Media diet for March 2026

Posted on 12 mins read View source

I watched 11h 23m of movies and 12h 38m of TV shows, a total of 24h 1m:

🎬 Movies

  • I Love You, Daddy (2017) – ⭐️ 5/10
    • Ever since this movie was shelved and then leaked shortly afterwards, I had been waiting for better version to eventually see the light of day. As I had enjoyed most of Louis CK’s standup and his show Louie even more so, I had also been excited for this movie back before the news broke.1 It’s been almost a decade now, I was still curious about the movie and it seems no better version will come out any time soon. So I finally gave in and watched the DVDScr – sure has been a long time since I last watched one of those. With a glorious resolution of 720x400 pixels and it being a black and white film, the experience was quite the change of pace from the 4K Dolby Vision experience I’ve grown accustomed to these days. Frankly I have no idea why this was in black and white, that choice did not add anything. Overall, the movie was okay. Pretty much what I’d have expected. I don’t think it was much weirder because of the revelations that made it into the lost item it is today. It was plenty weird just by itself – as a lot of his material always has been. And some of it made me laugh. As I said: Pretty much what I had expected. Not a great movie, though I wouldn’t go this far.
  • Warfare (2025) – ⭐️ 5/10
    • This was rather disappointing, as my expectations were really high after Civil War. I know it got a lot of praise for being realistic/authentic, but honestly it didn’t feel nearly as revolutionary in that regard as it seems to be praised for. Maybe it’s because I stopped watching Black Hawk Down-type movies a while ago? I don’t think I actually did – though my stance towards them definitely changed over the years. But I also think there have been other movies that already did similar things in the genre. Ultimately Warfare did not overcome the “There is no anti-war movies” mantra for me (and neither did Civil War, I don’t think it means you can’t make good movies in that realm), even though I can appreciate the message it intends to achieve.
  • La Jetée (1962) – ⭐️ 7/10
    • I rewatched 12 Monkeys in 2024 (still a banger!) and read up a bit on it afterwards. That’s when I learned that it’s based on this old short film, but it took me a while to be in the right mood to finally watch it. A really fascinating experience: Not only is it a short film, but it is composed almost entirely with still photos and voice over. I thought it was a bit too nebulous to be truly great, but it’s amazing how much of an effect you can achieve with so (comparatively) little. It also makes perfect sense to me that the bleak core of the story is of French origin (as opposed to coming out of Hollywood).
  • Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2026) – ⭐️ 6/10
    • This was very weird, but in a mostly good way. Unfortunately it didn’t manage to achieve greatness and ultimately felt like a weird blend of some Black Mirror episodes rather than a coherent movie. Although admittedly, that impression may at least partially be intentional given the subject matter(s). Sam Rockwell was pretty much perfect, so I was not surprised to learn that the script was written with him in mind for the role. I wish this ended up being better than it turned out, but I’m very glad it got made. At the very least this was really interesting, more than can be said for most of the algorithmic and focus-group’ed garbage coming out lately.
  • Ballad of a Small Player (2025) – ⭐️ 7/10
    • Quite fascinating but also very weird. I suppose the “Ballad” in the title was a fair warning, because it really felt more like that than a “normal” film. Nothing wrong with a movie not being normal, of course, but I wasn’t quite ready for how strange and (comparatively) hard to follow this would be – as well as sometimes pretty disgusting and off-putting. Nonetheless, the stellar performance from Farrell as well as the absolutely spectacular cinematography made this worth a watch. I wouldn’t necessarily say I fully came around to liking the “ballad” aspect of it, but the themes and questions raised in the film did stick around in my head for a while.
  • A History of Violence (2005) – ⭐️ 7/10
    • Watched this very spontaneously just a few hours after my brother recommended it – don’t recall ever hearing about it before. It was surprisingly good – at only 90 minutes it was a great reminder of how effective you can be in “so little” time. That almost feels like a lost art these days – the era of even comedies routinely crossing the two-hour mark. But even beyond its runtime, everything about this movie felt much more like something from 1995 than from 2005. It’s not perfect: Mostly solid acting from a pretty incredible cast, but there’s some egregiously bad writing/dialogue at times. But not bad enough to spoil the overall experience. I may need to rewatch Eastern Promises, the Cronenberg/Mortensen collaboration released two years after this.
  • Trap (2024) – ⭐️ 4/10
    • This is a laughably dumb flick, but I actually enjoyed it quite a bit. Hartnett plays it weird but oddly captivating, and Shyamalan is still pretty good at building up tension. Basically everything in this movie requires ludicrous suspension of disbelief. I do not just mean the larger plot, but like… this is not how concert merch vendors work. Or how concerts work, for that matter. Or the police, the FBI, a manhunt, phones… it’s all completely bonkers. And yet, especially in the first ~45 minutes I was thoroughly entertained despite all that. It falls off in the second half and should have ended a fair bit sooner than it did – that way it might have turned out as a 5/10 or even a 6.

📺 TV Shows

  • Hijack – S02 (8 episodes with 6h 7m)
    • Yeeesh, this was… not good. It wasn’t terrible either, which is similar to how I felt about the first season. A first season that really didn’t need a second one, so from that perspective I’d consider (mostly) maintaining quality a win. Having the entire season play mostly in Berlin should have been a nice gimmick in theory, and at least they did actually have a ton of actual German actors… but they all spoke the usual theater-like German that sounds nothing like actual human conversation and makes most of our domestic productions insufferable to watch. Idris Elba elevates this as almost anything else he’s in, I’d just prefer getting more good Luther seasons instead.

💬 Late Night & Talk Shows

  • Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
    • March 1, 2026: Police Body Cameras
    • March 8, 2026: USAID
    • March 15, 2026: J.D. Vance
    • March 22, 2026: Police Stings
    • March 29, 2026: Hungary
  • The Daily Show
    • March 2, 2026 - Jafar Panahi
    • March 16, 2026 - Mayor Matt Mahan
    • March 23, 2026 - Jake Sullivan
    • March 30, 2026 - Cindy Cohn

🎧 Music

I scrobbled 1125 tracks on 30 days in March 2026:

🎶 Top 10 Tracks

  1. The Smith Street Band – Everyone Is Lying To You For Money (77 plays)
  2. Queens of the Stone Age – Ode to Clarissa (35 plays)
  3. Queens of the Stone Age – Domesticated Animals (22 plays)
  4. Queens of the Stone Age – Paper Machete (20 plays)
  5. Queens of the Stone Age – A Song for the Dead (17 plays)
  6. Queens of the Stone Age – The Way You Used to Do (16 plays)
  7. Queens of the Stone Age – You Think I ain’t Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire (15 plays)
  8. Queens of the Stone Age – Feel Good Hit of the Summer (14 plays)
  9. Queens of the Stone Age – Little Sister (13 plays)
  10. Queens of the Stone Age – Emotion Sickness (12 plays)

Due to popular demand, QotSA month has been extended! It really was just the last 7 to 10 days of February during which QotSA took over my ears, so that continued well into March. I’m now able to listen to other music again… sometimes. I’m sure it’ll go over soon. Not that I’m in a rush, I freaking love this phase. Ode to Clarissa, a somewhat untypical track originally released only on Rated R in Japan, might be my new favorite song of theirs – and I didn’t even know it exists until now!
A different band takes the crown, though: Through the trailer for Everyone Is Lying to You for Money – looking very interesting, not just because Ben McKenzie2 made it – I discovered this amazingly addictive track of the same name. What a banger! 🤘

🧑‍🎤 Top 10 Artists

  1. Queens of the Stone Age (563 plays)
  2. The Smith Street Band (77 plays)
  3. The Prodigy (38 plays)
  4. Weezer (37 plays)
  5. Foo Fighters (34 plays)
  6. Greg Edmonson (21 plays)
  7. Wolfmother (16 plays)
  8. Arctic Monkeys (15 plays)
  9. Sportfreunde Stiller (14 plays)
  10. Hard-Fi (13 plays)

📚 Books

  • 📘 The Secret Place [Dublin Murder Squad #5] – ⭐️ 3/5
    • I struggled getting into this one, and now that I’ve finished it I consider it the weakest entry in the series. Especially during the first half of the book something about the writing was off. It seemed more convoluted, I often had to re-read sentences because I felt like I didn’t really get what it was trying to say. To be fair, I had some intensely stressful weeks that didn’t always make for relaxed reading time, but my irritation with the writing went on long and consistently enough that I don’t think it was just me. It got better after the halfway point – by which I was fairly interested in the story and invested in the characters, as per usual for the series. However, there was generally too many characters and I did not enjoy the narrative structure, with both time and POV flipping every other chapter. Another bizarre aspect: At some point around the first third there is an unexpected and blunt foray into what appeared to be explicitly supernatural stuff. This series has always played in a very grounded universe, where things certainly got spooky and creepy sometimes, but never actually otherworldly. I didn’t think this was done or resolved/explained very well, and it felt really out of place. The character studies and particularly the emotional impact of the ending still turned this around to above average, but I’m hoping the next (and final!) entry in the series returns to former glory.

🎙️ Podcasts

I listened to 18 episodes across 4 podcasts in March 2026:

🎮 Games

I played 4 different games for a total of 19.8 hours in March 2026.

  • IMMORTALITY
    • 🏆 Began and finished the entire game this month, unlocking all 27 achievements in 8.0 hours across 4 days. Wrote a 👍 review (305 words) on 2026-03-22.
  • Untitled Goose Game
    • 🏆 Began and finished the entire game this month, unlocking all 25 achievements in 6.0 hours across 3 days. Wrote a 👍 review (545 words) on 2026-03-08.
  • HITMAN World of Assassination
    • Played 3.6 more hours across 4 days, already unlocked all 83 achievements in the past. I had already written my 👍 review (438 words) back on 2023-11-27.
      • Went back for the new Resident Evil crossover contract, and also took care of the returning Bruce Lee mission that I missed during its initial release – I don’t like the timed exclusivity bullshit, but the game itself is just so incredibly good. (I even bought a Steam key for the now-unlisted second game so I can 100% that separately – just like I did with the first one, which I still owned from before the entire trilogy was rolled into the third game.)
  • Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes
    • Played for 2.2 hours across 3 days. Unlocked 2 new achievements this month, now at 6/10 total. Haven’t written a review yet.
      • Finally some achievement progress here, whoop! It’s a slow burn given that my partner and I usually only have 30 to 60 minutes to play per week, but it is always fun – and so satisfying when we master a new difficulty level.

  1. 🇩🇪 I’ve written a few words about engaging with his art “afterwards” during my awkward German blogging phase. ↩︎

  2. Welcome to the OC, bitch! ↩︎