Bring Her Back (2025)

I thought I saw promising signs to this one going in. The cowriting and codirecting team of the Philippou twins from Australia, Danny and Michael, previously gave us the raucous Talk to Me (and both incidentally were associated as crew with the revelatory Babadook). Sally Hawkins is a featured player, an actor who has worked well with Mike Leigh (Vera Drake, the amazing Happy-Go-Lucky), Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water), and others. And the reviews I saw were favorable, if not enthusiastic, with a 7.1 ranking on IMDb from 128,000 viewers (I generally handicap rankings on IMDb for horror movies a full point, meaning Bring Her Back had the potential for 8.1 quality). Its reputation, in fact, made me a little afraid of what was increasingly a mandatory viewing. You can see I put it off awhile. Indeed, it’s not a picture to be looked at during dinnertime, as it has many gross and harrowing scenes of extreme violence and abuse. I should have remembered that Talk to Me bore themes of grief, depression, and trauma in its plot, because once again, in Bring Her Back, contemporary horror has rooted itself in grief, depression, and trauma. In this case, Laura (Hawkins) has become deranged by the death of her daughter Cathy, who was blind and drowned in their swimming pool (which has been drained during this movie, making it a dangerous concrete hole in the backyard). Laura was a social worker before Cathy’s death. Now she is a foster mother. In many ways this is a movie about the importance of the vetting process of foster parents. Laura takes in a blind Asian girl, Piper (Sora Wong), and, under some duress because Laura only wanted the girl, Piper’s older brother Andy (Billy Barratt), who looks like Mark Hamill in 1977. Laura also has another foster living with her, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), who is a certain model of creepy horror movie kid, Deliverance style. The rest is mostly tiresome working out of the grief. I can’t tell you any of the details because they would be spoilers. The Philippous can supercharge their scenes with lively, kinetic energy, but I kind of wish they’d lose the grief, depression, and trauma business. Nothing that way in this movie felt remotely real, only more like pink frosting.

Wick Is Pain (2025)

The John Wick franchise has been a boon for the careers of Keanu Reeves and director Chad Stahelski as well as a boon for the action movie genre itself. It’s one of the best. Fortunately for us they have also been documenting their story as they go—“they” meaning Jeffrey Doe, director of this documentary, and whoever was shooting interviews and asking questions along the way. Wick Is Pain is on the long side for a documentary, running over two hours, and more than half of it focuses on behind-the-scenes drama getting the first movie made. It’s a familiar pile of anecdotes about options, properties, getting funding, losing funding, drilling screenplays throughs rounds of revisions (“notes,” they say). Honestly, I don’t know how anyone survives these agonies, which can go on for years. It’s great fun to learn how the Wick principals met and how deeply steeped Stahelski and co-director David Leitch are in martial arts choreography and the culture surrounding it (after the first John Wick they parted ways and Leitch went on to direct Atomic Blonde, Deadpool 2, and others). It’s even more fun to relive the chutzpah of breaking one of Hollywood’s strictest rules: never kill the dog (which gave rise to one of my favorite quotes imputed to Wick: “Be kind to animals or I’ll kill you”) (although apparently the actual original source is Morrissey). I learned—no doubt Wick fans already knew—that Wick’s style of action is sometimes called “gun fu.” Reeves is universally beloved in the kind of way that Betty White was and he cuts an interesting figure here, a kind of enthusiastic stoner who is wholly committed to his art. It sometimes feels like he is saying John Wick saved his life. The title comes from the reality of making the movies. As with professional wrestling, it’s all mostly scripted and choreographed playacting, but that doesn’t mean the people involved don’t get hurt doing it. We’re told Reeves does 90% of Wick’s stunt work and you can see, say in the hall of mirrors sequence in Chapter 2, that he’s being brutalized, thrown around and into things. I know there are safety guardrails for stunts on the set, but there’s only so much that can be done to minimize the danger of getting the shots and scenes they get. And besides, Reeves is obviously stoked by it. Wick Is Pain is an essential addendum to the franchise.

The Naked Gun (2025)

Happy to note that the fourth installment in the Naked Gun franchise, 31 years in the making, carries on in the fine old Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker tradition, at least judging by how much I laughed sitting alone in my apartment. It’s a fast-paced barrage of dad jokes, bad puns, sight gags, slapstick, and outrageous dirty jokes. Random action such as fistfights between principals is often going on in the background. Mug shots are taken by fashion photographers. Frank Drebin Jr. (Liam Neeson) is always running over things when he drives. There’s even an OJ Simpson gag. If one bit doesn’t get you, there’s another one coming in about 20 seconds. Eventually, you just have to give in to this intense desire to amuse. I love how they mix up the styles and strategies, such as redundancy. Whenever Drebin Jr. shows up at a crime scene or the Police Squad headquarters, some underling is sure to hand him a latte cup of coffee. It just seems like another cop show cliché the first time but then it keeps happening, with slight variations. While he is driving, for example—a hand with a cup of coffee reaches into the window. Drebin Jr. is the son of Frank Drebin Sr. from the original franchise (Leslie Nielsen). Besides sharing initials, Neeson and Nielsen traveled similar screenway paths to fame, from romantic leads to roles as hard-bitten heavies into these surprising turns toward comedy—based in part on their previous sober personas (Z-A-Z did the same for Peter Graves, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges, of course). Neeson does not quite have Nielsen’s deadpan genius, but he’s good enough here I’m willing to give him time to get it (meaning, yes, I hope there are further installments ... the Z-A-Z attack somehow remains reliably fresh). Neeson is good, and so is a game Pamela Anderson as Beth Davenport, Drebin Jr.’s love interest at the center of the murder story. Her brother has been killed using a Primordial Law of Toughness (PLOT) device, which turns rational human beings into savages under influence of their worst impulses. This short movie has a long, long credits reel with extras, including a tender and hilarious love song that Drebin Jr. sings (poorly) to Beth. I recommend sticking around for it.

Him (2025)

Here’s an odd mashup of sports movie and horror show, carrying on another one of today’s genre-blending exercises that don’t even seem possible. Jordan Peele is an executive producer. The main problem here is that sports movies tend to build toward sentimental heroic upbeat triumphs whereas horror is more like the opposite. Here the sport under examination is pro football, with obvious similarities to the NFL but equally obvious (for legal reasons?) departures from it. The featured team is the San Antonio Saviors—the unlikely nickname captures well the strange vibe of Him. Do any sports teams bear the nicknames of holy figures? I’m drawing a blank. The Los Angeles Angels? New Orleans Saints? San Diego Padres? Not quite the same. We’ve got a veteran quarterback in Him, Isaiah White (Marlon Wayans). He’s the GOAT, the greatest of all time. He’s won eight of the picture’s Super Bowl equivalent, as opposed, you can see, to Tom Brady’s seven. Frankly, I’m tired of the whole GOAT discourse, but here we are. The Saviors have drafted a promising rookie QB, Cam Cade (Tyriq Withers). This worries Isaiah, as Brady was worried when the New England Patriots drafted Jimmy Garoppolo (and Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love, etc.). Isaiah feels threatened and undermined as the starting QB, but shows he’s a good sport about it, in a way, voluntarily taking on mentorship of Cade. But is he really trying to help Cade? Really? It doesn’t seem that way. Things start to drift in strange directions at the remote training compound in the desert, where Isaiah comes on with the snarling drill sergeant style of turning boys into men by taunting and humiliating them. Cade is given transfusions of Isaiah’s blood. Things have been strange even before that, as some rando wearing a goat costume knocks Cade on the head, giving him a serious concussion and endangering his career. Him explores some of the psychedelic implications of concussions and brain injury, which can be visually striking, as in a showdown fight toward the end. But as the title suggests, however—this is not remotely like the movie Her, by the way—the capitalized “Him” is as much a religious reference as anything. Fans are worshippers and the movie goes spinning off to some majestically ridiculous Cthulhu type places in the end. The picture does not work, but it has its overheated moments along with a soundtrack that collects some nice jams. You could do worse.

Black Mirror, s7 (2025)

It’s possible that Black Mirror creator, chief writer, and showrunner Charlie Brooker’s well is running dry, but I thought s7 was an improvement and even something of a return to form over s6, which leaned way too hard for me into easy horror. The show still feels a little tired, but priorities are back in order. The familiar sardonic view of corporate absolute control was sharp as ever in the first episode, “Common People.” It involves a miracle pharmaceutical that upgrades brain function against tumors and disease. The problem is that it’s expensive and only getting more so as tiered “membership” levels come available. To defray costs, lower-tier users serve as advertising media, involuntarily dropping product pitches into everyday random conversation, with predictably loony (and intense) results. Other episodes, creaking slightly as they may, take on the multidimensional lifestyle in a competitive work environment, immersive AI in a unique type of film restoration, and the usual world-ending levels of computer hackery. Perhaps the most interesting development here—perhaps a sign of where Brooker’s imagination is drifting—is a kind of sequel to the USS Callister storyline from s4. I say sequel, but the relation between them is more like the first was a pilot for a TV show and now this redux is the first episode of the first season. It’s a parody of Star Trek, a good one that rivals even Galaxy Quest, focused more on the original series (“TOS”) than The Next Generation or anything that followed. Jesse Plemons plays the Captain Kirk character—he is as interested as James T. Kirk in getting laid but a far more unbalanced and cruel person. In real life he is Robert Daly, a software developer and creator of a successful immersive space opera computer game. A DNA replicator enables him to bring coworkers into his private version of the game. At least a couple of familiar points are here. One is the little electronic nubbin you affix to your temple which enables so much technology in Black Mirror. The other is the idea that “digital cloning” brings an essential element of consciousness into the software and/or device or game. Digital clones are not just some kind of empty replicant but bear essential sentience and self-awareness in their own right. Both USS Callister scripts shade their characters to appear different from different angles. Daly at first appears to be a harmless dweeb, but when he keeps calling himself “a nice guy” in conversations with women we start to get the picture he’s more of a petulant incel. As the captain of a spaceship, he is a monster. But I suspect Brooker is having so much fun with his Star Trek universe that I wonder if he wouldn’t like to dedicate a whole season to boldly going around in it.

KPop Demon Hunters (2025)

Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters is approximately exactly what you think, with a glitzy K-pop soundtrack, fabulous animation, and scary demons. As the story goes, generations of female K-pop acts have secretly been demon hunters, running down the dark creatures with great ferocity and protecting their fans and humans generally. Now it’s the fictional girl group trio Huntrix picking up the mantle. The specific narrative arc here is that one of the singers in the group—Rumi, the one with the stupendous coil of hair—is secretly part-demon and must learn to come to terms with it. Awww... The animation is mainly what makes the picture work as well as it does, wild, vivid, expressive, verging on the psychedelia of the Spider-Verse movies. Besides Huntrix (with Rumi, Mira, and Zoey), there is a five-piece boy band, the Saja Boys, who are under the control of the Satan figure here, Gwi-Ma. Gwi-Ma is in the business of buying up and consuming souls. Jinu is the leader of the Saja Boys. Naturally he and Rumi fall in star-crossed love. Rumi must learn to accept and love herself for who she is while Jinu is trying to work through a lot of well-deserved bad karma. But he’s not so bad himself. Awww... Out here on the K-pop tip I don’t know much so my expectations (and hopes) were more for something in perhaps an EDM vein, rhythmic and seductive sexy and romantic for the dancefloor, but as I should have known what I got was a lot of pop warbling about self-help self-esteem self-care, with selfies for the fans etc. Huntrix’s songs are explicitly written in the sessions we see as messages of hope and strength for their fans. Awww... The animation does not fool around with these demons—I can believe they would be quite scary for little kids. Some 13 minutes are reserved for the end credits and include live-action shots of the main voice artists singing and carrying on—it’s as fun as the best parts of the rest of it, so think about sticking around awhile. If the music would have been better (the Saja Boys are no better than Huntrix but there’s no reason to expect them to be), and the story a little less on-the-nose inspirational, KPop Demon Hunters might have been something special. As it is it’s reasonably entertaining, not that I mean to damn with faint praise.

28 Years Later (2025)

It hasn’t been quite 28 years since the 28 / Later franchise opened for business by director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland in 2002, with 28 Days Later (the first sequel, 28 Weeks Later, came in 2007). Boyle and Garland brought some innovations to the zombie movies (will they never die?) that I wasn’t always on board with. Their zombies can outrun anything short of the Flash, for example, as opposed to George Romero’s more classic lumbering, relentless creatures. It hasn’t been quite 28 years, but frankly I’m not sure, without refresher looks at those first two, what is new here and what is continuity. There are slower zombies, called “Slow-Lows,” that crawl on their bellies and snack on earthworms. There are the fast zombies. And—new with this installment, I think—there is an evolutionary development in zombie-land that human survivors call “Alphas.” They are fast, strong, and big—like eight or ten feet tall—and look something like a Norse god or maybe Conan the Barbarian. The story here is about a 12-year-old boy, Spike (Alfie Williams), mentored by his father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) to hunt zombies. He is more concerned at the moment about his mother Isla (Jodie Comer), who is sick, no one knows with what and there are no doctors. They live in a small community on an island off the coast of the British mainland, reachable at low tide via a causeway (a neat visual and suspense device also used well in both the 1989 TV movie The Woman in Black and its 2012 remake). The UK has been overtaken by zombies but the rest of Europe has worked out keeping them confined there (a different flavor of Brexit). Spike hears of a doctor on the mainland who is supposedly insane—Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes)—and sets out with his mother to get her cured. I wasn’t really convinced by the family dynamic here, or maybe I’m complaining because it seemed lifted in many ways from the TV series The Walking Dead. Not surprisingly, 28 Years Later is full of great shots and it entertains some interesting ideas—the developing zombie fauna, reproductive speculation (including an amazing childbirth scene), and a wandering tribe of punk-rock zombie assassins. A lot of 28 Years Later is world-building, figuring out how things work in this world and universe. It’s lucid but very busy. Its sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, was shot at the same time and released early this year. The sequel is written by Garland but directed by Nia DaCosta (Hedda, the 2021 Candyman). The ending here is wide open for the sequel and thus 28 Years Later feels unfinished or more like the way TV works now with chains of episodes. Maybe Boyle—or perhaps Garland—has big plans for what’s to come. 28 Years Later and possibly its sequel are worthy additions to the franchise, though, as I say, I have my reservations about the franchise at large.

Eddington (2025)

The range of opinion is wide on the latest from director and writer Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar, Beau Is Afraid). Filmmaker John Waters put Eddington at the top of his list of the best pictures of 2025, while movie critic Glenn Kenny put it last on his list, in the category “No Cigar” by itself with the brushoff comment, “Piss off, MAGA boy.” I’m somewhere between. It’s a mixed bag. It’s basically the Covid pandemic as viewed and experienced from the small town of Eddington, New Mexico, but it’s a satire so lots of things are exaggerated. Eddington is only tangentially related to the disease, to Black Lives Matter protests, to QAnon, or even to masking. But it’s all here. Mandates required masks in public, as I’m sure you recall—the main virtue of Eddington is the way it brings 2020 back so vividly. Masks are an ongoing issue here and, yes, the picture is sympathetic to people who won’t wear them. “There’s no Covid here,” Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix) keeps saying, although he develops a terrible cough after an altercation with a homeless person who probably is infected. Sheriff Cross is in a dispute with the mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who is working with shady tech bros to open a massive data center that he promises will bring jobs to the town. Sheriff Cross decides to run for mayor against Garcia’s reelection bid, dresses up his rig like the one Robert Altman used in Nashville for the Replacement Party candidate Hal Phillip Walker, and cruises the town speechifying through the loudspeaker as he goes. Like Aster’s last picture, Beau Is Afraid, Eddington is long and muddled. It's trying to stuff everything it can into it from 2020. The burgeoning hunt for pedophiles under influence of QAnon, for example. Sheriff Cross’s staff of three includes a Black man (Michael Ward), which leads to lots of easy plot developments. At least Beau had a great first hour before going off the rails. Eddington has isolated impressive points, such as Phoenix’s performance. He’s great as he always is, maybe even a little better here, disappearing into the role. The white-kid protesters are treated as robotic woke-spewing morons. One tries to explain himself to his parents, saying they’re “changing institutions, dismantling whiteness, and not allowing whiteness to reassert itself.” Certainly from the MAGA point of view that’s how the Left in this country can look, whereas the MAGA-friendly types here are arguably more down to earth. Maybe I’m talking myself into not liking this one. It didn’t give me that much to take away. Approach with caution.

My Mom Jayne (2025)

Until this documentary came along, I did not know that Mariska Hargitay, flinty star of the longest-running live-action TV series of all time, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, is a daughter of Jayne Mansfield. Jayne Mansfield, of course, relegated to sex kitten status, was one of the midcentury “Three M’s,” the so-called blonde bombshells of the ‘50s and ‘60s, with Marilyn Monroe and Mamie Van Doren. Hargitay directed this picture, a patient and loving unraveling of the many complexities associated with Mansfield, her career, and her family and loves. Mansfield had her first of five children at the age of 16. She had wanted to be a Hollywood star for most of her life by then. After winning a series of beauty pageants she finally made it there at the age of 21. Hargitay interviews her brothers and her older sisters, visits storage units that have been left untouched for decades, and peels back the layers of family secrets, eventually uncovering a major one that involves Hargitay herself, Mansfield’s fourth child. She was named Mariska but Mansfield insisted on calling her Maria for most of the few years left to her—it’s a clue to this labyrinthine past. Full disclosure, I’ve never been a fan of Law & Order: SVU, which I think largely just leans into outrage about sex crimes to the point of monotony. A lot of my problems there persisted here as Hargitay often feels like she’s performing in her seething Olivia Benson mode. There’s no doubt, however, about her bravely facing the headwinds of heartache and family agony, and in many ways her tough detective mode is a perfect fit for this investigation. As with Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield was no dumb blonde, but was frustrated by the limitations, long-term as well as immediate, of the sex dolly roles that amounted to most of her opportunities. I still love the 1956 movie The Girl Can’t Help It (more for Little Richard and the other rock ‘n’ rollers) but have always found Mansfield hard to watch, it’s such a parade of stereotypes and cliché, pious about her maternal instincts, openly bug-eyed about her boobs. Hargitay skillfully if somewhat ham-handedly restores Mansfield’s dignity here. She doesn’t dwell much on Mansfield’s worst roles or the grotesque details of her death. She reaches out to and includes all the children and extended family of Mansfield, including Hargitay’s stepmother Ellen Hargitay as well as Mansfield’s friends and husbands still alive and she drenches it all in a lot of love. I would say it’s better than any episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, but that’s a low bar for me. Good one especially for fans of SVU and/or Jayne Mansfield.

The History of Sound (2025)

This period romance plays around with a few interesting ideas but the whole of it unfortunately ends up somewhat muddled. It’s 1917—at first the picture acts like it’s going to be a coming-of-age story about a musical prodigy, Lionel Worthing (primarily Paul Mescal as the younger version, with Chris Cooper finishing up as Lionel’s older self). Lionel’s musical abilities later seem to be merely the explanation for his worldly mobility, with scholarships and good jobs. As an adolescent Lionel studies at the Boston Conservatory, where he meets David White (Josh O’Connor). Two lonely gay guys, they soon bond over folk music. Lionel is native to Kentucky and knows lots of material from his family and neighbors. David knows lots of material too—he has been on numerous song-collecting jaunts, making field recordings. And it’s not long before Lionel and David are embarked on a song-collecting expedition of their own, with a box of wax cylinders in tow, in Maine. Maine struck me as an unlikely destination for such a venture but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility and in any event avoids distractions by keeping things race-neutral, if that was the intent. The picture reminded me of Brokeback Mountain in the way Lionel and David have such stark mixed feelings about their love affair. Lionel seems to be more accepting of his sexuality but David is obviously uncomfortable. And it’s not just the sex. David has lots of ongoing internal issues that he doesn’t talk about much. The History of Sound dodges around its many cliché traps and is often neatly done, with surprises and various wrenching turns. It finishes with a Joy Division B-side playing on the soundtrack, “Atmosphere.” How you get from Alan Lomax to Ian Curtis is something you might be wondering, and will likely continue wondering. For all the folk music and country blues that dot the soundtrack here, director Oliver Hermanus and writer Ben Shattuck (from two of his short stories) keep moving us beyond what we think we’re going to get. It’s not exactly coming-of-age and it’s not exactly ethnomusicology. It plays a somewhat tiresome fan dance with those elements before settling on further confusion. But the performances are good and the characters felt acutely real to me in many ways. I wanted to like this one more than I did—some parts are very good.

Sorry, Baby (2025)

Eva Victor wrote the screenplay, directs, and stars in this gentle story of Agnes, a 28-year-old student and professor of literature. IMDb summarizes, “Something bad happened to Agnes. But life goes on—for everyone around her, at least.” Wikipedia calls Sorry, Baby an “independent black comedy-drama,” noting that it debuted at Sundance earlier this year. I don’t know about the comedy part, black or otherwise. The bad thing—I don’t think this is a spoiler, it occurs early in the picture—is that her grad school advisor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi), shows a great deal of interest in her work but later lures her to his home and rapes her. The extremes of violence seem to be limited, but Agnes is sensitive and it’s a deeply troubling, traumatic event. The way she describes it it’s not so much the physical act as her entire loss of confidence in herself that hurts most. Was Decker just praising and flattering her for sex? Sorry, Baby might be a kind of challenge to those with less empathy because it makes it so easy to say or think things like “that wasn’t so bad.” Agnes’s resulting depression and withdrawal from social interactions, however—it’s pretty bad, though doubtless some will call it an overreaction. But Decker does quit his job at the college and move away soon after. It’s possible the assault was worse than we think. Agnes spent hours at his place though she shows little sign of being injured. She tells her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie) about it within 24 hours. Lydie takes her to a hospital and helps her report it to the police. But the reaction tends toward indifference and minimizing, especially once authorities learn she bathed soon after. It’s another sad portrait of the way women who report rapes tend to be treated. Ever since the incident Agnes has been reclusive, holing up in her isolated place in the country and mostly keeping to herself. But she does get some good news—she’s been hired for a tenure-track position at the college where she studied, in the New England region where she wants to live, she finds a kitten and adopts it, and she connect with her neighbor Gavin (Lucas Hedges) in an odd but not apparently unhealthy sexual relationship. Agnes, and Sorry, Baby itself, is almost too withdrawn, you almost miss that she is even there, crisis and all. Yet it might be good practice for empathy. I had to keep telling myself to stop minimizing what happened to Agnes and what she is going through. I felt like an unfeeling beast, not taking it seriously enough. It might be good practice for you too—although I can’t be entirely sure that was ever Victor’s intent.

Black Bag (2025)

Like most spy thriller movies, I’m sorry to say, excellent or otherwise, Black Bag lost me with its many security levels, espionage protocols, and high-tech gizmos up the ying-yang. I got this far: There’s a leak at the UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). Counterintelligence officer George T. Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) has been put in charge of uncovering it. There are five chief suspects, two couples and Woodhouse’s wife Kathryn (Cate Blanchett). A husband’s suspicion of his wife is a Hitchcockian kind of premise that rarely fails to raise plot stakes quite high. George invites the handful of suspects to a collegial dinner party, dopes the food so their inhibitions are lowered, and plays psychological games looking for insight. He may or may not get much, but violence erupts as infidelities are confirmed. In general, Kathryn is starting to look better for it. Common sense about such plots also makes her more likely for the sake of drama. But that might be misdirection too as down the rabbit hole we go, the investigation deepening. Kathryn is seen meeting (via surreptitious satellite access) with a mysterious Russian in Zurich for reasons unclear. There’s also a mysterious Swiss bank account with millions of pounds in it. By the time of the second dinner party, I was pretty well lost, although, like keeping an eye focused on one cup in the shell game, I followed Kathryn’s movements and interactions closely. However, I still can’t say if I was right—partly because ensuing events became complicated and confusing for me, and partly because I’m dutybound anyway to withhold spoilers. Even mystified as I was, Black Bag was zippy and entertaining. Fassbender disappears into his role in his usual uncanny way, and Blanchett struts the frame and holds attention any time she is in it, as usual. The supporting cast is great too, notably Marisa Abela as Clarissa, one of the suspects. Director Steven Soderbergh has an affinity for this kind of pseudo-intellectual cat and mouse thriller, often involving spies and even more often complicated plots that people like me have a hard time following, even if we’re enjoying the way it rolls. I enjoyed the way Black Bag rolls even when I lost track of who was designing what on whom. It’s good to see Soderbergh coming out of retirement to make a couple of stalwart, flashy ones the past year or two, Black Bag and Presence. Good stuff.

Superman (2025)

I heard a lot of good word of mouth about the latest Superman movie, directed and cowritten by James Gunn, who in 2022 was put in charge of a reboot of the DC Comics film franchise (his “cowriters” here are the original Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who died last century but, as with Bob Kane and the Batman movies, must have finally won an ironclad lawsuit). The word of mouth is warranted—the movie is well worth seeing for any fan of Superman and maybe even for those, like me, now good and sick and tired of superhero movies. Gunn has an intriguing resume. He is also responsible for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy movies and, back in 2010, Super, with Rainn Wilson and then-Ellen Page, which might be the greatest superhero comic book parody ever made. Gunn’s tongue is not as firmly in his cheek with Superman, but the picture is so lighthearted as to be perfectly refreshing, notably with its use of the super-dog Krypto, who is playful here like a dog but has those good old Kryptonian superpowers too. If this dog ever catches a car, woe to the car. Speaking of catching, this boy-scout Superman (David Corenswet) is also caught saving a squirrel in one throwaway scene. That’s how tender his heart is. Superheroes are referred to in this universe as “metahumans” and they are not always trusted, lifting a page from the mutants thing. Superman is set up by enemies as an alien invader and people start grumbling about him. Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult) has a lot to do with it, appearing as a transparently Stephen Miller type, raving about alien immigrants. Pretty obvious, but OK, I will take it in this day and age. We also get a handful of extra superheroes, associated with a quasi-core to the Justice League calling themselves the ”Justice Gang”—the Green Lantern with a blond haircut like Moe’s from the Three Stooges (Nathan Fillion), a version of Hawk Girl (Isabela Merced), Mr. Terrific, new to me (Edi Gathegi), and Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan). At the very least it’s an odd but deeply informed view of the DC universe, such as it is. Another key twist on the usual is finding out early that Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) knows Clark Kent is Superman and they are basically boyfriend / girlfriend. There’s also a pretty good joke about Superman thinking he is authentically punk-rock. I dread whatever comes next because that usually means weighing down all the best stuff with unlikely explanations and doing the continuity dance for the sake of carping fans. Like the 1978 Superman, this one can be thoroughly enjoyed on its own terms and all sequels approached with caution. Better to look at this one more than once—it’s that good.

The Ugly Stepsister (2025)

I’m still not sure what to think of the fantasy subgenre that updates fairy tales with modern sensibilities, usually done in the horror mode. Other than Angela Carter’s exercises in this realm (her treatment of the Little Red Riding Hood tale is a near-perfect short story trilogy), I haven’t liked a lot of what I’ve seen, which admittedly is not much. This Norwegian-language swipe at Cinderella has a batch of surprise switch-ups to the original story and way too much body horror for my taste. I admit I like the idea of seeing fairy tales roughed up like this, but I was looking at The Ugly Stepsister through my fingers for minutes at a time. I like the way the story is approached here, basically offering up its twists in a prequel to the original. By the time one of these stepsisters has earned the name “Cinderella,” the prequel narrative had overturned most of my expectations. The nominal ugly stepsister, Elvira (Lee Myren), seems sympathetic at first. She never seemed ugly to me but most people in the movie think she is, starting with her mother, who subjects her to plastic surgery procedures such as they existed in the time and place of the movie, which I’m assuming is approximately Middle Ages Europe. It’s all about winning the prince at an upcoming ball. There’s a nose job involving precise work with a chisel, enhanced eyelashes (couldn’t watch it), and resizing her foot to fit a slipper. For the latter, I spoke aloud to my screen and begged her not to do it. There’s also some extraordinary business with a tapeworm. Elvira is such a punching bag of circumstances here that it starts to verge on comic, like her regular lusty screams of pain. I was kind of sorry this one decided to go jokey, but I also have to admit it was relief from a lot of the unpleasant action. Notwithstanding the unpleasant action, much here is lighthearted fun. At the ball where the prince will choose his lover, the whole thing is more like a variety show or beauty pageant. Elvira’s dance number is straight out of Busby Berkeley and/or Edgar Degas. The story stays focused on Elvira, even as, in the background, Cinderella wins the prince and presumably embarks on living happily ever after. What’s left for Elvira appears to be the opposite of living happily ever after. In the end the crows get the tapeworm and Elvira and her sister Alma flee.