0008 — WEEKLY REVIEW (April 3 - 17, 2026)
Ok, I guess I finally found a reason to make this weekly review a recurring thing—and that is to somehow organize my head and a lot of the stuff I’ve been up to, from media consumption to work. So here’s a quick fire of things I’ve been watching, reading, jerking off to (jk), and working on.
Movies and Shows
Let’s rewind a couple of weeks. For Easter, I revisited Bill Lustig’s Maniac Cop trilogy. You could argue this was the real first viewing of these films, since the first time I crossed paths with them I was a tiny pea of a person and not much into horror—mostly because horror was doing its job and scaring the hell out of me.
I remember these movies playing late at night on Cinemax or HBO, or whatever channels we had access to via an illegal antenna in late-’80s/early-’90s (a common practice in Colombia then), and little did I know how much I’d come to appreciate them decades later. So here we are.
Now, unintended as it was, Easter themes (you know—Catholic punishment, repentance, resurrection, blah, blah) align perfectly with those of the Maniac Cop movies. So if you feel compelled to see Matt Cordell as a Jesus figure, don’t worry—I’m there with you.
Let’s be clear, though. These movies aren’t great by any stretch of the imagination, but they are at least sincere in their attempt to entertain.
Of all three, part 2 is my favorite. Not only do you get a string of unexpected twists, turns, and stunts that keep you glued to the screen, but you can also trace threads of a more complex narrative involving city corruption, etc. So again—very Biblical.
Let’s hope Nicolas Winding Refn’s cocaine-infused remake/reboot finally happens.
With Robert D’Zar as the titular Maniac Cop, Matt Cordell, you had the right to remain silent… forever. What’s not to love?
Keeping it within the Easter themes (crucifixion, the devil—Old Nick—and all that), I finally tackled what was, for me, the most anticipated movie of the year: 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Unsurprisingly, the movie rules, and I’m really sad I missed it in theaters. One of the things I enjoy about Alex Garland’s writing is how easy it is to spot what he clearly likes. In this case, The Bone Temple feels like a Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventure set in a post-apocalyptic landscape. Plus, Ralph Fiennes is just terrific.
That viewing also prompted me to revisit another Garland gem, Dredd (2012), which popped up on Tubi (the best streamer out there) and served as his unofficial directorial debut.
I also went on a bit of a Paul Verhoeven kick and revisited Total Recall (1990) and Starship Troopers (1997). Is there anything new to say about those two at this point? Probably. Verhoeven is one of the few exceptional directors whose films remain relentless and unapologetically relevant.
Other movie highlights from the last two weeks:
(NW: New Watch. R: Rewatch)
Relay (2021). Slick, unexpected corporate thriller—the kind we used to get more of—starring an always excellent Riz Ahmed. (NW)
No Sudden Move (2021). Soderbergh cooking with gas in this Elmore Leonard–style crime flick where white-collar criminals aren’t that different from street crooks. (R)
The Hypnotic Eye (1960). Terrific setup involving hypnotism and a series of bizarre incidents of self-mutilation. Dog-shit ending, though. Someone please remake this. (NW)
Girl with Hyacinths (1950). Part of the Criterion Channel’s Nordic Noir collection. An unlikely sleuth and his wife seek justice after the mysterious death of their neighbor strikes them as suspicious. Very sad, very haunting. (NW)
Enemy (2013). Come for the urine-colored imagery, stay for the doppelgängers and spider metaphors. A somewhat forgotten Denis Villeneuve gem—concise, compact, surreal, ambiguous. My jam. (R)
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning (2025). Unnecessarily maligned. Not as strong as its predecessors (Fallout still the best of the series), but far from garbage. Bloated and as puffy as Tom Cruise’s face, sure—but still engaging, and oddly poignant about AI as an existential threat (Things are bad out there, folks!) (NW)
If you feel compelled to see what else I’ve been watching, follow me on Letterboxd.
Also this week, via Colors of the Dark, I dipped into Netflix and started Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen and Jo Nesbø’s Detective Hole.
The former, created by Haley Z. Boston, has a strong, intriguing first episode but quickly devolves into something I can’t quite wrap my head around. To be fair, I’m still two episodes from the end, but at this point it feels stretched thin just to fill an eight episode quota. I’m still hopeful, but this is veering into American Horror Story territory and I’m a tad wary.
On the other hand, Detective Hole has been incredibly entertaining. I’m a sucker for washed-up detective stories—especially Scandinavian-flavored ones. I was fully in once I saw Warren Ellis and Nick Cave did the score. If you’re into serial killers, alcoholic detectives, and city corruption—the usual tropes—this is for you Also nice to see Joel Kinnaman playing a completely despicable human being.
Not everything’s been great on the streaming front, though. DTF, St. Louis on HBO left me feeling more like “WTF, St. Louis,” with the series’ endless parade of misery dressed up as whimsy—ultimately empty and dull. I also tried returning to the fifth and final season of Hacks, but found it so cringey and unfunny I bailed pretty quickly—probably for good.
Back on Netflix, I attempted the new shark attack movie Thrash, but couldn’t make it past the 15-minute mark. Not worth expanding on, just some of the most precarious writing I’ve seen in a movie in a long while.
Music
Another week, another batch of great discoveries. I guess sponsoring Spotify’s honcho investing in AI weapons systems does, at least, get you a few musical highlights.
On a different note, I’m surprised more people don’t check their weekly recommendations—they’re missing out on a lot of good stuff.
Anyway, this past week I was pretty fixated with these two albums:
Devin Dazzle & The Neon Fever by Felix da by Housecat
Fountain by Emika
I’m also obsessed with creating 300-song playlists so if you feel like checking those out, find me on Spotify.
Books
Currently reading:
Antes del Volcán (Before the Volcano) by Jon Bilbao
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti
Alucinaciones (Hallucinations) by Oliver Sacks
Work
Since work has been terribly slow (apparently I don’t exist in the publishing world anymore), I’ve been using that time to work on personal projects—of which I have plenty.
Mainly, I’m in the final stages of the first phase of my tarot deck, so I’m happy to announce that almost all of those Major Arcana babies are ready to pop into the world (yay!)
TheThief’sTarot is almost there. Here’s a preview of some of the cards. Not the real color palette, though.
I’m also working on a couple of fun side projects. As suggested above, I’m a sucker for noir, hardboiled, and crime stories, which led me to two books: Jim Thompson’s The Getaway (1958) and Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling (1966). Even though I read both on my Kindle, I noticed the current physical editions have pretty boring covers. So once I finished them, I started working on my own versions, which has been a fun way to explore the kind of illustration I actually give a damn about.
My very own renditions of Carol and Doc, from the WIP artwork for The Getaway.
To be clear, Hard Rain Falling isn’t strictly noir or crime. I may have come to it that way, and while it has those elements, it’s really about juvenile delinquents navigating life’s hardships (poverty, race, sexual identity) on the West Coast in post–World War II America. And whilst that might be a simplistic description—there’s a lot more going on, believe me—this is an incredibly heartfelt book written by an author that has never come to my attention before: Don Carpenter. Anyway, highly recommend.
I’m also working—at least conceptually for now—on covers for Jonathan Ames’s Doll trilogy, a series I love that unfortunately has some truly awful covers (seriously, why). Which leads me to a bit of a rant: in a time when even AI can generate compelling imagery, how are publishers and movie studios still putting out such terrible book covers and posters? It’s baffling how generic mainstream media has become. Please explain this to me—it’s genuinely confusing.
Anyway, I also have two other movie poster projects in the pipeline based on two of my favorite movie discoveries from last year: The World of Kanako (2014) and Reflection in a Dead Diamond (2025).
I’ve also been trying to write short stories with the intention of first submitting them to contests and, eventually, illustrating them. But it looks like I’m rusty as fuck (I used to write a lot back in college and assumed that it was like riding a bicycle). I like the ideas behind the stories a lot, but when it comes to execution, it feels like drawing and illustrating have taken over most of my brain functions. We’ll see where it goes—one of my goals is to start illustrating these hybrid stories, or whatever they are, and give my career new life. I don’t know but I’ll probably comment on the process as it unfolds within the next months. In the meantime, wish me luck.
Anyway, that’s it for now. Until next week!