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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 It Was Just an Accident October 28, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Is This Thing On? October 26, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Shelby Oaks October 27, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hedda October 22, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

The Mastermind October 23, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen “For us to live any other way was nuts. To us, those goody-good people who worked shitty jobs for bum paychecks and took the subway to work every day, and worried about their bills, were dead. I mean, they were suckers… If we wanted something, we just took it.” Above almost any other line in his nearly sixty-year career, this one from GoodFellas , spoken as narration from Henry Hill to the audience, is the one that solidified director Martin Scorsese’s unparalleled ability to understand a way of life, specifically that of organized crime. It’s what made people incorrectly assume that he glorifies that lifestyle, with its “live fast, die young” mentality full of excess and greed. Deep down inside all of us is probably a juvenile desire to be free of all the rules and restrictions that we’ve placed on ourselves. But whether it's morals or laws, we keep the course and tough it out. It’s why we’re jealous of criminals, as they get to live the lives we can’t… except for the parts about getting caught, killed, or ruining the lives of everyone who’s become entangled with such schemes. Writer/director Kelly Reichardt is the type of filmmaker who loves to grasp onto those exceptions, twisting them into revelations that deconstruct what we’ve long assumed. Meek’s Cutoff is a female-centered western, Night Moves is an ecothriller stripped of a fast pace and righteous protagonists, and Showing Up displayed the untold pains that must be endured to create art, all without much expectation for reward. Inside all of these films are characters who want to escape their current situations, caught in a cycle of pre-established norms that prevent them from being their best selves. James Blaine “JB” Mooney (Josh O’Connor) is one of those characters, a failed architect who can’t bring himself to trudge through the basic life he’s built for himself. He has two boys with his wife, Terri (Alana Haim), and eats dinner with his disapproving parents (Bill Camp and Hope Davis) each week. It’s all so boring, except for the moments he spends at the local art museum. Rob Mazurek’s upbeat, jazzy score illustrates the gears turning in JB’s brain, the sleeping guard and disregard for any other security measures convincing him that he can easily become Henry Hill and take whatever he wants. He concocts a plan to steal four valuable paintings, carefully recruiting his team and giving them instructions on how the heist will go. It’ll be so easy, with no one getting in the way or caring about what’s being taken. JB certainly didn’t account for the “if it sounds too good to be true” part of the equation, which is how the whole thing falls apart and sends his life into a tailspin. It probably would have taken three “and then what?” questions from an outside party to see the many gaps in this master plan. To both Scorsese and Reichrdt, this examination of the Dunning-Kruger effect revolves around misplaced entitlement. In Scorsese’s eyes, it’s a tragic rise and fall from grace, littered with highs that convince the characters to withstand the lows. In Reichardt’s, the whole thing is just plain pathetic. The simplest description for the logic behind this criminal act is that a privileged man would rather steal from the public than do any amount of hard work for himself and his family. Reichardt twists this knife even deeper by setting the story in 1970, the shadow of the Vietnam War looming large. The theme of choice is frequently touched upon. Some people, mostly the underprivileged, don’t have a choice about being drafted to serve in this unjust war. Others are choosing to protest, with flyers posted on every corner and demonstrations being broadcast each night on television. JB makes a snide remark about draft dodgers harboring in Canada, as if he shouldn’t have to stoop that low in his current on-the-run predicament. And yet it seems all these people chose to do something with their lives, or made the most of their inability to do so. JB chose to make things worse, and everyone else has to pay a price. O’Connor’s incredible performance makes JB’s overall shittiness palatable. We don’t want him to fail, although everyone would probably be better off once he is caught. It’s the other half of the coin to his work in Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery , with his portrayal of preacher Jud Duplentis being about finding a higher purpose after being lost in the wilderness. In GoodFellas , Henry states that “your murderers come with smiles, they come as your friends, the people who've cared for you all of your life. And they always seem to come at a time that you're at your weakest and most in need of their help.” JB is one of those murderers, killing the image of the American dream at a time when it was most vulnerable, all with a smile and a masked spirit of innocence. More Reviews Is This Thing On? October 26, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Shelby Oaks October 27, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hedda October 22, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Frankenstein September 11, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Black Phone 2 October 15, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen In 1954, director Alfred Hitchcock released Dial M for Murder and Rear Window . Ingmar Bergman had Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal in 1957. 1974 saw Mel Brooks and Francis Ford Coppola simultaneously reach their apexes, the former with Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein , and the latter with The Conversation and The Godfather Part II . And then, in 1993, Steven Spielberg seemingly did the impossible, conquering the box office and the Academy Awards with Jurassic Park and Schindler’s List . He then repeated the feat in 2002 with Minority Report and Catch Me If You Can … and again in 2005 with War of the Worlds and Munich … and again in 2011 with The Adventures of Tintin and War Horse . Now, in 2025, Scott Derrickson has sneakily achieved greatness with Apple TV’s The Gorge back in February, and Black Phone 2 this October. Of course, to compare a made-for-streaming creature feature and a horror sequel to some of the greatest films of all time is quite a hyperbole. To equate anything to The Godfather Part II would be enough to have my license as a cinephile revoked on the grounds of heresy. But the general sentiment is still true, with Derrickson exponentially raising the ceiling for two films that should have been lost to the swamp of nothingness. The Gorge was a dream come true for anyone who has longed for Call of Duty Zombies to come to the silver screen, with the PG-13 rating never barring Derrickson from getting down and dirty with some nightmarish creatures. Black Phone 2 drops the "the” from its predecessor’s title, yet never drops the terror or suspense. Shifting a few years later to 1982, Finney (Mason Thames) is still haunted by The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) despite killing him at the end of the previous film. But that only marked a victorious battle in a war that mixes reality with dreams (or nightmares). His sister, Gwen (Madeleine McGraw, delivering one of the best performances of the year), has a series of dreams about children being gruesomely butchered at a Christian winter camp in the Colorado mountains, their corpses etching letters in the ice before sinking to the bottom. Similar to how she solved the mystery of The Grabber while Finney was locked in his dungeon, these dreams are visions of what’s happened, the murdered kids being a key to The Grabber’s past, and how he’s still able to be a threat to the living. With a runtime of 114 minutes, this film is not brisk. But Derrickson knows how to maintain a creepy atmosphere through pacing, an interesting story, and some stellar performances. All of these things are hard to come by in horror movies as gruesome as this one, and it's rarer to have them combine so harmoniously. I knew I was seeing something that was a cut above when we were forty minutes into the film, and I wasn’t bothered that Ethan Hawke still hadn’t shown up yet. But good things come to those who wait, and Hawke’s turn as this movie’s Freddie Krueger is quite memorable, reaching down into hell and relishing in his demonic presence. A Nightmare on Elm Street is the central influence, mostly out of necessity, since there’s not much of a grounded reason for this sequel to exist. Gwen is cut, beaten, and tossed around by a seemingly invisible enemy, her dreams being the only time she can see The Grabber. But he can still harm those who can’t see him, as he does on a frozen lake with some makeshift ice skates and an axe. It’s a lot less goofy to watch than it is to type and read aloud, although it’s not all perfect. There’s still plenty of blood to be chillingly spilled, most of which is conveyed through Derrickson’s signature Super 8 footage mixed with eerily scratchy sounds. This franchise only has a few more time jumps left before its titular payphones go completely out of style. Even here, almost all of them are out of order and targets of ridicule for their unreliability. I can already tell you that my Old Spice whistle ringtone won’t conjure up the same level of scares as the clangs of a rotary phone. It’s a good thing I haven’t taken my phone off silent mode in almost a decade, as there might be a few calls from beyond the grave that I should probably miss. More Reviews Is This Thing On? October 26, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen The Mastermind October 23, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hedda October 22, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Frankenstein September 11, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You October 17, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen Think back to the worst day of your life, a time when everyone and everything seemed hellbent on punching you down to the bottom. There might have been signs that this was coming, spread out over weeks, months, maybe even years. But you didn't think it would all explode at once, with the only response being deafening silence. The weight of it all made you numb, an almost fight-or-flight response bringing you to a primordial state. For Linda (Rose Byrne), that kind of day seems to happen every day. Her husband (Christian Slater, doing some of the best phone acting of the year) is away on business for weeks, leaving her to be the sole caretaker of their daughter, who has an unlabeled illness that keeps her from eating solid food and must be fed through a tube while she sleeps. Her career isn't much better, with her job as a therapist forcing her to listen to other people's struggles all day long in a dingy office. Even a therapist needs a therapist, but the colleague who's filling that role (Conan O'Brien) doesn't seem to like her and never offers any helpful answers. Every question she has is thrown back with a demeaning tone, as if it's insulting for an adult to have these kinds of problems. Oh, and there's a giant, gaping hole that flooded her apartment, forcing her and her daughter to take an extended stay at a crappy motel. However bad things get for Linda, there's always worse for us as we have to witness them through writer/director Mary Bronstein's lens. Annoying little clicks and clacks are pumped in during the opening studio logos, with the opening shot being an unbroken extreme close-up of Byrne's as she's passively aggressively being told by her daughter's doctor that she isn't doing enough. The child is never seen, but her constant complaining and questioning lead us to imagine some sort of bratty little demon. A pizza box falls on the ground, ripping off all the cheese. And then a hamster is run over by a car. At that point, the only choice we have left is to laugh at the pain. All of this makes If I Had Legs I'd Kick You a challenging movie to deal with. Was I annoyed because of the fact that the movie makes its point within the first hour, and then spends the next hour reheating it? Or was I annoyed because that's what Bronstein wanted me to feel, constantly irritated to the point of rethinking my life choices? I'd imagine it was a little from both columns, although the former seems to be the more dominant of the two. I was reminded a bit of Nightbitch from last year, another movie about motherhood with a strong premise and committed lead performance that is ultimately let down by an unwillingness to go beyond the surface. Byrne is a standout in the lead role, acting as the sole reason to keep rooting for her character to finally make the right decision. She both is and isn't trying to be better, caught in a limbo of nothingness that we often find too comfortable. Bronstein is married to Ronald Bronstein, a frequent co-writer and co-editor with the Safdie brothers. The eldest, Josh, is a producer on this film, giving credence to the comparisons to Adam Sandler's anxious downward spiral as Howard Ratner in Uncut Gems . To state that I never want to watch this film again isn't much of an overreaction. Honestly, anyone who willingly puts themselves through this on more than one occasion needs to be medically assessed. Effectively weaponizing this much chaos is an achievement on Bronstein's part, and Byrne's determination is admirable. It's a lot of sound and fury, signifying something, I guess. More Reviews Black Phone 2 October 15, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen The Mastermind October 23, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hedda October 22, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Double click the dataset icon to add your own content. 1/1/2035 By: Author Name Hunter Friesen

Urchin October 19, 2025 By: Button Tyler Banark In his feature-length directorial debut, Harris Dickinson delivers Urchin , a London-set drama about a homeless young man named Mike (Frank Dillane) trying to piece his life back together after prison and addiction. Dickinson had proved himself as a rising young talent on the acting front, having starred in films like Triangle of Sadness , The Iron Claw , See How They Run , and Babygirl . With Urchin , he becomes the latest actor to take a crack at being in the director’s chair. The ambition is clear and the intentions honest: we’re meant to see a character “fallen between the cracks” and the systemic and personal forces that keep him circling the same ragged orbit. The film is admirable for trying not to glamourize or oversimplify homelessness and addiction. Mike isn’t “saved” with a dramatic conversion or big catharsis. Instead, the film shows him in the middle of the grind—jobs, hostel rooms, the temptation of old habits. The movie wants the audience to win in the end, but it can be tough cheering for a protagonist who falls back into their old ways. It even stumbles into an ending that Dickinson’s script calls for ambiguity, but feels unearned. The decidedly middle-space of the plot, however, is brave, even if it lacks the tidy narrative arc many audiences expect. Frank Dillane gives a committed, gritty performance as Mike. There’s a rawness to his physicality—ragged clothes, a nervous energy, eyes on edge—that grounds the film in a lived-in realism. The performance has been described as “hangdog” and “unflinchingly authentic.” The camera often holds steady on Mike in static frames, allowing us to linger on his discomfort and alienation rather than rush through exposition. The film also occasionally uses surreal or dreamlike beats (such as a draining pipe segue into darkness) that hint at the character’s inner turmoil rather than spelling it out in heavy voice-over or flashbacks. It poses as a metaphor for Mike’s descent as his life is “going down the drain.” Despite those strengths, Urchin often feels uneven and unfinished in its execution. Some of the storyline beats feel familiar: the young addict, the jail time, the halfway house/job scheme, the woman who tries to help. These tropes are well-trodden in social-realist cinema, and while Dickinson tries to veer away from formula, the film still falls back into recognizable patterns. The surreal moments promise an interesting twist, but they also feel under-explored—at times, they seem like intriguing interruptions rather than integral pieces of the storytelling. For example, the dream-like sequence with the drainpipe is visually striking but not fully integrated into Mike’s emotional journey in a satisfying way. That kind of choice is bold, but when it doesn't fully pay off, it can leave the viewer dangling. Another issue is pacing: much of the film is slow, with extended periods of Mike drifting through life rather than moving toward a clear goal (beyond “stay sober, find work”). While that reflects his aimlessness, it also means the film sometimes lacks momentum. Audiences used to narrative drive might find themselves waiting for something to “happen.” Although Dillane’s performance is strong, some of the supporting characters feel underwritten. The woman who helps Mike, the probation or hostel officials, even the friend-foe figures—these roles sometimes function more as thematic markers than fully fleshed-out people. That weakens the impact of the film’s attempt at nuanced social commentary, because if the relationships feel thin, the stakes feel lighter. Urchin is a film of worthy intentions and commendable moments. It feels earnest rather than slick, and Dickinson should be applauded for going for something personal and socially minded in his first outing. If you’re drawn to raw, character-driven studies of the margins and don’t mind a film that resists tidy resolution, viewers will find much to admire. But for all its ambition, the film doesn’t quite cohere into the powerful, fully-realized piece it aims to be. The structural momentum wavers, some supporting work is uneven, and the surreal flourishes hint at more than they deliver. Thus, while Urchin is better than average, it doesn’t quite soar. A solid debut with rough edges: politics and performance align, but narrative and structure stutter along the way. You can follow Tyler and hear more of his thoughts on Twitter , Instagram , and Letterboxd . More Reviews Black Phone 2 October 15, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen The Mastermind October 23, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hedda October 22, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen If I Had Legs I'd Kick You October 17, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Blue Moon October 13, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen Despite being smack dab in the middle of World War II, March 31st, 1943, was a day for celebration, specifically on the streets of Broadway. The stage musical Oklahoma! premiered that night, the first of 2,212 total performances, not including multiple revivals, domestic and foreign tours, youth productions, and a feature film adaptation. The reviews were enthusiastic raves, a special Pulitzer Prize was awarded, and the partnership of composer Richard Rodgers and lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II was cemented in glory right from the start. Over the next few decades, the team would create some of the most important productions of the 20th century, including Carousel , South Pacific , The King and I , and The Sound of Music . But as one door opens, another closes. Before there was Rodgers and Hammerstein, there was Rodgers and [Lorenz] Hart. The latter pair was the most celebrated songwriting duo of the early decades of the century, raising the profile of the art form through their complex rhymes and wit. It’s a bit of a punchline for director Richard Linklater’s chamber piece about Hart to take its title after one of his most popular songs, one that he looks down on as a piece of shallow populism for the masses. Although, as played by Ethan Hawke and written by Robert Kaplow, it’s difficult to pinpoint what Hart liked and didn’t like. He bemoans some of the Hollywood-y writing in Casablanca , yet endlessly quotes it with his favorite bartender, Eddie (Bobby Cannavale). He spends the whole night tearing Oklahoma! to shreds, all while endlessly praising Rodgers as a musical genius. That dichotomy is what defined Hart. Hammerstein said that he was “alert and dynamic and fun to be around,” while singer Mabel Mercer thought that “he was the saddest man I ever knew.” Both of those quotes come alive in their purest form as Hart sits down at his favorite bar, Sardi’s, after walking out midway through Oklahoma! . Is he jealous that the first show that Rodgers does without him is going to be one of the biggest hits in the history of Broadway? “Fuck yes!” He’s extremely vulgar throughout the rest of the night, steadily downing a bottle of whiskey, all while babbling about how he needs to stop drinking. It only takes a few minutes for us to understand why Rodgers might have needed a change of pace after more than two decades of being with Hart. This whole “performance” that Hart puts on would be much more grating if it weren’t filtered through Hawke’s incredible performance. It’s a full-body transformation, complete with a comb-over hairpiece and visual trickery to make the 5-foot-10 actor appear almost a foot shorter. It’s often a bit of a gimmick, with a couple of blurry full-body shots drawing too much attention below the waist rather than to what Hawke is doing with his eyes and mouth. The camera matches the actor’s nonstop energy, steadily gliding on a track, transfixed on every syllable he ingeniously twists in his favor. Linklater and his longtime editor, Sandra Adair, quickly cut back and forth between Hart, Eddie, and piano player Morty Rifkin (Jonah Lees) as they playfully banter about art and women. Hart fancies Elizabeth (Margaret Qualley), a beautiful college student whom he foolishly believes could fall in love with a short, balding, forty-seven-year-old man. Blue Moon comes out around the same time as Linklater’s other 2025 film, Nouvelle Vague , which chronicles the creation of the film Breathless . Be it a coincidence or not that both of these films focus on mercurial geniuses, Linklater explores the conflicting areas where art is born. But while Nouvelle Vague is (charmingly) preoccupied with answering “how?” through fanciful homage and recreation, Blue Moon finds itself more interested in “why?” Kaplow, whose only other credit is as the author of the book that Me and Orson Welles is based on, finds the reasons why such a depressed and profane man could write such cheery tunes. His failure to get backing for his challenging projects illustrates that he was born in the wrong era; his genius wordplay dulled by the wants and needs for everything to be served with a smile. Rodgers and Hammerstein knew that fact, leaving Hart to be a bit of an also-ran in the annals of Broadway history. Andrew Scott appears as Rodgers about halfway through the film, glowing from the reception of Oklahoma! . He and Hawke have a wonderful rapport, cracking jokes and making playful stabs while one is trying to cling to their relationship, while the other is getting ready to leave it. Linklater and Hawke feel like they occupy a similar comfortable space, with a major difference being that it doesn’t seem like their thirty-year relationship is any danger of ceasing. And if the fruits are going to be this sublime this many years in, I can only imagine how sweet they’ll be another thirty years from now. More Reviews Black Phone 2 October 15, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen If I Had Legs I'd Kick You October 17, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Double click the dataset icon to add your own content. 1/1/2035 By: Author Name Urchin October 19, 2025 By: Tyler Banark Hunter Friesen

After the Hunt October 7, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt opens with the sounds of a ticking clock. With each tick, a routine is established for Alma Imhoff (Julia Roberts). She's woken up in the morning by a kiss from her husband Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg), takes two pills as she shuffles through their classy apartment, and then struts across the Yale campus to teach her philosophy course. Days go by like the seconds on that looming clock, almost as if you could blink and fast-forward through weeks of monotony. And then, one day, that clock stops, jolting your eyes wide open as you scratch and claw to hang onto all that you have. That occurs the day after Alma and Frederik host a party for the students and faculty. Hank (Andrew Garfield) is the department's resident bad boy, poking and prodding at the generational divide between the guests. He and Alma are good friends, and both are up for the same tenured position. Hank especially likes to mischievously pick on Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), Alma's favorite student, who just submitted her PhD dissertation. Barbs are shared, wine is copiously consumed, and everyone goes home having flexed their favorite philosophical jargon. Maggie appears on Alma's doorstep the next day. She explains that Hank came up to her apartment after walking her home. A few more drinks were shared, and then he "crossed the line." Hank denies the whole thing, spinning a yarn about confronting Maggie for plagiarizing her dissertation, and this being her way of covering it up. Between what she should believe and what she chooses to believe, Alma becomes the third point in this triangle, which opens up old wounds from her conflicted past. Guadagnino and first-time screenwriter Nora Garrett don't allow a single door to be kept open, always half or fully closed. Sightlines are blocked and voices are muffled, leaving assumptions to fill in the gaps. “I’m in the business of optics rather than substance,” says the school dean, a poignant summarization of how these issues are handled. A young male student tells Alma that she will get tenure because higher education now favors women in the post-#MeToo climate. Maggie is a black, queer student in a largely white populous, and she comes from rich parents who have made a handful of sizable donations to the university. These things initially carry as much weight as the facts of the case, eventually growing to bury the truth of the matter underneath layers of excuses and conjecture. But the truth by itself is just as slippery. Guadagnino takes after David Fincher, specifically his idea that “language was invented so people could lie to one another.” Everyone goes into a conversation with an agenda, twisting and turning every syllable beyond its face value. What they can’t control is their body language, which Guadagnino and cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed capture under a microscope. Hands fold at the end of a sentence, and eyes dart once a question is asked. Jonathan Demme’s famous close-ups take a new life here, with the 180-degree rule being broken as characters talk directly towards the camera. In those moments, you can no longer hide from what’s been bubbling over, almost as if you’ve been slapped back awake after spacing out. Roberts is fantastic, presumably taking a lot of inspiration from Cate Blanchett’s performance in Tár . There’s even a similar scene where she scolds a student who dares to question her teachings. Her conviction is supported by her sharp outfits and blonde hair, with every confrontation being a battle she has every intention of winning. But she also carries a loose thread, one that completely unravels her once someone starts to pull on it. Garfield is slimily charming, so full of himself that you’re confident that he is capable of doing bad. And Edebiri finds the gap between naivety and confidence, knowing that she hasn’t been fully stripped of power in this situation. As evidenced by the Woody Allen-inspired credits, Guadagnino isn’t interested in making things comfortable or easy for us. That doesn’t come as much of a surprise, considering the tangledness of previous works like Suspiria and Queer . Any answer will have to be formulated on your own, and subjected to assumptions and doubts. Even the ending betrays what we were left to speculate, fittingly illustrating that a maze can never be solved by going in a straight line. More Reviews Black Phone 2 October 15, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Blue Moon October 13, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Double click the dataset icon to add your own content. 1/1/2035 By: Author Name Double click the dataset icon to add your own content. 1/1/2035 By: Author Name Hunter Friesen

Good Fortune October 12, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen Ariana Grande sang that, “Whoever said money can't solve your problems must not have had enough money to solve 'em.” The world is increasingly becoming a place of the haves and have-nots. The rich keep getting richer, and the poor keep getting poorer. No amount of rolled-up sleeves and picking yourself up by the bootstraps can solve that inequity. That is, unless an angel comes down from heaven and allows you to switch lives with a rich person. Then you’d be able to leave behind the hustle and grind of your old, painful life and live out your days as someone who can literally do whatever they want and never ponder how much it costs. This is the central concept of Good Fortune , comedian/actor Aziz Ansari’s feature debut as both screenwriter and director. It will literally take an act of divine intervention to get his character, Arj, off the metaphorical hamster wheel that he’s been on ever since he joined the gig economy. He drives up and down Los Angeles, delivering food through the Foodster app, dealing with equally frustrated restaurant staff and ungrateful customers who never leave a tip. His car is also his home, and the local gym locker room is his bathroom. Arj enters into a It’s a Wonderful Life kind of deal with the angel Gabriel (Keanu Reeves) when he realizes that he has nothing left to live for. Gabriel is the guardian angel for texting and driving, offering people that sixth sense to alert them when they’re swerving out of their lane or a pedestrian is about to cross in front of them. It’s not showy work, especially when the other angels brag about all the adventures they’ve been on, inspiring mortals to see the error of their ways and cherish life. Seeing Arj as an opportunity to better both of their situations, Gabriel decides to teach him a lesson by showing him that money doesn’t buy happiness. So he switches Arj’s life with that of Jeff’s (Seth Rogen), a private equity tech billionaire who got his “humble” beginnings from a multi-million dollar investment by his parents. Contrary to George Bailey, Arj sees absolutely no downside to his new life. He never wants to go back, which is kind of a problem since he has to consent to that for this experiment to end. And who could blame him? Ansari gets a lot of laughs out of exposing the fallacy of the long-held beliefs that the poor only have themselves to blame and that it's selfish to think materialistically. Jeff was rich because he was born into it, and, despite all his bragging, there’s nothing he can do to rise back up to that level. The central trio all display their comedic chops, with Ansari really leaning on the Reeves’ memeified energy at every turn. His happy-go-lucky demeanor is the highest it's ever been, and his delivery has never been this stilted, something that the later John Wick movies embraced for all its campy glory. He discovers hamburgers and chicken nuggets for the first time, eventually working down to cigarettes and marijuana. For all its humor, none of this rings as insightful. Every talking point has been exhausted, and every experience has been felt. There’s a divide between this film strictly being a goofy comedy and a moralistic lesson on appreciating what you have. Everything resolves itself almost offensively too easily, not reflecting the trickiness of the situation it sets up. Keke Palmer plays Elena, who's trying to organize a union at the big-box hardware store she works at. Her role is to deliver speeches to Arj about seeing the silver lining to the struggle, as that’s what gives people their identity. But if I had to choose between my comedy not having a substantive narrative or not being funny, I’d definitely choose the former. I’d like not to have to choose, but such is the situation with Good Fortune . It’s ninety-eight minutes long, has plenty of jokes, and displays enough confidence from Ansari as a writer/director that I’m eagerly anticipating what he does next. For that, I’ll say a quick prayer of thanks. More Reviews Black Phone 2 October 15, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Blue Moon October 13, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Double click the dataset icon to add your own content. 1/1/2035 By: Author Name Double click the dataset icon to add your own content. 1/1/2035 By: Author Name Hunter Friesen

Tron: Ares October 8, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen It’s either brave or foolish of Disney to consider Tron a viable franchise after only offering three entries across its forty-three-year existence. Then again, Top Gun is now one of the most lucrative series despite being comprised of two films with a thirty-six-year gap in between. Disney hoped that the director of Top Gun: Maverick , Joseph Kosinski, would make his return to this franchise after getting his Hollywood career started with Tron: Legacy . But he was busy with F1: The Movie , so the director’s chair was handed over to Joachim Rønning, a familiar face to the studio with a resume that includes Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales , Maleficent: Mistress of Evil , and Young Woman and the Sea . He’s a steady hand who understands the assignment, which is why this is a well-assembled, yet mildly forgettable blockbuster. Humans going into the digital world is old news, with digital creations coming into our world being the new craze. Rival corporations ENCOM and Dillinger Systems are in a race to be the ones to pioneer that technology, with the former promising medical breakthroughs and unlimited resources for humanitarian aid, and the latter selling super soldiers to the highest bidder. And if you still can’t tell who the bad guys are, Dillinger’s headquarters is in a top-secret air hangar perpetually bathed in red lighting. The final piece to this digital puzzle is the permanence code, which fixes the bug that limits the lifespan of any creation to just twenty-nine minutes. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, and the promise of that power is enough to push Dillinger CEO Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) to print his cyber soldiers and order them to kill ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee). As Blade Runner and A.I. Artificial Intelligence have taught us, it’s that robots have a desire to understand the human condition. Why a perfectly engineered specimen would want to join the plight of humanity at this exact moment is an unanswered question, one of many within Jesse Wigutow’s by-the-numbers script. For Ares (Jared Leto), the feeling of rain (but not tears in rain) and a sense of empathy from Eve are enough to convince him that Julian can’t be trusted. Endless chase scenes ensue as the pair avoids capture from Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith), Julian’s other unstoppable digital assassin. If that scenario sounds like a perfect excuse to pump the action full of light cycle greatness, then you’d be absolutely correct. Those beaming bikes are on full display in their shiny metallic glory, speeding along streets and cutting objects like a hot knife through butter. A hacking sequence is visualized like a neon-soaked version of the ending of Zero Dark Thirty , which I’m sure is still more accurate than what they did on NCIS . The whole thing looks and sounds incredible, with DP Jeff Cronenweth (not seen in movies since 2021’s Being the Ricardos ) concocting some dazzlingly sharp images. Speaking of sound, the techno score by Nine Inch Nails frontmen Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross offers the propulsive push this stale story needed. It sits right next to their Challengers score as the best rave music produced in the last few years. I staved off the inevitable question of “am I getting old?” by not being bothered by how ungodly loud the speakers were blasting in the IMAX theater. It’s a shame that Disney was able to hire David Fincher’s cinematographer and composers for this, but not the man himself. Jared Leto is perfectly cast as a robot, both because of his stilted mannerisms and delivery, and his insane ability to look this good at the age of fifty-three. He’s come full circle in the artificial life cycle, first playing the creator in Blade Runner 2049 , and now the created. Good as he is here, one outing with this character is all that I need, especially if it frees Greta Lee to pursue something more worthy of her immense talents. More Reviews Black Phone 2 October 15, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Blue Moon October 13, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Good Fortune October 12, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen After the Hunt October 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

TIFF25 Preview September 2, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen In the realm of cinema, nothing is quite as exciting as a film festival. It’s a place where a buffet of high-quality entertainment is laid out, each piece begging for your attention. Titles can range from micro-budgeted indies to major studio blockbusters, all of them using the festival as a launching pad for future box office and awards success. Of the ten films nominated for Best Motion Picture of the Year at last year’s Academy Awards, seven premiered at a major film festival. That includes the winner, Anora , which began its victory path at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Festivals reach their peak influence from late August through mid-September, when the trifecta of the Venice International Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) overlaps on top of each other. This condensed timeline spurs fierce competition amongst the trio for the right to host screenings of select films. Some titles will play at all three festivals, some at two, and some at just one. All of this is done intentionally by the filmmakers and distributors, with each festival offering its own pros and cons. Venice is more accepting of rigorous arthouse and international films, Telluride creates a laid-back and exclusive environment, and Toronto is one of the largest publicly attended festivals in the world. TIFF has always been my favorite festival thanks to its long-held tradition of being the “festival of festivals,” collecting a mixture of the best films from all the other festivals (Sundance, Berlin, Cannes, Venice, Telluride, etc.), along with a swath of juicy world premieres. This year’s lineup flaunts 209 feature films screening over ten days across the festival’s many splashy venues. I’ll attempt to watch forty of those films, an improvement over last year’s tally of thirty-seven. This will require mental toughness to comprehend viewing up to five films per day, a stretching program for my stiff legs and neck (some TIFF venues have very uncomfortable seats), and a willingness to take a risk on some under-the-radar gems. The first day will feature four Cannes stand-outs: Sentimental Value , Nouvelle Vague , Sound of Falling , and the Palme d’Or winner, It Was Just an Accident. I wasn’t able to attend Cannes this year, my first absence since I started going in 2021. Luckily, TIFF always welcomes the top players from there, which means I can partially replicate that experience, minus the pristine beaches and beautiful weather on the French Riviera. The second day presents new works from two of my favorite filmmakers. The first is The Wizard of the Kremlin by French writer/director Olivier Assayas. Paul Dano stars as Vadim Baranov, a filmmaker who became an advisor to Vladimir Putin as he rose to power in post-Soviet Russia. Jude Law portrays Putin, with Alicia Vikander, Jeffrey Wright, and Tom Sturridge rounding out the cast. Next will be No Other Choice from Park Chan-wook, whose two previous features, The Handmaiden and Decision to Leave , are some of my all-time favorites. This new film is a dark satire about a chronically unemployed man who decides that the best path to getting a job is to kill all the other applicants. Saturday night will have the marquee event, which is the world premiere of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery , the third installment in the whodunnit series starring Daniel Craig as detective Benoit Blanc. Earlier in the day will be a 70mm presentation of The Testament of Ann Lee , a musical about the founder of the Shaker movement starring Amanda Seyfried as the titular character. Mona Fastvold and Brady Corbet, the team behind last year’s The Brutalist , co-wrote the film, with Fastvold taking her turn in the director’s chair. Other big titles across the weekend include The Lost Bus , starring Matthew McConaughey as a bus driver during the 2018 wildfires in California; Rental Family , a dramedy starring Brendan Fraser as a professional surrogate for a Japanese family; Good Fortune , Aziz Ansari’s directorial debut; Hamnet , Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of the acclaimed novel with Paul Mescal as William Shakespeare and Jessie Buckley as his grieving wife Agnes; and Nuremberg , a courtroom drama centered around the trials of the Nazi high command in the wake of World War II. Dwayne Johnson will turn up the lights as he’ll present the North American premiere of The Smashing Machine , the life story of MMA and UFC fighter Mark Kerr. But the fun doesn’t slow down as the festival heads into its second half. Guillermo del Toro, the filmmaker most in love with monsters, is finally getting the chance to adapt the story of the most famous one of all. He and Netflix will debut the epically mounted Frankenstein , starring Oscar Isaac as the mad scientist and Jacob Elordi as the born-again creature. The steamer also brings over Ballad of a Small Player , directed by All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave helmer Edward Berger. Colin Farrell plays a travelling gambler in over his head as Tilda Swinton tracks him down to Macau. From there, the schedule gets a bit more fluid. There’ll still be plenty of screening opportunities for stuff like The Christophers , Fuze , Sacrifice , A Private Life , Scarlet , Roofman , Easy’s Waltz , and Eternity , as well as other titles not on my watchlist that receive great buzz. Respectively, The Beast and April were my favorite films of the 2023 and 2024 editions of the festival. Both were seen mostly on a whim in the festival’s waning days, proving that the best films are often hidden in plain sight. I could spend several more paragraphs describing the rest of the films I’m seeing and why I’m excited about them. That risks this article getting repetitive, and there will be plenty of time devoted to all those films in my recap article. For now, you can take a look at the full slate of festival titles at the TIFF website. I’ll be publishing full reviews for select titles, with a few of them likely to become some of my favorites of the year. More Reviews Blue Moon October 13, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Good Fortune October 12, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Tron: Ares October 8, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen After the Hunt October 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Twin Cities Film Fest 2025 Preview October 14, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen From late August through mid-September, the fall film festival corridor reaches its apex of influence and popularity with the overlapping of the trifecta that is the Venice International Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, and Toronto International Film Festival. Dozens of A-list movie stars and auteurs debut their newest projects, walking the red carpet and shaking hands to attract as much attention as possible. It’s all a game, with the victor being showered with praise in the form of box office earnings and industry awards. While those headlining festivals are mostly exclusive events, a democratization of this process begins in October with the blitz of the regional festivals. All across the country (and the world), smaller festivals gather a collection of the best that world cinema has to offer, curating for local tastes and building narratives that carry on throughout the rest of the year. Notable festivals that take place during this time include the New York Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival, the Philadelphia Film Festival, and AFI Fest. Also a part of that mix is the Twin Cities Film Fest (TCFF), now celebrating its “Sweet 16” anniversary with its lineup of blockbusters and headliners. Distributor Focus Features retains its opening night slot for the third year in a row after The Holdovers and Conclave , respectively. Both of those films placed for the Best Feature Film Award, something that this year’s selection, Hamnet , could very likely do, considering its rave reviews and awarding of the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Tissues will be needed for the audience of this tear-jerker, which features Oscar-worthy performances by Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal. It will then be released in theaters around the Thanksgiving holiday. Also from Focus Features is Bugonia , the newest collaboration between director Yorgos Lanthimos and star Emma Stone, whose previous works include The Favourite , Poor Things , and Kinds of Kindness . Stone plays a CEO who is kidnapped by two conspiracy-obsessed young men who believe that she is an alien who has been sent to destroy the planet. Amazon MGM Studios will bring Hedda , writer/director Nia DaCosta’s reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s classic play, starring Tessa Thompson. Aziz Ansari, Seth Rogen, and Keanu Reeves headline Ansari’s directorial debut, Good Fortune , which will play at the Edina Mann 4 Theatre as part of the festival’s new partnership to expand its programming capabilities. Searchlight Pictures will be pulling double duty during the festival’s final days with the dramedies Rental Family and Is This Thing On? . In the lineup press release, Executive Director Jatin Setia said that he wanted to “put a brighter spotlight on the independent spirit.” That sentiment is illustrated by the selection of The Floaters as the Spotlight Centerpiece. Marking its Minnesota Premiere at the festival, the indie dramedy features an eclectic cast of performers like Jackie Tohn, Seth Green, Aya Cash, and Steve Guttenberg. Director Rachel Israel and producer Shai Korman will conduct a Q&A following the screening. The Closing Night Gala, Lost & Found in Cleveland , will also bring together its cast and crew, including directors Keith Gerchak and Marisa Guterman, as well as actors Santino Fontana and Benjamin Steinhauser. The festival received a record number of submissions this year, with over 150 films set to screen at the Marcus West End Cinema, Edina Mann 4 Theatre, or virtually via the TCFF streams platform. The selection runs from October 16 to the 25th, with information about scheduling and tickets available at twincitiesfilmfest.org . More Reviews Blue Moon October 13, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Good Fortune October 12, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Tron: Ares October 8, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen After the Hunt October 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

TIFF25 Recap September 17, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen For ten days at the beginning of September, the laws of time and space cease to exist. Days turn to night in an instant, getting three hours of sleep per night becomes a normal practice, and diets consist of Tim Horton’s donuts, movie theater popcorn, and hot dogs from that heavenly cart located at the corner of King Street W and John Street. If you’re not going home asking yourself why you put your mind and body through the wringer, then you haven’t fully experienced the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Of the two hundred plus films showcased throughout the fiftieth edition of this festival, I saw thirty-eight of them, an improvement over last year’s tally of thirty-seven. Before branding me with the crazy label, just know that I’ve met and observed people who have eclipsed fifty films without breaking a sweat. My streak started on a soaking wet Thursday with one of the best films of the festival: Sentimental Value by Joachim Trier. The recipient of the Grand Prix at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, this Norwegian drama is one of the year’s most emotionally intelligent films. Every tear, gasp, and laugh is produced at the exact right moment. Yet it's never manipulative, always proudly wearing its heart on its sleeve. I expect a lot of Oscar attention to be placed upon Trier and his quartet of cast members, with Stellan Skarsgård likely to be the frontrunner for Best Supporting Actor. The second day began with a major disappointment as Olivier Assayas’ The Wizard of the Kremlin was a major bore. And that’s coming from someone who enthusiastically took a college elective course on modern Russian history. Luckily, Park Chan-wook’s wildly entertaining No Other Choice picked me right up only a few hours later. And then later that night, I caught the world premiere of The Choral , a comfortingly forgettable British dramedy starring Ralph Fiennes as a choir teacher who must inject new life into a town’s choir during the height of World War I. Sony Pictures Classics will release it in theaters on Christmas Day. After taking the festival by storm last year with The Brutalist , Brady Corbet and Mona Fastvold returned with The Testament of Ann Lee . Fastvold takes her turn in the director’s chair in stride, presenting a quasi-musical about the titular character and the founding of the Shaker movement in colonial America. Amanda Seyfried is excellent in the title role, and I hope she’ll be a factor in this year’s Oscar race once a distributor picks up the film. It’s unfair to label Wake Up Dead Man as my least favorite of the now three Knives Out films, as I still had a lot of fun with it. Josh O’Connor is ostensibly the lead, taking an ever larger role as the audience’s guide than Ana de Armas and Janelle Monáe did in their respective entries. The cast is not as well served here, while Daniel Craig falls deeper into his Foghorn Leghorn routine, upping his comedic prowess as the proudly rational detective must come face-to-face with the realization that all the clues point to this murder being a miracle. I saw a lot of good/great films throughout the first few days, but I was still waiting for “the one” to appear. That happened early Monday morning in the form of Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet , which deservedly took home the festival’s coveted People’s Choice Award. There wasn’t a dry eye in the theater as the origin of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is told through the tragic prism of his young son, Hamnet. Jessie Buckley is nothing short of transcendent, practically engraving her Oscar with every moment of laughter and cries. It’s the best film of the year, and make sure to check it out in theaters this Thanksgiving. Netflix led the charge during the festival’s middle section. Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams are also two of the year’s best films, telling touching stories set against breathtakingly beautiful backdrops. Edward Berger couldn’t maintain the momentum as he delivered his worst film to date in Ballad of a Small Player . It’s still watchable thanks to his expert craftsmanship, but the DNA is all wrong. Ranging from “okay” to “good enough” during that span were Rental Family , The Lost Bus, Nuremberg , Hedda , The Secret Agent , and Good Fortune . Starring Dwayne Johnson, The Smashing Machine came into the festival with a ton of heat after Venice showered the film with positive reviews and the Silver Lion prize to director Benny Safdie. I’m a little puzzled as to what everyone saw in the film, as all I experienced was a standard sports biopic clothed in just enough rough production qualities so that distributor A24 could maintain their indie cred. The final few days are always a crapshoot in terms of quality. Chris Evans and Anya Taylor-Joy starred in the toothless capitalist satire Sacrifice , while Angelina Jolie led an international cast through Paris Fashion Week in Couture . Vince Vaughn may be a very likable actor, but he can’t carry a tune to save his life, which is why he’s horribly miscast as a Las Vegas lounge singer with untapped potential in Easy’s Waltz . The worst film of the festival was Scarlet , Mamoru Hosoda’s anime version of Hamlet (there he is again!) that trades away all of the wit and heart for obnoxious characters and never-ending yelling. Many of these films will be released in theaters or on streaming by major studios from now until the end of the year, while others will be trapped in limbo for years to come. It’s all a part of the big gamble we all partake in, experiencing the ecstasy and agony through stories projected on a giant silver screen. You’d assume I’d swear off movies for a few weeks after this whole ordeal. But the train never slows down, and I’m having too much fun to jump off. FULL RANKING Hamnet Frankenstein Sentimental Value No Other Choice The Testament of Ann Lee Train Dreams It Was Just an Accident Sound of Falling Nouvelle Vague Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery Roofman Two Prosectors The Voice of Hind Rajab The Secret Agent Rose of Nevada Sirāt Eagles of the Republic The Christophers Rental Family Ballad of a Small Player Fuze Hedda The Smashing Machine Nuremberg A Private Life Good Fortune Couture The Wizard of the Kremlin Sacrifice The Choral Tuner Christy The Lost Bus Silent Friend Orphan The Fence Easy’s Waltz Scarlet More Reviews Blue Moon October 13, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Good Fortune October 12, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Tron: Ares October 8, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen After the Hunt October 7, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen