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 Running Man (2025)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Richard Bachman is having a hell of a year. Stephen King's pseudonym, mostly used in his earlier years as a publishing strategy to avoid saturating the market -- hilarious, in retrospect of the prolific author's career -- published a handful of edgy horror-thrillers in the '80s. Bachman's first four titles have been collected into a single work, The Bachman Books, including Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, and The Running Man. The linked title was adapted as a wonderful film earlier in 2025, and now we get the second cinematic adaptation of The Running Man, after the 1987 film. I've admittedly not read the source material nor seen the previous film of this title, so my thoughts here are only of Edgar Wright's new film.

Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Baby Driver, Last Night in Soho), known for fast pacing, action, and metafictional and/or satirical genre films -- in addition to his easily recognizable musical and editing styles -- is a pretty solid fit for this material, in terms of big-budget filmmaking. And, oddly enough, this title fits well with The Long Walk in thematic conceit: in each, a dystopian governmental regime rules the United States, offering the possibility of success and wealth to individuals who compete in a dangerous, violent activity meant to be broadcast to an oppressed nation. The Running Man is the name of a televised show, not unlike The Hunger Games, in which the authoritarian Network attempts to placate suffering viewers with how much worse life could be. Offering its entrants $1 billion if they survive one month, the Network sends its private assassins out to kill the competitors; by televising the chase, the Network also encourages casual citizens to attempt murder.

Its bizarre mashup of competition and reality television notwithstanding, it would seem the show is a certain lose-lose situation. But Ben Richards (Glen Powell), a blue collar worker living in abject poverty with his wife (Jayme Lawson, of The Batman and Sinners) and infant daughter, needs money. Their daughter is sick, and even with Sheila working, they can't afford her necessary medicine. Ben auditions for the Network, hoping to earn money on one of its other shows, only to find himself forced into competition for the most brutal of all. He's promised his family will be moved to a safe house and given an advance on winnings to help his daughter. What else can he do?

There might be a time and place to pick apart the internal logic of this story, but this isn't it. Mostly because Wright won't let us think too critically about anything. Relentlessly paced, the film feels like a race even as we're watching it, jolting us from chase to fight sequences with only action in-between. What differentiates this from, say, a John Wick film is Wright's signature style: brightly lit scenes, charming wit from our lead actor, and a certain musical flair that keeps things bouncy and moving. That's not to say this isn't bleak, so don't get your hopes up. It's about as nasty and gritty as you could imagine in visual presentation, to say nothing of its disturbingly timely messaging about the cruelty of modern American life under oligarchic systems. And it doesn't help that, in the world of the story, no one has ever won "The Running Man."

Powell himself delivers an admirable performance, injecting a viciousness to his character that I can't recall seeing in him before. Ben isn't just angry, he's determined to live out a life that says little more than "fuck you" to the regime he toils under. And we're meant to fully agree with him. It's not for nothing that we don't know exactly what line of work his wife does, though it's strongly hinted that she's a sex worker and neither of them really want her to be. I can easily imagine this as a highly successful early 2000s film, with its grimy punk style, but I'm glad this film pushes things into a recognizable future. It's telling, I might add, that the public face of the Network (the role played deliciously by Stanley Tucci in the Hunger Games series) is Colman Domingo acting his chops off as a diabolically insane game show host in glorious costume. 

There is a lot to unpack in this film. Josh Brolin plays an executive producer of the Network, who eyeballs Ben and railroads him into the game; the Network's use of manipulative deepfakes to control televised output is as upsetting (and, curiously, unremarkable in the film itself) as the means by which producers get their desired outcome. On his run from potential killers, Ben meets William H. Macy, Daniel Ezra, and Michael Cera, who help him in various ways and pay the price for their aid. We don't get to know these characters, and while it might be disheartening to see such prominent character actors chewing on so little, the film isn't about building community in the face of authoritarian regimes; it's more or less a direct critique of the ways neoliberal methods are employed by empire to entertain and provide false hope to the populace. So it's really just about the main guy trying to overcome the odds stacked against him.

And what odds. I mean, Lee Pace plays his primary hunter, wearing a mask and a lot of leather, and his abilities with physical performance are excellently featured here.

As Powell's vehicle, I can't speak highly enough of this film's efforts to showcase him. His physique is highlighted as much as his caustic wit; he's not totally likable, but he fully owns our attention and sympathies. Despite occasionally making foolish decisions, he's understandable and we desperately want him to succeed. Perhaps this is because we, too, in 2025 (okay, 2026 now; I'm trying to catch up, so sue me) are constantly concerned about making a living wage that allows us healthcare and housing, accountability in government, transparency and ethics in business. My lasting impression of the film is one of annoyance -- how can all these characters, who are universally aware of the falseness of what they're being fed on the tube, keep going along with the bullshit? -- but it's an annoyance I'm increasingly feeling towards our reality.

Annoyance, though, isn't always a bad thing when it's intentional. And this film succeeds in its intent. Like an adrenaline shot of moral outrage, this is a profoundly angry film that is thoroughly entertaining while stoking the same ire we should all be feeling.

Weapons (2025)

Score: 5 / 5

I wasn't ready for Weapons. And neither are you.

Suggesting more than it shows, letting its audience connect its dots, and enjoying its own peripatetic dynamism perhaps too much, Weapons respects itself and its audience and encourages associative cognition. Zach Cregger, perhaps the latest auteur (though we might be using that word a bit liberally these days) in our new wave of horror, has established himself as a writer/director who capitalizes on a thrilling premise and then runs hog-wild with it. With this much larger, in scope, title, Cregger establishes himself as a committed storyteller, one whose final product is considerably more than the sum of its parts.

If you're at all interested in seeing this film and haven't yet, please do yourself a favor and watch it without reading anything about it. To discuss Weapons is to reveal its manifold secrets. You've been warned.

Its central conceit, widely publicized in the film's marketing campaign to the point of being obnoxiously written out on its posters, is that, in a small Pennsylvania town one night, seventeen children from the same third-grade class vanished. The upsetting premise feels all the more poignant as school shootings continue to occur with increased frequency and deadliness; the parallels are pretty clear here, though it's only directly referenced once in a dream that hits it quite bizarrely on the nose. But there's more to this than simple allegory. The film's lackadaisical, almost whimsical tone is struck early, as we watch the children running out their front doors at 2:17am, arms spread as if they're pretending to be airplanes, seemingly blissfully in step with a '70s soft rock song (George Harrison's "Beware of Darkness," the internet tells me). Wistful, even sentimental, this opening sequence feels comfortably chilling, perhaps the very definition of uncanny.

This sweet, slow, subtly sickly aspect of the film -- which lasts for most of its runtime -- draws from a deep well of rural and suburban legends. Evoking the likes of The Virgin Suicides, Magnolia, Picnic at Hanging Rock, and even perhaps We Need to Talk About Kevin, we shift from perspective to perspective of various townsfolk in the wake of their shared tragedy as they attempt to ask (or avoid) questions, point fingers, and make sense of the unthinkable. Films made these days in such rigid episodic structures and nonlinear patterns do raise the question, for me, of whether they were written to be a miniseries, but in this case, I'm glad it was reduced to its two-hour runtime for the sake of cohesion and coherency. The chapters unfold in emotional chunks, sometimes overlapping narratively with an even we've already seen from a different angle; these particular overlaps are often of extremely frightening and violent moments, which serve as jarring ends-of-chapter jolts that, in my screening, had more people saying "wait, what?" than gasping, screaming, or laughing. And that seemed intentional.

To that point, I would like to add that each chapter is presented from the perspective of a particular character, and so Weapons works as an ensemble piece. Arguably the most important character to each part is Justine Gandy, the teacher of the missing students, who becomes a primary suspect of the inciting incident. Julia Garner plays her with profound depth, attempting to navigate her own grief through a gauntlet of weaponized hatred from her neighbors. But Gandy is a distinctly opaque character, one about as far from a Mary Sue as you can get while still being, if not wholly likable, at least sympathetic. She doesn't explain herself, and often holds others to an unspoken standard of judgment they invariably receive. She has a drinking problem, one she's clearly grown with before the inciting incident, and she has a weird vibe with her ex, local cop Paul (Alden Ehrenreich, doing his usual excellent work here with a character who could easily have been really gross). So it makes sense that she becomes the subject of a literal witch-hunt in her town: she's a single young professional who sins, makes no apologies, and doesn't bend over backwards to play nice with anyone but her students.

It's not long into the film that its tone shifts from the vibe of the films I've already mentioned; Cregger clearly knows and loves his cinema with all the references and nods he proudly waves while guiding us through his nightmares. Visually, the film looks like early Denis Villeneuve (Enemy, Prisoners) in its cold, clammy color palette and its vaguely gritty and damp set dressing; this is the decay of small town Americana, the film seems to be saying, and it's only going to get worse. The competing narratives and air of paranoia that pervade the film might be best described as a cold pressure-cooker, getting ready to freeze your marrow as people's frigid cruelties steadily mount. Secrets hidden behind white picket fence facades will out, and so will the lurking evil, older and more sinister than you would have imagined.

I had no idea where this film was going, though in retrospect, what I thought were red herrings were actually pretty solid hints as to the ultimate reveal. There is indeed a witch in town, but it's not Miss Gandy. Alex, the lone boy remaining in her class, has been helping a witch masquerading as his elderly Aunt Gladys. Gladys (played by an astonishingly delicious Amy Madigan) has tricked her way into Alex's house, bewitching and torturing his parents to convince the boy to help her abduct the town children. So the film, for all its thematic suggestiveness, is really just a sophisticated monster movie, featuring what may be the most maligned and inconsistently deployed monster in the genre, the witch. Presumably, she consumes their life force to sustain herself, much like the Sanderson sisters in Hocus Pocus, and please don't think me sacrilegious for the reference, but it is pretty squarely part of both the conversation and the convention at this point. And, while and I don't love the ageism and misogyny in his elaboration and grotesque exaggeration of this choice (especially after Barbarian featured a singularly monstrous "Mother" character, one has to wonder why Cregger is so hell-bent on vicious, violent older women as his vehicles of horror), there is something wickedly satisfying about the rhetoric of witch-hunts and public paranoia leading to increased socioreligious conservatism and inaction and violence being so literalized here. Weaponized, even.

Much as the townspeople fear, things will indeed pop out and scare them, probably even hurt them, in their vulnerable state. And so we, the audience, are similarly targeted by the film's firm grip on our anxieties. What could jump out of that shadowy door in the dark haunted house? Well, if your deepest fear said "your bloodied, wild-eyed neighbor/principal/officer/parent," you'd be right. I've always said that, in horror, what bothers me the most isn't what I can't see or touch, nor is it those supernatural things I won't encounter in this lifetime, but rather the person, known or not, lying in wait with the crazed sole intention of harming me and without regard for consequences. That's fucking terrifying. And that's what this movie delivers. By the end of its climactic sequence, I was shaking and weeping with sensations I haven't felt in a cinema in years, not the least of which was a bleak sense of relief that it was done.

That won't be everyone's level of engagement or appreciation, and it doesn't have to be. But Weapons is one I'll be eager to revisit soon. Come for the great ensemble cast -- I haven't even mentioned! Josh Brolin, Austin Abrams, and Benedict Wong all get POV chapters --  or come for the batshit crazy scary moments peppered in (there are shots that felt like Romero's The Crazies and others like Carpenter's Halloween) or come for the richly complex mystery linking it all, and stay for the sheer pleasure of original storytelling by a capable and inspired artist.

Dune: Part Two (2024)

Score: 5 / 5

For anyone who didn't already know Denis Villeneuve is one of the best directors currently working (some of us would say ever), Dune: Part Two will cement that attribute to his name. For those of us who love the middle part of any trilogy -- for, indeed, the heart of Frank Herbert's Dune is the first two books, the story of Paul Atreides, this film being the second part of the first book -- this is eminently on par with the likes of the middle of The Lord of the Rings and the three Star Wars trilogies, picking up where the previous left off, diving right into action without need for more exposition, and intensifying the dread of war and prophetic doom while raising the emotional stakes for characters we already know (and a few new ones). Villeneuve has never shied away from scope and breadth in his films, but his keen focus on the psychology of his main characters is what makes all his films feel epic. With this material, he can finally embrace a real epic, and boy, is it glorious.

After their annihilation of the Atreides, the Harkonnens take over Arrakis again and wage war on the Fremen "sand rats" who live in the desert and disrupt the harvesting of valuable spice. Unbeknownst to Baron Harkonnen (Stellan Skarsgard) and his brutal nephews (Dave Bautista and a chilling Austin Butler), one tribe of Fremen led by Stilgar (Javier Bardem) harbor two Atreides house survivors: Paul and his mother Lady Jessica (Timothee Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson). As they integrate into Fremen culture, the two learn more about prophecies of a savior from beyond, a messiah meant to lead all Fremen tribes to take back Arrakis and launch a holy crusade that will turn their planet green and sweep across the stars. They decide the prophecy applies to them -- and well it might -- and take drastic steps to ensure their own ascendancy.

Whereas the first installment sets the stage in every conceivable way -- mostly expository and world-building, the first film had more intrigue and tension (if not action) than some credit it -- the second allows the various factions to collide in some spectacular battle sequences. More importantly, the heightened stakes reveal more about characters we need to care for, making the violence matter in emotional ways. To counterpoint this, several characters, especially Stilgar and Paul's love interest Chani (Zendaya) inject key moments with unexpected and wonderfully effective humor. Exerting extraordinary mastery over tone, Villeneuve and screenwriter Jon Spaihts use these elements to inform their headier themes of corruptibility of power and the uses and dangers of fanaticism in ways we rarely see in epics or hero's journeys.

Not to be outdone by cerebral intrigue, Villeneuve continues his inability to make any visuals less than picturesque. Shot by Greig Fraser, every moment could be paused, blown up, and framed, including enemy bodies falling from rocky buttes and fleets of sandworms racing across no-man's land. Costume and production design continue to be the best in the business: a sacred reservoir looking like a bottomless cavern, a princess in pristine silver that could be chains, a new reverend mother who looks like some priestess or goddess from an eastern religion. And nothing compares to the breathtaking transitions to infrared light on the Harkonnen homeworld of Gieidi Prime under its "Black Sun," a brilliant interpretation of the novel, which suggests the planet is a volcanic wasteland raped by over-industrialization; here, their world (and lifestyle) is so removed from nature that even the sun's light seems profoundly wrong and torturous.

While I was annoyed in the first film that Zendaya's Chani narrated, I was pleased to finally have some of Florence's Pugh's Princess Irulan in this film, though her part is sadly limited. So is Christopher Walken's Emperor Shaddam IV, but he's not featured much in the book either (and frankly I've rarely been interested in his acting, so this limitation was fine). Given what happens in Dune: Messiah (the final part in this trilogy, though I promise, no spoilers here), I'd have liked a bit more time with the emperor and princess, Charlotte Rampling's reverend mother Gaius Helen Mohiam, and Lea Seydoux as Lady Margot Fenring, but I expect we'll get plenty more in the next film. This isn't their story. Yet. On the other hand, I was pleasantly surprised at the visual power and attention paid to Lady Jessica's rise and the film's recognition of her disturbing desire to galvanize weak-minded religious tribes into worshipping her son and waging open war. This isn't about them understanding and joining and leading the native people; it's about them co-opting an entire planet for their own designs.

You need to see this on the biggest possible screen with the best possible stereo system. Then see it again.

Dune (2021)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Denis Villeneuve is my favorite director right now for a lot of reasons, and his films are all on my regular favorite lists. As he's moved into science fiction and major franchises, I've been slightly skeptical; not because he didn't knock Blade Runner 2049 out of the park, but because I've worried that studio oversight would limit his vision or shoehorn accessibility into his work. We've seen it happen before. And Villeneuve's latest, Dune, is only exacerbating my anxieties to that end because, while my exact concerns did not come to pass, it is easily my least favorite film from the genius.

As with any big franchise -- especially in this genre -- most discussion will revolve around the adaptation process. Frank Herbert's '60s groundbreaking novel and his five (?) sequels spawned an entire shared universe of interplanetary politics, economics, and war, and it was notoriously labeled as unfilmable after David Lynch's 1984 cinematic attempt. I've never read or seen anything about Dune, so this review will not engage with those concerns, but I'm aware enough of its sprawling world-building scope to understand that there is enough within the franchise to excite anyone interested in heady ideas of environmentally radical geopolitics, anti-capitalist exploitation, and unusually complex gender and racial dynamics that hinge on religious identity. In these respects, I'm planning to read Herbert's series in the coming months, if only to check it off my list. But this film did almost nothing to excite the prospect of more, and given the widespread praise of it, I'd like to reflect on why.

The plot is, I think, shockingly simple. In the distant future, a galactic emperor decrees that the powerful Atreides family will relocate and become the rulers of Arrakis, a desert planet. What seems a curse is complicated due to the presence of "spice," a unique natural resource only on Arrakis, which is crucial for space travel (and hallucinogenic trips) and therefore the most valuable element in their civilization. Making this move, the Atreides patriarch (the ever-handsome Oscar Isaac) realizes they are in the midst of a power play between the paranoid emperor and other dynastic families vying for wealth and influence, none more so than the villainous Harkonnens (and their patriarch, a deliciously wicked Stellan Skarsgard), who previously ruled Arrakis. As the family learns more about their new place in galactic geopolitics, they must fend off traitors; their son Paul (Timothee Chalamet) becomes a man and a messiah, seeing visions and exhibiting powers cultivated by his deeply religious, slightly witchy mother (Rebecca Ferguson), and connecting with the native population to mysterious ends.

As the title card for this film indicates, this is only "part one" of the story, which will reportedly conclude with a "part two," and so it is by no means a complete narrative. Its extensive work in world-building is nothing short of spectacular, and deserves to be seen (and heard, in a droning Hans Zimmer score that threatens to blow out speakers) on the biggest screen available. But its characters, largely archetypal, are much harder to parse because they simply do not go through standard dynamic developments. The closest we get is the callow (dare I say shallow? Sorry, I'm not a big Chalamet fan) Paul becoming a man, but as much as he learns about himself, his mystical gifts, and his place in the violent intrigue of this interstellar Game of Thrones, he ends the movie finally finding "the girl" he's been seeing in visions (Zendaya), which is about as trite a resolution as we could have gotten.

It's a thoroughly entertaining experience, and in Villeneuve's hands often feels like the sort of epic that will add it to fans' shelves alongside major movies from George Lucas, Peter Jackson, Christopher Nolan, Stanley Kubrick, and Ridley Scott. I especially liked that it is so (apparently intentionally) allegorical, and was probably one of (if not the) first in its genre to tap into Islam as a good thing, as well as a certain sensitive portrayal of ecoterrorism. The native people of Arrakis (the Fremen) appear to be modeled after Arab Muslims, and "spice" read to me as oil, which the alien invaders sweep in to take over and fund wars much like Westerners (and in Westerns, at that). I confess myself most confused not with the material itself, nor with its visionary spectacle, but with its technical delivery. The editing is all over the place, in my mind, and almost every time I was prepared to settle in and absorb a new frame -- each gorgeously, gloriously composed -- it would cut to another shot. This worked well during the action sequences, including any time sandworms attacked and flying through a sandstorm, but not so well in intimate scenes or any shots meant to inspire sensations of grandeur or even fear, such as the weird religious test of pain Paul goes through very early in the film.

Perhaps part of my ambivalence for this movie stems from a similar annoyance with other soft science fiction devices, specifically an over-reliance on original vocabulary. You may have already gathered as much, but this movie made very little sense to me because of its thick screenplay, which is comprehensible only if you can effectively remember and contextualize its many characters, organizations, and technologies after only hearing them briefly. I say "hearing," but that's the other major problem: I could barely understand most of the dialogue in this film. Much like last summer's Tenet, I expect I'll like (and comprehend) this movie a lot more when I can watch it with subtitles. The sound mixing is fine, but the editing should have been mindful of their audience, many of whom have no idea what's really going on here, and so need to be able to listen accurately and without driving us to distraction. I appreciated that the screenplay didn't make its exposition feel like exposition, but the flip side is that it took me a while to feel reasonably confident about anything going on.

Sicario: Day of the Soldado (2018)

Score: 2 / 5

Oh boy.

The first thing you need to know about Sicario: Day of the Soldado is that it's a mess of messages. As a sequel, it sucks. As a standalone film, it's endlessly problematic. As a cultural product in 2018, it's shameful. And as entertainment, it's kind of fun to watch. Shall we unpack? Do let's.

Sicario was my #2 favorite film of 2015. Its glorious score, rapturous cinematography, slickly sly screenplay, and beastly performances haunted me ever since I saw it on the big screen. Sadly, the story of Emily Blunt's character ended with that picture, along with the involvement of director Denis Villeneuve, cinematographer Roger Deakins, and composer Johan Johansson (who died this February). We are left with Taylor Sheridan's new screenplay and a mostly new cast and crew for a sequel that no one expected and absolutely no one wanted.

Strife between Mexico and the U.S. has reached a crisis point, as ISIS terrorists are using La Frontera as the stage for suicide bombings. Matt (Josh Brolin) is given special permission to fight dirty with the drug cartels suspected of harboring these international terrorists. Of course he calls in Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro) for help with his latest secret mission: to set the cartels against each other and sit back to watch the fireworks. All does not go as planned.

Where to begin? First off, the movie has a terrible title. It should have just been called Soldado. Then again, it shouldn't have been called anything because nobody wanted a sequel! Did I already say that? I'll reiterate: nobody wanted a sequel. Moving on....

Whereas the first film featured a story of increasing violence and the slow revelation of U.S. complicity (read: absolute guilt) in border violence and the "war on drugs" -- framed with the effect of this violence on average families, especially of one Mexican family -- this film is a bloodbath with little (if any) dramatic purpose. Its themes are needlessly bleak, its tone irreverent, its target audience Trump supporters.

Too harsh? Think again. This film is almost total propaganda, and its placement in the 2018 calendar is shameful at best. At a time when families are being ripped apart and children are locked in cages, we have a movie whose logic indicates that this is not only normal but totally justifiable. The film suggests that Mexican drug cartels and ISIS are working together to create chaos for the U.S. and that the best way to fight them is by kidnapping children.

To make matters worse, the film has almost none of the aesthetic or technical brilliance of the first. In fact, it blatantly rips off from other -- more effective and original -- movies, including its own predecessor. Its story meanders, piling up improbabilities as often as offenses and trying to brush over it all with waves of violence. When we aren't subjected to crazy shootouts and car chases and torture, we're forced to hear racist people assaulting each other with words and ideas. Even the one instance of the film retreating to a rational position -- a throwaway line late in the film about how the ISIS bombers weren't from Mexico, but from New Jersey -- is at once completely inconsequential and utterly horrific in that, by this point in the film, neither the characters nor the audience can even register the violence that statement does to the story.

The closest I can get to appreciating the film revolves solely around Benicio Del Toro as Alejandro (also and by the way, why is Lady Gaga's song of the same name never featured in conjunction with this character? That is a missed golden opportunity!). His performance is no less committed here than it was before, and although his character is given shit by the screenplay, Del Toro manages to make the film both watchable and entertaining.

And while I'm not going to say the film -- taken for its all -- is culturally "bad" (after all, my single viewing and interpretation cannot comprehend all its complexities), it is dangerous and deserves careful consideration before, during, and after viewing. It's a fascinating look into a social watershed moment during this divisive summer of 2018, and while it's endlessly problematic, what isn't these days? Come for Del Toro, stay for the pulp, and leave determined to be a better person. If, that is, you can stomach the carnage you witness.

P.S.: I've heard the term "MAGA-sploitation" used in conjunction with this film, and I think that's a really fascinating concept. I've thought a lot, before, about Clint Eastwood's deeply problematic films and their tendency toward libertarian propaganda. But what's at work in Soldado seems to be something else, and MAGA-sploitation may be a useful tool to bring into film theory these days.

IMDb: Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Deadpool 2 (2018)

Score: 4 / 5

This sequel was, for me, far more enjoyable than the original Deadpool. It doesn't waste time on exposition. It caters hand and foot to its audience. It doesn't even try to play things safe like the first one (thematically, structurally). Ryan Reynolds is even more creepy and sassy as Wade Wilson. And it never really sinks to the sentimentality that lurked under the surface before.

Our foul-mouthed (and, really, just plain nasty) mercenary starts his new adventure with a few bangs and sudden tragedy, when his lover Vanessa (Morena Baccarin) is murdered. Vengeful and suicidal, Wade is taken in by the X-Men. When one mission goes wrong, he and a troubled young mutant are arrested. As this develops, a secondary plotline is born involving Cable (Josh Brolin), who comes from the future looking to kill the kid Wade has taken under his wing.

Heavily plotted, the film has almost no breathing space between breakneck action and whiplash comedy. Which is good if you care about such things, and if the filmmakers are trying to cover up the absurdity of the proceedings. Fortunately, because this is Deadpool, absurdity is the name of the game, and the film brings lots of attention to itself. Its meta sensibilities aggressively take over in the film's final act, and while it's certainly fresh, interesting, and entertaining, it's also more than a little overkill. Overkill, you say? Just wait for those mid-credits scenes of Deadpool leaping through time to kill Ryan Reynolds in X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Green Lantern.

And while aggressively crude and/or topical comedy isn't always my cuppa, Deadpool 2 provides other fabulous things for me to sink my teeth into. We finally have Juggernaut! We finally have Cable! And my favorite sequence in the film -- by far -- is the formation and ill-fated first outing of X-Force. It's hilarious and subversive and really just an amazing scene.

Speaking of subversion, whereas the first Deadpool was, I'd argue, anything but game-changing, this film definitely tries harder to fulfill that promise. We do have more explicit queerness between characters, though the representation leaves plenty to be desired. We have strong, independent women, though we also have the main woman used as a plot device and little else. And we have a diverse ethnic cast of characters who are nevertheless riddled with stereotypes. All in all, this film is a perfect example of the problematic issue of representation: Are we satisfied with problematic representation simply because any visibility is good? Or do we need representation of a certain quality to truly progress as a culture?

I don't think Deadpool cares, which is fine. I don't think many of his fans care, which is far more troubling.

IMDb: Deadpool 2

Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

Score: 4.5 / 5

It's one of those amazing things that happen once in a while, an Event, a cultural watershed, a work of consummate pop art that is so dense, so important, and so spectacular that it's hard to be critical. At least, it is for me. Fans of the franchise who watch the whole damn series every year multiple times will lose their minds over this movie. I know because I am one of those crazies.

In the (penultimate) culmination of each of the eighteen films in the Marvel Studios universe, Infinity War sees all the superheroes join together. Well, almost all (where the hell are Hawkeye and Ant-Man?). Essentially taking all the little tidbit scenes of Thanos as a launch pad, the film starts with a devastating look at the Big Bad in action. The mad purple titan (played by Josh Brolin) is a beast of a villain, intelligent and chilling and even sad, on par with Killmonger as one of the most interesting characters in the franchise. He seeks to destroy half the universe to save life from overpopulation, and he's one of the rare villains whose evil endgame isn't totally insane. He can actually make it happen, and he does.

Oops, spoiler alert.

While Thanos's arc is a riveting story -- especially after having been teased for so long -- the rest of the film feels a bit haphazard and slipshod. Don't get me wrong: It's all dazzling and funny, poignant and sad, action-packed and explosive. Directors Joe and Anthony Russo (of the last two Captain America films) do some damn amazing work here, and the writers have obviously worked hard to tie together so many various characters and plot strands into a more or less cohesive film. Simply graded on a scale of grandeur and epic proportions, Infinity War is one of the best franchise-based movies ever made.

Yet on its own, or from a non-fan perspective, I imagine it's a mess. It's all crazy action and bright colors and fast scene changes between characters who never see each other and planets you may or may not remember from other films. Even I had trouble making connections once or twice -- wait, those two guys don't know each other? What did we last see him/her doing? Why is so-and-so in this place at this time? -- and I'm about as hardcore a fan as we come. And that's just because the movie is so bloated, so full, and so confident in telling its own story. I suspect that watching the film on its own would be woefully unsatisfactory. It works as a result of its connections to all the other movies.

And that's why I love it. And feel a little weird about it.

Actually, my exact feelings can be summed up by the last scene of the film, which is a bitch of a cliffhanger. Stunning as it was in the moment, I couldn't help but feel disgusted. As if we weren't already going to pay to see any and all MCU movies already, you're going to insult us with a big-ass cliffhanger that forces us to come again? Really? I felt the same way at the end of the second Hobbit film. You're not making a television serial, dudes. Make a movie and call it good. Especially since the studio has already announced sequels for at least half the characters who dissolve into dust. We know the Guardians will be back (even though all of them "die"). We know T'Challa and Peter Parker will be back. It's almost certain Strange will be back. It just felt like a cheap way to titillate fans who don't know how franchise contracts work and don't follow any social media.

That said, DAMN, I need to see this movie again. And you do too.

IMDb: Avengers: Infinity War

Hail, Caesar! (2016)

Score: 4 / 5

Hail, Caesar! takes us back to a golden era of moviemaking, when Hollywood was an empire in its own right, and the people who ran it, eccentric as they were, grappled with scandal, fame, and fortune on a daily basis. We follow Ed Mannix (Josh Brolin), head producer at Capitol Pictures, in his exhaustive efforts to save his stars from their own scandalous behaviors, knowing full well that as the 1951 studios begin to break up, the future of moviemaking, his company, and his livelihood hang in the balance. As he maneuvers between oddballs and screwballs and criminals, he is forced to examine his own economics, values, relationships, and ultimately theology. It's a moving movie about making movies, and one that stole its way into my heart.

What's that you say? That doesn't sound like the movie Hail, Caesar! to you? Why do you say that?

What we have here is a problem with marketing. I thought -- along with several other people I've heard from -- that this movie was going to be a raucous, irreverent, madcap comedy bubbling over with slapstick and irony and all the things listed so perfectly in its trailers. Guess what? It's not.

Sure, it has a few of these elements. The casting is brilliant, the script is fierce, and the production design is simply perfect. The film makes reference after reference so quickly that it took me hours afterward to remember some; each reference is so cheeky that I often laughed aloud and missed the rapid-fire dialogue. We see everything from Ben-Hur to Gene Kelly, and from Esther Williams to Carmen Miranda. It's a glorious celebration of the industry.

But it's not a madcap caper film about a bunch of zany moviemakers banding together to save their iconic leading man (obviously played by George Clooney, because who else?) from his untimely abduction. I was expecting the enormous cast of stars to share a lot of screen time and a lot of laughs as they fashioned a comedic heist, like a silly, campy version of Argo. And it just doesn't happen. Ever.

Sure, the performances are great, but they are relegated to brief scenes. Each character, besides Brolin and Clooney, gets only two or three scenes each, and these are usually one-on-one with either Brolin or Clooney. Those scenes are jam-packed with a showcase of the actor's talents, but we never really get much else, let alone interaction between them. And as for all of them banding together to save the star, it's almost laughable: I think only about three characters besides Brolin even know that Clooney has been abducted, much less offer aid.

I may feel a little bitter about the more or less "epic" comedy that doesn't exist here, but there are a lot of great things to be said for the movie that we got instead. It's a glorious testament, riddled with nostalgia and wit and charm, and showcasing some of our brightest modern stars in period performances. Channing Tatum steals the movie away with his song and dance as Burt Gurney, a Gene Kelly homage. Tilda Swinton would have stolen the movie had the film given her more screen time as twin sister, rival gossip columnists Thora and Thessaly Thacker. The effects are all old-school, with long takes to show off dancing and comedic skills and the use of miniatures and backlot sets where we might otherwise have wasteful CGI (I'm thinking of the anti-climactic scene with the submarine). And, finally, there's the script that, typical of the Coens, is about far more than it initially suggests. It's about religion and economics and history and politics and all sorts of complicated things that it never really resolves but Brolin's character manages to work out for himself. I think his priest would be proud of him.

IMDb: Hail, Caesar!

Sicario (2015)

Score: 5 / 5

I get really excited every time some of my favorite artists team up to do a film, and Sicario is no exception! Visionary director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy), legendary cinematographer Roger Deakins (Prisoners, Doubt, Fargo, The Shawshank Redemption), and recent composer Johann Johannsson (Prisoners, The Theory of Everything, Foxcatcher) rock this daring and haunting crime thriller in ways I only dreamed they might. It was a total moviegasm experience for me, and my hands are still shaking from it.

Imagine what would happen if Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Traffic (2000) had a baby, and you can grasp the direction this film takes. It's a brutal peek into the drug trade and cartel culture, and it relentlessly forces us to face the horrors we so easily permit. It's about the little compromises we make every day that push us farther and farther away from civilized life and into the deserts of chaos and cruelty. It's a web of policy and procedure, a critique of corrupt or misguided law enforcement, and a tragedy of one soldier's fall from innocence.

That soldier, played with great vulnerability and compassion by Emily Blunt (The Young Victoria, Into the Woods), is an FBI agent determined to win the war on drugs by the book. But, as she soon learns, her idealism is far from practical and far from successful. After a traumatic incident in one raid, which starts the film, she joins with Department of Defense agents to hunt down the head of a cartel and bring him to justice. She sees her team lie, torture, and murder their way to the top of the cartel, and becomes privy to secrets that destroy her faith.

Of course, director Villeneuve is keenly aware of his female protagonist as the heart and soul of the film, and so he keeps us trained on her. For every horror she faces, we see it only as it relates to her. In fact, most of the violence and dead bodies we see only briefly, before turning to see her reactions to them. It's a gamble, and one that pays off brilliantly. And that's not to say we don't see plenty of the other actors as well. Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men, W.) is his typical gruff self, though here I found him more compelling and inscrutable than usual. And Benecio Del Toro (Traffic, Che) blew me away yet again as the dangerous loose cannon of the team, guarded behind his facade but vicious and terrifying when necessary.

Cinematographer Roger Deakins -- I can't even say how much I love his work -- fashions the drama with an eye for gravity and weight, shown most obviously in his repeated longshots of the desert landscape and views down from aircraft. He takes his time with every scene, painting a portrait with varied lights and colors that build to a climax that parallels the plot. By the time we actually reach the climactic raid -- underground and at night -- he throws convention to the wolves and douses us in thermal vision and night vision lenses. The interplay is provocative to say the least, aand by the time it was done I felt as though I had tried some of the drugs the characters were hunting.

The whole movie is a trip and a half, a spiritual descent into hell, and one that left me bewildered but satisfied. And the score by Johann Johannsson isn't intrusive at all; the only memorable part is an increasingly hypnotic drone that thrums on through the film, a mysterious and unsettling sound that feels tied to an idea of impending doom. If this all sounds a bit heady, it's because it is. And designed to be so. Handled by others, this film might have become mired in complex dialogue absorbed with the details of the crimes and organizations involved, in muddled editing and ambiguous plotlines juxtaposed with vague or unnecessary characters, or in sentiment and politics. Instead, we get a clear, if artistic, picture of a very specific world in which very real people grapple with huge abstract concepts. And it's all done beautifully, which is obviously the most important part.

IMDb: Sicario

Everest (2015)

Score: 4 / 5

I fell into my own trap. I have preached before about not putting much stock in trailers and letting the film speak for itself, regardless of its claimed genre. When I first saw the trailers for Everest, I was expecting this year's Gravity, a daring, dark venture of cinematic novelty, great camera work, and heightened allegory. But as I walked out of the theater, I confess myself disappointed because it was none of those things. It's a damn fine film, to be sure, but it wasn't what I had anticipated. So don't do what I did.

So what is this movie? It's a good old-fashioned (by which I mean the genre reached its peak in the mid-2000s) disaster movie. In terms of plot, it's straightforward and formulaic: competing groups of climbers attempt to mount Everest (beg pardon) and due to a bizarre series of mistakes and happenstance, almost everyone dies. Is that a spoiler? I don't think so. Why? Because the movie is also a good old-fashioned biography, detailing the infamous real-life 1996 expedition. And what if it's not as spectacular as I might have expected? There's a lot to be said for a thriller this well-crafted and independent of CGI.

The real heroes of this film are all behind the scenes. Yes, it might be worth seeing for the great and varied cast (including the amazing Jason Clarke, Emily Watson, Michael Kelly, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Josh Brolin). But I applaud first the writers for so effectively capturing the many characters, places, and events of those few days. I never once felt confused or disconnected, which is saying a lot because I have trouble with names and faces. Credit must also go to director Baltasar Kormakur, whose passion for this project is unmistakable. Any big-budget filmmaker could have gone with the wind here, and really amped up the special effects (as I expected he would), but Kormakur is far more interested in creating a distinct tension between human willpower and the might of the mountain. Early in the film, Jason Clarke's character, the leader of one climbing team, describes the horrors they will face on Everest, and he climaxes by saying that above a certain altitude their bodies will literally be dying. I think the director relished in that concept.

In fact, the first part of the film is more of an adventure drama, and a rather uplifting one at that. We hear about the characters' dreams and motivations for climbing, we see them working together and overcoming obstacles. It is not until they reach their mountaintop experience that all the mistakes they have made along the way return with a vengeance. That's when it becomes a full-fledged disaster movie. And yet, despite the horrors we see on screen, Kormakur keeps his eye trained on closeups of his actors, making the human drama as spectacular as the occasional wideshot of the mountain's grandeur. He also keeps his eye on excruciating detail, which I didn't even realize until the credits began to roll and we are presented with photos of the real characters during their doomed expedition. Hair, costumes, and even poses are perfectly replicated, and every single scene of the film is tagged with a time and location. At first I found this device obnoxious, but it further proves Kormakur's passionate endeavor to accurately portray the real story.

It's entertaining, it's informative, and it's ultimately haunting. I could go into a lengthy argument about the integrity of art and my ambivalence toward movies that try to accurately depict reality at the expense of poetic transcendence. But I won't, because Everest never really tries to be anything but an honest look at a group of people who wanted a mountaintop experience, and how their efforts culminated in absolute tragedy. Hold on to something.

Oscar season is coming in fast and hard, guys. This one's a sure contender for sound mixing and editing.

IMDb: Everest