The Last Thing He Wanted February 27, 2020 By: Button Hunter Friesen Netflix has been on a roll these past few years. While changing the idea of how television can be consumed, the streaming giant has also financed dozens of films from revered auteurs and budding talent. This level of investment has paid dividends with films such as The Irishman and Roma . But like all portfolios, there are some stinkers such as Bright and The Ridiculous 6 that blemish the hits. Joining the latter pile of garbage is the newest film to be dumped unceremoniously on Netflix: The Last Thing He Wanted . A journalist for The Atlantic Post , Elena McMahon made her mark with hard-hitting investigative pieces detailing the revolutions in 1980s Central America. One day, her secretive father attempts to reconnect with her after years apart. It’s revealed he’s rekindling their relationship because he has fallen victim to Alzheimer’s. With his final days winding down, he confesses that he is a gun smuggler for the Nicaraguan Contras and asks her to complete his final deal. To fulfill her father’s dying wish, Elena must go back to the place where everything began for her. Only this time she’s on the opposite side of the law than before. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmrU6gMc1Lc Reteaming with Netflix after the critical success of Mudbound , director Dee Rees makes some of the most shocking failures a respected filmmaker could make. Her command of the material is nonexistent as the plot and characters move along without any rhyme or reason. For a two-hour movie (that feels twice as long), Rees offers little in terms of suspense and subtlety. The choppy editing lacks any cohesiveness between its revolving door of throwaway characters and locations. Even when Rees is supplied with quality supplemental material, such as the score by Tamar-kali, she cues it at the most obvious times, turning it against her intentions. She does throw in a nice camera movement every once in a while, but it’s painfully obvious that it’s only being done to try and cover up the catastrophe that is being filmed. An example is the laughably bad final shot that looks ripped straight from a parody movie. Adapted by Rees and Marco Villalobos from the book of the same name, The Last Thing He Wanted is one of the most incomprehensible movies ever made. I would feel safe betting someone a billion dollars to watch this movie and then properly explain what they had just seen. The dialogue is both cliched and flowery as it makes even the smallest detail hard to comprehend. Characters speak English in a way so cryptic that it seems they aren’t even speaking English at all. No amount of rewinding or looking through a dictionary could help me understand what exactly someone was saying. Fortunately, the poor sound mixing makes half of the dialogue muddled, saving me from further anguish. Also part of the problem is the script’s overabundance of half-baked storylines and details. I would say that almost every one of these plots and subplots is filled with holes, but I’m not sure of what the plot was, to begin with. Characters and locations come and go, barely leaving a mark on the overall narrative. That is, until the end when Rees wraps a dozen different things up in the final three minutes, ending the film in a pile of disjointed pieces that produces more questions than answers. I know it’s a tired trope to say that a movie should have been a mini-series... but this seriously should have been a mini-series. Anne Hathaway is mediocre as our supposedly tough main character. Hathaway tries her best, but she is woefully miscast and can’t muster a sliver of enough fortitude to convince us of her believability. Ben Affleck plays a CIA agent hot on Elena’s trail. Affleck seems to have been on set for less than a week and has as much energy as someone who just woke up from a nap after downing a bottle of NyQuil. Factoring in his minuscule screen time, it’s safe to say that the main reason he was cast was to put his name on the poster. Playing the ailing father is Willem Dafoe, who has recently been on a career resurgence. Disappointingly, Dafoe falls into the type of hammy overacting that plagued the middle third of his career. The Last Thing He Wanted is a glaring misfire on the careers of the usually dependable cast and crew. It will surely land on many worst-of-the-year lists and may even take the top spot on a few. Thinking about this awful movie is the last thing I ever want to do. Netflix will release The Last Thing He Wanted in select theaters on February 14th, followed by its streaming premiere on February 21st. More Reviews Primetime September 22, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Unabomber September 24, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Look Back September 16, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Elsinore September 14, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

The Instigators August 1, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen Through the power of content quotas and streaming service overload, the phrase “it’s a streaming movie” has replaced “it’s a VOD movie” as the description of choice for all the disposable movies that choose to circumvent the physicality of the multiplex. That doesn’t apply to every streaming movie, as the lucky few (aka “the good ones”) get special treatment from their creators, usually in the form of modest theatrical footprints similar to The Irishman , Killers of the Flower Moon , and Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery . No, when we’re using “streaming” as a pejorative, we’re talking about the films on Netflix’s Most Popular Films list: Red Notice , The Adam Project , Bird Box , The Mother , and The Gray Man . Sure, the quality is much better than we used to get during the VOD heydays, but to what end? If everyone watches your film - but no one remembers it - does it really count as a hit? Doug Liman’s The Instigators , his second streaming movie of the year after Amazon’s middle-of-the-road Road House remake earlier this spring, fits that “competent, yet forgettable” mold to perfection. I’d totally believe it if Apple boasts about it being one of their highest-performing titles come the end of this year, all while no viewer could pass a memory test about the plot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5oqpxi3U7M Luckily, writers Chuck MacLean (creator of the very pro-Boston series City on a Hill ) and Casey Affleck ( Dunkin’ Donuts second-biggest fan behind his brother) aren’t concerned with wasting our time with such trivial things as building events or character groundwork. The ticking time bomb encompassing the studio logos is replaced by the ticking of the clock on the wall within Dr. Rivera’s (Hong Chau) shabby office, where Rory (Matt Damon) is declaring that he needs to do something big or else he’s going “cash in all his chips.” That explosive action comes from a job offer from two local crime bosses (Michael Stuhlbarg and Alfred Molina). It’s simple: sneak in through the hotel kitchen hosting Mayor Miccelli’s (Ron Perlman) reelection party and steal the campaign donations in the safe in the back office. Of course, no heist plan ever goes according to plan (wouldn’t that be nice for a change?), which leaves Rory and his equally down-on-his-luck middle-aged partner Cobby (Affleck) on the run from every cop within the New England region. The derogatory aspects of this “streaming film” come from the visuals, with the digital flatness and shoddy visual effects benefiting from the smallest screen possible. Liman has always prided himself on his scrappy indie filmmaking roots of Swingers and The Bourne Identity . That pedigree has certainly faded over the years, especially with Steven Soderbergh showcasing the benefits of digital filmmaking with his bevy of streaming films. A lot of comparisons between this and Soderbergh’s No Sudden Move could be made, none of them positive for the former. Damon and Affleck make a great pair, their decades-long friendship creating some instant sparks between their mismatched pair. Cobby is the more seasoned of the two, something he never lets each of them forget as he constantly runs his mouth about the absurdity of their situation. Their characters may not be all that interesting, with the running joke of Rory exploring his feelings while committing a crime being spread too thin, but the actors make it all entertaining enough. There’s also Jack Harlow, Ving Rhames, Paul Walter Hauser, and Toby Jones in smaller supporting roles that make this cast much more stacked than it has any right to be. One side of my brain is saying that a film with this much talent in front and behind the camera should be a lot better, while the other half knows that they almost always aren’t when they’re assembled for a product largely meant to bolster a digital catalog. Call it disappointment, call it an acceptance of the market. Either way, no one involved will look bad, and no one who watches it will feel their time totally wasted, so everyone will just go about their business as if nothing happened. Apple Original Films will release The Instigators in select theaters on August 02nd, followed by its streaming premiere on August 9th. More Reviews Primetime September 22, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Unabomber September 24, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Look Back September 16, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Elsinore September 14, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

The Best Military Movies for Veterans Day November 11, 2022 By: Hunter Friesen With America’s lengthy involvement in armed combat over the past century, it’s no surprise that there is a bountiful supply of war films, ranging from small-scale character dramas to epic recreations. To honor those that have served, I’ve compiled a list of war films that I recommend you check out. All of them pertain to war from an American point-of-view (so don’t expect Come and See or 1917 ), with each doing it in their special way. They’ll be listed in chronological order according to their release date. The Longest Day (1962) The Longest Day is an interesting piece of military and cinematic history. We have plenty of movies about the American perspective of landing on Omaha Beach, but we don't have any that tell the entire macroeconomic story relating to that fateful day. Through a style that has long been abandoned, three different directors each tell a side of the story: American/British, French, and German. We get unique perspectives because of this tactic, with an all-star cast of John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Richard Burton, and Robert Mitchum providing larger-than-life performances. Patton (1970) Patton is a film caught between two time periods of both Hollywood and real-life history. In 1970, the golden age of Hollywood was coming to an end as studios were moving away from lavishly epic productions and leaning more into auteur-driven stories that reflected the harsh realities of life. That year also was the height of the unpopularity over the war in Vietnam. Protests occurred regularly, and patriotism was no longer seen as a virtue. The brilliance of Patton is that it can appeal to everyone. Francis Ford Coppola's script sees Patton for who he was, warts and all. He was a genius on the battlefield, achieving victory with historical speed and precision. The Germans feared and respected him. He was also a tyrannical brute. He berated soldiers both verbally and physically (an act that nearly cost him his career), and pushed his men to the absolute limit. He got the nickname "Old Blood and Guts" for his bloodthirsty campaigns that, while successful, were incredibly dangerous. George C. Scott's performance is one of the finest biographical portrayals ever. Because the film has no side plots or heft supporting characters, Scott's electrifying performance is what drives the three-hour runtime. But Scott isn't alone as director Franklin Schaffner assists him with well-composed battle sequences and startling imagery. The film is epic in scope like in the past, but it is also intimate in detail and character. It's a balancing act that entertains the viewer with production and theatricality but also educates them about one of the most complicated men in American history. Born on the Fourth of July (1989) Centering on the loss of innocence and the façade of the American dream for the Vietnam-era youth, Oliver Stone returns to his Platoon roots. There's even some of the original crew returning here, like Willem Dafoe in a small role that doesn't occur until almost 2/3 through the movie. Stone crafts several ingenious individual scenes with his might behind the camera. The prom, the Vietnam battle scene, the protest at Syracuse, and Tom Cruise playing the loudest game of chicken by exclaiming the word "penis" are some of the great moments. John Williams' score supplements the sweeping nature of the story. Cruise makes you forget about those problems from time to time as he effortlessly runs the gamut of Kovac's life from wide-eyed patriot to battle-weary realist. His performance is a reminder that he is a real actor, even if we tend to disagree with that sometimes. Saving Private Ryan (1998) The firm ideals of bravery and good ol' American patriotism are not traditionally found within Saving Private Ryan . Instead, Steven Spielberg , along with screenwriter Robert Rodat, offers something not usually found within a war film: humanity. While still an action film at its heart, the mind of the film is centered on philosophy, as opposed to pure entertainment. The titular mission of extracting Pvt. James Ryan isn't an honorable one. It doesn't take a genius to see the flawed math of risking the lives of eight men to save one. Spielberg and Rodat don't dance around that thought, and also find time to analyze the themes of doing your duty and the futility of war. None of this is to say that the men in this movie aren't brave. It takes a lot of guts and courage to do what they did, which is why we have a day to honor them. But they don't carry out their mission out of their love for the stars & stripes. They do it because they have to. It's an order, and orders must be followed. There's a character named Upham in the film. He's the squad translator and doesn't have the same fighting spirit as the rest of his fellow compatriots. There are times when you get mad at him for not being tough or getting the job done flawlessly. But I would bet many of us would be more like him than John Wayne when the time comes. Within the film, there are no individual heroes, only real men fighting to keep themselves alive for just another moment. The opening set piece is one of the greatest ever produced, with chaotic camerawork, editing, and sound design. It's no wonder no film has attempted to portray D-day since, as Spielberg has set the bar at an unassailable height. The Thin Red Line (1998) While released in the same year and covering the same war, Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line and Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan could not be any more different. Marking his return to filmmaking after a 20-year absence, Malick imbues the film with his usual philosophical ruminations on life and the futility of violence. “What difference do you think you can make, one single man, in all this madness?” is a line that is often repeated, sometimes with brutality and sometimes with lyrical beauty. Of course, Malick still excels at giving action fans what they came for. With one of the most stacked casts ever assembled - including, but not limited to, George Clooney, John Travolta, Adrien Brody, Sean Penn, Jim Caviezel, and Nick Nolte - the action set pieces are awe-inspiring in their ability to convey the confusion and hopelessness within combat. Soldiers weep as they know they are taking their last glances at the living world, and others question the ethics of killing someone in the name of your country. Some war films claim to have more on their mind than just action, but none pontificate and leave with as much to chew on as Terrence Malick does with The Thin Red Line . Black Hawk Down (2001) Each great director has quite a few stinkers that blemish their track record. But each great director also has a few or many great movies that perfectly showcase why they are great. Case in point, Black Hawk Down is one of the finest works by Ridley Scott and his tactical style of direction. In real-time, the Battle of Mogadishu rages on with bullets whizzing, men screaming, and the overall frenzy rattling everyone down to the bone. It's amazing how Scott and his team, which includes an amazing score by Hans Zimmer and genius editing by Pietro Scalia, were able to take this daunting puzzle and piece it together. The Hurt Locker (2009) Kathryn Bigelow won the Oscars for Best Director and Best Motion Picture for this Iraq War thriller. Screenwriter Mark Boal, who won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, based much of the story on his experiences being an embedded journalist on the front lines. Jeremy Renner stars as a bomb defuser who seems to have a death wish, much to the distress of his squad mates that just want to make it to the next day. Bigelow’s full-throttle direction lends itself to some incredibly tense action set pieces. It’s an exhausting experience enduring the 130-minute film, which, to Bigelow and her team’s credit, puts you right in the mental and physical shoes of the characters. Causeway (2022) Shifting away from the battlefield and towards the home front, first-time director Lila Neugebauer sensitively delivers a personal story that avoids much of the PTSD/trauma clichés we’ve come to expect. Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry each deliver powerfully subtle performances, with their characters striking up an interesting connection that goes deeper than something purely platonic or romantic. For viewers that tend to steer away from violence, this new film on Apple TV+ will offer a semi-fresh take on the well-worn genre. Full Review More Reviews Primetime September 22, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Unabomber September 24, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Look Back September 16, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Elsinore September 14, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Cannes 2023 Predictions - Part 3: The Festival Mainstays April 8, 2023 By: Hunter Friesen As one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world, the Cannes Film Festival always attracts the attention of cinephiles and industry professionals alike. Each year, the festival presents a diverse lineup of films that represent the best of international cinema, including both established and emerging filmmakers. With the 76th edition of the festival set to take place in May, film enthusiasts around the world are eagerly anticipating the announcement of the official selection on April 13th. While the festival organizers keep their cards close to their chest, there are already some strong players emerging as likely contenders for the coveted Cannes spotlights. In this four-part series, I’ll take a closer look at some of the films that are generating buzz and predict which ones are likely to make it to the Croisette this year. Each part will represent a category of films, which are: The Festival Masters Hollywood Makes a Splash The Festival Mainstays The Irregulars and Up-and-Comers The third part of my series reaches a little further down the pecking order. The filmmakers listed here may not have the pedigree of those from the first part, nor do their films command the headlines like the blockbusters. But many of them are in the process of being established as festival darlings and have projects that deserve attention on account of their immense potential. Which of these films are you most interested in? I'll be keeping you all posted on my adventures and sharing my thoughts on the films that I see. Stay tuned for more updates! Coup de Chance With a legendary career that now spans fifty works as a director, it would seem fitting to bid farewell to filmmaking in the country that has always adored him. Allen has brought several films to the festival, all of them playing out of competition. His latest work will be entirely in French with a local all-star cast. Of course, any mention of Allen brings along controversy, so Fremeaux will have a hard decision to make about what to do. La Chimera Alice Rohrwacher’s film made waves at last year’s festival when Neon picked up the project’s North American distribution rights. The company had a great run last with Triangle of Sadness taking the Palme d’Or, so it seems likely they’ll be gunning for a repeat. The film stars Josh O’Connor and Isabella Rossellini in a story about 1980s tomb robbers set in Italy. The Beast Bertrand Bonello has premiered nearly all of his films at the festival, so there’s no reason not to predict him to do the same this time around. Léa Seydoux and George MacKay lead the cast of this sci-fi romance revolving around a troubled young woman who decides to purify her DNA in a machine that will take her on a journey across a series of past lives. Jeanne du Barry Never one to shy away from controversy, writer/director Maïwenn has doubled down by casting Johnny Depp as King Louis XV in her palace drama. The casting itself will bring headlines, but not the kind the festival may want, especially with films by Woody Allen and Roman Polanski also in the mix. If selected, it’ll likely be placed in one of the sidebars. *UPDATE: CONFIRMED FOR OPENING SELECTION* Daaaaaali! Along with Gaspar Noe, surrealist filmmaker Quentin Dupieux often is the provider of the strange and wild, which he did last year with the wacky Smoking Causes Coughing . His new movie will certainly be a more fun story about Salvador Dalí than Mary Harron’s Dalíland at last year's TIFF. The logline is as follows: “A French journalist meets the iconic surrealist artist Salvador Dalí on several occasions for a documentary project that never came to be.” The Book of Solutions Michel Gondry has always kept himself incredibly busy between feature films, music videos, television shows, and short films. He’s done a tour of the festival sidecars throughout his career, so there’s little doubt he’ll be invited back if he decides to premiere his new film on the Croisette. The premise sounds Charlie Kaufman-esque as it follows a director who tries to vanquish his demons which are oppressing his creativity. Limonov While the Cannes leadership has ruled that they will not welcome any members of the Russian delegation or those linked to the government, that rule does not apply to Russian auteur Kirill Serebrennikov, who has had his problem with Putin’s government. Serebrennikov recently left the country after a three-year travel ban, which forced him to miss the premiere of Petrov's Flu in 2021. His next film will continue the biopic streak from Tchaikovsky’s Wife , this time in the English language and focusing on the life of Soviet poet Eduard Limonov. Serebrennikov co-wrote the screenplay with Cold War director Pawel Pawlikowski and Ben Hopkins, and Ben Whishaw will play the titular character. Promised Land While he doesn’t make as many regular appearances as Ken Loach, fellow Englishman Michael Winterbottom did make a name for himself at the turn of the millennium with a slew of rough-around-the-edges peeks into British life. His new film sounds like it might fit that description quite well, as it follows two Brit police officers in their hunt for charismatic poet and Zionist freedom fighter Avraham Stern, who was plotting to evict British authorities. Last Summer French provocateur Catherine Breillat looks to be coming out of her self-imposed retirement with her first film in almost a decade. The sexually charged auteur's new film may be her most squirm-inducing yet, as it follows the consequences on a family when a woman gets attracted to her underage stepson. The first image was released in December just as production wrapped. Given her pedigree within the French film industry and that this may be her last film, it seems highly likely Breillat makes her way into the competition. More Reviews Primetime September 22, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Unabomber September 24, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Look Back September 16, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Elsinore September 14, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Echo Valley June 9, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen Echo Valley opens at the bottom of a lake. A wrapped-up dead body is adrift, the details as murky as the ethics of the person who put it there. How and why that body got to where it is is the central mystery that will be solved, unraveled, and resolved within the next two hours. It starts on Kate's titular Pennsylvanian horse farm (Julianne Moore). Due to her wife's tragically sudden passing earlier in the year, the farm is just downtrodden as Kate's emotional state. Doing the bare minimum to keep the place at least somewhat presentable is the only thing that gets her out of bed in the morning, which takes a little longer to accomplish with each subsequent day. A barn roof collapse doesn’t make matters any easier, forcing Kate to beg for the $9,000 to repair it from her ex-husband Richard (Kyle MacLachlan), who now has a much younger wife and daughter. The two of them share an adult daughter named Claire (Sydney Sweeney), who's been in and out of rehab several times over and is relatively estranged from her parents. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQiZ5zMhliw While Richard has stuck to the pledge they made in family therapy that they wouldn't interact with Claire until she got better, Kate can't completely go cold turkey. A few days later, Claire shows up at the farm. She still has a shitty boyfriend, but things seem to have drastically improved. That is, of course, until it's revealed that she has gotten involved in a drug debt and has no one else to turn to except for Kate. I'll stop the plot synopsis there to preserve the cover of who that dead body is, and how they got to be there. The script comes from Brad Ingelsby, who most recently created and wrote every episode of Mare of Easttown , alongside films Out of the Furnace , The Way Back , and American Woman . The pervasive themes of strained familial relationships within a crumbled America are present here, just in a frenzied manner. Stories like this have become dime-a-dozen streaming miniseries at this point, and there are more than a few instances here where that route would have lent to a more methodically structured story. Twists and turns come at a pretty rapid rate, leaving little time to question what's going on and how we should react. Then again, it's nice to watch a story dole out multiple swaths of information in minutes rather than chunking it out over several hours. Having great actors like Moore and Sweeney at the helm helps make it all go down more easily. There are years of melancholy in each of Moore's choices, grounding the high-wire choices she has to make as a parent. Despite not being present for large stretches, Sweeney makes the most of her opportunities. The frenetic energy she brought to her character in Euphoria is replicated here. A harrowing confrontation between mother and daughter becomes the standout scene, as each character unloads years of baggage on the other. The subsequent busyness of the plot loses focus on that raw emotionality, almost as if Ingelsby doesn't trust himself to reach the audience without a tried-and-true murder plot. Director Michael Pearce, the main discoverer of Jessie Buckley with Beast back in 2017, shoots this story with a gloomy palette. There are moments where it feels as if he didn't know that the final product would be watched on Apple TV+, with the overall darkness of the imagery requiring a pitch-black cinema to make out any of the details. On one hand, I blame myself for watching this on a summer afternoon, the sun being too powerful for my curtains. On the other hand, I lay some blame on an artist for not being considerate of his audience. It's that kind of dichotomy stretched across each department, keeping this film from lifting itself out of the realm of being respectably average. Apple Original Films will release Echo Valley in select theaters on June 06th, followed by its streaming premiere on June 13th. More Reviews Primetime September 22, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Unabomber September 24, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Look Back September 16, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Elsinore September 14, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

One Battle After Another September 24, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen One Battle After Another is a film chock-full of unexpected occurrences. It’s unexpected that it would contain the most thrilling car chase of the past few years. It’s unexpected that it would have a scene where a group of middle-aged white men would start their meeting by exchanging Christmas pleasantries, only to then be so disgusted by the existence of the mixed-race child they put a bounty on. It’s unexpected for a place called the “Chicken Licken Frozen Food Farm” to be the pivotal location for the film’s middle act. It’s unexpected that Leonardo DiCaprio would play such a burnout dirtbag after years as the most suave man in the world, a choice that allows him to once again flex his status as cinema’s most unconventionally funniest performer. And yet, being that this is the year 2025, nothing should really surprise us anymore. One Battle After Another is the apex of a string of 2025 films directly about the 2025 experience. This story involves themes of immigration, liberation, radicalization, and revolution, all seemingly ripped straight from the headlines and gloriously projected onto IMAX screens. The National Guard is dispatched to sanctuary cities, ICE encampments are crammed with unattended children, and marginalization is performed in the open without any remorse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg8AGTyYMBA But by also being a loose adaptation (“inspiration” is the label used in the credits) of the 1990 Thomas Pynchon novel Vineland , writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson illustrates that none of these issues are brand new to the American political landscape. It’s an endless cycle of progress and pushback, with each side digging its heels a little deeper with each subsequent turn. Case in point: The French 75 militant group, and its most outspoken comrade, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor). The letters and protests weren’t getting the job done, so they’ve been substituted with raids and bombings. The liberation of an immigration detention center is where it all starts, with Perfidia initiating a dangerous dominant/submissive relationship with Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), and Pat (Leonardo DiCaprio) impressing her with his fireworks display. The blood of battle runs hot, and so does the passion between Perfidia and Pat. A baby girl is born, the next generation to carry the revolutionary flame. But before the light can even be passed, it’s extinguished when Lockjaw seizes the upper hand and picks off the group’s members one by one. Pat is renamed to Bob Ferguson, taking the baby (now named Willa) on the run to the backwoods of Baktan Cross. Fifteen quiet years go by, with Bob and Willa (Chase Infiniti) living a secluded life for reasons she doesn’t totally understand. Lockjaw’s mission eventually gets unpaused, with his pursuit of these two fugitives plunging the town into a hotbed of political turmoil. One Battle After Another is the outlier in Anderson’s filmography. It’s his first film in over twenty years to take place in the present day (assumedly, since a specific date isn’t given here). It’s also his costliest production by a wide margin, with a reported budget between $130 and $175 million. Anderson fully embraces both of those facts, reminding us why the artist responsible for Boogie Nights , There Will Be Blood , and The Master deserves to have a canvas just as expensive as Jurassic World: Rebirth . Catch me on a good day, and I’ll proclaim Magnolia to be the greatest film ever made. This is a frantic story for a frantic time, furiously rushing from one location to the next. Like Magnolia , Anderson just keeps pushing us along, never allowing for a moment for wrist watches to be checked. 161 minutes fly by, all of it subsumed by Jonny Greenwood’s score that might as well have been recorded as the piano was falling down the stairs. For all its serious earnestness, this is also a deeply silly and funny story. Lockjaw may as well be a description of the character rather than a surname. Penn walks around with the same mobility as a sunglass carousel, full of pent-up anger and jealousy. He’s the reason the Grindr Dating App always reports a massive increase in traffic at major Republican events. He desperately wants to be a member of the Christmas Adventurers Club, a group of wealthy white men who declare themselves superior solely because they deem it so. It’s easy to laugh at this ludicrousness, but we all know there probably is such a thing in our world. DiCaprio is also wonderfully buffoonish as a retired activist who can no longer remember secret passwords and see himself within the big picture. It might seem crass to talk about award prospects so soon after the film’s debut and so far from this year’s Academy Awards. But like Oppenheimer , a movie of this size and relevance doesn’t come around all that often, and that rarity needs to be celebrated. Anderson is one of the biggest losers in Oscar history, going 0-11 over a span of nearly thirty years. The time is now for a revolution within his film, and so it is for him to walk up that gilded stage, receiving one honor after another. Warner Bros. Pictures will release One Battle After Another in theaters nationwide on September 26th. More Reviews Primetime September 22, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Unabomber September 24, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Look Back September 16, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Elsinore September 14, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

The Old Man & the Gun November 1, 2018 By: Button Hunter Friesen Robert Redford has built a successful decade-spanning career as a charming actor who can play any type of character with a heart of gold. It seems fitting that in his final performance in the new film The Old Man & the Gun , Redford plays Forrest Tucker, a man who was born to rob banks. Except he’s not your typical bank robber, he’s the most polite and happy criminal around. Now at the age of seventy-four, Tucker becomes nationally famous and must continue his passion while eluding the pursuit of detective John Hunt, who becomes enraptured by the legend of one man living his dream despite the consequences it may bring. Director David Lowery isn’t a household name, but the thirty-eight-year-old has made some quality films, such as his 2017 indie hit A Ghost Story and Pete’s Dragon in 2016 (also starring Redford). Lowery goes for the sweet and simple approach when it comes to directing this film. He keeps the feel of the film feeling like a cool, light breeze and keeps the main plot centered on detail at a time. He also nails the look and feel of the film to fit the 80s setting. The film doesn’t just feel like it's set in the 80s; it's like it was made during that time period. He uses very grainy film stock to shoot the movie, giving it a very nostalgic feel. There is also an abundance of old classic songs from that era that perfectly fit the tone. The simple approach Lowery uses also has its minor drawbacks. The overall story of the film felt a little shallow and could have used more buildup and stakes in order to build suspense. There could have also been more interaction between characters in order to develop relationships, as some don’t feel as genuine as they should have. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7rlUe-Thvk Lowery also adapts the screenplay from a real-life biographical article written about Forrest Tucker in The New Yorker by David Grann. Lowery matches his writing with his approach to directing. The script is filled with tender moments that work wonders with the actors involved. The diner scenes between Redford and Sissy Spacek are the best as they simply just enjoy each other and talk about life in old age. With only a little bit of effort and some magic, the two actors and the dialogue they share are able to keep us engaged throughout. Below the surface, however, is where Lowery’s script suffers from the same problems as his directing. The overall story told feels too simple to satisfyingly fit a feature-length film. More background and supporting details could have been used to tell the story with more depth. Many important events happen with little to no explanation, which proves very distracting by the end as they cut down on the overall believability. Redford essentially plays a culmination of every part he’s previously played in his fifty-plus-year career. He works magic with his confidence and overall physical presence in each scene. It’s a testament to his skill that you never actually see the gun he uses during the robberies; his charisma and charm are the only weapons he needs. Even with all his misdoings, you end up rooting for him by the end of the film. Partnering up with Redford in a supporting role is Sissy Spacek as Jewel, a widow whom Forrest takes an interest in. Jewel finds herself romantically caught up with Tucker and just can’t seem to shake him off despite knowing what he does for a living. Spacek and Redford have excellent chemistry together and keep us thoroughly entertained in even the most mundane of scenes. Every criminal needs a cop to be his nemesis, and filling that role is Casey Affleck as John Hunt. Affleck provides a counterbalance to Redford’s glee as his character glumly deals with the thought of getting older in a static career. Affleck middlingly works throughout but never matches Redford’s ability to make us care about his character. The Old Man & the Gun is similar to that of a Sunday drive out into the country. It doesn’t really know where it’s going from time to time, but it doesn’t really matter because the ride itself is more enjoyable than the final destination. In his farewell performance, Redford shows us that he can win over any crowd and rides out into the sunset and leaves us with his legend and unforgettable skill as an actor. Searchlight Pictures will release The Old Man & the Gun in select theaters on September 28th, followed by a nationwide expansion on October 09th. More Reviews Primetime September 22, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Unabomber September 24, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Look Back September 16, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Elsinore September 14, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Top 10 Oliver Stone Films September 15, 2022 By: Hunter Friesen As one of the most controversial figures in American filmmaking, Oliver Stone has never been shy about wearing his politics on his sleeve, which were shaped by his experiences in the Vietnam War, and the American cultural turmoil of the 1960s. Films such as Platoon, Wall Street, Born on the Fourth of July , and JFK gave way to his meteoric rise as an outspoken voice against a country he loves so much. But even with all that success early on, Stone hasn’t been able to find a footing in the 21st Century, turning in subpar work that doesn’t contain the epic anger he once had. In honor of his 76th birthday today, here’s a look at Stone’s ten best films as a director, many of which remain American classics. 10. Salvador This biographical war drama went largely unnoticed in 1986 due to the fact it was released the same year as Platoon . In fact, Stone competed against himself at the 1987 Oscars as both Salvador and Platoon were nominated for Best Original Screenplay (both would lose to Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters ). Salvador falls right in line with Stone’s career ambitions as he critiques America’s involvement in Central American politics during the Reagan administration, which had been embroiled in controversy over the Iran-Contra Affairs. James Woods, who was Oscar-nominated for his leading role, doggedly carries the film as a burnt-out journalist who slowly begins to see the horrible truth the further he goes down the rabbit hole. 9. Talk Radio With Talk Radio , Stone had finally met his match with a protagonist that was as angry as he was. Eric Bogosian reprises his stage role from the Pulitzer Prize-nominated play he created, delivering a grotesquely unlikeable character that you dare not look away from. In a similar vein to Paddy Chayefsky’s Network , Stone’s film is a scathing critique of our mass media culture, a subject he would tackle again with Natural Born Killers . With Robert Richardson’s dizzying circular camerawork and Bogosian’s never-ending tirade of insults towards his listeners, Talk Radio is in-your-face entertainment from beginning to end and has only gotten more and more relevant in our age of clickbait media. 8. The Doors Similar to the fate of Salvador , The Doors has often been pushed under the rug due to it being released a mere nine months before JFK . Following the larger-than-icon of Jim Morrison and the formation of the titular band, Stone’s film was the perfect combination of the psychedelic style of the creators and the period. Critiqued for its historical inaccuracies (which Stone is no stranger to), the film is best remembered for Val Kilmer’s stunning performance as the central figure. Kilmer was reportedly mistaken several times for the real Jim Morrison and did his own singing in each of the film’s concert sequences (take that Rami Malek). 7. Wall Street Only a year removed from Platoon , Stone switched his sights from American foreign policy to the domestic financial industry with Wall Street. Most famous for coining the multi-meaning quote “Greed is good,” and giving finance bros a figure they (wrongly) looked up to, Wall Street is overly naïve and mostly just two hours of Stone yelling about how capitalism is broken. But that doesn’t mean his simple statements aren’t correct, nor does it make the film any less entertaining with its flashes of excess that would later become popular in films such as Boiler Room and The Wolf of Wall Street . It’s a shame the 2011 sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps wasn’t able to match the heights of its predecessor, especially considering the ripe material Stone was given with coming out of the Great Recession in 2008. 6. Any Given Sunday With enough light and noise to give even the audience a concussion, Stone makes Any Given Sunday into a war picture. He never lets you forget that football is not played on just a simple field, but a battlefield. The score is everywhere, the blood is spilling, and everybody is playing for their survival. Stone's direction is ambitious and loud, which is the sort of thing that works perfectly for this type of sports movie. Everything is heightened to the highest degree, both emotions and physicality. It's no wonder the NFL didn't approve of this movie as no viewer can come out of this and be motivated to watch football, let alone play it. 5. Born on the Fourth of July With a great Tom Cruise performance at its center, Born on the Fourth of July is an endearing, yet conventional, biopic. Centering on the loss of innocence and the façade of the American dream for the Vietnam-era youth, Stone returned to his Platoon roots. He crafts several ingenious individual scenes with his might behind the camera, which earned him his second Oscar for Best Director. The scenes at the prom, Vietnam, and the Syracuse protest are just some of the great moments. John Williams’ score perfectly supplements the sweeping nature of the story, as it contains trumpet swells that recall youthful patriotism and a string orchestra that signals the haunting moment reality has crushed those once bright dreams. 4. Nixon A few years after making JFK , Stone gave Kennedy’s 1960 election opponent the full cradle-to-grave epic biopic with Nixon . Surprisingly not as damning as one would think and turning out to be a box office bomb by grossing only $13 million against its $44 million budget, Stone’s film plays out like a Shakespearean tragedy as our “hero” rises to the highest mountain, only to be eventually brought down to the lowest valley. The Welsh Anthony Hopkins, who, unlike Val Kilmer, doesn’t share many resemblances to his counterpart, gives a great performance, complete with a foul mouth and overwhelming thirst for alcohol. Hopkins was Oscar-nominated for his portrayal, as was Joan Allen as First Lady Pat Nixon. 3. Platoon As the film that quickly raised Stone’s status as an American auteur, Platoon is a dizzying autobiographical masterpiece. There's no order to anything that happens, from the battle scenes to the doldrums of downtime. Along with your confusion, you feel despair and a loss of purpose. What's the point of any of this? Soldiers are sent to die, or they survive and wish they were dead. The film was an enormous box office hit, grossing nearly $150 million on only a $6 million budget. It would conquer the 1987 Academy Awards with a haul of four awards, including Best Director for Stone and Best Picture. It would also launch the careers of several of its stars, many of which would work with Stone again (Charlie Sheen in Wall Street and Willem Dafoe in Born on the Fourth of July ). 2. Natural Born Killers Making each of his previous films look tame in comparison, Natural Born Killers creates a hellscape within the mind of the viewer as Stone savagely takes down the true-crime obsession of the American public. Matching the bewildering chaos on-camera was a bevy of troubled stars behind-the-scenes, such as the drug-addicted Robert Downey Jr. and Tom Sizemore, and Juliette Lewis beginning to practice Scientology. You also had Quentin Tarantino - who had just won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Pulp Fiction - lambasting the film for its reworking of his original script. All that drama fueled public anticipation for the film as it became a box office success while being banned in several countries and demonized by politicians for its unflinching violence and gonzo style. With the 2010s seeing a boom in true-crime podcasts, scripted television, and reality shows, the film has only gotten more relevant as time went on, with several critics praising the film for its messaging during its 25th anniversary in 2019. 1. JFK Accurately described as a “mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma,” Stone’s magnum opus is his quest for truth and justice against the military-industrial complex that stole his innocence. It’s a masterwork of cinematography by Robert Richardson and editing by Joe Hutshing and Pietro Scalia, both of which won Academy Awards in their respective categories. Richardson employed 7 cameras and 14 film stocks during the production, ranging from 16mm to 35mm, as well as color and black and white. Despite some of the film’s claims being later debunked, the “counter-myth” Stone proposes is nonetheless enticing at the moment and makes you wonder what else could be lurking in the shadows. The meeting between Jim Garrison (wonderfully played by Kevin Costner) and Mr. X remains one of the most effective conspiracy scenes in cinematic history. While it was trounced by The Silence of the Lambs in each of the above-the-line categories it was nominated for at the 1992 Academy Awards, JFK remains one of the quintessential films of its time and genre. More Reviews Primetime September 22, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Unabomber September 24, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Look Back September 16, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Elsinore September 14, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Nightbitch September 8, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen “Motherhood is a bitch” reads the tagline for Nightbitch , the feature film adaptation of author Rachel Yoder’s much-raved 2021 novel. It comes as a warning to us all, but not in the form that the overzealous marketing (including an incredibly divisive trailer ) would have led us to believe. Motherhood can be a trapdoor for some people, with the promises of the beauty of fertility and providing for others being switched out for restless nights, little appreciation, and the slipping sense that you are your own person. It turns women into a primordial version of themselves, a state where self-preservation triumphs over self-actualization. And in the case of Nightbitch (both the novel and the film), motherhood being a bitch is also a warning that there may be a slight chance you start turning into a dog after having children. Only slight! It first starts with patches of fur and a heightened sense of smell for our unnamed Mother (Amy Adams). Her newborn boy is now a two-year-old, and those very long two years have worn her down. When she sees a friend in the supermarket, they ask her if she loves being a mother. In one of several instances of writer/director Marielle Heller’s comically tuned editing, Mother goes into a long tirade about its pitfalls, akin to America Ferrera’s speech in Barbie . But once she’s gotten that off her chest, we cut back to reality, and at the start of the initial question, only for Mother to answer with a simple “I love it!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=918prRymA-U This exchange represents the heart that Heller is digging for in the next 90-ish minutes. There is so much about motherhood that cannot be discovered until it is experienced, with society not allowing women to talk about what they have to go through every day. Or, if someone does lend an ear, it’s usually in the form of her husband (Scoot McNairy), who, while always having a loving interest, never gives the full attention and consideration required. Both of them just float through their existence, one shouting into the void and the other turning the other way. Once the breaking point is reached for Mother, that’s when her animal instincts come out. In a page out of the Animorphs book series, Mother transforms into a red husky at night, running with a pack of dogs doing all sorts of canine things. She comes back to the human world covered in leaves and smelling of blood, and also with a sense of freedom that could only be achieved by fully cutting loose. Is this transformation literal, or just a metaphorical representation of postpartum depression and body changes? The clues lead to it being literal, but Heller never dives enough into the deep end for it to be conclusive. There are more than a few moments of kookiness (the ones promised in the trailer) where this movie could distance itself from the many other stories about womanhood and maternity, but there’s a refusal from Heller to really throw us for a loop. Her intentions and emotions are authentic, something that shouldn’t be a surprise considering her filmography, which includes Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood . Someone who does cut loose is Adams, devouring the meat of this performance with gusto. Her character fears becoming invisible, but it’s impossible not to see what Adams is bringing to the table, which ranges from soulfully teary monologues to devouring rabbits on the front lawn. Backing her up is an enigmatic performance from Jessica Harper as the local librarian and a trio of neighborly moms (Zoe Chao, Mary Holland, and Archana Ryan) that provide some excellent moments of comic relief. They often say less is more, but in the case of Nightbitch , more would have been more. A little more zaniness here and a little more directness there would have lifted this well-meaning story out of the crowded category labeled “just fine.” A woman turning into a dog isn’t exactly doing just fine, and neither should a film with such promise as this. This review was originally published from the world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Searchlight Pictures will release Nightbitch in theaters nationwide on December 06th. More Reviews Primetime September 22, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Unabomber September 24, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Look Back September 16, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Elsinore September 14, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

The Witches October 29, 2020 By: Button Hunter Friesen I’ve always wondered what Robert Zemeckis thinks of his career. From 1984 to 2000, he was an A-level director who could seamlessly blend visual wizardry with fantastical stories. His output during that time consisted of the Back to the Future trilogy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Forrest Gump (for which he won the Best Director Oscar), and Cast Away . Since then, Zemeckis has still incorporated fantastical ideas into his films, but his effects work has gotten progressively worse as time goes on. The Polar Express is only remembered for its acid-trip-inducing digital-capture performances. Beowulf , A Christmas Carol , and Welcome to Marwen were visual eye-sores. Even his adult-oriented films, such as Flight and Allied - which are decent - came and went with barely a peep. Zemeckis has returned once again to the silver screen (or silver television, since it’s being released on HBO Max) with The Witches , another movie filled to the brim with computer effects and a crazy story. Unfortunately, this new feature follows right in line with the latter part of his filmography and again makes you wonder if we'll ever get the old Robert Zemeckis back. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nlhmJF5FNI The Witches is narrated by Chris Rock, who, in the opening segment, explains to the audience that witches are real and are here to prey on little children, especially cute ones. This claim is supported by our narrator’s encounter with witches back in his childhood. From here, we travel back in time to 1960s Alabama. Our narrator, named Charlie, has just become an orphan after a freak car accident. He moves in with his grandmother, a lady who would “ spank you when you deserved it and hug you when you needed it”. After some time, Charlie eventually comes face-to-face with a witch, which brings up memories from Grandma’s past as well. As a precaution, the two of them head to a swanky resort to hide away for a while. Unfortunately for them, this resort is the same location where a coven of witches is planning their nefarious scheme of turning every child into a mouse so that they can be easily squashed. It’s up to Charlie and his grandma to stop these witches before they cause the extinction of all children. Despite being in a slump for nearly two decades, Robert Zemeckis is still a capable director when it comes to blockbuster filmmaking. The Witches still showcases his talent with the camera as he uses a few tricks, such as long tracking shots that dip and dive throughout the resort setting. It is kind of cheating since it’s obvious the camera and much of the set are digitally created, but it’s still nice to look at nonetheless. While the visual style of the film is in line with Dahl’s authorial vision, its quality is not up to the technological standards of 2020. With their razor-sharp teeth, hanging talons, and bald heads, the witches are pure nightmare fuel that will surely haunt small children (and adults) for days after. They may not look convincing, but they sure look frightening. Even though the witch effects kept things scary, the mouse effects did not hold up their end of the deal. The entire second half of the film is soiled because of the poor effects work on the rodents. Shockingly, mouse special effects have not progressed in the slightest since Stuart Little ( Ratatouille doesn’t count since that’s all digital). Filling in the role of the Grand High Witch is Anne Hathaway, who gives a no-holds-barred performance complete with heavy accent work and villainous speech patterns. She’s more cartoonish than most cartoons, which makes her the most memorable of the cast. Octavia Spencer as the grandmother and Stanley Tucci as the resort manager are much more subdued in their roles, which makes Hathaway stick out even more from the rest of the cast. The child actors who play both their human selves and voice their mouse counterparts rely too much on overacting to get the point across. Their performances can be both blamed on themselves and Zemeckis’ lackluster acting direction and screenplay, which was co-written by monster aficionado Guillermo del Toro of all people. Nearly all their dialogue is said in all caps with three exclamation points. The Witches may not live up to its print and celluloid predecessors, but it has just enough campiness and visual splendor to keep it exciting from start to finish. It’s not a good film - or even one I wholly recommend - but it’s something that can be semi-enjoyed by the whole family during the waning days of spooky season. Warner Bros. Pictures will release The Witches on HBO Max on October 22nd. More Reviews Primetime September 22, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Unabomber September 24, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Look Back September 16, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Elsinore September 14, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Black Bag March 13, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen A meeting on Friday, a dinner party on Sunday, a murder on Monday, and a movie on Tuesday—this is the cycle of events that the characters in Black Bag face with a cold attitude. All of them work in different departments within British intelligence (probably MI6; it’s never made clear). The actions of a traitor initiate this cycle, and the unflappable George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) is tasked with snuffing them out. On his list are the names of five suspects. There’s Freddie Smalls (Tom Burke), always confident in his skills despite just being passed over for a promotion by George; Clarissa Dubose (Marisa Abela), the youngest of the bunch who possesses much more skill than she lets on; James Stokes (Regé-Jean Page), the young colonel whose ascendancy at work is only matched by the height of his ego; Dr. Zoe Vaughan (Naomie Harris), the psychoanalysis who probably knows more everyone and everything than she should; and, most importantly of all, Kathryn St. Jean (Cate Blanchett), George’s wife and fellow spy. One of these people stole some sort of device that could destroy a nuclear reactor from the inside, inevitably leading to the radioactive deaths of every man, woman, and child within fifty miles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Du0Xp8WX_7I Honestly, though, the world-ending stakes aren’t that important, especially once a generic Russian terrorist becomes involved later on. What’s important to director Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp is what George will do to the traitor once he finds them, and what kind of collateral damage the other four will have to endure before they’re exonerated. Everyone asks George if he’ll be able to pull the trigger if Kathryn turns out to be the culprit, a question that he always leaves unanswered. Making the traditionally important aspects of a story the least interesting thing about them is a common practice for Soderbergh. He took all the basketball out of his NBA movie High Flying Bird , focused on business over dancing in the Magic Mike films, and swapped out horror for familial dysfunction in his haunted house movie Presence . These decisions could, should, and would disappoint those looking to be greeted by the familiar trappings of a genre. But Soderbergh is always one step ahead, using subversion to his and our benefit. Black Bag illustrates that the greatest weapon in a spy’s arsenal is not a gun or some nifty gadget, but the ability to have an open conversation. But when you and everyone you know work in a profession that trades in deceit and lies, the truth becomes ungraspable. The titular phrase is famously used around the agency as an answer to any question that can’t or won’t be divulged. Where were you last night? Black Bag. What did you do today at work? Black bag. How much longer do you think you’ll need to stay at the office tonight? Black bag. George hates liars. His steely presence and precision in deciding whether to speak or remain silent allow every other character’s words to hang in the air just long enough to box themselves into a corner. Between this and The Killer and The Agency , Fassbender has clearly found his knack for playing the highly competent professional who finds himself flung in over his head. He plays the small moments with as much heft as the explosions, the retreatment keeping everything as tight as a piano wire. The supporting cast gets to cut loose a little more, but mostly from the benefit of comparison. Soderbergh always knows how to make the mundane feel smoky cool, something that comes with ease when you have the mega wattage of Cate Blanchett. Just the sight of her walking through an airport in sunglasses is enough to raise the temperature. But except for the opening long take that snakes George through an underground London club, Soderbergh never calls much attention to himself. The camerawork and editing (performed by himself under the famous pseudonyms Peter Andrews and Mary Ann Bernard, respectively) are ripped out of a surveillance system, blocking characters from each other in a playful game of back-and-forth. Koepp and Soderbergh have collaborated twice before on Kimi and Presence . I hope this partnership continues indefinitely, as each product twists our expectations through practical and thematic strategies. Even when you strip away all the fancy artistry and subtextual analysis, you’re still left with something extremely entertaining. Focus Features will release Black Bag in theaters nationwide on March 14th. More Reviews Primetime September 22, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Unabomber September 24, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Look Back September 16, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Elsinore September 14, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Twisters July 17, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen Is it a good or bad sign if the most interesting aspect of a disaster movie is the humans? Twisters may be the first film to buck a decades-long trend within the disaster/monster subgenre where our species has been the superficial window to view the events within our world that hold dominion. The occasional glances at the watch here are reserved for the moments of tornado-based destruction, with the character-driven scenes coming in like a knight in shining armor to break up the monotony. I guess that’s what you get when you hire the director of one of the most tender human dramas of the decade. Lee Isaac Chung’s inability to fully flex his filmmaking muscles is definitely the lesser of two evils, as none of the traditional journeymen that could have been hired to fill the chair would have a percentage of the heart he instills here. A ragtag group of Oklahoman storm chasers has replaced his Arkansan family from 2020’s Minari , each ready to risk their lives in the name of science. But the risk turns out to have exactly that asking price, with the only two survivors of the five-person team being Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Javi (Anthony Ramos). It’s another startling reminder that Mother Nature is undefeated in any attempts to tame her. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdok0rZdmx4 That fatal error of judgment was enough to send Kate behind a desk in the New York office of a weather service. She’s put her wild days behind her, which we all know isn’t true because we’re only ten minutes into a two-hour movie. Javi calls her back into the fold once an even deadlier series of storms starts ripping through her state. This time, they’ve got the advantage of upgraded technology and a team full of PhDs, a combination that could help them answer the elusive question of how to prevent and stop these storms. The implementation of serving the common man as a reason to be in this line of work is sold well by Edgar-Jones and Ramos, both of whom carry a small amount of traumatic weight in their performances. Screenwriter Mark L. Smith doesn’t give them much of anything to work with, nor does he have regular Joes like you and I do anything more than get swept up in storms and look solemn after their towns have been destroyed. There’s an underdeveloped subplot about Javi’s boss acting as an ambulance chaser, buying up the ripped-up land at rock-bottom prices under the guise of offering a fresh start to those who have nothing left. That aspect could essentially be mirrored onto the film itself, with Smith and Chung always talking about their love for people, yet the way they walk illustrates otherwise. This is where Glen Powell enters the scene as “tornado wrangler” Tyler Owens, his good-ol’-boy charm and looks implemented to distract from the film’s mental problems. That strategy works more times than it doesn’t, with Powell’s movie star swagger perpetually threatening to burn a hole through the screen. It’s no surprise that the most impactful moment of weather is just a drizzle of rain while he dons a cowboy hat and white T-shirt while striding to his mammoth pickup truck. But the simplicity of that breathless moment instantly becomes a double-edged sword, as the weightless scenes with millions of dollars' worth of special effects feel even more disappointing in comparison. The theater roars and the screen fervently flashes, but the bone-chilling feeling of real danger is never felt. There’s a moment where Kate and Tyler rescue a mother and child by clinging for dear life at the bottom of a hotel pool. Chung holds the camera on their fear-stricken face as an act of humanistic connection, yet the CGI debris and wind effects rob those feelings from truly bubbling to the surface. To incorrectly apply a famous phrase: it’s full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. Twisters may still end up being one of the better blockbusters of the summer on account of its central characters being the secret main attraction, although I’m not exactly sure that’s how the plan was drawn up at the Universal offices. The rusty old door has been opened with the care that it needed, while the well-greased one seems to be giving the most trouble. Universal Pictures will release Twisters in theaters nationwide on July 19th. More Reviews Primetime September 22, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Unabomber September 24, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Look Back September 16, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Elsinore September 14, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen