandango called My Dead Friend Zoe. It was a film that I had never heard of before, but the timing fit for today so I gave it a chance.
The film deals with grief, loss, PTSD and the military as well as the challenges of a family dynamic between people who struggle to relate.
According to IMDB, “MY DEAD FRIEND ZOE is a dark comedy drama that follows the journey of Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green), a U.S. Army Afghanistan veteran who is at odds with her family thanks to the presence of Zoe (Natalie Morales), her dead best friend from the Army. Despite the persistence of her VA group counselor (Morgan Freeman), the tough love of her mother (Gloria Reuben) and the levity of an unexpected love interest, Merit’s cozy-dysfunctional friendship with Zoe keeps the duo insulated from the world. That is until Merit’s estranged grandfather (Ed Harris) — holed up at the family’s ancestral lake house — begins to lose his way and needs the one thing he refuses… help. At its core, this is a buddy film about a complicated friendship, a divided family, and the complex ways in which we process grief.“
This is a very deep character study about life after loss and how individuals need help getting through the pain of life and loss. There is a bit of a twist at the end of the movie that recontextualizes the idea of the story, but the fact is that it is still dealing with the loss of an important person in your life.
There are strong performances in the film, especially that of Sonequa Martin-Green and Ed Harris. Two veterans, both with their own pain from loss, trying to get through their lives. Morgan Freeman is always a great addition to a cast, even if he may not have as much to do in this one.
My Dead Friend Zoe may be a touch long, but the character study of Merit, in particular, is full of important little steps and that is a realistic tale. This was based on a true story and it was a very powerful film that lets you think about other people in a different light.
Preparing for 20 Years Later which will be released later in the month of June, I wanted to rewatch the first two films of the franchise. I was up to 28 Weeks Later, the sequel to 28 Days Later.
28 Weeks Later was different than the first film, but it was still very intense and anxiety-filled. The second film listed Danny Boyle and Alex Garland as producers, but the direction was done by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo.
Then, 28 Days Later featured a cast with not very many big stars, where as 28 Weeks Later would be considered an all-star cast. The cast of 28 Weeks Later included Jeremy Renner, Idris Elba, Robert Carlyle, Harold Perrineau, Rose Byrne, Imogene Poots, Catherine McCormack, Amanda Walker, and Mackintosh Muggleton.
According to IMDB, “Almost six months after London was decimated by the unstoppable Rage Virus in 28 Days Later (2002), the U.S. Army has restored peace and repopulated the quarantined city. However, the deadly epidemic reawakens when an unsuspecting carrier of the highly transmittable pathogen enters the dead capital with the first wave of returning refugees. This time, the horrible virus is more dangerous than ever. Has the next nightmare begun?“
This was a solid sequel to the first film and this brought a serious vibe to it. The desperate struggle to survive was even more in effect here as our protagonists faced so many more obstacles than just the return of the “Rage” virus. The military brought yet another level of threat to our characters.
Robert Carlyle, who played Rumpelstiltskin in Once Upon A Time, is amazing in this film. He kicked things off making a choice that gives us a glance at his character, but you can understand where he was coming from. It did not make him look any better even if you do understand. I loved Jeremy Renner in this movie, even if I had a hard time thinking about him as anyone other than Hawkeye.
There were some scenes that really stretched credibility here. These scenes add tension to the story, even if they are unbelievably unlikely to actually happen.
I do believe the first film was a tighter story and the second one is a little messier. Some of the scenes of the infected attacking others remind me of scenes when Killer Bob would attack someone on Twin Peaks Still, the shots did feel more artistic than just gory.
I do not expect any connection between these two films and 28 Years Later, outside of the “Rage” virus because of the length of time. I am still pleased that I was able to watch these two films before 28 Years Later comes out.
Later this month, 28 Years Later will be released in theaters. The trailers to that movie look sensational so I decided to look back on the previous two films in the franchise both of which I have only seen once before. First up was 28 Days Later.
Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland, 28 Days Later sets up the world as we see a group of animal right activists free a group of monkeys that, according to the scientists, had been infected with the “Rage” virus. The activists ignored the warnings and immediately discovered that they had made a serious error. The virus spread across Great Britain leading to the collapse of society.
Jim (Cillian Murphy), a bicycle courier who had been involved in an accident prior to the outbreak, awoke from a coma to find the world a much different and more violent place. London seemed deserted as Jim walks through the city in search of anyone.
This beginning reminded me of the beginning of the Walking Dead, with Rick awakening in a deserted hospital only to find the world had changed while he was unconscious. Obviously Robert Kirkman took inspiration from this movie for the idea for the comic book.
Cillian Murphy was excellent as the desperate Jim, struggling to survive in this savage world. Naomie Harris, Christopher Eccleston, Alex Palmer, Toby Sedgwick, Brendan Gleeson, Noah Huntley, Christopher Dunne, and Megan Burns filled out the cast of the film.
The tension built through the film and, as we see in many of these films, the theme of man being the real monster comes through strong in this. The second half of the movie was as nerve-wracking as you are going to find.
Despite the horrendous world around them, the film ends with a great message of hope.
On HBO Max, I was looking at my watchlist and I chose to watch Y2K for today’s June Swoon.
As the Grail Knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade said…
“He chose poorly.”
Y2K is a movie. I regretted picking this movie five minutes into it.
According to IMDB, “Two high-school nobodies make the decision to crash a Y2K party. The night becomes even crazier than they could have ever dreamed when the clock strikes midnight.“
I do like Jaeden Martell (It) and Rachel Zegler (West Side Story and Snow White). They are so much better than this garbage.
You know that you are in trouble when the best moment of the film is Fred Durst singing George Michael’s “Faith.” Yeah, that happened.
I don’t want to waste any more time on this. What a terrible movie.
Today’s movie from the June Swoon is on HBO Max and it starred Kristin Stewart.
The film, a dark, erotic crime thriller, is directed by Rose Glass. There are some great scenes of violence and erotica in this movie. The acting is top notch and the shocks are all over the place.
According to IMDB, “Reclusive gym manager Lou falls hard for Jackie, an ambitious bodybuilder headed through town to Vegas in pursuit of her dream. But their love ignites violence, pulling them deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family.”
It started following the relationship between Lou and Jackie as Jackie prepared for a bodybuilding contest. When Lou’s sister ended up in the hospital at the hands of her husband JJ (Dave Franco), Jackie took her own ‘roided-up rage out on him. This forced Lou into a position to try and help her love.
As the film progressed from this love story into a crime thriller, Lou’s criminal father Lou Sr (Ed Harris) got involved, trying to pit Jackie and Lou against each other.
The third act went way off the charts as something very bizarre took place that made you look differently at this film than any other one. It is hard to speak about it without spoilers so lets just say that I think it might be metaphoric at the end.
That final scene or two really threw off my thoughts about this film. It felt like something that was tense and real made, dare I say, silly.
Kristin Stewart was great as Lou. She seems like she has always had great performances since Twilight ended. Ed Harris brings some menace to the film too.
Not sure what happened at the end and why it went this way. Still, most of this movie was strong and the end did not completely waste that good will.
Colman Domingo received an Academy Award nomination for this lead role in Sing Sing. He was fabulous as “Divine G.”
While I figured this would be a prison movie, I have to admit, this was not what I was expecting.
According to IMDB, “Divine G (Colman Domingo), imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn’t commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other incarcerated men, including wary newcomer (Clarence Maclin), in this stirring true story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art, starring an unforgettable ensemble cast of formerly incarcerated actors“
The only thing that I knew about this movie was that Colman Domingo was in it and, going by the title, I assumed it was taking place in the prison Sing Sing. I am glad that I went into this movie as blind as I did because it caught me so off-guard that it really made this a great experience.
I actually compare it in my mind more to Ghostlight than I did to another prison movie. It provided the power of the stage in a manner to help face the troubles of your life.
Finding out that this was a true story was another shock and made it even more impactful. The clips at the end of the film with the real people was powerful.
Colman Domingo was amazing. He has become one of our best actors working today. The rest of the cast was just as solid, as much of the cast was previously incarcerated individuals who played themselves.
Sing Sing was a outstanding film that had some real drama inside the prison without falling into the typical prison tropes that we have seen a million times. This is one of the overlooked films of 2024.
This was another movie that I never would have heard of if not for Dan Murrell, online critic, who put Ghostlight on his best of 2024 list. After hearing that, I added it to the June Swoon list.
Thank you, Dan. This was a sensational movie, one of the best that I have seen over the last year or so.
According to IMDB, “When a construction worker unexpectedly joins a local theater’s production of Romeo and Juliet, the drama onstage starts to mirror his own life.”
This script was beautifully constructed and the story told in a wonderful manner. Pieces of the story were given as the film progressed. We knew some of the things that happened, but they hold on to the overall events for the stretch. The writing was layered and worked so well that you could feel everything going on.
The performances were out of this world. Interestingly, the actors who played Dan and Sharon Mueller, Keith Kupferer and Tara Mallen, are married in real life, and their on-screen daughter Daisy was played by their real life daughter Katherine Mallen Kupferer. All of this made this feel real and all three of them knocked this out of the park.
I had immediate connection to this movie because I know kids like Daisy, who came out immediately with curse words and anger. I wanted to know more about what was going on, and these characters were so well done that everything was awesome.
I watched the movie on Amazon Prime and, I am not sure if this was the way it was supposed to go, but the very end felt like Prime cut off too soon. Maybe that was how the film ended, which, if so, it felt like I needed one more scene.
That was the only problem that I had with this film. It is one of the best movies I have seen in awhile. The story was small and emotional with the feeling of reality truly cutting deep. Ghostlight was great. If I were giving star ratings for these June Swoon movies, this would be five stars.
Because of busy day at the theater, I decided that today I would watch the Academy Award winning documentary short for the first film of the day. It was called The Only Girl in the Orchestra, and it was a celebration of Orin O’Brien, the first woman to become a member of the New York Philharmonic.
O’Brien played the double bass the doc came about as she was retiring from her position.
It felt like this was too short and that this topic could sustain a much longer documentary. O’Brien was an interesting topic as someone who just did not want to be in the spotlight. She said, in the doc, “I didn’t have any ambition of being a soloist, I liked being in the background.“
She even revolted against the very idea of the documentary focusing on her. O’Brien’s niece, Molly O’Brien directed the documentary and tried to convince her that she a valuable topic.
Her passion for music definitely came through in this doc, even if it is too short. Oren O’Brien is a fascinating character that shines in the short.
The June Swoon entry today is the final of the 2025 Academy Award nominees for Best Animated Feature, Memoir of a Snail. It is an Australian stop motion film.
According to IMDB, “A bittersweet memoir of a melancholic woman called Grace Pudel – a hoarder of snails, romance novels, and guinea pigs.”
The voice cast featured some of the top level Australian actors including Emmy and Tony Award winner Sarah Snook, Academy Award nominee Kodi Smit-McPhee, Academy Award nominee Jacki Weaver and actor Eric Bana.
This animated film is not one for kids. It is a distinctly adult story told in the stop action format. It is a funny film, with a very tragic feel.
The film was written, directed and produced by Adam Elliot and it was loosely based on his own life.
Even though the movie was dark, it had a remarkable flair for life and the eccentricities of the human condition. The film is chocked full of adult themes mixed in with the humor. It is powerful and deeply affecting. It is a wonderful example of what is possible in the animation style.
Today’s entry in the June Swoon is an Academy Award winner, and you can see why. Flow won the Oscar for the Best Animated Feature at the 2025 Academy Awards, knocking off such luminaries as Wild Robot, Inside Out 2 and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Flow follows the life of a dark grey cat that was living in a forest. A massive flood swept through the land, leading the cat to struggle to survive in a variety of ways.
During the film, the cat meets up with a group of different animals that form a sort of crew, especially while they were on a felucca. The cat joined up with a yellow Labrador Retriever, a ring-tailed lemur, a capybara and a secretary bird.
These animals were not anthropomorphic. They acted like the individual animals would act. The dog was playful and clearly looking to please. The lemur was a thief, collecting trinkets and shiny objects. The capybara, which is a type of rodent, laid around. There were some moments where it felt as if the animal characters transcended their natures and became something more.
The cat served as the POV of the film, as we see things through its eyes. The survival instincts of the cat was on display throughout the film in such a harrowing instance that you could not help but root for these animals.
I am a cat lover and so it was very easy to get into Flow. There were multiple perilous events along the path of this adventure that placed the cat in jeopardy. The whole showdown with the flock of secretary birds was tense and frightening.
There were a couple of scenes that went past just survival and looked at themes of life and death. One, involving the secretary bird, was a lovely moment that leaves you to deduce what exactly had occurred. There was a second scene involving a mutated whale that had saved the cat from drowning earlier in the movie. This scene was heartbreaking.
Flow was beautifully animated with such amazing visuals across the board. The artistic mastery created an incredible tone throughout Flow and some of the visuals with the cat and fish in the water was astounding.
With no dialogue, Flow was able to tell this story through some amazing characters and some fantastic music. According to Wikipedia, the cat of sound designer Gurwal Coïc-Gallas provided the meows for the cat in the movie, which I thought was a funny piece of trivia. It also provided that realistic sound that enhanced the viewing treat.
While I am not sure if I would have given Flow the Oscar over The Wild Robot, there can be no denying that this is a masterful animated film full of life and love and friendship.
There were several animated movies that I missed out on in 2024, so there are several on the list for the June Swoon 4. The first one is the Oscar nominated Netflix film that returned to the stop action animation of the franchise Wallace & Gromit.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl sees the erstwhile inventor Wallace trying to help his trusty dog Gromit with his garden. Going over the top, Wallace created a robot to help… the “smart gnome” or Norbot. Meanwhile, master criminal Feathers McGraw, who had been captured by the police thanks to Wallace & Gromit, plotted a way to take control of the army of Norbots.
I had watched another Wallace & Gromit film (Curse of the Were-Rabbit) and I did not like it much. That was part of the reason that I did not watch this on Netflix last year. However, this was so much better than I expected. It was funny, clever and just a really enjoyable film.
The voice talents of Ben Whitehead, Peter Kay, Lauren Patel and Reece Shearsmith are on full display in the film.
The animation feels old school. The effort it takes to create a film using the stop action animation is considerable, and this crew does an amazing job with it. It never feels shorted or lacking, and delivers some excellent moments throughout, including a big action chase scene at the end.
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl has one of the rarer accomplishments… 100% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I can see why. This was a lot of fun. It did not try to exceed what it does well and it did not overstay its welcome at a slim 79 minutes. This is available on Netflix.
Dan Murrell had this on his list of the best films of 2024 and I had never heard of it. Hundreds of Beavers sounded weird and bizarre. I figured this would make a good watch for the June Swoon.
What a wild ride this was.
It felt like a live action Loony Tunes cartoon, full of slapstick, cartoon violence and laughter.
According to IMDB, “In this 19th century, supernatural winter epic, a drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become North America’s greatest fur trapper by defeating hundreds of beavers.“
This film translates it story without dialogue (or at least, without much dialogue). Outside of a few words grunted or mumbled, the film does a tremendous job of creating a visual storytelling aspect that makes this all the more appealing.
The black and white style adds to the homemade feel of the film, and plays right into the joke. The score of the film is perfect, making this feel like the old time animation, despite the hundreds of over-exaggerated beaver costumes all over the place.
It is gems like this that I appreciate the YouTube community for mentioning. I can legitimately say that I would never have heard of Hundreds of Beavers without the recommendation from Dan Murrell. I spent a chunk of time laughing at so much of the stupid humor going on in this movie that it was an absolute treat. This is the type of film that takes a chance and has it pay off big time. One of the funniest movies I have seen in a long time.
The fourth annual June Swoon kicked off this morning with a movie that I have been anticipating for a long time. It is a film that I would have gone to in the theater but it never came around to any of the theaters in my area. At least, I never saw it available in my area.
September 5 told the tragic story of the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany where a group of Israeli athletes were taken hostage during the games. The movie was told from the perspective of the sporting crew from ABC, who were in Munich covering the Games and wound up near the scene of terror.
I only knew a little bit about the situation before viewing this and the massive tragedy that would befall the athletes. This was put together with an outstanding ensemble of actors as well as real life archival footage shot by ABC. Footage of the late Jim McKay as the anchor of the sports crew and the voice that sent the news out to the world was used. The quote of McKay when everything was finalized and his words went out across the world
When I was a kid my father used to say “Our greatest hopes and our worst fears are seldom realized.” Our worst fears have been realized tonight. They have now said there were 11 hostages; two were killed in their rooms this morn– yesterday morning, nine were killed at the airport tonight. They’re all gone. — McKay, 1972
The ensemble cast included Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, and Leonie Benesch as well as a ton of other actors. The tension of the situation was amplified by these talented actors and they brought suspense to a moment in time that many, if not all, knew would end up with tragic results. Yet as you watched the film unfold, you still held hope that there would be part of the story that you did not know and that there would be some sliver of happiness would be found.
September 5 was an emotional roller coaster detailing the horrors of a terrorist attack, and the dedication of these men and women to provide the details of the news to the world.
With the school year coming to an end, we decided to show a movie at the end of the most recent unit we have been working on. It was a sci-fi/space adventure unit and it actually had a possible “long” read offered of Orson Scott Card’s novel, Ender’s Game. We decided to show the movie to the seventh graders.
I hadn’t seen Ender’s Game since it was in the theaters back in 2013, so I was excited to get a chance to see it again. I remember liking it, but not loving it.
The cast of this film was extraordinary, starting with Asa Butterfield as Ender and Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff. These two had tremendous chemistry and carried much of the film. The actresses that played Valentine and Petra drove me nuts at first because I knew I recognized them but I just could not place their youthful faces. After a check on IMDB, I realized that Valentine was Abigail Breslin and Petra was Hailee Steinfeld. They were both great. The movie also included Ben Kingsley, Nonso Anozie and Viola Davis. Great actors in this film.
The special effects and the shots were spectacular as well. It looked beautiful and stunning at every moment. The animation of the mind game was a little uncanny valley, but it was supposed to be, showing the difference between this game world and the real world.
I did have some problems, basically with the script. It felt like there were too many moments that were rushed, as if they needed to cut things out to fit it in the film, and because of that, some scenes which were meant to be more impactful, ended up less so than it could have been.
One example was a scene between Ender and Sgt. Dap (Nonso Anozie) where Ender was being a particularly annoying child. Dap screamed at him to shut up and that he would never salute Ender. Then it felt like ten minutes later that Dap was doing that very thing. It was meant to be a powerful moment, but Ender did not seem to have earned that salute in any way, so the powerful moment felt a bit flat.
The conclusion of the film is sensational and Asa Butterfield is excellent at this moment. The eyes of Butterfield were remarkable, constantly right on the verge of being filled with tears while reflecting the light perfectly. The close-up visuals of Ender always worked.
The message is not ignored in Ender’s Game and, in fact, could be argued that it is as important to the film as anything else.
The students of my class seemed to enjoy the film, as every class that I showed this to asked if there was a sequel. I pointed out the book series while telling them that this was the only movie. One girl told me that she wanted Ender and Petra to get married… that she shipped them.
In the end, the film was pretty good. Yes, I think some of the writing needed some work and some of the moments did not feel as earned as it should have, but Ender’s Game was still a fun time among sci-fi films made for both kids and adults.
EYG- Embrace Your Geekness 