One Battle After Another (2025) * * *

Directed by:  Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring:  Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Regina Hall, Chase Infiniti, Tony Goldwyn, Benicio del Toro, Teyana Taylor

One Battle After Another is a political action movie.  It showcases both extremes in the right and the left and makes them both insufferable.  You have a leftist revolutionary group which robs banks, shoots people, blows up detention centers, and commits other acts of violence in the name of righteousness and ending oppression.  The right are secret white supremacists and run a shadow government while members like Col. Steven Lockjaw (Penn) clearly has a thing for black women, even though he's trying to gain membership to a "whites-only" wing of the government.  Anderson is probably thinking like we do:  Can we meet somewhere in the middle?

The opening scenes gives us Bob (DiCaprio), a bomb expert who manufactures explosives for the infamous French 75 who liberates immigrant detention centers while professing dialogue you would hear from 1970's radicals.  The leader, who is Bob's girlfriend is Perfidia (Taylor), who has some fun of her own when she encounters the center's commanding officer Col. Steven Lockjaw (Penn) and forces him to will himself to have an erection before taking him prisoner.  Lockjaw doesn't exactly object and we sense he likes Perfidia, which he makes clear when he runs into her later on after a botched robbery attempt.  The tables turn.

However, Bob and Perfidia have a child named Willa (Infiniti) and Bob takes her parenting duties far more seriously than Perfidia, who would rather be committing violence in the name of leftist ideology.  But as mentioned in DiCaprio's movie The Departed, when facing a loaded gun, does it matter whether a cop or criminal is holding it?  Years pass, Bob is in hiding and Perfidia has long fled to Mexico after turning state's evidence to Lockjaw after being captured during the robbery.  Willa is now a teenager looking to have friends and attend school functions while Bob smokes copious amounts of weed and drinks himself into a stupor.  When Lockjaw tracks down Bob and Willa, Bob calls on his old revolutionary buddies to find out her location, and due to the years of inactivity and drug use, he can't remember key passwords.

One Battle After Another also works as biting political satire with DiCaprio providing multiple dimensions as the zonked Bob, but the movie belongs to Penn, who grunts his lines and walks with a distinguished limp.  Seeing how he moves in civilian clothing vs. military fatigues gives us two vastly different sides of Lockjaw.  He's something of a mad dog who can't wait to be unleashed and is also conflicted up to his eyeballs, especially when he encounters someone like Perfidia, who makes his blood boil.  There is also a hinted connection between Willa and Lockjaw which casts a new light on the proceedings.

If anything detracts from One Battle After Another, it's the 2 hour, 40 minute running time.  It begins to feel bloated at times, and could use a good 20-minute trimming.  But it also treads into Dr. Strangelove territory, with characters who do nothing but fight in the war room, because what else would they have to do to make themselves useful?

The Living Daylights (1987) * * *

 

Directed by:  John Glen

Starring:  Timothy Dalton, Maryam D'Abo, Jeroen Krabbe, John Rhys-Davies, Joe Don Baker, Andreas Wisniewski

Timothy Dalton was the Bond the world may not have been ready for.  He was more serious than Roger Moore and Sean Connery, exhibiting a lean, mean toughness that no actor who played James Bond before ever tried.  Daniel Craig hit many of the same notes, but Dalton's Bond still seemed to enjoy showing up to work, while Craig's Bond was a borderline alcoholic and full of angst.

Bond is first seen in Prague scoping out an orchestra performance attended by Soviet General Georgi Koskov (Krabbe), who is looking to defect to the west.  However, before that, Bond witnesses the orchestra's beautiful blonde cellist (D'Abo) attempt to assassinate Koskov, but Bond hesitates before shooting at her (and missing).  Since Bond doesn't miss nor hesitate, we know he has his reasons that originate from above the waistline.  Koskov defects to London with Bond's help, but is soon "kidnapped" from the safe house by the KGB, which further raises Bond's ire and curiosity.  

Bond realizes that the cellist is Koskov's lover and the defection was a ruse designed to trick the British government into killing Koskov's boss General Pushkin (Rhys-Davies) and thus allowing him to conduct nefarious arms deals with a villainous arms dealer (Baker).  Bond, of course, is on to Koskov and his group of goons, all the while romancing the cellist who doesn't understand she is being used as a pawn.  

D'Abo is a looker, but lacks the substance of previous Bond heroines.  The Living Daylights introduces more of the ingenious gadgets the series was famous for, and the action scenes involve Bond and the cellist sliding down the mountainside in a cello case evading the baddies.  The movie itself is fun and gave us a new take on James Bond which worked for two movies until Pierce Brosnan came aboard in 1995's Goldeneye.  Brosnan was more of a return to the suave, sophisticated Bond.  Dalton is just a machine and I have to say it was pretty refreshing.  

Dead of Winter (2025) * *

Directed by:  Brian Kirk

Starring:  Emma Thompson, Judy Greer, Marc Menchaca, Laurel Marsden, Gaia Wise

Dead of Winter has the elements in place for a crackling thriller which somehow loses steam quickly.  What's left is a slog which runs only 98 minutes but feels interminable.  It takes place in Northern Minnesota, and with the snowy, ominous backdrop and a folksy female lead, it's hard not to compare the film to Fargo.  However, this is where the similarities end.  Fargo was a masterwork.  Dead of Winter is destined to be forgotten.

We meet Barb (Thompson) who is traveling to a Northern Minnesota lake to spread the ashes of her recently deceased husband.  The movie shows us flashbacks of them in their younger days.  Why this is, I don't know.  All these scenes accomplish is take us away from the present day in which Barb stumbles across a remote cabin where a married couple are holding a teenage girl hostage.  Dead of Winter hints at why the girl was kidnapped and maddeningly hides the plot from us until the end when the couple's aims are revealed.  The antagonist is a woman listed in the cast as "Purple Jacket" (Greer), who is terminally ill and suffers nosebleeds while wielding a shotgun and bossing her hapless husband (Menchaca) around.  

Barb, who speaks in the same accent as Marge Gunderson, while using her resourcefulness and ingenuity to help the girl out of her predicament.  It's certainly new to see Emma Thompson in an action role, and who knows?  Maybe she'll become the next Liam Neeson in this stage of her distinguished career.  But while Thompson is game, the movie lets her down.  By the way, Barb's late husband's name is Carl and the flashbacks remind me of Up, so we have a movie that combines elements of Fargo and Up, and succeeds at being nowhere near as good as either of those.  

Rudy (1993) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  David Anspaugh

Starring:  Sean Astin, Jon Favreau, Ned Beatty, Vince Vaughn, Jason Miller, Robert Prosky, Scott Benjaminson, Chelcie Ross, Charles S. Dutton

I've read about the factual inaccuracies of Rudy.  Well, there is a Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger, Jr. and he played for two plays in a Notre Dame Fighting Irish uniform in the final game of the 1975 season.  Rudy is about how he found himself in that jersey.  It's a stirring story of a young man who didn't quit until he not only made the team, but found himself as both a footnote in team history and among its folklore.

Rudy (Astin) played high school football, but was deemed too small to play college ball.  He grew up in suburban Illinois as a Notre Dame fanatic, and roughly five years after he graduated high school and following the accidental death of his best friend in the factory where Rudy works, he lights out to Notre Dame to try out for the team.  The school breaks it to him gently that he needs to be a student there first and Rudy finds himself attending nearby Holy Cross college in order to work up the grades to get into Notre Dame.  Once he's accepted to school, then he has to essentially make the team as a walk-on, and even if he were to make the team, he'd be little more than a glorified tackling dummy.  That doesn't bother Rudy, who has made it his single-minded mission to call himself a member of the Fighting Irish.

Astin is focused, determined, and a textbook definition of an underdog.  While attempting to get into Notre Dame, Rudy takes a job as a member of the stadium crew.  If he can't play for them, he can at least be in the vicinity.  The head groundskeeper Fortune tells Rudy, "You're five foot nothing, 100 and nothing, and you'll walk out of here with a degree from the University of Notre Dame,"  The movie doesn't even tie Rudy down with a girlfriend, although he has one early in the film who is conveniently discarded.  The movie focuses on Rudy's dream and fighting spirit he exhibits in trying to obtain it.  It's not a spoiler that he achieves his goal, because otherwise there wouldn't be much point in the movie.  But then the movie takes it a step further by adding in a swelling, emotional score and a goose bump-inducing finale.  Did everything occur as the movie says to reach that pinnacle?  No, and who cares?  The movie is riveting in the tradition of Rocky, and that's not something I say lightly. 

The Senior (2025) * * *

Directed by:  Rod Lurie

Starring:  Michael Chiklis, Mary Stuart Masterson, Rob Corddry, Brandon Flynn, Todd Terry

The Senior is based on a true story of a 59-year-old former college football player named Mike Flynt (Chiklis) who learns he still has one year of college eligibility left and decides to try out for his old college football team in West Texas.  I recall there was a 1991 comedy called Necessary Roughness which covers the same ground, but the events of The Senior take place in 2007 and Flynt didn't realize the loophole until then.  I wonder if he visited the movie at some point later.  

Mike was a college superstar who was kicked out of college before his senior year due to repeatedly being involved in fights on campus.  We learn in flashbacks he was raised by a quasi-abusive father who taught him boxing by repeatedly punching his son in the face and insulting him into "being a man".  This made Mike quick to drop the gloves, so to speak, and engage in fistfights.  Years later, Mike is happily married, although with a resentful son Micah (Flynn) with whom Mike has a cold, distant relationship.  He works as a construction foreman with a loving, understanding wife Eileen (Masterson), and one day receives a reunion invitation of his old football team even though he never completed his collegiate career.

Mike reconciles with the teammate he fought back then and learns he still has another eligible year of college ball.  Mike decides to try out for the team not only as a lark, but as a way to remedy his belief that his life is somehow incomplete without football.  Coach Sam Weston (Corddry) thinks Mike wants a coaching job, and is somewhat relieved and amused that Mike wants to play football.  He figures Mike will be quickly cut, but then sees Mike is a determined individual who won't be dismissed easily.  Mike has his detractors, including a player who hits him with a cheap shot hard enough to keep him out of commission for most of the season.  Mike fights to come back, and soon finds he has the support and camaraderie of his teammates.  

The Senior doesn't break new ground.  It ends with a big game, and whether Mike will actually see playing time.   You would think The Senior is a retelling of Rudy, with one character actually referencing Rudy when describing Mike's tenacity, but it's a separate true story involving another man who won't quit and wants nothing more than to be a footnote in college football history.  Mike has no illusions about doing anything more with his career, and Chiklis is an embodiment of the pugnacious Flynt down to his bones.  The Senior also exudes care and reflection, with Mike learning that his father embraced faith later in life and maybe he should follow in his dad's footsteps to release his pent-up anger at his past.  We find ourselves rooting for Mike and that's why The Senior was made.  On that level, it is absorbing. 

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (2025) * *

Directed by:  Kogonada

Starring:  Colin Farrell, Margot Robbie, Hamish Linklater, Kevin Kline, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Lily Rabe

Barbie, starring Margot Robbie as the title character, was a worldwide blockbuster.  If Margot Robbie continues to star in flops like A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (no commas), that goodwill will be erased.  That's Hollywood.  It isn't necessarily Robbie's fault, because the camera adores her like fewer actresses in cinema history, nor is the fault of Farrell, whose character Dave exudes likability and charm.  The movie itself wants to be a whimsical fantasy in which two people fall in love while on the Big Bold Beautiful Journey of the title, but it's a slog with its two protagonists fighting love every step of the way.

Farrell's Dave is a bland, single guy who takes care of his ailing father and has a lifetime of hurts which make him unwilling him to truly give himself to another person.  Robbie's Sarah is a woman whose mother died years ago, but yet is still in stagnation on the relationship front because she's the type who will hurt you before you hurt her.   For reasons that are supposed to be grounded in fantasy but are tiresome, the two wind up renting old Saturns at a bizarre car rental agency.  The Saturns are installed with a GPS that gives directions not only to your destination, but other aspects of your life.  Dave and Sarah attend the same wedding and flirt with each other, as two single people are wont to do, but they don't act on it.  If they had, then there would be no need for the Big Bold Beautiful Journey and that would've been just fine.

Before Dave and Sarah can admit to being in love, they travel to woodlands where a single red door is constructed in the middle of nowhere, and each must walk through it to confront the pain of their pasts before they can forge a path forward.  A Big Bold Beautiful Journey wants to be loved with every fiber of its being.  It wants to be Deep, Moving, and Offbeat, but I couldn't help but be reminded of the comedic twist in LA Story (1991), in which Steve Martin encounters a freeway traffic sign which gives him life advice at a time he desperately needs it.  A Big Bold... is that scene from LA Story over and over again.  

Freakier Friday (2025) * *

Directed by:  Nisha Ganatra

Starring:  Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, Julia Butters, Manny Jacinto, Mark Harmon, Sophia Hammons

I didn't see Freaky Friday which featured Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan switching bodies on the Friday before Curtis' wedding, and that version was a remake of the 1976 Disney comedy featuring Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris living for a spell in each other's shoes and bodies.  I don't need to see the other versions to gain a full understanding of the complexities of Freakier Friday, in which Curtis and Lohan switch bodies with Lohan's daughter and Lohan's soon-to-be stepdaughter.  That's four bodies with switched bodies personalities and souls.   You could double it to make it eight and the law of diminishing returns would still take effect.  Four people doesn't make it any more funny.

Lohan's Anna is days from getting married to a kind, sensitive chef (Jacinto).  Their respective daughters (Butters and Hammons), however, do not get along and fight the marriage every step of the way.  After each of the women meets up with a psychic at Anna's bachelorette party, their personalities switch into the new bodies and the high jinks ensue with one unfunny situation melding into another as the wedding is thrown into peril. The actors are game and expend the required energy to try and make this work, but it's all for naught.

So, do the people all learn empathy for each other and forgive each other?  Does Anna, who shelved her own singing career to manage another teen singer, get a chance to perform one of the songs she wrote on stage in a supposedly stirring finale?  Is the wedding saved?  Do we even care?  For those who are keeping score, that's three years and a no.  

The Long Walk (2025) * * *

Directed by: Francis Lawrence

Starring:  Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Ben Wang, Charlie Plummer, Mark Hamill, Judy Greer

The Long Walk is exhausting to watch, and not in a bad sense, but in a visceral one.  The dystopian film, based on a Stephen King/Richard Bachman novella, is about a group of young men who participate in a walk in which you must continue to walk or be executed by military escorts.  The prize for the winner?  Untold riches and your biggest wish granted.  The prize description is vague, but the dire nature of the contest is not.  

The movie takes place during a war-plagued dystopia, but when?  King's novella was written in the 1970's and the characters' clothing and vehicles suggest that time period, but since the 1970's have come and gone, trying to shoehorn this vision of the "future" into it is awkward.  Or maybe the period exists in a timelessness like A Clockwork Orange.  The Long Walk's two main protagonists are Ray (Hoffman) and Peter (Jonsson), who form a friendship and alliance in which they manage to physically and psychologically prop each other up as the walk continues endlessly into the night.  The walk, which is televised to a nationwide audience, is lorded over by The Major (Hamill), who spits out the rules and espouses the participants' hope and patriotism like he's channeling Sgt. Slaughter.   

If any of the participants even stops long enough to urinate or defecate, then they're given three warnings before being shot.  The road soon becomes littered with bodies, fecal matter, blood, and other gross objects.  Hoffman, the son of the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, is a fine actor, but he is a bit pudgy to be lasting this long in the marathon walk.  If he weren't the star, we would picture him being among the first to exit.  Jonsson is in much better physical shape and it is more believable that he would wind up in the final four.  The Long Walk becomes a tale of suspense and endurance.  Ray has an ulterior motive in wanting to win the race, involving The Major, and the payoff isn't worthy of the buildup.  But, then again, how could it be?  The Long Walk is not a happy movie, and it doesn't end that way either.  

The Strangers: Chapter 2 (2025) *

Directed by:  Renny Harlin

Starring:  Madelaine Petsch, Richard Brake, Rachel Shenton

Nothing about The Strangers: Chapter 1 made we want to revisit the small Oregon backwater town where Maya (Petsch) and her late fiance were brutally and randomly attacked in a home invasion.  It wasn't terrible, but it wasn't memorable either, and the second chapter is nothing more than a brutal series of attacks on poor Maya, who sustains numerous bruises, injuries, and physical/psychological trauma at the hands of the masked killers who really want her dead.  Why do they go after Maya with such passion?  The movie provides flashbacks to the killers' religious childhood upbringing, and away we go.

The motives are meaningless.  They are just brief respites from the relentless assaults on Maya, who to her credit can take a living and keep on ticking.  But The Strangers: Chapter 2, while directed skillfully and slickly by veteran Renny Harlin, is let down by a series of jump scares and endless brutality.  Maya doesn't deserve this abuse and neither do we.  These killers go after her like she owes them a gambling debt.  Actually, I think the goons sent out by loan sharks to break bones have more compassion.

We are promised a Chapter 3 soon, or otherwise another gloomy installment.  Remember when horror movies used to be fun.  They were built more on suspense than slaughter, but that seems like eons ago.  Probably because it was.  

The Toxic Avenger (2025) * * *

Directed by:  Macon Blair

Starring:  Peter Dinklage, Kevin Bacon, Jacob Tremblay, Taylour Paige, Elijah Wood

I never saw the original cult classic from the 80's, so I'm watching this remake with a fresh set of eyes.  The Toxic Avenger is satirical, campy (of course), and has a sympathetic hero in Winston Gooze (Dinklage), a janitor at a toxic waster factory who is diagnosed with a brain tumor.  When he pleads with the arrogant factory CEO Bob Garbinger (Bacon) for better insurance, he is thrown into a vat of toxic waste for his troubles, and he emerges as the deformed green monster with super powers.  

The Toxic Avenger goes after Garbinger and his goons, who masquerade as a rock band called Killer Nutz, with a vengeance.  Nothing can reverse his condition.  He is now a freak who becomes a cult hero with a son (Tremblay), who has to learn with a father who looks like a walking advertisement for the drawbacks of being thrown into a pool of toxic waste.  An investigative reporter (Paige) snoops around looking to break the story wide open of Garbinger's dumping practices and the unsafe factory.  She shouldn't have to investigate much, as evidence is pretty rampant and apparent to anyone with working senses.  But she exists as someone the Avenger has to rescue and fight alongside him as an ally.

Bacon is a slimy villain, although why he wants to drink a magic potion of toxic waste to turn himself into a better-looking Toxic Avenger is still baffling to me, but he's someone we want to see taken down.  The movie doesn't take itself seriously, with the actors taking great care to have fun with the material, and a sense of sly self-awareness which only adds to the fun.  Everything starts with Dinklage, who we care for when he's Winston, and know the same likable schlub is inside the green guy killing his enemies with glee.  

Trust (2025) * 1/2

Directed by:  Carlson Young

Starring:  Sophie Turner, Rhys Coiro, Billy Campbell, Katey Sagal

Here's a movie that's a challenge to review, especially nearly one month after seeing it in a mostly empty theater on Labor Day.  Or maybe it was before then.  I will try and recall the events of the movie, Trust, which came and went in a limited theatrical run.  It is pretty much a dead zone with a heroine who barely seems interested, which is soon the same effect Trust has on the audience.  Here goes:

Television star Lauren Lane (Turner) is in the midst of a scandal in which she is suspected to be pregnant,  Lauren hides away in an Airbnb house in the countryside, one which is besieged by would-be thieves who terrorize Lauren before two of them wind up dead at the scene, and Lauren is hiding away in a secure room where she spends the rest of the movie while loved ones look for her and the baby's father, the star of the show Lauren has been on for years (Campbell) hires a hitman to kill her because she won't get an abortion.  Lauren attempts to escape the room when the door won't open, winds up accidentally breaking a water pipe, and tries her mightiest to repair the leak before the room fills up with water and drowns her.  

I was reminded of various Three Stooges episodes in which the hapless Moe, Larry, and Curly try their hand at plumbing and of course muck up the works.  Lauren does no worse a job, but I found myself wishing I could go home and watch the Stooges instead.   Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk.  

Juror No. 2 (2024) * * *

Directed by:  Clint Eastwood

Starring:  Nicholas Hoult, Toni Collette, JK Simmons, Zoey Deutch, Kiefer Sutherland, Leslie Bibb, Gabriel Basso, Chris Messina

What is likely director Clint Eastwood's final feature film is not a courtroom drama masterpiece, but it hums along with suspense and a feeling that the vise is tightening on Justin Kemp (Hoult), a freelance writer who is summoned for jury duty on a murder case.  He'd rather be home caring for his pregnant wife Allison (Deutch), who miscarried with her previous pregnancy and this led to a dark and rainy night in which Justin, a recovering alcoholic, finds himself staring at a shot of whiskey in a local bar.  He doesn't drink, but he drives home and strikes something in the road.  He assumes it to be a deer and moves on, especially when he doesn't see any deer.  

Fast forward to the trial.  Justin fails to be excused from the jury and is now sitting in judgment of a local man (Basso), who is accused of murdering his wife after she leaves the same bar on the same night Justin was there.  The man and wife have an argument and she leaves to walk home in the rain.  Did Justin accidentally run over the woman and not a deer?  His mind flashes back to that night and because he never found a dead deer or person, he doesn't know.  His conscience gnaws at him.  If he comes forward now to save the defendant, then he'll be charged and taken from his family.  Other jurors and soon prosecutor Faith Killebrew (Collette) suspect the possibility that maybe the defendant didn't do it and follow other possible leads, which force Justin's hand.

Juror No. 2 is straight out of John Grisham territory, even though it's not based on any of his works.  It feels like a movie based on a Grisham novel, and that's not a bad thing.  Hoult is a sympathetic protagonist who finds himself in a mess caused by being picked for the wrong jury and the wrong case at the wrong time.  Eastwood also provides a Hitchcock-like feel to the film, in which the hero finds himself in an ethical dilemma which we find ourselves hoping he gets away with...to some extent.  It's not anything that aspires to greatness, but it's a fitting and effective possible final film for the iconic Eastwood, who found as much success directing as he did acting.   But who knows?  He may have one more left in him, even at 95. 

Caught Stealing (2025) * * *

Directed by:  Darren Aronofsky

Starring:  Austin Butler, Zoe Kravitz, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D'Onofrio, Carol Kane, Matt Smith, Regina King, Bad Bunny

Caught Stealing is about as straightforward a story as Aronofsky has told in his long career.  It's an action drama with comic elements about a New York bartender named Hank (Butler), whose British punk rocker next door neighbor Russ (Smith) hurries back to Britain and asks Hank to watch his cat for him.  No issues so far, until Hank is soon embroiled in a plot battling the criminal element over stolen money and drugs.  He's Hitchcock's classic "innocent man wrongly accused" and we're also reminded of Dustin Hoffman's Babe Levy in Marathon Man, who is also drawn into a plot he doesn't fully understand even as a Nazi doctor is drilling holes in his teeth. 

Hank was once a major leaguer in the making during his high school playing days in California until a car accident kills his friend (who was a passenger) and wrecks his body enough to where playing baseball competitively is now a pipe dream.  Years later, circa 1998, Hank is working as a bartender and muddling through life until Russ leaves his cat with Hank and also a backlog of criminals looking for him.  What do they want with Russ?  And later Hank?  Hank has no idea, but a police detective (King) is suspicious of Hank at first, then seems to be willing to help him escape his quandary.  

Hank wasn't built for this, but he finds himself learning to be meaner and more resourceful as he deals with killers like Hasidic gangster brothers (Schreiber and D'Onofrio), who have no issue killing people but don't want to drive on the Sabbath or not show up for shabbos dinner for fear of possibly going to hell for violating Hasidic laws.  Maybe the criminals themselves feel for Hank because he was left holding the bag by Russ, but hey, they want what Russ stole from them, and someone has to pay when they can't collect. 

Caught Stealing is a darkly comic action film in which Hank finds himself in one damned thing after another.  He never asked for this mess.  His girlfriend Yvonne (Kravitz) winds up paying the price.  The movie ends satisfactorily if not necessarily happily.  After all, Hank loses nearly everyone he loves, except for one person who may be a bigger San Francisco Giants fan than he is.  Butler isn't channeling Elvis, he's just a sympathetic hero who never expected his humdrum life to be turned upside down.  On this level, Caught Stealing works like a charm.  It isn't deep and it isn't tragic...thank goodness.  

The Apprentice (2024) * * * 1/2

Directed by: Ali Abassi

Starring:  Sebastian Stan, Jeremy Strong, Maria Bakalova, Martin Donovan

The Apprentice tells a tale told many times before.  It's story is as old as stories themselves.  A mentor takes a willing pupil under his wing, only to have the student outgrow his need for his teacher, leaving the mentor in the dust as the student grows in stature.  In The Apprentice, the apprentice is future president Donald Trump (Stan) and the mentor is corrupt and powerful attorney Roy Cohn (Strong).  Neither person is meant to be sympathetic or someone to feel sorry for, but because the performances contain so many dimensions, we actually feel sympathy for Cohn when Trump inevitably leaves him out in the cold as he ascends into power, wealth, and celebrity which carried him to two non-consecutive terms in the White House.

The Apprentice takes place first in the 1970's, when Trump falls into Cohn's inner circle and hires Cohn to represent he and his father in a federal civil lawsuit.  Cohn takes a liking to the naive Trump, whose position in his father's real estate corporation is reduced to knocking on tenant doors in his slums to collect rent money.  He teaches Trump his three rules of business:

1.  Attack, attack, attack.

2.  Admit nothing, deny everything

3.  Claim victory, and never admit defeat. 

Trump has practiced those rules every day of his life, and we see it in his White House dealings.  However, it is ironic to see how defeated Cohn appears when he is battling AIDS and seeks out Trump simply for friendship and comfort.  By then, it's the 1980's, and Trump has become the symbol of the excess which defined the decade.  He has no more use for Cohn, and coldly discards him, which I'm sure Cohn did to many others in his lifetime.   However, The Apprentice is distinctly able to make this story fresh while making certain not to hate its subjects.  Director Ali Abassi's The Apprentice takes place in a different world than the disco era of the 1970's and the cocaine-fueled 1980's, although Trump's drug of choice is diet pills, which transform him into a cruel, nasty person who mistreats his wife Ivana (Bakalova) and spurns Cohn.  

The fact that The Apprentice is about Trump and Cohn adds another level of historical perspective to the story.  We see how the Trump we know today, love him or loathe him, was created and how he has obviously heeded Cohn's advice more so than anything else in his life.  

The Bear (2025-Season Four) * *

Starring:  Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Oliver Platt, Abby Elliott, Josh Hartnett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Rob Reiner, Brian Koppelman, Will Poulter

Season four of The Bear starts out intensely and pressure-filled with the restaurant's financier Uncle Jimmy setting a clock which will count down sixty days until Doomsday.  Not the end of the world, but the end of The Bear, unless it can miraculously starting turning a profit.  The first three or four episodes crackle with intensity as The Bear tries to reverse its fortunes.  It is packing the place nightly, but still no profits.  Uncle Jimmy is part of the Berzatto family and feels for his nephew Carmen (White), but business is business and money talks. 

I thought The Bear would return to form as a pressure cooker of a series which shows why I would never wish to own a restaurant.  But then, The Bear falls back on the issues which has plagued its previous two seasons, the endless dialogue and entire episodes devoted to making us forget that the countdown is on.  These people operate as if their livelihoods won't end soon, and waste valuable time on endless conversations which would test anyone's patience and comprehension.  The shows should be taut and tense, even if they only have to clock in at thirty minutes instead of 45.  But we need PERFORMANCES from these actors so they could submit the scenes at awards season for consideration by the voting bodies, so we need dialogue for them to espouse.

However, there are scenes which reveal truth.  Abby has a heart-to-heart with the perpetually miserable Carmen in which she states that it's okay for him to no longer being a chef or enjoying the restaurant business.  Carmen is still Haunted by his brother's suicide and his family issues, not withstanding his breakup with Claire, who I'd honestly forgotten about as he awkwardly tries to reconcile with her.  There isn't much chemistry there, and I can't imagine having Carmen having much chemistry with anyone.  For a restaurant looking to cut costs, Richie (Moss-Bachrach) brings on additional staff and consultants which help shape the place and push it towards success, but I'm sure they aren't cheap.  

With season five eventually going to stream, I must say I think I'm over The Bear.  There are too many characters, too many subplots, entire episodes which are devoted to bores like Syd (Edebiri), who painfully tries to decide whether to jump ship to a startup establishment.  The Bear is at its best when the tension overcomes everyone, but The Bear almost seems to feel guilty allowing this to happen.  

Honey Don't! (2025) *

Directed by:  Ethan Coen

Starring:  Margaret Qualley, Chris Evans, Aubrey Plaza, Charlie Day, Billy Eichner

This is Ethan Coen's second film since splitting with brother Joel Coen.  The first was the unbearable Drive Away Dolls and Honey Don't! is nearly as unwatchable.  Whatever your personal or professional issue may be, please repair it with Joel and get back to making movies like Fargo and No Country for Old Men.  Movies like Honey Don't! beg to be forgotten.  It took some research for me to recall the name of the movie Drive Away Dolls, let alone what it was about.  Both movies starred Margaret Qualley as its lesbian protagonist, and both are equally unremarkable.

Qualley plays Honey, a Bakersfield private eye who is drawn into a murderous conspiracy involving (possibly) a corrupt local preacher (Evans) and his henchmen who are hell-bent on knocking off those who disrupt or threaten their criminal empire.  Honey wisecracks her way through the proceedings and falls for a local cop (Plaza), who may be more involved with this than we believe, or even care about.  I stopped caring early on.  Fortunately, Honey Don't! is only roughly 85 minutes long, although that was probably 75 minutes too long.

Chris Evans at least provides some comic relief as the hypocritical preacher who finds he's in way over his head.  He has found some interesting work post-Captain America, even though the early summer's Materialists was better than this movie, it wasn't anything memorable either. Whatever the opposite of memorable is, Honey Don't! is that.  

And Just Like That...(Season Three-2025) * *

Starring:  Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon, Evan Handler, Nicole Ari Parker, John Corbett, Mario Cantone, Sarita Choudhury

Carrie Bradshaw and her supporting cast have run out of gas, and this series which continues the story of the four Manhattan ladies from Sex and the City has lost all sense of excitement and danger.  It has become a show about women wearing obnoxiously gaudy clothes everywhere they go, including their own kitchens.  And Just Like That has become the Sex and the City 2 of the series.  The first two seasons played well off the nostalgia and the women trying to navigate the new sexual landscape, but now it's dead on the vine.  

A big problem is Carrie herself (Parker), who is a couple years removed from her husband Mr. Big passing away from a heart attack and finds herself in a "relationship" of sorts with Aidan (Corbett), who at the end of season two said he wanted to have a five-year break from Carrie but still be in a relationship.  Talk about mixed signals.  No matter.  They wind up seeing more of each other and their scenes together feel like an argument or breakup waiting to happen.  No matter.  Carrie owns a plush Manhattan apartment and constantly bugs her downstairs neighbor by wearing heels everywhere.  Because of how the show operates, the neighbor immediately falls for Carrie, which is what practically every man who comes within her field of vision tends to do.  

Miranda (Nixon) is taking on a new relationship as well with a reticent lesbian while her son gets another young woman pregnant.  Charlotte (Davis) is the happiest of the bunch although her longtime husband Harry (Handler) is soon battling prostate cancer and impotence as a result.  The impotence is considered worse than the cancer.  Samantha does not make any appearances in this season, proving Kim Cattrall's appearance last season was a one-off, and I say good for her.  Samantha has been replaced by not one, but two other female buddies in Lisa Wexley (Parker), a documentary filmmaker whose husband is running for NYC mayor and finds herself attracted to her male editor, and Seema (Choudhury), a chain-smoking realtor who finds love with a hippie gardener.   All of this doesn't generate much heat or interest.   The show itself met an abrupt cancellation so season three became the final one.  A season four likely would've just dragged things out even further and maybe more old boyfriends of Carrie who would inevitably fall back in love with her would've been dug up.

Nobody 2 (2025) * * *

Directed by:  Timo Tjahjanto

Starring: Bob Odenkirk, Connie Nielsen, Christopher Lloyd, Sharon Stone, Colin Hanks, John Ortiz, RZA

I was prepared to write off Nobody 2 as an uninspired sequel which nobody (no pun intended) asked for.  I'm glad I was wrong.  Nobody 2 proved that Hutch Mansell (Odenkirk) still had some energy left in the tank for this sequel, which is pure action and more proof that Hutch is not a guy to mess with despite outward appearances.

Picking up from where the surprise 2021 hit Nobody left off, Hutch has returned to a life of black ops missions to pay off a debt to a Russian mobster.  If I recall correctly, he torched this man's money in the first film and it proves the rule that you don't burn money, which Hutch also ignores in Nobody 2.  Following a particularly daunting mission, Hutch takes his family on a much-promised vacation to a lakeside resort Hutch visited often as a kid.  Things don't stay peaceful or relaxing for long, as Hutch soon finds himself in the middle of a crime ring run by the mysterious and cruel Lendina (Stone), who has affection for her dog and nothing else and rules the town ruthlessly.  She'll kill cheating gamblers right at the blackjack table, one-upping Robert DeNiro in Casino (also starring Stone) who merely broke a cheater's hand with a hammer.

Hutch disrupts operations and brings in his brother Harry (RZA) and his retired father (Lloyd) to help destroy Lendina.  One thing about Hutch, like in the first movie, is that he can take a licking and keep on ticking.  In Nobody, there was humor in learning that an ordinary schmoe like Hutch is actually a trained John Wick-style assassin.  In Nobody 2, we come to accept that Hutch will eventually come for you if you cross him, and the results are rarely pretty.   Nobody 2 isn't original nor does it expound upon the genre, but it works on its own merits.  

Together (2025) * *

Directed by:  Michael Shanks

Starring:  Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Damon Herriman

Longtime couple Tim (Franco) and Millie (Brie) move out to the country in hopes of revitalizing their stagnant relationship.  The passion is missing.  For reasons never made clear, they haven't had sex in months and a general malaise has set in.  The movie Together itself suffers from that same issue.  Not the no sex part, but the malaise part.  Franco and Brie are married in real life, and their is definite depth to the performances, but the movie is a horror film and thus the horror appears early and often.

While hiking in the nearby woods, Tim and Millie find themselves trapped in a cave overnight.  Thirsty Dave drinks from the pool of water collected there (a no-no as it turns out) and the two wake up with some funky glue-like good connecting them.  They manage to free themselves of the goo and the cave, but soon they begin to pull towards each other like magnets.  I've heard of magnetism, but this is ridiculous.  No matter how they try to stay physically apart, they find themselves sticking together.

One of Millie's fellow teacher friends (Merriman) is ominously patient, kind, and sweet, which means he either likes her or is keeping a secret.  The first possibility is erased early and then we await the mysterious explanation of all of this.  I won't give away the ending, but when Tim and Millie put on the record player and play the Spice Girls' Two Become One, well that was that.  And then I had questions.  Such as under whose name do we keep the utility bill?  Just wondering. 

Weapons (2025) * *

Directed by:  Zach Cregger

Starring:  Julia Garner, Josh Brolin, Amy Madigan, Cary Christopher, Alden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams

Weapons starts out strong and suspenseful and about two-thirds of the way through settles into the mundane.  There likely was never a way to create a payoff worthy of the setup, and Weapons fails where it should succeed the most.  Cregger's 2022 hit Barbarian unfolded the same way, and led to disappointment.  Weapons reaches a point where it stalls and can't start up again.

Weapons has been an unexpected box-office hit here in the late summer of 2025.  The opening is mysterious and dark, with seventeen children, all from the same classroom in the local elementary school, awakening at 2:17 am and fleeing their homes to vanish without a trace.   They were following some sort of direction, but to where?  Were they abducted by aliens?  Were they murdered?  The next morning, teacher Justine Gandy (Garner) walks into school to discover her entire classroom save for one student (Christopher) absent.  The disappearances gain local and national media coverage and Justine herself is soon held responsible by parents and the public demanding answers from her.  In their minds, Justine had to have done or said something to make seventeen kids disappear one night.

The most vocal of the parents is Archer Graff (Brolin), who makes it his business to discover his son's whereabouts and they lead to a disturbing home across town owned by a family of seemingly catatonic parents and a grandmother (Madigan), who practices witchcraft.  Anyone who enters the home soon finds themselves in a zombie-like trance.  Until this point, we discover how wounded Justine and Archer are by this sad sequence of events, both actors creating sympathetic characters who aren't equipped to handle such unprecedented goings-on,  Then again, who would be?  

But then we grow impatient and a bit let down once we learn the truth of what happened and Weapons loses its trump card.  It settles into a typical horror story full of jump scares and gore, which is the last thing we wanted or expected from a buildup that starts out so promising.  

The Roses (2025) * *

 

Directed by:  Jay Roach

Starring:  Benedict Cumberbatch, Olivia Colman, Kate McKinnon, Andy Samberg, Wells Rappaport, Hala Finley

It's impossible not to compare The Roses to its 1989 counterpart The War of the Roses (1989), which starred Michael Douglas, Danny DeVito, and Kathleen Turner and was a merciless dark comedy that didn't play nice.  We believed it when the Roses of that movie met, fell in love, and years later were at each other's throats over their divorce and custody of their house.   In this current incarnation, we're unconvinced that the married pair truly despises one another and thus, the humor and intrigue are lost.  The Roses tries to play catch up by throwing in a montage of nasty things Theo (Cumberbatch) and Ivy (Colman) do to each other in a game of one-upmanship, but by then we are long past caring. 

Cumberbatch and Colman are, of course, likable down to their cores.  Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner had edges and elbows when dealing with each other, even when they were happily married.  It is difficult to these Roses to transition into full-blown hatred when you are never convinced it's real.  This is not the fault of the actors, but of a screenplay that doesn't want them to seem mean.  Their arguments are forced; sounding like new age psychobabble wrapped in British accents.  Theo, an architect and Ivy, a chef, meet and quickly fall in love one night in a London restaurant where Ivy works and Theo is trying to muddle through a business dinner.  Ten years later, they've moved to Los Angeles where Theo is a successful architect and Ivy opens a restaurant which quickly gains popularity.  However, one of Theo's buildings is destroyed in a storm and finds himself out of a job when the destruction goes viral.  He is now relegated to house-husband while Ivy's business expands and she becomes the primary breadwinner.

There is room for satire and exploration of the roles of the sexes in a marriage, but that is not done in The Roses.  Instead we have a needless remake "based on the novel", but let's be honest:  Who knew The War of the Roses was ever a novel?  This is a remake of the 1989 movie for my money, and it pales in comparison.  

Happy Gilmore 2 (2025) * * *

 

Directed by:  Kyle Newacheck

Starring:  Adam Sandler, Benny Safdie, Christopher McDonald, Haley Joel Osment, Julie Bowen, Scottie Scheffler, Bad Bunny, Travis Kelce

Happy Gilmore (1996) was not a movie begging for a sequel, but Adam Sandler made one, and his Happy this time is gentler, thanks to the years and having a wife and five kids.  He is still on the pro circuit, having won numerous championships while his nemesis Shooter McGavin (McDonald) is languishing away in a mental institution after the ending of the first movie.  However, Shooter still has a soft spot for Virginia (Bowen), Happy's wife who is soon killed off within the first twenty minutes of the movie following an errant golf ball striking her.  This sends Happy into a downward spiral in which he retires from golf, begins working at a supermarket, and takes on John Daly as a roommate.  

Happy is approached by smarmy mogul Frank Manatee (Safdie), who is starting up a new golf organization which craps all over tradition and arranges Shooter's release once Happy violently turns Frank down.  You would assume Shooter would go along with Frank's schemes, which include removing some vertebra removed so the golfers can drive from the tee even longer than Happy.  Shooter, more of a traditionalist than we realize, rejects Frank and befriends Happy.  (Not before a silly fistfight near Virginia's grave, of course, which forces a truce).

Happy gathers up some of his tour buddies to take on Frank's golfers in a match played on what resembles an amusement park mixed with an obstacle course.  Happy Gilmore 2 isn't a movie to watch for any semblance of accurate golf strategy or even sanity at times.  I enjoyed the evolution of Happy and Shooter, who team up to take on an even more dastardly villain, and I found myself caring much more than I expected.  Like any sequel made nearly thirty years after the original, there are callbacks to actors and characters who have passed on, and even that has a certain sweetness.