Movies – A Damn Fine Cup of Culture

I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: V for Vigilante

Feb 1, 2026Feb 1, 2026The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.

This week, we launched our new monthly feature: Shortcuts. Once a month, we will post quick write-ups about what the gang at A Damn Fine Cup has been watching, reading, listening to or playing. Our first Shortcuts took us from the poetic Silent Friend to the “chemistry and crass jokes up the wazoo” of goofball superhero game Dispatch.

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #271: Boom ⇒ Snooze ⇒ Boom

Jan 30, 2026Jan 30, 2026MelanieLeave a comment

Welcome to Six Damn Fine Degrees. These instalments will be inspired by the idea of six degrees of separation in the loosest sense. The only rule: it connects – in some way – to the previous instalment. So come join us on our weekly foray into interconnectedness!

*Bai Jing Ting (left) and Zhao Jin Mai (right) star as soulmates in an endlessly harrowing meet cute*

Last week, Mege hit us with “I didn’t like Oppenheimer. That’s largely because I didn’t understand the second half of the movie.” In its bluntness, this is one of my favourite Six Degrees posts so far, and Mege is spot on. The funniest thing (to me) is that he went right back to watch it again and still didn’t get it, and now he’s apparently seriously contemplating watching it a third time. Noooooo. Cut your losses, Mege!

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Shortcuts: January 2026

Jan 28, 2026Jan 28, 2026The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Considering how much we watch, read, listen to and play in any given month, it’s almost a bit sad that we only write about a fraction of these. So, starting this month, we’re trying a new monthly format: on the last Wednesday of each month, we will release a few shortcuts: quick impressions of films, series, books, albums, games, or any other damn fine cups of culture that we’ve enjoyed this month, whether they are new or we only just got around to them now.

So, with no further ado, here are our first Shortcuts. Enjoy!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: By the power of nostalgia!

Jan 25, 2026The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

Even a couple of years after its release, not everyone has seen Oppenheimer – and some who are now remedying this aren’t necessarily enjoying it as much as most have. Check out Mege’s Six Damn Fine Degrees for an instance of this.

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The Five Stages of Backlog Anxiety

Jan 24, 2026Jan 24, 2026MattLeave a comment

There was a point in my mid-40s where I realised: I have so many games purchased on Steam, I will not live to play all of them, at least not unless I start going through them one by one… and not unless I stop buying a single additional game.

And, looking at my collection of films on physical media? The same may be true. I have a bit more of a fighting chance: my library of games on Steam is in part so large because once a game I’m even just mildly interested in is on sale for US$10 or less, I tend to buy it. Films still cost more, especially those highly addictive Criterion releases I can’t seem to do without. Still: I buy films at a higher rate than I watch the films I’ve bought. The same is definitely true for books.

And, frankly: when I realised the extent to which my backlog would survive me? I felt an unsettling sense of vertigo. (And, embarrassingly, I briefly hoped that by the time I’m old, there’d be a way to upload my consciousness into the cloud, where I would then spend eternity working off my backlog.)

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Six Damn Fine Degrees #270: Oppenheimer

Jan 23, 2026Jan 30, 2026MegeLeave a comment

I didn’t like Oppenheimer. That’s largely because I didn’t understand the second half of the movie, wherein, somehow, Oppenheimer gets the upper hand over Strauss. I didn’t understand what was there for the getting, nor did I understand what the bone of contention was. To the very small extent that I got the situation between them, I didn’t much care. As I understood it, it took a smallish statement by the Rami Malek character during the hearing to push Strauss off his pedestal. And that was it. What had just happened?

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: All singing, all dancing

Jan 18, 2026Jan 18, 2026MattLeave a comment

In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Sam wrote about Netflix’ adaptation of Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper books – and the importance of normalising LGBTQI+ romance that doesn’t need to adhere to limiting tropes and clichés. You’d think that we’d be further in 2026, but, sadly…

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A Damn Fine Espresso: January 2026

Jan 17, 2026Jan 16, 2026The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

In our main podcast for the month, we celebrated our one-hundredth episode with Matt, Julie and original co-podcaster Mege, talking about the beginnings of A Damn Fine Cup of Culture. For this month’s espresso episode, we’re continuing the story: Matt, Alan and Sam met up in real life to record their first ever live podcast episode together. Join the three of them in their conversation about 2020, the year they joined A Damn Fine Cup of Culture, and their experiences since. How have they changed as podcasters? How do they keep things fresh and interesting, even after five years of podcasting? What are the episodes they remember best? And what are the topics they hope to do an episode about in the next five years?

P.S.: A big shout-out to the wonderful REX cinema in Bern, Switzerland for letting us meet up at their bar in early January (you can hear the gentle noise of other cinemagoers, glasses and espresso cups in the background) to record our conversation!

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I’ll be in my trailer… watching trailers: I’ve been through the desert

Jan 11, 2026The Barista CollectiveLeave a comment

In this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, Alan writes about 2024’s witchy Agatha All Along – and what it may say about the different roads the Marvel Cinematic Universe could go down in the future.

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They create worlds: the melodies of Silksong

Jan 10, 2026Jan 10, 2026MattLeave a comment

One of the things that video games can do magnificently is create worlds. These posts are an occasional exploration of games that I love because of where they take me.

In 2017, a small Australian studio called Team Cherry released Hollow Knight. The game, an action adventure set in a world of insects, was well received by gamers and critics, and its reputation grew over the following years, as much for its challenging gameplay as for its melancholy world and atmosphere. Over time, Team Cherry aded to the game in various ways game – but the main expansion they originally promised, which was to feature Hornet, one of the game’s characters that starts off as an antagonist only to become an ally of the player character, proved too ambitious. As a result, Team Cherry announced in 2019 that Hornet’s adventures could not be contained in an add-on of the original Hollow Knight but instead required their own game: Hollow Knight: Silksong.

It would take another six years until Silksong came out.