Seen in December

We're at the center of the Earth gents, so it's shirts off!

There was a time when I formulated and curated a Christmas watch list, but these days are busier and more prone to finding a moment to sneak in a little screen time. That seems odd given just how much down time there was when I was more prone to being in a prone position, but here's what I saw in the darkest hours of the year.

Elves away!

Prep & Landing: Snowball Protocol
Disney+
The latest in the series of Pixar/Disney Christmas animated shorts with elves Wayne (Dave Foley) and Lanny (Derek Richardson), and their misadventures. The stories revolve around Santa's helpers depicted as paramilitary strike forces, and each Christmas being a memorable campaign. In the context of ICE raids, that doesn't sound so great. The other part of the stories are centred on Wayne's anxiety about getting a promotion and the office politics of Santa's workshop. In other words, it's a very American take on the Santa mythos. 

Dames, not damsels.

Down Cemetery Road S01
Apple TV+
For those of you waiting for the next installment of Nick Herron's Slow Horses, don't worry, Mr. Herron has another reprobate character in his canon of murder mysteries set in Oxford, England. Instead of an exiled MI5 agent, our protagonist is Zoë Boehm (Emma Thompson), a private detective more accustomed to tracking down cheating husbands than uncovering a government conspiracy. A gas explosion in a house without a gas hookup, a missing girl, and the murder of her husband set Boehm and an Oxford art restorer, Sarah (Ruth Wilson), on a perilous path that leads to a remote, abandoned military base in Northern Scotland. Like Slow Horses, the plotting and pace are crisp, the dialogue is sharp and funny, and the characters are flawed and human. If you enjoy Slow Horses, you'll enjoy this.

Go with God, or at least have a clever detective to help.

Wake Up Dead Man, a Knives Out Mystery
Netflix
Like other Knives Out mysteries, this film is a clockwork of curiosities that combines the eccentricities of a Hercule Poirot detective with the complications and characters of a Ms. Marple story. The film is packed with so many notable and recognizable faces you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a SAG convention, but that's all part of the fun. Daniel Craig as Benoît Blanc is in fine form, as is newcomer (to American audiences), Josh O'Connor as Father Jud, the worried young priest struggling with a past guilt and present dilemma. Buckle up, it's a bumpy ride.

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It's all in your head.

I write now of a recurring theme: migraines. I get migraines. Not as often as I used to. I'm sure years ago many of my migraines were caused by stress, then I learned not to worry (or care) so much about things in general. Ta-dah! Fewer migraines! I even joked I had found a cure for migraine. "Have fewer migraines by avoiding migraines!" In reality I only lessened one of the innumerable triggers. Scientists say they've ruled out air pressure changes as a cause, but anecdotally, I don't get migraines on sunny days. Now my treatment for migraines is very simple. Give in. Cry "Uncle." Succumb. Unless you are performing life-saving surgeries, are the sole caretaker for a small child, running a country or planning to invade a smaller country, you can afford to occasionally take a knee and capitulate. It's a lost day on your calendar but the world will keep turning without you.

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Things of the year!

David Blackwood's January Visit Home

I have a "love, hate, kiss, marry, kill" relationship with all the year-end lists, like "Best Movies of the Year" or "Best Albums of the Year". I enjoy them and to a certain point, depend on them to fill me in on what I missed out on while I was busy doing other things like, I don't know, buying groceries, talking to friends, or looking at trees and trying to guess their height. It gets in my craw (wherever that might be) when many different dictionaries announce their "word of the year" that aren't even a word but "words". They're often phrases like, "brain rot", "rage bait" or "TACO" or some other faff. I wasn't surprised that Merriam-Webster chose "slop" as their Word of the Year. I'm still amazed by how quickly AI agents and their use became mainstream. What was strange was just how bad some AI-generated content by "professionals" was (looking at you Coca-Cola and McDonald's). This crap output was dubbed "slop" and it only goes to show you can fool some of the people some of the time, and the rest will call you out on your slop. An even worse type of year-end list is "Pantone's Color of the Year". This year's colour, "Cloud Dancer", appears to be wisps of white, which is even more underwhelming than last year's "Mocha Mousse". It had the heart of chocolate pudding but the soul of a neglected rural outhouse. What I'm saying is I expect more from The Oxford English Dictionary or The Economist. That being said, I expect a lot less from myself, so here's my list of lists of some conventional, some idiosyncratic, "things of the year".

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Seen in November

Two greats of British cinema don't always see eye to eye in Slow Horses.

It's been a busy month or so, when not much was watched or seen and finding time to post was difficult. Before the year ends, here's what was seen last month.

Slow Horses S05
Apple TV+
If this was the only show worth watching on Apple TV+, the subscription would still be worth it. It's a plot that feels ripped from our own conspiracy laced multimedia drenched world in which a few malevolent characters wreck havoc on a society preoccupied with its own reflection. Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) and his team of fallen MI5 agents are still in fine form, even if their form is never really that fine. In this season, a group of disaffected terrorists (which I guess is redundant to say) concoct a scheme using MI5 tactics against MI5. This season, Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) comes to the foreground as the honey-trapped agent, as does the eerily quiet Coe (Tom Brooke), who is the first to discern the strategy in play. Meanwhile, the most MI5-iest of the Slow Horses, River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) is at his worst. He makes mistake after mistake while still believing he's above the rest of the rabble. Despite some critics saying the show has lost a step, I disagree. I'm particularly fond of the agent Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards), who is still the most effective Slow Horse while struggling with addiction, and the indomitable Diana Taverner, played with such confidence by Kristin Scott-Thomas.

Only Murders in the Building S05
Disney+
This unlikely murder mystery comedy starring Selena Gomez, Steve Martin, and Martin Short returns like a comfy old cardigan you don a few times a year. It's a little old, a bit musty and predictable, but you can rest easy knowing it's there for you. There are the usual outrageously underused cameos, a series of misdirections and red herrings, but it all works out in the end. What I find odd is that the comedy in the show is so much safer than Martin and Short's live shows, but that's fine.

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Seen in October

Robert Redford was a natural in The Natural

There is a trend line in my viewing statistics that I appear to be seeing fewer and fewer films. I'm not tracking it per se, but it's pretty plain to see. Am I being more selective? Unlikely. Here's what I saw in October.

He may be a hero, but he still needs a ride.

Peacemaker S02
Crave
John Cena will surprise you as Chris Smith, aka Peacemaker. Peacemaker is basically a killing machine with a heart of gold, and James Gunn has continued his way of finding fringe superhero characters and re-imagining them with more humanity and purpose. Peacemaker might be a big lummox, but he really will be your best friend when you need him the most. This HBO series, based on the DC character that time forgot, is similar to Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy. It's funny and silly, but it is grounded in characters you will come to care about. In this season, Peacemaker accidentally kills himself from another dimension (he has an altercation with a parallel universe version of himself). He discovers in that universe his racist father and brother are both still alive. Unfortunately, it's not as "rad" or cool as he initially thought, and his friends risk themselves to bring him home.

Colin from Accounts S01
CBC Gem
A "broken dog mends broken people" story? Pub owner Gordon (Patrick Brammall) and med student Ashley (Harriet Dyer) meet when she crosses in front of his car, "distracts" him, causing him to run over a stray dog. The pair bond when they can't bear to have the dog put down and decide instead to split his incredibly expensive surgery. They then rename the dog "Colin… from Accounts" and so their story begins. This Australian comedy finds a balance between sweetness and sourness.

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Meditation at 25m Intervals

Swimmer Jeanne Wilson Underwater by Wallace Kirkland

SYNCRETISM
A poem
By Nina C. Peláez
September 28, 2025

My father does not believe in God or therapists—
instead, he pedals his bike past Brighton Beach
to the Coney Island Y to swim his fifty laps.

Once, I went with him and watched as he emerged
from the locker room in faded swim trunks

moving slowly to the edge of the pool. He paused,
lifting his hands over the gray halo on his chest,

pressing his palms together in a gesture
I know he learned as a boy.

My father’s eyes: devout with a darkness
he keeps buried deep inside

where it glows hell-hot as the ember
from the cigarillo his father—a womanizer,

drunk, half-asleep—dropped on the sheets
setting the bed ablaze, and even though extinguished

kept smoldering invisibly inside the mattress springs,
reigniting, sending the house up in smoke a second time.

So my father’s anger burns, a blood-wicked flame
scorching through the softest parts of his interior

until it rages through the house,
blackening the rooms again.

Even in the absence of ideology
I am trying to learn forgiveness—

I watched my father’s body breach the air for just a moment
before he dove, disappearing beneath the surface.

Steam coiling through the chlorinated room,
the ripples his body made still reached me on the other side.

---

Breath, stroke, stroke, stroke, breath… no, not an adult-themed party game, but what I'm thinking, when I am thinking, as I swim lengths of a 25m pool. Eventually, it's unnecessary to count strokes and breaths. You take measured breaths without thinking about it, and a fitness tracker can bother with the counting. I wanted to talk about the meditation that is swimming, but the poem above, published in The Atlantic, hits the mark better than I could. Not the part about a daughter seeking to forgive an angry father, but the thoughtfulness swimming can bring. When I find I'm overthinking a problem, I know I need to get out of my head, but underwater, you stay in your head because there’s nowhere else to go. The only option is to expand your mind.

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