The early screening I saw began with a promo title card featuring a boombox playing a cassette labeled “BFF Mixtape.” This seems a strange choice for a movie whose theoretical core audience has never heard of mixtapes let alone made one. The movie itself begins in the classroom of young Jo and Raissa as Jo gives a presentation explaining the island of Nakali and the creatures that inhabit it. We then follow Jo and Raissa as they grow up and bond over all manner of childhood activities. Including that true millennial rite of passage, watching R rated movies on broadcast TV. In this case a live action clip from Predator which is featured in low-def glory on the girl’s TV and censored by a perfectly timed clap. This scene is the biggest clue that we are not dealing with a normal kids movie here.

Am I reading too much into this? It’s a joke for the parents, but we go further when the girls reach Nakali and the plot mimics The Hangover. Jo and Raissa awaken with no memory of the last twelve hours having lost the magic sand dollar that will send them home. Their only hope is the weredog Raww who spent the night partying with the girls. A fact proven by his new tattoo which matches and equally new one on Jo’s arm. In case you are doubting The Hangover comparison the tattoos read “The Wild Pack.” There is a lot of humor and a battle with a vampire demon and a perfectly predictable twist. Some odd choices like the bizarre merman character and his talking starfish nipple covers, certain to leave some parents questioning if they really should be showing this to their kids. In the end the real villain is a memory stealing demon motivated by a desire to experience the world but crippled by a fear of leaving her home.
Is this a kids movie? An adult comedy? It’s a little of both. Parents shouldn’t be so uptight anyway. Let your kids watch Predator. And with some luck the kids who see Forgotten Island will wonder about that old analog tech and realize the memory stealing monster living in a cave is the same as someone who watches shorts all day, letting the opportunity to make real memories and build the friendships and make life worth living slip away. A thesis summed up best by the very first line of the movie, Jo screaming, You people sitting in the dark, wake up!

Waves flow across an
ocean of infinite time
uniting future-past

This haiku was inspired by thoughts around the topic of retro-causation, the idea that the future reaches back and influences the past. This is one way to explain premonitions that people report. Have you ever had a premonition? Do you believe the future already exists and can influence the past?

In this tragic story, Lon Chaney plays Paul Beaumont, a scientist whose benefactor, Baron Regnard, stole his research and his wife. In his despair Beaumont has become a circus clown, famous for his nightly reenactment of his humiliation before the academy of science, each slap bringing the crowd to laughter. In the finale HE is tied up, his heart ripped out, and his body mishandled in mock funeral, a final and ultimate humiliation.

This is dark stuff. The punishment and humiliation suffered by Beaumont are through no fault of his own. He worked hard for years to produce his thesis which was hailed by the academy when presented by Regnard. He loved and cherished his wife. There is no catharsis in his art. Rather this performance represents the ongoing suffering within Beaumont. The message is the world doesn’t care about your suffering. The world will take your tragedy and turn it to comedy. The crowds will laugh as your heart is stamped into the dirt.

The movies main plot focuses on Consuelo, the new, young circus rider whose father is an impoverished aristocrat seeking to marry her to Baron Regnard and regain his fortune. Consuelo has fallen in love with her riding partner Bezano while also gaining the silent admiration of Beaumont. The movie’s most touching scene happens when Consuelo mends Beaumont’s costume, fixing his heart and returning it to its place. Chaney’s silent acting shows more than any words the depth of his feelings. Later in the film Beaumont sees Consuelo’s despair at her impending marriage to Regnard and he confesses his love, pledging to rescue Consuelo from her fate. A confession that elicits a heartbreaking slap from Consuelo who has taken the confession as a joke, replying with the mocking gesture from Beaumont’s act.

This time Beaumont’s resolve doesn’t break and he sets out to stop the marriage. He receives a final mortal wound to his heart but succeeds in preventing the marriage. Making his final curtain call Beaumont dies performing his act and clutching his now bloody heart.

The subject of Beaumont’s thesis was the origin of mankind. It is fitting that the story of his life would be revealing of the nature of man’s world. Tragedy turns to comedy and back again as the world keeps spinning.

Generational anxieties are nothing new in cinema, especially horror, and I was reminded of Stephen King’s The Long Walk. A story of young men walking until one by one they give up or collapse and only one is left. While King was reacting to the prime horror of his generation, the draft and slaughter of the Vietnam War, It Ends confronts the horror at the center of gen Z. That life is meaningless. That all progress has stopped. That even in death there is no peace. These are the existential questions we all must face. Raising these questions while never truly facing them is where It Ends has its weakest moments. The questions present themselves but the group is not up to the task of addressing them. Even with four characters we only get three options: Give up and join the mindless masses in the woods; Form a routine and ignore the horror for as long as possible; Keep going no matter the costs. A little more philosophical heft would go a long way.
The biggest strength of It Ends is provoking thought in the audience. What are you doing with your life? How do you find peace with it? If you were on this road what would you do?

A24’s Anthony Bourdain (Dominic Sessa) biopic doesn’t fit that genre. Tony isn’t a biopic, it is a bildungsroman. That’s a German loan word meaning coming of age story and I learned it while watching the dinner scene in which Bourdain’s mother responds to his enthusiasm over a applying for a Vassar writing fellowship by criticizing his intellect and implying that he’s maybe not up to being a novelist. This scene tells us all we need to know about Bourdain’s life up to this point. No matter how good he is, how much he knows, or what he accomplishes it is never enough. A single misspoken word and his mother is ready to remind him that he isn’t perfect and, therefore, isn’t worthy. This creates an odd combination with Bourdain projecting a fragile arrogance, buttressed by his many lies. When he doesn’t get the writing fellowship he lies and says he did. When he is told that his crush is unapproachable he pursues her anyway and follows her to Provincetown. When he runs out of money and needs a job he lies about his work experience.
The many lies of Bourdain do catch up with him in big and small ways throughout the movie. With every prank his coworkers pull or every failing he demonstrates before his mentor, known only as “Chef” and played to perfection by Antonio Banderas, there is a sense that Bourdain is learning. The positive side of his mother’s harsh moral lesson is that each failure is an opportunity for growth. By the end of the movie we can look at this arrogant prick who deserved the black eye he received his first night in Provincetown and see a man who has been cured of his childishness and ready to come into his own.
Here I will confess that I am not particularly familiar with Anthony Bourdain the man. I haven’t read Kitchen Confidential and I’ve never seen more than a few clips of him online. I’m coming at this in an ignorance that will not be common for the target audience. Even my cursory knowledge is enough to know Bourdain still had his demons. One summer isn’t enough to morally perfect a man. It’s only enough to make a boy try to live his life as one and learn the importance of honesty. Especially the importance of being honest with yourself.

Eli Roth’s remake of Ice Cream Man (1995) is the product of a man who spent too much time wandering the horror section of Blockbuster Video and suffering endless disappointment with the direct-to-video releases that never lived up to the promise of their cover art. I recognize this affliction as I suffered from it myself. As soon as I heard the title I could recall the original version with Clint Howard holding up an ice cream cone with a skull shaped scoop of vanilla. And while I never rented that particular video I saw plenty of movies like it.

The difference is my disappointment stemmed from the lack of characters and plot development where Roth’s seems to have stemmed from the tepid amounts of violence and gore. His remake of Ice Cream Man solves his own problem quite well. The movie begins with by quickly establishing the main characters and then proceeds to have the children of the Baleen Bay, seized in violent thrall to the titular ice cream man, enact horrific violence. It is little more than an hour long version of the ending to Weapons. Children wake up, murder their parents, go to school, murder their teachers. That’s it. That’s the movie. Near the end Roth may have realized the audience would like an explanation of what is going on here. This is where the protagonists discover the most unreliable character in all of cinema to tell us that a wizard did it. Ok, technically a necromancer.

If you want to attempt to diagnose the anxieties of modern life you can read a little more into the mind controlled/demonic children plot line and see it as parents fearful of the impact of technology. The pliable minds of children being drawn into TikTok brainrot, internet echo chambers, and AI psychosis resulting in an unrecognizable monster that will destroy the world the parents labored to create. Brainwashing and mind control are emerging as themes in contemporary horror and this is worth studying. It’s a shame Roth does so little with the concept and is satisfied with merely painting the screen with gallons of blood, producing a movie that is best suited for streaming background noise. Or, better still, not watched at all.

“One Night Only” stars Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro it release August 7, 2026. I saw an early screening.

“One Night Only” is a movie with a simple premise, “The Purge” but with sex instead of violence. I have yet to see a Purge movie so I can’t judge the accuracy of this statement. What I can say is “One Night Stand” holds a mirror up to modern dating and shows us an uncomfortable yet familiar world.
Three years ago the United States banned all forms of extramarital sex, a law enforced through barely believable 5G enabled tattoo technology. Forget that this is absurd on every level and roll with it. The movie isn’t interested in the society outside of the one night (the term used to describe yearly the twelve hour long bacchanal where single people can legally have sex) we are only shown the world when the population is desperate to find strangers to hookup with and no one wants to be left out of the one night of supposed freedom. This is where our protagonists Owen and Allie find themselves. Owen reeling from his girlfriend deciding to leave him for the bed of another man and “explore” herself. Telling him at the dinner where he intended to propose that he needs to get out of his box too. Allie hoping to not repeat the mistakes of years past, falling for beautiful men on the one night and finding herself ghosted soon after. Allie meets up with her best friend and the two pledge to be there for each other and make good decisions. This pledge is immediately broken and Allie finds herself fending for herself as the friend runs off with a man she met waiting in line for the bathroom. While it is played for comedy in the moment this decision will prove wise as it works out for the friend at the end of the movie. And here the movie starts building its premise. The one night isn’t some aberration or absurd premise to make a funny movie. The one night is our society. Stuck in a perpetual tailspin of seeking immediate pleasure, exploring other options, looking for something better, and ultimately finding nothing of value. Those who succeed in escaping the hedonistic death spiral have no special skill beyond mere luck. The entire system is obviously crazy to those watching from the outside.
Despite almost every scene featuring at least one “Repeal” flag we don’t get any sense that there is real resistance to the mandate. Owen and Allie have real chemistry and obviously belong together. They remain apart, running on parallel tracks, due to the pressure of the one night and the desire to find something “perfect.” Aside from one political caricature on TV we hear no opinions in favor of the mandate. Why does it persist? Much like our own world the state of affairs is obviously untenable but no one has the power to resist the forces impacting their lives.
As the night goes on Allie meets some a good looking playboy liar and gross celebrity crush. Owen meets a scammer and a freaky cougar who he embarrasses away by walking in on his mother’s bubble wrapped fetish. All of this adds to the feeling of desperation and sadness surrounding the one night. Who could possibly be enjoying any of this?

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In the final hours of the one night Owen and Allie resigned to their respective disasters meet in Owen’s pizzeria and discuss what they like best about sex. Allie confesses to enjoying the build up; Owen to the after, the two people together sharing a secret. Neither of these situations require sex yet society has come to focus solely on the act. It’s only when Owen and Allie stop their pursuit of sex that they manage to see the good in each other. A scene that finally makes it clear that Owen and Allie belong together. Allie then fumbles the moment encouraging Owen to go back to his girlfriend who calls and tearfully apologizes admitting she couldn’t go through with her plans. A decision that Allie makes believing it is the right one for Owen, abandoning the hedonism of the one night and showing genuine care for another person. It’s a comedy so of course Owen realizes this but too late to find Allie again until he reflects on the meaningful parts she shared of herself which leads him to the only possible place Allie can be where they decide to remain together and wait for the next one night before having sex.
“One Night Only” is a pretty silly movie when you stop to think about it. Many of the jokes overstay their welcome or simply never land. Owen and Allie make decisions so dumb you want to slap them both. There’s an extended scene involving finding a condom that verges on slapstick. And yet this movie has a real heart. It’s a movie that baits the audience in with a debauched, sexually obsessed story and then turns a mirror to the audience and says, This is you, and dares you to share its belief in romance and true love above hedonistic pursuits.

Up there look to such a high place and see how many fall
reach the top a desire only realized by those willing to fall

The path not clear and the goal obscure, do you climb?
to reach the top? You may dream but no, you will fall

Down, down, and thud all progress gone without a trace 
now reset will you begin again knowing what it's like to fall?

Was it a mistake that sent you down? A simple slip and then...
or did you give up again and choose to jump instead of fall?

Then why begin again? Surely you can't win. The climb is 
but repetition. Never reach the top, or anything, only fall

So learn to love it, Daniel, that climb and know what is 
at the bottom will always catch you and save you from the fall

This poem was inspired by true events. Literally falling off the wall in a climbing gym. I first thought it would be scary but it turned out to be a lot of fun. So there’s a reminder to not let your fear stop you from trying new things. Especially when those things are what twelve year old you would have found to be awesome.

Heatwave day three
Two eyes looked up from the pavement
and told the story of death

dropped and melted
the spine there visible
in the pool of a former body

Soft summer treat
cool relief laid low
dripping down the pavement

a ghostly outline now
to be feasted on 
by the ants

It’s been a while since I posted anything and what can I say? Life’s been busy. This poem was inspired by a scene I saw on a recent walk during the heat wave. Pictured here:

Pick red you live, guaranteed.
If half or more pick blue everyone lives,
under half and blue pickers all die!
Which button do you choose?

    I don't know, I say, Let me think—

A machine predicted your choice.
It has yet to be wrong.
Box B is empty if the machine thinks you're greedy.
You're a millionaire if it thinks otherwise.
Are you taking one, or both?

    Where did the machine get this money?

You see three doors and make a guess
Monty Hall opens one with a goat
Care to change your guess?
Win a car or find another goat?

    Umm

There's a trolley and two tracks—

    Fed up I ask, 
    Will you put away the shopping cart?

Social media had quit a few of these rationalist problems floating around this week. I decided to have some fun and write a poem referencing the themes.

We start with the question that took over this week, the Red vs. Blue button problem,then Newcomb’s Problem, which has a good video discussion. Some classics; the Monty Hall problem and the trolley problem before finally closing with the only one you will ever encounter in real life, the shopping cart problem.

Nihilist penguin marches to doom
toward mountains of the interior 
"He's just like me," you say

"But not like me," I say.
This is the penguin like me
napping and unbothered

There in the almost dark dusk of early spring
we knelt side by side by the wet concrete
and you told me to go first and I said, No you first
so we started together and the sticks broke
in that thick wet stone.
We should have known but how could we?
That what flowed smooth in the day
would be firm in the night.
Less like writing and more a scratching
the effort made us strain, at last we each drew
our own half of the heart that outlined us
and with the veil of night we ran home laughing.

I passed that spot today—I saw them
breaking and carting away our slab
without ceremony

Here is the full text with my erasure poem in the highlights. Plain text follows:

Rock, granite, granite, stones
sea-wind
stones, dust, leaves, wind, smoke

ducks, nest-birds, coasts

horse

coast, ocean, fish

sky, sea
gulls, sky

day, dawn, dusk

hawk, night,
firefly, shore, mouse
.
.
.
God

That one work “Prehuman” jumped out at me and I removed all that was human from the text leaving only the nouns we can find in nature. That which existed before man and will surely exists after.

I.
Snow melt sounds like mountain streams
tinkling down the city streets
almost at peace when a car horn
blares

II.
Not snow but minute hail
falling and making the sound
of bacon frying

Then there’s that other one that symptom
forgetting things before you know them
What’s it called?
Something like a cloud or is it a cloud?
A Cloud of Unknowing like the book
I bought it and still haven’t read it
Or is it…………
I’m sorry what was I saying?
Yes, symptoms like a cloud
Like a brain cloud 
that’s what killed Tom Hanks
in Joe Versus the Volcano, right?
No wait, he doesn’t die in that one
Sorry, what was I saying?

In this poem I try to capture the feeling of dealing with brain fog. Let me know if you can relate

Hearing the thump thump thump of her racing heart
over alien noise that barely registers as sound
and they feel the very room itself as it spins
shattering windows and walls—turning the world spiny

I’ve been feeling a little stuck and not writing much poetry. Today I broke out a little randomness to and used the words I came up with in solving today’s Wordle puzzle at the end of each line. If you’re feeling stuck I recommend adding a little randomness to the mix.

Can’t login
Launch failed
No resources available

DDoS at the data center
Read poems
Write poems

The snow day reborn

I’m supposed to be working right now but the data center that hosts my company is down. Until it’s back I get to just chill here on Substack, reading and writing poetry. It made me think of getting a snow day from school.

The fisherman so poised with spear in hand
spends everyday in the rivers clear water
his catch piled high upon the wet sand
he could eat for a month, why the slaughter?

They say years ago he sailed the open sea
where the fish were big and he a success
then he spied a fish massive and mighty
a golden marlin, stolen in trespass

And awoke the sea dragon, king of storms,
in fury he sent forth thunder and squall
that fisherman’s love they tore from his arms
appeasingly sent to the  dragon’s thrall

Now he practices spearing fish whose size
most closely matches the dragon’s eyes

This sonnet was written for the Clarity Cut Ekphrastic Challenge. For more information see here:

Crafting Clarity

The Clarity Cut: Ekphrastic Challenge

I’m excited to introduce a new monthly poetry contest…

Read more

9 months ago · 28 likes · 16 comments · JC

Fat pigeon—I saw you there 
on the floor outside the 
Penn station souvenir shop.

Do you survive on discarded pizza crusts
and fallen Insomnia Cookie crumbs?
Station bird, do you remember how to fly?

What’s inside? Poetry of course. Featuring work by myself, , , and a special guest poet whose work doesn’t appear online. If you want one to call your own simply send a piece of mail with a return address to:

Daniel V. Gaglio
PO Box 540114
Flushing, NY 11354-0114