austinado 📺

18. HALO 2 (replay, heroic difficulty)

halo 2 is everything you can love about the first game done bigger and better. fantastic level design, great narrative follow through, and one of the best game soundtracks ever made. the boss fights are piss easy and the ending is lame, but tbh? who cares.

17. POOH'S ADVENTURES OF POKEMON: THE FIRST MOVIE (watched with friends)

you all know the story. how winnie the pooh and his friends found a magical door that can leap to other worlds.

16. HALO: COMBAT EVOLVED (replay, heroic difficulty)

CE is clunky, and the end of its campaign is a slog- but it's also an endlessly exhilarating, sometimes beautiful experience. you can easily see how halo revolutionized modern gaming, and why microsoft needed to milk it for all it's worth.

15. EDDSWORLD'S BANG, BOOM, SPLAT!

used to play the shit out of this as a kid and shockingly still had the cheat codes memorized. it's a fun enough time waster for just being a few eddsworld themed shooting gallery levels, but it isn't much more than that.

yo my name is MC tom, MC tom, MC tom-

14. WAKE UP DEAD MAN (rewatch with friends)

liked it even more the second go around! there were many visual details i missed the first time that really enhanced the storytelling in a movie that's very focused on how we use storytelling. may still be my least favorite? but they're all neck and neck.

13. TRANSFORMERS (2007) (rewatch with friends)

this was my introduction to the robots in disguise. i have a soft spot for it, but it's the epitome of late bush-era filmmaking. racist, crude and tinted in doodoo brown. what i've done rules and the ladiesman217 bit is unironically hilarious, though.

12. THE MUPPET MOVIE & THE MUPPETS (2011) (rewatch)

watched these to prepare for the lead up of the new muppets special... which i never actually got around to watching. oh well!

11. SEND HELP

more multifaceted than expected! don't think it's one of raimi's best, but it's very thematically cogent and the character acting between the leads are electrifying throughout. have some minor gripes and the ending will certainly be divisive, but i feel this'll be a grower.

10. 28 DAYS LATER (rewatch)

nearly perfect zombie movie. fires on all cylinders and never stops punching you in the gut. the grainy camera work, the desolation of the modern world, the building score, the incredibly vulnerable performances, the angry monkeys, the simpsons reference- it's all peak.

9. DAWN OF THE DEAD (2004) (rewatch)

zach snyder dared to ask: "what if we made george romero's movie epic". it has a zombie baby and a world class richard cheese needle drop. the cinematic equivalent of a midnight taco bell run. you're just going to shit it out, but it's damn good in the moment.

8. IRON LUNG

for his first film, much less an adaptation of a bottle game, i can't imagine iron lung coming out any better. strong, disgusting atmosphere and just enough character and surreality to keep you gripped for the entire run. may this ward off the LA gangs for a little while longer.

7. RETURN TO SILENT HILL

this is already getting pulled from theaters so me and marcie had to go a city over to a rinkydink local place with no audience. we nearly got in free, but she said something last second. so i paid $15 AND was forced to pretend james sunderland is "relatable". sucked ass.

6. FROM DUSK 'TILL DAWN (rewatch)

better than i remembered! elements have aged poorly, and tarantino's character is a bit much even for the disgust he's meant to garner, but it's still a great balance of grounded grit and balls to the wall nonsense. truly they were dealing with fucking vampires.

5. LITTLE CAESAR (watched with friends)

you can easily see the influence little caesar holds over the modern gangster film as soon as you put it on. it's got some gusto for the 30's! i had a fun time watching it! but it's little more than the cliches it inspired. rico really died via ragebait.

4. THE EVIL DEAD & EVIL DEAD II (rewatch with friends)

3. THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SEARCH FOR SQUAREPANTS

second best spongebob movie! was not expecting this to be as good as it was. expressive CG and strong story and character writing that mostly upholds the show's identity. it's good, clean fun! the TMNT short before it was slightly better tho lmao

2. FRIDAY NIGHT FUNKIN X LE SSERAFIM SPECIAL COLLAB

i hope she made lotsa spaghetti

1. STRANGER THINGS 5

despite a decent start, this final season devolves into a set of self-indulgent episodes that are simultaneously too much and not enough to do anything truly satisfying. there are a few moments worth cherry picking, but none that could ever salvage this series from itself.

that's it for 2025! here's 2026.

bsky.app/profile/aust...

2026 media thread. it's happening. nobody can stop it, especially not me.

happy new year, have a costantastic 2016

117. A CHRISTMAS STORY (rewatch)

its a christmas story dogg what else is there to say lmao

116. ELF (rewatch)

i really don't eat much better than buddy i'm not gonna lie

115. NOTTING HILL

caught this while at my folks place for the holiday. it was sweet enough. i enjoyed the premise and the dialogue for the most part, but it's nothing i haven't seen before done better elsewhere. incredibly fond of spike though. what a lad.

IF ONLY IT WERE TRUE

114. STRANGER THINGS 5: VOL. 1

better than expected! i still have a LOT of problems with the direction this series took, and it will always suffer from those choices, but for the hand they dealt themselves? could be a lot worse. just wish that for a season worth half a billion it looked better lmao

113. HIVESWAP ACT 3 PREVIEW

the most fun i've had with hiveswap so far! really enjoyed the added mechanical depth with cast interaction choices. it probably won't make anyone against new-age """woke""" homestuck into a believer, but the team did great work here. looking forward to the full release!

112. THE SNOWMAN (rewatch)

my hole felt especially harried after watching this again

111. WAKE UP DEAD MAN

weakest knives out movie so far, but that doesn't mean bad in the slightest. i just felt some of the sauce was actually lost by focusing TOO much on making a hardcore mystery. still! everyone brings their best and josh brolin talks about cranking his hog to cat girls. cinema.

110. SMILING FRIENDS SEASON 3

it's clear now that smiling friends has a formula. YMMV if it works for you long-term. for me? this is substantially stronger than season 2 and i think its so cool we have a show that focuses on the unbridled creativity with animation. why was pyramid head there tho