Media diet for December 2025

Posted on 18 mins read View source

I watched 31h 56m of movies and 10h 57m of TV shows, a total of 42h 53m:

🎬 Movies

  • TRON: Ares (2025) – ⭐️ 4/10
    • A pretty turd is still a turd. I didn’t like the previous Tron movies either (the original “cult classic” one the least, actually). The only good thing to ever come out of that “franchise” is the Daft Punk soundtrack of the predecessor.
  • One Battle After Another (2025) – ⭐️ 8/10
    • Wow, that was quite the experience.
      It’s been a while since a movie captivated me as much – the 2h40m runtime didn’t feel long at all. Leo playing a young radical at the beginning was rather cringe to see, but after reflecting a bit I wonder if that wasn’t intentional. If it was, I’m not sure that can work (and not still be cringe despite the intentionality). The tonal mix of comedy and drama made for some more odd scenes, but those fit into the overall mood of the film quite well, and was actually part of what kept me engaged – wanting to see where this is going. Sean Penn was absolutely incredible, but the whole cast really delivered fantastic performances. Towards the end I thought that some things fell into place a bit conveniently, but that didn’t lessen the emotional (and physical) impact of the climax. I’m not much into video essays these days – still miss Every Frame a Painting – but Eric Ross shared some interesting thoughts, even if I wouldn’t necessarily agree with everything verbatim. Overall this was easily the best new movie I’ve watched this year.
  • Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) – ⭐️ 7/10
    • Fun! I still consider the second movie the best in the series (apparently a very rare opinion), but this was entertaining enough that I’ll gladly watch more.
  • Demolition Man (1993) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • I think I decided to rewatch this when it came up in some discussions of Idiocracy. I have never really liked any of Stallone’s movies (Rocky 1/2 are watchable, but the rest and all of Rambo is utter garbage – don’t @ me), but he’s not the worst casting choice here. Also, this dystopian world feels more realistic than Idiocracy – people in the latter are way too stupid for any of their complex systems or technology to still work. Having hindsight always makes these movies interesting on a meta level, beyond that it was just okay.
  • Love Actually (2003) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • This movie came up in the movie-based “escape room board game” advent calendar I got from one of my best friends this year. I didn’t remember the context of the famous cards scene, and the ensuing discussion reminded me that I’ve always considered The Holiday the better “romantic stuff with ensemble cast during Christmas time” movie. I hadn’t seen either in more than a decade, so I figured it’d be nice to revisit them.
      I had heard that Love Actually hasn’t aged well, but frankly I don’t see it – there’s plenty of imperfect humans in it (to put it very mildly), but that was true 20 years ago already. I don’t think I was nearly as progressive then compared to today, but I still didn’t think the movie portrayed a lot of aspirational role-model behavior when it came out. There certainly is a glamorizing aspect to what the movie is showing, but I mainly see it as portraying a slice of life – which unfortunately contains fat-shaming, cheaters and other unpleasant things. So my rating remains unchanged: It’s a competently made 6/10, but not more. The most interesting aspect of watching the movie for me was that it felt like a window into a different planet, one where there was still – despite the aforementioned human imperfection – so much hope and positivity.
  • The Holiday (2006) – ⭐️ 7/10
    • This will keep its 7/10 rating, validating my memory of it being the better film overall. It is at the same time a bit more and a bit less serious, but what I think gives this movie the edge is that it has a narrower focus which makes it a bit more impactful. I enjoyed the meta bit with one character being a movie trailer editor. This movie came out shortly after The Office started airing, and features young and not-yet famous John Krasinski for barely a couple of seconds. It was also funny to see young (but not as young as during his own barely-a-couple-of-seconds-part in Demolition Man!) Jack Black playing it so straight, before giving fully into his own persona in the subsequent decade.
  • Prisoners (2013) – ⭐️ 9/10
    • I’ve been meaning to watch the first Villeneuve/Deakins collaboration again – it’s one of my highest rated films of the previous decade. Still an absolute masterpiece, and it’s probably my favorite Gyllenhaal performance.
  • A House of Dynamite (2025) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • An interesting experiment, but I’d consider it flawed to failed. It starts with an incredibly strong performance by Ferguson. This first act is close to a 9/10 – it’s Riefenstahl Bigelow doing what she does best: Crafting palpable tension and jerking at emotions under the pretense of hyper-realism. I’m not gonna lie: I love that shit – hook the jingoism it straight into my anti-imperialist veins. Unfortunately the rest of the movie is (rather literally) just more of the same. That’s not always a bad thing, but some editing choices1 really hurt the overall experience. And once the tension begins to falter, the illusion of realism and competence porn stops working as well.
  • Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (2025) – ⭐️ 3/10
    • I bet this hits really hard if you’re a 12 year old, especially the “we have Inception hallway fight at home” scene. The first two were corny and far from perfect, but watchable. They should have called this one “Now You 3 Me” to signal that they now target the same crowd as the Fast & Furious movies. (I’m also getting really tired of the constant Abu Dhabi sanewashing.)
  • Roofman (2025) – ⭐️ 5/10
    • Meh. Not bad, but I wish I had known it was a dramatization beforehand so I could have skipped it. Bonus point for at least having some archival footage during the credits, but the story was changed so much that it’s a waste of time to watch the movie. Kirsten Dunst was fantastic, though. One interesting aspect was how well this movie emulated the common cinematic style of the time it is portraying – it felt notably different from new releases.
  • Bullet Train (2022) – ⭐️ 3/10
    • I skipped this movie when it came out because I expected it to not be very good. In a shocking turn of events it was not very good. Don’t remember ever seeing a movie trying this hard to be a Tarantino / Guy Ritchie flick. Just throwing shit into a blender, adding some extra gore and edge and there you go. Also, what the hell is going on with Sandra Bullock’s face at the end?!
  • Star Trek (2009) – ⭐️ 6/10

    • In 2023, I watched more than two weeks (raw runtime!) of Star Trek: The Original Series, TNG, DS9, Picard, and all the movies except for the new “soft reboot” trilogy. Prior to that I had only seen random TNG episodes on afternoon broadcasts and some movies of that era, about 20 years ago – and these new movies as they came out. So I was curious to see how I’d feel about them now that I leveled up my Trekkie status. I knocked this one down from 7 to 6/10 – I’d say it’s an okay sci-fi movie, but not a good Star Trek movie.

      Reading through older discussions online it was pretty sad that the overwhelming majority was “I don’t even like Star Trek, but this was great!” or something along those lines – though I guess that means “Mission Accomplished” given that this clearly was an attempt to win new audiences. What I found most interesting is how quickly these films aged – I know I say this often, but it sometimes felt more like an SNL skit about itself. Just the ridiculous, emotional tearjerker origin story intro sequence alone is such a mark of that era. But also the entire look and feel of the movie, and I don’t just mean the lens-flares (though I definitely do mean those as well, holy cow). The MCU hadn’t yet taken off when the first new ST movie came out – only Iron Man and (Norton’s) The Incredible Hulk had been released, but you can already feel a strong influence of what would take over that franchise here as well.

      Another interesting thing to observe in retrospect was my reaction to the joke about Kirk’s allergic reaction to a vaccine early on – mainly just an idiotic addition that is misplaced in a scene that’s supposed to be tense. But ever since the Corona pandemic I recoil when there’s even a hint of anything that people could interpret as support for vaccine conspiracy theories.

      That all sounds horribly negative, but as I said: It’s entertaining and well-made overall. And Beastie Boys on the soundtrack, always a plus.

  • Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) – ⭐️ 6/10

    • It really is fascinating how quickly these became dated. Doubling down on the lens-flares, and things like the font used for location titles all just scream 2010. As does the casting, adding Cumberbatch at peak popularity. Overall this was a slight improvement over the first entry – ironically feeling a bit less MCU-y, with less shitty banter during fights, and not every single character being a god damn comedian all the time.
      But I still can’t help but feel that this simply is not Star Trek. The premise for the plot is in contrast to what ST stands for, and it seems like a telling reflection of our own societal downfall that this story, with these characters and motivations, is what the writers came up with for a boldly going new Star Trek movie. As before, this doesn’t make it a bad movie per se –knocking this down from 7 to 6 as well, the sequel being closer to a 7 and the first one closer to a 5.

      I was delighted to be reminded of the Wikipedia Star Trek Into Darkness debate in the course of this rewatch journey, it even has a relevant XKCD!

  • Star Trek Beyond (2016) – ⭐️ 4/10
    • Well, now it’s getting a bit ridiculous. Beaming Kirk while driving on a motorcycle was kinda where I mentally checked out, that seems to be my red line for where I start considering it sacrilegious how far removed from classic ST the reboots had become. And as it turns out, having the Beastie Boys on the soundtrack is not always a plus. Mainly I found it really sad that they didn’t write anything good for Idris Elba to work with, what a waste. I’m actually still upgrading this from 3 to 4/10, though. I don’t recall why I went that low when I saw it originally. In the larger context it’s not that bad – just normal bad.
  • Black Bag (2025) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • Good, but could have been much better if I had actually cared about any of the characters. I’m not sure if this was intentional, but I felt that it tried to be cool and instead ended up being very sterile and detached. Some scenes broke through that, but not enough. I liked how much the movie was able to do with its (nowadays revolutionarily) short runtime of just above 90 minutes, but at times it was a bit hard to fully follow along.

📺 TV Shows

  • South Park – S28 (5 episodes with 1h 56m)
    • And thus ends my great South Park experience of 2025: Replayed both games, rewatched the entire show, and now caught up with the latest season after it finally aired completely. My conclusion from last month remains: The level of disrespect and disgust for Trump is exactly right. In fact it should be the only way for the media to engage, because portraying him as a kooky uncle like SNL still loves to do is borderline being complicit at this point. However, I still would really, really like to get some classic South Park again – as opposed to what feels more like “The Trump and friends show in the style of South Park”. Not that I’d go as far as saying “South Park sucks now”.
  • Pluribus – S01 (9 episodes with 7h 33m)
    • Vince Gilligan proved his capability for greatness with BB and BCS, so I was curious enough to make an exception to my rule of only watching new shows once they have fully concluded. The show was very well done (mostly, some VFX were jarringly bad) and it definitely piqued my interest – but I immediately regretted my decision. They had a two-season order all the way back in 2022, and yet after S01 has aired they don’t even know when they’ll start shooting season two, and apparently haven’t even figured out the story yet? It’s going to be late 2027 before the next couple of episodes, and if it does end up being four seasons (as they seem to envision) it will probably take about ten years for 36 episodes of a TV show. Thanks Netflix, love the disruption.

💬 Late Night & Talk Shows

  • The Daily Show
    • December 1, 2025 - Elizabeth Kolbert
    • December 8, 2025 - Malala Yousafzai

🎧 Music

I scrobbled 825 tracks on 29 days in December 2025:

🎶 Top 10 Tracks

  1. Die Toten Hosen – Madelaine (aus Lüdenscheid) (11 plays)
  2. HEALTH – Tears (8 plays)
  3. Metallica – Master of Puppets (8 plays)
  4. Mariah Carey – All I Want for Christmas Is You (7 plays)
  5. Genesis – I Can’t Dance (4 plays)
  6. Die Toten Hosen – Hang on Sloopy (4 plays)
  7. Fettes Brot – Schieb es auf die Brote (3 plays)
  8. Sportfreunde Stiller – Ein Kompliment (3 plays)
  9. The White Stripes – When I Hear My Name (3 plays)
  10. The Kills – Sour Cherry (3 plays)

🧑‍🎤 Top 10 Artists

  1. Die Toten Hosen (22 plays)
  2. Die Ärzte (19 plays)
  3. Ramin Djawadi (15 plays)
  4. Metallica (15 plays)
  5. Weezer (13 plays)
  6. Darren Korb (13 plays)
  7. The White Stripes (11 plays)
  8. The Offspring (11 plays)
  9. Fettes Brot (10 plays)
  10. Limp Bizkit (10 plays)

📚 Books

  • 📘 Animal Farm – ⭐️ 4/5
    • This was much more interesting than I expected. I only had rough knowledge about the book, besides knowing “it’s a classic”.2 It was in my library for years but I always skipped it when picking my next read – for fear of it being long and complex. Turns out it’s just a novella, about half as long as what I read on average. It’s also not very complex, in fact it is extremely on the nose and easy to read. I’m certain that I didn’t pick up on most of Orwell’s references, but that didn’t hurt my experience. However, I found the two appendices in my edition almost more intriguing than the story itself – both Orwell’s “Proposed Preface” and “Preface to the Ukrainian Edition” gave fascinating context that I wasn’t really aware of. The Publishing section of the Wikipedia article gives a good overview. What I also learned from that article: Apparently Andy Serkis has been working on a movie adaptation for almost a decade?!3
  • 📘 The Soviet Union: A Very Short Introduction – ⭐️ 2/5

    • Another one that I’ve had in my library for a very long time – certainly before the full scale invasion in 2022, but I think even before Russia started the war in 2014. I don’t recall who or what recommended it to me, maybe I became interested in it during The Americans. Anyway, all that to say that these days it feels harder than ever to trust anything on this topic, but looking at the author I feel reasonably sure that while it may be biased it is not propaganda.
      The reason why I skipped this book for so long is that I thought the title was a joke: That even a brief history of the USSR would be of epic proportions, and that despite the title it would take me months to get through it. Given my renewed curiosity about the subject thanks to the book above, I saw that they’re actually pretty much equal in length and figured now was the time.

      However, it still took me quite a while to get through it, because I really didn’t enjoy this very much. I think my main gripe is the structure: Instead of doing it chronologically, the book is grouped thematically. This approach is well reasoned, but personally I found it extremely hard to follow because I’m not already a scholar on the topic and can’t easily jump around in the temporal context all the time. What the book chose to explain in detail and what it assumed to be pre-existing knowledge often felt very arbitrary.
      Another aspect I really disliked was the needlessly dense language. You’re already dealing with an extreme amount of complexity from compacting down the subject matter so much. Using simple language would help make it more approachable. Here’s a few examples:

      Mass uprisings and public disorder were temporary phenomena attendant on the mass migration and attenuated modernization of the 1950s and 1960s.

      What does that even mean? It is worded so confusingly that I looked up both “attendant” and “attenuated”, but actually my original guesses for their meaning were already correct. The sentence still does not make sense to me: Were the uprisings attendant on (migration & modernization)? Or were they attendant on migration, and they did attenuate modernization? Maybe arcane grammatical rules have a definitive answer to that question, but I doubt most English speakers could confidently say so.

      In the Brezhnev period, such instances of conflict occurred only about once every two years (and they were concentrated in the early years of 1966–8) […]

      What the heck kinda notation is “1966–8”?! Isn’t this whole sentence ultimately just saying that the instances of conflict (mainly) only occurred in ‘66 and ‘68? If not, what is it saying?

      Nevertheless, there was some interesting things I’ve learned from this – I was not aware much of the relations between the US and the USSR before WW2, for example. See the Volgograd Tractor Plant, or industrialization more broadly. But my key takeaway is that I still hate reading non-fiction and will always prefer a Wikipedia-binge where I can pick my own journey and dial into particular details based on my needs and interest.

      I’ll end with two painfully prophetic quotes:

      The Soviets were happy to see the West weak and divided, and to that end were happy to see a fall in support for the German socialist party (underestimating, like others, the Nazi threat).

      [W]e can expect investigation of the Soviet experience to remain intense until 2050 or so. For those who have the stomach for it, there is much to look forward to.

🎙️ Podcasts

I listened to 15 episodes across 4 podcasts in December 2025:

🎮 Games

I played 3 different games for a total of 96.4 hours in December 2025.

  • Minecraft Dungeons
    • Played for 77.4 hours across 17 days. Unlocked 62 new achievements this month, now at 102/104 total. Haven’t written a review yet.
      • Good lord, I’m so glad I’m almost done with this now – just two more achievements left for January (because they are time-sensitive, that already tells you all you need to know about this garbage game).
  • Assassin’s Creed Mirage
    • 🏆 Finished this up in 11.0 hours across 4 days, unlocking all remaining 11 (of 61) achievements. Haven’t written a review yet.
      • I had already 100%ed this, it just got some more achievements in the blood money expansion. The expansion story was as bad as the main game, but some of the new gameplay challenges were almost entertaining.
  • N++
    • Played for 8.0 hours across 7 days. Unlocked 2 new achievements this month, now at 28/33 total. I had already written my 👍 review (190 words) back on 2016-08-25.
      • Phew, I think that’s it for this game – the remaining five achievement are year-long challenges I currently have no real desire to take on. Maybe in another decade. :)

  1. Spoiler warning, the first act should have ended just a bit earlier. That way, each subsequent repetition would reveal a bit more progress in the situation. Other than many people I’m okay with the ending overall, but the first act had by far the most dramatic and impactful climax, so tension throughout the movie actually decreased when the opposite should have happened. ↩︎

  2. Spoiler warning, although what I’m saying is revealed on the first few pages: I had no idea that the animals on the farm would be talking and reading – and be the actual protagonists. I always thought it would be metaphorical, maybe about animal cruelty due to industrial revolution developments. ↩︎

  3. In fact, the trailer was released just a few days after I finished the book, impeccable timing! Unfortunately it looks like that movie will be a crime against humanity, what the heck. ↩︎