Best of TIFF 2025 – Part One

The 50th Toronto International Festival (TIFF) certainly offers movies that will compete for Oscar gold in March 2026, but this fabulous cinematic lineup has countless other options for professionals and fans of all ages. This proud Phoenix Film Festival critic has caught 38 films so far. Here are five of my favorites: The Best of TIFF 2025 – Part One.

Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you soon, Phoenix!

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“I Swear” – A total crowd-pleaser! Robert Aramayo delivers an endearing performance as John Davidson, a real-life Scotsman with Tourette’s, in a heartbreaking, hilarious, tender, and emotional biopic. Director/writer Kirk Jones (“Waking Ned Devine” (1998)), Aramayo, and the terrific supporting cast – led by Maxine Peake, Peter Mullan, and Shirley Henderson – wield these emotions and more in a film that dives headfirst and close-up into Davidson’s struggles that began during his teenage years. Unwanted verbal (and sometimes physical) outbursts could occur at any second, which obviously leads to John’s constant anxiety – but also the sympathetic audience’s - in anticipation of ill-timed, unsavory moments, as we curse the disorder and hope for a cure as much as Davidson does.

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“The Last Viking” – Anker (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) robs a bank, and just before the police arrive, he instructs his younger brother, Manfred (Mads Mikkelsen), to hide the money.  Manfred, however, isn’t entirely reliable due to his mental illness, and when the system releases Anker from prison, the pair embark on a dysfunctional treasure hunt for the loot!  Director/writer Anders Thomas Jensen pens several colorful characters in a kooky, wild, and violent dramedy that is paired with a haunting Viking tale.  Mikkelsen’s physical comedic gifts and flawless timing lead to utterly flabbergasting moments, but the famous “Casino Royale” (2006) villain also carries convincing dramatic depth when playing the ever-so-fragile Manfred.

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“No Other Choice” – Man-soo (Lee Byung-hun) is content, fulfilled, and living his best life!  He’s a long-time executive with a paper company and lives in a beautiful, spacious home with his loving wife and two children.  However, Man-soo’s happy reality falls into jeopardy when he loses his job, and the bills pile up.  Director Park Chan-wook (“Old Boy” (2003), “The Handmaiden” (2016)) and Lee determine that our lead’s desperate times call for extreme actions.  You see, Man-soo has “no other choice” in this entertaining and unpredictable experience, and Park spins his cinematic gifts into the idea that one unfortunate corporate judgment can crumple a secure existence into a precarious, unstable one.

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“Obsession” – Have you ever had a crush on someone who didn’t reciprocate those feelings?  Welcome to Bear’s (Michael Johnston) world!  He’s in love with long-time friend and co-worker Nikki (Inde Navarrette).  Bear seems forever stuck in the friend zone until he makes a wish for Nikki to love him, and guess what?  His request comes true!  Unfortunately, Nikki doesn’t just suddenly adore Bear; she’s obsessed with him in director/writer Curry Barker’s creepy, insidious horror flick.  Barker plays a lot with lighting, relationship anxieties, and taxing anticipation (for the worst) with this nightmarish bond, one in which Bear realizes that breaking up is not an option.  Navarrette – in her first big-screen horror role - is frighteningly exceptional as the fanatical Nikki. 

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“Sirat” – Director/writer Oliver Laxe’s searing and surreal road-trip movie feels like “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2015) meets “Tracks” (2013), and this comparison does not do this movie justice.  Set in the desolate, despairing Moroccan desert, a distressed father, Luis (Sergi Lopez), searches for his daughter.  He travels with his young son, Esteban (Bruno Nunez Arjona), to a rave in the middle of nowhere with the hopes of finding her.  After this rhythmic party breaks up, the fish-out-of-water parent-child duo follows a small group of counter-culture attendees to the next one.  However, gas stations, convenience stores, and fast-food joints are nonexistent on this barren landscape, as the on-screen ensemble hopes that they don’t also become missing.   

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“Relay” – Movie Review

Directed by:  David Mackenzie

Written by:  Justin Piasecki

Starring:  Riz Ahmed, Lily James, Matthew Maher, Eisa Davis, and Sam Worthington 

Runtime:  112 minutes

‘Relay’ translates into a compelling small-scale thriller in a massive and crowded New York City 

“This is the Tri-State Relay Service.”

A relay service is a communication program for the deaf and non-speaking communities.  The service provides a method for the aforementioned persons to receive and send phone calls.  An individual machine – that can sit in a home or business – has a small keyboard and an analog display that reveals the conversation between two parties.  

If one relay user wishes to converse with a hearing or speaking individual, a liaison, who acts like an old-fashioned operator, calls that person, manually voices the message, and can “relay” a typed memo back to the originator.  

In a 21st-century world of the Internet, YouTube, and smartphones, the text telephone was invented in 1964.  The first relay service was established during the 1970s. 

This valuable 20th-century innovation plays an enormous role in director David Mackenzie’s (“Hell or High Water” (2016)) “Relay”, obviously, since the technology is the name of his compelling small-scale thriller in the massive metropolis of New York City. 

During the first act, Sarah Grant (Lily James), a bright, young executive, meets with a lawyer.  Sarah is desperate and explains that she stole company documents that prove that their bioengineered foods would or could harm humans who consume them.  The attorney initially believes that she is a whistleblower, but she insists that she wants to avoid trouble and return the documents. 

Return the documents?!!?

Who can she turn to?   

The barrister knows someone. 

“I’ve never met him.  That’s kind of the point.” 

Ash (Riz Ahmed) is that person.  Through especially covert means, Ash is a fixer.  With intricate planning and espionage-level gadgets, Ash can bring two parties together for an agreement, where crucial information can be exchanged without harm to someone like Sarah.  

Ahmed was mesmerizing as a rock drummer who loses his hearing in the deeply affecting “Sound of Metal” (2019), but Ash is not deaf when frequently relying on the relay machine and service in “Relay”.   

However, one might question Ash’s hearing or speech state.  Unless this critic missed it (which is entirely possible), Ash doesn’t speak for the first 28 minutes (or thereabouts) of Mackenzie’s film.  Instead, we see this silent operative work with his first on-screen client, Hoffman (Matthew Maher), and plan his safe getaway after returning documents to a pharmaceutical CEO (Victor Garber) in a modest NYC establishment.  Ash keeps a copy of the company’s returned records under lock and key as a safeguard for Hoffman’s protection.  

“If anything should happen to me, then….”

Since Ash doesn’t utter a word (or much of one, if again, this critic missed it) for the first half-hour, you might be glued to the screen watching our lead’s every meticulous step.  He works alone, like a private detective but with spy-like skills, and his mind seems to be playing a dozen matches of chess simultaneously while operating – on the outside - with the cool efficiency of a cyborg cruising on autopilot.  

Ash uses relay as a prime method of communicating with his clients to preserve his anonymity when tendering sensitive negotiations and high stakes.  Relay is dependable, safe, and used throughout the film as engaging cinematic exchanges between Ash and his clients and interested third parties.  However, for most of the film, his attention and work are squarely focused on Sarah, who badly needs his help.  

Ash is constantly communicating with Sarah and three reps from her previous employer, the biotech company.  However, Dawson (Sam Worthington) and his two associates aren’t long-time white-collar executives who belong to country clubs or own second homes in The Hamptons.  They are hired guns, the muscle to reacquire the valuable research that Sarah pocketed, and if they scare (or possibly harm) her, well – in Dawson’s mind – that’s life in the big city. 

Worthington doesn’t play Dawson as a cartoonish heavy but rather a determined, informed villain who doesn’t use violence (at least initially) but seems awfully capable of taking extreme measures.  Dawson and his stooges face off – from a distance – with Ash and Sarah.  

Sarah is attractive, naive, and frightened, and even though the two don’t meet in person quite yet, Ash sees photos of her online, and through their conversations, she develops into a damsel in distress for Ash.  She’s more than just a benign customer in his world.

Justin Piasecki’s screenplay reveals Ash’s vulnerabilities through two confidential group settings and another moment in a local pub.  He’s a loner in both his personal and work life, so these two small assembly scenes dictate his only real connections.  

Hence, when this lonely heart begins to connect with Sarah, we entirely believe it. 

“Relay” also connects with the setting.  New York City’s streets are bustling.  People from all walks of life are walking everywhere.  Corporate offices stand alongside modest, moody speakeasies, late-night Asian cuisine spots, and crowded convenience stores.  

Even though Ash wishes to be faceless and nameless in his work, he freely moves about The Big Apple without concern and becomes “lost” in a sea of people and concrete.  Mackenzie and cinematographer Giles Nuttgens film on location and use the crowded urban environment as another character, and often use random individuals looking at (or approaching) Ash, Sarah, or even Hoffman as immediate or potential threats, and these moments swell our anxiety.  

Danger could come from anywhere, and we feel the concern for Sarah’s and Ash’s safety.  Thankfully, this job is not Ash’s first rodeo, but when the heart is potentially in play, working with Sarah places him in a hazardous arena for the first time; this helps translate “Relay” into a clever and stressful experience.

 Jeff’s ranking

3/4 stars

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“Americana” – Movie Review

Directed and written by:  Tony Tost

Starring:  Sydney Sweeney, Paul Walter Hauser, Halsey, Simon Rex, Eric Dane, Gavin Maddox Bergman, Christopher Kriesa, and Zahn McClarnon

Runtime:  107 minutes

‘Americana’:  Tost’s feature film debut is a wild, violent yarn that ties in colorful characters and an elusive shirt

A Ghost Shirt.  

The definition of Americana in Merriam-Webster is - materials concerning or characteristic of America, its civilization, or its culture. 

In director/writer Tony Tost’s wild and violent crime story, his first feature film, the aforementioned article of clothing – a relic from the Lakota people - is a slice of Americana, and an assortment of colorful, memorable South Dakota (although filmed in New Mexico) characters hope to secure a massive payday.  

In a 2023 interview with (YouTube) “The Successful Screenwriter”, Tost said, “Tarantino and The Coen Brothers are obviously so storytelling-baked into my DNA.”  

Like in just about any Quentin Tarantino film, Tost’s on-screen players frequently engage in lengthy exposition to help define their personalities and highlight their motivations.  “Americana” includes a non-linear element, a catchy soundtrack with current and way-back-when tunes, and sudden bursts of carnage that explode (sometimes) out of nowhere from both disreputable and (supposedly) virtuous characters.  

“Americana” also breathes in modest western locales, like in “Blood Simple” (1984), where felonious plans are quietly considered and debated in pubs and humble abodes.

The movie first introduces us to Mandy (Halsey, the pop singer), her younger “brother”, Cal (Gavin Maddox Bergman), and her boorish boyfriend, Dillon (Eric Dane).  Straightaway, Dillon gins up nasty vibes towards the elementary school-aged Cal and Mandy, which results in a pair of violent episodes.  This scene introduces us to Cal’s tireless insistence that he is actually Sitting Bull, just reincarnated, and this Caucasian kid frequently carries a bow and arrow and always dons a blue war bonnet minus the feathers.  

Proceeding in a chapter format, we are whisked across town to a diner where Lefty Ledbetter (Paul Walter Hauser), a stout, gentle, soft-spoken fella (with a cowboy hat and full beard) speaks from the heart (with Cliff Notes handy), and Penny Jo (Sydney Sweeney), a waitress with a stutter, but with dreams of living in Nashville and singing country music, listens.  

These acquaintances are a pair of sweet, kind souls, and they both share the passive quality of allowing life to run them over.  However, when they learn of a priceless Lakota Ghost Shirt running around town, they grab life by the horns and attempt to poach it for themselves.  

In contrast to Dillon, Roy (Simon Rex), a greedy collection dealer, Fun Dave (Joe Adler), and Hiram Starr (Christopher Kriesa), a ruthless businessman with cult-leader intentions, Lefty, Penny Jo, Mandy, and Cal are righteous protagonists, but not entirely.  

No one in this movie is free of sin, not even Cal. 

Everyone mentioned, but Hiram partakes in a race to “capture the flag” for this elusive garment, and add Ghost Eye (Zahn McClarnon) to the mix, who simply wishes to return the shirt to his people.  

The entire cast superbly dives into their respective roles, and Sweeney and Hauser’s vulnerabilities, Halsey’s fight, Bergman’s singular focus, and McClarnon’s quiet, steadfast determination are the mesmerizing highlights across the 107-minute runtime.  

As the search marches on, some participants/combatants courteously inquire about retrieving or paying for this particular apparel.  Ignore these pleasantries because force – in the form of firearms and other weapons – will be used to secure the Native American attire. 

Despite rooting for Mandy, Cal, Lefty, Penny Jo, and Ghost Eye, it’s truly anyone’s guess who will win the day, because in this unpredictable labyrinth of ragtag desperation, the villains seem to have an equal possibility of raising the clothing trophy.  

The Ghost Shirt may be the most obvious and celebrated piece of Americana in “Americana”, but before the film’s conclusion, so are hilarious sight gags, a collection of walking wounded and lethally wounded, a sidebar of atrocious abuse, a pseudo-“Kill Bill: Vol. 2” compound, and a genuine outpouring of on-screen and audience emotion.    

Jeff’s ranking

3.5/4 stars

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Celebrate Eric Bana’s 57th birthday with this engaging triple feature

Eric Bana turns 57 years young on August 9, and this talented, charismatic Australian-born actor has lit up the big screen for 28 years.  To celebrate Eric’s birthday, here is an engaging triple feature that showcases the man’s thespian gifts, including one role that earned him the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts’ Audience Choice Award! 

Happy Birthday, Eric!  Thank you for your work. 

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“Chopper” (2000) – Mark Brandon “Chopper” Read’s surname is apropos, because this violent Melbourne (Australia) criminal wrote his autobiography while in prison.  In director Andrew Dominik’s pugilistic, and sometimes surreal, biopic, Eric Bana – in his first big-screen leading role - plays the infamous and paranoid title character, a brute who would rather violently lash out at his enemies and friends through several preemptive, shocking strikes rather than wait around for their potential assaults. 

Dominik and Bana do not feature this real-life ruffian jotting down notes in a spiral notebook or typing away on a Remington typewriter during the often vicious 94-minute runtime.  Set from 1978 to 1991, the director and actor showcase Chopper’s gift of gab and curse of obsessive mistrust while in jail and roaming Melbourne’s streets.  The production sweats in (mostly) bleak or ordinary surroundings while Chopper feels in constant crisis.  

He confides with his girlfriend, Tanya (Kate Beahan), that he should take “some time to be normal.”  

Mark certainly does not engage in customary behavior as he constantly creates his troubles with fellow prisoners or several civilians in his path, as his fists, knives, or guns are his tools of choice.  Chopper even sits in a chair and demands that another convict cut off portions of his body, like a demented, heinous session at the barber shop in a crucial moment that demonstrates our lead’s abnormal brain patterns.  No worries, Bana allegedly gained significant weight to play Mr. Read, so it all evens out.  Okay, not really.  Still, this uneven but engrossing character study is worth carving out just over 90 minutes on your schedule to experience Bana’s disconcerting portrayal. 

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“Hanna” (2011) – Hanna (Saoirse Ronan), a slender 16-year-old, fires an arrow into an enormous deer that falls in the open snow.  She stands above the four-legged mammal and utters, “I just missed your heart.” 

Our young, blonde-haired lead seems usually and emotionally cold in the frigid temperatures, and the reasons for her icy persona soon become clear.  

Her father, Erik (Eric Bana), suddenly approaches her and exclaims, “You’re dead.”

The two begin hand-to-hand combat in a kinetic, aggressive exercise that results in Hanna lying beside the deceased deer and wondering why she failed in her mission, even though she caught the bounty for numerous suppers in their isolated log cabin, located somewhere in Northern Europe (and filmed in Finland). 

Hanna’s mother, Johanna (Vicky Krieps), has passed away, so Erik and Hanna are each other’s only family.  Instead of regular chores, Dad teaches Hanna to shoot guns, speak several languages, engage in close-quarters fighting, and offer nightly lectures, like explaining the size of blue whales and exploding stars.  The movie later reveals Erik’s hazardous profession, one that requires lethal force and high intellect, as he relentlessly attempts to share his extensive knowledge with Hanna in a lifetime course of the Girl Scouts on steroids, along with a hydrogen bomb or two. 

Erik and Hanna prepare for some unknown mission, one against CIA agent/executive Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett), and the wily but dutiful teenager sets the hazardous pursuit in motion, where the pair split up but will eventually rendezvous in Berlin.  

Ronan is a wonder as the ever-capable fighting machine and puzzle solver, as she finds herself in a massive concrete Black operations facility and then out into the world for the first time.  Hanna might have more worldly knowledge than 100 MBAs, but she completely missed her childhood and simple comforts like electricity.  Director Joe Wright spends more time than needed on Hanna’s journey with her new and temporary surrogate British family on holiday, but these moments attempt to showcase her unique talents and naivete.  

Meanwhile, Wright also frequently volleys over to Erik’s travels.  This dangerous gent, on occasion, will reveal his combative skills that would make Neo (Keanu Reeves) green with envy, in Bana’s uber-capable and calm yet relentless performance.  Additionally, Erik’s talents feel even more impressive while witnessing Hanna expertly handle her pressures for hundreds of miles towards her hopeful destination in Germany.  

“Hanna” might have a few misses, but this action movie beats to a genuine heart.

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“The Dry” (2020) – Director Robert Connolly’s riveting noir is set in a parched small Australian town, Kiewarra, under scorching hot and bright skies.  It hasn’t rained in 324 days, and Connolly and cinematographer Stephan Duscio’s camera captures the brown, cracked earth desperate for a quench of water.

However, the dry village suddenly becomes soaked with death.  A family was murdered.  A mother, a father, and a little boy are dead, and the deceased dad could be the suspect.  The patriarch, Luke, is a former best friend of Aaron Falk (Eric Bana), a federal policeman.  Aaron lives in the big city, but he travels to Kiewarra to attend the funeral. 

A lethal mystery lingers in the air, but now that Aaron is home, thoughts of a fateful day – 20 years earlier - repeatedly enter his mind.  A teenage girl, Ellie, was found drowned, and Luke and Aaron, teenagers as well, were thought to play a role in her demise.  

Ellie was Aaron’s girlfriend.  

“The Dry” is filled with this captivating present-day whodunit and the persistent agony of the painful past, and Aaron finds himself in the center of both.  Some locals are pleased to see Aaron, but others are straightaway convinced he’s guilty of (or was involved with) Ellie’s passing.  

Connolly and casting director Jane Norris did a crackerjack job of casting Bana as the conflicted, tortured, and professional lawman forced to face his past and push through the noise, threats, and mystery of the here and now.  

As Aaron searches for clues and asks questions, Connolly and Bana introduce us to small-town residents, like Luke’s parents (Bruce Spence and Julia Blake), his old friend, Gretchen (Genevieve O’Reilly), an antagonist named Grant (Matt Nable), and a young police sergeant (Keir O’Donnell) who partners with our troubled lead.   At 117 minutes, “The Dry” doesn’t splash and spray with a reckless pace.  Instead, Connolly and Harry Cripps’ script, based on Jane Harper’s 2016 novel, matches the tranquil, peaceful, and wide-open environment but with an undertow of anxiety and secrets.  

With a pitch-perfect cast and an absorbing mystery, this modern-day noir doesn’t wither under the blazing sun. 

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“Architecton” – Movie Review

Directed and written by:  Victor Kossakovsky

Starring:  Michele De Lucchi and Victor Kossakovsky

Runtime:  98 minutes

Kossakovsky builds a compelling arthouse look at our imperfect relationship with natural resources in ‘Architecton’ 

In “Gunda” (2020), Victor Kossakovsky’s previous documentary, he traveled to a Norwegian farm and filmed the life of a pig named Gunda and her piglets.  He focuses his camera on intimate spaces and captures, at exceptionally close range, his four-legged subjects’ daily routines, which induce smiles at times and concerns during others under the transparent embrace of nature. 

Kossakovsky’s new doc, “Architecton”, looks at nature as well but embarks on a completely different scope, a broad, wide-ranging approach that addresses the planet, and specifically, nature’s stone and its relationship to man’s conversion of it to cement.   

“Architecton” is a sweeping, arthouse epic in which Kossakovsky shoots numerous natural landscapes, like enormous mountains and their associated mountainsides, but also strip mines that depict man’s industrial impact on the environment.   These manufactured excursions have a purpose, of course, which is to extract stone and crush it to create cement, the prime ingredient for constructing housing and corporate buildings. 

Victor takes a cynical view of this chief component of construction and modern architecture.

In an October 2024 interview with (YouTube) laserhotline, he says, “We live in a time of fast food, and there are two ingredients (in) fast food, sugar and cement.” 

He adds, “Maybe in a thousand years’ time, people will call our time, not (the) Iron Age, not (the) Stone Age, not (the) Ice Age, but (the) Sugar and Cement Age.  This is our time, and we consume a lot of sugar and cement.” 

Additionally, in the same interview, Victor wanted to portray stone as “not dead, but it’s something alive in a way.”

Watching this interview provided helpful insight into Victor’s perspective before walking into “Architecton”, because his experimental style doesn’t follow traditional filmmaking blueprints.  The only spoken words are conversations between Italian architect Michele De Lucchi and some workers building a circular stone garden on his property.  He speaks to another architect or builder who manually moves large stones by hand and a wheelbarrow in an entirely different place, and has a brief conversation with Kossakovsky about what it all means.

The film doesn’t feature an expose on McDonald’s or Jack in the Box.  Instead, the audience witnesses a constant array of sequences that stimulate thoughts about the natural world and the ways that humans impact it through consuming stone.   Many moments feature mountains and strip mines, but Kossakovsky also introduces images of structures built during the last century and this century and compares them to ancient edifices that have stood or partially stood for hundreds or thousands of years.  

The often-spoken phrase, “They don’t make things like they used to,” will come to mind.  

The film includes a sophisticated machine that pours cement and forms a new wall, which is juxtaposed within the camera frame against an artist attempting to shape a modest stone sculpture with an iron bar holding the rocks in place.  This young man tries to express his ideas through the iron and stone artwork, but “Architecton” also includes the needless, destructive force of man by starkly revealing catastrophic rubble in broad daylight of an Eastern European war transpiring right now.  

Kossakovsky travels to Ukraine, Turkey, Lebanon, Italy, and other unknown spots around the globe.  Actually, the only two known locales that someone can easily recognize are Ukraine and Italy, and the film doesn’t label where we are at any time.  It’s poetic but also a bit frustrating.  This critic needed to look up the other locations afterward.  As Victor and cinematographer Ben Bernhard shuttle around to uninhabited settings and some inhabited ones, accompanied by composer Evgueni Galperine’s score, which feels like a beautiful mash of 21st-century industrial instrumentals and operatic tones.  Just think of the music in the opening to Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972) as Spanish conquistadors march on narrow paths in mountainous Peru.  

The harmonization between the visuals and music feels profound, timeless, and Biblical throughout the 98-minute presentation.  Still, Victor frequently yanks us back to our present, where a resonant but unassuming stone circle is formed in Italy, or wrecked neighborhoods are crumbled like matchsticks and need to be rebuilt.  

More cement!

“Architecton” screened at a July Phoenix Film Society event, and the first audience member to describe the film called it “stunning.”  

Here are some other words that come to mind:  scenic, exploratory, awe-inspiring, comparative, earthy, contemplative, and symbolic. 

Non-linear and vague are a couple of other adjectives, and “Architecton”, with its arthouse flair, is not for everyone, but Kossakovsky is a cinematic artist, whether he devotes his time to a family of pigs on an isolated farm or travels to far-reaching spots to ponder man’s relationship to natural resources.

Jeff’s ranking

3/4 stars

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The Fantastic Four: First Steps - Movie Review

Dir: Matt Shakman

Starring: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Joseph Quinn, Julia Garner, and Paul Walter Hauser

1h 55m

From the very beginning of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps," it's assumed that the Marvel audience is familiar with these characters. Much like the recent reboot of DC Comics "Superman", the story of Reed Richards aka Mr. Fantastic (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm aka The Invisible Girl (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm aka The Human Torch (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm aka The Thing (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) has already established a long history of franchise experience within the superhero movie universe. The story of the Fantastic Four has been told in the 1990s, with a Roger Corman-produced odd yet comical B-movie effort, the 2000s with two films starring Jessica Alba and Chris Evans not as Captain America, and the 2010s with a much maligned production but with a fantastic cast starring Kat Mara, Miles Teller, Jamie Bell, and Michael B. Jordan. Director Matt Shakman wastes no time, curating an ingenious introduction that quickly explains the backstory everyone already knows, the cosmic radiation that made the four humans fantastic, the beloved heroes and public figures they have become, and the announcement of an unexpected pregnancy that Sue announces to Reed that leads them into the pulse of the story with "The Fantastic Four: First Steps". It's one of the best introductions of recent memory of any of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. 

While Reed and Sue prepare for the arrival of their new team/family member, Reed, an ever-critical thinker and problem solver, is concerned about how the cosmic radiation will influence the development of their unborn child. Before Reed can conduct much research, a herald in the form of a silver entity, immediately recognizable to comic book fans as the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), arrives with a message from an ancient cosmic entity known as Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson) concerning Earth's impending destruction. The impulsive Johnny Storm chases the harbinger to the edge of Earth's atmosphere, realizing that the Silver Surfer is much faster and powerful than any foe they have faced to this point. The Fantastic Four devise a plan to venture into space and eliminate the threat, hopefully saving Earth. However, while on their mission and within a planet-destroying spacecraft, the Fantastic Four are offered an exchange for salvation from Galactus, who realizes that the heroes harbor something more desirable than all of planet Earth. In exchange for Earth's salvation, Galactus requires the child of Reed and Sue. 

Part of what makes Matt Shakman's film work so well is its emphasis on character and the dynamic that connects their heroic personalities and everyday lives, as they live as abnormal superhumans. Shakman cut his teeth in both theater and episodic television. The process of understanding and building emotional nuance on stage and throughout the run of long-form television helps make these superheroes feel grounded and relatable. Specifically, the connection between Reed Richards and Sue Storm is an impressive credit to actors Pedro Pascal and Vanessa Kirby, who have incredible chemistry throughout the film. As the threat to their family grows greater, with numerous failed attempts at saving Earth, the anxiety and fear displayed both individually and as a couple is a highlight of the film. Pascal, whose characterization of Reed Richards is cold and calculated, and unknowingly, at times, insensitive. At the same time, Kirby is protective, empathetic, and ready to act at a moment's notice for those she loves. Add strong supportive roles from Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, an impatient yet wholeheartedly supportive sibling, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach as Ben Grimm, the steadfast supportive rock of the entire team and film. 

The design of "Earth 828" in "First Steps" is enjoyable. With a vintage-inspired aesthetic that draws design qualities from various eras, including the 1950s and 1960s, yet incorporates technology-enhanced materials, the film's world is creative in nearly every scene. The addition of robot helper H.E.R.B.I.E., who makes pasta, assists with daily chores, and helps drive the spacecraft out of danger in a tense scene, is a charming addition to the environment. 

While much of "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" works, with an excellent cast and impeccable design, unfortunately, the story lacks the sustaining power to reach a satisfying conclusion. The emotional stakes involving the jeopardy of Earth in exchange for Reed and Sue's baby never seem very threatening, especially within the realms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And Galactus, a giant that glides through New York City with reckless abandonment, rarely seems like much of a threat even when the cosmic entity stomps and swipes away the Fantastic Four's aggressive attacks. You can sense early in the film that the Fantastic Four will be around for a while, that they will serve a greater purpose than anything that could happen in this film. 

"The Fantastic Four: First Steps" succeeds due to its attention to character development, featuring standout performances from the core Four, and its phenomenal production design that sets it apart from other Marvel Cinematic Universe films. While it very obviously feels like a setup for future Marvel phases, it's still an enjoyable adventure that hopefully influences the creative decisions of the movies that will follow. 

Monte's Rating

3.50 out of 5.00

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“Oh, Hi!” – Movie Review

Directed by:  Sophie Brooks

Written by:  Sophie Brooks and Molly Gordon

Starring:  Molly Gordon, Logan Lerman, Geraldine Viswanathan, John Reynolds, and David Cross

Runtime:  94 minutes

Gordon, Lerman, and the film’s initial premise earn a refreshing hello, but ‘Oh, Hi!’ wears out its welcome

“Islands in the stream.  That’s where we are.  No one in between.  How can we be wrong?” – “Islands in the Stream” (1983), performed by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers

“I did something bad,” Iris (Molly Gordon) says. 

Shortly after Iris utters this statement to her best friend, Max (Geraldine Viswanathan), during the opening minute(s) of director/co-writer Sophie Brooks’ film, “Oh, Hi!” immediately jumps to 33 hours earlier to retrace our heroine’s steps toward her regretful action. 

Brooks’ rom-com features two amiable 20 (or early 30) somethings, Iris and Isaac (Logan Lerman), and basks in the glow of a blossoming relationship and young love during a weekend trip to a picturesque Upstate New York farmhouse.  The locale, in a town called High Falls, is complete with sunny skies, relaxing winding roads, a strawberry farm, and plenty of rolling hills.  The spacious, out-in-the-country Airbnb sits on a huge lot, complete with a picnic table and stunning views.  The flirty, open-minded duo share affectionate chemistry, and magic is in the air. 

However, this harmonious getaway can’t last the entire 94-minute runtime without conflict.  Rather than introduce an outside element – excluding an oddball Gen X noisy neighbor (David Cross) – Brooks reveals a relationship fly in the ointment between Iris and Isaac that triggers our heroine’s path towards horrible judgment and dating dysfunction.  

“Oh, Hi!” explores an intriguing premise within the unsuspecting walls of this small-town homestead, where hurt feelings lead to damaging decisions.  The film’s second and third acts open up dialogue about miscommunication and divergent expectations.  Mixed signals – either unintended or deliberate – become a lightning rod for thunderous debate with the attractive duet.  

Gordon and Lerman capably navigate Iris and Isaac’s journey (and Brooks and Gordon’s script) from pure bliss to troubling angst, as one character suddenly dives into a deep pool of irrationality while the other bathes in nuance to coax the unreasonable partner toward the safer, shallow end.   

The discourse surrounding early courtship and gushy feelings feels familiar, but distinctive distress soon transpires within the scenic, rustic domicile.  

Actually, the events are not unique, as they mimic an iconic 1987 novel and its 1990 film, but the specific book and movie will not be revealed in this review.  

The second act presents a duality of thoughts between Iris and Isaac’s relationship and the ultimate resolution to unglue a sticky situation, which then pastes Iris’ pal, Max, and her boyfriend, Kenny (John Reynolds), in the mess. 

Brooks and Gordon deserve kudos for introducing a clever and perilous premise for our affable couple after initial hopes of a picturesque holiday.  

Unfortunately, the narrative’s bid to free all concerned parties from the muddle is underwhelming and languishes in safe decorum even though the wacky solution is awfully unbelievable.  (Yes, the solution is safe, but also unbelievable.)  “Oh Hi!” takes welcome risks within the dating sphere but doesn’t go far enough.

Additionally, the second act is purposely designed to be agonizing as one of the leads drones on about their personal history way too long.  The lengthy exposition/exploration into relationship-repair feels too drawn out, and it becomes an exhausting experience rather than a curious one.  Brooks devises an intended madness here, but one could argue that the folly runs around the same circle rather than climbing towards more heightened questions.  

Then again, for moviegoers wholly invested in Iris and Isaac mending their relationship or tearing each other apart, the aforementioned second-act trek and far-fetched third-act resolution could be a fascinating, eye-popping, and popcorn-consuming theatrical experience.  

Or perhaps “Oh, Hi!” would work better as a short film than a feature-length one.  

Not everyone will agree.

On the other hand, “How can these two islands, Iris and Isaac, be wrong?”   

Well, let us count the ways.

Jeff’s ranking

2/4 stars

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Eddington - Movie Review

Dir: Ari Aster

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Pedro Pascal, Luke Grimes, Emma Stone, Austin Butler, William Belleau, and Michael Ward

2h 28m

The newest film from writer/director Ari Aster, the mastermind behind some of cinema's most compelling films of the last decade, including "Hereditary", "Midsommer", and "Beau is Afraid", returns with a challenging movie that reflects the complicated realities of recent pandemic-era memory—focused with a wild-eyed gaze on commentary centered on topics such as COVID-19 protocols, mask mandates, and Black Lives Matter. "Eddington", a fictional small town on the border of a Tribal community in New Mexico, is Ari Aster's most grounded film while also being the most dense with ideas, both intriguing and infuriating. There is much to admire about an artist engaging in difficult conversations and displaying the ugly truths about society, forever changed by a fear of the unknown and a crumbling trust in the political structure. Ari Aster's film is divisive, in a good way, and reflective in its pacing, tone, and story structure of the ever-changing chaos felt during the years lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) is a world-weary Sheriff in the small town of Eddington, New Mexico, a tight-knit community that reaches its boiling point over new mandates for public health protection in early 2020. At the center of the conflict, which is driven by both public policy and a long-held personal vendetta, are Sheriff Cross and Mayor Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal). Sheriff Cross's wife, Louise (played by Emma Stone), and the Mayor have a history, which infuriates the Sheriff whenever political ads for the Mayor's reelection campaign appear on television. The contemptuous relationship between the two men only grows more radical as the world around them unravels with the invading paranoia surrounding the worldwide pandemic and social media outcry over police brutality that sends the Eddington townsfolk into protest. 

Writer/director Ari Aster meticulously composes "Eddington" with a strong emphasis on its visual language, an impressive design that has highlighted the director's work since "Hereditary". The town of Eddington feels like a maze in the early part of the film, as Sheriff Joe Cross encounters resistance from the bordering Tribal police department for not obeying mask mandates on tribal land, and responding to disorderly conduct calls at Mayor Garcia's bar, which leads to an altercation. Director of Photography Darius Khondji ("Uncut Gems") builds paranoia into every right turn and empty street in the city while also showing the desperation of Sheriff Cross as the driving scenes grow more erratic and panic-driven as the town folds in on itself. Aster's ability to build tension into any scene, whether complex or straightforward, is a masterclass in how to emphasize characters and movements within a scene. 

The diverse cast in "Eddington" brings the odd mix of characters to life. Joaquin Phoenix delivers a standout performance in the film. Phoenix, whose choices of characters in films are always fascinating decisions, adds so much to the composition of Sheriff Joe Cross's descent into paranoia and madness. It's infuriating to watch the character grow more desperate, but also quite funny. Phoenix has excellent comic timing, both with the stammering of words and the intention of movements. Pedro Pascal is also interesting, playing a do-good political figure who, regardless of saying all the right things, still feels untrustworthy. The chemistry between Phoenix and Pascal is magnetic whenever the two actors are on screen together. Emma Stone, playing the role of Sheriff Cross's lonely and fed-up wife, Louise, and Austin Butler, who arrives as a cult-like leader who spouts conspiracy theory rhetoric, are underwritten but still effective in their performances whenever on screen. 

There is so much going on in "Eddington", with social, political, and personal commentary built on commentary about feelings and perspectives from the not-too-distant past. These story movements create abrupt plot twists and turns, culminating towards a finale that feels like it can only end one way: violently. Still, Aster builds fascinating metaphors throughout the film, ideas that have stuck with me days after watching the movie. The classic Western story characteristics are updated in the modern but still lost-in-time town of Eddington, with a white cowboy-hat-wearing Sheriff who is desperately resisting change, protecting antiquated ideologies as if it were a showdown at the O.K. Corral. The neighboring Native American community police team, who do everything right, abide and enforce all the right laws to protect their people, yet are consistently undermined about where their land boundary is located and disregarded when they try to operate within the realms of what is right and good, getting so close to solutions only to be taken out at the knees and pushed back behind everyone else. Aster brilliantly, perhaps over abundantly, builds these conversations into the entire structure of the story. 

"Eddington" may feel like a joke someone will inevitably respond with "too soon" after you tell it. All the feelings of anger, frustration, fear, and mourning people felt when forced to shelter in home, while watching death tolls increase, while fearing for the lives of friends and family you could only talk with through a window, while watching protests for the protection of Black lives, and many more feelings every single person felt in different ways while we all lost two years of our lives to a world-changing event; Ari Aster takes all this, turns the mirror, and forces the viewer to watch all these feelings come to life again in a small, seemingly inescapable fictional town in New Mexico. Instead of thinking an intelligent, challenging film like this is a joke told "too soon", perhaps, as cinema has always done, maybe it’s more appropriate to call it a cautionary tale, a warning to remember how we behaved, who we let have power, and how we responded when our beautiful world was threatened by forces both within and out of our control.

Monte's Rating

4.00 out of 5.00

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“To a Land Unknown” – Movie Review

Directed by:  Mahdi Fleifel

Written by:  Mahdi Fleifel, Fyzal Boulifa, and Jason McColgan

Starring:  Mahmoud Bakri, Aram Sabbah, Mohammad Alsurafa, Angeliki Papoulia, and Monther Rayahneh

Runtime:  106 minutes

 ‘To a Land Unknown’ spotlights a gritty and anxious refugee conundrum in one of the planet’s most famous cities

Athens, Greece’s capital, enjoys millions of tourists every year.  The City of the Violet Crown offers plenty of attractions, like the Parthenon, the Acropolis, the Temple of Hephaestus, and much more.  

Chatila (Mahmoud Bakri) and his cousin Reda (Aram Sabbah), two 20-somethings, are Athens’ tourists, but not in the traditional sense. 

The unemployed Palestinian refugees attempt to earn a living by stealing purses, swiping merchandise from local businesses, and through other nefarious means.  

Chatila anxiously hopes to reach Germany to start a new life and open a café.  Reda, a recovering heroin addict, is along for Chatila’s ride and will find some blue-collar work in Deutschland, possibly as an enforcer if anyone messes with his cousin’s café. 

The men need passports, and a local, Marwan (Monther Rayahneh), can forge documents for the right price.  

Our flawed protagonists need cash.  

Outside of his petty misdeeds, Chatila devises a couple of grander schemes for big paydays, and his plans include allies/pawns, such as a lonely single Greek woman, Tatiana (Angeliki Papoulia), a 13-year-old Turkish boy, Malik (Mohammad Alsurafa), and a few others.  

The cousins face extremely long odds for success, and director/co-writer Mahdi Fleifel, Bakri, and Sabbah envelop and cloud the audience with feelings of doom and dread.  

Fleifel’s gritty and captivating modern-day crime indie pulls moviegoers into a ground-level conundrum where two refugees frantically yearn for a new home, a new country.  Chatila and Reda crave to land in a new land and find a fresh start, but achieving their goals without deception, crime, and harsh transgressions remains unknown.   

Fleifel’s film feels raw and authentic and is set mostly away from Athens’ glamour and natural beauty.  The script pits Chatila and Reda on a butte’s peak during a couple of brief scenes overlooking the historic locale, but almost every other on-screen minute spends time in coarse, untidy urban housing centers, which are not unique to Athens, as similar economically distressed districts can be found in just about every metropolitan center on the planet.

Cinematographer Thodoros Mihopoulos and location manager Sonia Koulepi critically contribute to the film’s purposely designed dour mood, as the working-class or poverty-driven city streets, residences, and shops are flush with gloomy grays, and sometimes, apartments have open windows that allow the heat or sticky fingers to enter unabated.  

The young men’s chances for finding honest employment and building wealth and prosperity in their current surroundings (and with their associated mindsets) seem slimmer than meeting Zeus, Apollo, and Aphrodite in person.

Bakri and Sabbah have only a few acting credits each, but they deliver convincing performances that effectively portray their characters’ misery and hopelessness.  Chatila and Reda sport makeshift beards, unkempt attire, and exhausted, frustrated personas, as a life of petty crimes is the only option to reach the Promised Land in their minds. 

At one point, Reda says, “We are bad people,” but Chatila justifies their actions for the greater good.  

Well, not the greater good but THEIR greater good.  Chatila also proposes making up for their trespasses and lies with future good deeds, but Reda dismisses his cousin’s declaration as mere talk.   

Fleifel, Fyzal Boulifa, and Jason McColgan’s script also knowingly toys with the audience regarding the morality levels of our two lead characters.  They are both imperfect men, but the movie swings back and forth in depicting which one is more ethically damaged, creating frequently shifting thoughts of empathy and dissatisfaction for Chatila and Reda throughout the film’s 106-minute runtime. 

Despite their questionable judgment, we’re rooting for the cousins to reach their goals, but with a profound wish that they minimize the harm directed toward strangers and colleagues who encircle their modest orbit.  

Will karma catch up with them?  

Chatila and Reda may or may not be too quick for the aforementioned karma, which effectively places our leads and moviegoers under duress.  Granted, “To a Land Unknown” is not as stressful as living through the 430 BC Athens plague, but this movie is light years away from a pleasant holiday jaunt to the Parthenon.

Jeff’s ranking

3.5/4 stars

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Jurassic World Rebirth - Monte Yazzie Movie Review

Director: Gareth Edwards 

Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Rupert Friend, Manuel García-Rulfo, Luna Blaise, Ed Skrein, and David Iacono

2h 14m

How do you keep a franchise fresh? The summer popcorn movie sequels, prequels, and reboots provide a steady stream of opportunities to revisit familiar characters and relive those movie memories. "Jurassic Park", released in 1993 with two sequels, and followed by "Jurassic World" in 2015, which also had two sequels, has maintained a grip on the summer box office for more than 30 years, and for some moviegoers, forged a lifelong connection to nostalgia for dinosaurs. 

"Jurassic World Rebirth", directed by Gareth Edwards, attempts to reinvigorate the long-told story of dinosaurs run amok with a new storyline set many years in the future, featuring characters not connected to past franchises, and now, mutant dinosaur hybrids from a secret island. Drawing influences from "Jurassic Park" with its atmosphere and suspense, and even paying direct homage to the 1993 classic in a few scenes, "Jurassic World Rebirth" may not reinvent the long-running franchise as much as it simply reinterprets moments from many of the past films.

Written by David Koepp, the writer of the first "Jurassic Park" based on the novel by Michael Crichton, "Jurassic World Rebirth" takes place five years after the events of "Jurassic World: Dominion". Earth hasn't been a hospitable environment for the dinosaurs, leaving them with only one place to thrive: near the equator. Humanity has also become disenfranchised with the once awe-inspiring animals; now they are just a nuisance, creating traffic jams and overturning sailboats. 

A pharmaceutical bigwig, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), however, realizes that a life-saving drug can be produced from the extracted DNA of the most enormous dinosaurs on land, sea, and air. Because the DNA must come from a dinosaur that is still alive, a covert special ops team led by Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) is offered a once-in-a-lifetime salary to venture into the forbidden zone to find the dinosaurs and collect a blood sample from each of them. Zora enlists the help of an old friend, Duncan Kincaid  (Mahershala Ali), a boat captain with a team ready for a payday. Krebs and Zora also enlist the help of Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), a paleontologist eager to see dinosaurs outside of captivity. 

These mercenaries don't get very far into their mission before responding to a distress call from family whose boat is overturned by an enormous Mosasaurus. But, before they can restart the mission, a group of hunting Spinosaurus confronts them. Ambushed, the Mosasaurus returns to finish the job on Kincaid's boat, leaving the team stranded without supplies or weapons on the island with both giant and experimental dinosaurs. 

Director Gareth Edwards, who is no stranger to large-scale epic adventures, having directed the 2014 "Godzilla" and the 2016 "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story", understands the objective of these films and crafts an environment that is epic in scope, yet also an atmosphere that feels genuinely threatening. It's the closest in tone to the original "Jurassic Park", but that, in part, can be attributed to how much it emulates some of the best set pieces from the first film. A gas station chase down with some mutated flying creatures feels very much like the Raptor scene in the kitchen from the first film. A Tyrannosaurus Rex pursues a floating raft in the same way it pursued a high-speed Jeep way back in the early 90s. It's a testament to the effectiveness of "Jurassic Park" that these scenes could be retooled and still work in such a thrilling fashion. It's also high praise for director Gareth Edwards, who understands the franchise and adds a nice touch of composing the dinosaurs as giants and using creature feature characteristics to create thrills and chills. 

The cast is also wholly capable; there is no doubt that they are all having fun and adding as much as they can to the material. Unfortunately, these characters have too much to compete against and aren't provided much to do when not being chased by dinosaurs. Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali excel in these roles, and they are given emotional depth connected to their shared traumas. However, even with these extra character-building blocks, they are still pushed aside in many ways for the giant spectacle of new dinosaurs or for time spent with other characters who aren’t as interesting. A subplot featuring a rescued family who begrudgingly join the mission for dinosaur DNA is lost in the mix of all the different events.

"Jurassic World Rebirth" suffers from too many storylines, which don't leave much room for character development when competing against the set pieces of swimming dinosaurs, flying dinosaurs, and the one big, mutated, scary one that appears way too late in the final act. Still, Gareth Edwards is talented and keeps the pacing quick, tailoring the action with interesting kinds of dinosaur danger. The raft scene, featuring a curious T-Rex chasing the stranded family through the river rapids, is better than any of the action scenes in all three "Jurassic World" films. Alternatively, the finale of "Jurassic World Rebirth" falls the flattest of all the movies in the franchise with the arrival of the D-Rex, a gargantuan dinosaur that resembles something from the "Alien" franchise, which is underutilized and does nothing more than cause a minor inconvenience for the team. 

"Jurassic World Rebirth" is one of the better films of the "Jurassic Park" franchise. While it may not excel in storytelling, director Gareth Edwards understands the world and utilizes the set pieces and many of the dinosaurs in creative ways that keep the adventure exciting. 

Monte's Rating

3.00 out of 5.00

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“Sorry, Baby” – Movie Review

Directed and written by:  Eva Victor

Starring:  Eva Victor, Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges, Kelly McCormack, Louis Cancelmi, and John Carroll Lynch

Runtime:  103 minutes

 ‘Sorry, Baby’:  This sensitive and quirky college-town dramedy is unapologetic with its nuanced, genuine approach in dealing with trauma

In a June 2025 Stephen Colbert interview, he asks “Sorry, Baby” director/writer/star Eva Victor how she balanced a heavy subject, trauma that her character suffers, along with plenty of humor during other moments of the film.

“It’s hard.  I don’t know.  I think you write something sad, and then (you think), ‘Well, I need a pick-me-up,’” Victor says.

Well, Eva’s back-and-forth tonal shifts when screenwriting prove to be a winning practice, as she won the 2025 Sundance Film Festival’s Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award for “Sorry, Baby”.  Her first attempt at writing and directing a feature film results in a thoughtful, troubling, quirky, and funny R-rated indie, one set in a small college town in rural Massachusetts where the skies are usually gray, and its residents don warm jackets as they leave their homes for work or school every day. 

 Agnes (Victor) is a bright English Literature PhD student who eventually becomes a professor at the school.  She’s in her 20s but hasn’t met the right person yet.  Agnes is independent but loves to share her space and thoughts with her warm and supportive BFF, Lydie (Naomi Ackie).

 Everyone should have a best friend like Lydie.

 Our lead works hard in the classroom and enjoys making her way through her little corner of the world when – suddenly - a disturbing event occurs with her professor, Preston (Louis Cancelmi).  Afterwards, Agnes verbalizes the incident to Lydie.

Victor handles the actual episode and explanation to her friend with grace and sensitivity.  The director/writer/star doesn’t film the confrontation between Preston and Agnes, but still leaves the audience with a sickening feeling of dread, simply by Victor and cinematographer Mia Cioffi Henry placing the camera out of harm’s way.

This is a moment where moviegoers and critics alike are relieved when Eva doesn’t show us but tells us, which is usually the opposite reaction of a “please show us, don’t just tell us” preference when watching a film.

Eva gives a moving, authentic performance around this subject, and she pulls emotions from a similar event that happened to her in real life.  “Sorry, Baby” is based on a personal experience, and the adage “write what you know” is felt here, including Agnes’ lonely, difficult drive home accompanied by a ringing-in-your-ears resonance, a sound that signifies that she’s dizzy and distracted in the aftermath. 

As mentioned on Colbert, Victor certainly includes pick-me-ups as well and channels her humor through her character’s everyday discourse with Lydie, sexual tension with her neighbor, Gavin (Lucas Hedges), sarcastic snaps with a school rival, Natasha (Kelly McCormack), and a wonderful, friendly, and frank exchange with Pete (John Carroll Lynch), a sandwich shop owner with a willing ear to listen and a voice to dispense sound advice. 

All the above characters are welcomed presences whenever they grace the screen in anticipation of empathetic or lively banter.  A prime example is when Lydie parts with Agnes, and this critic felt a bit of sadness as she leaves, but voila, Lydie thankfully appears straight away due to the screenplay’s chapter format.  Victor also effectively gives the supporting cast their own voices, rather than falling into the rookie writer’s trap of presenting the same declarations, timing, and style for many characters. 

Agnes finds a stray cat, which will warm the cat-lovers crowd’s hearts, and this fuzzy, four-legged cutie has a unique voice as well! 

“Sorry, Baby” doesn’t purr and pat the 103-minute runtime with heavy, dark cliches regarding Agnes’ healing.  Instead, Victor uses a nuanced approach.  Agnes still works, leaves the house, has a life, and sees her small circle of friends, which, granted, could be two.  Her self-repair journey is uneven, with some setbacks and unexpected anguish or aches that appear out of nowhere.

Sometimes in life, pick-me-ups are soon followed by pick-me-downs.

“Sorry, Baby” is a film to pick at your local theatre.

Jeff’s ranking 

3/4 stars

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“Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” – Movie Review

Directed by:  Embeth Davidtz

 Written by:  Embeth Davidtz, based on Alexandra Fuller’s memoir

 Starring:  Embeth Davidtz, Lexi Venter, Zikhona Bali, Fumani Shilubana, Anina Reed, and Rob van Vuuren

Runtime:  98 minutes

‘Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight’ is an enlightening time capsule captured during the aftermath of the Rhodesian Bush War

A few canines appear in director/writer Embeth Davidtz’s feature film debut, and the four-legged friends lounge in a living room and on the porch of a family farm set in Rhodesia (or named Southern Rhodesia, Zimbabwe Rhodesia, or Zimbabwe, depending on the time) during a hot 1980 summer.  The dogs observe the Fuller family, led by Tim (Rob van Vuuren) and Nicola (Davidtz), and their two daughters, teenager Vanessa (Anina Reed) and 8-year-old Bobo (Lexi Venter).  However, the movie is led by the youngest Fuller, Alexandra, also known as Bobo. 

Alexandra wrote her memoir, with the same title as the film adaptation, in 2001.  In celluloid, Venter, 7, bravely (or perhaps without a care in the world) carries “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” – with a marvelous performance - in a small setting where sweeping national changes ensue, and Bobo and moviegoers witness their effect in this household. 

Davidtz – who grew up in nearby South Africa and directs, writes, and stars as a passion project – captures Alexandra’s subjective childhood thoughts through Lexi, as the child actress gazes at the world through Bobo’s eyes and offers extensive emotional ranges.

Racial tensions and the end of the Rhodesian Bush War linger over and throughout the house like a 100,000-pound slab of chromite, and the broader quagmire, which we don’t witness on-screen, turns Nicola into a day drinker and an irritated command sergeant of her home, barking orders and showing little patience.

Bobo briefly explains why her mom is this way, and the reason deals with a painful loss.  Her father is often jettisoned away to fight “terrorists”, so Bobo usually turns to Sarah (Zikhona Bali), the Fullers’ maid, for comfort, conversation, diversion, and direction.  They care for one another, but Jacob (Fumani Shilubana), a worker on-site, regularly interjects during Bobo’s transgressions, effectively depicting a microcosm of the larger division between Blacks and whites.

Alexandra loiters around the farm, wanders into her parents’ bedroom, sits in grassy and dirt fields in her bare feet, zips along on her recreational motorbike, or hangs with other children outside a local pub while their parents drink the night away. 

Cinematographer Willie Nel films the days’ events from Bobo’s perspective, depicting them close and at her height, like during an awkward visit to her grandparents’ home, where Grandad mumbles and struggles with incontinence.  Bobo opines that her grandpa doesn’t speak anymore, and “he makes some strange sounds.”   She also travels with her mom to her place of work outside the farm.  Nicola is a police officer, and Bobo carefully walks up to a weathered but secure door with a horizontal slot (that’s cut for a food tray), looks inside, and sees a Black prisoner looking back at her.

At home, she’ll gaze out at the surrounding brush and say, “I keep a lookout for terrorists.”

Davidtz establishes the possibility of the violence setting foot on the Fullers’ farm but under a backdrop of ordinary events, like serving tea, hanging damp clothes on a line, or in Nicola’s case, waking up, seeing a snake in the kitchen, and firing bullets from a machine gun to kill it.

“Sorry about the mess,” Nicola says.

In terms of pacing, the 98-minute runtime feels longer, as “Dogs” doesn’t choose to land very often with explosive moments, like machine gun pest control.  Instead, it moves from one random scene to another with a larger purpose that is not easily discernible with just one viewing.  However, during this one viewing, it largely works as a time capsule to enlighten moviegoers with life during this time and place for average white and Black Rhodesians, which is, at times, accompanied by a catchy 70s soundtrack, including a song from one of (nearby) South Africa’s favorite musicians, Sixto Rodriguez. 

The film might jog memories from your childhood, as you may have listened to adults converse over stressful events from recent history while the TV in the room features them, like the Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War, 9/11, or in this critic’s case, 70s inflation and the Iran Hostage Crisis. 

For Bobo, she interprets the lingering trauma – the best an 8-year-old can - around her while attempting to go about her daily routines and stumbling into arbitrary happenings.  Amid the heat and racial divides, she’ll occasionally try to conjure childhood magic.

“Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight” might not be magic, but we begin to understand the men and women living behind this Rhodesia/Zimbabwe curtain.  

Jeff’s ranking

2.5/4 stars

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“Jurassic World: Rebirth” – Jeff Mitchell Movie Review

Directed by:   Gareth Edwards

Written by:  David Koepp

Starring:  Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, Jonathan Bailey, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo, Rupert Friend, Luna Blaise, Audrina Miranda, and David Iacono

Runtime:  134 minutes

‘Jurassic World: Rebirth’:  The characters’ hope for survival on this on-foot journey is less believable than dinosaurs roaming the planet in 2025.  For starters, did anyone get their malaria shots?

According to the official trailer, “A new era is born.”

 “Jurassic World: Rebirth” is the seventh movie in the “Jurassic Park” franchise.  In the previous sequel, “Jurassic World: Dominion” (2022), the producers, casting agents, and director Colin Trevorrow combine both casts from the “Park” and “World” series.  However, Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Laura Dern, Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, and BD Wong couldn’t save “Dominion” (1 out of 4 stars), a convoluted and boring mess that, in this critic’s opinion, is the single worst film in the series. 

In 2025, director Gareth Edwards (“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” (2016), “Godzilla” (2014)), writer David Koepp, the producers, and casting agents take a different approach and offer an entirely new cast but set them in the same universe as the first six films, 32 years after the events of “Jurassic Park” (1993). 

So, we aren’t traveling to Earth 2 for this on-screen adventure, but by the end of “Rebirth”, perhaps you’d rather be anywhere but inside a movie theatre for this particular film.  More on this later.

For now, it is the present day, and dinosaurs are dying off across the world except for a specific band of tropical latitudes near the equator.  The movie revolves around one ill-advised hunting expedition on Ile Saint-Hubert, an island teeming with dinosaurs.  Worse yet, mutant dinosaurs were engineered on this island – 17 years earlier - by the infamous InGen.

Yikes!

Well, within the first 15 to 20 minutes, Edwards introduces the audience to a corporate hustler type, a pharmaceutical executive, Martin Krebs (Rupert Friend), who would probably swindle his grandmother from her life savings, and he recruits an uber-confident mercenary, Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson), and a nerdy, unathletic paleontologist, Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey).

He’s no relation to Dr. Samuel Loomis (Donald Pleasence), in case you were wondering. 

Zora is tougher than your average Velociraptor.  She loves to smile and offer snappy comebacks, and Dr. Loomis, with two left feet, is frequently impressed with Zora’s Indiana Jones-like action-star dance moves. 

They rendezvous with Duncan Kincaid (Mahershala Ali) on his boat, and we meet his team, which includes Bobby (Ed Skrein), Nina (Philippine Velge), and a couple of others, but who can keep track?   This Ocean’s Six, Seven, or Eight set course for Ile Saint-Hubert, and all they need to do is collect three blood samples, one from each of the largest dinosaurs on this Rumble in the Jungle.  No problem, right? The giant lizards, whom Dr. Loomis calls out by name (but one would need subtitles for the spelling or Wikipedia for reference) are from the sea, land, or air, so the script allows the actors to partake in three different sets to capture fluids.

However, they aren’t alone. 

Mind you, international laws prohibit travel near the equator due to the concentrated and deadly packs of dinosaurs that swim, roam, and fly, but that doesn’t stop Reuben Delgado (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) from hopping on his sailboat with his soon-to-be-college-bound daughter, Teresa (Luna Blaise), his (roughly) 8-year-old daughter, Isabella (Audrina Miranda), and Teresa’s slacker boyfriend, Xavier (David Iacono), a guy who brags to Reuben that he has weed, but his stash is unfortunately wet.

 Well, this family adventure is suddenly all wet, as an ocean dinosaur tips over their boat, and they call for help.  Duncan, with Zora’s encouragement, answers their distress call and brings the family and boyfriend along for the blood sample treasure hunt. 

It’s a bit of madness that Reuben takes a voyage with three kids in banned waters, and thankfully, Duncan calls this out too.  Everyone in the audience is thinking the same thing, but then Martin, Duncan, Zora, and the Ocean’s crew bring Reuben and the teens/children, due to convenience, to Ile Saint-Hubert for the dino escapade.

So, the Ocean’s crew and Reuben and kids traverse all over the island, filled with ancient reptiles big and small, during the second and third acts.  “Rebirth” runs for 134 minutes, but how could these humans last 134 actual minutes walking around Ile Saint-Hubert with T. rexes, Velociraptors, Pterodactyls, Brontosauruses, and oodles of hungry, snapping lizards who might only stand 12 inches high?

Is the water safe to drink?  Apparently!  One character dips his flask into a small stream, or was it a puddle?

Did anyone get their malaria shots?

As implausible as it is for dinosaurs to roam the planet in 2025, audiences have bought into this cinematic universe for over three decades.  However, what is more far-fetched is this human party surviving this on-foot journey, including just finding a safe place to sleep or rest. 

Reuben also injures his ankle early in the first act and finds trouble walking, but on other occasions, he seems to saunter along just fine.  Weird…and convenient.

It’s all too convenient that the Delgados and Xavier are included in Koepp’s screenplay, but perhaps the studio heads, marketing, or Koepp decided that kids need to be included in “Rebirth” to help attract younger audiences to theatres.   One must figure that the Under-18 crowd has cheered on Black Widow (Johansson) in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but Scarlett hit it big 22 years ago in “Lost in Translation” (2003).  The Boomer, Gen X, and Millennial crowd have Sofia Coppola’s modern-day classic covered, but probably not Gen Z.

Then again, a friend recently informed this critic that Jonathan Bailey stars as Fiyero in “Wicked” (2024).  Who knew?   Millions of moviegoers, other than yours truly.  Geez, the casting department has cast a wide net for popular stars.  Bailey is fine as Dr. Loomis, for the record. 

The massive art department, visual effects and special effects teams reached spectacular heights – the size of 10 Brontosauruses – in crafting a convincing environment and the creatures’ playground of dangers that awaits any fool who attempts to trek across the island and the nearby sea. 

A pack of Jurassic whales, a crazy new form of Brachiosaurus, a fearsome T. Rex, and a terrifying giant carnivorous mutant make the most impactful marks, and a couple of chase scenes might be paying homage to “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (1984) and “The Mist” (2007).   Then again, these moments conjure the most laughable surviving fall from towering heights since “John Wick: Chapter 4” (2023) and a repeat of the Velociraptor kitchen scene from “Jurassic Park” (1993), respectively.

We’ve seen these dinosaur thrills and chills countless (check that, six times) before.  Then again, in another sequence, we witness the slowest and most eye-rolling T. Rex chase in “Jurassic Park/World” history, so that’s new.

(Oh, did this review mention that a simple Snickers bar wrapper somehow becomes an eternally lethal instrument?)

As engaging as Johansson, Ali, and company seem in real life and (usually) on-screen, do we care if Zora, Duncan, the Delgados, and everyone else make it out alive?  Zora, Duncan, and Loomis’ compassion versus Krebs’ greed is a curious but predictable storyline that deserves some consideration.  Otherwise, it’s an open question.  It depends on whether one’s suspension of disbelief is set or not in this extraordinarily unreasonable hike. 

Perhaps “Jurassic World: Rebirth” needs one carryover from the other films.  Where is Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) when you need him?

Jeff’s ranking 

1.5/4 stars

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“Deaf President Now!” – Movie Review

Directed by:   Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim

Starring:  Jerry Covell, Greg Hilbok, Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, Tim Rarus, and I. King Jordan

Runtime:  100 minutes

‘Deaf President Now!’ is an inspirational ‘fight the power’ documentary

“Deaf President Now!” – “The time was now to light a match.” – Jerry Covell. 

“Fight the power.  We’ve got to fight the powers that be.” – “Fight the Power” (1990) by Public Enemy 

Gallaudet University, located in Washington D.C., is “the only university in the world specifically designed for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students.”  For a week during the spring of 1988, the campus became a thunderous epicenter of students’ outrage that sparked a national debate.

Directors Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim, with assistance from their crew and four former students – Jerry Covell, Greg Hilbok, Bridgetta Bourne-Firl, and Tim Rarus – retell the miraculous, unrelenting fight against the system in an utterly compelling 100-minute documentary, “Deaf President Now!”

Jerry, Greg, Bridgetta, and Tim graduated from the school during various years between 1989 and 1992, and they proudly sit in front of DiMarco and Guggenheim’s camera in separate, individual interviews and walk us through the explosive particulars and waves of emotion that both ignited and poured over university grounds during that fateful week in 1988.  

A beloved former professor, I. King Jordan also lends his perspective in a similar interview style as the four Gallaudet grads.  All five narrators are the film’s stars in a documentary that travels back 37 years when “greed (was) good” and “sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name.”  

On a fateful Sunday night, the students assembled outside in mass to support two specific names as their new university president, Harvey Corson and I. King Jordan.  The school’s board of trustees, tasked with nominating a new university president, had three candidates, Elisabeth Zinser, Corson, and Jordan, but Zinser was the only hearing nominee.  The school, in its 124 years of existence, has never had a Deaf president, and the students want a “Deaf president now!”

The scholars soon learned that the trustees nominated Zinser as president, and they erupted! 

Recounting his reaction, Tim asks, “What?”

Jerry says, “I refuse to accept this.” 

Over the remaining “Deaf President Now!” runtime, DiMarco and Guggenheim offer an inside-baseball look at the Gallaudet student body’s uphill climb toward proper inclusion.  The uprise feels like a 1960s passionate Vietnam War protest, but one focused on validation and representation.  In 2025, the sentiment may resonate as recent federal bureaucratic scuffles to suppress or eliminate inclusion have captured the public spotlight.  

To cinematically shine a light on the Gallaudet collision of wills, DiMarco, Guggenheim, and editor Michael Harte deliver an absorbing mix of 1988 on-campus video footage and still photos, timely chime-ins from the five narrators, along with effective recreations, to offer a complete view from the students’ perspective.  

On occasion – and without warning – the filmmakers frequently pull the sound for a few seconds at a time throughout the presentation in successful attempts to remind hearing audiences that the student body and our narrators are Deaf.  While watching the doc, one might sit a bit higher and lean forward towards the screen during these moments, and this is especially true during a real-life footage 3rd-act scene in the school’s gymnasium.   The movie even briefly displays the eye-opening workings of a simple campus fire alarm, as another communicative tool for the audience, during this three-alarm university protest. 

“Deaf President Now!” isn’t a David vs. Goliath tale.  It’s more a French Revolution-like story with the masses fighting for fairness and justice against the monarchists, and in this 20th-century version, Gallaudet University’s board of trustees chair, Jane Bassett Spilman, is the all-controlling queen.

Ms. Spilman, seemingly affluent and complete with a Nancy Reagan hairstyle, is the obvious villain and the primary face behind Zinser’s ascension.  Spilman smirks in front of the student assembly - appearing full of condescension - while they raise their ire, and she becomes the explosive center of controversy over a reported cutting, callous statement about the students that she later denies.

Choosing a side between the Gallaudet kids (and now adults) and the administration is as evident as picking Harry Potter over Voldemort, but to be fair, the documentary avoids exploring Spilman’s reasoning or reaching out to those related to Spilman about her obviously erroneous view in 1988.  An on-screen confessional of regret would add value to the documentary, but the points of view are so crystal clear that, perhaps, this perspective isn’t ultimately needed.  

One perspective that is wholly welcomed is reaching out to our lead narrators as they explain their histories of growing up Deaf.  Sprinkled throughout the documentary, they share their personal histories, which deliver inspiration and support while also revealing hardships.  These reveals offer a deeper understanding of the community and the former students’ environmental makeup, which is now reflected in their adult Gen X characters, as we also affectionately look back at their 80s hairstyles and fashion choices through the reams of on-campus footage.  

“Deaf President Now!” details the Gallaudet students’ staggering grind and passionate on-foot, on-campus, on-camera, in-the-press groundswell that captured the attention of a nation with equal portions of the broad, sweeping hope for change and the intimate, personal struggles and smiles from Jerry, Greg, Bridgetta, Tim, and I. King.  Students may have lit a figurative match in 1988, but watch this movie to discover if everyone – inside and outside of Gallaudet - can embrace the warm, inviting glow of righteousness.

Jeff’s ranking

3.5/4 stars

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“Elio” – Movie Review

Directed by:  Adrian Molina, Madeline Sharafian, and Domee Shi

Written by:  Julia Cho, Mark Hammer, and Mike Jones

Starring:  Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Remy Edgerly, Young Dylan, and Brad Garrett

Runtime:  99 minutes

‘Elio’:  This bizarre alien abduction story might have you wishing for a more traditional welcoming party of Little Green Men

Are we alone in the universe? 

That is the age-old question asked by astronomers, “Star Trek” fans, and billions of other curious human beings roaming the planet.  

When Elio Solis (Yonas Kibreab), a Montez Middle School student, wanders about Montez Air Force Base and stumbles into a Voyager 1 exhibit, he asks the same question.  This imaginative but also delusional kid believes that aliens should abduct him and that he belongs in outer space.  Well, we need to grant Elio some grace because his parents just died, and this new orphan attempts in vain to adjust to his new reality while living with his Aunt Olga Solis (Zoe Saldana), a United States Air Force Major.  

Olga is single, and she’s adapting to parenthood.  Major Solis has a good heart and tries her best, but she doesn’t have all the answers to help with Elio’s post-traumatic stress as well as his day-to-day emotional needs.  

Elio’s world, however, turns right side up (in his mind) when aliens actually answer his call and beam him straight up to their realm, a place named the Communiverse.

The Communiverse is a bizarre, kaleidoscopic locale that’s a peculiar cross between “Rainbow Brite” (1984), “Elysium” (2013), and Marvel Studios’ Quantum Realm, as featured in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” (2023), and that’s not a compliment.  

Equally unusual non-uniform beings inhabit this interstellar spot.  None of the aliens’ names are memorable in the least, and this critic needed to research the characters’ monikers after the movie.  Ambassadors Helix (Brandon Moon) and Questa (Jameela Jamil) resemble Mr. Monopoly and a seven-foot shrimp, respectively, and they and the rest of the gang are squishable persons who are “tolerant” intellectuals and hope to recruit Elio as a new member.  

They believe that this 10 or 11-year-old kid is Earth’s leader, so the Communiversians might be book-smart but are far from street-smart. 

Anyway, Elio needs to prove himself as a worthy new affiliate, so he duels with Lord Grigon (Brad Garrett), a massive, intimidating baddie of Hylurg who prefers to shoot first and ask questions later.  Meanwhile, our child hero is actively hiding the plain-as-day fact to everyone that he isn’t the President of Earth.   

Oh, come on now, isn’t it obvious?

For presidents and every other adult, this Pixar film doesn’t target grown-ups, as “Elio” seems to be directed solely at elementary school children.  In dealing with his grief, Elio, a friendless loner, rushes toward his “id” for immediate gratification, regardless of the consequences of his aunt’s feelings.  For him, acceptance to the Communiverse is his right, but screenwriters Julia Cho, Mark Hammer, and Mike Jones’ script properly weaves in the importance of family as a hopeful learning point for Elio.  Will he listen?  

It's difficult for the audience to listen.  Even though Elio is an orphan, his “me first” attitude doesn’t make him particularly sympathetic, and the movie doesn’t introduce his parents before their deaths, so we don’t feel his loss at that moment.  “Elio” doesn’t have the deeply emotional “Up” (2009) effect that provoked sobs in theatres everywhere 16 years ago during one of Pixar’s most effective on-screen moments, even though parental deaths in animated films is a tired practice.

Instead, we must wait patiently - during the 99-minute runtime – for Elio to hopefully find pals, his place in the universe, and a connection with Olga while he delivers a never-ending stream of juvenile exclamations. 

“If any aliens are listening, please come and get me.”

“It’s really happening!”

“This is awesome!”

While the suspense is thinner than the “Toy Story” franchise’s Forky, directors Adrian Molina, Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, and the animation department attempt to fatten up the audience with animated wonders of the cosmos. 

However, the creatives conjure up this “Rainbow Brite” / “Elysium” / “Ant-Man 3” translucent, neon spot with no sense of boundaries, size, and scope once inside the Communiverse.  It features concert-like seating, wave pools, mushroom-like trees, and organic inventions or beings, such as a universal translator and users’ manual.  It’s all a bit overwhelming, yet quite dainty and fragile with a few “Alice in Wonderland” rabbit holes.  

The possibilities seem endless, but without a suitable foundation, one might just give up during the constant and gaudy pomp and circumstance and also lose the will to understand the baffling surroundings and Dr. Seuss physics, including Elio finding shelter from a lava flow in the most inexplicable way because either a script writer or the animators dreamt it up in a staff meeting. 

The movie eventually circles back to Olga and the Air Force’s purpose, but that feels forced and potentially geographically incorrect as the apparent Asteroid Belt appears somewhere after Saturn, while it’s truly located between Mars and Jupiter.   Then again, this moviegoer might have been a bit lost after spending too much time in the Communiverse.  

Admittedly, Helix, Questa, and the cornucopia of philosophers are a friendly bunch.  Still, after watching “Elio”, one might wish for a welcoming party of traditional Little Green Men or possibly Marvin the Martian instead, even if the latter wants to blow up the Earth.  

Jeff’s ranking

1.5/4 stars

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“How to Train Your Dragon” – Movie Review

Directed by:  Dean DeBlois

Written by:  Dean DeBlois, based on Cressida Cowell’s book

Starring:  Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gerald Butler, Julian Dennison, Naomi Wirthner, and Nick Frost

Runtime:  125 minutes

This ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ live-action remake is not necessary, but it honors the original story and soars during the biggest moments

“The reign of the dragons ends right here, right now.”  - Stoick (Gerald Butler)

“Everything we know about dragons is wrong.” – Hiccup (Mason Thames)

In 2010, the thrilling, uplifting, and soulful animated feature “How to Train Your Dragon” garnered two Academy Award nominations for Animated Feature Film and Original Score.  “Toy Story 3” (2010) and “The Social Network” (2010) won those Oscars that year, respectively, but in no way does that diminish the marvelous work of directors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, composer John Powell, the crew, and the voice actors led by Jay Baruchel, Gerald Butler, America Ferrera, Craig Ferguson, and a host of others.  

For sensitive animal lovers, Hiccup (Baruchel) - the awkward, “120-pound”, pacifist teenager who thinks out of the box and uses his heart and ingenuity to befriend a dragon named Toothless, a cordial, loyal, and ferocious (when needed) charcoal gray flying buddy with expressive green eyes - is your hero.  

Granted, the intimidating opening scene and some dicey moments during the third-act battles might have some adults question the PG rating, but “How to Train Your Dragon” (2010) – based on Cressida Cowell’s 2003 children’s book - is a lovely family film.  

It’s a modern-day classic that’s worth enjoying time and time again.

Fifteen years later, director DeBlois creates another way to relish the experience with a live-action version of “How to Train Your Dragon”, and he and his team’s new vision honors the original animated feature.  

“Dragon” (2025) is essentially the same story as the 2010 movie, or one might argue that they are nearly identical.  So many times, scenes play out beat for beat and word for word.  Both films’ tones and life lessons are consistent.  

However, the 2025 movie runs for 125 minutes, while the 2010 original lasts 98 minutes. This new iteration certainly feels longer.  Note that “Dragon” 2010’s end credits – as shown on HBO/MAX - begin at the 89-minute mark.  Still, it’s not easy to discern where the additional 27 or 36 minutes originate.  Perhaps, the opening battle on the Isle of Berk and the concluding conflict last for a few more minutes each, and one of the Viking teens often looks for fatherly approval that isn’t a plot point in the 2010 flick.   

DeBlois includes Butler to reprise his fierce role and composer John Powell, whose emotive score soars in both theatrical renditions.  Baruchel, 43, has aged out of the live-action role, but 17-year-old Mason Thames (“The Black Phone” (2021)) is perfectly cast as the new Hiccup, who wonderfully captures the lead’s uneasiness, warmth, and resourcefulness.  

Nick Frost fills in nicely for Craig Ferguson as Stoick’s indispensable right-hand man, Gobber, and Julian Dennison, Nico Parker, and Naomi Wirthner as Fishlegs, Astrid, and village elder Gothi, respectively, are other standouts.  

If you are a “How to Train Your Dragon” newbie, there is no need to see the animated film first, and here is the basic premise.  

The Vikings residing on the Isle of Berk, located somewhere in the North Sea, attempt to live peacefully, but they are under frequent attack by fire-breathing dragons who burn their homes and steal their sheep.  Sometime in the past, a dragon killed Stoick’s wife (and Hiccup’s mother), so this ongoing war has led to hundreds of Vikings and thousands of dragons losing their lives.  Stoick, a burly, bearded alpha male and village leader, hopes to find the elusive dragon’s nest and end this ongoing human-dragon campaign for good.  

Meanwhile, a group of teenagers are thrown into dragon-slaying training, including Hiccup, who previously and desperately wished to kill a dragon.  (“Wished” is notably in the past tense.)  However, he meets and befriends Toothless, an elusive Night Fury dragon who Hiccup actually injured with a catapult contraption the evening before.  When they first meet, both Toothless and Hiccup are equally frightened, and dragon and human each swallow their anxiety and learn to trust one another. 

Hiccup is a quick study, and he soon learns Toothless’ behaviors and employs these discoveries to confront the dragons humanely during training rather than swing a club and stab with a sword.  Will Hiccup’s gentle approach resonate with Stoick and the rest of the village? 

For Hiccup and the audience, we actively hope our lead’s example will spread to everyone, but his efforts effectively feel like an extreme uphill climb, like to the top of Berk’s highest peak, especially since Stoick’s years of dragon battles, the pain of losing his wife, and the man’s imposing presence stand in Hiccup’s way.

In contrast to the ongoing stress of Berk’s overall off-putting outlook against the fearsome flying lizards, the special effects team conjures some hilarious, goofball dragons during several training sessions, and the kids don’t really feel in danger during those sequences.  

Still, the movie’s absolute best moments are all the on-screen minutes, seconds, and milliseconds with Hiccup and Toothless as they cooperate and lean on each other to form the North Sea’s most inspirational team.   Cinematographer Bill Pope, Powell, and the visual effects team get all the magic right during the pair’s introductions, rousing flights, and hazardous third-act fights against some capable studio backgrounds and the on-location shoots in stunning Iceland and the Faroe Islands.   The sound design team and DeBlois and Pope’s camera also focus on Hiccup’s shifting gear contraption “at the feet” of his left foot, which is essential for Toothless’ flying.  

So much so, that moviegoers in theatres everywhere might simultaneously shift their left feet to help adjust Toothless’ flight patterns along with Hiccup. 

No question, Toothless’ visual appearance is a flawless and endearing reimagination of the animated dragon, and he and Hiccup’s heroic labor and friendship capture similar vibes with its 15-year-old predecessor.  

Yet, is a live-action take on a modern-day animated classic a necessary cinematic endeavor?  Admittedly, no, and in our current world of sequels and remakes, “How to Train Your Dragon” (2025) does feel like a redundant experience, except for the intense and lengthy third-act colossal clash that seems more ferocious than its animated ancestor.  Is this movie too much for small children?  Possibly, although a friend opined that his six-year-old son would probably embrace the dragon fights because, hey, kids love dragons!  Fair enough.  

There might be good reason to love “How to Train Your Dragon” (2025) or at least like it because DeBlois and his team know a lot about dragons.  They have the right stuff. 

Jeff’s ranking

3/4 stars

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Materialists - Movie Review

Dir: Celine Song

Starring: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Marin Ireland, and Pedro Pascal

1h 56m

Who doesn't like a good romantic comedy? In "Materialists," a woman must choose between the perfect guy and the imperfect ex-boyfriend. This simplistic synopsis, however, a prototypical and overused Hollywood construct, is rebuilt into a somewhat anti-rom-com, mostly romantic drama by writer/director Celine Song. "Materialists" attempt to handle the idea of finding love in modern society with maturity for the complications seen in any love while also indulging in the impossible fantasy of perfection. Celine Song, whose last film, "Past Lives," was a brilliant analysis of love and longing, builds excellent chemistry between a trio of exceptional actors to support a story that initially crafts thought-provoking questions but ultimately takes the path of easy compromises. 

Lucy (Dakota Johnson) is an elite relationship matchmaker working with wealthy clients looking for specific kinds of love in New York City. Lucy prides herself on "checking all the boxes" that compose the list of must-haves for the often lonely yet supremely privileged clients who want partners who make 250K annually before taxes, are women who are mature and accomplished but also 27 years old or younger, and men who are no less than 6'2" and have perfect jobs. 

At the wedding of a recently matched client, Lucy meets Harry (Pedro Pascal), an exceptionally wealthy and charming man who spares no expense or compliment to convince Lucy to go on a date with him. Lucy, who identifies Harry as a "unicorn" for his rare attributes of good looks, wealth, and height, tries instead to match him with one of her clients. The pair, whose chemistry is palpable, are interrupted by Lucy's ex-boyfriend John (Chris Evans), a cater waiter who has money troubles, but the spark between these old flames is instantaneous. 

For much of "Materialists," Song composes two romantic suitors that both feel worthy of Lucy's choice. Pedro Pascal as Harry is fantastic, a perfect, everything man with charm to spare. Pascal chews up the scenery at every opportunity. Chris Evans is the somewhat flawed John, a supportive and emotionally attentive ex-boyfriend who still yearns for a second chance. However, this is where the romantic comedy underpinnings hinder the character-driven story, as by the final chapter of the film, it's hard to care who Lucy chooses because the story loses focus on what it wants to convey. The antiquated ideals of the fairytale romance are initially critiqued, but as Lucy mulls over the choice between the two men, "Materialists" eventually falls back into the simplistic motivation of the routine romantic comedy. 

Celine Song juggles the balancing act of tone and performance throughout the run of "Materialists." From the introduction of the film, which features the courtship ritual between ancient humans that showcases the beauty inherent in the survival of daily life during this time, to the modern world and a different kind of daily survival in the concrete jungle of New York City, characterized by transactional engagements in relationships. Song utilizes this metaphor of courtship in various ways throughout the film to discuss how we find love, how relationships evolve, and ultimately, how much is given by both people when they choose to embark on a journey together. It's a clever introduction for a film that appears to be a romantic comedy but is more a drama about romance. 

"Materialists" attempts to subvert romantic comedy tropes, presenting a world of privilege and style while offering commentary on how love has become a luxury item, an agreement reduced to checked boxes and superficial commodities. For a moment, Song does an engaging and entertaining job of indulging in this idea provocatively. Unfortunately, the film evolves into a highly stylized story that fails to convey much about the complexities of relationships and sometimes the sadness that comes with opening one's heart and letting another in.  

Monte's Rating

2.50 out of 5.00

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“Ballerina” – Movie Review

Directed by:  Len Wiseman

Written by:  Shay Hatten

Starring:  Ana de Armas, Ian McShane, Gabriel Byrne, Angelica Huston, Catalina Sandino Moreno, Lance Reddick, Norman Reedus, and Keanu Reeves

Runtime:  125 minutes

‘Ballerina’ may not take many complicated steps, but the movie and de Armas hit their action-film marks.  Encore!

“What a pleasure to see you again.”  - Winston Scott (Ian McShane)

Winston, the longtime manager of New York City’s The Continental Hotel, welcomes Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas) to his opulent, urban lodge.  He last saw Eve, perhaps 12 or 15 years ago, when she lost her dad to a vicious firefight in their home.  

Eve travels to New York and visits Winston for a favor.  She wants to find the mob-like organization that murdered her father and take vengeance.  

If the names Winston and The Continental ring a bell, yes, that’s right, they both live in the “John Wick” movies.  In addition to Eve, it’s a pleasure to see Winston, his hotel, and the John Wick Universe again. 

“Ballerina” stars de Armas in the title role.  Eve is a trained assassin, a one-woman killing machine on a singular mission to find the mercenaries that she only knows by a scar-marked “X” on their wrists.  The leader of this “cult,” as Winston speaks of it, is The Chancellor (Gabriel Byrne), in a delightfully violent and entertaining John Wick spinoff that includes Angelica Huston and the late Lance Reddick, and Wick newcomers Norman Reedus (“The Walking Dead” (2010 – 2022)) and Catalina Sandino Moreno (“Maria Full of Grace” (2004)).  

And yes, John Wick fans, Keanu Reeves plays a small supporting role in the de Armas-led action picture. 

Director Len Wiseman’s (“Underworld” (2003), “Live Free or Die Hard” (2007), “Total Recall” (2012)) “Ballerina” plays into the related themes and tone as the “Wick” flicks, such as imaginative and jaw-dropping/arm-breaking close combat choreography and the protagonist’s singular, Terminator-esque focus on claiming retribution, no matter the legions of daunting, faceless hit men and hit women throwing punches and firing bullets in Eve’s path.  

In the original “John Wick” (2014), our lead begins his revenge after a Russian crime syndicate kills his dog.  Similarly, Eve is set on her merciless path after the same fate befalls her dad. 

Suddenly orphaned, a preteen Eve meets Winston, and he whisks her off to The Director (Huston), the devilish, intimidating force who runs the Ruska Roma, a Russian crime society where kids and young adults vie in rigorous preparation to become killers for hire, an idea employed by other recent action movies, like “Red Sparrow” (2018), “Anna” (2019), and “Black Widow” (2021).  Used as a cover, the executioner candidates, including Eve, also partake in ballerina training.  Eve’s dad gave her a ballerina music box encased in glass, and these are the only pure references to the movie’s title. 

While Eve learns the pirouette, plie, and port de bras for a brief montage or two, she readily studies martial arts, loading and firing pistols, and breaking and entering.  These are real dance steps for her upcoming hired-gun career.  

She is soon thrown into the blender for her first assignment, and before you can say, “It’s go time,” the movie is set two months later, with Eve gaining murderous experience in the field.  She soon diverts her attention away from her 9-to-5 job to a side hustle:  tracking down the X-marks-the-spot cult despite objections from The Director and warnings from Winston.  However, verbal counsel won’t sidestep Eve! 

Furthermore, de Armas – who had action-picture training in Daniel Craig’s last 007 flick, “No Time to Die” (2021) - is convincing as Eve.  She fires firearms and dispatches hand-to-hand pugilism with resolute purpose and masters nimble movements when danger arises, like in a crowded club with a floor constructed of ice and an unassuming coffee shop with plenty of unassuming serving plates that could be used as weapons.  

Ana, 5’ 6”, has an athletic, svelte build, but Wiseman and de Armas don’t portray Eve as an unstoppable, indestructible killing machine.  Eve suffers horrific knocks, jolts, and swipes along the way.  Larger adversaries throw her around like a muppet and into concrete walls or through glass on occasion, which helps build a realistic portrayal of this newbie contract killer who is also a 120-pound woman.  She’s not overpowering 300-pound men with the greatest of ease.  Eve is vulnerable but awfully capable.

However, the audience doesn’t gain much insight into Eve’s character, as Wiseman, screenwriter Shay Hatten, and de Armas don’t delve deeply into our leads’ thoughts and feelings other than lethal retaliation.  Then again, John Wick received the same treatment, especially in his first film.  

The script also randomly introduces a new family member (to Eve), which feels forced and a bit unnecessary.  The breathtaking third-act small village location is a wonder, but we don’t learn much about the locals or The Chancellor, and no, the main plot never really rises into intricate nuances.  

“Ballerina” is a straight-up, simple revenge picture, but Wiseman, Hatten, and the stunt and visual effects teams dream up some flat-out astounding action-packed sequences and kills – including creative uses of a television’s remote control and various grenades - that caused this critic to verbally curse and take the Lord’s name in vain a few times during the frequently compelling 125-minute runtime.  That’s a good thing, by the way.  

It's also a good thing that the John Wick Universe has room for another assassin, and it will be a pleasure to see Eve again.  “Ballerina” may not take many complicated steps, but the movie and de Armas hit their action-film marks.  Encore!

Jeff’s ranking

2.5/4 stars

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Bring Her Back - Movie Review

Dir: Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou

Starring: Sally Hawkins, Billy Barratt, Sara Wong, Jonah Wren Phillips, and Sally-Anne Upton

1h 44m

Filmmakers Danny and Michael Philippou's much-anticipated follow-up to the 2023 genre hit "Talk to Me" is a chilling domestic horror thriller that, while less structured than their debut, is still an undeniably effective second feature for two impressive storytellers. "Bring Her Back" explores themes of unresolved trauma and grief through an unflinching lens of violence, featuring a stunning performance from Sally Hawkins as a menacing foster parent. With "Talk to Me," the two directors crafted an unpredictable supernatural story, expertly composed with scares. "Bring Her Back" showcases the filmmaker's growth through a character-driven drama that evokes dread in more ways than expected. 

Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sara Wong) are siblings who experience the trauma of losing their father unexpectedly. Andy, struggling with nightmarish visions of his deceased father, desperately pleads with the social worker (Sally-Anne Upton) on their case to stay with Piper, who is blind, until he can take custody of her when he turns eighteen. The siblings find themselves in the care of Laura (Sally Hawkins), a former social worker who cares for her son Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips) and is trying to build a happy foster home, all while trying to recover from the unresolved pain of the tragic drowning of her daughter. Laura's true demented motivations come to light, and Andy and Piper must escape before it's too late.  

The mystery surrounding Laura's intentions, along with the constant dread seeping into the atmosphere of the film, establishes a story that builds towards a terrifying reveal. Whether a creepy cult ritual stored on a grainy video cassette or the odd behaviors of Oliver, who remains locked away most of the day, "Bring Her Back" patterns the film with a little bit of every horror characterization one could count. Children in peril, an evil parent, strange rituals, a possessed child, and a squirm-worthy scene of violence are just a few of the building blocks for this film. There are a few moments where all these inspirations come together successfully, but more often, many of these scare tactics get in the way of the fascinating characters. 

Sally Hawkins is the anchor for the entire film, delivering a performance that draws a strong comparison to the character of Annie Wilkes, played by Kathy Bates in the 1990 film "Misery." Hawkins has a kind smile, and early in the movie, the motherly gentleness of her character is a welcome contrast to the spooky happenings. Billy Barratt and Sara Wong have great chemistry as brother and sister. Barratt, whose character is manipulated throughout the film by Laura, does a great job of shifting between being self-conscious, stemming from the trauma of finding his father dead, and becoming self-aware of everything happening to his sister. Wong is charming and the sole vessel of what little humor is instated into the relationships between the characters. As the film builds to its bleak and cruel climax, it's these characters and their relationships that make the final moments so effective. 

"Bring Her Back" struggles to connect all the ideas it introduces. However, the composition of characters and the performances of the actors build emotional drama that makes the visuals of violence and ominous atmosphere more effective than they might have been otherwise. It is undeniable that Danny and Michael Philippou are voices to acknowledge and filmmakers to watch in the world of horror filmmaking. 

Monte's Rating

3.50 out of 5.00

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“Bono: Stories of Surrender” – Movie Review

Directed by:  Andrew Dominik

Starring:  Bono, Gemma Doherty, Kate Ellis

Runtime:  86 minutes

‘Bono: Stories of Surrender’ seems like a ‘Beautiful Day’ for a live audience, but the on-screen version is not ‘The Sweetest Thing’.

“Hello, hello!  Hola!  I’m at a place called Vertigo.”  

U2 recently enjoyed a Las Vegas residency at The Sphere at The Venetian Resort from September 2023 to March 2024.  Although this critic has yet to attend a show at The Sphere, a few friends have described the venue and U2’s performance at the locale as awe-inspiring and larger than life.  The 875,000-square-foot, 366-foot-tall, 20,000-seating/standing capacity spherical marvel showcased Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, and Larry Mullen Jr., along with surreal visuals on its inner walls.  And yes, one pal said that vertigo could accompany spectators placed in the highest seats.  

In “Bono: Stories of Surrender”, based on his 2022 book, “Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story”, the U2 frontman performs at New York City’s Beacon Theatre, capacity 2,600, for an intimate one-man show, in which he articulates his various life accounts through a spoken monologue while interspersing several of his band’s hits.  

He declares, “Welcome to my quarter-man show!” 

Bono (a.k.a. Paul David Hewson) sings portions of his famous songs except one performed in its entirety late into the production.  The musical segments of the 86-minute documentary feel like a 1990s MTV Unplugged concert with grander production values.  Bono is partnered by Gemma Doherty on the harp and Kate Ellis on the cello on stage, but yes, one U2 member (who will not be revealed in this review) joins the acoustic trio, too.

For diehard U2 fans, “Bono: Stories of Surrender” is a grounded, understated compliment to the band’s sprawling and spectacular concerts, like their 2001 Slane Castle show, Super Bowl XXXVI appearance, recent Sphere performances, and hundreds and hundreds (or it is thousands?) of live events in between.  “Surrender” is a movie for U2 enthusiasts who enjoy consuming every form of the Irish legends on-screen and in person, as well as for those who wish to learn about Bono’s inspiration, struggles, and pivotal life events.   

However, for more casual fans or non-fans, the sluggish pacing, the lack of U2’s traditional pomp and circumstance and showmanship, and the conversational nature of the medium itself make “Bono: Stories of Surrender” an unfortunate concession as a curiosity, rather than a must-see documentary.  

Director Andrew Dominik (“Chopper” (2000), “Killing Them Softly” (2012), “Blonde” (2022)) competently films Bono, his on-stage companions, and the Beacon audience in (almost) entirely in black and white with an arthouse elegance.  Dominik offers many close-ups in which Bono’s face fills the screen.  Other times, he captures harmonizing glimpses of Gemma and Kate, as well as silhouettes of Mr. Hewson’s back as he’s flushed against the Beacon live audience.  

The upstage includes a metallic apparatus, which magically and interactively parades hundreds of small lights, that resembles a modest version of the enormous electronic display presented in U2’s 2015 “Innocence + Experience” arena tour, and the luminosity tenders a worthy cohort to Bono’s tales and songs from both his unassuming and illustrious past.  

The 65-year-old Dublin native recounts a particular medical problem, the birth of his first child, meeting a world-famous tenor, and more, but the most intimate and connecting moments are when he speaks of his parents, Brendan Robert and Iris Hewson.  

Like most children who ache for their late parents, their deaths impacted Bono.  Regret and the unforgiving thief known as Father Time are emphasized via subtle and overt approaches through spoken word and music.  His recurring reimagined caucuses with his dad in a pub called The Sorrento Lounge are the most affecting.  

Bono also reveals small details about his (over) six decades on Planet Earth, such as his first home that he shared with his wife, Ali, and broader views, including his thoughts about poverty. 

“Poverty is not natural.  It is manmade and can be overcome.” 

Despite the generous insights, clever camerawork, and intimate nature of the performance, the on-screen experience keeps an emotional distance between Bono and moviegoers, despite this rock star standing so close to the edge of the stage and the cozy and supportive Beacon Theatre audience.  

He often refers to Ali, his bandmates, and his parents by holding or pointing to empty chairs that sit on the lonely stage.  Although they seem appropriate when speaking of his late parents, generally speaking, the chairs appear to be unneeded props and don’t enhance the presentation.  In fact, they may oddly remind some viewers – including this one – of Clint Eastwood’s infamous 2012 Republican National Convention speech, where the cinematic legend spoke to an empty chair. 

Another reminder of a different sort is that Martin Scorsese filmed the Rolling Stones’ absolutely fabulous and wildly energetic 2008 concert film, “Shine a Light”, at the Beacon, and that immersive experience radiates Mick, Keith, and the band’s enthusiasm, along with the in-tune on-screen audience’s fervor to moviegoers.  Due to the Stones’ masterclass musicianship and pure energy, the intimate setting, and Scorsese’s kinetic multicamera harmonies, the movie feels as close to a live concert experience in a movie theatre as one might ever experience.   It’s an all-timer!

The comparison between “Shine a Light” and “Surrender” is, admittedly, a bit unfair.  However, since Bono (mostly) sings portions of the massive U2 hits, the connections between his verbal accounts and his glorious tunes don’t carry enough emotional weight as they should.  

The abbreviated versions of the classic songs repeatedly clip our emotive relation to the familiar material, as Bono then stops singing and moves on to another tale from his past.  Meanwhile, the Beacon audience appears completely engaged in these moments.  Bono may or may not perform the entire songs in person.  Still, either way, the Beacon fans seem to enjoy a notably more gratifying encounter with one of rock’s most charismatic lead singers than this particular audience member, whether that’s due to the documentary’s editing, the abbreviated songs, or the natural distance of an on-screen encounter versus a live one. 

Still, after experiencing “Bono: Stories of Surrender”, one might find the “Desire” to buy a ticket to enjoy a “Beautiful Day” with a live performance of Bono’s “quarter-man show” to absorb such a vulnerable, personal discussion/concert in a renowned and cozy venue.  

Unfortunately, the theatrical/streaming version doesn’t translate as “The Sweetest Thing”. 

 Jeff’s ranking

2/4 stars

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