PJH Studios

Category: Movies

Movies high, low, action, adventure, comedy, drama, sci-fi, horror, western, zombie, samurai, dvd, blockbuster

  • The Oscar Best Picture Nominees, each uniquely weird

    Wesley Morris ties all the 2025 Oscar Best Picture Nominees with a common thread: they’re each uniquely weird.

    They’re weird — every single one. They take weird forms. The people in them do weird stuff. They induce weirdness in you.

    I’ve seen 9 out of 10 of the nominees (still waiting for I’m Still Here to be available), and my vote would either be Conclave or Anora. Each contains beautifully composed cinematography for their respective stories with casts that held my attention the entire time. But they’re vastly different. Conclave runs along as a tense thriller, while Anora is a fable with a Three Stooges episode in the middle.

    And regarding Wicked, I texted two friends:

    begrudgingly and surprisingly enjoying it. It’s like skittles in movie musical form

  • The story of Neon films

    Whenever you see the buzzing, fuchsia Neon title card, you know your going to get at the very least something different and interesting. Eric Ducker at the Ringer tells of how six people in a WeWork space grew to a 55 person team consistently supporting awards campaigns.

  • Cabin in the Woods 4k

    I think Cabin in the Woods still succeeds in deconstructing the horror movie genre while placing Easter eggs as callouts to other movies and stories.

    Beginning with the cheery introductions of our characters, with an early career Chris Hemsworth playing the quintessential jock, the film leads us down a road to the middle of nowhere and stopping at a rundown gas station complete with a grizzled, creepy old man. Once the sun sets, Evil Dead vibes consume the woods, and our team makes the first of a series of bad decisions, descending to the basement, because a horror movie cannot exist without a series of bad decisions. If you pay attention to all of the different objects spread throughout the room, you’ll be rewarded when the film reveals the imprisoned menagerie of monsters.

    Chaos ensues. As the gang is killed off, we meet our villain, played by Sigourney Weaver, who attempts to reason with our final girl, played by Kristen Connelly. Typically, the final girl perseveres with grit, determination, and wits–the last person with any agency to make a choice–to defeat the villain and survive. Connelly’s character makes a choice that makes the ending surprising and unique.

  • MGM now owns James Bond

    For the last six months, I’ve been going through the James Bond movies in order. I’m about halfway through and it’s fun watching them as time capsules to the eras that they were made. Amazon now has full control as to what they’ll pack into future installments.

    The common refrain regarding this move is how will Amazon screw this up. Dilute Bond with so many poor quality spin offs like Disney did to Marvel and Star Wars? Or crank out shoddy movies to cash in on the name?

    John Gruber probably had the most astute takeaway:

    Amazon taking control of James Bond is like McDonald’s taking over a great steakhouse chain like Del Frisco’s.

  • Kill Bill in 4k

    Uma Thurman in Kill Bill vol 1

    It’s been of the 20 years since I’ve watched Kill Bill vol 1 and 2, Quentin Tarantino’s homage to 70s era kung fu action movies and Japanese cinema. That’s a long enough time that upon rewatch, it was like experiencing them for the first time again – only this time in 4K with surround sound, not a bad DVD copy on a CRT computer screen with minute speakers.

    Both movies still hold up. Colorful costumes and cinematography, engaging dialogue, an excellent stunt work in choreography for the fight scenes, particularly the nod to Lady Snowblood.

    In Kill Bill Volume 1, The Bride (Uma Thurman) faces off against O-ren (Lucy Liu) in a snow covered garden.

  • This is the Tom Green Documentary

    This is the Tom Green Documentary is an insightful work of nostalgia, showing his rise, how he made it work, and how he understood media and technology. The documentary serves as a segue to his new reality series on Prime.

    He performed TikTok, street style pranks before Gen Z was born. He executed Jackass style physical stunts before the Jackass crew got together. He even produced a web stream talk show before podcasting became a word.

    Green’s parents and friends all appear, and towards the end, there’s a contemplative aura about him.

  • My 2024 best of list

    Originally posted to Instagram

    Now that we are in the final days of the year, here are 🎵a few of my favorite things 🎶

    (TV, movies, music are all from this year. The book list are my favorites that I read this year, but may have come out earlier)

    TV

    • Shrinking
    • Penguin
    • Arcane
    • Shogun
    • Slow Horses
    • Abbott Elementary
    • Geek Girl
    • Las Azules
    • Interior Chinatown
    • Fallout

    Books

    • Adam Higginbotham – Midnight in Chernobyl
    • Kathryn Schultz – Lost & Found
    • Scott Carson – Lost Man’s Lane
    • Matt Dinniman – Dungeon Crawler Carl series
    • Tananarive Due – The Reformatory
    • Travis Baldtree – Legends & Lattes
    • Adrian Tchaikovsky – Children of Time
    • Rick Remender – The Sacrificers vol 1
    • Matthew Desmond – Evicted
    • Patrick Horvath – Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees

    Movies

    • Mads
    • The Last Stop in Yuma County
    • Wild Robot
    • My Old Ass
    • Caddo Lake
    • Rebel Ridge
    • Inside Out 2
    • Hundreds of Beavers
    • Late Night with the Devil
    • Self Reliance

    Music

    • Etran De L’Air – 100% Saharan Guitar
    • Haley Heynderickx – Seed of a Seed
    • Glass Animals – I Love You So F Much
    • Cassandra Jenkins, My Light, My Destroyer
    • Runnners – Starsdust
    • Rosali – Bite Down
    • Zach Bryan – The Great American Bar Scene
    • Kelly Lee Owens – Dreamstate
    • Ghost Funk Orchestra – A Trip to the Moon
    • Dehd – Poetry
    • Pearl Jam – Dark Matter
    • Phosphorescent – ‘Revelator’
    • Itasca – Imitation of War

  • Ladies & Gentlemen…50 Years of SNL Music

    If this isn’t infectious, I don’t know what is. Questlove drops a trailer for a documentary about 50 years of SNL musical guests.

  • Flow

    A wondrous journey, through realms natural and mystical, Flow follows a courageous cat after his home is devastated by a great flood. Teaming up with a capybara, a lemur, a bird, and a dog to navigate a boat in search of dry land,

    Flow really was a magical movie. No talking, just a motley crew slightly anthropomorphized animals navigating through beautiful scenery. Throughout the movie, we see hints of a higher level species (humans? who knows!), and you can’t help but wonder how or why this is happening.

  • Movie Bar Codes

    Slice a frame from a movie, stitch ’em together, you’d get something that resembles a bar code. A bar code that illustrates the color palate of the film. Here’s Singin’ in The Rain.

    tumblr_lhp031ycnm1qhtovi.jpg

    Prints are for sale, too.