Movies: Red Sonja and Weapons
Aug. 15th, 2025 09:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snickficRed Sonja (2025). Sword and sorcery fantasy about a young woman who is captured and made a gladiator by the emperor threatening to invade her beloved forest.
This was an absolute joy. I cannot say whether it was good, but I had so much fun, and I'm so glad I got to see it on the big screen on the one (1) day it was in theaters. This movie has all the classic sword and sorcery cheese melted on top of a big ol' overpowered hero(ine)'s journey. Matilda Lutz stars as Sonja, and she is very hot and has great big eyes full of feelings. The other place I know her from is the lead in Coralie Fargeat's movie Revenge, so it kinda seems like she got cast here for her ability to run around being badass in her underwear, but she's great at it, so!
I need to stress that Sonja is hilariously overpowered, and it's fucking delightful. Sometimes you just want a woman beating the shit out of bad guys who are hurting animals. (I love that her first important character note is having a soft heart for the funky CGI fantasy rhinos.)
There are also some other characters! Emperor Dragan has a surprisingly complicated backstory about being a slave child who invents a bunch of new technologies, is probably gay, and is maybe fucking his giant mandrill-guy captain. Annisia is Dragan's star gladiator-turned-concubine except they don't sleep together, and she is haunted to the point of incapacitation by... ghosts? mental illness? who can say. She gets a surprising amount of focus and has a lot of very pointed chemistry with Sonja, and I will say my only disappointment is that the movie didn't really take that to any kind of logical conclusion. And also there's Osin, hot fellow gladiator and Sonja's nominal love interest, who's honestly very charming, not least because he takes no more attention from Sonja than he ought to.
The CGI is dodgy, but the scenery is lovely, and some of the casual worldbuilding is a lot of fun. (What's the deal with the mandrill people, anyway?) There are a lot of horses running everywhere when they should be walking. There's a whole thing where Sonja sings one of the songs of her people, and according to the credits it's a traditional Irish folk song.
There's also a bunch of plot, which you can discover for yourself once the movie's on streaming at the end of the month, which you should absolutely do. Again, I do not promise that this movie is good, but if any of what I've said sounds like fun, run do not walk.
--
Weapons (2025). One night, a bunch of children ran out of their houses and didn't come home again.
This is Zach Cregger's sophomore outing after Barbarian, which came out three years ago and which I liked quite a lot, partly for tackling a lot of chewy thematic material and partly for its absolutely fearless disregard for conventional Hollywood narrative structure. I would not say Barbarian was entirely successful at what it was trying to do or that it even knew precisely what that was, but boy it was trying a lot of things in a lot of directions, and it gave me a lot to think about.
Weapons, by contrast, feels more conventional and generally more successful in its aims, but those aims are so much less interesting to me than Barbarian's. It doesn't appear to have any themes it's trying to tackle at all. It feels like Cregger decided he just wanted to make a fun horror movie about [spoiler]. And I'm not opposed to that! I think overall Weapons is a lot of fun and definitely has its good points. However, I wish it'd shown some more ambition.
I also wish it had any sense of character development in it. The gimmick is that this movie is being told from successive overlapping perspectives of more or less the same time frame. This is absolutely my shit; I love stuff like this. (In this Cregger reminds me a bit of early Christopher Nolan, who also loved weird structural stuff in his movies.) Unfortunately, I didn't feel like these multiple perspectives really built to anything other than eventually revealing the mystery. We get to reevaluate certain characters as we go, but there's only one character who feels like they get any kind of arc to speak of, and we don't get to dig into that character until halfway through the movie. There's no one like Tess from Barbarian who acts as an emotional throughline for the audience.
( spoilers )
Overall: less messy than Barbarian, less ambitious, not quite as pee-your-pants scary (there's nothing on par with the multiple tunnel scenes in Barbarian), but a fun time and still enough creativity and interesting angles on things to keep me looking forward to more movies from Cregger. And from the box office numbers, it looks like we will definitely be getting more from him. Yay.
This was an absolute joy. I cannot say whether it was good, but I had so much fun, and I'm so glad I got to see it on the big screen on the one (1) day it was in theaters. This movie has all the classic sword and sorcery cheese melted on top of a big ol' overpowered hero(ine)'s journey. Matilda Lutz stars as Sonja, and she is very hot and has great big eyes full of feelings. The other place I know her from is the lead in Coralie Fargeat's movie Revenge, so it kinda seems like she got cast here for her ability to run around being badass in her underwear, but she's great at it, so!
I need to stress that Sonja is hilariously overpowered, and it's fucking delightful. Sometimes you just want a woman beating the shit out of bad guys who are hurting animals. (I love that her first important character note is having a soft heart for the funky CGI fantasy rhinos.)
There are also some other characters! Emperor Dragan has a surprisingly complicated backstory about being a slave child who invents a bunch of new technologies, is probably gay, and is maybe fucking his giant mandrill-guy captain. Annisia is Dragan's star gladiator-turned-concubine except they don't sleep together, and she is haunted to the point of incapacitation by... ghosts? mental illness? who can say. She gets a surprising amount of focus and has a lot of very pointed chemistry with Sonja, and I will say my only disappointment is that the movie didn't really take that to any kind of logical conclusion. And also there's Osin, hot fellow gladiator and Sonja's nominal love interest, who's honestly very charming, not least because he takes no more attention from Sonja than he ought to.
The CGI is dodgy, but the scenery is lovely, and some of the casual worldbuilding is a lot of fun. (What's the deal with the mandrill people, anyway?) There are a lot of horses running everywhere when they should be walking. There's a whole thing where Sonja sings one of the songs of her people, and according to the credits it's a traditional Irish folk song.
There's also a bunch of plot, which you can discover for yourself once the movie's on streaming at the end of the month, which you should absolutely do. Again, I do not promise that this movie is good, but if any of what I've said sounds like fun, run do not walk.
--
Weapons (2025). One night, a bunch of children ran out of their houses and didn't come home again.
This is Zach Cregger's sophomore outing after Barbarian, which came out three years ago and which I liked quite a lot, partly for tackling a lot of chewy thematic material and partly for its absolutely fearless disregard for conventional Hollywood narrative structure. I would not say Barbarian was entirely successful at what it was trying to do or that it even knew precisely what that was, but boy it was trying a lot of things in a lot of directions, and it gave me a lot to think about.
Weapons, by contrast, feels more conventional and generally more successful in its aims, but those aims are so much less interesting to me than Barbarian's. It doesn't appear to have any themes it's trying to tackle at all. It feels like Cregger decided he just wanted to make a fun horror movie about [spoiler]. And I'm not opposed to that! I think overall Weapons is a lot of fun and definitely has its good points. However, I wish it'd shown some more ambition.
I also wish it had any sense of character development in it. The gimmick is that this movie is being told from successive overlapping perspectives of more or less the same time frame. This is absolutely my shit; I love stuff like this. (In this Cregger reminds me a bit of early Christopher Nolan, who also loved weird structural stuff in his movies.) Unfortunately, I didn't feel like these multiple perspectives really built to anything other than eventually revealing the mystery. We get to reevaluate certain characters as we go, but there's only one character who feels like they get any kind of arc to speak of, and we don't get to dig into that character until halfway through the movie. There's no one like Tess from Barbarian who acts as an emotional throughline for the audience.
( spoilers )
Overall: less messy than Barbarian, less ambitious, not quite as pee-your-pants scary (there's nothing on par with the multiple tunnel scenes in Barbarian), but a fun time and still enough creativity and interesting angles on things to keep me looking forward to more movies from Cregger. And from the box office numbers, it looks like we will definitely be getting more from him. Yay.
Battleship: things I wrote!
Aug. 15th, 2025 10:18 amsnickficI wrote six things in six days for Battleship (and made a tiny art) and promptly burned out, which was okay, because I then left on my trip and didn't get back until after works reveals.
First, I wrote a bunch of Oasis fic!adastreia kindly threw in some prompts for me so I had at least one person to write for who I knew would like some Gallaghercest, and then a teammate kindly adopted one as well. This was so lovely and much nicer than combing through the Creator's Choice of Fandom requests for someone who looked like they might enjoy an RPF incest ship.
You Know That I Would Give You My Hand, 1.7k, Liam/Noel, fisting PWP. Set ???. One of the things about Battleship is a lot of the details I'd normally worry about, like era, just kind of get glossed over. However, I am incredibly proud of the title (which comes from their deep cut Sad Song).
one in the oven, 2.1k, Liam/Noel, semi-public omegaverse pregnant sex PWP. Silly and porny and kind of schmoopy.
maybe tomorrow, 600 words, Liam/Noel. This ficlet is pure vibes, inspired by the "liminal spaces" tag. It might be my favorite thing I made for Battleship. Contains one of my favorite lines I've written this year:
And some other fandoms!
the land of gold seemed to hold him, Re-Animator, 1.6k, Herbert/Dan, wilderness survival and h/c. Another one that's mostly vibes, but this time the vibes are "the world has ended and all we have is each other." This is fact the THIRD fic of around this length that I have written for this ship on this theme, all with slightly different apocalypses.
putting the ick in ichor, Buffyverse, 600 words, Buffy/Faith sex pollen. My forever fandom. <3 My most popular fic during the anon period (before I redated all the Oasis fics). I'm very pleased with this title, too.
steak, rare, Stardew Valley, 2k, Abigail gen horror with animal transformation and cannibalism. Out of all the stuff I wrote, this is the one I feel least sure about. I'm not sure it really works tonally, although there are some individual lines I liked, and writing the Abigail-Sam-Sebastian trio was fun.
First, I wrote a bunch of Oasis fic!
adastreia kindly threw in some prompts for me so I had at least one person to write for who I knew would like some Gallaghercest, and then a teammate kindly adopted one as well. This was so lovely and much nicer than combing through the Creator's Choice of Fandom requests for someone who looked like they might enjoy an RPF incest ship.You Know That I Would Give You My Hand, 1.7k, Liam/Noel, fisting PWP. Set ???. One of the things about Battleship is a lot of the details I'd normally worry about, like era, just kind of get glossed over. However, I am incredibly proud of the title (which comes from their deep cut Sad Song).
“Oh fuck,” Liam said. He squirmed, and Noel could feel his every tremble and shiver of breath, because he was up to his wrist in Liam.
one in the oven, 2.1k, Liam/Noel, semi-public omegaverse pregnant sex PWP. Silly and porny and kind of schmoopy.
If anyone had asked Liam beforehand, he’d have guessed Noel would only get more squirrely once Liam had a very public baby on the way that was also very secretly Noel’s. Instead it was like the weird soup of hormones simmering in Liam was so strong that Noel was getting high off the fumes.
maybe tomorrow, 600 words, Liam/Noel. This ficlet is pure vibes, inspired by the "liminal spaces" tag. It might be my favorite thing I made for Battleship. Contains one of my favorite lines I've written this year:
A brother and a tune and a beer, which will never run out so long as he doesn’t drink any more of it.
And some other fandoms!
the land of gold seemed to hold him, Re-Animator, 1.6k, Herbert/Dan, wilderness survival and h/c. Another one that's mostly vibes, but this time the vibes are "the world has ended and all we have is each other." This is fact the THIRD fic of around this length that I have written for this ship on this theme, all with slightly different apocalypses.
A part of Dan wanted to be angry that they’d come up to here to begin with. So the world had ended, more or less; that didn’t mean they needed to run away from what little world there was left. They didn’t need to break camp this morning when the weather looked foul, and they didn’t need to take the shortcut Herbert insisted was indicated on the map, and—
But looking at Herbert’s face, pale and pinched with discomfort, all Dan wanted was to get him somewhere warm. “It can’t be that much farther, right?”
putting the ick in ichor, Buffyverse, 600 words, Buffy/Faith sex pollen. My forever fandom. <3 My most popular fic during the anon period (before I redated all the Oasis fics). I'm very pleased with this title, too.
“Crap. Didn’t Giles say the blood was poisonous?”
“I think the phrase was ‘mildly toxic,’” Faith said. She was still smirking, which meant Buffy… probably wasn’t going to die a miserable painful death? “Pretty sure I’m already feeling it. Aren’t you?”
steak, rare, Stardew Valley, 2k, Abigail gen horror with animal transformation and cannibalism. Out of all the stuff I wrote, this is the one I feel least sure about. I'm not sure it really works tonally, although there are some individual lines I liked, and writing the Abigail-Sam-Sebastian trio was fun.
“It just makes me so angry,” Abigail said. “We were here first, and Dad’s prices are cheaper than Joja Mart’s. He has a booth at all the community events—” Not that Abigail’s mom was always thrilled about that, but the rest of the town seemed to appreciate it. “—and our store even sponsors the egg hunt every year. And we don’t sell Joja Cola, which I’m pretty sure is what turned Shane’s teeth blue last month, so that seems like a point in our favor.”
“Hmm,” said the wizard.
Battleship!!
Aug. 13th, 2025 04:52 pmsnickficI signed up for Battleship this year, my second time, knowing that I would leave for vacation nine days in. That seemed fine, since I figured eight days of Battleship would probably be enough for me, and then I burned out in six days. 😅 Still, I received some things and I wrote a bunch of things, and as always the team atmosphere was very fun. I'll put the stuff I wrote in a different post.
Things I received:
no alarms and no surprises by![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
ElasticElla, Suspiria 2019, Susie/Madame Blanc, 800 words. A trippy little post-canon piece, and the one gift I received for one of my requests.
Dirty Water bydarkrosaleen, Jaws/The Witch crossover, Martin Brody/Thomasin, 900 words. I got offered this in DMs (as someonetimes happens in Battleship), and the combo was so wild I couldn't resist.
Wrist Day byNary, Letterkenny, Jonesy/Katy/Reilly, 1.5k. A very silly PWP with the humor and voices of the show, which I adopted when it was offered up on discord (as also sometimes happens in Battleship).
Things I received:
no alarms and no surprises by
Dirty Water by
Wrist Day by
OASIS CONCERT
Aug. 11th, 2025 11:13 amsnickficOn July 26 I saw Liam and Noel and the rest at their second night of five at Wembley Stadium in London, which has a capacity of around 90k and was completely sold out.
( So much more. So much. )
So yeah. Great concert, absolutely mind-blowing tour, my ship has gone from "will they ever speak to each again" to NIGHTLY HUGS AND HANDHOLDING. Everything about this reunion has exceeded my wildest dreams.
( So much more. So much. )
So yeah. Great concert, absolutely mind-blowing tour, my ship has gone from "will they ever speak to each again" to NIGHTLY HUGS AND HANDHOLDING. Everything about this reunion has exceeded my wildest dreams.
more new horror movies
Aug. 8th, 2025 11:53 amsnickficI have been to the theater a bunch since I got back, and am going again tonight to see Weapons, so before I build up even more of a backlog, here are my latest watches.
28 Years Later (2025). 28 years after the original rage virus that turns people into mindless flesh-eating monsters, a twelve year old boy named Spike leaves his safely quarantined island community and ventures to the mainland in hopes of finding medical help for his mother.
I have heard very mixed reviews of this movie, things like "interesting but messy." I honestly find this a little confusing, because on the whole I found this movie beautifully executed (it's Danny Boyle, after), emotionally coherent, very well-acted, and with only as many unlikely bits as one gets in any zombie/post-apocalypse movie. It's very earnest; I saw someone call it "sentimental, in a good way," which feels about right. I liked the island community, I liked the complicated relationship between Spike, his mom, and his dad. The moments the movie wanted me to find beautiful and moving generally worked for me.
I didn't love it the way some of my friends did; I think it just didn't have enough of my own personal id-bait in it. I thought it was a perfectly competent post-apocalyptic coming of age story, though.
The one fly in the ointment is the ending/cliffhanger, which feels like a visit from the schlockiest era of Mad Max. It's easy enough to just ignore that scene, though, at least until the second movie in the trilogy comes out. IMO this movie works fine without it.
Together (2025). Real-life spouses Dave Franco and Alison Brie star as a longtime couple whose stagnated relationship gets more strained when they move to the countryside, and then things get really weird after they go hiking and fall into a weird hole in the ground.
I feel like this movie knows exactly what tone and mixture of horror, humor, metaphor, and relationship drama it wants and mostly succeeds. Unfortunately that tone didn't really work for me, and I found the main couple annoying, especially Franco's character. Meanwhile the movie is NOT interested in the mechanics or backstory of its horror, fair enough, but those are the parts that I would have been most interested in.
The deal with the third significant character is pretty fun, and I appreciate the foreshadowing. I also appreciate that this is yet another horror movie this year with a casual, unmarked queer relationship in it.
Overall, this felt like a perfectly fine movie that was just not for me.
Strange Harvest (2025). A true crime mockumentary about one man's series of ritualistic killings.
If "Lovecraftian serial killer mockumentary" sends tingles down your spine, then this movie is for you. I would not say it does a lot over and above that description, but the slow unspooling of events and the eventual reveals (which mean more to us horror aficionados than to the people being interviewed) are all very solidly written. It also manages to be quite gory, which I feel is impressive given it's literally all shown via photographs and video taken after the fact. There's one particularly grisly kill that is not like anything I've seen before. Plus, you have to be charmed by a movie so indie that the guy playing the serial killer is also the production designer.
Watching this, I wondered why there aren't more horror mockumentaries. They feel like probably just one step up from found footage in terms of budget and complexity (okay, maybe two steps), and they allow for a lot of the same kind of storytelling. I would absolutely watch more of this kind of thing. (Any recommendations? I've seen Lake Mungo, and that's about it.)
Anyway, this movie is a solid example of the kind of thing it is, which happens to be a thing I like. If you watch it, be sure to stick around through the end credits for the little stinger.
28 Years Later (2025). 28 years after the original rage virus that turns people into mindless flesh-eating monsters, a twelve year old boy named Spike leaves his safely quarantined island community and ventures to the mainland in hopes of finding medical help for his mother.
I have heard very mixed reviews of this movie, things like "interesting but messy." I honestly find this a little confusing, because on the whole I found this movie beautifully executed (it's Danny Boyle, after), emotionally coherent, very well-acted, and with only as many unlikely bits as one gets in any zombie/post-apocalypse movie. It's very earnest; I saw someone call it "sentimental, in a good way," which feels about right. I liked the island community, I liked the complicated relationship between Spike, his mom, and his dad. The moments the movie wanted me to find beautiful and moving generally worked for me.
I didn't love it the way some of my friends did; I think it just didn't have enough of my own personal id-bait in it. I thought it was a perfectly competent post-apocalyptic coming of age story, though.
The one fly in the ointment is the ending/cliffhanger, which feels like a visit from the schlockiest era of Mad Max. It's easy enough to just ignore that scene, though, at least until the second movie in the trilogy comes out. IMO this movie works fine without it.
Together (2025). Real-life spouses Dave Franco and Alison Brie star as a longtime couple whose stagnated relationship gets more strained when they move to the countryside, and then things get really weird after they go hiking and fall into a weird hole in the ground.
I feel like this movie knows exactly what tone and mixture of horror, humor, metaphor, and relationship drama it wants and mostly succeeds. Unfortunately that tone didn't really work for me, and I found the main couple annoying, especially Franco's character. Meanwhile the movie is NOT interested in the mechanics or backstory of its horror, fair enough, but those are the parts that I would have been most interested in.
The deal with the third significant character is pretty fun, and I appreciate the foreshadowing. I also appreciate that this is yet another horror movie this year with a casual, unmarked queer relationship in it.
Overall, this felt like a perfectly fine movie that was just not for me.
Strange Harvest (2025). A true crime mockumentary about one man's series of ritualistic killings.
If "Lovecraftian serial killer mockumentary" sends tingles down your spine, then this movie is for you. I would not say it does a lot over and above that description, but the slow unspooling of events and the eventual reveals (which mean more to us horror aficionados than to the people being interviewed) are all very solidly written. It also manages to be quite gory, which I feel is impressive given it's literally all shown via photographs and video taken after the fact. There's one particularly grisly kill that is not like anything I've seen before. Plus, you have to be charmed by a movie so indie that the guy playing the serial killer is also the production designer.
Watching this, I wondered why there aren't more horror mockumentaries. They feel like probably just one step up from found footage in terms of budget and complexity (okay, maybe two steps), and they allow for a lot of the same kind of storytelling. I would absolutely watch more of this kind of thing. (Any recommendations? I've seen Lake Mungo, and that's about it.)
Anyway, this movie is a solid example of the kind of thing it is, which happens to be a thing I like. If you watch it, be sure to stick around through the end credits for the little stinger.
Books
Aug. 4th, 2025 12:07 pmsnickficAt long last I have been reading again! A tiny bit, mostly on airplanes!
Wild Spaces (2023), SL Coney. A boy's grandfather unexpectedly moves in and disrupts the boy's contented family life; also the boy might be turning into a monster.
I hated this! Unreservedly! This has pretensions of being literary, the kind where nobody gets a proper name except the dog, and the focus is entirely on small, sad family drama seen through the eyes of someone too young to correctly interpret all the details. The fact that the grandfather eventually turns out to be a shapeshifting eldritch horror who murders the boy's parents and his dog did not make me like it any better. Then the boy, who inherited the eldritch shapeshifter gene, murders his grandfather and reflects he is now alone in the world, an inhuman monster with only a transforming revived dog for a companion. Okay!!!
Deeplight (2019), Frances Hardinge. Born and orphaned on one of hundreds of islands who used to worship sea gods until the gods all killed each other a few decades prior, youngster Hark is determined to save his friend(?) Jelt from himself, the law, criminals who are rightfully angry with him, and being transformed into something unimaginable, all whether Jelt wants to be saved or not.
On one hand, I found the toxic friendship at the center of this story pretty difficult to read. Jelt is such a manipulative asshole, and there was so many points where I just wanted to get Hark away from him. OTOH, the execution is very strong, and I think it's probably a really good theme for kids to read about and think through, so A+ there.
But really what I am here for and the reason multiple people have recced this to me is the stuff with the sea gods, and friends, that stuff is very good. The gods when they lived were all enormous, all different, all awesome and horrible in their own unique ways, and I loved everything about them and how they played into the story. Hardinge's worldbuilding never disappoints, and it's fantastic here while also tying into bigger themes that feel very salient. But mostly: fucking amazing eldritch horrors.
In terms of sheer joy the story brought to me, this is probably now my second favorite Hardinge after Cuckoo Song.
Wild Spaces (2023), SL Coney. A boy's grandfather unexpectedly moves in and disrupts the boy's contented family life; also the boy might be turning into a monster.
I hated this! Unreservedly! This has pretensions of being literary, the kind where nobody gets a proper name except the dog, and the focus is entirely on small, sad family drama seen through the eyes of someone too young to correctly interpret all the details. The fact that the grandfather eventually turns out to be a shapeshifting eldritch horror who murders the boy's parents and his dog did not make me like it any better. Then the boy, who inherited the eldritch shapeshifter gene, murders his grandfather and reflects he is now alone in the world, an inhuman monster with only a transforming revived dog for a companion. Okay!!!
Deeplight (2019), Frances Hardinge. Born and orphaned on one of hundreds of islands who used to worship sea gods until the gods all killed each other a few decades prior, youngster Hark is determined to save his friend(?) Jelt from himself, the law, criminals who are rightfully angry with him, and being transformed into something unimaginable, all whether Jelt wants to be saved or not.
On one hand, I found the toxic friendship at the center of this story pretty difficult to read. Jelt is such a manipulative asshole, and there was so many points where I just wanted to get Hark away from him. OTOH, the execution is very strong, and I think it's probably a really good theme for kids to read about and think through, so A+ there.
But really what I am here for and the reason multiple people have recced this to me is the stuff with the sea gods, and friends, that stuff is very good. The gods when they lived were all enormous, all different, all awesome and horrible in their own unique ways, and I loved everything about them and how they played into the story. Hardinge's worldbuilding never disappoints, and it's fantastic here while also tying into bigger themes that feel very salient. But mostly: fucking amazing eldritch horrors.
In terms of sheer joy the story brought to me, this is probably now my second favorite Hardinge after Cuckoo Song.