Wow, that’s the best 2025 release I’ve seen yet. Man, what a movie. I actually could spend time criticizing the opening 45 minutes to hour, but I think the back half of this movie is outstanding. I kind of loved it.
A couple of twins, both played by Michael B. Jordan, open a Juke Joint, borrowing money from some white guys who feel sketchy. Something is up there.
And then the movie happens. Just go in blind. Great movie, I was gripped until the final moment.
I was having a middle 2025 movie wise until this one. First truly great movie of the year.
It was on Shudder for a couple weeks before I considered watching it. Then I had it on in the background a few times and didn’t pay attention. I thought it was going to be some variation of Chucky or something. Chucky ain’t got nothing on this particular oddity.
When you say it got disappointingly predictable, do you mean that you knew the husband was behind it? I think we’re meant to understand that. I thought the point was watching how Darcy will prove / avenge it.
I also have a question - do you think Darcy fell into Ted’s trap door trap, or do you think she deliberately jumped? I think the latter but it seems most folks online think she just fell..
A couple of things. Darcy was completely independent and could get around almost as well as a sighted person. It didn’t seem logical that she wouldn’t have heard Ted lift the door, or at least been suspicious. And I may have misinterpreted it, but I thought she had a kind of look of resignation just before she walks toward the opening. Also, she says “I dragged him from his bed and killed him; I’m going to pay for that”.
One thing that I haven’t seen mentioned that I think is a great touch; Darcy is styled like the wooden man, with short hair, beigey skirts and blouses cut with puffy, square shoulders. In the darker or far away shots, you almost can’t tell them apart. They.are.connected.
Watched A Complete Unkown on Hulu last night. I know that Dylan asked for Suze to be kept out of it (by name), though I really don’t see why, as the character was still there. She played a major part in his early success and should have been honored.
They supposedly changed the character’s name to protect Suze…and mentioned that the character was based on her in seemingly every press junket and interview the cast did. Seems to kind of defeat the whole purpose of that endeavor.
I forgot to mention in this horror wrapup that I also saw Wolf Man (Peacock), which I really liked. I loved when we got glimpses from the perspective of the wolf. I also liked how they managed to squeeze like four different locations out of a single location. And finally, there was only really one truly stupid character decision, but it was kind of understandable and they were not punished for it. Love that. I’m seeing some people trash it online, which I think is unfortunate. This is the kind of horror movie I want to see more of.
I was only vaguely acquainted with Dylan’s life before seeing the movie. I knew that he was once romantically involved with Joan Baez. I had never heard of Suze Rotolo. When Dylan moved in with the character played by Elle Fanning, I thought this was supposed to be Baez. I knew that she didn’t look much like Baez. When he then begins a relationship with the character played by Monica Barbaro, I was completely confused. I had to wait until I got home from the movie and read the Wikipedia article about Dylan to understand what was going on. Having read it now, I realize that Dylan isn’t as wonderful a person as I thought. Perhaps he deserves his Nobel Prize for being a great poet (based on his songs). But he went through as many girlfriends and wives as many celebrities.
Like a lot of artists, Dylan is flawed and self-absorbed. There is no denying his talent for storytelling and poetry, and we often tend to overlook the quirks that come with genius.
The depth and complex relationships between the father and two sons is very well written. The anger and raw emotion between the brothers and also directed at the father is well done.
The MMA fights just add to an already great movie.
Nick Nolte won an award for his role. I was surprised he was capable of playing such a wounded and understated character. It’s nothing like his bombastic roles with Eddie Murphy.
Dude makes a cardboard maze in his apartment and gets lost inside it. His girlfriend gathers some friends to form a rescue team to go in after him. An absurdist comedy.
I think I’m going to recommend watching this without watching the trailer first. I enjoyed the mystery of wondering what the inside of the maze would be like for the first 15 minutes or so. The entire rest of the movie takes place inside the maze, so the trailer is forced to show you a bunch of it.
I watched Tombstone for probably the 4th time yesterday. That will be the last time, as I’m noticing the acting issues and plot problems now. Fun while it lasted.
I liked that movie too. I thought I read somewhere (maybe iMdb trivia) that it was based loosely on Rich Franklin who was a math teacher before he went pro MMA.
Oddity (2024) Already mentioned here several times. I was quite impressed by this spooky horror thriller from Ireland, possibly more than some others here. Very competently put together and highly recommended for fans of atmospheric, creepy horror.
Two lesbians rent a car with a MacGuffin in the trunk. Movie ensues.
It’s a good first - maybe second - draft of a movie, but it definitely needed some sharpening. I wasn’t really sure what the film was trying to be. Ethan Coen (without Joel) and his wife Tricia Cooke came up with a sort of Tarantino-lite road movie that doesn’t approach the wit or depth of the best Coen Brothers efforts.
I did like the two leads (Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan) quite a bit, even if Qualley’s cartoon-Texas twang got a bit grating. Their relationship arc was really rather satisfying, as each came to understand and learn from the other’s differences.
Perhaps that should have just been the movie, without all the briefcase business. The reveal of the MacGuffin was just silly, and its resolution came right out of left field.
I didn’t hate it, but it really should have been much better.
What a mess. There’s a super-secret spy agency with impossible technology that exists for reasons that are not really clear. There are people trying to destroy said agency for reasons that are not really clear.
Nobody’s motives for doing anything are really clear. Why does Doris from accounting in her Christmas sweater kill a bunch of people in an elevator at Jamie Dornan’s command while the character who is supposed to be his equal partner is screaming “NOOO!!!”?
The plot manages to be both nonsensical and entirely predictable, with every spy movie cliche you’ve ever seen thrown in along the way.
All of this could be forgiven if the action sequences were on par with even, say, a lower-tier Bond movie, but alas, they are not.
Even being able to look at the incredibly gorgeous Gal Godot for a couple hours didn’t make this worth watching. A pity.
Bob Trevino Likes It. A young woman with a horrible estranged father tries to find him on FB. She instead finds another guy with the same name. Quasi-family interaction ensues.
A really good, small time movie. Barbie Ferreira plays the young woman. Great job, not a “Hollywood” type at all. Big plus. John Leguizamo plays the “other Bob”. French Stewart plays the “original Bob”. Stewart really plays the jerk well here. Rachel Bay Jones plays the other Bob’s wife.
The latter has been in things like Young Sheldon/etc. and The Good Doctor lately. She’s one short of an EGOT. Just needs the Oscar. Although the Emmy is a daytime one and the Grammy is a Broadway cast album. Sadly this is such a small film that her chance of getting nominated for an Oscar is zilch. Leguizamo “only” has an Emmy and a Special Tony.
Apparently very slightly based on something that happened to the writer/director.
Skinamarink on Hulu. Wikipedia tells us that this is an “experimental horror film” and that it “follows a young brother and sister who wake up during the night to discover that they cannot find their father and that the windows, doors, and other objects in their house are disappearing.” Okay, but also, you don’t see the actors except for a couple of very brief glimpses. Mostly just shots of dark corners, doorways, Legos, the television screen, and so on. Very atmospheric, nightmarish in a creepy sort of way. I liked what the filmmakers were doing as I was watching it, but thinking back on it a few days later, I’m not quite as impressed. And toward the end, I was thinking they were about to wrap it up two or three times, and to be honest, I was ready for it to be over. But they just kept going. So maybe I would have hoped for about ten minutes to be cut from the last part.
Drive-Away Dolls on Prime. I’m always interested in checking out whatever a Coen does, but for whatever reason, I just now got around to this one. Comments here prompted me. I’m disappointed. The story seems a bit more disjointed than I wanted it to be. I get that it’s supposed to be a comedy, so you make allowances for that, but I have no fucking clue why the decapitated head ended up in the car [that scenario should be considered retired with Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, really], and the dong as a politician’s career killer wasn’t adequately explained. If that was the case, make it embarrassingly tiny, maybe?
And the whole thing about the characters being lesbians just felt “inauthentic” to me, as if some married straight guy just decided to haul off and write a screenplay about lesbians. I do think that kind of thing can be done, but the way it was handled here just seemed ham-fisted, slapdash, and terribly clumsy to me, maybe vaguely reminiscent of Steve Buscemi’s “fellow kids” thing. (And me being a straight, married guy as well, I don’t know myself what “authentic” would have looked like here. I just doubt that this was it.)