Posts: 2025
December 31 2025, 19:10
2025: Best films, books and music
I have never pretended to be cool, or to try and keep up with the latest this or that. But, astonishingly, I saw sixty-one films in the cinema in 2025, by far the most ever in my life.
December 30 2025, 11:03
Velvet Buzzsaw
This is a story of greedy art world snobs getting their comeuppance. Art gallery receptionist Josephina steals paintings from the room of a dead artist who wanted them all destroyed. But the paintings are cursed, and those who profit from them begin to die in gruesome art-related ways.
December 29 2025, 15:07
2025: Life projects review
I can’t believe it’s been a year already since the last one of these. There’s been less family drama, more culture, and some not-unexpected symbolic shifts. My focus in the first half of the year was physiotherapy and gradually strengthening the muscles around my hips. Then in the summer, things became more varied and interesting.
December 27 2025, 21:25
Death Walks at Midnight
On the surface, this had everything I love in a film. It’s a mystery set in a European city, in the world of fashion, nightclubs, parties, with artists as lovers, eccentric minor characters galore, murder with a weirdly brutal weapon... it could be perfect. None of this matters if the pacing is off, the dialogue is dull, and there’s no character development.
December 26 2025, 21:43
Anaconda
I was trying to find a film the whole family would enjoy at the cinema on Boxing Day, and when I saw Anaconda, certificate 12A, with Jack Black and Paul Rudd, I thought I’d hit the jackpot. The twist is that neither child wanted to come, so the jackpot was all mine.
December 21 2025, 18:58
Mermaid Legend
On the Japanese coast, a newly married couple bicker on their fishing boat. Migiwa dives for shellfish, and Saeki minds the rope to pull her up. One night, Saeki sees a fellow fisherman killed on the water by a passing speedboat, and when he takes Migiwa to investigate, he is harpooned in the chest. Migiwa survives and goes into hiding, but as she begins to understand what’s going on in the village, she is driven to revenge.
December 19 2025, 16:00
Reflection in a Dead Diamond
Yikes, the plot of this one... John Diman is an old man staying at an expensive hotel on the French Riviera, but he was once a secret agent for a clandestine government organisation. He spent years trying to catch a leather-clad female assassin called Serpentik, but she evaded him to the end. Memories and reality merge as he walks the hotel grounds and wonders if Serpentik has at last come for him.
December 13 2025, 14:42
Warning Sign
At a remote agricultural biochemical facility, a group of scientists are celebrating a discovery, but while taking a photograph a vial is accidentally broken and the whole building is immediately shut down. Government forces arrive to manage the incident, confusing the people of the town who don’t know the facility’s true purpose. Sheriff Cal Morse knows his wife is trapped inside and decides he has to try to get her out.
December 08 2025, 22:07
The Shrouds
Karsh Relikh part-owns GraveTech, a company that wraps up dead bodies in a material that allows the living to view it in its grave. His wife, Becca, died of cancer, but five years on, through the technology, he notices mysterious growths on her decomposing body. Soon after, the graveyard is seriously damaged, the technology of the graves hacked, and Karsh’s business hangs in the balance.
December 06 2025, 20:50
Cloud
Ryōsuke Yoshii buys and sells things on the internet. He has a knack for sensing what’s valuable to the market, then buying cheap and coldly selling for enormous profits. He escapes Tokyo with girlfriend Akiko to find more space for his wares, cutting off his boss and other business associates to do it, but his insensitivity makes him enemies, and a group of them track him down for revenge.
December 01 2025, 20:07
Demons
Music student Cheryl accepts tickets to a film event at an old cinema from a man in a demon mask. She takes her friend Hannah, and they hook up with two boys to watch the start of a horror movie. In it, two similarly dressed couples disturb the grave of Nostradamus and uncover a demon mask.
November 07 2025, 15:29
November mood
I’m between a couple of unusual (for me) adventures and recovering from a cold. We flew to Lisbon for three nights with our daughter—she’s into marine conservation, and the Oceanário de Lisboa is the second-biggest aquarium in the world. It’s a beautiful city.August 29 2025, 20:23
Summer’s end
I’ve started watching the Met Office YouTube channel, perhaps because I know autumn is coming and I want to prepare for it, or it could be because the more unpredictable weather represents my return to work, big new projects, my daughter starting A levels, and a new phase in my life.
August 27 2025, 20:05
Matt and Mara
Mara, a married creative writing professor, is surprised when Matt, a very close friend from her past that she no longer hears from, shows up at one of her lectures. They pick up their relationship while Matt is in town, leading to Matt driving Mara to a literary conference where the nature of their relationship is called into question.
August 25 2025, 18:38
In the Mood for Love
A devastating film in the best way. In 1962 Hong Kong, two working couples, the Chans and the Chows, move in to neighbouring apartments in a house run by Mrs Suen. Both Mr Chow and Mrs Chan suspect their spouses are having an affair, and they begin their own relationship to work out what they should do next.
August 24 2025, 17:56
Parasite
A family friend gives Ki-woo an opportunity to teach English to the daughter of a rich businessman, Mr Park. Ki-woo’s family is struggling to make ends meet, and they live in a basement flat in the poorest part of town. Once he’s secured the teaching job, Ki-woo and his family manipulate the Parks into hiring Ki-woo’s sister, father and mother, replacing all the existing staff. But the modernist house contains unexpected secrets, and their parasitic peace doesn’t last long.
August 17 2025, 09:53
Caché
Another French classic from the early noughties that I’m only now getting around to. Georges and Anne, and their son, Pierrot, are living a comfortable middle class life in Paris when a VHS tape is left on their doorstep. The tape shows the outside of their house, with the family coming and going oblivious to the hidden camera.
August 14 2025, 21:32
Irréversible
It’s been a couple of days since I watched this, but I needed time to let my thoughts percolate. Irréversible is infamous for the extended and brutally violent rape scene at its centre. The shock of it overwhelmed the critical thinking part of my brain, and it’s rare that I finish a film completely confused.
August 12 2025, 18:25
Summer experiments
It’s twenty-nine degrees outside, and I’ve drawn the blinds, turned on the fan, and hunkered down until my swimming lesson at seven. My family return at the weekend, and I’m excited to see them. Tomorrow I’m taking a last-minute day trip to Edinburgh, and I’ve bought tickets to hear A.L. Kennedy talk about her new book at the Edinburgh Book Festival.
August 09 2025, 19:52
The Girl on a Motorcycle
I’m pleased with myself for seeing one of these #ArthouseSummer films in the cinema. The BFI South Bank is an amazing space, and it’s been several years since I’ve visited, so I’d forgotten how they have red curtains in NFT2 and how uncomfortable the seats are. Also, the weirdos.
August 06 2025, 21:59
Irma Vep
Hong Kong action star Maggie Cheung arrives in Paris to take the lead in a remake of a classic silent film, Les Vampires. The cast and crew are friendly, but Maggie is an outsider, and the group's conflicts and histories become increasingly pronounced as director René begins to realise the film is not working.
August 03 2025, 16:44
Le Samouraï
Hitman Jef Costello takes a contract to kill a nightclub owner, but he is seen leaving the premises by several employees. Despite having a watertight alibi, the police superintendent doesn’t believe Costello and puts him under surveillance. Meanwhile, Costello’s employer is unhappy with the police involvement and the hitman has to find a way to get both parties off his back.
August 02 2025, 16:03
PlayTime
Monsieur Hulot arrives in the centre of Paris to meet a man about some business, but his attempts to connect are thwarted by the distractions and mechanisms of a modern city. Other people come and go—tourists, businesspeople, tradesmen—culminating in a chaotic dinner at a the opening night of a new restaurant.
August 01 2025, 19:21
Morvern Callar
On Christmas Eve in a Scottish port town, Morvern Callar finds her boyfriend dead on the floor of their flat. In a suicide note, he asks her to send out his unpublished novel to a list of agents. Morvern is trapped in a supermarket job and has no family, so she convinces herself he means for her to post the novel under her own name.
July 30 2025, 20:08
Picnic at Hanging Rock
On an outing from their boarding school in the Australian outback, four girls wander around the base of Hanging Rock and are tempted to climb higher. The rocks seem to have ghostly powers and the girls fall asleep in a stone circle near the top. Three of them walk through a gap and disappear.
July 27 2025, 21:35
Run Lola Run
I saw this in the cinema when it came out and I remember being blown away by the mixture of pulsing techno, Franka Potente running through the streets of Berlin, and the looping narrative. I hadn’t seen anything like it before.
July 16 2025, 18:56
Splashing in the shallows
A month ago, I said I was going to try new things, and that’s what I’ve done. I started swimming lessons. I had a guitar lesson (with another tomorrow). I redesigned this website and built it under a new domain name. I read a non-fiction book about the death of neoliberalism.June 15 2025, 13:34
Soft machine
I’m thinking about digital gardens and my creative mechanisms. Making anything involves ideas, craft and tools. My current mechanism feels like a meat grinder. I’ve managed to make “creative writing” into something brutal and excruciating. Time to dismantle the machine.June 01 2025, 14:32
Reconfiguration
I’m switching the domain name of this website to michaelwalters.uk over the coming months. I bought it on a whim, but I knew something was brewing, and I was right.April 30 2025, 14:59
Did not finish
Instead of posting negative reviews on books I don’t like, I’ve decided to take a few notes about what didn’t work for me, put the book down and move on to the next one.April 06 2025, 14:13
Holding
I’m going through an uncomfortable phase. My creative projects feel stale. It’s an effort not to check the news. My YouTube algorithm has been infected with news influencers. The people I follow on Bluesky are understandably incensed by what’s happening in the world, so the news cycle plays out there too. I need to take some time away from being online.
March 17 2025, 20:51
Afire
Writer Leon travels with his friend Felix to a remote house to finish his book. Felix’s cousin, Nadja, unexpectedly joins them, as well as local lifeguard Devid, and Leon’s obsession with his work over all else becomes a source of humour and friction. When Leon’s publisher arrives, forest fires are threatening the house, and Leon has to face reality.
March 16 2025, 11:25
Super-Cannes
Written by J.G. Ballard, first published in 2000, it’s a book I’ve told myself I love for years, but I couldn’t say why, and I remember it was also frustrating, and again, I couldn’t say why. I thought I'd read it afresh and work it out once and for all.
March 13 2025, 19:46
Black Bag
George works for a British intelligence agency in London and is tipped off someone in the service is trying to sell a deadly secret. Known for his tenacity, he quickly assembles a list of suspects and begins to unpick their various motivations, but his wife, Kathryn, is also on the list.
March 09 2025, 09:51
Mickey 17
Mickey Barnes owes money to sadistic loan shark Darius Blank. To avoid a tortuous death, Micky enrols on a colonising mission to a new planet as an ‘expendable’, a person digitally copied so they can be endlessly recreated after kamikaze scientific tasks. But Mickey 17 doesn’t die before Mickey 18 is created, which makes them both question everything.
March 07 2025, 17:09
Art funnel
I have a pitch to myself. I want to get better at speaking in public. I also want to be more actively engaged in the research I’m doing for my next book. I love doing #31DaysofHorror, but the pace is not sustainable. Instead, I could drop the goal aspect, add books to the mix, and at the end of the month post a short video about them for Patreon.
March 05 2025, 19:56
What’s good to share?
I posted a short story to Patreon this week. That’s real content. I’ve been ambivalent about doing that for years, but fuck it, I’m ready to start experimenting with new approaches. I want to create good work and lots more of it. Getting it into the world is energising.February 21 2025, 16:14
Glass full
Life feels tough this month. There’s a lot going on at work, I’m doing physio rehab, there are tradesmen in the house making a mess, the world seems to be in an awful place and getting worse, and I’m too tired in the evenings to read or write. I am grateful for all I have, but my body and brain is at full capacity.January 30 2025, 19:02
Glutes 2
Last August I posted about my gluteal tendinopathy. I remember writing it in a penthouse flat overlooking St Ives, an amazing spot, where I was stuck for the day because I’d messed my tendons up on the hills and flights of stairs. I was miserable. Five months on, I thought I’d give an update.
January 11 2025, 10:28
