2025

dir: James Gunn

2025

Mostly, what I feel is, is relief.

Not that the film is okay, which it is, but that it wasn’t out and out bad. Heavens know why I would feel protective of this character.

Also I feel relief that Zack Snyder is no longer making movies with Superman in them. Ideally Snyder won’t make any movies full stop, but not making any more with DC’s characters is a good enough substitute for that, one that I can happily live with.

One other thing, at least, is that James Gunn knows how to make something funny, or at least he has a sense of humour, again unlike Snyder. It doesn’t mean every joke lands; it doesn’t always mean I appreciate the perverted directions his leanings sometimes take him, but I generally find his takes pretty funny.

He is incredibly obsessed with threatening characters eyeballs. There is an almost demented amount of eyeball torture for heroes, villains, and everyone in between in this film. Come to think of it, wasn’t there a crucial moment in his Suicide Squad that depended on Harley Quinn saving the day by piercing someone or something’s eye with something sharp?

Eww, that gives me the heebie-jeebies just remembering it. But there’s so much more of it here.

What else don’t we get here: it starts, thankfully, with Superman as Superman already, a superbeing in their world, trying to do good and being resented for it. It’s an okay place to start. We didn’t need to see Krypton again, we don’t need to live through the origin once again, in the same way that we don’t ever need to see anyone’s parents being shot in Crime Alley ever again, with Martha’s pearls spilling into the gutter for the thousandth time.

He already has his gig at the Daily Planet, Lois (Rachel Brosnahan) already knows about him and his dual identities, but eugh, in this version / reality / reboot / redo universe, Jimmy Olsen is somehow a desirable ladies man.

dir: Celine Song

2025

Anyone who saw and liked Past Lives fairly recently wouldn’t be surprised that this flick is a subtle one, seemingly about how great it is to be rich and never worry about whether you’re going to be able to make rent or eat food for the next fortnight, but more about the modern minefield that is dating. Also, anyone that was hoping for something as sublime or exquisite as Past Lives is going to be sorely disappointed.

Materialists is a different film, a different song that plays out in a different register. Being alone, being single makes us anxious. Finding someone to be in a relationship with makes us anxious. Actually being with them and thinking about a future together makes us anxious. Having it all fall apart makes us anxious, because we’re not sure if we can go through all of that again, but we can’t be on our own, because then the world thinks we’re worthless. We are not valued, therefore we don’t value ourselves. We need others to make us feel valuable. Or at least feel slightly less shit about ourselves.

So how do we find someone to be compatible with? I don’t mean a hook-up – I have no personal knowledge of the world of either online dating or online hook-ups: They’re both from way before my time on the dating battlefield / in the dating-mining trenches. But I’ve read enough about them or see enough about them as a phenomena in countless movies and tv shows, and through conversations with friends to have some idea.

Imagine not a dating service, but a matchmaking service, which seeks to pair prospective daters, with people who will be the right ‘fit’ for them. People apparently don’t know where to go, or how to approach people in non-threatening or non-cringe ways, so having someone go through your family history, education and net worth, put your data into a spreadsheet, and then compare it with someone else of the opposite or same identifying gender in order to calculate compatibility, well, that would be a godsend, surely? It would take the guesswork out of it, the messiness, the fear, surely?

Would it fuck…

dir: Wes Anderson

2025

Oh look, another Wes Anderson film. I wonder if it will be preciously over-designed and exactingly composed, and have eccentric performances from quirky actors in weird costumes / uniforms?

But I jest, I jest. We know all about Wes Anderson. One of the few auteurs left whose films are immediately identifiable by every single frame visible, even by people who don’t know who he is.

I enjoy his films probably more than most people, but then I’ve always been a cheap date. Rigorous formality may not be my jam, but I do appreciate it much of the time. I think of many of the much older films that Anderson echoes, and then I think about how much more I enjoy his films in comparison while I’m watching them. And then they end, and I wonder quietly to myself “I wonder what the fuck all of that was about?”

And yet I’m also the first to admit that, enjoyable as they are, his flicks often don’t say much of anything and don’t seem to mean much in the scheme of things beyond whatever aesthetics he’s decided to precisely realise (for his own purposes).

Oh yes, and the same themes, as ever. This Scheme adds another bad dad to the rogue’s gallery Anderson has conjured over the years, and he’s a welcome addition. I just recently, in honour of the great Gene Hackman’s passing, re-watched The Royal Tenenbaums, and had the opportunity to remind myself both how great Hackman was, and what an awful father he played to those poor kids.

dir: Len Wiseman

2025

I’m calling this film Ballerina 2025 to differentiate it from the South Korean action film Ballerina from a couple of years ago, because calling it its full title of From the World of John Wick: Ballerina is just too embarrassing except to the kinds of people who live to work in marketing. To them such a title is sweeter than crack.

The only other thing it has in common with the South Korean film from 2023 is that the film is not about a ballerina at all: that flick was about a depressed super assassin who wanted revenge against a jerk who sexually abused her only friend, leading to hundreds of deaths. This flick is about a pretend ballerina who’s really a super assassin who wants revenge on the guy who killed her father, leading to hundreds of deaths.

It is unashamedly a John Wick flick that doesn’t have John Wick as the lead that still, thanks to situating it temporarily between the 3rd and 4th movies, still has John fucking Wick in it. You know, as someone who saw the other 4 movies, I did wonder if he killed enough people back then.

Now he’s killed even more. It’s an excellent cheat. Despite the results of the 4th film in his franchise, he could be killing more people for all eternity. So what if he killed over 400 people over the course of those four flicks – he can always beat his highest score.

I don’t know if this flick was successful money-wise guaranteeing more films where someone who’s not a ballerina kills hundreds more people, but there is something to be said for a flick that illuminates / betrays the emptiness of its central conceit: It was always absurd that one person could kill literally hundreds of people at a time. And now, with even less justification, the mayhem continues, like she’s a one person IDF, mowing down countless Palestinians…

Numbers. It comes down to numbers. If the mainstay attraction of those films is a main character killing hundreds of people, then I guess a film where the protagonist maims dozens of people but only kills the main bad guy would be considered a failure. Never fear, she probably kills, I dunno, 30, 40 people here? She gets to roast a bunch of them, but also stab and shoot a whole bunch of them too.

And she does it really well. Ana de Armas is blessed with being a performer who is often as good as the film she’s in (like her roles in No Time to Die, or Knives Out), and often she puts in a better performance than the film deserves (The Gray Man, Ghosted, Dark Waters, Blonde). She’s pretty great.