Mostly Screen Time: January 2026

What I watched so you can watch it too.

This month: Less TV time in lieu of (gulp) reading and (double gulp) video games (??), and chipping away at all Oscar best picture nominees I have yet to see.

⭐️ Starred items are ones I’d recommend!

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• Stranger Things 5 (Netflix) - The low-hanging fruit joke about this show is how long it takes to produce and release, the kids are old, etc. Many plot points made me say “I forget where we left this story line”/who is in love with whom, why is he mad at her… this rings especially true in the first episode of this season. The discourse on this final season is now a month old, so instead I’ll turn my attention to the frustration I felt over the documentary addendum Netflix released a few weeks later.

  • One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 (Netflix) - I actually enjoyed the “making of season 5” documentary. Not that it excused a three-year gap between television seasons, but it did show how many people and elements go into this show; the importance of practical effects!!! (And without this doc, I may not have noticed how much is done practically.) The table reads, the casting, all of it was probably pound for pound more fun than watching the actual final season of the show 🤨. There are some elements that the internet blew up into the highlights (shooting without s script— not a flex! Reddit and ChatGPT tabs open on the writing computer— lol). Thinking about how many days a writers room runs and the day “cameras and mics are coming in”; I doubt this footage was authentic, in that this wasn’t the day that they were debating Eleven’s fate, but it’s still silly the information they decided to include.

• Loot S3 (AppleTV) - This continues to be a great comedy in which I would recast 60% of the supporting roles. Maya Rudolph, Academy-Award-winner Nat Faxon and Traitors cast member Ron Funches can stay. I do fear that, while it’s a sitcom and has an evergreen premise (Maya Rudolph’s Molly Wells has billions of dollars she’s trying to charitably give away), the series has dropped in goals to progress the story, and we barely if at all touched on those story points this season until the last three episodes. Season 2 earnestly had something to say about the unhoused population in Los Angeles and I think there could be more meat there, even for a comedy! Shout out to D’Arcy Carden’s fake Italian accent played for laughs because I was LAFFIN and she should be considered for a comedy guest star Emmy.

• ⭐️ Send Help - Movies like this make me stare daggers at anyone who blankly dismisses all January releases as garbage. Rachel McAdams truly slays as a low-level employee who is wronged by a mean, young, slick boss, until the two get stuck on an island together and BOY DO THE POWER DYNAMICS SHIFT. Wonderfully gross VFX, sound, and terrible decisions made by both main characters. Sam Raimi the director that you are.

• ⭐️ Anaconda - Alerting the masses once again of the joys of seeing comedy in a crowd. If I had anything negative to say about this it’s that it would have sung as an R-rated comedy, but you can feel the moments that were cut around to make it PG-13. Thus, it starts slowly before the meat of the action/comedy begins (and, unfortunately, many of the huge beats were in the excellent trailer). Come for Paul Rudd and Jack Black, stay for the insane cameos and in-Hollywood jokes.

• Sentimental Value - It’s important to note that I understood the dynamics at play in this movie, but it did not strike me the way it seems to have struck many others. (see also: Hamnet?? I’m missing that part of my brain I guess. Seeking treatment.) Wonderfully acted, though I question all four main actors getting Oscar nominations— two out of four would suffice.

• The Housemaid - AND SPEAKING OF ANIMALS BEHAVING BADLY lol I kid, rule of threes, folks. About midway through this silliness (I was still waiting for the twist to drop) I decided that Kathryn Newton would do better in all roles that went to Sydney Sweeney. I’ve continued to sit with that. Sydney does fine in this but it’s Amanda Seyfried that carried the melodrama. One of those movies that had me frantically searching online for “book to movie changes” because some elements just seemed thin.

• Mercy - There was a movie in 2018 called Searching that felt, gasp, groundbreaking?, in its storytelling style? Well this seemed to just want part of that cake but it barely lived up to it. Instead, this was AI propaganda the main character even concedes in the end that AI sometimes makes mistakes but that it is beneficial to our justice system, to paraphrase Chris Pratt/Garfield/Mario— I don’t think something that “makes mistakes” should be in charge of executions but that’s just me!!!!!) Anyway, watch Searching.

• Primate - Mid-level horror continues to have its moment but this will not be a memorable entry. What reeks of “40-something writing dialogue for 23-year-olds” (they suggest calling their crush on the phone, ok?) fails to use a lot of the environmental elements that its sets up in a playful way. Why hang on shots of the ceiling fan if it won’t lead to someone’s terrifying demise? Why contain most of the action to just treading water in a pool to pass time and wait out the rabies-infected titular-role primate?

That’s all for January— If that groundhog sees its shadow, I’m going to see six more movies next month.