Weapons - 2025 Amy Madigan. Wow. It took me several scenes before I even recognized it was her. This isn't quite the movie the trailers showed, but at least the trailers did hint that the kids running off was where the story really began. The structure of the film is interesting enough and helps keep you feeling a bit off as you're trying to decipher where it's going. Eventually you get to a fairly common horror/thriller ending, but the journey makes it better than most.
Dead of Winter (2025) Dir. Brian Kirk Barb, a recently widowed woman, is visiting a remote lake up in Northern Minnesota that has special significance to both herself and her late husband. Asking for directions from a man chopping wood near a cabin, she sees traces of blood near his vehicle and a gun on the dashboard of said car. Initially not too suspicious of these two things, that changes when she sees the same man chase a bound young woman through the woods. As she approaches the cabin undetected, she finds out that a man and a woman are keeping the young woman hostage, though it is unclear why or what they might have planned for their captive. With no cell phone reception to call the cops with and the nearest town two hours away by car, it is left to Barb herself to try and free the imprisoned young woman. The last 15+ years is more or less the heyday of the Old Man Action film. Liam Neeson and Denzel Washington have both been in too many to list here. Bob Odenkirk was given his own franchise in the genre. Much rarer is the sub genre of Old Woman Action film, though there are at least a few decent instances. I thought the Allison Janney led Lou was fairly enjoyable. Here Emma Thompson is the somewhat unlikely lead and she is the best thing about the film. Imbuing her everywoman with both courage and a desire to do the right thing even in the face of great danger and overwhelming odds, an emotional core that seemed earned and consistent with the flashback backstory we get of her and her late husband's marriage (mostly played by actors playing the younger version of the pair). Actually largely shot in Finland and Germany, standing in for the North Star State here. Judy Greer is a decent main antagonist. An enjoyable 90+ minutes, though primarily thanks to the quality of its star.
The Roses [2025] Very cute (even adorable) film. I can't say I liked the last 15 minutes of the movie, but the rest was fairly brilliant. Great and witty writing (very British) and of course, pretty solid acting all around.
A Royal Icing Christmas - 2025 (Great American Family) This one is still listed as Once Upon A Christmas Crown on IMDB. Princess Charlotte (Ellise Roth) and Prince David (Sebastien Darcel-Sinclair) are expected to get engaged as their kingdoms have arranged their marriage since childhood. Charlotte remembers sneaking into the kitchen and baking as a child and decides to go see her American friend Kate (Kimm Dizdari) and enter a Christmas baking contest with her, where she meets Luke (Callum Buckley) and has further misgivings about her predetermined future. Nothing groundbreaking here, and a few parts are clunky (even the title was different 2 weeks ago), but I'm giving some bonus points for the above average performances by the two leads and the prince. This is the first credit listed on IMDB for both Ellise Roth and Sebastien Darcel-Sinclair. Callum Buckley's only other credit is a short from 2023. Unlike the terrible actor that won a role for Hallmark last year, these three, especially Roth and Buckley, are already better than most of the regulars in these movies. I'll give this one a C- for an unknown cast making it better than the script should have allowed.
Coyotes (2025) Dir. Colin Minihan Comic book artist Scott lives with his wife Liv and daughter Chloe in a villa, up in the Hollywood Hills. They are dealing with a rat problem in their home, though they soon find themselves dealing with wildlife a bit larger and more dangerous than what an exterminator can deal with: hungry and super-aggressive coyotes descend upon their little enclave, terrorizing them and their neighbors during a power outage. Then a fire further complicates their situation and the danger they find themselves in... Dog horror movies were a sub-genre of horror that probably had its heyday in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This is not straight horror, but more of a horror comedy. Unfortunately not a very good one. Justin Long has been enjoyable in this type of fare, even the completely over the top incarnations like Tusk. This however, isn't it. The few moments the comedy actually does work all revolve around the character played by Brittany Allen. The mostly CGI coyotes don't really provide much in terms of real scares. Underwhelming and falling short of even my modest expectations.
The Martian ~ R. Scott A perfect popcorn film. It's visually gorgeous. The pacing is superb. The script balances gravitas and levity deftly. The all-star cast all deliver solid performances. It's not ground-breaking but is supremely well-executed in every area and a joy to re-watch.
Sweeney Todd has been on my list for quite a while. My wife hates horror movies (or bloody movies for that matter), but one of her patients recommended it and she agreed to watch it. I don't know if it is Apple TV issue, but I found the music and the dialogue were not mixed well. I'd have to turn it up during the dialogue portions, especially anything with Judge Turbin (Alan Rickman), and then have to turn it down during the songs. Overall I enjoyed the movie. Timothy Spall's portrayal of Beedle was excellent and the guy was as creepy as I imagined him. Helena Bonham Carter was great as well and did a good job balancing the conniving crazy side with the lusting side of her character. The only weak point for me was Johnny Depp's singing. But my opinion is probably tainted because I've been listening to the Josh Groban version of the musical. But Johnny did a good job and his manic moments were great.
she was great in Les Miz. Tragically, she had a small roll in a long and mediocre movie, but her duet (with Sasha Baron Cohen) was my favorite part of the movie.
Finally got around to watching this movie. I don't think a synopsis is required. I really enjoyed it. Sadly, they cheaped out bigly on some of the graphics, especially when it came to the animals. And, of course, the Predator is completely invincible except when it comes to fighting the two main protaganists. It was a really cool and well-executed Comanche movie that portrayed their culture well, and hired a good deal of NDN actors (borrowing that from @The Devil's Architect). I was actually emotionally invested in the characters and got nervous/uncomfortable in moments. Not "really" a predator movie, and more of a great Western that's Predator adjacent with simple story telling that is well-paced.
Loved the voyageurs showing up in this. I remember I struggled to understand their French and then read their speech had been based on historical research to recreate the version of French they would have spoken.
Yeah, it was nice to spit some hate at the French, who don't get a lot of it for their role in the great American Genocide. Yet comparatively, they tended to live amongst the indigenous population more often than the others.
Triangle of Sadness (2022) It's hard work pretending to be rich. Part time model and full time influencer Yaya lives basically hand-to-mouth for despite taking in money and freebies at a decent rate it goes out quickly by constantly dining at expensive restaurants and being seen at expensive events, usually with her male model boyfriend Carl, who is as much a business expense as love interest. Her latest gig is to be seen on a mega yacht for the mega wealthy to give the cruise line clout. Only surviving the bizarre guests and a storm at dinner time might not be the worst crisis she will face. One of the points of the movie is that "being wealthy" is a kind of mental model more than actual wealth, and it's interesting how people change or don't change depending on their situations and self-concepts. I do think there's a lot of insight in the movie, and I really liked how it ended, but fundamentally this isn't a spejic movie. It is mostly scenes of social awkwardness and cringe and I had to frequently and incessantly fast forward 10 seconds to get past bad moments only to find myself in a new bad moment.
Merry Christmas, Ted Cooper! - 2025 (Hallmark) Ted Cooper (Robert Buckley) is a local [somewhere] weatherman who has a long history of getting injured in various ways every Christmas. He returns home to Lackawanna, NY to spend Christmas with his sister Kate (Meghan Heffern) and do a few remote reports on the event she's running to raise money for the local children's hospital. Once he arrives home he immediately has his luggage switched with a college girl's, leading to him wearing a lot of festive pink, and hurts himself trying to help setup for Christmas. At the hospital, the doctor is his old high school crush he was afraid to speak to, Hope Miller (Kimeberley Sustad). They begin to date a bit while he interviews for a job with a local Buffalo TV station to do the weather there instead. The lighting, the pacing, and even the writing feels like a mid 80s to mid 90s romcom, almost in the Groundhog Day vein. The two leads and the sister were light years better than the typical Hallmark movie, and there are memorable turns by Reedan Elizabeth as hospital co-worker Sydney and Tal Shulman as escape room host Brendan. This is really good. I'll definitely watch this again sometime and if they release a physical copy I'll seriously consider buying it. A+
Christmas in Midnight Clear - 2025 (Great American Family) Daughter of big time redevelopment firm visits small town where widowed pastor is trying to keep things going and doesn't want to sell out. Oof. Alicia Josipovic looks like an older Millie Bobby Brown. That's the one positive for this. Across the board terrible otherwise. F
Thomas Renfield travels to Transylvania to meet with Count Dracula. Renfield misses all signs of danger, becomes enslaved to Dracula, and embarks on an adventure to London where Dracula begins his reign of terror on the city. Mel Brooks does his typical treatment of lampooning movies and pop culture. While not as strong as some of his other movies, Mel’s humor comes through and the film has plenty of subtle jokes. Leslie Nielsen’s slapstick humor shines, but I prefer to imagine Frank Drebin is undercover in Transylvania and fails to realize Renfield isn’t part of the case.
I think this has the reputation as the film that sunk Mel Brooks, but I'm glad you took the chance and liked it. It would be helpful to include the name of the movie in the text. Images go away, but the post remains useful for years and I know that at least I will occasionally read old posts to get some ideas of things to watch or not watch.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (2025), which my wife and I caught on Friday as part of our annual Holloween Avoidance Protocol. Decent movie in that it avoided a good bit of the typical musical biopic cliches that were parodied in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (but not all of them: there was a gratuitous girlfriend who existed largely because the only other opportunity for angst depiction would be a guy sitting in a room with a guitar tearing up sheets of paper with bad lyrics written on them). Good performances by both Jeremies, Jeremy Allen White as the Boss and Jeremy Strong as manager Jon Landau. Generally, I thought the book was better, but I give the movie credit for working in one of my favorite parts of the book where Springsteen talks his label into releasing an album by the NYC punk band Suicide, whose song Frankie Teardrop makes its way into the soundtrack. Not all ten minutes, of course, but still. . . nice touch. Also interesting: the guy who plays Bruce's dad also played legendary Leeds footballer Billy Bremner in The Damned United.
You mean Stephen Graham? It's interesting the performances each person attaches to an actor in terms of immediate association. Until you just mentioned it, I had totally forgotten he was even in The Damned United. To me he is still primarily Al Capone from Boardwalk Empire. To a lesser extent, Tommy from Snatch (that was really more a Pitt and Statham film).
The Return (2024) It has been twenty years since Odysseus answered Agamemnon's call to help besiege the impenetrable city of Troy, twenty years since the island of Ithaca has had a king. Almost everyone has given up hope of his return, but still Queen Penelope delays remarrying, and the hundred suitors laying waste to the countryside in their gluttony are getting impatient. The only man that can break the stalemate has washed ashore, battered and weathered and unsure if he is still worthy. A slow and patient movie, achingly beautiful and capturing my full attention very early. While keeping all the story points I remember from my school days reading the Cliffs Notes, the movie is mostly concerned with a modern take on the timeless theme of what war does to a person. It depends so much on Ralph Fiennes' acting and physical transformation and he is mesmerizing. Filmed in Greece, the outside color palette and light helped create a unique, slightly dream-like atmosphere, and the natural (I should probably put that in quotes) lighting of the interior night-time shots turned every camera angle into an artistic piece.
The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt (1939) Michael Lanyard thought his past was behind him, but his kidnappers didn't want the wealthy Washington DC socialite. They wanted the man who used to be the famed safecracker known as the "Lone Wolf". But when Lanyard turns down the massive $10000 fee to take the plans for a anti-aircraft gun from a safe, they simply let him go. He forgets the incident, and the next day has a pleasant two hour private conversation with a beautiful woman interested in buying some of his certainly legal antiques. But now there is a broken-in safe with evidence leading to Michael who can't account for his whereabouts during the two hours when the safe was cracked. Someone is doing a frame job, and the police are quite happy to go along - they haven't forgotten his past either. An entry in the the long running Lone Wolf series of films going back to the silent era. His defining feature is setting up a clever counter-ploy an instant before his opponent comes in and delivers their ploy. Diverting enough and occasionally pretty funny, usually at the expense of the young woman that desperately wants to be Mrs. Lanyard, but I can't say this is a particularly memorable film of the era. Featuring Rita Hayworth as the femme fatale just before she burst into stardom.