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The Gorge February 13, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen Making a film straight-to-streaming is a low-risk-low-reward proposition for any filmmaker, especially when said streaming service is still in its relative infancy (i.e. they're not Netflix). If the film doesn't work, then it fails quietly, its only legacy being an inconspicuous credit on people's IMDb page. The same fate awaits a film that turns out to be good, all those months of blood and sweat not being met with a big box office haul, only a mention by the CFO at the next quarterly investor call covering subscription growth. While the television side of Apple TV+ has sporadically graduated from this level with hits like Ted Lasso , Severance , and Shrinking , its straight-to-streaming division remains firmly entrenched in the land of anonymity. The titles of Fingernails , Palmer , and Finch mean nothing to the average movie fan. Despite its exceptional quality, director Scott Derrickson's The Gorge is likely destined to repeat that same fate, falling down a cavernous catalog just as deep and mysterious as the one in the film itself. The location of this pit is a classified secret, even kept from the guards stationed in separate watchtowers on either side of it. One of them is Drasa (Anya Taylor-Joy, sporting a moderately more believable accent compared to her work in The New Mutants ), your prototypical heartless Russian assassin who dons all black and pulls the trigger without hesitation. The American Levi (Miles Teller) was once like that, but the prolonged years of being in this business have made him care too much. What good is an assassin who's grown a conscience? A mysterious private military figure (Sigourney Weaver) figures that the absence of anything giving him a reason to keep living makes him the perfect expendable soldier. Both Levi and Drasa are essentially part of a suicide mission, standing guard over a cavern that possesses something so evil that the Eastern and Western superpowers have always put aside their Cold War differences and worked together to keep it contained. What the overlords didn't consider when they selected their representatives was what happens when you place two very attractive people in the wilderness with nothing to do but get to know each other. Teller and Taylor-Joy pull off the incredibly difficult task of developing a romantic relationship despite their physical distance initially preventing them from ever sharing the same frame. They communicate through telescopes and whiteboards and even exchange playful sniper fire in games of one-upmanship. Derrickson lends his skills well to this twisted meet-cute scenario, creating montages set to energizing needle-drops. None of the song choices could be considered original or fresh, but they're all incredibly likable and fit the mood. All this fun almost makes everyone forget that they're standing above a gateway to hell, that is until one day when the demons start getting a little too ambitious for their own good. Levi and Drasa are forcibly relocated to the bottom of the gorge, fending off waves of emaciated creatures that have waited for decades for a decent piece of meat to chew on. Derrickson is a filmmaker who's most well-known for his gnarly R-rated features like Deliver Us from Evil and The Black Phone . One would think that the PG-13 rating here would tie his hands behind his back, but the interesting creature design and expert overall craftsmanship never let that thought occur. I can't divulge specifics about what the creatures look like and how they came to be, as that's the central hook, something that the marketers equally valued when they surprisingly kept it a secret in the trailer. Cinematographer Dan Laustsen, a natural fit for this project considering his years-long relationship with creature feature aficionado Guillermo del Toro, creates an unsettling atmosphere through his colorful use of mist and Cold War aesthetics. The composer duo of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross accentuate Laustsen's imagery with their steel wire score. For those who have regularly played the Zombies game mode in the Call of Duty video game series and have longed for it to be brought to the silver screen, this is your dream come true. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Triangle of Sadness May 28, 2022 By: Button Hunter Friesen Triangle of Sadness had its World Premiere at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Neon will release it in theaters on October 7. An influencer couple, a Russian capitalist, two British arms dealers, and an American Marxist sea captain all board a $250 million luxury yacht bound for the high seas. What could go wrong? You’ve seen movies better at dissecting economic classism than Triangle of Sadness . You’ve also seen much tighter and more succinct ones. And you’ve definitely seen ones that leave you with a better understanding of an issue than when you walked in. But, I don’t think you’ve ever seen a film that doesn't do all of that and still be as wickedly hilarious as Triangle of Sadness . Ruben Östlund has never found an issue he can’t tackle. Whether it be mundane social norms in Involuntary , male ego in Force Majeure (for which he was given the dubious honor of having remade in the English language with the woefully dull Downhill ), or the upside-down art world in The Square , the Swedish filmmaker has always found a playful way to show just how absurd life is. And, along with those themes of social skewering, the thing that has stayed most consistent is the praise he’s received. Force Majeure snagged the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival, which allowed him to be “promoted” to the official competition with 2017’s The Square . The brighter lights did nothing to hinder his upward trajectory as he added the prestigious Palme d’Or to his trophy shelf. Now in 2022, Östlund’s stock continues to rise with his second consecutive Palme win, joining Michael Haneke and fellow countrymen Billie August as the only filmmakers to win the award for back-to-back films. So, with all the awards surrounding Triangle of Sadness as it sets its American theatrical release, the question remains: Does it live up to the hype? Well, yes and no. Taking a page out of the Zoolander school of satire, Östlund’s film opens with a modeling audition. At the age of 25, Carl (both smartly and aloofly played by the rising Harris Dickinson) is getting a little too close to being phased out of his career as the roles in the “grumpy” and “smiley” brands aren’t coming as easily as they used to. He’s left to languish in a slow and painful societal death, which includes losing social media followers and invites to his girlfriend Yaya’s (Charlbi Dean, who tragically passed away just after the film’s premiere) runway shows. This A Star Is Born dynamic threatens the pair’s relationship, which Östlund punctuates with a side-splitting cringe-fueled debate over who should pick up the check at a restaurant. Fortunately, the couple is bound for a superyacht vacation that will act as the final opportunity to mend their connection. On the boat, they become the middle class, stuck between the uber-rich guests and the lowly workers that service every passenger’s whim, which includes going for a swim to assuage their master’s guilt and promising to clean the sails, even though this a motorized vessel. In this second act of the film’s clear three-act structure, Östlund unleashes a tirade of written and visual allegories upon his micro-society, with two standouts being Woody Harrelson’s alcoholic ship captain and the closing scene where the ship fills with literal shit and vomit. Any viewers with a weak stomach have been properly warned. None of what Östlund is saying is revolutionary, but it is oh so funny. But that high level of hilarity can’t sustain itself across the film’s extremely bloated 150-minute runtime, which becomes quite clear during the final, and weakest, act. Through unforeseen circumstances, the passengers have been marooned on a desolate island. Things get even more in-your-face by Östlund as the social hierarchy completely flips, with the white-collar passengers proving to be inept and the “peasants” becoming royalty because of their basic survival skills. From here to the end, most everything only elicits a mild chuckle instead of the belly-aching that the first two hours had accustomed us to. Triangle of Sadness demands to be seen with the largest crowd possible, as its mixture of low and high-brow humor travels like wildfire in the moment. Unfortunately for the majority of the viewers, the post-pandemic theatrical landscape doesn’t create too many opportunities for that level of a collective experience for any non-MCU branded film. It’s a true pity, as my Cannes screening of Östlund’s farce in May has lasted longer in my memory than most blockbusters do the day after. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire December 20, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen If you loved the “This is Katana” speech from 2016’s Suicide Squad , then you will have a field day with Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire . Snyder and his two credited co-writers, Shay Hatten and Kurt Johnstad, steal from every source they can, so much so from Star Wars and Seven Samurai that George Lucas and the estate of Akira Kurosawa would be in their legal right to sue for credit, although they shouldn’t because that would tangentially connect them to this abominable script for the rest of time. But the con doesn’t stop on the page, as nearly every image is so steeped in the iconography of what’s come before that it’s impossible to see it for anything more than a cheap knockoff. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. An opening crawl’s worth of lore is narrated by Anthony Hopkins as an evil dreadnought appears out of space and moves past the camera, which then pans down to a desert planet to reveal a young orphan farmer. No, the projectionist (or the Netflix server) didn’t accidentally play A New Hope , it just started the biggest edge lord wannabe since Todd Phillips’ Joker (that one at least boasted a high level of competence). Our young hero is Kora (Sofia Boutella), who harbors a traumatic past with the fascist Motherworld, led by Ed Skrien’s Admiral Atticus Noble, donning every piece of Nazi regalia except for the swastika. Kora knows that the arrival of Noble means death for her quant farming village, but none of the other villagers take the danger seriously enough. The consequence of their underestimation is tragedy, prompting Kora to travel the galaxy assembling a team of warriors to fight back against the evil that encroaches on the people she cares about. That synopsis might seem simple enough (as it should because you’ve literally seen it before), but nothing is simple about the way Snyder tiringly doles it out. The who, what, where, when, and why are in a constant state of vagueness, masked by unclear exposition and uninteresting politics. At some point, you just have to throw your hands in the air and simplify it down to Kora being Luke Skywalker, Noble being Darth Vader, the Motherworld being The Empire, and Charlie Hunnam playing the Han Solo-type. What does that mean for the other half-dozen characters that don’t fit into that mold? It actually doesn’t matter because they hardly matter either, almost all of them serving more as action figures than believable mortals. But action figures deserve good action set pieces. And except for a genuinely cool fight between Doona Bae’s samurai witch and an Arachne, there isn’t a moment that inspires the eyegasm Synder so desperately wants you to have. He employs the typical slow-fast-slow speed-toggling at such a predictable clip that you’d wish it was eligible to be gambled on. The gore is also toned down considerably through choppy editing. That aspect has been lumped in with the individual character backstories as the main selling points for the future Snyder Cut, which promises to fix all the problems they’ve readily admitted feature in this cut. Those extra hours will include more opportunities for Snyder - serving as his own DP again after Army of the Dead (who the hell let that happen!?) - to indulge in his ultra-shallow focus cinematography. It’s not as ugly as before, but it still backfires to expose the artificiality of the sets and incessant visual effects used to cover it up. Returning to George Lucas, there were a few moments here that made the digital backdrops from the prequel films seem photorealistic. I don’t know where the story goes next in the soon-to-come sequel The Scargiver ; not because Snyder ended it on an interesting note, but because I’m still baffled about everything that happened and what it all means going forward. Honestly, it takes true talent to cheat this intensely and still fail so hard. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Blue Beetle August 18, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen Blue Beetle is the best DCEU film in years. But that’s not much of a statement, as it would take a monumental amount of skill to make something lesser than Black Adam , Shazam: Fury of the Gods , or The Flash . It's like a student got three straight F's on their exams and then got a C-, or Shaquille O’Neal finally making a free throw. The act itself isn’t noteworthy, but the context makes it a landmark moment. There’s also not much fun to be had with Blue Beetle ’s competence, as every story element and character decision is pulled directly from the “How to Make a Superhero Origin Story For Dummies” textbook. Take a shot each time a sentence in the subsequent paragraph reminds you of another superhero film. Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) is just a kid from Palmera City who’s the pride and joy of his immigrant family. He’s returning home after obtaining his college degree, but family hardships prevent him from unlocking his true destiny. He and his wise-cracking sister (Belissa Escobedo) take jobs as part of a mansion cleaning staff. There he crosses paths with Jenny Kord (Bruna Marquezine), the niece of tech billionaire Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon). Jenny asks him to hide something called The Scarab, which quickly decides to attach itself to Jaime, making him a world-killing supersoldier (he’s DC’s Iron Man, to put it bluntly). He didn’t choose to have these powers, but he’ll need to learn to put them to good use as people like Victoria want to use them to take over the world. Blue Beetle wears its heart on its sleeve when it comes to the family dynamic within the cast. For the most part, it greatly succeeds in establishing that special bond. Jaime’s uncle Rudy (George Lopez, doing a pretty good job spinning gold out of the lead he’s given) is the “Mexican Doc Brown,” and he always fears that the government is tracking them. But it’s not like the Reyes family would just lie down and take it, as Nana (Adriana Barraza) has a secret revolutionary past, a joke that tries to go on longer than its shelf life. This is a tight-knit group, providing both the most emotional and entertaining moments of the film. Unfortunately, writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer put all his skill points in that area. Besides the family, there’s not much of any reason to care about what’s going on. There’s very little introduction or explanation into what The Scarab actually is, why it chose Jaime, and what Victoria’s evil plan is supposed to accomplish. Although I’m sure the answers to these questions would have been just as clichéd as everything else, I still would have appreciated the courtesy of having them addressed. Director Ángel Manuel Soto doesn’t do much to make up for those problems with the action. It’s the usual “overpowered hero takes out tons of goons before fighting the final boss, who has the same powers they have” that we’ve come to expect (again, the comparisons to Iron Man are uncanny). At least Tony Stark felt like a person in a suit, unlike the poorly rendered CGI creation that Maridueña just ADRs over. The Cobra Kai has the charm and looks to be a superhero, but those seem to be his only assets. It’s hard to nail down where Blue Beetle lands in this whole DC shakeup, not only because of the wishy-washy answers from head honcho James Gunn but also because it feels so much like a product of the old regime. If it’s meant to cap off this decade-long run that started with Man of Steel , I guess we could have gone out with something worse. If this is the start of something new, then there’s not much to get excited about. Same shit, different day. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

A Hero July 16, 2021 By: Button Hunter Friesen A Hero had its World Premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Amazon Studios will release it in theaters on January 07, followed by its streaming premiere on January 21. Without much fanfare, Iranian auteur Asghar Farhadi has become one of the most consistent filmmakers of the new millennium. His work has amassed him prestigious premieres at film festivals, two Academy Awards for Best International Feature (2011’s A Separation and 2016’s The Salesman ), and the opportunity to work with some of the biggest international stars. Premiering at this year’s Cannes Film Festival (which usually serves as his launching pad) is his newest film, A Hero . Set within modern Iran, A Hero follows the life of Rahim, who is currently on two-day parole from his prison sentence, which he is serving because of his inability to pay off a debt to a local lender. When Rahim and his girlfriend find a bag of gold coins at a bus stop, they decide to pawn them off to help pay the debt. Unfortunately, the exchange rate for the coins isn’t ideal, so they decide to do the right thing and return them to the owner. A woman comes forward to reclaim her lost property, which turns Rahim into a local celebrity for his generosity. But after some digging, hidden details start to come up to the surface. Rahim’s story is put under a microscope, with many suspecting there’s more than meets the eye. Barring his 2018 feature Everybody Knows , Farhadi has concentrated his storytelling on his home country of Iran. He has a fascination with showcasing the modern problems that its citizens often deal with, a monumentally difficult task considering the strict censorship the government puts on its artists. Despite the government initially banning him from making the film, Farhadi was able to explore the modern fallacies of divorce and gender in A Separation . A Hero taps into that same vein as Farhadi spins a web of moral and ethical quandaries so dense that it would give the world’s leading philosophers a headache. Often compared to the great Alfred Hitchcock for his knack for suspenseful drama, Farhadi structures his film with a rapid pace, both in terms of setting and plot progression. Taking place entirely throughout Rahim’s two-day parole, the film covers a lot of material in a short amount of time. And this material isn’t clean and dry stuff as much of it contains complicated details and extensive critical thinking without the guarantee of a satisfying answer. Unlike Hitchcock, Farhadi is quite invisible in his direction. Like the master that he is (which isn’t to say Hitchcock isn’t a master), Farhadi is always present, but never visible. There isn’t anything showy about his work as the story and actors carry the film from beginning to end. His reluctance to overtly showcase his prowess to the audience is a sign of a director confident in his abilities, and the crew that he has assembled. A Hero is still filled with a few directorial flourishes such as a perfectly framed shot here and there, with the final shot rivaling his best visual work. Where Farhadi flexes his muscles is in the jam-packed script. Like Aaron Sorkin’s work in The Social Network , there are mountains upon mountains of dialogue, all going by in the blink of an eye. This is both a blessing and a curse to the film, as it produces a rapidly evolving plot that keeps you guessing, but also overloads itself and spreads its message too thin over too many topics. The ideas of The Good Samaritan and the troubling machinations of the court of public opinion are topics rife with debate that Farhadi is expertly able to dissect, but just not at the same time. At the center of the film is Amir Jadidi as Rahim, who, like all Farhadi performers, is a captivating lead. Despite his myriad of problems, Rahim always carries around a dogged smile on his face and a sliver of optimism in his mind. You’re attracted to him as a character because of this and feel betrayed by him once more light is shed on the truth. While he may not be working at the absolute height of his power, Asghar Farhadi’s A Hero is still a feature by a master storyteller doing what he does best. There’s a lot to learn and digest, with some of the material being quite rough around the edges. Few filmmakers are as gifted as Farhadi at showing the complicated nature of everyday life. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Dreamin' Wild August 1, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen History is full of instances where creative geniuses were overlooked in their own time, only to get the proper amount of recognition long after they’ve left our mortal world. Vincent van Gogh personally sold only one painting; the majority of the poems by Emily Dickinson never saw the light of day until decades after her death; and Johann Sebastian Bach was only known as a simple organist during his active days. But what if that rush of recognition wasn’t delayed so posthumously? What if all that work was reappraised during their lifetime? Would those figures celebrate their newfound success, or would it disrupt the unappreciated lives they had content themselves with? Such are the questions within Bill Pohlad’s sophomore feature, which premiered last fall at the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals, and just made its American debut as the opening night selection for the writer/director’s hometown Minneapolis St. Paul Film Festival. In the late 1970s, the teenage brothers of Donnie (Noah Jupe) and Joe Emmerson (Jack Dylan Grazer) recorded an album called “Dreamin’ Wild” in their makeshift studio their dad built on the family farmland. Nothing came of it, with most copies going unsold and taking up space in their parent’s basement. The brothers moved on with their lives. Thirty years later, a producer hears the album and is compelled to track down the creators. The record is remastered and re-released to great acclaim, sparking a newfound nationwide interest, capped off with an article in The New York Times . The adult Donnie (Casey Affleck) is a bit skeptical of all this attention and isn’t sure if he wants to get back into the life he left behind so long ago. Affleck’s performance may as well have been lifted straight from Manchester by the Sea , which earned him an Oscar. There’s a quiet sense of guilt and regret in his demeanor, as his first go at music fame cost his dad a small fortune. Joe (Walton Goggins) is the less talented brother, but he’s always trying his best on the drums and there as support. While Donnie struggles with finding the passion he once had as a teenager, Joe is more than willing to dive into the musical beats once again. Pohlad started out his Hollywood journey as a producer for several talented filmmakers such as Ang Lee ( Brokeback Mountain ), Terrence Malick ( The Tree of Life ), Sean Penn ( Into the Wild ), and Steve McQueen ( 12 Years a Slave ). His directorial debut came in 2014 with Love & Mercy , a biography of The Beach Boys frontman Brian Wilson, split between his youthful origins and later broken years. Dreamin’ Wild repeats that exact narrative structure, with Donnie and Joe literally looking into their past on multiple occasions. “Magical realism” is the way Pohlad described his approach to the film, with the exact stylings leaning close to that of Malick (sans whisper narration). But just as Malick’s name is misspelled in the “special thanks” portion of the end credits, Pohlad’s emulation of his style isn’t totally correct either. Some scenes are a little amateurish in their production qualities, and some of the interesting creative ideas are sandwiched between the story beats we’ve come to expect within the musician genre. Still, the director’s love and appreciation for the Emersons is always evident, almost as if he made the movie more for them than the paying audiences. That emotional reverence is what I walked away from the movie feeling the most, which is more than I can say about the majority of biopics these days. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Magic Mike's Last Dance February 10, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen There are two camps of viewers who have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of the trilogy finale that is Magic Mike’s Last Dance . The first are those responsible for the $40 million opening weekend haul for the original and accounted for 96% of the opening weekend ticket sales for the sequel: women. It’s not hard to see why the audience demographics broke down the way that they did, but it could also be a symptom of a more noticeable trend of movies being less “sexy” these days . The second group is far smaller and less enthusiastic, which is the cinephiles who are interested in seeing what’s next for Steven Soderbergh, who returns to the director’s chair after taking a backseat to his frequent collaborator Gregory Jacobs for the sequel. The Oscar-winning director has always been hard to label an “auteur” on account of his chameleonic nature, not just in genres but also in mediums and filming techniques (shooting Unsane and High Flying Bird on an iPhone before it was cool). He’s now directed more films than he did before announcing his retirement in 2013, providing high-quality content to streamers like Netflix and HBO Max with Let Them All Talk, No Sudden Move , and Kimi . Both of these groups likely won’t be fully satisfied with Magic Mike’s Last Dance , ending this unlikely franchise on a whimper instead of the sensual bang it deserved. Now almost forty (although you’d hardly be able to tell as Tatum looks nearly the same as he did in the 2012 original), former male stripper Mike Lane is in Miami trying to make ends meet while bartending. His compadres from the first two films are (sadly) gone, leaving Mike to walk down this lonely road by himself. That is until he meets the extremely wealthy and also equally lonely Max (Salma Hayek Pinault), who coaxes Mike into giving her one last private dance. Mike’s dance (shot and edited with pinpoint precision by Soderbergh under his usual Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard pseudonyms, respectively) unlocks something deep within Max, prompting her to invest in his talents by taking him to London to revive a stodgy play that’s been overplayed at the theater she owns. Just as he’s done with every entry, Tatum’s business partner Reid Carolin writes the script, instilling it with the usual big themes about having a purpose in life and how people react to the adult entertainment business. Carolin’s even added narration here about the psychological influences of dance, which sounds just fine as long as you cover your ears. Soderbergh seems to be more interested in the ideas than the physical acts themselves, as evidenced by his two chapters being much less fun than Jacob’s middle child. The dance sequences are of course competently shot and stitched together but are weighted down by what they’re supposed to mean on a thematic level. There’s less of a free spirit to them, keeping the true carnal passion just under the point where it’s too uncomfortable to watch with your parents. While the rest of the bros are sorely missed, Hayek makes a nice fold against Mike. Her confidence is mesmerizing, and so is the way she looks, attracting all the eyes in the room with her clothes and gravitas. The relationship between her and Tatum doesn’t hold up the eye test though, as the romantic sparks fizzle rather than fly. Their creative relationship is solid, with Soderbergh constructing some snazzy Ocean’s Eleven recruitment montages as they gather their troupe of dancers. Last Dance takes a mature approach to ending this story, which would be admirable if it didn’t sacrifice so much of the fun of its predecessors. What was originally mostly just Step Up for adults has been overthought and underserved, stripping (pun intended) almost all of the guilt and pleasure out of the term “guilty pleasure.” More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Dear Evan Hansen September 23, 2021 By: Button Hunter Friesen Besides the expected superhero films, the genre that seems to be all the rage in 2021 is musicals. This year sees several different variations of the movie musical, featuring original concepts ( Annette ), musical variations of classic tales (Amazon’s Cinderella ), Broadway adaptations (Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights , and Miranda’s directorial debut Tick, Tick… Boom! ), and even remakes of Broadway adaptations (Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story ). Slotting right in with the rest of the Broadway pack is the film adaptation of the modern stage musical sensation: Dear Evan Hansen . Riddled with social anxiety, depression, and a cast on his left arm, Evan Hansen is a teenager who can never seem to fit in. He writes letters to himself for motivation, in which one haphazardly falls into the hands of the troubled Connor Murphy, who takes his own life shortly after. The Murphys believe the letter to be Connor’s suicide note, with Evan being his best friend. Rather than admit the truth that Connor was his bully, Evan goes along with this opportunity, netting him a newfound sense of popularity and affection from those that never once passed him a glance. He also becomes an unofficial member of the Murphy family, with the parents taking him under their wing and their daughter, Zoe, developing a relationship with him. But like all charades, the lie begins to spin out of control, tangling Evan and those he cares about in a web of deceit. Tasked with bringing the stage play to cinematic life is director Stephen Chbosky, who recently had success with Wonder , about a boy with facial disfigurement, and the soon-to-be cult classic/greatest movie ever according to Tumblr, The Perks of Being a Wallflower . Unlike the musicals mentioned in the beginning, Dear Evan Hansen doesn’t feature large group numbers on sweeping sets. Much of the action occurs in smaller, domestic locations, with the most exotic sets being a school gymnasium and a run-of-the-mill apple orchard. And even when a song features more than one performer, they hardly share the same location, such as “Requiem,” where the Murphys are crosscut and folded on top of each other. The film hangs its heart on the musical numbers, many of which have become anthems to a generation, especially “You Will Be Found,” which has become so iconic that it gets a special Sam Smith treatment during the credits, along with the familiar showstopping rendition that occurs at the midpoint. Schbosky shows middling prowess for the staging of these numbers, opting for the actors to sing live, filming them through extended takes and slower camera movements that accentuate the emotional pull of the material. That stillness also acts as a double-edged sword, as there is a distinct lack of energy that makes the 137-minute runtime feel a lot longer than it is. Ironically, the main problem that keeps this version of Dear Evan Hansen from being a sensation is not the cinematic qualities, but the story itself, which won Best Book of a Musical at the 2017 Tony Awards. The problem with the story is systematic, with Evan’s actions being steeped in selfishness. Screenwriter Steven Levenson tries too hard to have his cake and eat it too as he attempts to scorn Evan’s actions while also finding the silver lining with a ploying message about friendship and grief. The stage may have been able to cover this with its overpowering emotional tunes and acting, but the slowness of the film adaptation allows for that problem to fester until your sympathy for Evan has completely dried up and you just want him to get caught. Fortunately, the actors aren’t too affected by the script’s problems. Reprising his famous role, Ben Platt proves once again that he was born to play Evan Hansen, despite his 27-year-old face and gangly body signaling that he should have stayed retired. Kaitlyn Dever, who broke out in 2019 with Booksmart , often steals the show as Zoe. Dever finds the right amount of vulnerability as her character deals with the death of a brother she never had much respect for. She and Platt make their relationship seem believable, despite the glaring age difference and underwritten romantic development. Misguided, but not without its merits, Dear Evan Hansen aims for the heart with pinpoint accuracy. There’s an emotional and sweet lesson buried under the creepy candy coating that is the central premise. Once that obstacle is overcome (which is a big task), then there are enough powerful songs to connect with those that sometimes feel alone. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

BlackBerry April 24, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen BlackBerry screened at the 2023 Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Film Festival. IFC will release it in theaters on May 12. Out of all the “corporate biopics” that were on the docket for 2023, none piqued my interest more than BlackBerry . The allure of the story came solely from the predictability of the outcome, as everyone knows Nike made billions off of the Air Jordan brand and that Tetris would become one of the world's most popular video game franchises. But do people really know what happened to BlackBerry, the phone that one executive referred to as “CrackBerry” due to its dominant popularity within the business landscape? I’m guessing they don’t, as a little-known product called the iPhone consumed all the attention at that transitional moment. But before we get ahead of ourselves with all that doom and gloom, let's jump back to the hopeful beginnings. The year is 1992. Mike Lazarides (Jay Baruchel) and Douglas Fregin (Matt Johnson, also serving as co-writer and director) have just founded Research in Motion in Ontario and are going around to investors pitching their idea for a revolutionary new phone that is capable of being an all-in-one business machine. While their idea is brilliant, the duo have little to no business acumen, which is illustrated by the laissez-faire way they approach their equally bright workers. Luckily, one of their “so bad it’s good” business pitches catches the attention of the power-hungry Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton), who sees the potential for this product. He jumps ship in exchange for becoming co-CEO with Lazarides, making them the new Jobs and Wozniak. Success comes quickly in the form of market domination and billions of dollars in market capitalization. But the fall came quicker when the actual Steve Jobs came out with a phone that has a keyboard on the screen (“Who would want that!?” yells Lazarides during the Apple announcement). The rest, as they say, is history. Of course, you could just read the Wikipedia article on BlackBerry to get all of that information. But Johnson is a smart enough writer and director, invoking a seriocomic sensibility at every turn. The camera is handheld and observational, with zooms similar to The Office and Succession . You laugh along with these misfits as they race to their doom, but you also never look down upon them. Their brilliance is always on display, even if Jay McCarrol’s electronic score (borrowing heavily from The Social Network ) does most of the heavy lifting as tech-heavy terms like “network interface” and “carrier capacity” are thrown around to land credibility. Baruchel’s Lazarides is a charisma void. He’s someone that would say thank you after being told to fuck off, which happens more than a few times as Balsillie’s ambition starts outgrowing his capabilities. Howerton is brilliantly cast, as he essentially plays his character of Dennis from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia , just with a quite obvious bald cap. And then there’s also Johnson as the man-child of the group, who always sees work as an opportunity to have fun. But his idea of fun is not just about slacking off, it’s about creating a family ecosystem that produces new ideas through support and nurturing, something a lot of other tech companies miserably tried to emulate through bureaucracy. Time has not been an ally for the BlackBerry phone, but I believe it will be for this movie. While the other movies in this growing subgenre built themselves largely around the iconography of the brand, Johnson always has his sights set on the people behind the machine, which is what makes this specific story that much more compelling and rewatchable. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Frankenstein September 11, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen Frankenstein had its North American Premiere at the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival. Netflix will release it in theaters on October 17, followed by its streaming premiere on November 07. Guillermo del Toro, the filmmaker most in love with monsters, finally gets the chance to adapt the story of the most famous one of all. It’s been a dream project for him, entwined in his DNA and influencing each piece in his vast filmography. For decades, Mary Shelley’s novel always seemed to elude him, with box office hits and scores of Oscars never moving the needle enough. Then came Netflix with its bottomless war chest, opening the possibility for an epically scaled story about monsters playing god. “Some of what I will tell you is fact. Some is not. But it is all true.” This is how Dr. Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) prefaces his life’s story to Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen) after his injured body is rescued from the frozen tundra of the North Pole. A creature has been hunting him from the ends of the Earth, seemingly unkillable after Anderson’s men fire several shots and trap him under the ice to no avail. To understand this relationship, Victor must start from the beginning, when death conquered over his mother, igniting a vengeful desire for the brilliant boy to reverse what only God can control. His goal and methods make him a bit of a bad boy in Victorian England, the professors at the Royal Society decrying his attempts to revive the dead. He is more or less creating zombies, a patchwork of body parts from separate corpses held together by an electric current through the spinal column. They’re technically alive, although they lack a soul to become emotionally and mentally intelligent. But as history has proved time and time again, war loosens moral constraints. In comes Harlander (Christoph Waltz) with his deep pockets and need for Victor to revive dead soldiers so that they can be reused for cannon fodder. The Creature (Jacob Elordi) is the first specimen to take things to the next level, offering increased motor skills and the ability to learn language. The original 1818 novel carries the full title of “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.” But unlike the Greek god, Victor doesn’t champion humanity or its new member. He’s only interested in reversing death, not creating life. To fix death only takes a keen intellect and equipment. Bestowing life takes compassion and patience. The Creature is slow to learn, stumbling around with his oversized limbs and scars that make him look similar to the Engineer from Prometheus . He is discarded once he proves useless, a toy that his owner no longer finds amusing. Conversely, Shelley and, by extension, del Toro, share great sympathy for The Creature, his plight being a reflection of humanity's cruel backwardness. Harlander claims to be a man of honor, and yet he can’t even remember the name of the war that he’s currently getting rich on. Elordi turns in his best performance yet, with the pounds of makeup and effects never inhibiting his emotional pull. His grunts eventually become full sentences, with the second half of the film dedicated to the origin from his perspective. Heavy is the head that wears the crown of immortality, forced to walk a lonely life of rejection and incompleteness. At the very least, del Toro crafts this dreary story into an absolutely breathtaking experience. The filmmaker’s love for the material is entirely infectious, with the constantly roaming camera picking up every sumptuous detail from Tamara Deverell’s sets and Kate Hawley’s costumes. The stark black and red suits and dresses gothically contrast with the pure white snow, which is then bathed in blood and fire. Victor’s clifftop laboratory exemplifies that contradiction, littered with pristine sculptures and severed bodies. Isaac’s doctor is a mad genius, his ego always more inflated than his understanding of what he’s truly doing. He and The Creature are in a constantly revolving door over who is the predator and the prey, blazing a bloody trail across Europe. Mia Goth is well cast as Victor’s sister-in-law, Elizabeth. She has just as curious a mind as Victor, but also a heart to be offered to The Creature. Waltz joins alongside Charles Dance, David Bradley, and Ralph Ineson as the heavy hitters lining up the rest of this stately cast. With a lifespan recently crossing over into two centuries, Shelley’s story has long suffered the plague of becoming a copy of a copy of a copy. Endless adaptations and inspirations have taken only the elements that are deemed the most commercially muscular, leaving out the heart and mind. Del Toro has picked up those discarded pieces and made it whole again, reminding us why stories like these have and will withstand the test of time. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Foe October 25, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen Five years from now Saoirse Ronan and/or Paul Mescal will have an Oscar in their hands. When that happens we’ll look back through their careers, highlighting all the films that led them down this path. For Ronan, we’ll be starting with her groundbreaking child performances in Atonement and Hanna . Then we’ll fondly remember her navigating female adolescence with Greta Gerwig in Lady Bird and Little Women . For Mescal we’ll start on television with Normal People , and then the explosion of Aftersun and All of Us Strangers . And then for both of them, we’ll see a movie titled Foe that came out in 2023 that they starred in for writer/director Garth Davis. We’ll sit back and think long and hard because we can’t remember if we have or haven’t seen it. Eventually, the memory of seeing it (probably on Amazon Prime) will come back, followed by a sad thought about how a movie starring two of the best actors of a generation amounted to absolutely nothing. Taking a page out of Jane Campion’s (whom he directed alongside for the television series Top of the Lake ) playbook from The Power of the Dog , Davis has his native Australia stand in for the barren American Midwest. The year is 2065 and things are as predictably bleak as we expect them to be. Water and fertile land are some of the most valuable resources, making farming a near-extinct occupation. Hen (Ronan) and Junior (Mescal) still hold on to that way of life in their own way. They live in a crumbling farmhouse in the middle of nowhere, with Hen working as a waitress and Junior as a line worker at the local poultry farm. They seem content with each other, which makes the arrival of a stranger (Aaron Pierre) all the more unnerving. This stranger has a proposal: Junior has been selected (conscripted would be the better word) to be a part of a mission on a space station far above Earth. Hen wouldn’t be left alone, instead, a perfect clone would be made of Junior to take his place while he’s away. This stranger must stay with the couple for a while to gather all the information needed to make this person-to-clone transition as seamless as possible. Adapted from the novel by Iain Reid, Foe can’t decide between being a parable about relationships and A.I., or a literal story about life on a desolate Earth. It picks somewhere in the middle, dooming both sides as they each need full commitment in order to work. The introspection of clones taking the place of humans has been done better in Blade Runner and Swan Song starring Mahershala Ali. Does it really matter if a clone is just as lifelike as a human when the characters aren’t interesting? There are also so many facts about this world that leave so many open questions. Why is Junior so special for this program? What exactly is this mission? If the clone is so perfect, why can’t they just send it into space? Why do Hen and Junior only listen to music from the mid-1900s and drive a beat-up pickup truck that would barely be worth anything in 2023? Some of these questions are nitpicks, but the lack of any gravitas surrounding the thematic material makes these stand out even more. The two leads do everything they can to keep things interesting, a job they can do with ease. They run the entire emotional gamut with their performances, but none of it registers due to Davis’ detachment from the material. Each of them is forced to overact once the third-act twists come into play. Everything feels so forced by then that it’s almost comical. But it’s not a total trainwreck, so it’s just rather tediously bad. Son of Saul cinematographer Mátyás Erdély captures the landscape beautifully, showcasing the mystifying wonder that keeps people like Hen and Junior tethered to this patch of dirt. If only Davis could have done the same with his direction and script, as most of his decisions steer away from that intrigue and end up being as interesting as dirt itself. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

The Ballad of Wallis Island April 7, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen When The Barenaked Ladies performed their song “If I Had $1,000,000,” they mentioned that they would use the money to buy a house, a K-Car, a fur coat, exotic pets, and expensive ketchup. But what about a whole island? Well, that’s exactly what Charles (Tim Key) does in The Ballad of Wallis Island . Of course, you’d need a little more than a million dollars to do that. That’s no problem for Charles, as he won the national lottery not once, but twice. Yes, this slightly oafish man is one of the luckiest people in history. The proceeds from the first win were spent traveling the world with his wife Marie. The money eventually ran out, but not before they filled their fridge door with magnets and postcards from every place on Earth. Charles decided to be a little more fiscally responsible with the second lump sum, buying a small, secluded island in the middle of nowhere and hunkering himself there. Charles is a massive fan of the folk duo Herb McGwyer (Tom Basden) & Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan). Unfortunately, the pair broke up nearly a decade ago, with McGwyer embarking on a solo career and Mortimer staying out of the music industry together. But there isn’t a problem time (and a lot of money) can’t fix. Charles separately books them to perform on his island under the guise of an intimate private event for just a few fans. Like Lindsay Lohan’s parents in The Parent Trap , this comedy of errors leads Herb and Nell to reconcile the past and the present. However, this isn’t a Disney movie where everything works itself out in the end. The romantic ballads of Herb and Nell’s past came out of a real infatuation between the two. Basden and Mulligan are great together, the former putting up a tough exterior to hide the pain he feels for being a has-been, and the latter laying it all out on the table. There’s a constant will-they-won't-they dynamic at play, although the presence of Nell’s husband Michael kind of puts a damper on that. This feature is based on the 2007 short film The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island , which Basden and Key both starred and wrote. The duo wrote the feature as well, bringing the original short director James Griffiths along for the ride. There’s a calming reassurance that permeates through the whole thing that could only be bought from nearly fifteen years of care and affection by the creatives. Cinematographer G. Magni Ágústsson provides a warm texture to this charming run-down slice of paradise. Time has also been a double-edged sword for the creatives, with some poor ideas possibly not being killed simply because they had stuck around so long. Charles is lovable, yet has a habitual need to fill any moment of silence with words. It’s a humorous tick at first but the fact that it’s trotted out nearly a dozen more times makes it immediately annoying. I wish more time had been spent on the dynamic between Nell and Herb, as their brief isolated moments are easily the most interesting parts of this story. Basden wrote nearly two dozen songs for the feature, a mixture of folk and rock. They aren’t exactly memorable, but there’s a soothing quality to them that invites you to agree with why someone like Charles would just want to live a quiet life with them as his soundtrack. The Ballad of Wallis Island is kind of like those songs, beckoning you to relax by the fire and gently search your soul. More Reviews Wicked: For Good November 19, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Rental Family September 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Jay Kelly November 20, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Train Dreams November 21, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen