Blogocentric Formulations

Watch List - February 2026

Methodology ▶︎

To qualify for my Watch List every month, a title has to be something that I've watched that's new to me. It doesn't necessarily have to be a current show, but it can't be reruns or rewatches of something I've already seen. If I'm including it in this list, it means this month is the first time I've watched it. I'll put "DNF" (Did Not Finish) next to anything that I stopped watching and have no immediate plans to finish. If I'm watching an ongoing season of a series across multiple months, I'll only list it once.

Movies

          Crime 101
          Expendables 4
          Goat
          Predator Badlands
          Trap House — DNF

Crime 101. Based on a Don Winslow novella, this was a pretty well-made crime drama with a good cast. The ending was a little weird (it felt like the movie was working hard to give everyone a happy ending even though it wasn't set up to work out that way without a lot of contrivance), but it was otherwise interesting. I'm kind of curious to read the novella and see if it has the same issue with the ending. But other than that and feeling a little long, this was an entertaining movie about a professional thief and the cop trying to catch him.

Expendables 4. I wish I could say that the stylized title of this movie — Expend4bles — was the dumbest thing about this movie. If you're thinking to yourself, "Wasn't the first Expendables that gimmicky, cheesy action movie that stunt cast a ton of big-name action movie stars as the main draw?" You would be correct. And if you're thinking to yourself, "Other than Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham, are any of those big names still involved?" The answer is NO. They swapped out Schwarzenegger and Willis and Rourke for Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Tony Jaa, and Megan Fox. While keeping Dolph Lundgren and Randy Couture. It was clearly another installment of a franchise that I don't think anyone expected to be a franchise, and now they're just getting whoever they can to star in them.

Goat. This was an animated film inspired by Steph Curry's life. It was basically Zootopia centered around basketball. It was just okay. The animation was interesting (I really like Sony Pictures Animation's style, which is also visible in the Spider-Verse movies and KPop Demon Hunters) and the worldbuilding was cool, but it was ultimately just a really expensive, animated version of a "rags to riches" story about an athlete. I can tell it meant a lot to Steph Curry and he was really proud of this film, but it wasn't original or unique enough to merit multiple viewings.

Predator Badlands. This was a really interesting installment to the Predator franchise, focusing on a young Yautja (the species that we know as Predators) who crash lands on a hostile planet and has to kill an apex predator in order to prove himself to his clan. Earlier in the franchise, I would have said that the mystery surrounding this alien predator was important to preserve, but now that we're at nine movies into the franchise, it makes sense to focus on worldbuilding the species that randomly showed up in the jungle to hunt Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura nearly forty years ago. This was a pretty well-made movie, considering how it could have easily fallen into B-movie sequel territory.

Trap House. Dave Bautista has made some real questionable film choices lately, and this is definitely one of them. In 2025, Bautista was cast in four films and only one of them was any good at all (the remake of The Naked Gun, where he played himself). The only nice thing I have to say about this movie is that at least it wasn't as bad as Afterburn.




Television

          The Legend of Vox Machina (Season 2)
          Leverage: Redemption (Season 1) — DNF
          Lincoln Lawyer (Season 4)
          Memory of a Killer — DNF
          Steal
          We Own This City

The Legend of Vox Machina (Season 2). Another great installment of the animated series inspired by the hugely popular TTRPG actual play series, Critical Role. I appreciate the fact that this show endeavors to be a quality grown-up animation show and not just a cash grab. It's decent for people who are fans of the campaign, but accessible even for people who aren't.

Leverage: Redemption. This is a reboot of the popular cable television series from 2008-2012. I remember really loving the original show, but when I put on this 2021 reboot it was just so over-acted, corny, and cringey. I honestly don't remember the original series being this goofy, but apparently it was. Safe to say the comedic and dramatic sensibilities of 2008 cable television have not aged well.

Lincoln Lawyer (Season 4). This season was much better than the last one. Last season ended with protagonist attorney Mickey Haller being pulled over by the cops and them finding a dead body in his trunk, and this season was the trial for that murder. Even though the season was almost entirely focused on the trial itself, it was tense, well-written, and well-acted. Michael Connelly continues to be a great source for procedural intellectual property that gets turned into compelling television.

Memory of a Killer. Patrick Dempsey plays a hitman who seems to be suffering from early on-set Alzheimer's (or another condition that causes cognitive decline). It wasn't terrible, it just wasn't something that I have a lot of interest in continuing with. I think this might be one of those shows that would have been better if you dropped the whole series and let people binge it, because waiting every week for a new episode like traditional television just makes me forget it exists while I have other stuff I'm eagerly waiting on.

Steal. This was a fantastic show about a financial firm that is taken hostage and forced to make a massive trade that basically transfers billions of dollars to the criminals, and then a slow burn show where we realize that several of the people at the firm were less innocent (and more involved in the plot) than we originally thought. There were enough twists and turns (and few enough episodes) to keep this moving along as a brisk pace and with plenty of twists and turns. And there's a genuinely surprising moral crisis at the end of the show. It's definitely worth watching if you like crime mysteries.

We Own This City. Based on real events that took place in Baltimore's law enforcement community in the wake of Freddie Gray's murder, where a special unit of police officers was engaging in a massive amount of illegal activity, including keeping money seized in police action, planting evidence, conducting illegal seaches, overtime fraud, and more. Jon Bernthal plays the central character of Wayne Jenkins, and it's a performance worth watching. Based on the nonfiction book of the same name by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton and produced by David Simon (showrunner of The Wire), this is a quality six-episode miniseries that's almost unbelievable in the amount of corruption it unveils.

TOP PICK:
Steal