The Reel World

You likely know Scarlett Johansson best as Natasha Romanoff aka The Black Widow in the Marvel Cinematic universe (MCU). But Romanoff has been killed off with a heroic death, and even with all of this multiverse stuff going on in the MCU, she has made it pretty clear that she doesn't see the character returning. Her resume has taken a bit of a turn, and it looks like she's out there trying to reinvent herself a bit. Her most recent role was on the latest Jurassic World film, and I would argue her character wasn't very far from the one she's left behind, but it's a start, I assume. Where the actress has really reinvented herself is as a first-time director with Eleanor the Great. She's starting small. No huge budgets and mega-CGI stuff going on here. She's keeping it simple and as far away from the image as possible. But that might be your surface reaction. The truth is that Eleanor the Great is far from a simple turn for a new director. The film leans heavily on characterization and narrative here. In many ways it's a much harder task than doing a mindless action or f/x film.  There's not much of a safety net here, and the film has the potential of exposing those rookie mistakes. It was actually a pretty bold choice, and it ends up working out quite well.

Enter the titular Eleanor Morganstein, played by June Squibb. She's a 90+ year old woman living with her old friend Bessie (Zohar). They have a routine, and it's been pretty much a cookie-cutter life for the two elder women. With a relationship like this, it's inevitable that one of them was going to disappear from the routine, and it's Bessie, who was a Holocaust survivor, who ends up passing away. Eleanor is now lost at sea. Her daughter Lisa (Hecht) and her family decide to take her in until they can figure out something more permanent, and that means moving her to the big city of New York. They encourage her to take advantage of the wide culture and make some friends. She's reluctant, but ends up at a local community college where her daughter signed her up for a class. She accidentally walks in on a group in some kind of a session. They are Holocaust survivors, and this is their support group. They assume that's why she's there, and they welcome her with such energy that she's kind of liking the support. But Eleanor is not a Holocaust survivor, and when she's called upon to share her experience with the group, she channels her friend Bessie and the many horrific stories she's heard for 12 years and begins to tell them as her own.

“Viva la Revolucion.”

I don’t say this lightly, but One Battle After Another is without question the best movie that I’ve seen this year. With a star-studded cast that includes at least three Oscar-award winning actors (Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio Del Toro), several other Hollywood veterans (Regina Hall and Wood Haris), and up-and-coming talent (Teyana Taylor and Chase Infiniti’s film debut), the film establishes itself from its opening credit and held my attention till the very end. Inspired by Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland, this epic dark comedy follows DiCaprio as Pat Calhoun and Taylor as Perfidia Beverly Hills are lovers and members of the far-left revolutionary group known as the French 75. While breaking out detained immigrants from a detention center, Perfidia humiliates the commanding officer, Steven Lockjaw (Penn), who develops a sexual fascination with her. With the French 75, Pat and Perfidia carry out attacks on politicians' offices, banks, and even the power grid. Still obsessed with Perfidia, Lockjaw leverages his position to pursue the group, more specifically Perfidia.

Following the success of Only Murders in the Building, it was only a matter of time before we got more shows and films coming in to piggyback off the success. I’ll admit when I first saw an ad for The Thursday Murder Club on Netflix, I really didn’t think much of it, but I was glad to see the ensemble of actors continuing to get work as they age gracefully into their twilight years. With a film with a cast like Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley, Celia Imrie, Jonathan Pryce and several more familiar faces I found myself compelled to give this film a chance. Oh, and how can I forget, though this came as a surprise to me as I watched the closing credits, to discover the film was directed by Chris Columbus? The man is a legend to me just for directing Adventures in Babysitting, a childhood favorite of mine, but he also directed Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, Stepmom (in my opinion an underrated classic), oh, and the first two Harry Potter films … so the guy has a pretty stacked resume. So with this iconic cast and a prolific filmmaker, how is the film? I found this film charming and one of those gems Netflix has released that is better than anyone would expect.

The Thursday Murder Club is a group of retirees led by Elizabeth (Mirren), a feisty and spirited gal with a secretive past. The gang gets together at Cooper’s Chase, their luxurious retirement home that is basically a refurbished castle, and they solve cold-case murder files. In the group there is also Ibrahim (Kingsley), a retired psychiatrist, and there’s Ron (Brosnan), a former yet highly respected union rep. The cold-case files are from their friend who was a retired officer who is no longer conscious and is withering away in the hospice wing of the residence.

“Now we’re playing some football.”

Let’s just start with the high marks: Marlon does his thing, which I fully expected that he would. Right when you think that we have already seen the best that he has to offer, he finds a new gear, and let it be known that he will not be typecast as just a comedian or as a writer or as producer. He is, in fact, him. Pun intended. Tyriq Withers shows some promise as a leading man, and like his character is clearly hungry to make a name for himself, with this project being his second box office horror appearance this year (the other being I Know What You Did Last Summer). Also, you can see Jordan’s Peele’s influence on the film, as there are a handful of similarities to his previous projects. However, Him, while entertaining, does not achieve the same impact as those aforementioned projects. There was plenty of intrigue, but the train somewhat comes off the track, particularly in regard to the film’s conclusion.

Watching a production as high-caliber as The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) naturally comes with a lot of hype, with its Hollywood budget and immense popularity. It is refreshing to see a Hollywood horror film treated with real seriousness, the kind that draws both genre diehards and casual viewers, and my theater was packed as evidence of that. Within its shared universe there are nine, debatably ten, entries you can binge, including Annabelle (2014-2019) and The Nun (2018-2023) with their sequels. The debated tenth, The Curse of La Llorona (2019), is only loosely connected through Father Perez from the Annabelle films. As the title suggests, The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) positions itself as the capstone to this first phase, and it is wrapped with a cathartic finality. I think one of the main reasons for its success is the fact that these movies are based on real events and experiences from the perspective of the Warrens. While you are watching something horrifying and seemingly fictional, you keep in mind that these are lived experiences as recounted by Ed and Lorraine Warren. It is haunting to think such paranormal events happened, and to imagine the bravery it takes for the Warrens to dedicate their lives to helping others confront such phenomena. Whether you believe in the paranormal or not, the cases in these movies are drawn from reported events, and the claims from the families they helped are well documented. For me, I err on the side of phenomenology, accepting these experiences as truth while accounting for the mind’s power to shape perceived reality, even amid skepticism and the possibility of fabrication.

In the film, The Conjuring: Last Rites (2025) is loosely based on the Smurl haunting, which took place in West Pittston, Pennsylvania in the 1980s, where the story is also set. Although the Warrens lived in Connecticut, they decided to help the Smurl family after their daughter, Judy Warren, was drawn there through supernatural forces she could not explain. Shortly after, they discovered a previously unknown connection to the house through a mirror the Warrens had encountered before Judy’s birth. The writers took creative liberties suited to the big screen, deviating from real accounts in ways that still felt tasteful and respectful to the family involved.

"It takes a heavy sack to sign up for this contest. I'm not gonna go through the whole rule book, but it boils down to this. If you fall below the speed of three miles per hour, you get your ticket. Walk until there's only one of you left."

Stephen King has been America's most renowned writer for about 50 years. That's a long time to stay on top. He does it by giving audiences something they want but are not always willing to admit that they want. Of course, he's the master of horror, but he doesn't always write specifically about horror. The reason King is able to scare us so well is because he understands the human condition. He has an innate ability to touch our emotions. The truth is that the best of his film adaptations have tended to be the films less related to horror. The Shawshank Redemption remains the best Stephen King film ever made. He returns to the subject of prisons and punishment in The Green Mile. Stand By Me, based on his story The Body, isn't really a horror story at all. It's a coming-of-age story. Still, when we thing of King, we think of horror, and that is part of the reason that several decades ago he decided to write a few stories under the pen name Richard Bachman. I'm not sure we were fooled for very long, and when I got the four-story Richard Bachman collection, I already knew who had written them. I'm not sure if it made a difference, but The Long Walk remains to this day my favorite King tale, and I've read it many times more than any of the other stories he's written.

Some people may think I’m crazy, but as a lifelong horror fan, I feel right now we are in the Golden Age of horror cinema. When you look at the box office this year and last, horror has simply been a dominate force, and I’m loving it. What’s even better is that it is new material that is raking in the money rather than seeing tired retreads of IPs that have been exhausted over and over again. Sinners, though it wasn’t my cup of tea, dominated the box office, and even though I’m not the film’s biggest fan, I still like seeing horror rake in the money. I’m loving that we’re getting all kinds of horror lately, where an indie slasher like Terrifier is going to be featured at Halloween Horror Nights, and we’re getting all sorts of experimental horror. For instance, later this year we’ll get Goodboy, a paranormal story told through the perspective of a dog. (Sure, it sounds silly, but I’m all for it.) This brings me to Barbarian. For me this has been my favorite horror film in the past five years, and that’s saying a lot, because there has been A LOT of good horror lately. From the moment I heard about Zach Cregger’s next film, Weapons, it immediately shot to the top of my list of most anticipated films. Now that the film has finally come out, is it worth the wait and the hype that surrounds it?

The setup is relatively simple. One night at 2:17 am, 17 students got out of their beds and ran out of their homes and disappeared. The next morning when the teacher went to her class, only one of her students showed. So what happened to these 17 kids?

I originally watched Predator: Killer of Killers (2025) as suggested by my boyfriend, which was released on Hulu in June. To be candid, I stopped following the Predator franchise after its cultural peak with the iconic crossover Aliens versus Predator (2004) and its respective sequel in 2007. Once franchises start to feel more like money grabs, like with the Jurassic World franchise (2015-2025), the magic becomes evanescent, and the cinematic experience is severely diminished for me. That said, this movie is so creatively gory, with such a stellar story, you can’t help but be impressed! This film acts as a standalone animated anthology, which serves as the eighth installment for the franchise, released after Prey (2022) and preceding Badlands (Nov 2025). Both the style of animation and the creative use of vantage points distinguished this production from the rest in the franchise and amazingly keeps you invested in the story, despite it initially seeming disconnected.

The point of the anthology clearly was to connect more warmly with the respective characters, and what they’ve endured to reach the point of rendezvous. Despite its grotesque fight scenes and generally horrific outcomes, you grow to feel compassion for each character, understand their interactions with greater insight, and feel hope for them in moments of despair. Additionally, I loved the nuances in historical timelines featured in each story, with the first set during Viking-era Scandinavia, the second exploring feudal Japan, and the third unfolding during World War II.

The simplest way I can think to sum up this movie is as such: If you saw the first film (Freaky Friday), then you have essentially already seen the second film already, Freakier Friday. This is due to there being very little difference between the two films beyond the passage of time. Yes, Lindsay Lohan now finds herself in the adult role, but the film’s themes are very much the same. In the interest of fairness, I will admit that there is very little room for deviation given the film’s premise. This is a “walk a mile in another person’s shoes” type movie, and the film delivers on that, so when push comes to shove, the film delivered on what it was supposed to. However, I feel like this kind of movie was the reason that Disney created Disney+ for. As nice as it was to see Lohan return to the silver screen, this film marks Lindsay Lohan's first theatrically released leading role in 18 years. However, it just felt like the film would have been better suited on the streaming service. I will give this legacy sequel credit for its continuity, as it found a way to bring back nearly every character from the first film, which was something that I did not expect.

And when I say nearly every character, I mean nearly every character. Obviously, Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay had to return. It wouldn’t have been much of sequel without both of their participation. It was reportedly Jamie Lee Curtis who persuaded Lindsay Lohan to return to Disney again, as the two became close friends after the 2003 film. However, what was also interesting was the return of characters such as Chad Michael Murray (Jake), Mark Harmon (Ryan), Stephen Tobolowsky (Mr. Bates), Rosalind Chao (Pei-Pei), Lucille Soong (Pei-Pei's mom), Christina Vidal (Maddie), and Haley Hudson (Peg). Murray’s role offered some comic relief, as his character still carries a bit of a torch for Curtis’s character, but I think the return I was most surprised to see was Harmon, as this marked his first non-NCIS related work in 13 years. In addition to returning characters, the film also featured some returning music. If you will recall, Lohan’s character was in a band, and to the film’s credit, it found a way to incorporate some of those popular songs (Ultimate and Take Me Away) as well as a couple of original songs as well.

The Naked Gun (2025) is a beautifully absurd film that had me and everyone in the theater laughing in tears. It is both a continuation and reboot to the original franchise that introduces a new generation of characters, which still honors the classic formula of deadpan delivery, absurd plotlines, and visual gags that gave the original its significance. It was like a breath of fresh air in a lackluster era of Hollywood which felt seriously rich in soul. I can’t even joke; my face was hurting from laughing and smiling throughout the entire movie! Initially, I was apprehensive about the movie because it starred faces I’ve honestly grown tired of seeing in Hollywood, notably Neeson and Huston. It is a star-studded cast with Liam Neeson as Lt. Frank Drebin, Jr. and Pamela Anderson as Beth Davenport. Additionally, Seth MacFarlane is part of the production with Fuzzy Door Productions in partnership with Paramount Pictures. Even though I didn’t care for Neeson having the main role, his acting wasn’t washed up at all and was far better seeing him in a comedy—same with Huston. The production was ripe with cameos with Busta Rhymes as a bank robber, “Weird Al” Yankovic as himself, Cody Rhodes as a bartender, even ring announcer Bruce Buffer, and so many more. To me, this is what genuinely gave this movie its soul, with its cultural relevancy and space for diverse interests.

Even as a gay man, I have to say that Pamela Anderson was absolutely gorgeous and so sexy in this film! I say that because that is exactly how she set out to present herself as the femme fatale in this movie, and she nailed it! Even though her talks with the media around aging gracefully are viral, it felt she authentically elevated the Hollywood beauty standard that she so virtuously chooses to be buoyed by. She completely sold the dumb blonde trope, and the movie wouldn’t have had its charm without her!