The Life of Chuck (2025)

Score: 3 / 5

Melancholic and sentimentally bittersweet, The Life of Chuck is not the kind of film I usually enjoy. Movies with oddly specific character actors in their ensemble cast based around a sort of "live, laugh, love" thematic premise don't do it for me in comedies or dramas. With rare exceptions, stories musing on the afterlife in order to reaffirm spiritual awareness in the present feel too manipulative and triggering for me to be either emotionally provocative or hope-inspiring. And while I've not yet read the eponymous novel by Stephen King, it's quite low on my list of his works for the same reason. King can do amazing spiritually-resounding stories -- just look at The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Dolores Claiborne, among many more -- so it's not that I doubt his writerly craft. And I certainly didn't doubt Flanagan's extraordinary skills as director or writer. But this one worked for me, even if I doubt I'll revisit it anytime soon.

I should note here that, while I will avoid many spoilers, to discuss this movie is to spoil it. So if you're at all interested in a cozy, existentially curious speculative piece of date night vibes with the characteristics already mentioned, give The Life of Chuck a watch. It may not be your cuppa, but you'll be glad you tasted it. It's even a solid choice for your next family movie night, if you've got younger ones; they may get squirrelly or confused during a few lengthier scenes of heightened dialogue, but it'll offer cool opportunities to discuss the less tangible things in life with your loved ones.

While I've already named sentimentality as a pillar of this film, it would not do to ignore its resistance to wallowing. Indeed, the film staunchly refuses, in true Flanagan fashion, to condescend its messaging or cater to audiences in a way that feels dumbed down. We're engaged via multiple senses and cerebral appeals, Flanagan inviting us into his stylized world where one man's choice to live life to the fullest not only positively impacts the people around him but in fact melds him with the fabric of the universe. Over time -- the film is told in three sections presented in nonlinear narrative -- the titular Chuck navigates both childhood and adulthood, and his imminent death after a life well-lived seems to be bound up with the death of the universe. Weird? You bet. But cool as heck to think about? Also yes. And utterly horrifying when the stars start blinking out of existence? Trust and believe that that'll be my next nightmare.

Flanagan's approach to this film feels musical, both regarding the satisfying rhythms and movements of its thematic and dramatic beats and regarding its central scene of Chuck dancing to a busking drummer before pulling a young woman up and dancing with her. The extended scene is stunning and fun, riveting in its unbridled sense of joy, presented with considerable artistry from all departments involved. The film may never quite get us to a point of weeping -- which I say pointedly, as I cry in a lot of movies -- but I had a bigass smile on my face for most of its runtime. 

Its large ensemble cast is uniformly solid in what they do, but there's not a whole lot of featured moments for any of them to shine. Mark Hamill and Tom Hiddleston are excellent, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan have nice chemistry, and Carl Lumbly and Jacob Tremblay sell their scenes with gusto. I would add that Annalise Basso makes a case for herself as a leading actress in a big way, and I hope to see more of her on the big screen. Almost like those anthology holiday romances in which all the couples are somehow related to each other as everyone learns to love, actually, this film avoids integral or featured performances in favor of more or less meaningful encounters between characters. This helps provide some flesh to the film as folks like Matthew Lillard, Kate Siegel, Rahul Kohli, David Dastmalchian, Heather Langenkamp, Harvey Guillen, Violet McGraw, and Q'orianka Kilcher pop in for a scene or two each. 

Yet, for all this, it's hard to describe or even label the film. It pulls from the likes of affirming holiday classics like It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Carol, for sure, but it also pulls ideas from Being There and Amelie and Footloose and Nine Days while never feeling like anything else out there. In the first act, I was wildly excited to see what would happen; it felt like the kind of sci-fi drama that Denis Villeneuve or a younger Christopher Nolan might make. But each act has wildly shifting focal points and tones -- even within individual scenes -- and the film never recovers from the thrilling end of its first act. At least not for me. No amount of amazing dancing or stories about ghosts in the attic or Walt Whitman quotes was able to bring me back from distraction by that first act. So while I had fun dancing through The Life of Chuck (which, actually, is an odd title, since we only really see him as a kid and again as a middle-aged man before his death) along with its unequivocally beautiful spectacle, I still don't know quite what to do with it. And that seems to be very much not its intended effect.

The Last Showgirl (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

With a flair for the melancholy of yesteryear, Gia Coppola returns to the director's chair (after Palo Alto and Mainstream) in her best feature yet. I admit disliking her previous films, and feeling nervous heading into this one, not least because of the overblown and largely misunderstood nature of "showgirl" life in this year of Taylor Swift's shallow appropriation of the culture. Coppola hasn't yet handled much plot-driven storytelling, and that remains true here, as the film is more a character study than a narrative. So if you're looking for a dynamic story, glamorous energy, or the fantasy of theatrical burlesque, you might want to look elsewhere. But if you're used to Mrs Henderson Presents and Moulin Rouge and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Burlesque and want something with a bit more teeth, look no further than The Last Showgirl. 

Le Razzle Dazzle is a long-running French-style revue on the Vegas Strip, and Shelly has performed there for three decades. Now 57, she's blissfully (perhaps willfully) resilient and persistent, sure that she'll continue working as a showgirl until she dies. Shelly comes from a time when showgirls, to be employed and successful, worked tirelessly for their craft. Of course, the dancing is a major part, and keeping up one's health to maintain a certain body image that will garner tips, but she's also a seamstress, choreographer, props master, and even a sort of de facto manager of her costars, the significantly younger women who dance in her show. She's a motherly figure to the young women, counseling them through professional turmoil and family abandonment and bad relationships and unwanted pregnancies, all while maintaining a caring and gentle demeanor in an old-school professional sense. When a doorknob has been changed backstage and it rips a gown, Shelly is the kind of busybody mother hen who will repeat her disdain about it until she finds who's responsible and berate them for the inconvenient oversight. She can't wrap her mind around the fact that things can and do change.

She's told, quite suddenly, by her old friend/former lover/stage manager Eddie (Dave Bautista in a subtle and brave featured performance), that the show is finally closing in two weeks, due to poor ticket sales. Shelly's reaction to this crisis fuels what little story is left, which is basically Shelly auditioning for another show, being confronted with prejudice about her age, and dealing with a lack of legacy, a lack of retirement savings, and a lack of family. It's a bleak and depressing story to tell, yet Coppola, writer Kate Gersten, and star Pamela Anderson work in graceful tandem to make what could be a tragedy something approaching life-affirming sublimity. 

Anderson imbues Shelly with more than we might expect from the real-life Playboy Playmate who became an internationally regarded actress from Baywatch on television to Chicago on Broadway. The brilliance of her casting only establishes a foundation for her mystique here, as she presents a fully-realized and deeply flawed woman in the prime of her life who nobody believes is in the prime of her life. She knows the history of her craft and tries to impart it to her younger comrades in their cramped dressing room: their show honors "Parisian Lido culture," she preaches to the girls rolling their eyes and wishing she'd shut up so they can get onstage. Yet Shelly is also effete to a fault, a fey sort of person, delicate and immature-sounding, almost babyish in her sickly sweet affectation. She's also stubborn and weirdly attached to life as she imagines it, living life through distinctly rosy glasses as she chooses glitz and glamor over things that are messy and tarnished.

To that end, Shelly is estranged from her daughter Hannah (Billie Lourd, another inspired casting choice), who comes visiting. During their talks, we quickly gather that their relationship is strained to a breaking point. Shelly wants to have a relationship with her adult daughter, but Hannah won't have it. Furious that Shelly would give up her baby to a foster family -- details are vague on this arrangement -- to pursue her dreams of dancing in feather boas and rhinestone-bedazzled bikinis, Hannah is about to graduate college and seems to want some kind of closure with her mother. Or at least to give her one last chance to be the mother Hannah always wanted.

Spoiler alert: things don't go well. While we might easily blame Shelly for her ignorance about Hannah's life -- she forgets Hannah's age and major, right off the bat -- Hannah seems determined to make her mother miserable for effectively abandoning her. Hannah even attends Shelly's show for the first time, curious about what her mother gave her up to do instead; her excoriating review of the show is a highlight in this film, shattering Shelly's lifelong esteem and purpose while provoking real territoriality and anger from the woman who so clearly needs to express real, raw emotions. Life on the stage can so easily make someone disingenuous or even unemotional in real life, and Shelly has built her mask to last.

Shelly's life seems to be that of a hermit. Without much money and without any family, she hides away in her dark little home to watch Hollywood golden-age dancing videos with the likes of Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse, losing touch with reality and with her own future prospects. She has no concerns that her own show could close -- and indeed is closing -- and no real plans for what comes next; her nostalgia is a prison through which she is forced to reconsider her own legacy, purpose, capabilities, and of course the cost of having chased her dreams. Thankfully, we're not simply adrift in her fracturing sense of self; this isn't Black Swan, though it does share some connective tissue. Not least of note is that Shelly is also kind of nasty when things don't go her way, or when she feels slighted; she's more a petulant child than a professional showgirl, and most people tolerate or ignore her eccentricities. But she has a special friend who provides the film's best scenes of context and contrast.

Jamie Lee Curtis steals the whole movie as Annette, Shelly's longest friend who used to dance in the same show. Now a cocktail waitress in a casino, and gambling perhaps more than she should, Annette is a grotesque figure with a gorgeous personality. Chain-smoking and an alcoholic, she even loses her home in this brief story, and frankly I wanted to know a hell of a lot more about her character. When she, too, faces being laid off in favor of younger servers, she wades into the deep end, arriving at work anyway and dancing on a table (to "Total Eclipse of the Heart," and this is the single best use of that song I've ever witnessed) in a total haze. It wasn't until certain scenes with Curtis that I became aware that the grainy, oddly focused with a blurry periphery, dreamlike cinematography wasn't intended to put us into Shelly's headspace. Rather, it's simply the visual approach to people in this world. They're all the center of their own shows, and the camera frames them as if it were an unfocused spotlight practicing its movements.

I loved the simplicity of this film. Actually, it feels like Coppola is filming in a style similar to Sean Baker (The Florida Project, Anora) in its arthouse approach to a quiet character drama couched in a larger, stylized world slowly decaying. This approach has the effect of putting us at ease in the viewing experience, and it seems to put the performances at ease as well; this is some of the most naturalistic acting I've seen on screen all year, and that's saying a lot when these women are strutting around in their getups. We're given almost no direct (or reliable) information regarding the actual content of her show; the closest we get to her reality is her audition for another show, which is awkward and painful to watch, particularly due to Anderson's palpable joy and star-struck eyes. Around her, these realistic and grounded characters bounce off each other in naturalistic and believable ways. But make no mistake: Anderson and Curtis are alchemical in this tightly framed little window into the souls of struggling, aging women who bought into the American dream and now must face the cost.

Roofman (2025)

Score: 3 / 5

A criminal with a heart of gold takes center stage in Roofman, biopic of sorts masquerading as a crowd-pleasing comedy. Drastically changing tone for writer/director Derek Cianfrance (The Place Between the Pines, Blue Valentine, The Light Between Oceans), this movie capitalizes on the winning charms of its leading actor, Channing Tatum, doing what he does best. Yet, as fascinating as the real story is, the film consistently skews toward fantasy over reality, choosing to paint the struggles of its titular robber as a desperate lifelong adventure for family and belonging. Rather than diving into what could have been a strange and enlightening character study, Cianfrance pushes us into conventional rom-com beats that, while sweet and often slightly off-key, whitewash the story and ignore its more chilling implications.

Nominally about Jeffrey Manchester, a former Army officer who becomes a gentle and kind robber in order to make a living, the film oddly distances us from knowing his inner life. Tatum's capable performance -- though a far cry from his recent devastating presence in Blink Twice -- cannot rescue the film from a series of unanswered questions posed by itself about him. He's shown to be head over heels in love with his young family, yet he chooses not to provide for them using legal means. On the suggestion of an old military friend (LaKeith Stanfield), Jeff instead uses his training in observation and action to cut holes in the roof of fast food joints, kindly restrain the limited employees opening the store (usually by asking them to get their coats and wait in the freezer until the cops come), and take whatever is in their safe. Even when interviewed by the media, who provide the film's title for their mysteriously gentlemanly criminal, the employees praise Jeff's thoughtful and gentle manner.

Yet it's never clear why he can't hold a job on his own, despite some brief early remarks about American society using and discarding discharged service members. And it's wholly unclear why, despite his obsessive desire to connect with his daughter (almost never his wife or infant twins, mind), he doesn't actually try to be a self-sufficient civilized individual. His most recent crime ends with the police arresting him at his daughter's birthday party, surely traumatizing her, and then he's whisked away to prison with only an occasional afterthought about what he has done to the girl he loves most in the world.

Jeff is described as resourceful and brilliant by other characters, but we see almost none of it. His chameleonic wit and charm disguise him from suspicion, even when he shows up to a church looking (and surely smelling) like the dregs of society. Thankfully, the film depicts the church he finds as truly good Samaritans, lovely people led by Ben Mendelsohn and Uzo Aduba (it's an aggressively weird pairing, but they uplift the middle of this film in a necessary way). They warmly accept him as he is and help provide for him.

The problem is that he's also lying to them. He's living in a hidden space in a Toys R Us store, bathing in the employee bathroom sink, eating candy, and acting a fool in the aisles by night. He fixates on the cruel and stupid manager, Peter Dinklage, and a beautiful young woman and mother who recently went through a divorce. Kirsten Dunst's presence as Leigh is an unexpected but heartfelt delivery of a salient millennial crisis right now, when what we were promised by those we love -- and society in general -- has been broken and we're left to pick up the pieces. Her pathos is emphasized when Jeff, who followed her to the church, meets her and she clearly wants to try dating again. But money is an issue, as are her teenage daughters; would a single man be interested in a quiet pizza night at home with mother and daughters? Maybe not every man, but one who's functionally starving, desperate for family time, and eager to escape the prison he's built for himself will absolutely be there.

And he goes overboard. I don't want to spoil any more, but Jeff's personality quirks don't stop when he finds love. He's a great influence on the girls, who he shockingly quickly befriends, yet his behavior is peripatetic, somewhat unpredictable, and almost always materialistic. At one point, Leigh literally tells him point blank that they just want him to be with them, yet he continues to throw money and toys and flowers and candy and balloons and even a damn car at them. Meanwhile, he gets paranoid about the unsustainable life he's eked out and sure that someone will identify him, so he reaches out again to his army friend, wanting to pay an exorbitant amount for a new identity and a one-way ticket to a country without extradition. These things don't add up coherently, and while that might be the point, it makes Jeff as presented in the film to be something like a sociopath, whose integrity is nonexistent despite his nonviolent crimes. He's going to devastate the people he claims to love, and he does it both willingly and seemingly intentionally. I don't get it. And that's not even approaching the topic of his criminal compulsions, which to be rationalized in our minds does not match with the character we see here.

It's a fun enough film, and really sickly sweet, until it isn't. And I was most struck with its hypocrisy late in the film, when I wondered how this charming man might have fared, especially in the deep South of the film's setting, had he been non-white. Or unattractive. Why is it that this guy, who has been convicted of many crimes and sentenced to several decades in prison, is afforded the benefit of our romantic and humorous affections whereas so many other incarcerated men are not? Is it by nature of his wacky escapades and bizarre life's work? Then why the overwhelming focus on his romantic life and not on his psychological state, the institutional realities that compel him to commit crimes, or the material impacts of his frankly idiotic financial and relational decisions? I want to know why he thought endless consumerism would make him a good father, a good husband, a good man. I want to know why he seeks to give women around him a life he thinks they deserve rather than honoring what they say they need from him. I want to know what he thinks of the ways veterans are treated and how and why he so terribly chose anarchy in an effort to make a better life, especially in the context of a distinctly charitable church network. There's a lot of charm in Roofman, to be sure, but there's a dispiriting lack of curiosity, turning what should be a humanist saga into a simplistic and generic tangent.

Tron: Ares (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

Tron is a strange franchise, one never really destined for all-time greatness, yet curiously enduring and improving over the decades with few and far-between entries. The story is actually quite dense and interesting, though largely inaccessible due to wooden dialogue and somewhat fanciful depictions of the inner workings of computer software. Rendered narratively inert -- or close to it -- then, the films work almost entirely as a result of their iconic special effects and visual splendor. Technological light shows scored by brilliant, equally iconic music make these films consummate entertainment. It helps that, after the 1982 original film, 2010's Legacy and now 2025's Ares have leaned into the stylized elements while also eliciting much more grounded and dynamic performances from well-cast leading actors. And Ares is certainly my favorite of the three.

Without Tron, we likely wouldn't have The Matrix or Wreck-It Ralph or Ready Player One. And, I'd argue, its design is more inspired, interesting, and thoughtful than those. Its cold, dark, bleak depiction of cyberspace built up in neon cities based around data hubs lends itself to a focused meditation on how our Age of Information might be physically represented. It's also cleaner and much more chic than the crumbling wastelands or candy-colored theme parks of the other titles I mention. It's arguably even as kinky as The Matrix, though more subtle. And its weighty thematic elements -- at least in the two sequels -- rival that of most science fiction in its earnest dramatization of sons becoming their fathers, the sins of the father returning, gods and CEOs vying for power, artificial intelligences taking over, and a revolutionary approach to liberation.

With a magnificent score from Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross), director Joachim Ronning fashions a stylish and sexy action movie with abundant thrills and more ideas than it knows how to handle. Much like the philosophical tone of Blade Runner, here we're launched into a violent race against time as characters enter and exit The Grid, Flynn's alternate reality of gaming codes, now made public and interconnecting servers around the world. Flynn's old nemesis Dillinger has reared his head again, in the form of his daughter (Gillian Anderson) and her son (Evan Peters), the new CEO. Their company has created a Master Control Program whose AI is so profoundly effective that they can create a body for him in the real world (using a magical form of 3D printing) and he'll be their super-soldier for all of 29 minutes.

His mission: permanence. To bring imagined codes in the Grid to real life, the Dillinger company will stop at nothing, even espionage and murder. So the CEO sends his new creation, Ares (an incredible Jared Leto), to find and take a rumored "permanence code" from the ENCOM CEO, Eve Kim (a ballsy and exciting Greta Lee). Kim has been running Flynn's old company well, and the film wisely builds on what has come before. I won't spoil things for the fans out there, but there is a sequence over halfway through the film that absolutely sent me into nostalgic joy, culminating in a legacy appearance so effective it brought me to tears. By film's end, Ares marks alongside Ex Machina or Her as one of the most moving and beautiful depictions of AI on film.

While lionizing the benefits of AI thus, at this particular moment in time, feels irresponsible at best, I don't entirely think that should derail our appreciation of this magnificent film. Much less dominate conversation about it. Let's keep it in conversation, of course, but I do think it's significant that the film ends with an embodied, limited portrayal of AI and an admittedly optimistic perspective: if we so fear AI wanting to become more human-like, have we considered that that includes death and dissolution? Ares himself muses, late in the film, that though he's searching for a "permanence code," so called because it would allow digital beings and items to exist in the real world for more than 29 minutes, it should really be called the "impermanence code." Essentially, Ares's sought-after permanence would actually make him mortal.

The visual flourishes of this series -- especially of the latter two entries -- hint at far more than surface pleasures. Kim's opening scene feels like an ironic inversion of the Garden of Eden, in which Eve herself enters a frozen waste with little more than filial love in her mind, not just sampling the fruits of her miraculous labors but in fact creating the tree of both life and knowledge. She's an idealist and dreamer, but that doesn't stop her from roughhousing when things turn sour, making her a riveting protagonist among this ensemble cast. We sadly don't have Michael Sheen's Zuse in this one, of course, but we are given other fabulous new characters like Jodie Turner-Smith's lethal and chilling Athena. And then there's the eye-popping finale that, while perhaps stealing a bit from The Avengers in visuals of Dillinger's cyber soldiers materializing in the real world of Center City and wreaking havoc while hunting their mark.

Hinging strongly on a Frankenstein reference, Ares himself dominates both narrative and screen, making the logical choice after Legacy to further continue the series' attentions to real-world implications of relations with programs and AI. I'm sad we didn't get Garrett Hedlund or Olivia Wilde in this, but perhaps there's room in yet another installment for more familiar faces. Tron may be many things -- not least of which is simply uninteresting to many people -- but for those who willingly let it take its course, a deeply satisfying experience of cerebral and surprisingly emotional spectacle await. The dialogue is messy, and rarely works in any of these films; the plot is convoluted and fanciful. Yet the ideas are really smart, and the films work because of the dedication and thoughtfulness of their performers as well as the devastatingly delicious awe of sound and image so effectively combined. Ronning has severely disappointed me before, but his work here is remarkable and truly special.

Good Boy (2025)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Rare would I wish a film to be longer; rarer still that I felt it needed to be longer, but Good Boy deserves more room to breathe and play. It is, after all, about a dog.

When rumblings first appeared in social media about a horror movie from the perspective of a dog, I was worried. Frankly, given the recent rash of indie arthouse films toying with the idea of "found footage" visual approaches in fresh ways (like The Outwaters and Skinamarink), I assumed that this would be a handheld camera, low to the ground, shaky and limited, putting us in the dog's eyes. I still think there is room for that kind of film, but when the protagonist and narrator is an animal, it's very helpful to be able to see it. So creator Ben Leonberg wisely chooses instead to make a more conventionally shot film, and to make a star out of his very own good boy.

Much will be said about Indy, the dog who is indeed Indy in real life, owned by director Leonberg, who tells us in some behind-the-scenes footage during the credits that they shot this film in small bits over a very long time. Indy, to his credit, is emotive, but this project is primarily a success due to Leonberg's own editing, stitching together usable footage in a thoughtful, meaningful way that makes Indy feel much more communicative than a dog can really be on a film set. Especially one dealing with a haunted house and invisible stimuli. 

We're pretty much dumped into the story with minimal context, though Indy is clearly much-loved by his troubled human, Todd, whose poor health manifests in a serious lung disease that leaves him coughing up blood. Together, they flee urban New York City for an isolated house in the woods, owned by Todd's late grandfather. Todd's sister, Vera, calls him often, worried about his remote privacy and about the house itself, which is where their grandfather died, and family superstition more than suggests the place is haunted. Could it be dear old grandpappy himself, or is the house somehow "bad," even perhaps having caused their grandfather's death? If the house is to blame, it's also guilty of causing the disappearance of the grandfather's dog, a golden retriever named Bandit.

Right away, Indy can sense something is wrong with this house, hesitant to cross its threshold when first arriving. The cinematography may not put us in Indy's head, but we're severely limited by constantly moving around Indy, staring at him as things happen offscreen or in the background of shots. It's a beautiful approach, sometimes irritating, always meaningful. The film is barely over an hour in length, and within that, we're asked time and again to consider an otherwise straightforward genre film with a fraction of the information we're usually provided in extensive dialogue or action sequences. Indy often stares off into empty hallways and dark corners, reminding us of the inherently creepy reality that our pets sense things we don't -- and can't -- and what horrors might be avoided if we heed their peculiar mannerisms. 

The film is also not as cutesy and simple as I'm making it seem. Ingeniously, Leonberg allows flairs of fancy I absolutely did not expect, including dream sequences of what might happen in a dog's nightmare. Leonberg's subtle and strong use of special effects make it occasionally unclear about the differentiation, as a shadowy presence stalks Todd and Indy, between reality and fantasy. This makes Indy's behavior both relatable and brave, to the point that he sometimes charges headfirst down dark hallways or stairs to investigate strange sounds, while we in the auditorium are whispering for him to stop, to stay in the light, and not do the dumb thing we always criticize idiot teenagers in slashers for doing. But Indy has only one goal: to love and protect his human, just as Todd loves and protects him. Man's best friend, indeed.

Even when that man is becoming a monster. Either due to innate qualities finally taking over or the sinister influence of the house, Todd battles his illness, his sanity, and his darkest impulses in a curiously literate haunted house narrative. We're never quite sure of the nature of the haunting, as in the best of the genre; after all, in Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House or Henry James's The Turn of the Screw, are the people haunted, is the place haunted, is it about spirits or history or ideas, or is it an unholy combination about the unique particulars of time and place and personality? Such heady questions don't elude the grasp of this film, which nevertheless focuses our experience of horrors through sensory input we associate with the nonhuman subject. Too bad we can't smell this film.

Leonberg even suggests that Indy might be so stressed by the haunting, and in attempting to care for Todd, that he's an unreliable narrator, imagining ghostly presences. After all, Todd and Indy both watch old home videos of Todd's grandfather and Bandit back-to-back with cheap, direct-to-VHS horror flicks; could that imagery be messing with Indy's understanding of reality and informing his feverish nightmares? Yet by the film's admittedly terrifying climax, I was completely on board, rooting for Indy with an emotional investment I didn't even know I'd given him. Indy's smart and brave efforts to save Todd, even despite being mistreated by his master in thrall to a cruel spirit, are stronger than those of most horror protagonists. Moreover, the underscoring horror of a dependent dog being suddenly terrorized and abandoned by his owner is no small matter to contend with. We're forced into a unique headspace by the end of this film, which ends satisfyingly, though I won't spoil it for you. Indy deserves to show you himself.

Bone Lake (2025)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Sage and Diego are a young couple on a weekend away, renting an enormous rural lake house, and he's about to pop the question. But we learn he's an aspiring writer, who quit his job and is currently unemployed while chasing his dream. And she's an editor supporting them both with no small irritation at his foolishness. They're in that rut of a relationship that's gotten too comfortable and safe, taken for granted and unintentional, evidenced by their intimacy issues and unspoken resentments and expectations. As the story progresses, we learn that they really don't have a very healthy relationship and probably shouldn't be getting engaged. But the horrors in store for them at Bone Lake will change them, if they can survive.

After a jarring opening scene I'd rather forget, the latest indie feature from Mercedes Bryce Morgan starts promisingly. Another couple materializes at the house -- mansion, really, so how are these pretty young things affording such luxury? -- by name of Will and Cin (short for Cinnamon, inexplicably), claiming to have the same rental via a different website. Compromising the double-booking by agreeing that both couples should enjoy the place, it's clear to us they're in for a bad time. We've seen Barbarian recently with its own double-booking first act. And to have that initial premise set up a mansion filled with other key horror motif, I was sure this was about to become a new version of The Cabin in the Woods. 

A smorgasbord of narrative options seem intentionally presented by the film, like little red herrings for the meta fan. Its inspirations and references are evocative, if not always clear. My notes of this film are almost entirely of other titles that I thought of while watching Bone Lake. Its Barbarian premise leads to hints of The Strangers, The Beach House, Psycho, The Gift, Significant Other, Last House on the Left, Friday the 13th, Eden Lake, Together, Funny Games, The Rental, and Speak No Evil. Heck, I don't think it's unfair to add Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Flowers in the Attic. And while those are mostly handsome titles to be linked with, it's not a good sign my notes include little else. Where is the gumption to stand out, to do your own thing?

Bone Lake suffers, ultimately, from a disappointing lack of imagination. Will this be a haunting from the lake shown repeatedly to be a graveyard of sorts? A home invasion by violent strangers or a silent stalker a la Jason or Michael? Are the horny couples going to go mad, do something bad? To say the filmmakers choose the most obvious, predictable, and boring option -- of so many cool ones -- is putting things mildly. 

Like the '80s suburban erotic thrillers it clearly wants to emulate, this film capitalizes on a vulnerable normative couple being terrorized by a fiendish outsider. In this case, the fiends are not the obvious outsiders because they look so much like insiders. And in fact, they are, which seems the only decent want to make sense of this otherwise deeply conservative and cautious film. Refusing to engage with its own characters, the screenplay careens wildly into dialogue-heavy scenes that effectively say nothing while forcing its actors to navigate circular and stilted lines. Even that concession doesn't absolve the actors, though, who are very pretty but act as if they're playing to the balcony in an opera hall, broad and flat.

Perhaps most egregious in my mind is the constant promise of eroticism in this material that is never realized. Despite their looks, the actors display shockingly little nudity. A bizarre lack of queerness exacerbates the main problem, which is that these two couples are treated so blasé by the screenplay, so thoroughly not outré, that my imagination preferred to make up its own story about what they'd do to and with each other, horrific or otherwise. As such, by film's end I was mostly just annoyed by the supposedly sympathetic characters' constant stupid decisions and irrational choices to not communicate with each other. Not thrilled, not entertained. Annoyed. They spill their beans to the manifestly, insistently creepy other couple while refusing to even speak honestly with each other about what is necessary for their own survival in this situation. 

The film is capably shot and looks handsome enough, but from its meek treatment of sex (there is literally a sex room the size of my apartment that doesn't get used) to its conscious choice not to entertain other horrors it itself introduces (there's a room for monitoring surveillance tech riddling the estate, and another with some spiritualist or satanic ritual tools, and a lake containing literally dozens of skeletons), I simply can't help but feel cheated out of a story -- any story -- that might have been meaningful or interesting. Which, really, is the bare minimum.

One Battle After Another (2025)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Not being familiar with Thomas Pynchon's Vineland, and not knowing it serves as the basis for Paul Thomas Anderson's latest film, One Battle After Another, was probably a good thing for me. Pynchon lies beyond my preferred tastes in literature, so I might have cooled at the suggestion of a screening. My ass was in the seat for Leo DiCaprio and Benicio Del Toro, and Anderson, of course, though I was admittedly nervous after his most recent feature. Yet being brought to tears multiple times and feeling cerebrally affected by this story and its timeliness were not things I was prepared for.

Opening with a searing scene of violence and shockingly funny eroticism, Anderson pulls no punches in this film that seems to be reaching through the screen to grab audiences and shake them out of a stupor. Escapism? Not here, and to that end, I do think the marketing campaign for this title was especially effective. I had, truly, no idea what we were in for, and that Anderson chose a distinctly unsafe and wickedly fun route with a story that, as it unfolded, became insidiously upsetting should earn him laurels come awards season. Wryly skirting sentimentality, his saga of an extended family of choice with a twisted past reconnecting to save their next generation showcases human awkwardness and hopefulness in a way less like Anderson's pointing a mirror at us and more like he's giving us a pep talk after losing a game. He knows exactly who his audience is, and what they're tired from. Hint: it's in the title. 

"Fighting" and "attacks," as words, have been sapped of their strength in the age of social media, but Anderson reminds us of what it really means to dedicate yourself -- bodily -- to a cause you believe in. And not just because Warner Bros., despite their reported blanching at this film's extraordinary budget, trusted in their auteur to have creative control. Opening with a far-left militant group breaking out detained immigrants on the American southern border, including the aforementioned shockingly funny erotic scene, the story indeed shows us the physical toll one battle after another takes on the people desperately fighting for their obsessions.

The plot jumps sixteen years into the future -- though the exact temporal setting of this film is deliberately hard to pin -- after establishing its main characters, members of the revolutionist group the French 75, especially Bob (DiCaprio) and Perfidia (a riveting Teyana Taylor, in full command of her craft), who fall in love and have a daughter before they are separated and forced to live in hiding. Their nemesis? Steven J. Lockjaw, and honestly, just enjoy the names in this as you listen, they're great. Sean Penn delivers an astonishing performance as Lockjaw, the most evil presence on a screen I've seen in a long time, a military colonel and avowed white supremacist who develops a psychosexual monomania fixated on Perfidia. His reign of terror has rendered Bob debilitatingly paranoid, despite living a happy -- and very private -- life with his daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), a strong-willed and highly capable teenager. They've lived under false names and without communication with their former comrades, including Perfidia, but Lockjaw finds them.

Determined to track down any possible child he may have had -- to eliminate any evidence of his interracial sexual activities (and fetish) -- he has utilized mercenary bounty hunters to locate his quarry. After Willa's rescue by the French 75, and Lockjaw's attack on their house, a fleeing Bob frantically uses what resources are available to him through his secret network. But it's been years since he's remembered certain passwords, and suffice it to say that his is a significant and almost absurd journey, which functions as the main plot. Regina Hall and Benicio Del Toro perform brilliantly in their supporting roles, holding their own even as the screenplay zigs and zags and maintaining believable gravitas in moments so strange they need grounding. 

Indeed humorous throughout, the film nevertheless keeps a firm clutch on our attention for its two-and-a-half hours. Jonny Greenwood's score sets a haunting mood, one calculated to feel at times like aural anxiety, including a long sequence of rising tension with what sounds like a single piano key played endlessly. And right that it should! Our humanist attachment to these odd and exciting, dangerous characters comes from somewhere, and -- spoiler alert -- it's probably because of the significant threat against them. This film, despite blurring its own setting, wears its politics on its sleeve and flashes it around. Not necessarily about Antifa or MAGA or any recognizable labels like that, but in that its antagonists are institutionalized hypocrites, aspiring to and/or mobilized by a secret society of white supremacist men controlling the government. Timely themes abound, to be sure, in this work, but its characterizations of desperate men couldn't be more starkly painted.

One Battle After Another niggled my brain for some time after our screening, not least because of its curious tone. For a film of such scope and seriousness and urgency, this feels fun and even hopeful as it challenges and subverts our expectations. Like these characters, we're tired from so much fighting, but this film reminds us of the lasting power -- and empowerment -- of resistance. That freedom shouldn't come at a cost too great for us to conform to injustice. In retrospect, it seems Anderson changes the title's significance to reorient us from the past to the future: don't waste time fretting over old battles or counting your scars, you've gotta take stock and heal before the next battle. Onward and upward!

Bring Her Back (2025)

Score: 5 / 5

Some movies were just meant for you. You know? I had that experience once this year with HIM and now, again, with Bring Her Back. Before I finally got to it -- having taken most of the summer off --  I rewatched the Philippou brothers' Talk to Me (2022), which I remember liking but not feeling strongly about. The rewatch changed my opinion, so I'll likely have to revise my old review, and made me quite excited for this film, about which I knew absolutely nothing. The title suggests something similar to their previous venture, involving a dead female and some attempts at reviving her, right? Sure. But Bring Her Back is so much more.

I used to say that the new Big Three in new inventive horror -- Jordan Peele, Ari Aster, and Robert Eggers -- started with an intensely focused initial film and delivered sophomores much broader and weirder and angrier. And the Philippous do the same here, crafting a film so mysterious and intense and strange that I felt like my sofa was vibrating beneath me. Rarely have I been this uncomfortable and unsure in a movie in my own living room. Even with its well-lit and brightly colored visuals, a far cry indeed from Talk to Me, which threw me from the start. And not even because it's wholly unpredictable, though I confess to having had no idea whatsoever what was in store for our protagonists, stepsiblings Andy and Piper, played by equally excellent Billy Barratt and Sora Wong.

A delicious Sally Hawkins reigns over this story as Laura, an eccentric and delightful new foster mother for two orphans. She's a free spirit and a former social worker and she's one of the most emotionally terrifying creatures I've ever seen on screen. She's got ulterior motives, you see, and her explicit preference for one of her new charges should raise your hackles. Their little family -- including Laura's other stepson, who is mute, after the untimely and tragic death of Laura's biological daughter -- has a unique dynamic I found endlessly fascinating in a film founded on the believability of their unbelievable relationship.

I won't say more for fear of spoiling it. This is an exceptional film to go into totally cold. It suggestively pulls from multiple horror subgenres, with a heady result of nasty influences meant to keep you off-kilter and anxious. A few moments are sure to have you shaking your head and muttering "what?!" through your wince. Anyone familiar with emotional abuse, take heed: this will trigger you badly, and once it starts, it doesn't stop; there are similar vibes in Resurrection and Alice, Darling which are similarly upsetting. And that's not the whole hog, either: I can only imagine how stressful it would be to have been in the foster system and now witness two endangered kids desperate for help and being institutionally unable to get help for their very real and very urgent situation. 

The Long Walk (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

It's become somehow fun for people to either adore or detest Stephen King -- especially his adaptations -- and I don't have the slightest interest in those conversations. King is a master of horror fiction, that much has always been clear, and I'm rarely more intrigued than when a new title surfaces. While I've been a longtime personal fan of his work, I'm by no means an expert or even a completionist. Yet. So this novel, published in 1979 under his pseudonym Richard Bachman, was not one I had read before, and I was eager to experience it. Little did I know that it would blow me away.

If you've seen the trailer, or seen the title itself, you already know the plot. A simple concept becomes much more, though, in King's imagination, as he imbues diverse characters with such fascinating psychological quirks that they end up being the story far more than the plot is. His imagined America, here, is bleak and evil, and the characters are cogs in a dystopian machine, lorded over by a totalitarian military regime that feels shockingly close to where we're currently headed. Think something between The Hunger Games and The Handmaid's Tale, and that's the kind of haunting mess you'll have stuck in your head after watching this film.

Which is apt, as it's helmed by Francis Lawrence himself, director of most of the Hunger Games film series (and Constantine, I Am Legend, Water for Elephants, and Red Sparrow). He melds quite well, here, with King's story of adolescent male bonding -- rather typical of his work -- in a somewhat retro version of Americana, set in remote rural Maine. I can only imagine the difficulty with which writer JT Mollner had to grapple in dramatizing this story for the screen, visually monotonous as it is and with a literally set pace of 3mph. Yet Mollner's sheer brilliance in Strange Darling should have prepared me for the psychological thrills he'd deliver here, on the edges of civilization and civility alike. There's a literary sensibility to this film I have trouble identifying, but it has something to do with Steinbeck and Bradbury. And the characters' dialogue is never less than riveting, as it's pretty much all we -- and they -- have to go on. What else can you do while walking endlessly by necessity?

I don't really have much else to say, so forgive the coming non-sequiturs. The actors are all excellent, especially leads Cooper Hoffman (yes, Hoffman) and David Jonsson (making a huge case for leading man stardom, after Alien: Romulus), the latter of which was so charming and charismatic in this film I sometimes had trouble believing he was suffering at all. Talk about literature; Jonsson is the film's Samwise Gamgee. Judy Greer, Charlie Plummer, and Mark Hamill are all grim and suitably entertaining, though none are really given any character depth to feel like high points in the film. The scenes of horror -- and I do mean pure, unadulterated, violent and gross and shocking horror -- truly upset me in this film, perhaps because I didn't expect it of Lawrence. This is a hard R rating, for sure, and even someone too accustomed to such things may find parts of this film difficult to endure. I sure did.

This is going on my list of favorite King adaptations, for sure. It's a somber affair, one rife with elevated ideas and major themes woven with care and compassion for its characters. Depicting a hard world like this can so easily result in flattened character archetypes and forced action; this feels raw and immediate in a way that's difficult to put into words. This is along the lines of The Green Mile or The Shawshank Redemption, Dolores Claiborne, even Stand By Me, in terms of King's work, and I just loved it, despite sweating profusely and weeping loudly during our screening. The film's climax was a tad disappointing to me, but no less satisfying for it, and by the time the credits started, I was a mess. Thankfully, that meant I stayed in the darkened auditorium and heard the original song "Took a Walk" by Shaboozey and Stephen Wilson Jr., which is already my choice for best original song of 2025. What an extraordinary final touch to an already highly successful film.

Locked (2025)

Score: 1.5 / 5

The fourth cinematic version of this story, Locked manages to be a kinetic and zippy ride that kept me guessing as to the direction it was headed. It was also repetitive to a fault and quite boring for me. This crime thriller may be some folks' cuppa, but it was not mine.

Bill Skarsgard brings his formidable skills to the fore as Eddie, a petty criminal who just wants to be free of his sins and live a safe and secure, if not comfortable, life with his young daughter Sarah. Here, he's an anxious, panicky weasel of a man whose desperation lands him in a "Dolus" (I don't speak car; is this a real thing? I don't care), a luxury SUV pimped the fuck out with all the bells and whistles you can (and can't) imagine. It's sitting conspicuously in the middle of an urban lot, unlocked, and so he naturally gets in to see what he might nab. When the car locks him in, he can't escape, attempting suddenly urgent violence and cutting his arm in the process, but to no avail. Then the digital screen begins to ring.

There's a long tradition of single-location movies with a cast of one or two actors, the best of which hinge on claustrophobia and psychological distress. Yet director David Yarovesky and his cinematographer and editors don't do much to highlight those aspects, despite almost the entire screenplay taking place in close, limited perspective on Eddie. We're taken in highly energized visual flights around the vehicle, especially in moments when it gets piloted remotely, and we soar high above, before, and behind it as it careens through city sprawl and mountainous curves alike. It's a small frustration, perhaps, but seems ill-chosen in a film meant to force us into a certain headspace.

Speaking of our remote pilot, Anthony Hopkins plays the film's antagonist, William, whose car Eddie has woefully entered. His trap is highly moralistic, sparked by a twofer personal tragedy that apparently caused sociopathic madness, and he preaches about it at length. Mostly invisible during the film, Hopkins uses his iconic voice to devastating effect, more lucid and vicious than we've seen (or, rather, heard) from him in quite a while. I should have been overjoyed by the time he graces our eyeballs by the film's climax, but by then I was so annoyed by what the screenplay created him to be that I just wanted the movie to end. Unfortunately, the climax is far too lengthy and redundant for any such simple finale.

Probably my most significant gripe with the film is its insistence on thematic -- read, moral -- ambiguity. Eddie doesn't even break into the car initially; I'd have liked a film that made him a real bad guy and then asked us to endure and consider his suffering. And suffer he does: William's bells and whistles include several torture devices and practices, which he unleashes with chilling glee. But, for all the screenplay's pontificating about ethics and legality and morality, and for all William's cleverness and vigilantism, he's very clearly labeled insane and sadistic, not unlike the lesson-teaching evils in Saw movies. So we have a bona fide monster -- personal tragedy notwithstanding -- literally torturing a highly sympathetic opportunist for 90 minutes. There's almost nothing of interest, to me, in that premise. Or in its execution here.

Perhaps most egregiously, to that point, is an extended sequence of pure horror as William directs the vehicle to slaughter other criminals on the street and then to terrorize and nearly kill Eddie's young daughter. It's this kind of tasteless trash that really boils my blood, especially as, while these scenes are occurring, William continues his endless monologue. The takeaway from the film, ultimately, is that wealthy people -- the literally crazy rich -- are a blight on society. That the "haves" can and do torture the "have-nots" and that that's unjust. No shit, Sherlock! And, for all its ado, it fails to elicit audience investment because it's never so dour that we don't think for a single minute that the quietly righteous Eddie will die. Of course he -- and we, by extension -- will escape this trap and live peacefully and more thankfully with our loved ones and eschew further crime. So the nonstop torture was really just for...fun? I think not.