American Sweatshop (2025) Dir. Uta Briesewietz Although Daisy dreams of a career as a nurse, her current job is as a content moderator for a social media platform. Alongside her colleagues, her job is to watch videos and content that has been flagged as offensive by users, with the intent of deleting the stuff that actually breaks the platform's content rules. In essence it means Daisy and her co-workers watch mostly sexually very explicit and/or very violent content all day long. One day, Daisy sees a video she cannot properly shake: the apparent torture of a young woman. It is unclear if the movie is authentic or not and she cannot say why it is this particular video that has left such an impression on her, when she watches extreme content all day, every day. Her inability to let go of the video in question means she eventually wants to track down the people in it, especially the two men visible: the one who carries out the torture and the silent watcher for whom the violence is seemingly being carried out. Drama-thriller that borrows ideas from Steven Soderbergh's Kimi (with which it has in common a tech worker stumbling onto evidence of an apparent crime) and 8 mm (the whole torture porn plot line). I think this had aspirations of being something of a commentary on how social media and the exposure to extreme imagery on our phones and devices might affect us. Though I'm not sure it succeeds at real profundity. I think the ultimate non-resolution followed by the fourth wall breaking at the end is also meant as a knowing wink to the audience, who by that point had successfully been made hungry for a violent resolution. Lili Reinhardt is good enough in the lead role to keep our attention. Daniela Melchior has a supporting role as the main character's friend and co-worker that ultimately did not give her a whole lot to do. A movie that clearly aspired to be more than it managed to achieve, at least from my perspective.
Black Bag (2025) Dir. Stephen Soderberg This is a British "spy thriller" that had a very short theatrical run in the Spring and then moved to Amazon Prime at some point. Staring the almost always great Michael Fassbinder and the almost always great Cate Blanchett (although, personally, she is not one of my favorites), and directed by Stephen Soderberg, this seems like a can't miss movie. Well, it sort of hits and sort of misses. Michael Fassbinder is George Woodhouse, a security officer with the NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre). He heads to a very claustrophobic club in London and meets his boss Philip Meacham. Meacham gives Woodhouse a week to find out who stole a top secret program about, umm, something(?) that is called Severus. Meacham gives Woodhouse a list of five names who are 'suspects' in the case...including Woodhouse's wife! Meacham complains about Woodhouse's devotion to his spouse, Kathryn St. Jean (played by Cate Blanchett), also an officer at NCSC. Apparently, fidelity is a hinderance in the spy game. This really comes to play during the movie. Woodhouse claims that nobody can lie to him and he also runs the polygraph tests of fellow employees. He invites the other four (and his wife) to dinner. He spikes the dish with a "truth drug" but tells his wife not to eat it. They play a "game" were each has to provide a resolution (like New Years resolution), but for the person at the table who is to their right. Tensions are extremely high as basically everyone at the table is having sex with one or more people at the table. Again, Woodhouse and St. Jean's fidelity is a big plot point. St. Jean is off to a meeting for a couple of days, but cannot say why (it's in the "Black Bag" i.e., secret). Woodhouse recruits Clarissa Dubose (Marissa Abela), who was at the dinner party and is a relationship with Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), also at the dinner party, to help him spy on his wife. They hack a satellite to see what she is up to where she is meeting with a Russian. I will not go through the entire plot from this point. Essentially Severus could cause a meltdown if employed and, if used in Russia, could end the war in Ukraine, basically by destroying the Russian government. Three things caught me about the movie: 1) It is extremely short, just 94 minutes. It is a very "Small" movie. There are only about 9 or 10 speaking parts in the entire movie. 2) It really felt staged like a play. Some of that is the material and some is Soderberg's obsession with setting and sense of "closeness" in many of his movies. 3) It was unsatisfying overall. Well made, well acted, but the plot was very dense and felt claustrophobic Pierce Brosnan is really underutilized as Arthur Stieglitz, NSCS Director. Marissa Abela is really the star of the movie as Clarissa. She is smart, tough (but vulnerable) and annoyed by forced into things against her will. I enjoyed her character and performance the most. If one wants to kill an hour and a half with a smart, well acted, but mostly forgettable, movie, one could do worse than Black Bag.
Black Rabbit [2025 - 1 season] Just saw this on Netflix the other week and decided to watch it. Stars Jude Law and Jason Bateman. This wasn't 1/2 bad. It's only 1 season (thank God), so it wasn't hard to conclude the show with a logical ending. Both Bateman and Law did a decent job, and the supporting cast was fairly decent. The show is nothing original or anything that special, but for what's it meant to be, decent enough to watch.
The Running Man (1987) ~ P. Glaser I saw a trailer for a new version of this story that looks terrible, then saw the original pop up in Netflix. I don't know if I've ever seen the whole film. It seems like something I'd run across on cable and start watching midway through. There's a whole half hour at the beginning that felt unfamiliar and a tad unnecessary (was that in the TV edit?). It's undeniably terrible in a lot of ways, but I also feel a general level of nostalgia and forgiveness for a cheesy 80's action film.
It certainly starts the same way. The middle is way more modern action Hollywood. I said before the ending is unfilmable, but I might be mistaken.
I assume that middle part is because Glenn Powell is in his "Failure to Launch" portion of his Matthew McConaughey cosplay career.
Yeah, the trailer mostly focuses on action set pieces, and they mostly felt the same as a dozen other trailers. There just doesn't seem to be any visual uniqueness. It's just all gray and drab (and dodging a lot of gunfire, sigh). The villains in the '87 film are clownish caricatures in cheap costumes, but there is at least unique visual storytelling happening.
Those buildings, inside and out, are exceedingly grey which makes me think there's a lot of green screen going on. But it could also be a directional choice because there are some interesting clothing choices for everyone except the lead who is in what Hollywood thinks modern poor people dress like I guess in an attempt to get us to identify with him. Not a lot of high hopes, and it's not like the original book is a work of art, but I still want to see this eventually. Seems to have some of that Nobody attitude I like.
A Biltmore Christmas - 2023 (Hallmark) Lucy is writing a modern update of the 1947 Christmas classic, His Merry Wife!, but keeps running into push back from the studio execs because she wants to write a different ending. To find inspiration for the new script, she travels to the Biltmore itself at Christmas. After a tour of the building with the rest of the visitors, she's given access to the special library by the hotel manager (played by JONATHAN FRAKES). While there, she accidentally knocks an hourglass over, and after setting it up again, she's transported back to 1947 during the production of the original film. She then travels back and forth through that room, nearly causes irreparable changes to the original movie, and struggles to return to the present after breaking the hourglass in the past. The twist ending is just right. I figured I should warm up my cheesy movie muscles, with the first GAF film landing on 10/11, and went with one of the recommendations that shows up at, or near, the top of every list. To put it simply, this is leaps and bounds above the typical effort and easily better than everything from the 2024 group of movies. It's actually smartly written with realistic dialogue, every scene clips along at an enjoyable pace, and there isn't a poor casting choice in the bunch. Bethany Joy Lenz is perfect as Lucy. Kristoffer Polaha (Jack) is great as the unknown supporting actor from the past, Annabelle Borke (Ava) and Colton Little (Claude) are excellent as the leads of the original film, and David Alexander (William) does a great job as the original director.
Smooth as Silk (1946) Dir. Charles Barton Hotshot attorney Mark Fenton helps Don Elliot beat a manslaughter charge, even though the man is likely guilty. Fenton had a reason to take on the case beyond the generous retainer he was paid by his client's wealthy uncle: said uncle is also a successful theater producer and Fenton's girlfriend Paula Marlowe is an actress who has dreamed of being in one of the man's plays. When Don's uncle renegs on his promise to give Paula a chance as the lead in his new play, Fenton is displeased but has no choice but to accept it. To Paula, it is an excuse to try and cut out the middle-man and instead try to approach Don's uncle through Don himself, inserting herself into the young man's life. Doing so behind Mark's back, Paula underestimates both her beau's possessiveness and vindictiveness... Decent Universal noir, clocking in at 65 minutes and one of the few times I will not praise such a short feature for its efficient story telling. This time around, the climax felt incredibly rushed, sped through in no more than five minutes of screentime, it needed a tiny bit more attention than that. What came before was enjoyable enough, especially Virginia Grey's scheming femme fatale and Kent Taylor utterly unscrupulous attorney.
Boy Kills World (2023) The boy and his family were enemies of the state for some unknown reason. Maybe no reason at all. All he knew was that once a year the despotic Van Der Koys put on a televised show where they executed twelve people. He, his little sister, and his mother were three of them. For decades the Van Der Koy family has ruled this island city-state - which is at turns South-east Asian, Middle Eastern, and African - with an iron fist wrapped in television savvy. Only the boy didn't die. Rescued by the pitiless junkie Shaman, the now deaf and dumb boy is trained with a single purpose - become a living weapon to exact vengeance on the entire Van Der Koy family. Whomever they might be. Reminiscent of The Raid and Judge Dread, this is a non-stop kung-fu and gun-fu extravaganza with one very big difference - Boy Kills World is completely batshit insane. And I loved that about it. The boy's internal monologue is voiced by H. Jon Benjamin, who does Bob from Bob's Burgers and the incongruity never gets old, particularly at the times when the boy runs across some aspect of the world an adolescence spent in single minded training didn't prepare him for. Despite the film's devotion to action, I wouldn't say this is an empty film. There are some unanswerable questions about devotion to revenge that are still twisting my gut an hour later. Knocking down a notch is its relentless gruesomeness. I figured out early on that when it went slow motion I'd have to cover the screen with my hand and that happened a lot.
The Most Wonderful Time of the Year - 2008 (Hallmark) Ralph, a newly retired New York cop is getting ready to visit his niece, Jennifer, in Chicago for Christmas but hasn't flown in decades and can't find his way around the airport. A stranger, Morgan, helps get him to his flight and they scam their way past the line and into a first class upgrade. The stranger is a bit of a vagabond who is heading to Denver by way of Chicago but gets stuck in Chicago due to a snowstorm in Denver. Ralph invites Morgan to stay with him at Jen's place until the weather clears. Jen is struggling with convincing her son, Brian, that Santa is real while also balancing her work life and relationship with Richard. Fairly predictable, but elevated by Henry Winkler (Ralph) blending a bit of that Fonzie attitude with his wise old uncle smarts. Probably the best work I've seen from Brooke Burns (Jen) and Warren Christie (Morgan), both of whom seemed to rise to the occasion, especially when they're on screen with the veteran actor. All the bit players are good with Jennifer Clement being fun as the quirky neighbor, Rita.
The Naked Gun - 2025 Meh. Every now and then they recaptured the magic, but far too often it was just a "Scary Movie" caliber parody film. The nearly 10 minutes of post credits are the best part of the film.
47 Ronin ~ C. Rinsch 47 Ronin is trying to be three things; a samurai action film, a supernatural fantasy, and a outsider redemption story; and failing at all three. Or more simply, it was just trying to be Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves... and failing at that. None of the disparate elements ever really work together and usually undercut the other (e.g., cheesy supernatural effects like glowing swords being added to the final battle). When looking for a picture to include, I came across a lot of the baffling advertising for this movie highlighted above. The second character was a demon? I swear that wasn't mentioned in the movie. The fourth character has one minute of screentime which I'd completely forgotten about.
Thunderbolts* (2025) Movies make the lives of secret superagents seem pretty special. Excitement. Meaning. Frequent flyer miles. But when you are one, year after year of singlehandedly taking out buildings full of highly trained soldiers, infiltrating high-tech security, and blowing things the hell up turns into a grind like any other. The Black Widowish Yelena is well past tired of her job. She is going to do one last task for head of the CIA Valentina Allegra de Fontaine to buy her freedom - go into the super protected CIA vault and stop a thief. Only she finds three other superagents, all in similar situations with similar tasks from de Fontaine. They are getting played. Nothing is supposed to leave the vault. Not even Bob. As themes go you can't really get a more blatant metaphor than this one, but I don't know if you can go after depression with subtlety and subtext. I appreciated them taking on the issue and how they dealt with it within a movie that still provided what you expect from a Marvel blockbuster. I don't recall the movie taking a significant wrong step. Thunderbolts* was really well paced with excellently timed comic moments, usually from the Red Guardian character. The nature of the group required lots of team building in the story, and those moments of conversation had a very natural, organic feel to them. I strongly approve of the way the big bad was dealt with. It wasn't conventional, maybe even anti-climactic, but I'm getting bored of special-effect extravaganza conventional.
Petite Maman ~ C. Sciamma Following the death of her grandmother, a young girl helps clear out her home. As she explores the nearby woods of her mother's childhood, she meets a girl her age with a familiar name. A tender film about grief and children's empathy towards their parents. After watching a series of middling films recently, it took a minute of seeing the intention in every shot of this film to captivate me. Sciamma is a master of mise-en-scène. The title flashes over the screenshot above. You don't see the mother's face, but everything about the shot as it drops across the vacant hospice room to her sitting staring out the window expresses the grief she feels. The movie primarily focuses on two child actors, and they are good, but they're never expected to carry the scene with emotive expressions or dramatization. Sciamma captures that through the framing and composition of the shots. Really tremendous film-making.
I want to see this, haven't gotten around to it yet. I agree in terms of Sciamma's rare mastery of mise-en-scène, it is why almost every single frame in her Portrait of a Lady on Fire is worthy of being printed and hung in your living room.
Primitive War (2025) Dir. Luke Sparke In 1968 Vietnam, Colonel Jericho loses contact with a Green Beret unit he had sent into a valley to investigate activity observed on aerial surveillance, including proof of recent construction. Wanting to know if it is some Vietcong activity, the Russians or something else altogether, the unit the Colonel sends goes completely radio silent after one last communication in which they had requested immediate emergency evac. Jericho subsequently summons Vulture Squad, a special forces unit specializing in reconnaissance, their mission: to find the missing Green Beret unit or otherwise try to find out what might happened to it. None of the men like the idea of the mission, including their squad commander Sergeant Baker, and not just because they have just returned from a difficult POW rescue operation. Colonel Jericho being cagey about revealing too much information tells them they are likely going to step into an epic shitshow, though nothing could have prepared them for what they actually encounter in said valley. Australian action thriller, pretty much if you mixed Apocalypse Now with Jurassic Park 2 and made it about 400% more silly. The degree to which this movie happily runs towards Vietnam movie cliches can be summed up by the fact that it takes fewer than three minutes of its runtime to hear Fortunate Son on the soundtrack. I cannot stress enough how silly this all is, which makes the hyper-serious tone a bit bizarre. And in spite of all that, I could not help enjoy a lot of the goofiness. If you want to see pterosaurs go up against Huey choppers, Tricia Helfer use a bad Russian accent for an entire film, Jeremy Piven in a scenery chewing mode that is dialed up to eleven and includes him shouting such dialogue as, "I lost my ********ing Green Berets. And I need y'all to find them for me!", creature CGI that wavers noticeably (and sometimes hilariously) in quality, a crazy Russian scientist character wanting to open a wormhole (a character honestly worthy of having been in the Command & Conquer video game series) than this is your film. As Dani Pudi's Abed character once described JCVD in Community: this is the good kind of bad. Honestly the movie it most reminded me of was Skull Island, which was also a Vietnam era creature/monster film that was very silly and similarly enjoyable (though considerably more high budget). If this glorious pile of sweet, sweet silliness has a flaw it is its bloated runtime. This clocks in at just over 130 minutes. I think there is definitely a superior 110 minutes or under cut of this flick hidden in here somewhere.
Unfortunately, in 2025 America "Primitive War" might actually involve the military with a "walk in the park"...in LA, DC, Memphis, Chicago, etc.
Play Dirty (2025) Dir. Shane Black After a cold open in which we see Parker and his crew hit a race track's vault, things go bad enough during their extraction that one of their gang is shot and killed, another wounded. After they gather again at the safe house, the remaining crew members are betrayed by one of their own, Zen. Only Parker gets away alive, and just barely. Once he has recovered enough, he decides to track down and kill Zen, and retrieve the stolen loot from the race track job. Only when he corners Zen, she claims she has already used the 400K they stole as seed money for a new, much bigger job: stealing a treasure of jewels, gold and artifacts recovered from a Spanish shipwreck. Parker reluctantly agrees to help Zen with the bigger score, even though he knows he cannot trust her. He gathers a new crew to steal the treasure, which is no easy undertaking as it is being kept at the U.N. headquarters and a familiar old foe of Parker's also wants to get their hands on it: the Outfit. Shane Black loosely adapting various plot elements and ideas from Richard Stark's Parker novels, to make a rather typical Shane Black type action comedy. On a surface level this is very much up my alley and I found the movie itself more than enjoyable. Marky Mark as Parker is the weakest link, as I had expected. And whilst he is all wrong for the role, his performance did not bother me as much as I had feared. There have been many cinematic Parkers at this point and I don't think any of them have perfectly captured the essence of the literary character. Somewhat down to the fact that Parker on the page is a cypher with an innate elusiveness, so perhaps any actor perfectly portraying him is near impossible. Lee Marvin is probably the most famous incarnation in Point Blank. In my estimation, the actor who got closest Robert Duvall in The Outfit. Of the more recent Parkers, I don't think either Jason Statham or Mel Gibson really captured the Parker essence, though in fairness to Gibson, I think he got closer than Wahlberg and Statham. I should mention that originally Robert Downey Jr. was attached to this in the Parker role (and his production company is still involved in the film). I don't think he is the right actor for Parker either, so I don't think the original casting would have greatly improved this film. The supporting cast is good and fun and includes LaKeith Stanfield as Parker sidekick Grofield, Tony Shalhoub as Outfit figurehead Lozini and Keegan-Michael Key and Claire Lovering as a husband and wife pair in Parker's second in-movie crew. As well as Thomas Jane in a key cameo role. Definitely worth checking out if you are a Shane Black fan. Perhaps slightly less so if you are a purist Parker fan.
Capricorn One (1978) Dir. Peter Hyams Capricorn One, the first manned mission to Mars, is ready for launch. Just minutes before liftoff, the three astronauts, Brubaker, Willis and Walker, are ordered to exit the capsule. They are subsequently and very secretly whisked off by helicopter and airplane to an abandoned Texan military base. There they are surprised to find the head of NASA waiting for them in the form of Dr. James Kelloway. Kelloway informs them that he pulled them at the last minute because it had been discovered the life support system they had developed for the long trip to Mars would have likely failed in under three weeks. Faced with informing the government with the news that it spent 20 billion dollars on a dud of a mission, Kelloway instead decides to try and salvaged NASA's manned space program by faking the Mars landing: there is a Martian set already built on the base where the trio of astronauts have been dropped off at. When mission commander Brubaker expresses reservations about deceiving the American people like that, Kelloway threatens the three man crew's family, forcing them to play along and fake Capricorn One's communications from their very planet-surface location. Kelloway uses his position as the head of NASA to nip any problems in the bud, including getting rid of a staff member who is a bit too critical and curious for his own good. Unfortunately for Kelloway, said NASA employee was friends with reporter Robert Caulfield, who himself now starts to suspect there is something rotten about the Capricorn One mission. A typically 1970s paranoid thriller in which the innate optimism and hope of the 1960s space program is perceived through a post-Watergate lens and is now just another source for cynicism and government mistrust. Found myself enjoying this quite a bit. A nice ensemble cast, with Elliott Gould as Caulfield, James Brolin, Sam Waterston and O.J. Simpson as the astronauts and a terrific Telly Savales cameo. Karen Black is a another noteworthy small supporting player in this as a streetwise reporter colleague of Caulfield's. Hal Holbrook's Kelloway is the personification of the banality of evil. Features a very fun climactic helicopter vs. bi-plane duel. In the very last scene, I could have sworn I saw Richard Pryor as one of the extras. Cannot immediately find confirmation online, so it might just have been my imagination. Supposedly Buzz Aldrin hated this movie because the manner of the faking of the Mars landing is more or less done how the moon landing conspiracy theorists suggest the Moon landing was faked. I think the point here is less to give credence to that belief and more to use this story to tap into the late 1970s anti-government paranoia.
The Falcon in San Francisco (1945) Tom Lawrence and his pal Goldie are taking the train to San Francisco for a vacation. On the train they run into a precocious but not annoyingly so little girl and her stern guardian. The guardian is later found dead, apparently of heart attack, except Lawrence suspects murder. The killer is out of luck because Tom Lawrence is actually The Falcon, notable private sleuth and man of action. The killer is back in luck because Lawrence is serious about his vacation and is going to leave this to the cops. As a kind and responsible man, he decides to take the little girl to her home. Except his taxi is stopped and he's arrested for kidnapping. And then he's bailed out by a mysterious benefactor. As he's trying to figure out the motivations of the parties that had him arrested and bailed, he keeps getting into situations that frame him for more and worse crimes. The Falcon is in a pickle. An entertaining light action caper that packs a lot of complexity into its hour runtime. Goldie is such a second-fiddle stereotype he could have come from a Loony Toons short, and I'm not sure which is the original and which is the homage. The story was good and I enjoyed the jokes, but the humor is certainly of its time. This is a later entry in the long running series of Falcon movies.which I knew nothing about until I was browsing the free movies and came across the magic words "San Francisco". Regarding The City, the film has lots of fabulous establishing shots of the touristy sites, and while it's remarkable how little has changed in them I paused the film and spent quite a while looking at the things that did. But it really looked like most of the "outside" scenes featuring the cast was done in front of the 1945 version of a green screen.
Music by Jerry Goldsmith going to space (or not) a couple years before Alien and Star Trek, The Motionless Picture