In Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, the myth roars back to life in this mostly successful adaptation. Jacob Elordi’s performance is a standout, while Oscar Isaac is miscast. Filled with beautiful and grotesque imagery, the film struggles for greatness and occasionally reaches it. Recommended. Continue reading Frankenstein (2025, Netflix)
WWII movies fall into two categories, those that following tradition and those that chart new territory. Those that opt for the former envelop you in their warm, cozy familiarity with the genre, like your favorite quilt. They don’t challenge you, but they’re entertaining. WWII Movies that eschew tradition in favor of bold and daring choices are more admired than loved. They’re the quilts you receive with a polite “thanks” that currently reside in the dark recesses of your closet. Nuremberg is solidly in line with the first approach, a direct descendant of the WWII movie from the Forties or Fifties.
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Raising children is expensive. Combine that with how difficult it can be for veterans to find suitable work after leaving the military and you have the origins of Roofman. The movie is about a thief who earns his nickname by chopping through the roofs of businesses before robbing them at gunpoint. Since Channing Tatum is in the leading role, I’ll confirm what’s most important to his fans: his trademark abs and glutes are prominently on display. That said, Tatum is far more than a beefcake actor, and this movie provides him with an opportunity to showcase his seldom-used range.
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Blue Moon is an engrossing snapshot of the artist in free-fall, with a delightful performance by Ethan Hawke at its center. Its insistence on shrinky-dinking Hawke down to size is a humorous distraction, but not a fatal one. Margaret Qualley radiates glamour as his potential love interest and lifeline. Recommended. Continue reading Blue Moon
When The Black Phone did well at the box office in 2021, it was a foregone conclusion that a sequel would be coming. This posed a challenge to writer-director Scott Derrickson and co-writer C. Robert Cartill: how to continue the story with a dead villain? For Black Phone 2, the solution was to delve into the origins of the Grabber (Ethan Hawke). While there’s no evidence of an unhappy childhood, we do see how he honed his skills before taking up residence in a Colorado suburb. Practice makes perfect, right?
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Tron: Ares isn’t a continuation of Tron and Tron: Legacy, but a spin-off. It’s Tron-adjacent, set within the Tron universe with only the slightest connection to the previous films. It’s the same approach behind this year’s Jurassic World: Rebirth, which was basically a CGI dinosaur movie populated with entirely new characters. This movie offers Tron-styled action and aesthetics with a completely different cast. In both cases, branding propels the endeavor instead of storytelling continuity or narrative cohesion, with logic not entering into the equation. On the plus side, members of the audience with minimal knowledge of what came before can still enjoy these films on the basis of the sheer spectacle they provide. While that ultimately wasn’t enough in the case of Rebirth, it does make Tron: Legacy a very watchable experience. It’s the most captivating screen saver ever created.
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The role of the dog in a horror movie is a thankless one. They appear early on, growl at something unseen and vanish into the night chasing after it. The dog is found dead soon afterwards, a bad omen that the human characters never take seriously. Good Boy turns that cliche on its head by telling the entire story from the dog’s point of view, an inspired choice that makes a run-of-the-mill ghost story harrowing and unpredictable. In addition to its solid horror movie trappings, the movie is also a sobering meditation on what it means to be “man’s best friend”.
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For writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, no subject is too unwieldy for a movie. In his latest film, One Battle After Another, Anderson explores revolution, something most of us have only either read about or experienced from a safe distance. He wants us to understand what it’s like to be a revolutionary and embeds us within a violent political movement so that we experience the emotional roller-coaster of their daily existence. In his view, revolutionaries aren’t a faceless group of angry radicals wielding guns, but ordinary people who live and breathe a cause.
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In When Harry Met Sally, the characters are blocked from taking the logical next step in their relationship by their neurosis. Eventually they come to their senses and there’s a happy ending. A Big, Bold, Beautiful Journey has basically the same premise, except that this time the couple spend the movie undergoing couples therapy before winding up together. Call it When Harry and Sally Went to Psychoanalysis. While this alternative take on the rom-com formula is intriguing, the movie’s emotional impact is underdone by its episodic nature and awkward tonal shifts.
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Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale is precisely that, a joyful celebration of the characters who’ve been part of our lives for the past fourteen years. Funny, nostalgic and sentimental, it’s a perfect farewell to the franchise. Recommended. Continue reading Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale
Detroit Cineaste 