TRIO #20

Tuesday November 25 2025

I’ve spent most of November in a pitch black theatre, a handful of buttery popcorn in my fist. Luke liked Bugonia more than I did and I liked Die My Love more than he did, but we agreed that Sentimental Value was better than Worst Person in the World, and that the new Wicked was less exciting than the first. We have tickets to Hamnet tomorrow, and while the premise feels a little too close to Shakespeare in Love for my liking, I’m willing to sit back and let my mind be changed.

Speaking of movies, I wrote about the untimely death of actor/director/it-girl Adrienne Shelly for the latest edition of Cason’s Casting Couch. My goal, which I hope translates, was to split the difference between film criticism and true crime. You can read it in the most recent issue of In the Mood (look out for Part II in the new year).

I’m self-conscious about my film writing: I have no formal training so I don’t always have the language to talk about movies, and most of what I’ve picked up has been cribbed from A.S. Hamrah, whose criticism I’ve been following for the better part of a decade. Luckily for me (and possibly you), he has two new books out this month: Algorithm of the Night, a collection of his criticism over the last six years, and Last Week in End Times Cinema, which compiles his weekly dispatches of Hollywood-related misfortunes. If November was dedicated to going to the movies, December will be dedicated to curling up on the couch and reading about them.

Til next time,

Cason