Continuing my 6x6 series, publishing on the 6th of the month for the first time, here are six things I want to recommend for March 2025. Just as with the first installment in Feb 2025, these are things I think might be overlooked or under-appreciated or just things that I really enjoy that I want to share with others as I work to share more positive things.
This month, they're presented arbitrarily in alphabetical order...
I ran two Alien The Roleplaying Game One Shots for Extra Life back in November 2020 and the Destroyer of Worlds mini-campaign in November and December. Prepping for those plus the Blank Check Podcast covering the franchise on their Patreon Extras Feed meant I re-watched all the films from September through January. Naturally, I've immortalized the list on Letterboxd...
I used to go see movies, in the before times... Apparently I saw 44 films in the theater from 1/1/2019 through 3/7/2020 when the world shut down. I've been thinking back on the joy of buttery popcorn and the rumble of surround sound in a dark theater, so I went back and reminisced about the movies I saw then on Letterboxd.
Elijah Wood has excellent taste, from helping to produce mind-bending films like Mandy and Colour Out of Space to voicing Wirt on Over the Garden Wall, post-Hobbitsing, Wood has gone in interesting directions.
Come to Daddy is an off-kilter, suspense thriller that takes full advantage of Elijah looking much younger than his age. Even with Norval’s mustache and bowl cut, he looks like a mid-20s hipster, especially when contrasted with an extremely grizzled looking Stephen McHattie, who radiates pure menace from the first moments of the film.
With a slow build and moments of dream-like violence that come interspersed in long uncanny sequences. The film builds an odd world that seems like a time out of place despite Norval’s name-dropping and the presence of smartphones. Everything works together to create a experience that feels unexpected and specific; showing off a juvenile machismo that haunts the men of the movie and using the unique location, dated set dressings and soundscapes of the house and its isolation in nature to create an ambiance of dread and barely contained brutality.
Even on a second watch, there were still delightful surprises to be found and it was satisfying to see how bits that I missed the first time through connected to and built up the movie's climax. If you can handle a bit of gore, I cannot recommend enough this movie, which at its center, chronicles the dangerously earnest attempts of Norval to connect with his daddy, even if it means he must push past his comfort and perhaps life itself...
