Iron Lung (2026)

Score: 1.5 / 5

Based on a 2022 video game of the same name, Iron Lung starts promising. Opening narration tells us that a "Quiet Rapture" occurred, as many stars and planets suddenly disappeared and reduced the human population. Presumably, we've colonized the stars at this point, so it's a more existential threat than the similar phenomenon we saw in Stephen King's The Life of Chuck last year. The main character, Simon, is a convict who gets assigned on a mission in exchange for his freedom. He's forced into a small submarine, about the size of an escape room in the real world, alone and without any training. Hell, he's without guidance either: nobody seems able to tell him what he's looking for or meant to be doing. I can see how this would work well as a game, investigating the sub (its name provides the film's title) and using whatever is at hand to try and figure out your own purpose while mysterious things start happening to you.

Unfortunately, the film is a bit of a dud. Directed, produced, written, and edited by Mark Fischbach, the YouTuber of apparent renown who goes by the moniker "Markiplier," the film also stars the man himself in what is basically its only character role. And there's a lot to be said for this obvious labor of love. Atmospheric and absorbing, I found myself slowly swept into the intrigue of his existential horror trip. Who is he? Why is he here? These questions lead eventually to more pointed ones: did he deserve to be here? We get inexplicably little insight into this character, though, as half our energy is constantly diverted to attempting to understand the setting.

They're apparently diving, you see, into an ocean of blood. Literally. It's not clear if this is another planet or perhaps what remains of Earth, and indeed maybe it doesn't matter. We never even see the outside of the submarine. This is a single-room experience, not unlike Hitchcock's Lifeboat or Rope, or more recent thrillers like Buried. Using flashes of x-rays, he's able to "see" outside the sub via x-ray images in black and white momentarily projected on a huge screen that makes up one wall. Slowly getting the hang of his mission, Simon eventually locates what appears to be a massive skeleton on the ocean floor, seemingly his objective, and must then retrieve a sample. 

Curiously, at this point, he starts having misgivings about the purpose of his dive and the reason for collecting such a sample. This is where the film really lost me. Sure the voice speaking to him via intercom (Caroline Kaplan as "Ava," whose vocal performance I quite liked) is inconsistent and a bit shady, but his identity and motivations don't change: surely he still wants his freedom, even at the cost of doing a strange, risky task for dubious benefit. It's just an odd choice to alienate the viewer from Simon at this late point in the film, which is already ridiculously overlong at 127 minutes. We should be more invested in him, not less.

Fischbach clearly loves the material and wants to give it justice. And it's an impressive production for such a small budget and a first-time independent feature venture. Yet for all its nightmarish restraint, haunting lethargy, and moody sensory experience, Iron Lung is a miserably boring movie. There's just no getting around that.

Attempting to mimic the style of a survival, puzzle game is admirable, to be sure, but it is also foolish. Films are meant to be seen. Storytellers in film should always default to show us rather than tell us. So the problem with this approach to such inert material is that we aren't shown anything. For the entire movie. Worse, the story hinges on being able to know/understand what's happening contextually, and there is none here. We're constantly teased with images of the exterior landscape (ocean bed, so... seascape?), yet they are almost entirely abstract. I couldn't tell a blessed thing on that screen, until a shot or two that might have included what appeared to be a rib bone, and one that seemed an alien or monster's face. Part of what's so frustrating about this, too, is the budget: okay, so you can't actually show us what's out there in an ocean of thick, dark blood. But you can't even give us decent drawn or "photographed" images via the technology you've included as a crucial element for that sole purpose?

As it is, Simon is just not an interesting character, and Fischbach is not an interesting actor here. Simon is mostly single-note as a stressy, sweaty mess, and it gets grating before long. His dialogue is clunky and unnatural; his delivery is even less natural, with a forced concern that comes off more like he's compensating for not knowing his lines by sounding increasingly angry. And that seems to be a subtle indication of a larger theme: if violence is the only way for some people to assert themselves, what does that say about nature? We're in an ocean of blood, after all, and before film's end it's confirmed to be human blood. What are these monsters swimming in this mysterious ocean? Is this all that's left of Earth? And how many times as the enigmatic company conducted such missions? We learn Simon is not the first, and much like the Weyland-Yutani company in Alien, this organization has ulterior motives and is all too willing to make personnel sacrifices in the name of profit.

What can I say? I would have liked at least some of my questions answered. I would have liked to see this film rather than just listen to most of it. I would have liked to like it more. Admiration for the impassioned art and joy at what this might signal for runaway independent releases like this in the future does not nullify my suffering through two hours of boredom with only brief, fleeting moments of intrigue. 

Send Help (2026)

Score: 4.5 / 5

One of the most thoroughly entertaining movies I've seen in long months (maybe in over a year), Send Help is a gift only someone like Sam Raimi could have given us. Uniting one of the most criminally underrated actresses working today (Rachel McAdams, whose reliability is second only to her peerless breadth of work in varying genres and styles) with an appealing young heartthrob (Dylan O'Brien, here making a masterful case for himself as a serious Hollywood leading man), Raimi mashes his own genres with abandon, delivering a wholly original and endlessly riotous adventure thriller with no small amount of horror comedy. 

The main plot concerns McAdams, a corporate strategist whose meek and socially awkward demeanor in her big-time office does not earn her favors. She's like Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada, if Andy had stayed a mousy, tweedy little misfit for several years. Her dapper new boss, O'Brien, is the nepo baby of her old boss, who had promised her a significant promotion; unfortunately, O'Brien is a superficial moron who cares more about golf and suits and healthy lunches than about the people actually working in his company. Think 9 to 5, and McAdams is going to teach this "sexist, egotistical, lying, hypocritical bigot" a thing or two. Except that she's too busy being sad for herself when her coworkers laugh at her and avoid her smelly sandwiches and ugly clogs and unkempt desk.

But the film references don't end there. Invited on a consequential trip to Bangkok to advise during a major company merger, McAdams reluctantly joins, even as her plane mates viciously mock her. But when the plane spontaneously decompresses and its engines fail, she and her boss are the only survivors, washed up on a deserted shore of some remote Pacific island. With more than small dashes of Cast Away and Triangle of Sadness, Raimi sends us through twists of tone and plot and character that seem calculated to inflict whiplash. Carrying us through is a knowing critique about misogyny in the workplace, milked for its blackly humorous venom at every turn. Her toxic male boss, obsessed with status and the perception of success, desperately clings to the veneer of power he thinks he innately possesses. His foul, serviceable employee blossoms in tropical isolation, revealing her secret hobby of survivalist training, and growing more beautiful even as he breaks down and bleeds out. We're never fully sympathetic with either character; clearly McAdams carries the film, but it's not because she's a Mary Sue. Indeed, more than once Raimi forces us to judge her motives and methods and consider that O'Brien doesn't deserve his fate. This is where the film shifts to Lord of the Flies, or even Misery. 

Yet the screenplay (by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift of the Friday the 13th reboot in 2009), for all its unexpected brilliance, is brought back down to earth by Raimi's insistence on his Raimi-isms. You don't buy a ticket to one of his films without expecting explosive bodily fluids. Fountains of blood, geysers of vomit, rivulets of saliva and snot: it's all coming out, and likely in the dirtiest and most garish ways possible. Their power dynamic is constantly in flux, but so is their ability to survive. Wholly dependent on the flourishing, thriving McAdams is going to damage O'Brien's pride; it doesn't help that he's wounded in body as well as in spirit, so he can't just get up and walk away. They'll share more than just food, shelter, fire, and fluids before all is said and done, though: they'll share secrets. 

I won't spoil any more -- and believe me, it's more than worth it to go into this film blind -- and really, all I've given you is about the first 30 minutes. Send Help goes to strange, dark places, and it's a hell of a trip. Earned scares (I shrieked out loud twice in this film, and was not the only one to do so) lead to meaningful character development, which in turn informs our interpretation of the production. This is exactly what we go to the movies for. This is pure entertainment, artfully imagined and inspiringly realized, showcasing the inimitable talents of several artists at the top of their games.

Primate (2026)

Score: 3 / 5

Some movies are enjoyable because they are exactly what you expect. Whether you read the IMDb summary or watch a trailer -- heck, even seeing a poster might do it -- you know what Primate is up to. A fast and dirty creature feature, this classic B-list film dives in with laughable contrivances, ramps up with frustratingly inert characters, and delivers on its promise through brutal elimination of those characters. That's it. And it's a heck of a fun time.

Of course there's no reason for a college kid to return home to her million-something-dollar mansion on an isolated clifftop in Hawaii out of the blue, unannounced with a guest, and for her to have a single father, a veterinarian, who has been raising a chimpanzee. This movie is so bizarre in its setup that you can scarcely do anything but go along with it. It's a bit charming, frankly, and I found myself eager to understand who these characters are and why they've been assembled in this way. Unfortunately, the film never gives us anything satisfying in this regard. The exact same premise could have been in a townhouse in some mid-size city, where a chimp had escaped from the local zoo. The only difference would be that, here, there's a mix of tragedy in what is perceived as a senseless betrayal by the family "pet."

Because, as anyone with half a brain cell could have told you, the chimp snaps and then starts snapping necks. Or, rather, jaws. But this is no ripoff of Nope, with its relentlessly haunting depiction of a simple incompatibility between apes and a sound stage. Rather, this is a ripoff of Stephen King's Cujo. 

You got that right: our highly intelligent adopted pet/brother chimp, Ben, gets rabies.

I won't say anything else of the plot, which does what it needs to do in terms of piling on the contrivances along with the idiotic choices of its college-age main characters. This was never meant to be a deep theoretical discussion-starter about the thin, blurred line between civilized behavior and violence, or about what defines the missing link between varying kinds of primates. This is the kind of movie where a monster seeks to annihilate the obnoxious, sinning kids in increasingly inventive, gory ways. At a mercifully brisk pace, you barely have time to finish your drink before the credits roll; you'll never piss yourself out of fear in a movie this fast.

Ben himself is worthy of some discussion, though. This movie wisely makes the decision to focus on practical effects, situating movement specialist Miguel Torres Umba in the chimp suit and aiding his masterful performance with puppetry and a little CGI that you really can't differentiate. He's also kept shadowed enough that we never tire of his appearance, and I found myself squinting to see where he was looking and what his hands were grasping in scenes when he wasn't even moving. Though the human element of his existence on screen is palpable, you never really feel the light in his eyes; he's a monster, through and through, deceiving us (and his adoptive family) with the guise of sentience. There's some hubbub about the late matriarch of this family having taught Ben language as a result of her studies in literacy, and though the film eventually wants us to be emotionally invested, it never really works. She was no Jane Goodall, and this is no Mighty Joe Young. 

It's a nice setting for a slasher-type horror film, and the production design of this mansion is beautiful to distraction. Unfortunately, we don't see all that much of it, as the plot only works due to the restriction of its characters. They get stuck in the pool, on a subset patio only reachable by a single curving staircase set into the stone. Frustrating as this setting is, it does prevent us from distractingly wondering what might happen if a rabid chimpanzee got loose in the Hawaiian jungle, which I can only imagine being the premise of an inevitable sequel. Moreover, there's something to be said here about Ben's character: this film could have really delved into some considerations of the extent of Ben's illness. Is he naturally this monstrous, or is it purely a result of rabies? How does the disease affect him (when he's not just "accidentally" slaughtering people, but rather setting traps and toying with his prey) and can we fully blame it instead? Does this change how we consider human serial killers and their (likely) illnesses?

But of course director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down, 47 Meters Down Uncaged, The Strangers: Prey at Night) and his co-writer don't waste any time considering such intangibles. They've got blood to spill. And that they do, with some gnarly moments in an otherwise pretty lean thriller. Even knowing full well what I was walking into, I found myself annoyed to distraction by the characters' stupid choices; in another screening, I might invite my friends to loudly shout at the characters with me when they do the obviously idiotic thing. But that's part of the charm of this kind of flick: it's meant to be enjoyed by a large group of people only paying middling attention as they crack jokes and comment on costumes and settings and violence. 

Wake Up Dead Man (2025)

Score: 5 / 5

I hope Rian Johnson makes Knives Out Mysteries the rest of his career. Easily my favorite in what is now a veritable series of consistently excellent films, Wake Up Dead Man is also easily one of my favorites of 2025. 

This time around, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig delivering an inexplicably more interesting character, now three films in) is called to a small town parish in upstate New York. The Gothic setting is heightened by a new murder mystery: Reverend Wicks (gruff Josh Brolin), a charismatic and emotionally abusive monsignor dies, mysteriously and alone in a small closet adjacent to the sanctuary where he had been performing a Good Friday service. Johnson spends the entire first act of this five-act narrative in the parish community, so we get to know the dynamics at work first. Wicks gets a reassigned assistant pastor, a young former boxer (!) named Duplencity (a tortured Josh O'Connor), whose dark past and tendency toward violence make him all the more interesting to a burgeoning cult leader like Wicks. The parishioners are all naturally highly suspicious, including Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Thomas Haden Church, Cailee Spaeny, and of course Glenn Close as the devout and imperious right-hand woman of the head priest. In Johnson's capable imagination, however, their likely guilt isn't just a matter of fact; he forces us to consider, with each, the very realistic reasons they might fall prey to a toxic gospel, and how similarly we might do the same.

See, Johnson is of course doing an Agatha Christie thing, but he's also very much doing an America-in-the-2020s thing with these movies. In the first, he roasted insular families of wealth and the ways in which they prey on marginalized workers in a cruel twist of murder mysteries and legacy wealth; in the second, he skewered a wider swath of privileged people in the category of being "stupid rich" and how they prey on each other in a post-moralistic parable about capitalism. But now we shift -- though the motivation may still be about money -- to the realm of faith. Karl Marx famously called religion "the opium of the people," and Johnson seems eager to inject us with a counterdrug. In an age of fascists taking power in the "land of the free," it's telling that Johnson wants us to consider how religious conservatism and sociopolitical desperation leads to cults of personality.

Yet rather than merely scorching the devout -- or, indeed, painting this as a full-blown cult, a la Kevin Williamson's series The Following -- Johnson uses this focus to mine an opportunity. Rather than lambasting the faithful as weak or ignorant, much less willfully wicked, he develops the characters toward each other, reminding them (and us) of commonalities rather than irreconcilable differences.

Visually, Johnson hasn't been this strong since The Last Jedi. He and cinematographer Steve Yedlin create real magic with their lighting in this film, evoking Dutch Golden Age paintings with a dash of fever-dream lighting technique. Thick atmosphere and nebulous backgrounds are repeatedly pierced by golden, amber, or even white light through various doorways associated with life and death. The first especial time I noticed the gorgeous feast of color and light was, indeed, when Blanc arrives to the church at the start of the second act, and his shadow is superimposed over the bare wall over the shoulder of the man who needs him most. This motif is repeated twice in the film, for pointed thematic effect.

And indeed help is needed. The cast of murderous characters share something in common: not love of money, or paranoid false friendships, or even monstrous secrets, but in fact their anger. These characters, though desperate for healing, belonging, and purpose, all share a penchant for anger in its various forms. While Johnson's messaging, by film's end, is demonstrably about understanding other perspectives, de-escalating violence, and a counter-instinctive type of empathy, it's fair to say his approach to this material feels like his own angriest yet. Easily the richest thematic yarn he's yet spun in this franchise -- maybe ever -- Wake Up Dead Man also features an aggressive visual dynamic that demands to be see on as large a screen as possible, and with the best sound system. It's a crying shame so many people will watch this on phone screens.

I don't think I could accurately recount the plot to you, and I've seen it twice now. Johnson's plots, however, are intentionally unpredictable/unsolvable. His enduring legacy with these Benoit Blanc mysteries is more about why these murders happen than just about who dunnit. You know? Blanc even riffs on a Mulder and Scully dynamic with his young priest friend, essentially pairing a man of science with a man of faith as they grapple with inhumane questions. In Johnson's masterful language, they reach some profound epiphanies that will leave you shaken. Murder will always out; the battle for the soul, however, takes center stage in the best Knives Out mystery yet.

The Ugly Stepsister (2025)

Score: 3 / 5

Elvira and her sister Alma arrive with their widowed mother, Rebekka, at their new home. Apparently lower class and approaching destitution, they are humbled and grateful to be accepted into the wealthier Otto's home, their new stepfather. Otto's daughter, Agnes, is beautiful whereas they are, well, comparatively ugly. Clearly, this story, written and directed by the Norwegian Emilie Blichfeldt in her feature debut, is a reimagining of the Cinderella tale from the perspective of Elvira. What becomes apparent, even early, is that this is also a bona fide horror film. The fantasy elements of the Disneyfied story are stripped here, to the point that this film feels more like a Grand Guignol production of the original Grimm material. 

Early on, Elvira pops a zit on her nose and we get to study the pus in extreme closeup. Eventually we'll see maggots and tapeworms and breaking teeth and needles near eyes and all sorts of violent, vicious horrors. Some of the tortures in the Saw franchise aren't as graphic as what we see here, and I had to excuse myself at one point to suppress a retch. I don't know quite how to express the visceral discomfort I had while watching this, except to say it was more harrowing an experience than Guadagnino's Suspiria or Roth's Hostel. That said, it's nice to see someone reimagine the source material in this way, really taking things to their creepy roots: grim if not wholly Grimm.

Unfortunately, that visual extremism isn't really my cuppa, so my favors will not go with this movie. Its points of interest were less than engrossing to me, though I admit some fascination on my part with the in-world obsession with physical beauty. It's more than a fad or a desperation to please the Prince and rise from squalor. There's a general hysteria around outer beauty, so much so that the extent to which Elvira will go to become beautiful is as laughable as it is horrifying. And it's all supported -- indeed, mobilized -- by her mother, who takes filial villainy to a whole new level. 

You can't help but get swept up in the wicked sense of glee evinced by director and actors alike. Lea Myren plays Elvira with so much gusto and verve that you can't help but be impressed. From under increasing layers of makeup and prosthetics, Myren maintains a dreamy, wide-eyed hope that her idolized Prince might actually love her when she's pretty enough. We might as well call this film The Passion of the Stepsister. After a brutal nose job and its Hannibal Lecter-esque mask she must wear after, her braces are brutally chipped off; she swallows a tapeworm to make her skinny, and now her tummy burbles ominously in an aural version of Chekhov's gun; false eyelashes are sewn onto her eyelids. Eventually her hair falls out and she's put in a garish wig. 

Yet for all its potential, the film never really manages to say anything about, well, anything. Except perhaps our ability to laugh at grotesque violence done to young women in the name of beauty. There's no real messaging about inner beauty, or found family, or sisterhood, or self-empowerment, or the ultimate cost of capitalistic beauty standards. Blichfeldt is either too angry for that or too enraptured with spectacle; her embracing of extreme awfulness here undermines and collapses the Grimm pretense of a cautionary tale. We don't even get much from Alma's perspective; why isn't she subject to these barbaric procedures? Is she immune from needing to marry well to support herself and their mother? What does she think, privately, of what's being done to Elvira? Alas, we get no such perspective. Blichfeldt instead keeps us on a loop, making a statement about desperation for beauty while butchering a young woman and then forcing us to relive this pattern several times without progression.

Strange Harvest (2025)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Stuart Ortiz makes his solo directorial debut with Strange Harvest, a mockumentary with some nasty fun surprises up its sleeves. Its sort of anti-X-files approach to crime features two detectives in the area around San Bernardino chasing down a serial killer known as Mr. Shiny. Well, chasing him down is a stretch; they're really cleaning up after him. For over a dozen years, Mr. Shiny has gotten away with horrific, vicious murders that haven't been linked despite somewhat ritualistic evidence at the crime scenes. Specifically, dismemberment and missing organs.

Taking as its hook our cultural obsession with macabre murder sprees in true crime procedural fashion, this low-budget affair smacks at times of authenticity. Not because it's so polished but precisely the opposite. Frankly, at times it feels like an amateur's work, or a film student's. Witnesses sometimes look like they've prepared their lines. The camera is propped at too conversational a level, with curious voids in the background instead of a wall or curtain. And this is all to the film's credit; much like in The Blair Witch Project, you can't help but get sucked in by the unpretentiousness of it all. This is going to be a gruesome little murdery story, so tuck yourself in and get cozy, yanno?

Which is when the film smartly takes a couple left turns. I was not prepared for the postmortem scenes, but they are shown in all their gory glory. This is clearly where the film's budget went: reminiscent of Saw or Se7en or the Hannibal series, we're forced into grisly scenes of torture and death with only the bloody residue to indicate how this atrocity happened. Oddly, there is one indication of a dead dog, which is censored, but the multiple murdered children are laid bare and plain for us to see. There's more than a whiff of Sinister here, and I had to avert my eyes at times. I was a little glad for this, because the film's general air often had me forgetting this was fictional, and not some true crime doc on a streaming service. In fact, I was most reminded of the nature of Strange Harvest -- it's a horror film, through and through -- in those nightmarish scenes when, via security cam footage or the like, we see Mr. Shiny in action. 

There's also more than a whiff of Lovecraft about the proceedings, and without spoiling too much, it's fair to say this is basically a Lovecraftian story. Mr. Shiny's suggested liaison with an eldritch evil gives the film its title, meant to account for a profane ritual involving human sacrifices. Whether or not you believe is up to you, in true fashion of the writer, but the film works regardless in its perverse sense of pop culture intertextuality. It belongs among the ranks of those I've already mentioned, of course, but also Lake Mungo, Resolution and The Endless, and Zodiac. There's a suggestion of The Exorcist, specifically when the suspect tours through Europe and the middle east. Ideas of the Manson killings and the Night Stalker swirled through my mind too. By the film's end, we still don't have all the answers we might want, but this film works by not giving us any more answers. 

Oh, and pay attention to the title song as the credits roll. It's a damn fine vibe.

Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025)

Score: 3 / 5

Another venture to Pandora leaves us elated at Cameron's mastery over visual splendor. While those hankering for more narrative meat to chew in this franchise will be left wanting, Fire and Ash, the third entry in this laughably expensive series mostly recycles the elements established in its watery predecessor. Between an ironically chilling new villain and a story slightly less plagiarized than the two first ones, this film hits similar beats while allowing Cameron's imagined world to breathe and maintain its pace. Some new elements are inspired, so it's not a totally dull retread, but one wishes for imagination to match spectacle here.

Shortly after the events of The Way of Water, Ishmael -- ope, pardon -- Jake Sully and his family are settling in to their new home among the Metkayina, Na'vi who live on oceanic reefs and have adapted to a mostly aquatic life. Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldana) are at odds, as the latter has developed an intense, murderous hatred of humans. As the threat of violent encroachment will likely never end, the family must decide what to do with Spider, a rather feral (and obnoxious) human boy who has been semi-adopted by the Na'vi family. Sending him away to live with other humans at the scientist encampment only works until their convoy is attacked by other Na'vi: a rival clan of violent heretics called the Mangkwan. 

Apparently having renounced the nature-god of Pandora, Eywa, the Mangkwan live a somewhat tortured life in no-man's land near an active volcano. Ash and charcoal are their color palettes, and they raid other Na'vi tribes aggressively. They are led by Varang (a hauntingly effective Oona Chaplin), a sort of loose cannon whose mystique is laced with sociopathy. Scattered by the attack, the Sully family struggles to handle a compounded threat when Varang begins to work with the humans in an effort to wipe out Pandora's resistance to colonization and industrialization. Conveniently, this leads almost immediately to Spider being "accepted" by Eywa, and infected with mycelium, so that he can now breathe freely on Pandora. 

Ugh, I know.

From this point, the film loops back into annoyingly familiar terrain -- narratively -- and squanders some promising opportunities hinted at then fully ignored. I like Fern Gully and Pocahontas as much as the next guy, and Moby-Dick as much as the next gay, but we don't need yet another grossly lengthy film dramatizing the same basic story with the same basic moves. Matt Reeves's Planet of the Apes series should have been cited as an inspiration for Cameron in this regard. Especially seeing that the screenplay was basically written by committee (five credited writers, no less), and produced and distributed by the entertainment-industrial complex that is Disney, it's shocking that there is so little attention paid to decent dialogue, pacing, and thematic conceit. The scenes with Spider and the other kids are the worst, still repeating bizarre colloquialisms ad nauseam in every single scene they tumble through. Yeah, bro, you know it, bro!

It doesn't help, I should note, that this film doesn't entirely feel like its own film. Rumor has it that this was intended to be a continuous story from the previous film, so I'd recommend a rewatch of that before this. Most of the characters aren't (re)introduced, so if you don't remember what Edie Falco and her team of weird humans (including Giovanni Ribisi and Jermaine Clement) are up to, you're shit out of luck this time. Additionally, there's the added complications of who is actually an avatar these days; Jake Sully is fully embodied, of course, and Kiri contains the spirit of Dr. Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver, who I love, but we can all agree that her voicing a child is weird, especially when she develops affections for her adoptive brother), and Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is still alive but also locked in an avatar body. I don't know, but I do think we've lost the plot a bit when it comes to the damn title.

Scenes with the whales (and their unbearable subtitles) are much worse in this film than the last, perhaps because the awe is gone. There's a montage late in this film of the whales in meetings that is so outrageously silly and dramatically inert that I almost completely checked out of the film. For something so profoundly cool to see on screen, the atrocious dialogue and frankly cartoonish sign language these CGI critters are forced to enact ruin the magic. I also think the editing is significantly poorer in this film than even in the last, though that's also partly due to the screenplay; we often go for extended stretches of time, even in battle sequences, only following a character or two. Granted, there are a lot of characters to keep track of here, but the editing (also apparently accomplished by committee: six credited editors!) seems hellbent on deliberately obfuscating. 

The elements with Varang and her tribe, however, are what I've wanted from this series since the first film. The Na'vi have such an interesting relationship with their god, their environment, and each other, and even back in 2009 we were given a glimpse of the shamanistic theocracy of their culture. The Mangkwan take this to its inverse extreme: they're presented as a Mansonesque cult of unhinged, gleeful violence. While I remain annoyed that Quaritch takes the spotlight in this film, making Varang a sort of minion not long after she's introduced, even her presence helps the film feel more interesting than it should. And it's a shame, because Cameron has introduced us to very strong female characters -- heroes and villains -- before in his career, and nobody can say Saldana's performance in the previous two films isn't one of the best parts of this franchise. 

Just like nobody can fault these films for sheer awesome spectacle. Frankly, I'd love to watch these films just as they are but without dialogue. Sure, we'd still see the repeated climactic battle and the follies of the invading humans, who never fail to underestimate the whales' destructive capabilities. We'd still see repeated raids and captures of children and those pinkish tentacles in their hair having sex with other creatures. We'd still get the rousing music and immersive sound effects, but at least we could come up with our own damn dialogue. 

I don't like just shitting on a movie -- and truth be told, this was a very fun time at the cinema -- so I'll add my own spin here. This movie could have been so much better had we focused wholly on Varang. Perhaps including a story about Jake or even Neytiri trying to find their way forward and getting seduced into this cult, even as the supposedly salvific Spider continues on his way to the humans (which could then lead into the inevitable fourth film). We could have even started with the humans, including the terrifying scene where she decides her people need guns for maximal killing prowess. 

Bugonia (2025)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Nobody does black comedy like Lanthimos. His latest, Bugonia, is one of his more accessible and angry films, yet its timely insistence on absurdity fits his oeuvre well. Its premise is deceptively simple: two conspiracists abduct a powerful CEO, convinced that she is an alien intending harm to humanity. The kidnappers, socially awkward and paranoid young men with a plan that goes only about as far as their arms can reach, are led by a beekeeper whose motivations are as hypocritical as they are convoluted. His partner in crime is his impressionable autistic cousin. The CEO, on the other hand, is a sharp, no-nonsense woman who thinks so little of them that it takes some time for her to recognize them as actual humans with real concerns. Their deadly dance, in the men's dingy basement, is the whole of the film's plot.

Reactionary and profoundly irate, the film's heavy-handed messaging is sidelined only by Lanthimos's unique mastery of tone. We're never quite sure if we should laugh at the surreal situation or shudder in fear. After all, this kind of crap has been on our minds for several years in the current American climate. Maybe not about aliens and bees, but certainly about CEOs being disposable, incels acting out violently, and plots against powerful people. It's hard to watch this and not think of what almost happened with Governor Whitmer in Michigan or with Luigi Mangione and the UnitedHealthcare CEO. I also thought more than once of Eddington, this year's other timely bleak comedy-thriller from Ari Aster, who produced this film.

And while the violence in this film is clear and present, so too is its humor. Mind you, I did not laugh out loud in this screening, but you can tell the players likely were between takes. Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis are laughably silly as misled conspiracy theorists certain that Emma Stone's biomedical company is responsible for killing the honeybees and, by extension, enslaving humanity. The logic isn't there, of course -- when is it ever in such conspiracies? -- but that's what makes it so funny, at first, when their captive tries to make sense of it. When they further their claims, asserting that she's an alien "Andromeda" and that their own questionable experiments have proven this, we see this for the witch hunt it is. Yet Lanthimos has forced us to see the extent to which the men are certain of their delusions: they have trained for such an act of terrorism. They've even chemically castrated themselves, in one of the film's more insightful details. And it's not all wholly different from what the rich and powerful do regularly (Stone is intercut, in an early montage, running on her treadmill and ingesting vitamins). 

Accomplished cinematographer and sometime Lanthimos collaborator Robbie Ryan does some amazing work in framing the dynamics between the players, especially considering that the bulk of this plot takes place in a single location as a sort of Socratic dialogue/interrogation. Stone's shaved head shines ethereally, usually coated in lotion (there's a hint of The Silence of the Lambs here, too), and the camera is angled just above her, so that she's looking up at us. Plemons's sweaty visage, on the other hand, is often shot from just below his line of sight, so we're looking up at the man in a position of newfound and frightening power. He also utilizes light in haunting ways, bringing surreal hellish vibes to the otherwise workmanlike basement and somewhat otherworldly aesthetics to the stark modernity of the CEO's home and office.

Credit must also be paid to screenwriter Will Tracy, former editor-in-chief of The Onion, who also penned The Menu, the series The Regime and Succession, and who produced (you guessed it) Eddington. The verbal swordplay between characters in absurd yet tense scenes is riveting and ghastly, aided by the A-list actors' unique skills in nonverbal acting. He incisively and wisely avoids totally demonizing any one character, adding emotional baggage to the men that at least humanizes them a bit beyond what could easily have been caricature. He also suggestively resists an easy answer as to the woman's identity and motives, delaying answers in favor of forcing the characters to communicate not only with each other but with us in real time.

We're asked, at various points, to sympathize with each of of the main characters, to the point that, even when the climax and denouement shocked me into stillness, I reeled at the implications Lanthimos seems to be firing away at. What if the issue at stake, the film seems to ask, is just that we're debating issues with incompatible languages? What if, aliens or no, terrorists or no, the real problem is Big Pharma? Sure, we can discuss violence, science, urbanity, financial injustice, culture wars, internet radicalism, but the film isn't trying to preach at us as much as it is attempting to lift the veil on our current social dynamics. Like Plato, Lanthimos urges us to think critically and on a macro-level, to resist succumbing to the invisible powers of our world and the inherent problems of how we interact with each other down here among the commoners. 

Song Sung Blue (2025)

Score: 4 / 5

Another musical biopic? No thanks, said I, thinking bitterly of my resolution not long ago to ignore or at least not care about new entries in the genre. But of course I went, somewhat begrudgingly, to Song Sung Blue, perhaps the last big awards contender released this season, if only to see Hugh Jackman do what he does best. And thank goodness I did.

Based not on Neil Diamond but on a real-life tribute band known as Lightning and Thunder, the story is a rare biographical picture of legit musicians who never quite reached fame the same way as other "original" artists. They are, like so many of us, not writers of their own tunes but still profoundly skilled artists whose love of particular music leads them to their own kind of fame while spreading joy. The Milwaukee couple at the heart of the story -- Mike, a recovering alcoholic Vietnam vet, and Claire, a sassy single mother of two -- fall in love in the unlikeliest of places: a state fair impersonator gig: he as Buddy Holly and she as Patsy Cline. But Mike wants to perform as himself, with his self-styled moniker "Lightning." Claire is instantly intrigued by his charisma and passion, and their chemistry sparks immediately. In only their first date, they begin dreaming of careers beyond their daily grind; it's A Star is Born in the Midwest. 

In a whirlwind, their romance becomes a showmance, starring in their own singing duo and touring with rave bookings. Mike's flashy style and vision of stardom is mobilized by Claire; they share the work of arranging music, constructing costumes, and building set lists. They're destined for success both professionally and personally. Claire's two daughters, though at first somewhat hesitant about mom's new beau, soon enough come around to the infectious joy between them. This is true for us as well, and the film knowingly capitalizes on the winning charms of Jackman and co-star Kate Hudson, who by the film's midpoint takes the reins. 

One of the more nightmarish moments in any film this year occurs when Claire is almost killed in a freak accident at home. I was wholly unprepared for this. Apparently Song Sung Blue is based on a documentary by Greg Kohs of the same name, so if you're familiar with that you won't be shocked. I was not familiar, and shock doesn't begin to describe my sensation of the joyful, rapturous rug that is the first part of this film being ripped out beneath me. I should have been prepared for more depth in this fluffy film, as director Craig Brewer (of Dolemite is My Name) wasn't about to let this star vehicle careen into a puff piece. What was surely a lifelong struggle between the couple, their family, and their careers is boiled down into a montage-laden merry-go-round that highlights the somber, heartrending pain of average people with profound dreams fighting against the crushing tide of real life. Drugs and doctors, medical bills and disabilities, and the looming specter of being irrelevant, purposeless, and forgotten: these things are so relatable and rarely seen in such big-budget productions. 

It's not all dreary, of course, and Brewer wisely sidesteps many classic pitfalls of musical biopics in favor of his stars' unique charms. Jackman wields a bit too much power early in the film, but he evens out into a wonderfully rich character as he settles into a life he wants out of sheer love for his family. Hudson, warm and flat early on, transforms into a bitter wretch in the throes of self-pity and nihilism before rising from her own ashes in time for the film's final act. "Nostalgia pays," the characters repeat, and while there's much ado about Diamond's best songs -- and no, the film asserts rightly, "Sweet Caroline" ain't it -- the film works best as a human drama of average people the likes of which deserve this spotlight more than Hollywood usually grants them. 

I won't lie and say I didn't weep in this film, but it wasn't because of its sad moments. Rather, it was a sense of joy pervading the film that helps it make its mark above the miasma of usual fare. Moreover, its finale provides an inexplicable uplift that I absolutely did not see coming. This is a film more along the lines of Florence Foster Jenkins than Walk the Line, and it'll be a comfort watch in my future for sure. As the song says, "God of my day, lord of my night, seek for the way, taking me home."

And yes, the music numbers are all excellent.

Marty Supreme (2025)

Score: 1 / 5

Remember back in 2016, when Vance's Hillbilly Elegy was released to much fervor and placed on lots of reading lists? It seemed to answer some deeply uncomfortable questions about how and why that presidential election resulted as it did. People craved to understand aspects of rust belt America and tried to make sense of it on a national scale. Taking as its focus desperate people -- desperate for substances, for purpose, for escape -- the story of material rot was then used by its writer to make broad claims about the state of the country and its moral decay. 

The Safdies have done similar things with their films, especially Uncut Gems and now Marty Supreme, the latter a solo directorial effort by Josh Safdie. Taking as its focus a distinctly abhorrent character, these films cycle through a miniscule odyssey of sorts, showing how desperation for personal aggrandizement leads these toxic, wicked men into terrible circumstance after miserable choice. We're watching them digging their own graves in propulsive, vicious thrillers so rooted in what appears to be reality that we barely have time to appreciate the consequences of their actions before they're spinning it into a story of perseverance, even redemption. They're snake oil salesmen, attempting to fool the characters around them and even us; the problem is that many audiences -- hell, even the Safdies themselves -- seem to cash in on their depravity.

To position myself clearly: I don't. I find these films repugnant, unentertaining, disturbingly stupid, and frustratingly inert. Worse, the experience of watching them is akin, to me, to watching "reality" television or hot topic talk radio: the sheer cacophony of noise blasting from the speakers, paired with grimy, bleak, dark visuals that are usually unfocused and shaky, is like the sensation of my nails scraping a blackboard. The shiver going up my spine and causing my teeth to grate isn't that of frisson, but rather that of chomping down on a piece of foil right on a filling. It's painful. Those of you who have been with me a while will recognize my hatred for this style of filmmaking as similar to what Sean Baker does (Anora, for example), but at least Baker can stage a scene with a bit more theatricality and dramaturgical intent.

Without flogging the dead horse that is this movie (and my opinion of it), I'll prolong my torment in discussing it to say the few notes I jotted after screening it. Feeling like his attempt at a seedy '70s criminal antihero, Timothee Chalamet stars as the title character in what I can only describe as his attempt at de Niro's Taxi Driver, Eastwood's Dirty Harry, or Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon. A sleazy, sweaty, angry white man who lies and cheats his way into his own version of success: money, sex, and the keen ability to avoid the worst consequences of his actions. Indeed, he seems determined to convince himself that he's invincible and, moreover, a gift to the world around him. Deluded and grotesque, Chalamet delivers a compelling and admittedly excellent performance, even though I will never understand the sexual nature of his stardom among certain viewers. I find him [insert antonym for attractive] at best, yet here he is repeatedly boinking Gwyneth fucking Paltrow for no clear dramatic reason as if he's the stud of the century. Much like the main plot, this highlights that Marty is so convinced he himself is a god that he can't see himself in reality.

Apparently set in the '50s, the film is already displaced temporally in my mind, yet the overbearing soundtrack includes several '80s songs that, while sometimes vaguely funny, serve more to confuse me than inform the mood. Perhaps this is intentional, showing that Marty is, too, out of time and dreaming of other temporal successes that he dreams of. But there are far more literate ways of doing this; look at Edgar Wright's films or, hell, Baz Luhrmann's. And, keep in mind, all this is a backdrop to what the film quickly establishes as its focus: ping pong. Yep, you got it. This crime saga writ laughably small is, in effect, a sports drama about table tennis. Sure, Marty has a few scenes in the store where he sells shoes absentmindedly, eager for the next opportunity to impregnate Rachel (Odessa A'zion), an old friend married to a brute (Emory Cohen) who is a cheap ripoff of Stanley Kowalski.

Marty sweet talks everyone and everything to the point that you can't trust even his breathing; he blames any slight or inconvenience on everyone and everything around him, all while swindling his way into better lodgings at the Ritz or out of paying for destroying a bathtub, a floor, and the man below whose arm is nearly ripped in half as a result of his own negligence and dangerous disregard for ample warnings. Thus begins a further complication of his criminality, one that takes over the second half of the film in increasingly stupid ways, not least featuring a climactic shootout at a farmhouse over a dog.

A bizarre cast rounds out the whole experience, including Sandra Bernhard, Fran Drescher, and even Tyler the Creator (who we know is horny for twinkish Chalamet in their uncomfortable scenes together), but collectively they have very little to do. Even Paltrow, who performs with her usual excellence, can't win us over to her character, who has transcendent moments she immediately undermines with gobsmackingly stupid choices, usually resulting in her going back to Marty for sex. That's because Safdie is too interested in the toxic braggadocio of their protagonist and how it relates to a different kind of snake oil salesman currently running the American government (and, apparently the Venezuelan government now). It's a dismal depiction of American identity and masculinity, and thankfully Safdie does include some lighthearted commentary on this from an international perspective when Marty travels with the Harlem Globetrotters and eventually competes in Tokyo. It's just not enough. It's not even enough, in one scene, when the businessman Marty wants to bankroll him subjects him to public humiliation via paddling, which is probably supposed to be funny but sat in our auditorium with a ringing silence of deep discomfort. Perhaps it's because we know Marty deserves it and much worse. But he doesn't get worse. The film ends with him proving himself and finally seeming to choose family life, easily the most unforgivable part of the whole nonsensical escapade.