The Reel World

It’s hard to believe it has been nearly a decade since we last had a film directed by Kathryn Bigelow. I’ve been a fan of hers from her early years when she was doing films like Near Dark, Point Break, and Strange Days. I’ve always felt she’s never been given the credit she deserves, but when she finally got recognition for films like The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, it just felt long overdue. Now that she has A House Full of Dynamite releasing on Netflix, I’ll be honest; I immediately expected this to be one of my top films of the year, and considering when it was being released, it seemed like a sure frontrunner as an awards contender. Sadly this film might be my first major disappointment of the year, and what’s frustrating is that it still might have one of the most riveting opening acts of the year. So where did it go so wrong? The film takes us on a journey in a “what if” scenario where the US has a nuclear weapon fired at it from an unknown origin, though the best possible guess is North Korea. The film is broken up into three parts, each part focusing on different figures as they are faced with the same problem. It starts in the Situation Room with Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) leading the effort to track the missile, and along the way we meet several key figures involved with trying to shoot the missile down to the President (Idris Elba), who is the key focus of the third act. This first act is phenomenal, and if it was simply a short film, it would deserve so much praise …The problem is that as each act is replayed, even though we are seeing new characters added to the mix to heighten the drama, it loses its impact because we’ve already seen the moment play out, and the story doesn’t move forward, but simply sidesteps and avoids answering questions or giving us any sort of payoff by the end.

Sure, this is a very real scenario that is depicted here, and the questions presented here are terrifying. Knowing how easily an impulsive decision could create a global nuclear war is unsettling, and seeing how quickly things can spiral and how there just wouldn’t be enough time to evacuate a large city that was targeted … these are things that hit really hard in this film and will likely keep some viewers up at night to ponder what they would do if a strike ever did occur. I’m not saying that the film doesn’t have drama. It’s jam-packed with drama and tension, but there’s no release, no resolution. I don’t need to see a grand-scale fallout from the impact or even an all-out war, but the film is just left so wide open that it feels incomplete. The best way I could describe this is that it is like watching an episode of 24 but never getting to know anything else that happens after. They give us so many characters experiencing the same thing, but no resolution, and that just annoys me.

Ever since I first heard about Good Boy earlier this year as it was making the rounds at film festivals, it instantly became one of my most anticipated films of the year. I was sold just on the idea of this being a supernatural film told through a dog’s perspective. Sure, it sounds like a gimmick, but I really liked the sound of this gimmick. I’ve always been a sucker for the paranormal, and I was always intrigued by the idea that animals could see things that we could not. So after months of waiting, I finally got the opportunity to watch Good Boy. Did it live up to my expectations, or did it turn out to be a dud? The film follows Indy, a Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever. He is extremely loyal to his owner, Todd (Shane Jensen), who we see from the opening scene is extremely ill. Todd knows his health is in decline, and he decides to get away from his doctors and his overbearing sister and moves out to his grandfather’s rural home. Just about immediately upon arriving Indy senses that there is something not right about the home but still continues to stick to his owner’s side. We watch through Indy’s concerned perspective as Todd lumbers through the home, wheezing and coughing. At night Todd combs through his grandfather’s VHS collection of old horror movies, but also some strange home videos of Grandpa (Larry Fessenden) talking about taxidermy. It also doesn’t take long before Indy starts to see that there are things lurking in the home.

The film has several moments that I loved. One that stands out the most is when Indy is left alone in the house for the first time and we see him patiently waiting by the window for Todd to return home … but then something gets Indy’s attention. It’s another dog that is in the home  and it wants to show Indy “something”  and Indy follows the dog upstairs, and the reveal is a tad bit unsettling. What’s so impressive is that obviously not a word is spoken in this sequence. It is all told through visuals and of course Indy’s reactions. I’d imagine most dog owners are going to watch this film and afterwards wonder just how the director was able to wrangle this kind of a performance out of his pet. I’m not exaggerating that this dog shows more emotional range than several A-listers who have been in big-budget films this year.

“The things you do for the ones you love.” In this case, this saying has a bit of double meaning, one for the movie and one for me personally. For the movie, it is about how far a parent will go to protect their child from an ugly truth. And for me, it’s about how far I will go to ensure that my wife is happy and entertained. Regretting You, the second film adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel after It Ends with Us (2024) and the third adaptation overall, after the television series Confess (2017). In the case of this film, the audience gets two love stories for the price of one. One is centered around young love between a very talented pair in McKenna Grace and Mason Thames, and the other about second chances, between Dave Franco and Allison Williams. In my opinion, the young-love story is the more vibrant and uplifting story arc, hence why it received far more focus than the second-chance one. Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald also help round out the cast, but their roles are limited to the opening portions of the film, particularly because it is their actions rather than their presence that help drive the story as a whole.

So, I should mention upfront that I am not a reader of Colleen Hoover, but I am aware of her books. In recent years, they’ve been impossible to miss. She has become quite prolific in the literary space, with 24 novels under her belt, 11 of which have been featured on the New York Times Bestsellers List. Her popularity apparently surged in 2022, when she held six of the top ten spots on the paperback fiction bestseller list. Also as of 2022, she has sold more than 20 million books. It makes sense that her novels would find their way to the silver screen. I won’t spend any time on the events that surrounded the previous adaptation, but focus on this one, which I expect will also have a fairly decent outing. I wouldn’t be surprised if the film was this weekend’s box office winner, but it does face stiff competition in a horror film that also stars Mason Thames that was released last week.

It’s been a long time since a movie gave me goosebumps. The last real time I can remember it happened is when I first watched Nightmare on Elm Street, which is pretty ironic, as there are some pretty clear parallels between that film and Black Phone 2. Taking place at a summer camp, the film clearly also draws inspiration from the Jason Voorhies franchise as well. However, despite these parallels. Black Phone 2 is still a very entertaining and engaging horror sequel. The film stars Ethan Hawke, Mason Thames, Madeleine McGraw, and Jeremy Davies reprising their roles, while Demián Bichir joined the cast. Interestingly, Miguel Mora also returns. However, while he played Robin Arellano in the first movie, in the second movie he plays Ernesto, his brother. I was initially skeptical about this sequel because of the demise of Hawke’s character in the first film. I found myself asking, “How are you going to have a sequel when the villain was killed in the first film?” However, it appears that Joe Hill, the author of the short story that the first film was based on, had the answer:

“A phone rings, Finney answers, and it's the Grabber calling from hell.”

It was only a matter of time before we would see those who found success on platforms like TikTok and YouTube try to make the transition to the big screen. Sam and Colby found moderate success with their fans, but really, to the rest of the world it was barely noticed. Now later this month we’ll get the highly anticipated Shelby Oaks from Chris Stuckmann, who got his start with movie reviews and creating content on his YouTube channel. But now we have House on Eden, a small-budget found-footage film from content creators Kris The Girl and Celina Spooky Boo. I’ll admit I’ve actually been following their content for a few years, and I was a little optimistic about what these two would come up with, but I have to admit this was disappointing and frankly just lazy. To be blunt, it is an insult to those out there who are grinding to create the best film they can on a shoestring budget. The film follows a trio of content creators (they are basically playing exaggerated versions of themselves, not even bothering to change their names) led by Kris Collins.

The group likes to film and investigate potential haunted locations, and Kris has found a location that no one has filmed at before, and she convinces her friends to go to the spot and investigate it. Of course things go wrong once they arrive at the location, and to be honest, I’m surprised I made it that far.

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.