My November 2025 Media Diet

Not a ton of media this past month, and yes, this post is a week late, but I’ve been busy. Really busy working on a new app (👀). It started out as a way for me to get up to speed with the current LLM-assisted coding tools (Claude Code is wild), but it quickly grew into something much bigger. I’m excited for it to eventually come out, hopefully in the first quarter of next year. I want to get back to modernizing my first app, Bound, but that’s on the back burner while I learn a few new things. The wait will be worth it.

Here’s what I was up to last month when I wasn’t staring at Xcode:

📺 Hellsing Ultimate. Started watching this in the Halloween afterglow but fell off before finishing. Alucard is fun, but also kind of insufferable. Zero character depth and not much development to latch onto.

🍿 HIM. A fever dream of a movie that could have worked with a few tweaks. Ultimately mediocre at best and probably skippable.

🍿 Bugonia. Loved this. Instantly one of my favorites of the year. Great performances all around and I love that the movie really commits in the final act.

📺 The Summer Hikaru Died. I love the concept, even if the execution is uneven. You jump straight into the plot with almost no setup, and the missing prologue gets filled in with scattered flashbacks. The melancholy vibe worked for me. I did think this was a one-off mini series, so learning that there are multiple seasons planned took some wind out of my sails.

🍿 Good Fortune. Funny and irreverent, but also a little tone deaf considering the current economic climate.

🕹️ Pokémon Legends Z-A. More Pokémon. It’s the same. It’s different. The opening hours were decent, but when I put it down, I never think about picking it back up. Hard to ignore that the biggest franchise in the world still has mediocre graphics and no voice acting. I’ll probably finish it someday, but no promises.

🕹️ Devil’s Crush. I love pinball and especially pinball video games. This Turbografx-16 classic is fantastic. Great animations and fluid physics, even if it’s a bit too fast and chaotic at times. Still one of the best virtual tables I’ve played.

📺 Parks and Recreation. Probably my fifth or sixth full rewatch at this point. I think I mentioned it last month. I finished it. Still comfort food.

🍿 The Smashing Machine. Bennie Safdie tries to capture some Uncut Gems energy with another unconventional lead, but it doesn’t land the same way. A bit too serious, some odd casting choices, and ultimately too sad for me.

🍿 A House of Dynamite. Enjoyed the ride, hated the ending. It gets repetitive and there’s no real payoff between acts. Kathryn Bigelow is a great director, but this one missed for me. I blame Netflix.

🍿 The Roses. Went in with low expectations and mostly enjoyed it. The feud escalates way too high at the end and wraps up predictably, but it’s a fun Saturday night watch with friends.

📺 I Love LA. Surprise hit of the month. It’s part Broad City and part Atlanta, which is exactly my thing. I’m looking forward to every episode.

🍿 Boogie Nights. One of my all-time favorites and absolutely deserving of a rewatch, especially since Emily had never seen it. PTA at his peak.

🍿 Marie Antoinette. Beautifully shot, light on plot, even lighter on historical accuracy (which I’m fine with). Ultimately goes nowhere, but it sure is pretty.