Year: 2025

December 19, 2025 · Watch the official trailer

How music impacts people’s lives has frequently been the foundation of movies, both in traditional Broadway adaptations and in the more recent songbook musical biopic trend.

Best known for his infectious sing-along anthem “Sweet Caroline,” Neil Diamond has long been an inspiration for a certain segment of music lovers, and writer/director Craig Brewer’s dramedy “Song Sung Blue” lives firmly in the notion that Diamond is far more than a one-hit wonder.

Based on the 2008 documentary of the same name, “Song Sung Blue” follows a pair of Milwaukee-area impersonators whose own love is forged through collaboration, performing a Neil Diamond tribute act called Lightning and Thunder.

It feels inevitable for a theatrical songbook dramedy to star Hugh Jackman. Known for his charismatic, charming, and at times over-the-top theatrical turns in musicals on both stage and screen, Jackman’s presence here as Mike becomes a grounding element for “Song Sung Blue,” anchoring the film in a passion for life that feels rich and wholesome.

Jackman is less overtly vulnerable than one might expect for a character who is, by his own admission, twenty years sober, though the fragility of his humanity emerges through other aspects of Mike’s deteriorating health.

He revels in the frequent, intense close-ups that Brewer places him in, allowing audiences to see the vulnerability Mike refuses to show to others – subtle asides shared directly with the viewer rather than the characters around him.

His on-screen chemistry with Kate Hudson is light and affable, though the screenplay struggles to fully build Mike and Claire’s romantic bond beyond a peripheral, shared determination to succeed as musicians.

While Jackman may serve as the front man of the duo, it is Hudson who truly shines here, delivering a performance as a depressed Midwestern mother seeking to reinvigorate her life through music.

Her work brings an emotional grounding to the film that elevates it beyond the familiarity of its musical framework and gives the story its most resonant human dimension.

“Song Sung Blue” takes several risks in its storytelling, particularly in its second act, leaning heavily on Hudson’s ability to pivot emotionally at a moment’s notice. While not all of the narrative devices Brewer employs to chart Claire’s individual journey fully land, Hudson shines brightly through each of them, carrying the film’s most volatile emotional shifts with confidence and conviction.

Outside of the central relationship, the film’s strongest supporting work comes from Claire’s family, particularly her children. Ella Anderson stands out as Rachel, delivering a quietly observant performance that gives the character more emotional presence than Brewer’s screenplay fully develops.

What “Song Sung Blue” quietly shifts from is the simplicity of a jukebox musical to the more complex emotions that haunt its two protagonists.

While trailers lean heavily on the familiarity of Neil Diamond’s music and the promise of an easygoing musical dramedy, Brewer allows moments of melancholy, frustration, and emotional stillness to linger, particularly as the characters confront the limits of reinvention and the distance between aspiration and fulfillment.

These tonal shifts don’t always land seamlessly, but they give the film a weightier emotional texture than its promotional framing suggests.

Neil Diamond’s music, as interpreted by Lightning and Thunder, is used far more to shape the film’s emotional and narrative tone than in most recent music-driven films.

Rather than leaning into the maximalist, greatest-hits showcase approach of something like “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “Song Sung Blue” pushes closer to the framework of “A Star Is Born,” allowing songs to begin as performance before quietly transforming into transitions that carry the story forward.

Brewer is less interested in staging music as a crowd-pleasing interruption than in using it as a storytelling bridge, letting performance bleed into montage and character movement instead of halting the film for applause.

While Hudson recently earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy, that momentum is unlikely to carry over to the Oscars, where “Song Sung Blue” appears poised to be left out entirely.

As a musical dramedy rooted in a true story, “Song Sung Blue” draws much of its appeal from the emotional pull of Neil Diamond’s music, using those songs as a shared language of memory and connection.

Although its shifting tones and uneven narrative structure prevent it from fully cohering, the film’s warmth and sincerity – carried capably by Hudson and Jackman and grounded in familiar tunes – make “Song Sung Blue” worth heading to the movies for this holiday season.

December 19, 2025 · Watch the official trailer

Spectacle in cinema can be thrilling, innovative, and exhilarating, especially when blown up on the biggest screens possible. It defines what a cinematic blockbuster can and should be.

Yet spectacle for the sake of spectacle – whether achieved through practical effects or computer-generated imagery – risks losing the artistry that gives big moments their power, leaving audiences to wonder what the point was in the first place.

James Cameron’s original “Avatar” was groundbreaking in 2009, reimagining large-scale world-building in ways mainstream cinema had rarely attempted. With the franchise’s third entry, “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” arriving this holiday season, that once-bold creative vision feels markedly less inventive, raising the uncomfortable question of whether the series is now continuing more out of obligation than inspiration.

“Fire and Ash” picks up directly after the events of “Avatar: The Way of Water,” following Jake, Neytiri, and their family as they grieve the loss of their eldest son while remaining in hiding from Quaritch and the returning Sky People, who continue their efforts to destroy Pandora, the only world the Na’vi have ever known.

A meandering three-hour-plus extension that often feels like “Avatar 2.5,” the film introduces a new faction of Na’vi known as the Ash Clan, an apocalyptic group driven by a desire to cleanse the world through fire.

While the concept is initially intriguing, Cameron ultimately relegates the group to the margins, keeping them subservient to the ongoing Sully–Quaritch rivalry and doing little to meaningfully expand the franchise’s mythology.

Sam Worthington once again delivers a largely monotonous, mechanical performance as Jake, a former Marine turned Na’vi warrior now defined almost entirely by stoic paternal duty. The rigid, procedural quality of Worthington’s performance mirrors the film’s paint-by-numbers screenplay, leaving little room for emotional variation or growth.

Zoë Saldaña fares better as Neytiri, bringing genuine feeling and rawness to a grieving mother, though Cameron shows limited interest in fully exploring the emotional stakes he establishes for her character. Much of Saldaña’s expressive work is ultimately dulled by the heavy layers of CGI separating the audience from her performance.

Without the presence of Spider, the film’s lone consistent human element, “Fire and Ash” would nearly feel like a fully animated feature. As the franchise continues to move further away from its 2009 roots, the human perspective that once grounded Pandora’s spectacle becomes increasingly peripheral.

Cameron’s recurring themes of corporate greed, environmental destruction, and communal responsibility grow more diluted with each expansion of the world, functioning less as moral inquiry than as narrative fuel. The film’s fixation on family begins to ring hollow, recalling the way the “Fast & Furious” franchise has stretched that ideal thinner with every sequel.

Had “Fire and Ash” been released a decade ago, its sheer scale might have felt more visually arresting and easier to justify at its length. Even in IMAX, however, the film no longer carries the same sense of awe amid a modern blockbuster landscape saturated with expensive, style-over-substance spectacle.

The film’s visuals often insist upon themselves, as though audiences are meant to be impressed simply because this is “Avatar,” rather than because Cameron has done something genuinely special, innovative and new that warrants such reverence.

While Cameron avoids the flat, murky darkness that plagues many CGI-heavy releases, the addition of ash-filled whites, reds, and oranges does little to distinguish this entry visually from “The Way of Water.” For all its technical polish, the film breaks little new ground.

Cameron’s reputation alone may be enough to carry “Fire and Ash” into awards consideration, primarily in technical categories, and the expanded Best Picture field could allow it to linger on the periphery of the conversation. Still, it is difficult to view the film as a serious contender.

Ardent fans of the franchise – or viewers eager to experience large-scale spectacle on the biggest screen possible – may want to seek it out this holiday season, though there is little urgency in waiting to catch what ultimately amounts to half a movie’s worth of storytelling stretched across more than three hours of runtime until “Avatar: Fire and Ash” arrives on Disney+ later this spring.

December 6, 2025 · Watch the official trailer

Cinema that forces an audience to feel deeply and richly can be a powerful catharsis or completely backfire, depending on how successful the filmmaker can make one live in the emotional world they create.

Chloé Zhao, known for her Oscar-winning “Nomadland” and widely panned Marvel film “Eternals,” has the pedigree to do the former and the track record to do the latter, which makes her latest drama all the more intriguing.

An adaptation of the Maggie O’Farrell novel of the same name, Zhao enters new territory with “Hamnet,” a quietly ethereal, raw drama about family and the overwhelming power of both love and loss. While not overtly addressing him by name, the film follows a young William Shakespeare as he falls for a strangely independent woman named Agnes, and the love and family they develop set the stage for some of the playwright’s most powerful works.

Walking into a cinema for a film about the Bard, viewers don’t expect to be captivated by a performance that has almost nothing to do with Shakespeare himself. Jessie Buckley takes the role of Anne Hathaway – Shakespeare’s wife and mother to his three children – to astonishing heights with a turn that is naturally radiant when it needs to be, joyful and prescient when it wants to be, and wonderfully tragic at all the right moments.

There is so much vibrancy and emotion piercing through Buckley’s eyes and trembling off her quivering lips that it envelops an entire world of romance and tragedy, far greater than what could’ve appeared on the stage, on the written page, and absolutely everything more than what could have been in Zhao’s vision for “Hamnet” as a film.

The ability Buckley has to emote the joys and horrors of Agnes’s life with overwhelming respect and compassion yet never being too much is magnetic and at times overwhelms and captures the entire world of “Hamnet,” to the detriment of the other performers on screen. What Buckley is able to pull off here is a towering achievement for a performer that cements her as one of the generation’s best.

Paul Mescal bounds in and out of the world of “Hamnet” with both an exuberant passion for life and art yet a blind unawareness of the consequences of his actions. It’s a frustrating yet rich portrait of a man seemingly at odds with himself, burdened with a glorious purpose he doesn’t really know how to harness and can’t explain, isolating him from those he cares for.

At times, the dynamic chemistry between Buckley and Mescal is exuberant and intense, with Zhao allowing her camera frame to linger on the subtle flirtations that lead to William and Agnes’s coupling. Yet both do an exceptional job as the distance grows – the physical and emotional distance grows – between the couple and slowly peels back the layers of both characters, highlighting how the presence of each in the other’s lives has truly changed them for the better.⸻

Powerful and emotional, audiences will leave rejuvenated and yet emotionally overwhelmed and drained if they are able to fully buy into the cinema on display here. “Hamnet” takes its power not from bold, brash strokes of auteurist vision, but in the quiet majesty of nature, fueled by raw emotions.

“Hamnet” is far and away Zhao’s best film – even despite winning a Best Picture award for “Nomadland.” The razor-thin balance of tone is masterful, and there is a clear inspiration both in staged adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays and in the broad visual palette of a distinctly Terrence Malick-like aesthetic that helps cement Zhao’s vision for her artistry.

Very much a piece in production design, there is a dramatically vibrant, postmodern visual tapestry created by Zhao and her team that gives a wholly lived-in yet otherworldly aesthetic to “Hamnet” that leaps off the big screen.

What makes “Hamnet” exceptional is the precise attention to detail in every frame—from the rich, lived-in sets and production design to the evocative, Terrence Malick–inspired cinematography that frames the melancholic world of the film. Audiences are able to absorb an ethereal natural color palette reflective of Agnes’s upbringing, one that establishes an emotional mood from the outset.

The costuming is understated yet refined, grounding each character in a world that feels both authentic and delicately shaped by their inner lives. And Zhao’s camera, which rarely moves, allows viewers to linger in the highs and lows of Agnes and Will’s lives together and apart, letting the emotional contours of their relationship unfold with quiet, resonant clarity.

“Hamnet” is expected to be a major player come awards season, and a virtual lock for Best Picture, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay, and several technical categories. With Zhao and Mescal as strong contenders for Best Directing and Best Supporting Actor nominations, respectively.

Given the wide array of international films expected to also be in contention, and the strength of Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” “Hamnet” may not win as many awards as it is nominated for, although it is unlikely that another actress will rise to the same level of frontrunner status that Buckley has established here.

Beautifully bittersweet and exceptionally well acted, “Hamnet” is without question one of the year’s best films, regardless of genre, and something wholly deserving of the widespread critical acclaim it has received.

Cinephiles interested in seeing a celebrated auteur delve into deeper, richer emotional territory should race to theaters to witness this exceptional piece of artwork come to life. Zhao captures the tender, painful space between love and loss with such quiet honesty that “Hamnet” lingers long after it ends, a beautifully resonant reminder of why her work continues to matter.

November 28, 2025 · Watch the official trailer

Life isn’t an endless series of choices, big and small, that shape one’s destiny and determine the path they will take.

The endless possibilities of what a life could be often create a sliding-doors “what if,” full of longing and regret as people look back on the decisions they made as a microcosm of what their life was, is, and could have been.

Such existential questions are frequently at the core of cinematic narratives—especially for actors and filmmakers in the later stages of their careers—as these films become a metatextual reflection or treatise on their own life’s work.

While director Noah Baumbach still has plenty of movies left to make, it’s this key thought exercise that shapes the worldview of his latest film, “Jay Kelly,” which has been in select theaters over the past month and is set to debut on Netflix this Friday.

With Oscar-winning actor George Clooney as the titular character, “Jay Kelly” follows an older actor on the precipice of becoming an empty-nester, whose reunion with an old classmate sets him off on an international midlife crisis of sorts as Jay seeks to find who he is in a world where everyone sees him only as the roles he plays.

Clooney’s involvement here strikingly aligns with the metatextual nature of Baumbach’s film, as audiences will often transpose Clooney the man over Jay Kelly the character and it’s clear that Clooney himself has put a lot of thought into the questions his character faces.

It feels almost effortless for him to reach a level of introspection and self-reflection authentically, and he truly shines in the film’s quieter moments, which allow the actor to sit in the moments Jay has brought upon himself. This part of “Jay Kelly” – the overly sentimental and melancholic side – is where the film reaches its heights and becomes a thoroughly engaging portrait of a conflicted man.

Yet the contrivances that Baumbach thrusts upon the narrative in order to achieve these moments of poignant sentimentality have neither the comedic spark nor the dramatic nuance to maintain audience interest.

Even Adam Sandler, who is more than solid as Jay’s longtime manager Ron, isn’t given the right amount of character development, as there’s simply too much going on in the orbit of “Jay Kelly” for anyone to get close to a fully defined supporting role.

Talented character actors like Laura Dern, Emily Mortimer – who also co-wrote the film – and Thaddea Graham are largely wasted as members of Jay’s entourage. Their scenes orbit Jay without ever fully shaping or challenging him, and their presences, while engaging in brief flashes, are ultimately underwritten. These characters feel more like extensions of the film’s Hollywood satire than meaningful emotional counterweights, leaving the ensemble broad but not deep.

Isolated moments with Jay’s family offer glimpses of emotional authenticity, but they often feel disconnected from the metatextual Hollywood motif that dominates the film’s first half.

Baumbach tries to quickly breeze through decades of generational trauma and absent parenthood through disjointed, disparate scenes between Jay and his daughters — played by Riley Keough and Grace Edwards — as well as Jay’s own father issues in a rushed subplot when his dad, who is unnamed in the film but portrayed by Stacy Keach, is flown out to help bridge the third act into its pensive conclusion.

Baumbach has Jay essentially walk through his own past – watching younger versions of himself in casting rooms and on recreated movie sets – to reinforce the emotional struggles he’s feeling in the present.

While the effect is striking from a visual perspective, its execution is haphazard from a narrative standpoint. It plays as too much show versus tell, and it pushes the worldview of “Jay Kelly” beyond what this limited story is able to achieve.

Although Baumbach’s track record and the film’s Hollywood-centric narrative make “Jay Kelly” obvious Oscar bait, there’s ultimately not enough momentum for it to become a major player. It may scrape together attention in categories like Best Picture or Original Screenplay, but Clooney and Sandler face fields far too competitive for either to make a meaningful run.

Casual audiences will likely feel drawn to “Jay Kelly” thanks to its easy accessibility on Netflix and Clooney’s charming, introspective turn, though the film’s uneven structure may keep it from resonating long after the credits. For a story built on the weight of choices and the lives that might have been, “Jay Kelly” itself feels caught between versions of the film it could be – revealing flashes of something deeper without ever fully stepping into them.

November 21, 2025 · Watch the official trailer

Whenever a film doesn’t live up to audience expectations, it’s always disappointing, yet there’s something extra bittersweet when a genuinely high-quality film sees its inevitable encore completely ruin the momentum.

Whatever good will director Jon M. Chu built with his Oscar-nominated 2024 musical “Wicked” – which extended and chronicled the first act of the smash-hit Broadway musical – is completely and utterly destroyed by frustratingly poor decisions in its 2025 follow-up, “Wicked: For Good.”

Debuting this past weekend in theaters at almost twice the running time of the second half of the Broadway show, “For Good” picks up almost immediately after Elphaba leaves Oz in disgust at the Wizard’s actions, inciting a series of events that are meant to tie in classic “Wizard of Oz” imagery – the tornado, the shoes, the girl from Kansas – while steering the story toward the inevitabilities audiences have been waiting for.

Chu’s direction of “For Good” is so strangely, bizarrely inept that it outright makes both of its lead performers look worse from a visual standpoint.

Everything audiences may have loved about the original “Wicked” seems to be tossed onto the trash heap, as the bright, saccharine-sweet aesthetic of Oz Chu created to dazzle viewers in 2024 has been muddled into harsh shadows, upsetting grays, and deep blacks that literally hide characters’ faces in key musical moments.

It leaves an already difficult-to-see Cynthia Erivo – hidden under heavy makeup – almost completely unrecognizable. Any sort of magical trick to produce even basic front lighting is tossed aside, and a film franchise known for its theatrical production design is instead overly slathered in CGI.

And while “For Good” may not be the worst movie of 2025, it is without question the worst-shot movie of the year, with inexplicable, inexcusable decisions made by Chu and cinematographer Alice Brooks, resulting in an unequivocally lesser follow-up to the 2024 smash.

Shockingly, “For Good” simply isn’t fun, and the clearest evidence of that is the muting of Ariana Grande’s Elle Woods–esque turn as Glinda the Good Witch.

The cheery affability and sly snark that made her a scene-stealing presence – and a legitimate Best Supporting Actress contender – in the 2024 film becomes mired and bogged down in angst, dimming her light completely. There’s a dystopian heaviness to the morality-play framing of “For Good” that makes the entire project less interesting to watch, and in the process sidelines Grande’s ability to offer any levity in moments that desperately need it.

Chu’s insistence on isolating performers for their solo songs largely ruins the kinetic energy that both the Broadway musical and the first film had, though it occasionally works for Grande, especially in the newly added song “The Girl in the Bubble.”

Erivo, on the other hand, is even further saddled by Chu’s inability to put her in a position to succeed, as the expressive anguish her Elphaba feels in several of the musical’s rich songs from Stephen Schwartz is played straight to camera on a green screen and loses the emotional weight it might have had if Erivo were singing to another performer.

Audiences are going to “For Good” to hear iconic songs staged eighteen-plus feet high, and yet the urgency that the dynamic musical numbers had in the original is completely absent in the follow-up. There isn’t an aerobatic, captivating number from Jonathan Bailey like “Dancing Through Life,” nor the quirky, combative duets Grande and Erivo faced off in with “What Is This Feeling?” or “Popular.”

Even the titular song of the film, while majestically sung by two incredible performers, is largely hidden and requires no visuals to feel the emotion of the characters.

Erivo is ultimately more hurt by these choices than Grande because Glinda arrives in “For Good” as a more fully realized character from the original film. Consequently, Erivo’s Elphaba is left without a clear emotional through-line, and that lack of motivation shows in the performance outside of the musical numbers. Without strong scene partners, purposeful staging, or coherent dramatic stakes, she’s forced to play broad emotions in a vacuum.

The film’s supporting characters, who were given ample time for development in the nearly three-hour original, feel completely empty here, with both Bailey and Ethan Slater given no opportunity to be successful.

“For Good” relies far too heavily on a less entertaining turn from Jeff Goldblum as the Wizard and a horribly miscast Michelle Yeoh to be the film’s antagonists, and yet despite a nearly 140-minute runtime, nothing tangible seems to happen.

Last year’s “Wicked” was nominated for ten Oscars, winning for both costuming and production design, though it seems highly unlikely that “For Good” will come anywhere close to the same level of success. Its production work, while strong in many of the technical categories as a continuation from the original, is so obscured by the directorial and cinematography decisions that it can’t be viewed as a strong contender almost anywhere, despite likely being one of the ten Best Picture nominees.

Ultimately, “For Good” misses the point of “Wicked.”

Chu systematically sucks the lifeblood out of the musical, removing the joy and excitement, drenching the film in darkness like a wet blanket, and leaving a befuddling mess that feels overly hollow and empty.

While viewers will certainly head to the big screen to catch the conclusion to last year’s smash hit, “Wicked: For Good” hasn’t been changed for the better.

November 21, 2025 · Watch the official trailer

Decades of generational trauma bubble quietly beneath the surface of Joachim Trier’s achingly bittersweet “Sentimental Value,” a family drama bathed in cluttered interiors, faded trinkets, and a somber emotional register that never quite allows its characters to come up for air.

Winner of major prizes at Cannes earlier this year, the film arrives stateside carrying the serious awards potential – and the quiet confidence of a filmmaker fully in control of melancholy.

The story follows two sisters, Nora and Agnes, who are still reeling from the recent death of their mother when their long-absent father, Gustav – a celebrated but emotionally distant film director – abruptly reenters their lives. His request that Nora star in his new project becomes the fracture through which years of resentment, longing, and unspoken grief begin to surface.

And yet, for a film titled “Sentimental Value,” Trier’s drama is almost defiantly unsentimental. There’s an emptiness where vulnerability should be, a hollow that lingers between Nora and Gustav, and audiences often feel tossed in the emotional undertow as the film moves from one quietly charged moment to the next.

Renate Reinsve plays Nora as a woman whose incompleteness comes from a deep emotional loss, and from the overwhelming sense that she’s unable to provide herself the kind of life she wants. In a deeply affecting way, Reinsve is able to draw audiences in with eyes that are not sunken yet reflect years of endless sobbing and are constantly on the verge of welling up.

This layers Nora’s character greatly and propels their sisterly bond as Agnes becomes an anchor and source of strength for Nora, yet a constant reminder of Nora’s perceived failures. As Nora, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas does a terrific job of not just playing a stagnant, stoic, one-note character, but someone whose own traumas are far more internalized and further along the path of healing.

Conversely, it almost feels at times as if Stellan Skarsgård is in a separate movie all to himself as Gustav, with Trier thrusting the character into the lives of his daughters for emotional impact while simultaneously examining his own trauma as a secondary subplot. Skarsgård does a terrific job of balancing subtle inner anguish with the bravado of a tortured artist, unwilling – or perhaps unable – to recognize his own flaws and how his absence affected his daughters.

Elle Fanning brings a change-of-pace energy to the film as a famous American actress Gustav chooses to lead his film. And while her performance doesn’t get in the way of the emotional tones Trier aims for, her embodiment of Rachel does have enough stark differences to suggest that Rachel is almost another sister, and indicative of the high-society film world he chose over his family.

Trier employs a subtle structural device – brief flashes of black between scenes – that forces viewers to sit deliberately in the film’s melancholy, letting it seep in rather than wash over. The cinematography is rich but never indulgent, capturing the textures of artistic spaces without calling undue attention to itself.

And the film’s mesmerizing final sequence, a beautiful layering of reality and fiction, blurs the line between Trier’s authorship and Gustav’s, a meta touch that deepens the film’s emotional resonance rather than distracting from it.

Trier does an exceptional job not simply of telegraphing a sense of place through his camera work –which maps the geography of the home with intuitive precision –but of making a clear narrative decision to extend the family house into a character in its own right.

It’s an idea reminiscent of what Robert Zemeckis explored last year in the Tom Hanks–led “Here,” which similarly posited that places can hold memories and imprint themselves on the people who pass through them. But Trier’s far more subtle approach frames that argument with greater emotional nuance, allowing the house’s creaking silences, cluttered corners, and inherited objects to deepen the film’s thematic texture rather than dominate it.

While “Sentimental Value” will be Norway’s submission for Best International Film at the 2026 Academy Awards, a notable portion of the film is in English – particularly the tense, revealing exchanges between Gustav and Rachel – which may ease the viewing experience for American audiences less practiced with subtitles.

Should its momentum hold, the film could be a formidable presence across the Academy’s top categories including Best International Feature, Best Picture, Best Director and Original Screenplay for Trier, Best Actress for Reinsve, Supporting Actor for Skarsgård, and a range of below-the-line craft considerations.

Although “Sentimental Value” may not be widely accessible to cinephiles until perhaps as late as early next year, this arrestingly melancholy family drama is well worth seeking out for art-film lovers simply wanting to find the best films of 2025.

November 17, 2025 · Watch the official trailer

Note: This review was written based on an advanced secret screening earlier this month.

In the afterlife of “Eternity,” the passage of time is simply reflected by backdrops changing outside the window of a hotel room intended to be purgatory. The hollow, ever-changing view outside that hotel window ends up becoming a fitting metaphor for “Eternity” itself — an idea that promises depth and wonder but ultimately reveals how thin and fragile it is up close.

Like the many options offered to Larry and Joan for their eternity destination, there are too many ideas circulating in “Eternity,” but not much after a while, making the movie something cinephiles shouldn’t rush to include in their holiday moviegoing plans.

It’s clear that director David Freyne may have bitten off a bit more than he could chew with “Eternity”, as the wide tonal shifts of the screenplay from Pat Cunnane feel unbalanced and haphazard, especially for an A24 production. There’s a clear vision in the saccharine-sweet visual style of the film and in the defined, nostalgic performances from the trio of leads that show exactly what Freyne was aiming for, but there’s a clunkiness to the execution that’s readily evident on the big screen.

Miles Teller is the epitome of comfort as Larry, a man who has spent over 60 years doing whatever he needs to do to make his wife happy. It feels, from the outside looking in, like he’s trapped in a relationship dynamic between Joan and her first husband that he simply can’t navigate around.

There’s an overly warm, almost classic Dick Van Dyke–era shtick to Teller’s affectation that comes across more sweet and sincere opposite Elizabeth Olsen than it does when he is faced with his romantic rival. Yet the casting of Teller in this role feels awkward and clunky.

While he tries his best, there’s a certain uneasy awkwardness to his performance as Larry that feels disjointed — though it’s unclear whether that comes from his inability to find his way into the role or from lacking direction that fails to guide him into the right emotional space.

Strongest of the trio of leads is Elizabeth Olsen, who brings gravitas and a strong emotional energy to a romantic comedy that certainly doesn’t need it. There’s an energy to her quirky performance as Joan, a woman torn between her two life partners, and her Lucille Ball–esque charm radiates off the screen though it has a tendency to overwhelm both of her co-stars throughout.

For love triangles to truly work, audiences need to be equally invested in all three characters so the pivotal choice has real stakes for the film as a whole. If even one link in that chain falters, the will-they-won’t-they aspect of the narrative falls completely on its face.

It isn’t that the central premise of Eternity doesn’t work because Callum Turner’s performance is bad; rather, it’s that the way his Luke is written — borderline overbearing — paints Turner into a corner he can’t find his way out of. Framing Luke as the long-lost husband whose enduring love knows no time is fine, but how much of the disdain he has for Larry soaks into his relationship with Joan feels excessively callous and not in keeping with the more whimsical elements of the film.

Because eternity in this world construct requires afterlife coordinators, Oscar-winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph and John Early are tasked with keeping this bizarre love triangle on track and pointed toward the forever. Early provides demonstrative sass that brings a lot of the comedic humor, while Randolph propels the film forward with a kinetic energy that overwhelms Teller in their scenes together and sometimes feels tonally different from the rest of the movie altogether though her performance might be the best in the entire film.

Thinking about forever may be a whimsical exercise for a filmmaker to craft a movie around, yet there’s something a touch hollow about “Eternity” that may leave audiences a bit flat-footed this holiday season, as if the film itself is stuck in the same emotional limbo it creates.

While cinephiles may want to add this quirky comedy into their moviegoing habits this Thanksgiving, there’s not quite enough underneath the surface to make it a must-see on the big screen.

November 10, 2025 · Watch the official trailer

Cinephiles who've been watching the films of Guillermo del Toro for years could've seen this coming from a mile away.

Every frame, every rich tapestry and inventive creative decision that the auteur filmmaker has carefully and explicitly crafted over decades of moviemaking has led him towards perhaps his boldest, biggest passion project to date.

Given ultimate creative freedom from his extended partnership with Netflix, del Toro takes his modern Gothic fantastical eye to the world of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” – an epic baroque tale of fathers and sons and existential questions about humanity that make for elegant, breathtaking cinema that becomes moving pictures of art.

Slightly restructuring the original source novel to truly capture the differences between the famed doctor and his creature, del Toro weaves his tale into distinct parts, each anchored by a magnetic lead performance that reimagines the source material yet gives viewers a firm grasp of what makes “Frankenstein” endure.

Key to the film’s success of is the unique duality del Toro brings out in the narrative through the contrasting performances of its two leads.

Oscar Isaac is dynamic, broad, and brash as the relentlessly inquisitive, overzealous Victor Frankenstein, a man imbued with fervent passion for cheating death after the loss of his mother. Though the emotional toils his character suffers at a young age are never fully resolved in the film, Isaac’s gusto combined with pure gravitas create a dynamic, ever-so-slightly exaggerated turn that draws audiences in and breathes life into what could easily become a stagnant piece of movie making.

Conversely, “Priscilla” star Jacob Elordi brings a quiet, emerging humanity to the creature – slowly, methodically, yet subtly evolving his character as the creature learns to communicate and rehabilitate the humanity sown into him from disparate body parts. There is a stark, overly smooth, almost panther-like stride to each intentional physical decision Elordi makes despite heavy prosthetics covering his body, providing a level of depth viewers likely weren’t expecting.

Independently, Isaac and Elordi feel like two men on separate paths, only somewhat coming into contact for key critical moments – halves of the full frame in del Toro’s head.

And while these performers breathe life into fully realized characters, what gives them their grandiose feel is the expansive world building del Toro achieves through collaboration with his talented production team, whose exceptionally immersive, otherworldly set constructions demonstrate complexity, thoughtfulness, and a distinct sense of place.

Each environment that del Toro brings viewers into through cinematographer Dan Laustsen’s lens is literally covered in hundreds of subtle individual details – from oversized batteries to intricately placed scraps of paper and strewn body parts – as this mad scientist strives to bring his creation to life.

Viewers can understand the scale and the weight of each moment through visual design that feels ripped straight from del Toro’s imagination and onto the screen. There’s rich poetry in how costuming, makeup, prosthetics, lighting, cinematography, set dressing, and production design all work in tandem to create an elaborate, intricate piece of craftsmanship.

This somewhat overtly insistent style of moviemaking may feel excessive or grandiose for casual audiences, but fans of fantasy and of del Toro’s overwhelming heart will be captivated by the beauty in the brutality.

As Elizabeth, Mia Goth provides del Toro with the one character altruistically seeking humanity and beauty in broken parts, offering something for Isaac’s Victor to chase and Elordi’s creature to expand his worldview around. She maintains a soft, demure quality that doesn’t distract from the rivalry between creator and creation but rather deepens it.

Any del Toro film is certainly worthy of serious awards consideration on its merits, though crowded fields may push out acting nominations, which is especially disappointing given how Elordi is making a career-best effort as the creature. “Frankenstein” is likely to be a strong contender in numerous craft categories, however, as frontrunner for makeup and production design with its gorgeously Gothic prosthetics and the towering sets that define its world.

It’s unfortunate that a film as visually arresting and technically masterful as “Frankenstein” will largely be seen in the privacy of cinephiles’ homes, since catching the majesty of a del Toro movie on the big screen is the ultimate way to truly appreciate this level of craftsmanship.

While some might find the runtime and pacing a bit languid for their liking, audiences would be well served by spending a couple of hours inside the mind of a master and catching “Frankenstein” by any means necessary.

November 2, 2025 · Watch the official trailer

When a filmmaker allows audiences into the world of the movies they create, it is often a very revealing portrait of their own personal dogmas and psyche.

To say that there isn’t an auteur quite like Yorgos Lanthimos would be an understatement, given the exceptionally eccentric pieces of avant-garde cinema that the Greek filmmaker creates.

The mind behind “The Favourite,” “The Lobster,” and “Poor Things” is back with a truly twisted and bizarre modern tale of conspiracy theory and philosophy with “Bugonia,” his fourth collaboration with two-time Oscar winner Emma Stone.

The film finds Teddy, a loner on the fringe of society, determined to save humanity by kidnapping the CEO of a medical research firm he believes to be an alien. The events that transpire between the two, alongside Teddy’s cousin Don, create a shocking, twisted, yet deeply resonant and cynical look at humanity and the dangers of assuredness.

Because “Bugonia” is written essentially as a three-hander, the limited cast of characters must all deliver pitch-perfect performances in order to make such a dialogue-heavy, strange film successful.

Oscar nominee Jesse Plemons does a remarkable job as the film’s primary protagonist, although he brings just enough of an unreliable narrator quality to the self-assuredness he gives Teddy that audiences remain truly uncertain where they stand until the final moments.

A terrific character actor who is only now getting a chance to shine in larger roles, Plemons is an ideal candidate to blend the lovable, awkward quirks of Teddy’s personality with an overly tanned, mop-headed look and a confidence that wobbles almost to the point of fracture at just the right moments.

What makes “Bugonia” such a special film in its talk-heavy sequences is the precision its performers place on cadence – knowing exactly which words to emphasize and the right amount of time to leave between lines, leaving audiences desperate for the furtherance of the story.

This is especially true in Plemons’s performance opposite newcomer Aiden Delbis, who plays Teddy’s cousin Donnie. The brotherly care and genuine emotion the two feel for each other – though largely unspoken – resonates with every intonation and pause that both performers bring to their scenes together. It’s truly special to see a 19-year-old actor in his debut hold his own so strongly with two such powerhouse performers.

“Bugonia” may be the most challenging work of Stone’s filmography with Lanthimos as director, given the complex nature of her character arc. It’s important to the film that audiences never truly know whether Teddy or Michelle are right in their arguments over the course of the story, and Stone must gently balance her performance to ensure audiences are never completely clued in as to whether her character is – or isn’t – an alien.

For as ridiculous as that sounds, Stone is mesmerizing to watch, especially in her numerous extended monologues that allow the two-time Oscar winner freedom to show off a wide range of emotion. Yet there’s still something so haunting about how Stone imbues Michelle with exceptional composure, given the trap-like captivity of her situation.

Lanthimos reteams with longtime collaborator and director of photography Robbie Ryan – nominated for the cinematography of “The Favourite” and “Poor Things” – to create two distinct visual worlds in Bugonia, the pristine commercial society Michelle strides through and the gritty, rural, almost broken Teddy wallows away in.

Through the use of VistaVision 35 mm film, Ryan and Lanthimos elongate the frame to give audiences a wide berth in which to immerse themselves, especially in the dingy, aluminum-sealed basement much of the narrative takes place in. In both wide angles and searing closeups that create Stone’s iconic look, viewers are drawn even deeper into the conspiratorial worldview of Teddy’s paranoia, while still looking twice as Michelle evades relatability to audiences.

In some ways, “Bugonia” is exactly the sort of outlandishly original piece of cinema that Oscar voters have championed in recent years with Lanthimos’ work almost becoming a staple at awards ceremonies. While this film isn’t expected to be the same major player that “Poor Things” was two years ago, nominations for a two-time winner in Stone and cinematography hardly seem farfetched, with screenplay and a potential best picture nod not being out of the realm of possibility either.

Ultimately, Lanthimos’ eccentricities as a filmmaker and the biting comedic satire at play may be too much for certain viewers to rally behind as “Bugonia” makes its way through a theatrical release and awards season push. However, cinephiles familiar with the auteur’s unique point of view or those excited by compelling work from Stone and Plemons should make the effort to catch “Bugonia” on the big screen.

October 27, 2025 · Watch the trailer

Trying to do too many things at once in cinema is a fatal flaw that can ruin a terrific concept, spoil a magnetic performance, or turn a film into an outright disappointment.

Amidst a wave of biopics about iconic musicians like Queen’s Freddie Mercury, Elvis Presley, and Bob Dylan, writer/director Scott Cooper takes a second stab at a musical drama after his award-winning 2009 film “Crazy Heart” with his latest project offering a portrait of iconic New Jersey rocker Bruce Springsteen.

Based on the biography by Warren Zanes, “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” attempts to understand the man behind the music through a closer examination of a pivotal moment in Springsteen's rise to fame, focusing on the artist retreating to his bedroom to craft songs that would ultimately appear on two distinctly diverse albums: the classic "Born in the USA" and the introspective, acoustic "Nebraska."

An examination of this subject matter alone, given the right script, could provide fertile ground for a richly cinematic experience. There are certainly moments within “Deliver Me from Nowhere” that evoke the ethereal, lived-in quality Cooper strives for in his cinema –moments reminiscent of Springsteen’s own experiences watching “The Night of the Hunter” and Terrence Malick’s “Badlands” for inspiration in songwriting.

Yet the ethereal qualities of this segment of the film, along with a magnetically captivating lead performance by Jeremy Allen White, are often short-changed by decisions to obscure Springsteen's internal struggles with a poorly constructed love story, which is an amalgamation of several romances he had during the 1980s, and by overly indulgent discussions of recording devices and vinyl pressings.

It feels as if the film tries too hard to cover all aspects of Springsteen without getting any one particularly right. However, small, segmented pieces featuring White performing “Born to Run” and “Born in the USA” capture the fiery, dynamic energy of a Springsteen concert, bringing life and energy to what is otherwise a largely stoic, somber film.

What’s ultimately crushing about “Deliver Me from Nowhere” is how the meandering screenplay, which forces in flashbacks to Springsteen’s childhood shot entirely in black and white, keeps everyone in his life at such a distance that audiences unfamiliar with his story won’t understand the relationships that are clearly meant to be significant within the drama. This makes the character work less compelling and relatable; viewers don’t understand Springsteen’s struggles without proper context.

Furthermore, there isn’t enough time devoted to any of the relationships in the film for audiences to gain proper context.

This isn’t to say that White isn’t an ideal casting choice to play the rocker. In a better film, he would be perfectly primed to embody Springsteen, the consummate showman and thoughtfully introspective artist. Unfortunately, “Deliver Me from Nowhere” fails to let him do either for more than a couple of minutes at a time.

Jeremy Strong, fresh off an Oscar nom for “The Apprentice,” portrays Springsteen’s blindly supportive manager and friend Jon Landau well, but Cooper sidelines Strong with office scenes away from Springsteen, relying on audiences’ blind acceptance of their deep kinship over musical artistry.

Equally baffling is the decision to amalgamate several of Springsteen’s romantic partners into one fictional character, Faye, capably played by Odessa Young, whose fleeting time with Springsteen often feels like it’s part of an entirely separate movie, shifting audiences away from the deeply flawed character work White explores about Springsteen’s family life and depression.

What could have been a strong contender come awards season will probably only find White’s turn celebrated with nominations, though the film doesn’t allow him to explore the musicality of Springsteen to the same degree as Timothee Chalamet did with Bob Dylan in last year’s “A Complete Unknown.”

Viewers are left with a largely cold, self-reflective think piece of a movie that indulges in visualizing Springsteen’s songwriting process through random, pseudo-fever dream sequences that evoke a mood that isn’t terribly welcoming to casual audiences in theaters.

While “Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere” isn’t worth a trip to the big screen, cinephiles should make an effort for an at-home viewing for White’s performance and the nostalgia of classic 80s tunes when the film inevitably lands on a streaming service early next year.