Thunderbolts (2025)

Score: 3.5 / 5

The MCU seems to be really struggling to continue moving forward, yet this year's Thunderbolts offers some promising signs about the franchise's direction. I won't recount the plot here because a) you've probably already seen it if you're interested, and b) as with most superhero films, the plot doesn't really matter. What does matter here is visual design, thematic conceit, manageable stakes, and a curiously weak introduction that almost fails before, impossibly, climbing up to a climax and denouement that feel significant and -- most importantly -- earned.

Taking as its cue a certain dim and bleak visual dynamic riddling recent MCU films, the film starts almost drained of warmth in its color palette. We are reunited with Yelena (Florence Pugh), emotionally numbed while grieving her sister (back in Endgame, if you can believe the timeline has gotten so wildly widespread yet gone almost nowhere linerar-ly since 2019) and contemplating suicide in a somewhat family-friendly way. Working as a sort of black-ops private agent for CIA Director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), Yelena is sent on a couple clean-up missions for her boss, who is under Congressional investigation, only to discover that she herself may be on the slate for deletion. Yelena teams up with others in similar shoes, and their secret collective is formed as a rogue faction of third-rate outcasts masquerading as antiheroes.

The union of Yelena with US Agent (John Walker, played by Wyatt Russell), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko) is well-written and shot here, fighting each other as they slowly realize that they are all pawns in Valentina's game. They are disposable in their world and in ours, as the sad, hard truth is that if you haven't been keeping up with the MCU series streaming exclusively on Disney+, you simply won't know or care about these characters. Heck, I've been keeping up, and I still need to scour the internet to remember who has done what and showed up where in alliance with whomever in what series titles. It's a nightmare. Thankfully, you don't necessarily need to know much about these characters beyond what Thunderbolts provides about them.

This allows the actors a lot of room to play and express themselves as discontented and dispassionate soldiers. Remember how the first Avengers were light-hearted white men slapping each other on the back while joking about cussing? This is a far cry from that, with each character dealing with crushing disappointment, shame, guilt, and self-doubt and allowing it to lash out at each other with snide, sneering humor and the uniquely aggravated impatience of boredom. They are, quite literally, heroes stuck in the shadow of their more famous counterparts, yet those counterparts have all but abandoned a world in need. Pugh is clearly the protagonist of the film despite its ensemble cast; she perhaps most clearly is struggling with the crushing void (read: depression) and goes through the best arc of the film, literally sacrificing herself while acting on full throttle. David Harbour's Red Guardian and Sebastian Stan's Winter Soldier join the team as well, rounding out the angsty mercs with macho gusto. 

The motif of shadows becomes literalized not just in the shadowy nature of Valentina's black ops mercenaries, as they start the film being, but also in its secondary antagonist, Bob. Lewis Pullman's awkward, anxious little man who had been subjected to human experimentation in Valentina's secret trials to create superhumans known as Sentries. He unexpectedly survived and was cared for by Yelena before being recaptured and brainwashed by Valentina, who effectively convinces him he's a god. Trying to kill him fails, and Bob becomes the Void, his destructive shadow-self who begins trapping all of New York City and its citizens in darkness and nightmarish dreams of their personal traumatic memories. This motif is showcased throughout the film, in pointed dialogue about depression, trauma, guilt, shame, and suicide, and in visual elements, including color desaturation, the opening Marvel logo, and the pretty cool special effects of the Void and his assault on civilians. Cinematographer Andrew Droz Palermo (You're Next, A Ghost Story, The Green Knight) really nails it here.

As with any superhero flick, there are unnecessary action flourishes and sequences that don't do much other than keep us locked into familiar narrative beats. Schreier doesn't always seem to know what to do with action scenes, so the fighting is often unclear and muddled, perhaps intentionally (as these are not the best or most polished Avengers ever) but also formally through editing cuts that don't always follow or flow. Thankfully, the action isn't really the focus of this film, so these issues are minimal. Thankfully, too, Schreier knows that the success of this film is in its characters and their emotional appeal, so he focuses mostly on Pugh, who plies her typically A-lister craft on a character that desperately needs to have real life breathed into her. She does with aplomb, making Yelena one of the most interesting, consequential, and worthwhile characters in the entire franchise.

As the end of MCU's Phase Five, Thunderbolts may not be the Avengers movie anybody wanted or asked for, but it might be what we need at this point. Instead of a climax relentlessly shoving debris-clouded CGI at us as entire planets collapse and aliens descend on war-torn cityscapes, this one features mostly plays of light and shadow, interspersed with equally visually dynamic dream sequences. With these smaller stakes -- visually, if not necessarily thematically -- we can connect better with the unique aspects of these characters and how they might change the general sensation of superhero movies in this series moving forward into Phase Six. One can only hope, anyway.

Ballerina (2025)

Score: 3 / 5

It's difficult to review a film you barely remember. I spent the summer mostly without internet access, taking notes on movies and leaving them until I returned home. The problem is that I didn't take many notes on Ballerina, the spin-off with the unfortunate subtitle "From the World of John Wick," and now specifics of the film are difficult to recall. Yet, as I lament my shortsighted notetaking, I also wonder if that in itself is indicative of my feelings about the film.

For most of the film's first third or so, my notes are essentially nothing more than "worldbuilding, character (re)introductions, and placement in the franchise." Eve Macarro is the titular dancer, daughter of two assassins affiliated with a new crime family called the Cult, led by its Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne). Her father had taken her from the Cult to deliver her to his own syndicate, the Ruska Roma, led by the Director (Angelica Huston), which resulted in the Cult murdering her parents. She agrees to become a ballerina and assassin, and trains for twelve years under her Director's punishing, matronly watch. We see John Wick (Keanu Reeves) during his meeting with the Director (an event from John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum), placing the subsequent events of this film between that and Chapter 4; as a personal note, I don't fully understand this, as chapters 3 and 4 otherwise feel quite nicely subsequent, but perhaps it doesn't matter overmuch. Wick advises Eve to abandon this life, but she persists and becomes "Kikimora" (much as he became "Baba Yaga") shortly thereafter upon successfully completing her first mission. She inquires about the Cult, but is forbidden from learning more or hunting them by her Director, due to a tenuous truce between them.

Ana de Armas performs well enough in the lead role, offering more physical prowess than I expected of her, despite some genuinely obnoxious dialogue that beats you over the head with thematic points, but the action simply isn't up to snuff with the rest of the series. Perhaps that's unfair; the action may be rigorous and precise, but it's presented to haphazardly that it's almost impossible to follow. Whereas the other films have featured crisp, calculated cinematography and long takes meant to dance around the action as if we're present with it, Ballerina is shot and edited like... well, like a rudimentary action film, with unnecessary and distracting cuts between each fighting beat, dim lighting and distant lenses that make sure we know where we are spatially but often obscure the action itself. Especially in the first third, the action is sorely disappointing. It does improve slightly by the midpoint, when Eve chooses to pursue vengeance on the Cult for her father; it's perhaps to be expected that in a franchise about revenge, this entry finally finds its footing when its character chooses to seek revenge.

Though it still never reaches the high points of Chad Stahelski's films, Ballerina does improve significantly in its latter half, when Eve meets the Chancellor's son (Norman Reedus, who is woefully underused here) at the Prague Continental, who helps point her to his estranged father and asks her to help him hide his daughter from the Cult. After this, the final third of the film is essentially one long action sequence, as Eve finds, infiltrates, and attempts to utterly destroy the Cult's compound in a snowy Austrian hamlet. This is, finally, when the film feels like an earnest attempt to join the franchise, as its bonkers, often silly action is never less than entertaining and engrossing, even though it's never presented with the finesse or polish of Stahelski's fever dreams. Unpretentious and fun, its serviceable thrills worked well enough for me that I stopped taking my brief notes to just enjoy the wacky nonsense. I did note, once, that her enemies are pretty shockingly stupid, often running into clear danger without seemingly being aware that they're asking to be shot or stabbed or blown up. 

So if the film is saying that Eve is a skilled assassin because her foes are blundering, oafish men, I'm not sure this adds much to either the world of John Wick or the representation of women in action films (Atomic Blonde will remain my platinum standard, thank you very much). After all, Reeves returns for the climax in a much larger capacity than I expected or even wanted, as if the filmmakers knew he had to be involved in order to legitimize the mess they were creating. But if it's simply adding color and shape to the dynamics of this stylish world of syndicate-officiated violence and providing images of lesser assassins with entire European villages hellbent on her demise as she attempts to burn it all to ash, then I guess Ballerina does eventually provide enough to recommend itself to any fans. 

Elio (2025)

Score: 4.5 / 5

Knowing nothing about a Disney film is my preferred way to experience them. Earlier this summer, I had the unmitigated pleasure of experiencing Elio, the latest feature from Pixar. It doesn't necessarily rewrite the studio's tried-and-true formulas, and its signature schmaltzy sentimentality feels about as familiar as anything else from the studio, well, ever. From its heartbreaking premise of an orphaned child and put-upon guardian to its yearning themes of loneliness and desperation to belong despite overwhelming loss, the film is thoroughly calculated to effectively pluck at any viewer's heartstrings. Even its visuals aren't all original; more than once I caught myself annoyingly comparing sights to Lilo & Stitch, for the most recent example. But a film that knows exactly its essence, its target audience, its purpose, and its style and capitalizes on those things is rarely less than satisfying.

Elio Solis (Yonas Kibreab) lives with his Aunt Olga (Zoe Saldana), an Air Force major who gave up her dreams of becoming an astronaut to care for her young nephew. Elio's at the age of acting out in largely unpredictable and often destructive ways in his quest for belonging, and Olga's generosity and guardianship is embittering, starting to grind her gears as she wishes he'd appreciate her efforts and work with her rather than against her. Bringing Elio to work with her one day is disastrous for Olga: he is so inspired by the possibility of contacting extraterrestrial life that he uses a conspiracy theorist's device to send a message to space, causing a power outage at the military base and nearly causing Olga's firing. At the end of her patience, Olga sends Elio to camp, where his school bullies will unfortunately also be in attendance.

I mentioned a certain other story earlier about an unconventional guardianship, a troublesome orphaned child, and a desire for companionship and belonging. And it's this aspect of the film that feels the most grounded. Elio is somewhat infuriating to watch; in our screening, several kids were telling him not to do certain things that, of course, he'd do with disastrous results. This isn't the wide-eyed Belle or Rapunzel, reading books and fantasizing about life's possibilities while living an otherwise responsible, humble life; this is a modern kid, likely with neurodivergence and hyperactivity, causing ruckus because he's troubled while being materially cared for. So when he is nearly assaulted by his bullies at camp and escapes via suddenly-appearing UFO, we breathe a sigh of relief along with him rather than feel fear or trepidation. He's saved by people who are surely -- finally -- looking for him.

Like characters in Galaxy Quest, Elio is so thrilled to have discovered something magical (read: been discovered by someone who actually wants him) that he's even more desperate to fit in. The aliens welcome him to their Communiverse, a crossroads in space where aliens from different planets share their knowledge and technology. They mistake Elio for the creator of the Voyager spacecrafts, through which he broadcast his message to them (remember that these were probes launched in 1977 carrying messages), and deem him to be Earth's ambassador and planetary leader. Wanting to prove to himself that he belongs, and avoiding disappointing these strange new friends, Elio quickly spurts out lie after lie, confirming their opinions of him and agreeing to negotiate with an angry warlord, Grigon (Brad Garrett), to avoid him attacking the Communiverse.

It's interesting that both Grigon and Elio share a desperation to belong, and the potential for destruction when they don't belong. Though Elio's negotiations fail, he meets Grigon's sweet and innocent son, Glordon (Remy Edgerly), who naively agrees to being Elio's hostage in order to avoid becoming like his father: there's a somewhat disturbing tradition in their species of coming-of-age via fusion with an Iron Maiden-esque body suit, and Glordon does not want that future. And, though it doesn't even start until after the halfway point (in a brisk 90-something-minute runtime), Elio's friendship with Glordon is perhaps the film's most endearing and memorable dynamic. Most other characters, interesting enough in design if not in drama, are treated by the screenplay as immaterial objects of curiosity, which I think is rather wise in a kid's film like this. Too often secondary characters run amok with our attention, but this story (written and directed by two teams of three, respectively) feels surprisingly, compellingly focused on the important players.

We're swept up with Elio in a wash of joyous, funny, and warm-hearted montages meant to endear us to the fantasy of belonging he's experiencing. And it's all very effective. I was genuinely choked up multiple times, and yes, I wept like a babe by the climax, heavy-handed though it is. Something about beautiful, imaginative imagery and simple but challenging emotions can really impact even the most hard-boiled of viewers if you give yourself over to raw storytelling. With an evocative score, lots of genre references to sci-fi and Spielberg, and a joie de vivre missing from much animated films these days, Elio reads like a love letter to the kid in all of us, wondering if there's life out among the stars and if it could be better than this one, and ends with a poignant reminder to care for the people and places we call home in the here and now.