The Actor (2025)

"People always talk about happy endings. I think beginnings are much happier. You still have the whole movie ahead of you."

An actor struggling with memory loss tries to find his way back home. There's a bit of a Memento feel as it unfolds piece by piece, in a dreamlike fashion. It becomes apparent before long that certain actors are playing different roles, like a theater troupe in a play. Is it a stylistic choice or something profound?

This live-action film was directed by stop-motion filmmaker Duke Johnson, one-half of those responsible for the wonderful Anomalisa, and as such, the film has distinct Charlie Kaufman vibes, although he only serves as executive producer here. It's actually based on Donald Westlake's neo-noir mystery novel, Memory, originally written in 1963 (but released posthumously in 2010).

It feels like this movie has a point but it never quite manages to gets there. Its meaning escapes me, but I'm sure it was meant to be poignant.

2½ chairs out of 5

Death of a Unicorn (2025)

A family hits a unicorn with their car and promptly learns about the magical healing properties it possesses, and the potential for scheming and marketing opportunities that presents. The shitty unicorn CGI looks horrendous and takes away from any possible gravitas this movie may be trying to muster. For such a wild and imaginative premise, this should have been a lot more fun than it is. As a lackluster, uninspired horror comedy, it's what the kids would call "mid."

2 glowing horns out of 5

Snow White (2025)

Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, what is the shittiest remake of all?

Oh, it's not that bad. A Latina playing the part of Snow White with "skin as white as snow" is akin to hiring a black woman to play a redhead in The Little Mermaid. It's like Disney is intentionally creating ragebait to poison the apple of conversation. Similarly, we've replaced little people (literal dwarves) with hideous-looking CGI trolls. All in the name of social progress, you see.

The latest in a series of politically correct live-action remakes of Disney animated classics stars Rachel Zegler as the titular princess who is ousted from her kingdom into the woodlands by an Evil Queen (Gal Gadot) who lives up to her name. This was such a nothingburger. Zegler elevates every scene she's in, but somehow it all feels so empty, like a mere shell of a story. There is magic in her voice and in the music, but the dwarfs are out of a fever dream. Despite the beauty of the forest, it's filled with glaring CGI and uncanny valley hell. There's an otherworldliness to the proceedings, but it feels like all these separate elements at play don't coalesce into anything meaningful.

As one can deduce from the shortened title, the focus here is on Snow White herself, not on any of the aforementioned dwarfs. Likewise, the prince has been excised from the story completely, and replaced by a mere commoner. They only employ three of the eight songs from the original film and create their own to fill out the soundtrack, which leaves the viewer with a confusing and jarring mishmash of old and modern styles that work to varying effect.

Despite all the cosmetic changes, the general framework of the story remains the same, so it turns out they made a big fuss over nothing. There's a reason why people usually default to the original; and that's because there was nothing fundamentally wrong with it in the first place.

2 shitty-looking Docs out of 5

Note: This film has languished in different stages of development hell since March 2020, so it's like the universe was trying to prevent it from getting made. After the financial losses they suffered, I bet Disney wishes it hadn't.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

The Disney animated classic that started it all. Based on the Grimms' fairy tale, it tells the story of a princess who is banished from her kingdom by an evil stepmother who envies her youth and beauty. She seeks refuge in the forest where she encounters seven dwarfs, each possessing unique characteristics.

This film is quite simply a marvel of its time and cannot be ignored in the annals of film history, having influenced every bit of cel animation that came after it. It's a triumph that still holds up in all its simplicity and elegance, pure heart and true love's kiss notwithstanding. The songs are catchy and will have you humming long after it's over. Its values can still be looked up to today. 

5 tantalizing red apples out of 5

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (2024)

After Coyote vs. Acme got shit-canned a couple of years ago, I was surprised to see a new Looney Tunes movie on the horizon that actually got released. 

Daffy Duck and Porky Pig live in a dilapidated house in desperate need of repair, so they decide to (*gasp*) get a job at a bubblegum factory which appears to front an extraterrestrial plot. Before long, the entire town has been taken over by chewing gum-induced alien mind control. The rest is Looney Tunes-inspired madness that blends a bunch of different classic styles harkening back to the golden age of animation (though some of the modern tricks seem to owe more to the likes of Ren & Stimpy). I can't help but feel that this material could have been better served as a short film, but I can't knock traditional animation. It just feels overly familiar and largely uninspired.

2½ twerking Daffys out of 5

Note: Besides Petunia Pig, no other classic Looney Tunes characters appear in this film. Sorry, Foghorn Leghorn fans.

Finch (2021)

After the world has been rendered to unlivable conditions by solar flares, rising temperatures and unpredictable weather events (forcing everyone to move underground), a man and his trusty dog struggle to survive. Realizing he's slowly dying of radiation poisoning, Finch decides to build a companion robot in order to take care of his dog when he's gone, entrusting his life to it, as they set off in a reinforced RV to escape an approaching deadly storm.

Despite the very sad (and prescient) nature of the film, I adored it. It's a very stripped down sci-fi story that focuses on relationships above all. The characterization of Jeff was very well done and reminded me of Johnny 5 (Short Circuit) at times. There's something about friendly robots which is really comforting to me. It's too bad this movie got buried on Apple TV's platform. It makes the scale of this movie seem much smaller than originally intended.

3 games of fetch out of 5

The Electric State (2025)

In an alternate timeline, Walt Disney's animatronics have given birth to the robot uprising, which leads to an all-out war between robots and humans, until Mr. Peanut (played by Woody Harrelson) signs a coalition with Bill Clinton. It sounds like I'm kidding, but I'm not. No wonder it cost $320 million for a direct-to-Netflix film. Most of that must have gone to keeping the lawsuits at bay.

While the above sounds like a wild premise, all that information is condensed within the first 7 minutes of the movie. The rest of the film involves a teenage girl and an affable cartoon robot on a mission to find her long-presumed-dead brother, alongside a scoundrel and his wisecracking sidekick. On paper, this all sounds awesome, but for some reason it doesn't really work. The execution is painfully average and somehow manages to feel slow and uneventful despite everything going on in it. There's just no reason some movies need to be over two hours long. Cut 30 minutes out and maybe it wouldn't feel so superfluous.

The graphic novel this was based on appears to be highly acclaimed however, so perhaps interested parties should seek that out instead.

2 Neural Bifurcation™s out of 5

In the Lost Lands (2025)

It's been about a decade since I've seen the last of Paul W. S. Anderson (the lesser of the Paul Andersons), but here he is back again flaunting his wife Milla Jovovich in a painfully generic action fantasy flick that stretches George R. R. Martin's source material way past the point of credulity. It contains all the charm and intelligence of an empty video game cutscene. As I sat there for the duration of the 101 minutes (feeling every second pass), I contemplated the composition of the shots and all the ugly, murky, washed out CGI and cheesy blue screen effects. The color palette literally looks like shit; all browns and yellows. When is Paul W.S Anderson going to get his director's card revoked? It goes without saying that I did not care about a single thing that was happening on the screen and I breathed a sigh of relief when it was finally over. Honestly, I can't even complain; this one was completely on me.

This piece of shit made Werewolves look like absolute cinema by comparison.

0 full moons out of 5

Opus (2025)

John Malkovich (channeling Nicolas Cage) plays what amounts to a cult leader at a commune under the guise of a musical prodigy who has just come out of retirement. Ayo Ebediri plays the only rational character in the film who questions his motives and all the weirdness surrounding them. It's a bit of the horror comedy persuasion (not unlike Get Out and Blink Twice), but feels like it could have gone much, much further. Standards must be slipping over at A24.

2½ bites of the communal bread out of 5

Black Bag (2025)

An espionage thriller about a British intelligence officer and his wife who investigate an internal leak among four other spies. It's a premise that starts out intriguing and shrouded in mystery, but quickly proves to be dry and dull as ditchwater. It's the kind of film that thinks it's cleverer than the audience, but joke's on them: I didn't give a single shit about any of it in the first place.

The good thing about Steven Soderbergh is if you don't like one of his movies, just wait 6 months, and he'll come out with another one.

2 polygraphs out of 5

Riff Raff (2024)

Ed Harris plays a reformed criminal in a blended family who is inconvenienced when his former wife, his son and his bride-to-be come to visit, who are being hunted down by two relentless hitmen that make their lives a living hell. As a dark comedic thriller, this movie is a bit of a mess in its feeble and meandering execution. I'm not sure how this even landed in theaters because it screams direct-to-streaming to me. Even the bumbling team of Bill Murray and Pete Davidson (never thought those two would be paired together) left me wanting more. And poor Jennifer Coolidge just seems like she's typecast at this point.

Also, not sure why they ripped off the theme to Howard Shore's After Hours.

2 guys named Roger out of 5

Novocaine (2025)

Nathan Caine is a mild-mannered bank manager with an extreme case of CIPA (Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis), which basically means he feels nothing. When the girl of his dreams is taken hostage during a bank robbery, he sets out in pursuit, setting off a chain of events in motion which set the stage for plenty of violent antics at his expense. It's a fun premise that runs dry quickly and isn't quite clever enough to sustain an entire feature. There is a lot of potential to be had with a man who is impervious to pain, but the film doesn't do enough with it and leaves it all on the table. Jack Quaid brings plenty of charm to the role and makes it watchable, if not forgettable.

2½ epi-pens out of 5

Mickey 17 (2025)

Mickey Barnes is an Expendable. Essentially a disposable crew member on a space mission, he serves as a human crash dummy used for test experiments and dangerous missions that usually result in fatality, at which point he gets "reprinted" with all of his prior memories intact, like a video game character. The only rule being that only one clone can exist at a time. It's an intriguing premise for a film, but unfortunately the execution is all over the place. It's a big, sprawling mess that falls disappointingly short of the source material.

3 creepers out of 5

Parasite (2019)

AKA: Gisaengchung

A poor family of grifters attempt to ingratiate themselves within the employ of a wealthy household. A searing satire of monumental proportions, the way this film builds and builds upon itself is brilliant. This stuff is as captivating as Game of Thrones. It's such a fun twisty-turny ride, I'd rather not say anything more about it and let the viewer experience it for themselves. Submitted as a non-English entry at the Oscars, it won awards for Best International Feature as well as Best Picture, the first film of its kind to do so.

5 blinking lights out of 5

Hard Truths (2024)

Mike Leigh's intimate character study of a deeply unhappy woman who lashes out at everyone she comes across, perpetuating the cycle of negativity and bringing everybody down. Marianne Jean-Baptiste is spellbinding in the role and makes it her own, embodying the kind of misery and self-hatred where you retaliate at everybody else in an effort to bring them down to your level. It's such a stark and unsympathetic portrayal of someone in pain, which offers no easy solution. The film doesn't cast judgment on the characters, it simply presents the situation as is. It's a difficult movie that never shies away from deeply uncomfortable moments or asks us to agree with the choices. The title is apropos because there are no concessions or easy ways out. This is one of the most brutally honest movies I've ever seen and it's memorable for that very reason. It's hard to say I "enjoyed" the film per se, but I'll never forget it.

4 bouquets out of 5