May & June 2025 Reviews: Movies, Etc.

(whoops forgot to share this here!)

In case you missed it, life sure is doing a thing lately, so fell super behind and decided to split things into books and movies. For books, go here. For movies, read on.

Movies

• Jojo Rabbit (2019)—Young German boy caught up in the national enthusiasm for, uh, Hitler has his worldview challenged when he discovers a secret. Understandably divisive. This is a lot of movie to place on the shoulders of a mostly unknown child actor, but Roman Griffin Davis does well. Not as deep or as charming as it wants to be, yet also whimsical enough that its point gets obscured underneath a Wes Anderson homage.

• Moon (2009)—Solo astronaut discovers a secret on the moon. Incredible work from Sam Rockwell to play multiple versions of the same character and making each of them so distinct that the viewer isn’t ever confused as to who is who. Holds up well all these years later. Pair with 2001: A Space Odyssey and Mickey 17 for a fun space-themed movie marathon.

• Whistle (2002)—Short film from the director of Moon. Follows a man whose job boils down to “spy kills people via drone”, except this was made when that wasn’t actually, like, a thing. Probably hit a lot different in 2002, when "man kills long distance enemy via high tech gear" wasn't just the way we do war now. Would be interesting to see this adapted for modern warfare/spycraft. Liked the ambiguous-but-not-really ending.

• Last Breath (2025)—Fictional version of real-life events depicted in a documentary of the same name. Deep sea diver gets trapped on the ocean floor. A bit slow at first as it tries to establish its characters/premise but really kicks in when the divers go underwater. The ocean sequences are tense and so eerily lit. Glad they didn't make Woody Harrelson do a silly little accent or anything (in real life, the man he plays has a British accent).

• Love Hurts (2025)—Retired assassin? criminal? enforcer? gets dragged back into his world of crime. The trailer was the best part of this. Ke Huy Quan deserves better material than this. I have so many questions about how this managed to be devoid of any charm, chemistry, or sense of danger. Why was it set in Milwaukee? Why does Milwaukee have, like, high end heavy roller Asian and Russian crime syndicates? Why can't Ariana DeBose actually be in a good movie? Why did Young Marv in the flashbacks look so much older than Current Marv? Why did everyone act like they didn't know where Rose was when she maintained an apartment in town and was openly working at that strip club bar? Why is the subplot with the assistant and the assassin both so stupid and also the only interesting thing here? Why is the last scene in slow motion? Did no one realize that Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose had zero chemistry? Ke Huy Quan is charming and there are some funny moments (thanks, Marshawn Lynch) but otherwise this was such a disappointment.

• The Gentlemen (2019)—Convoluted crime world as everyone tries to steal a drug kingpin’s empire. Acting good, casting good, style good, costumes good, overall visuals good. Casual racism/sexism/homophobia/antisemitism bad, woman character existing solely for her plot line to end in a rape attempt bad. There's a universe where this was a fun stylish crime romp if only the script had been better. This movie truly feels like the script was written in 2002 and stuck in a drawer until now.

• Thunderbolts (2025)—Misfit super heroes! I know this didn’t perform very well at the box office, but honestly, this was a really good time. I’m very behind on Marvel movies, but this makes sense without having seen much of the recent canon — I feel like the biggest thing is knowing what the deal is with Store Brand Captain America — though I'm sure there's plenty that I missed out on that I would have noticed if I'd been bothering more. Anyway, this was engaging, not overly bogged down in CGI fight scenes, and actually had heart/soul instead of trying to come up with a muddled political message. I love a good story about misfits who have to come together and this hit all the right notes.

• A Desert (2024)—Indie horror about a photographer’s ill-fated road trip. Unpredictable, fantastic cinematography, and overall filled with unsettling, foreboding vibes. Alex, the photographer, is hard to feel bad for, though — he’s kind of spineless and creates his own problems with his inability to say no. This movie goes pretty hard but it also doesn’t really answer many questions at the end, which left me at least feeling kind of unsatisfied as the credits rolled.

• 28 Days Later (2002)—I don’t think people who weren’t watching movies in 2002 really realize how much this movie did to explode the zombie genre. This was unlike anything we’d seen before, particularly aesthetically. I love how this movie makes you be patient, how it gives the characters moments of normalcy (the grocery store, the picnic) in their new apocalyptic world. I love how this movie wasn't afraid to take everything you knew about the genre and throw the rules out the window.

  Not all of this holds up well, though. The "these soldiers have been alone for like five weeks tops and already have gone wild enough to want to rape women" plot line feels absolutely icky today and is a plot device that is best left in the past. Some of the cinematography choices are baffling (that one shot of the field of flowers that looks like someone ran it through seventeen different Instagram filters) which is even more confusing in light of how the early scenes in abandoned London are so memorable. And for this brief re-release, the movie wasn't remastered or anything and therefore clearly looks like it was shot via a potato. The lack of crispness in the images was a rude reminder of how far we've come in terms of technology.

• Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning (2023)—I'd meant to rewatch the series before seeing the new installment but ran out of time, so just revisited this one. Love the callbacks to the previous entries in the series, both via characters and style. Love the ridiculous big action sequences. Still think that the outcome of pitting Ilsa against Grace in terms of who Ethan is going to save was dumb as hell. I wish this movie stood on its own two feet better, but that’s apparently just the way things are in Hollywood now.

• Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning (2025)—As with the prior movie, I enjoyed this for the action sequences and the nostalgia and watching Tom Cruise do dumb things—like, I fully believe they tried to drown Tom Cruise in the Arctic Ocean for this. But I wish this franchise, and this movie in particular, trusted in the intelligence of its audience more. How many close up shots of the "poison pill" around Gabriel's neck did we need? Do they really think we forgot from 45 seconds ago that he still has it and it's what Ethan is trying to get to? Do we need the constant flashbacks and flash forwards and non-linear storytelling (aside from the glimpses of the Entity's desired future, which I get)? Do we need to triple-explain everything? If your movie's plot is so convoluted that you have to explain it to us like we're idiots, what are we even doing here? Also, I wish Gabriel had been less of a Soap Opera Villain - I think he could have been legitimately scary and threatening, exploiting his connection to the Entity and his connection to Ethan's past, and instead we have like, maniacal laughter and villain speeches giving away his plan and stuff. (Also I still think that introducing Ethan Backstory this late in the game - the set-up that brought him to the IMF in the first place - is ridiculous and contradicts everything we know about the IMF.)

• Fountain of Youth (2025)—John Krasinski’s goofy devil-may-care treasure hunter has to connect back with estranged sister and Serious Museum Person Natalie Portman on One Last Adventure. Absolutely forgettable direct-to-streaming junk, the only pro is that it has a cast of Actual Actors. Does Guy Ritchie just like really need money or something? Kind of bland, at its best when it's aiming for goofy banter and hijinx, loses me when it tries to grow serious and grow a plot. I will be honest, I kept nodding off towards the end, but it doesn't seem like I missed anything that would have made this better. Enjoyed the fact that it was largely shot on location instead of crappy CGI.

• Titanic: The Digital Resurrection (2025)—Documentary focused on the extensive digital imaging that’s been completed of the Titanic wreckage, and what we might be able to learn from it. I would have loved just a straight factual look at these new scans. Having the assorted experts speculate on stuff that they try to prove via simulation creates some interesting content but it's still just speculation. The images of the scans, shown at actual size, were incredible though and worth the watch just for that.

• Air Force Elite: Thunderbirds (2025)—Very similar to the Blue Angels documentary that came out last (?) year, without the benefit of getting an IMAX release. I could have done without the weird narrative framing centering it around playing excerpts from a podcast, instead of any other way to convey the same information, but thought this told a more effective, cohesive story than the similar Blue Angels documentary did. I felt more connected with this crew and their lives outside of the cockpit than I did with the Blue Angels. Also very early in the documentary, I think one of the podcasters said "these are America's top guns" and I feel like the Navy might have something to say about that. Blatant military propaganda, sure, but sometimes a girl just wants to watch planes go zoom.

• A House Made of Splinters (2022)—Documentary focused on a house for children in Ukraine whose parents/guardians have lost custody of them. Deeply melancholy, made even more significant by the fact that these children, whose lives have already been so touched by trauma, are now having to endure seemingly endless war. The documentary largely lets the children's lives stand for themselves - I have a feeling the limited voiceover bits were added later to provide some transitions. These kids have not had easy lives and the documentary unflinchingly shows the impact of their circumstances: girls who should probably be in kindergarten talking about drinking and fighting each other, a boy sneaking outside to smoke with an older teen, children having to parent their own parents and siblings because someone needs to be responsible. I'm sure the statistics of these kids breaking the cycle of abuse/addiction/poverty aren't great, and it's haunting to watch knowing how much more these kids are going to have to go through. While I'm glad this wasn't presented as a talking heads documentary, I do wish there was more context given to time/place/system. (I also wonder about ethics - these children couldn't possibly meaningfully consent to being part of this, and while they may never know that this film even exists, does that make it okay, to show them at their rawest and most vulnerable? I don't have an answer to that but I did think about it a lot as I watched.)

• Friendship (2024)—Awkward man has a full on meltdown after being rejected by his cool new neighbor. This is so darkly over-the-top funny. If you don’t enjoy the humor stylings of Tim Robinson, you’re not going to enjoy this movie, but this might be one of the funniest movies I’ve seen so far this year.

• Bring Her Back (2025)—Two newly-orphaned kids move in with a completely batshit foster mother. This movie is intense. I don’t know if this was good or just shocking, but a strong cast, led by Sally Hawkins, keeps this from being forgettable. This is the second movie by the Phillippous that featured scenes so gory that I have to look away from the screen, so they’ve got a brand, at least.

• Sisu (2022)—Former soldier in WWII Finland takes revenge on the Nazi soldiers who stole from him. That’s it, that’s the movie. If you want a talkative protagonist with a rich inner world, this is not the movie for you. If you want to watch Nazis getting blown up in increasingly absurd fashion, then by all means hit play on this.

• 28 Weeks Later (2007)—After England is devastated by zombies, 28 weeks later, people are slowly being allowed to return. Until two dumb kids ruin everything. This tries to recapture the gritty, tense isolation of the first one, but without significant input from Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, this just falls flat. It's your standard zombie move rather than something that upended the genre and wasn't afraid to try something different. There were some incredible scenic shots of an empty London which at least were visually pleasing. The core cast of characters is hard to root for - making the choice to center your story partially around a guy who's shown in the opening minutes to be a coward could have done something interesting but the reveal comes too early and kills all the morally grey tension that you get from finding a reason to root for a guy who lies to his kids and abandons his wife. Instead we got some hella dumb kids who cause Apocalypse 2.0 and don't even appear to realize for one second what they'd set in motion.

• Predator: Killer of Killers (2025)—Animated anthology following three different fighters from across history as they have to take on a big scary alien monster. The animation style, which just looks like 90 minutes of video game cut scenes, doesn't quite do it for me, but I appreciate that this story as conceived would have cost way too much to film as live action. I enjoyed how all of the stories ended up linking up and honestly there's worse ways to spend your time. I am indifferent to the Predator franchise so I imagine someone who cares very deeply will have a lot more feelings.

• Saint Maud (2019)—Deeply religious nurse takes a job caring for a dancer dealing with cancer and then gets a little too invested. All of the plot beats were fairly predictable, but despite that, this really did a great job at building a tense atmosphere as Maud’s religious fervor moves from devotion to something that probably should have been solved with antipsychotics.

• The Damned (2024)—Temu dot com Robert Eggars wanna-be movie. Residents of a fishing village face mysterious consequences after they fail to help the occupants of a sinking ship. This was fine, and if I’d never seen better/scarier period horror movies, I would have been a fan. Beautiful cinematography, highlighting a desolate, isolated place, but the lush visuals are hampered by a mediocre script and so-so acting. Could have been actually scary if it tried to do anything new/different, but alas.

• Titan: The OceanGate Submersible Disaster (2025)—Netflix documentary recapping the imploded submersible event. If you followed this in real time as the events unfolded, you won't learn much new, but Stockton Rush's inflated sense of self importance led his company to create endless archival footage of everything leading up to the disaster. Seeing them disregard in real time the safety concerns is chilling but also makes clear how inevitable a tragedy was.

• Cabaret (1972)—After seeing the current Broadway revival, I realized that I probably never actually saw the film version before. While I prefer the story as presented in the stage version - even though this may be closer to Christopher Isherwood's original writings - this undeniably hits that powerful balance of over-the-top decadence and the slow creep of fascism. Liza Minnelli is perfectly over the top as Sally and it's easy to see why she's defined this role for so long. I wish the various other subplots had more time to breathe and get you more invested in the characters, though. The stage version simplifies/streamlines a lot of the activity that goes on around Sally and Cliff/Brian which just worked better for me. Singing beer garden Nazis still hella creepy though.

• Lisa Frankenstein (2024)—1980s teen weirdo basically adopts a reanimated corpse. Shenanigans ensue. Funny but also not funny enough that I laughed out loud, you know? I appreciate the audacity and a movie that lets its teen characters be as weirdly horny and off-putting as real teenagers are. I enjoyed that Taffy was actually welcoming and kind to Lisa, in her own ditzy way - it was a nice change of pace from the evil popular girl trope. I think the movie could have gone harder and probably should not have toned itself down to get the PG-13 rating.

• Bullet Train (2022)—Assassins! On a train! I enjoyed this far more than expected, cheesy side characters and drama and all. It was a bit too long/convoluted, but as long as you just admitted defeat in keeping all of the double crosses and such straight, it was a good time. Felt like a Guy Ritchie movie, in the way it was filmed and the random side digressions it kept taking to flesh out the supporting cast. You can decide if that’s a good thing or not.

• 28 Years Later (2025)—I think the thing I respect most about this movie is that, like 28 Days Later, the creative team wasn't afraid to hand us a movie that was absolutely not what you expected. Some people might call it a bait and switch - the previews make you think the whole thing is Aaron Taylor-Johnson toting some kid around and killing zombies, but instead you get something both deeply weird and deeply poignant. I don't think that all of the choices land, and it's unfortunate that it can't wholly stand on its own without the other forthcoming movies, but I give it several thumbs up for having the audacity to swing for the fences. I am excited to see what comes next and hope the franchise continues to just do whatever it wants.

• Brokeback Mountain (2005)—An absolute classic for a reason. The lack of Oscar hardware is even more egregious 20 years later. I cannot imagine going into this movie not knowing anything about it. I had to go sit in my car and cry about it after it was over, and I knew the plot already. I would have been an absolute mess had I not been prepared. Incredible, vulnerable performances from the whole cast, and beautiful sweeping views of Canada-as-Wyoming. For added cultural context, remember that this came out around seven years after the murder of Matthew Shepard.

• Nobody (2021)—Seemingly ordinary suburban man goes on a revenge tour after a home invasion. I was skeptical about Bob Odenkirk as a Messy Action Hero but he's such a good actor that he sold me on it 100%. The script is a bit weak, some of the dialogue feels very phoned in, and it's like someone saw John Wick and was like "this but less interesting". Some funny bits and good action pieces, will inevitably watch the sequel when I'm looking to blow a few more hours on something.

• F1 (2025)—Washed up auto racer gets one last shot at glory. I enjoyed this more than I expected, being a person who appreciates the aesthetics of cars and the fact that racecars go zoom zoom, but who doesn't care much about the minutiae of racing. But there's plenty here to like even if you're not a car enthusiast. If you love messy men who have to learn to work together as a team to achieve something, well, congrats, here's your movie. Is it extremely formulaic? Yes. But I'm here for late-career Brad Pitt taking the Tom Cruise route and making movies about giving your dream one last shot even when your body is betraying you. I think it was just a bit too long, but the most obvious stuff to cut is the car racing, which is kind of the whole point of the movie, so it stays. Nice use of the IMAX format to showcase the racing footage.

• National Theatre Live: A Streetcar Named Desire (2014)—Pro shot of the British production staring Gillian Anderson and an early career Vanessa Kirby. Minimalist staging made unique by having the entire play take place on a constantly rotating stage, performed in the round. There is no backstage, costume changes and scene changes and setting the stage is done in full view of the audience. I felt like that really kept me engaged in what was going on, because even the “off stage” moments still told part of the story. Brilliant performances all around but Gillian Anderson is an absolute wrecking ball here.

• A Serious Man (2009)—Suburban 1960s professor deals with pressures at home and at work by slowly unraveling. Sometimes bad things just happen to you, and sometimes those bad things all pile up so they all happen at once. Michael Stuhlbarg is excellent as an exceedingly exasperated sad little man. Perfectly captured the suburban Minnesota-nice late 60s vibes.

What Else?

A friend and I took a long weekend trip up to Oshkosh, WI — for those unfamiliar with my trip planning for “get out of the city” weekends like this, I usually just open up a map, look for lakes/rivers/bodies of water, and then try to find a hotel/vacation rental where I can easily go look at water and sit on a bench and read a book. This time, Oshkosh won out, and much to my delight, there were also several cool other places to stop, including a glass museum and an aviation museum. Solid trip, would visit again. See below for some highlights.

What’s Next?

Okay, we’re back on track now. Thanks for sticking with me for some super-sized editions of this here newsletter. The next edition should be more reasonable, but I wouldn’t swear to that in a court of law.

Anyway, what are you all up to?

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