Carry-On December 13, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen Armed with enough competence to make it sufficiently entertaining and entirely forgettable, Carry-On joins the ranks of Don’t Look Up, Bird Box , and Rebel Moon - Part One: A Child of Fire as Netflix’s yearly holiday offering to bide your time for the few hours between opening presents and eating Christmas dinner. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery still reigns supreme in this hyper-specific genre, one that’s seen its fair share of big-name actors climb the yearly viewing charts. Taron Egerton, Jason Bateman, Sofia Carson, and Danielle Deadwyler are the quartet up to bat this time in a story that almost all of us can relate to: Airport travel during the holidays absolutely sucks. But the suckage that this cast goes through pales in comparison to the average person like me and you. For starters, Ethan Kopek (Egerton) hates Christmas. I know, boo him! It’s a yearly reminder he’s not doing enough, like being a lowly TSA officer when he originally applied to the police academy. There’s also the surprise that his girlfriend, Nora (Carson), gave him the gift of a positive pregnancy test. Oh, and a mysterious terrorist (Bateman) is threatening to kill Nora and everyone in the airport if Ethan doesn’t let a bomb slip through security. They say holiday-related stress can kill you, but I didn’t think it would be this aggressive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS0XacjMmOc With a setup such as this - a law enforcement protagonist, unfortunately, taken out of his element during the holidays by a calm and collected terrorist, one that will kill everyone he loves if they don't get their way - it doesn't take much media literacy to see the parallels between this story and Die Hard. Similarly to that action classic, our hero and villain don't speak face-to-face for a prolonged period of time. A Bluetooth earpiece acts as their mode of communication, the terrorist walking Ethan through every step as he sits at his security terminal. Lyle Vincent's camera keeps a shallow focus throughout these proceedings, pushing in on Egerton as he processes his limited options. Bateman's voice acts as sinister ASMR, although there's some playfulness in his casual demeanor about the whole thing. He's technically not a terrorist, just a "facilitator" performing a job for a high-paying client. It’s fun to see (and hear) the actor possess a character with callousness, with years of playing the straight man in wacky comedies prepping him for this descent. I also say that, with full awareness, not having seen Ozark has totally skewed my perception of him. Egerton is a capable lead, although his stressed and straighter-laced demeanor takes away a lot of his charm and makes him the least fun character in this cast. He’s at least served well by director Jaume Collet-Serra, who made a name for himself as the continuer of the post- Taken Liam Neeson action renaissance that saw him kick ass on planes ( Non-Stop ), trains ( The Commuter ), and automobiles ( Unknown ). There are no fewer than a handful of shots of Egerton sprinting throughout the airport terminal, dodging the scope of a sniper rifle and the suspicions of his coworkers as he tries to piece together this ticking bomb of a puzzle. Less catered is Danielle Deadwyler, the LAPD cop, in an overly stretched subplot, where she’s also on the hunt for this facilitator. A horrendously CGI car crash set piece is her one moment of physicality, a far cry from the more inspired chases within the chutes and ladders within the baggage claim machinery. More moments of visual eyesores, such as that, and some heavy-handed Christmas needle drops make Carry-On too cheap, predictable, and anonymous to buddy up to the holiday action films it so desperately wants to impress. Netflix will release Carry-On on its streaming service on December 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

Top 10 Films of 2024 December 28, 2024 By: Hunter Friesen In my Best of 2023 list, I described my choices as "predictable," taking both a positive and negative stance on that scenario. Anyone who knows me wouldn't be surprised that historical dramas by Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan, a David Fincher hitman thriller, and a Wes Anderson comedy would end up being some of my favorites of the year. 2024 ended up being very different, with many of the titles on this list coming clear out of left field. Could that be a sign that the usual heavy hitters are on their way down, or that last year's SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes have walloped the industry with more than just a temporary blow? Perhaps. But it could also mean that there are so many of those medium and small films out there, many ready to change your life if you just give them a chance. The only currency that matters in cinema is the experience you have in your seat and in the time that follows. All ten of the films featured in this list (and the extra ten honorable mentions) are boundlessly wealthy in that department, which is why I'm so excited to talk about them one more time before the book is closed. Honorable Mentions: A Complete Unknown , Dune: Part Two , I'm Still Here, Kinds of Kindness , Nickel Boys , Nosferatu , Saturday Night , September 5, The Apprentice , The Order 10. Maria Pablo Larraín concludes his biopic trilogy not with a story about a figure at the end of an era, but at the end of their life. This Maria Callas-led capper is further separated from the previous two efforts, the frenzied claustrophobia substituted with something more hauntingly elegiac, with Ed Lachmann's warm cinematographer and Guy Hendrix Dyas' sumptuous production design proving that pretty surroundings don't equal a pretty life. Angelina Jolie reminds us of her immense screen presence and poise as a performer, guiding us through Callas' tumultuous past and present. Full Review 9. The Substance If there’s one thing writer/director Coralie Fargeat’s sophomore feature hates more than attached limbs and unspilled blood, it’s subtlety. She knows that if you’re not going to be first or the most insightful, then you might as well make damn sure you’re going to the most audaciously unforgettable. With Julia Ducournau and Fargeat rising through the ranks of international cinema, the no-holds-barred corner that they occupy is looking like a mighty fine place to camp out for a while. Full Review 8. We Live in Time Featuring two of the most charming performances of the year by Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh, We Live in Time is the kind of heart-tugging romantic drama that they don't make anymore. Cutting back and forth in time, screenwriter Nick Payne pieces together the story of a relationship, the trials and tribulations that drive humans to seek companionship with each other. Director John Crowley, excellently rebounding from The Goldfinch , makes sure none of this seems corny or overblown, applying a deft touch that authentically incites tears of laughter and sadness. 7. Emilia Pérez To try and categorize the filmography of French maestro Jacques Audiard into one box would be an act of futility, a sentiment that extends to his newest Mexican-set film. Is it a musical? Is it a crime thriller? Is it a life-affirming melodrama? It’s all and none of those things, harnessing the unique power of each genre to create a film bursting with bombast. Karla Sofía Gascón is a true discovery in the titular role, as are the musical talents of Zoe Saldaña that are rarely able to be shown outside of her CGI-heavy work. Full Review 6. Evil Does Not Exist Arthouse superstar Ryûsuke Hamaguchi makes his most outspoken work with Evil Does Not Exist . The relative leanness of Drive My Car has been dialed down to a quiet tranquility. Those who embrace the molasses will find themselves powerfully transported, a task that becomes much simpler with the aid of Eiko Ishibashi’s magnificent score. Despite being clear in his message, Hamaguchi never eviscerates the villains of this story, delivering an ecological parable that intricately paints in shades of grey. 5. The Girl with the Needle An ultra-grim fairy tale comes to life in writer/director Magnus von Horn’s loose retelling of Denmark’s most heinous and prolific serial killer. The depressing gloom of post-WWI Copenhagen is lensed in claustrophobic black-and-white, and the dread drip-fed through abstract visuals and a deeply haunting score. Vic Carmen Stone and Trine Dyrholm are standouts in their lead roles, guiding not just through this literal story, but also the universal lesson of the nightmares women have endured throughout history. 4. The End Even in the darkest depths of the Earth at the end of humanity, you can still find a reason to sing and dance. Co-writer/director Joshua Oppenheimer, famed for his one-two documentary punch of The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence , makes sure his fiction feature debut is as bold and audacious as one would expect. The Golden Age influences of Jacques Demy and Vincent Minnelli supply the bravura, the cast's confidence more important than their physical abilities. This is an absurdist concept with humorous moments, but it’s also so sincere that you can’t simply excuse it as another "eat the rich" story. These are rich characters, both emotionally and financially, with their inner delusions offering a complex lesson on how we handle the horrors that are right in front of us. Full Review 3. Conclave For someone who seemed to appear out of nowhere with All Quiet on the Western Front , director Edward Berger has quickly strung together two of the finest films of the past few years. Conclave is a soap opera with as much page-turning substance as it has a prestige-like style, with Berger and screenwriter Peter Straughan keeping the balance between thrills and social critique just as pristine as it was in Robert Harris’ novel. Longstanding acting royalty fills the cast, each of them maintaining a quiet dignity as a web of lies and deceit begins to unspool right in front of them. Full Review 2. The Brutalist The Brutalist is a full-course cinema meal, requiring an afternoon to consume and much longer to digest. It’s easy to savor every moment of it in real-time because of its boundless beauty, and just as easy over time thanks to its long lingering themes on the ideals that modern America convinced itself it was built upon. With a record-breaking runtime of 215 minutes (including an intermission!), each scene flows with more freedom and weight, all of them simultaneously epic and intimate as the camera glacially passes through the years. With three features to his name as a director, Brady Corbet has become one of the most formidable artists of his generation, challenging his audience to see the darkness that our world invites. Full Review 1. The Beast First watched in September 2023 at the Toronto International Film Festival (and rewatched in April of this year as part of the film's US release), Bertrand Bonello's sci-fi epic was the clear wire-to-wire winner of the year. Bonello displays a mastery of tone and vision across his 146-minute adaptation of Henry James' genre-defying novella. There’s passion, fear, humor, drama, and everything in between as Léa Seydoux and George MacKay play characters in three different periods - 1910, 2014, 2044 - as they navigate the unknowable connection they feel for each other. It's a greatly demanding work exploring the fear of opening oneself up to risk and the unknown, something that modern audiences have continually proven to be less adept at overcoming. 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 Little Things February 4, 2021 By: Button Hunter Friesen The serial killer genre once was the biggest attraction at the cinema. The Silence of the Lambs (winner of Best Picture), Se7en, and American Psycho ruled the box office and were made on big budgets with big stars. With prestige television shows like True Detective and Mindhunter taking up space in the genre, films shifted towards low budgets and horror, which can be seen in Saw and the rebooted Halloween franchise. As one of the first cinematic releases of 2021, Warner Brothers is offering to take us back with The Little Things . Our story opens in 1990 Los Angeles as disgraced police detective Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) returns to his old precinct. Immediately, he’s sucked into a developing case led by young hotshot Jim Baxter (Rami Malek) that contains similar patterns to the case that destroyed his career many years ago. Young women are being followed to their homes and then stabbed to death by a sadistic killer. The prime suspect is a grimy crime buff named Albert Sparma (Jared Leto). Sparma may look and talk the part of a killer, but there’s no evidence to link him to the murders. To stop the killings they suspect he’ll do, Deacon and Baxter race against the clock to gather evidence in a city ravaged by fear. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HZAnkxdYuA There’s a line in the trailer, and also in the movie, that has stuck with me. At one point, Deacon says that “it’s the little things that rip you apart, and it’s the little things that get you caught”. While he’s describing how to cover up a murder, those same words can be said about making a movie. It’s the little things like character development, an engaging plot, and a satisfying ending that can rip apart this type of movie. These are the little, or in this case, big things that hold The Little Things back from reaching the heights of its predecessors. Writer/director John Lee Hancock, who’s had an average career with films such as The Blind Side and Saving Mr. Banks, is the one to blame for this hollowness. Hancock, for the most part, has written and directed his films, which signifies a certain amount of uniqueness. Similar to Denzel’s quote, I was also struck by the question of what exactly is a John Lee Hancock film? That question can be answered for many writer/directors like Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen, or Kevin Smith. But for Hancock, there isn’t something special he brings to the table. He doesn’t have a style or any original substance. His films are no different than the usual made-by-committee studio fodder. To give him the benefit of the doubt, he does bring above-average craftsmanship with cinematography and can carry a tense mood for most of the picture. But he still makes the unforgivable sin of delivering a shockingly underwhelming ending to a whodunit mystery. Hancock’s missteps also bleed into the central performances. As one of the best actors of a generation, Denzel Washington is incapable of doing wrong, which is why I’m only partially blaming him for his work here. There is a property in mathematics that stipulates that the product of any number multiplied by zero is zero. So, in the film’s case, with the character of Joe Deacon having zero depth, the amount of work Denzel puts into his performance does not matter. He must have known this fact on set, as he seems to be on autopilot and just doing a job for a paycheck. While Denzel knows he’s too good for this material, Rami Malek proves he isn’t good enough. His performance here is inconsistent, leaning too hard on the eccentricities and genre tropes of the rookie cop who hasn’t tasted defeat yet. His Oscar win in 2018 for playing Freddie Mercury in Bohemian Rhapsody is looking worse with each subsequent role. As Sparma, Jared Leto is at his best in years, even though that is an incredibly low bar since he’s been nothing short of embarrassing since his 2013 Oscar win. Leto is fully hamming it up with his long, greasy hair, odd mannerisms, and overall creepy demeanor. It may not be the most nuanced performance, but it sure is the most entertaining, which is worth something in this case. While The Little Things may amount to little, it’s still a harmless return to the bigger-budget serial killer dramas of yesteryear. In a time of year when there are fewer new releases, easy entertainment isn’t the worst thing in the world. Warner Bros. Pictures will release The Little Things in theaters nationwide and on HBO Max on January 29th. 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

25 Most Anticipated Films of 2025 January 27, 2025 By: Hunter Friesen The book of 2024 has been closed, and the first few pages for 2025 have already been written. But there’s still so much blank space left to discover, and lots of potential storylines to fill it. For the first time in half a decade, there isn’t an industry-altering pandemic or strike to disrupt the normal flow of business. With that comes a vast amount of optimism. Before we get too ahead of ourselves, let's lay down some ground rules. First, there must be some sort of verifiable evidence that a film is going to be released this year. It either must be in production, post-production, completed, or even mentioned in a reputable article that it’s on its way. I also won’t count any films that I’ve already seen, such as April and Eden , both of which I caught at the Toronto International Film Festival back in September. But enough of all that, let’s commence the fun. Here are twenty-five of my most anticipated movies of 2025! Honorable Mentions A Big Bold Beautiful Journey (dir. Kogonada) Árva (dir. László Nemes) Eddington (dir. Ari Aster) F1 (dir. Joseph Kosinski) Jupiter (dir. Andrey Zvyagintsev) Mother Brother Sister Mother (dir. Jim Jarmusch) The Bride (dir. Maggie Gyllenhaal) The Drama (dir. Kristofer Borgli) The Rivals of the Amziah King (dir. Andrew Patterson) The Silent Friend (dir. Ildiko Enyedi) 25. The Smashing Machine A24 has already excelled at the wrestling/fighting genre once with The Iron Claw , so it stands to reason that they should be able to do it again with The Smashing Machine . Dwayne Johnson has finally found a quality filmmaker in the form of Benny Safdie, flying solo for the first time since his split with Josh (also at A24 this year with Marty Supreme ). The sky is the limit for what the director and star can achieve with this endeavor, with Emily Blunt helping out in her first post- Oppenheimer role. 24. Hand of Dante With a cast composed of Oscar Isaac, Jason Momoa, Gerard Butler, Gal Gadot, Al Pacino, John Malkovich, and Martin Scorsese, Julian Schnabel’s crime drama will surely grab headlines wherever it debuts. Given that the former painter-turned-director has mostly had his sights set on stories within the artistic world, the antithetical nature of this project pleasantly raises my eyebrow. 23. Alpha Now that Coralie Fargeat just stormed Cannes with The Substance , the ball is back in Titane writer/director Julia Ducournau's court to unleash a tale of biological horror. Neon is once again backing her, with Tahar Rahim and Golshifteh Farahani starring. The rumored plot follows a teenager who is mistreated by classmates once they believe she carries an infectious disease. As with Titane and Raw , that information will likely be just the tip of the iceberg. 22. Die, My Love It's been seven years since Lynne Ramsay last graced the silver screen with You Were Never Really Here . That length of absence isn't unusual for her, which makes the prospect of potentially having two new films from her in 2025 all the more tantalizing. Die, My Love stars Jennifer Lawrence as a mother struggling to keep her sanity, and Polaris has real-life married couple Joaquin Phoenix and Rooney Mara in a story about an ice photographer coming face-to-face with the devil. Given that the former project recently released images and specific plot details, it stands to reason that it'll be due this year and the latter will stay on the shelf for just a bit longer. 21. Mother Mary Working across several genres and production scales, writer/director David Lowery has yet to miss. His latest will follow a relationship between a fictional musician (Anne Hathaway) and a famous fashion designer (Micaela Coel). Described as an "epic pop melodrama" with original songs by Jack Antonoff and Charli XCX, this sounds like the project that could bring Hathaway back to her peak and harness the untapped potential Coel illustrated in I May Destroy You . 20. Caught Stealing As much as the internet didn't want it to be true, The Whale was a massive success for director Darren Aronofsky. Now he's out of that drabby apartment living room and into the underbelly of New York City for his new film. Austin Butler is the man who must navigate those streets after he gets himself mixed up with a whole host of seedy characters. 19. Hope South Korean auteur Na Hong-jin hasn't been seen since he unleashed the horrifying The Wailing back in 2016. He's supposedly back with the first part of a new trilogy about a small village being invaded by aliens. Alicia Vikander and Michael Fassbender are a piece of this still secret puzzle that supposedly has a budget that could be the highest in the country's history. 18. Highest 2 Lowest Spike Lee is already 0/1 on English-language remakes of famous Asian films, his version of Oldboy was so terrible that 99% of filmmakers would steer very clear of that territory ever again. But Lee isn't like anybody else, and he's enlisted his most trusted accomplice, Denzel Washington, to pull off this remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1963 crime thriller. A24 and Apple TV+ are backing the project, a partnership that worked well when Joel Coen made his remake of The Tragedy of Macbeth in 2021. 17. Young Mother The brothers of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have been one of Belgium's finest exports for the past forty years. Their trademarked slices of social realism have netted them two Palme d'Ors and several other prizes at their beloved Cannes Film Festival. They'll likely be back again on the French Riviera with a story about five migrant mothers who must band together to build a better life for their children. 16. Sentimental Value The Norwegian band that brought you 2021's The Worst Person in the World is back together! Joachim Trier is in the director's chair, Eskil Vogt is in the writer's room with him, and Renate Reinsve is in front of the camera. Brought into the fold is Stellen Skarsgård as Reinsve's film director father, who offers her the lead role in his next film. Neon preemptively acquired North American rights to the project, signaling confidence in its worldwide prospects. 15. Frankenstein It makes sense that 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's recruited an A-list cast (Oscar Isaac as the mad doctor, Jacob Elordi as the monster) and crew to back up his vision, which Netflix is sparing no expense to bring to life. Expect this to be their big Oscar player going into the next awards season. 14. Marty Supreme Even with only one Safdie brother at the helm, A24 had enough confidence in this project to make it their biggest production to date (budget of $70-90 million) and give it a prime Christmas day release. Star Timothée Chalamet has dominated the holidays over the past two years with Wonka and A Complete Unknown , respectively. He'll have a stacked cast and an exciting writer/director to back him up for the threepeat. 13. Havoc Writer/director Gareth Evans is the mastermind behind the two The Raid films, both of which have a legitimate claim to be the best action movie of the past decade. Shot in 2021 and supposedly set to come this year, his latest action feature stars Tom Hardy as a “bruised detective who must fight his way through the criminal underworld to rescue a politician's estranged son, unraveling a deep web of corruption and conspiracy that ensnares his entire city.” Evans’ latest film was 2018’s Apostle from Netflix, and he’ll team up with the streamer again for distribution. 12. After the Hunt As cinema's premier workaholic, Luca Guadagnino doesn't know when to stop. Julia Roberts will lead first-time writer Nora Garrett's fiery script as a college professor who must handle an accusation made by one of her students (Ayo Edebiri) against a colleague (Andrew Garfield). Expect plenty of twists and turns in this timely tale of power. 11. Wake Up Dead Man With both Knives Out and Glass Onion premiering on the first Saturday of the Toronto International Film Festival, we can confidently pencil in September 06 as the date that Rian Johnson will unveil the conclusion to his whodunnit trilogy. He outdid himself with the sequel, so we're in for something truly special as he goes for broke with a stacked supporting cast around Daniel Craig. 10. Nouvelle Vague / Blue Moon While several international filmmakers have transferred to the English language, few Westerners trek in the opposite direction. Richard Linklater will be doing just that with his French-language production centered around the creation of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless , one of the most influential films ever made. Linklater will be staying in the performing art world with his other film in the pipeline, which tells the story of how Lorenz Hart created and opened the famous play "Oklahoma!" Frequent collaborator Ethan Hawke will play Hart, with Andrew Scott as his famous creative partner Oscar Hammerstein II. 9. The Ballad of a Small Player For someone who seemed to appear out of nowhere with All Quiet on the Western Front and Conclave , director Edward Berger has quickly strung together two of the finest films of the past few years. He's returning to Netflix to retain that hot streak, casting Colin Farrell, one of the hottest (both literally and figuratively) actors working today. Farrell will play a high-stakes gambler who must flee to Macau after he gets in over his head. With Conclave editor Nick Emerson and All Quiet on the Western Front cinematographer James Friend as part of the crew, the cards are looking well stacked for this project. 8. Jay Kelly True fans of Adam Sandler know that his most impressive performance to date was not in Punch-Drunk Love or Uncut Gems but in Noah Baumbach's 2017 film The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected) . The actor and director have reunited for a "funny and emotional coming-of-age story about adults." Emily Mortimer co-wrote the screenplay with Baumbach and appears in the cast, which boasts no less than George Clooney, Laura Dern, Jim Broadbent, Billy Crudup, Greta Gerwig, and Isla Fisher. 7. Untitled Kathyrn Bigelow White House Thriller It's been eight years since Kathryn Bigelow made a feature film, the financial failure of Detroit being the main cause. Before that, she was the preeminent filmmaker for dissecting American foreign policy, netting acclaim and awards for The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty . Netflix has brought her back to the spotlight with a real-time thriller about how the White House responds to a ballistic missile threat. Jackie writer Noah Oppenheim wrote the script, with Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Jason Clarke, and Greta Lee lining up the cast list. 6. Bugonia Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos have forged one of the most prosperous actor-director pairings with their three feature films of The Favourite , Poor Things , and Kinds of Kindness . As expected, they're reuniting again, this time bringing previous Lanthimos collaborators Jesse Plemons and Alicia Silverstone back into the fold for an English-language adaptation of the popular South Korean film Save the Green Planet . Succession and The Menu writer Will Tracy penned the script, which will combine well with Lanthimos’ bitingly deadpan satirism. 5. Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Film With a rumored budget of somewhere between $140 and $175 million, Paul Thomas Anderson's latest venture will drastically be the biggest tableau he's worked on. But those large sacks of money haven't prevented PTA from shrouding himself in his trademark levels of secrecy. All we know is that Leonardo DiCaprio leads a starry ensemble. Everything else, including the title to the premise, is a complete mystery. You know you're a master filmmaker when you can give your audience nothing and still have them lining up around the block months in advance. 4. Black Bag It wouldn't be a normal year in the movie world without another Steven Soderbergh offering. 2025 is an extra special year in that we get a double serving, the first being the theatrical release of Presence , which debuted back at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The latter entry will be an espionage thriller starring two of my favorite actors (Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett) as a married spy couple who must figure out if the other has double-crossed them. It'll mark the third collaboration between Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp, who previously wrote Kimi and Presence . 3. No Other Choice 2022's Decision to Leave was one of director Park Chan-wook's most commercially successful films. It was also a critical success, nabbing him the coveted Best Director prize at the Cannes Film Festival. He'll likely return to that festival this year for his fifth appearance in competition with a Korean adaptation of the 1997 horror thriller novel The Ax . Lee Byung-hun will star as an unemployed man who, in an act of desperation, starts to kill all the other applicants for the new job he needs. 2. The Way of the Wind Now making its sixth consecutive appearance on this list, I've run out of different ways to describe my excitement for this film. They shot this movie in 2019, for Christ’s sake! I'm just going to get back to praying that my patience will be rewarded 1. The Phoenician Scheme Wes Anderson's latest production was initially announced as a smaller-scale dark espionage tale centered on a father-daughter relationship. But it seems the whimsical auteur couldn't help himself, with the bulk of his A-list troupe of actors being revealed as part of the full cast once filming finished. With T he French Dispatch being my favorite film ever, The Grand Budapest Hotel not far behind, and Asteroid City being one of the best films of 2023, I'm obviously a fan of Anderson working with a large ensemble. Whatever the size and scale will ultimately be, I'll be seated with a beaming smile. 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

Knock at the Cabin February 1, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen Knock at the Cabin is so good that it makes M. Night Shyamalan’s previous film, Old , just that more fascinating in retrospect. The lack of terrible line readings and quality acting within Cabin seems to validate the conspiracy theory (which a few critics and audience members embraced from the start) that the alien-like awkwardness within Old was intentional, almost like Shyamalan was playing a joke on all of us. But that theory would also have to extend to the terribleness within Lady in the Water, The Happening , and The Last Airbender , which becomes too far-fetched to be fully believed. Cabin finds the believers pitted against the non-believers. But this isn’t a debate over the typical beliefs surrounding religion, politics, or sexual orientation. No, this is about whether you believe that the world is about to be consumed by an apocalypse of biblical proportions and that the only way to stop it is to sacrifice a family member. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wiBHEACNHs Leading the group of believers is Dave Bautista’s Leonard, a gentle giant who fully understands the impossible situation that he is thrusting upon the family of parents Andrew (Ben Aldridge) and Eric (Jonathan Groff), and daughter Wen (Kristen Cui). Along with Leonard are three other believers, all of whom have shared the same catastrophic visions, including tsunami waves as tall as skyscrapers and the sky being shrouded in permanent darkness. Of course, Andrew and Eric don’t take the situation too lightly and think that these people are part of a crazed cult, prompting the believers to stage an impromptu home invasion to get the necessary sacrificial lamb. Shyamalan’s film follows a long line of entries within the specific “what would you do?” horror-thriller subgenre. How much evidence would you need to contemplate killing one of your family members to save the world? It’s a question the director constantly keeps at the forefront of his screenplay, co-written with the duo of Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman from the book by Paul Tremblay. The tension is palpable as the “intruders” say all the right things and act with sympathetic politeness, making it impossible to fully write them off as the lunatics they’re initially perceived as. It is a shame that - for a story with the central theme about beliefs - Shyamalan can’t fully trust his audience to believe everything that they’re seeing. An overuse of flashbacks in an attempt to rationalize character actions in the present comes off as a bit shallow and reductive. It’s a clear example of the faulty “rubber ducky” reasoning invented by Paddy Chayefsky and Sidney Lumet, where a character will behave a certain way based solely on some past event, shredding any amount of nuance in favor of formulaic storytelling. Thankfully, Shyamalan has recruited some fine actors to sell the unbelievable nature of the premise and characters. Bautista has made a lot of headlines about being taken seriously as an actor, and this performance decently proves that he’s putting his money where his mouth is. His hulking physicality instinctually inspires fear, but his soft-spoken demeanor contrasts that with interesting results. Groff and Aldridge have a good give-and-take connection, pretty much making the flashbacks even more redundant as a way to explain their relationship. Special praise should also be placed upon Herdís Stefánsdóttir’s jittery score, which takes until near the third act to fully come into its own and do much of the heavy lifting for selling suspense. And while it pales in comparison to his work with Robert Eggers, Jarin Blaschke’s (working with Lowell A. Meyer) claustrophobic camerawork works well with Shyamalan’s trademarked twisty movements. Although Shyamalan will likely never return to the heights of his early days, works like Knock at the Cabin are proof that he still deserves a place within the theatrical landscape, especially as the horror/thriller genres continue to increase their importance in putting butts in seats. He even gets to deliver his signature twist, which is simply that he has made a good film that works well because of his traits as a filmmaker. Universal Pictures will release Knock at the Cabin in theaters nationwide on February 03rd. 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

Titane July 15, 2021 By: Button Hunter Friesen Containing some of the most disgusting and in-your-face grisliness that has ever graced the silver screen, Julia Ducournau’s Titane holds you like a vice grip from minute one, refusing to let you go no matter how much you squirm. The experience of watching the film can be borderline on torture, as violent punishment is enacted in ways that can only be seen to believe. The screening of the film at the Cannes Film Festival resulted in several walkouts within the first fifteen minutes, of which I do not blame certain viewers who are squeamish. Those who can stomach the film will be rewarded with an exhilarating story about acceptance and companionship told by one of the most original emerging filmmakers. A newcomer to the film scene, the French auteur (a status she has achieved in my books), Julia Ducournau, is the complete opposite of the stereotype of the woman director. She made her debut feature in 2016 with Raw , a story about womanhood and repression that just so happened to contain the element of cannibalism. Like David Lynch and David Cronenberg, Ducournau confidently confounded her audiences with her bold take on a story as old as cinema itself. Titane is proof that Raw was not a stroke of beginner’s luck and that she is the real deal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcAIvUJ-C-0 Translated from the French word for titanium, Titane follows the life of Alexia, who immediately causes a severe car crash within her first few minutes on screen. This leaves the girl with a metal plate implanted within her head (which is gruesomely illustrated) and a twisted attraction to the vehicle involved in the accident. Like the characters within Cronenberg’s Crash , Alexia can’t seem to help herself from being allured by vehicular and sexual violence. After physically recovering from her injuries over the years, Alexia (now played by the self-assured newcomer Agathe Rousselle) now works as an exotic dancer at a car show (very fitting). Through a nearly seven-minute-long take, Ducournau traverses the show, filled with neon lighting and an electric score. Cinematographer Ruben Impens, reteaming with Ducournau after Raw , shoots the film in harshly contrasting light, often blinding the viewer with lens flares. From this car show, Alexia quickly succumbs to her violent tendencies, forcing her to go on the run, but not without horrifically mangling her face so it would be harder to identify her. This brings her in contact with the local fire chief (a steroid-infused Vincent Lindon), who later turns out to be just as demented as she is, making them a match made in hell. Throughout several instances within Titane , audiences have to give themselves over to Ducournau’s vision and accept the logical fallacies, which nitpickers could have a field day with. To be fair, a literal Cadillac becomes sexually involved with a human in the first fifteen minutes, so the laws of reality (and anatomy) were thrown out the window from the get-go. Like Raw , Ducournau is able to relay a positive message that sticks with you just as much as the gore. Through their interactions, Alexia and the chief find a common emotional ground that brings them together through both lies and deceit. However, a problem that occasionally appears is what exactly Ducournau wants you to feel as too many elements come crashing together at odd times. The film wants you to focus on several different storylines at the same time, some of which don't amount to much and could be classified as red herrings. Still, once you cut through the clutter, there’s enough treasure to reward your patience. Titane requires a lot from the viewer, such as mental fortitude and an iron gut. It’s an uncompromising vision that bites off more than it can chew from time to time, but still sticks the landing due to the duo performances from Rousselle and Lindon, and the boldness of Ducournau to go where no one would dare. Just make sure to watch it on an empty stomach. This review was originally published from the world premiere at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival. Neon will release Titane in select theaters on October 01st. 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 Deliverance August 20, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen The Deliverance is a powerhouse showcase for Lee Daniels as a producer, as it takes a lot of skill to assemble such a stacked cast and crew for a project this uninspired. The real-life story of single mother LaToya Ammons and her three children being haunted by evil spirits has been a long-gestating project for Daniels, being announced over ten years ago as his follow-up to The Butler . Time marched on, with Daniels pivoting to his biopic on Billie Holiday ( The United States vs. Billie Holiday ), an otherwise rote story salvaged by the discovery of the acting talents of its star Andra Day, who received a Golden Globe award and Academy Award nomination for her work. The pair are reunited for this project, although I’m skeptical of any possibility of awards to come to the rescue this time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDcDagDcwPA “Inspired by a true story” immediately blankets what we are about to witness, a statement that has become a clichéd requirement (likely for legal reasons) for every member of the possession subgenre ( Poltergeist , The Conjuring franchise, The Amityville Horror ). Ebony Jackson (Day) and her three kids have just moved to their third home in just under a year, this time settling in Pittsburgh with Ebony’s mother, Alberta (Glenn Close, looking like a cousin to her character from Hilbilly Elegy ). There are cracks within every dynamic of the family, partially due to Ebony’s drinking, which has Child Protective Services monitor them at various times, and the fact that the children’s father seemingly abandoned them by going to Iraq. But for all the internal demons that plague this family, there are also external ones lurking within the walls. The youngest child, Andre, has an imaginary friend who increasingly tells him to commit heinous acts, and strange noises permeate every nook and cranny. Anyone who has seen an exorcist movie knows what’s been happening and where it’s leading. It’s why the second-act appearance of Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as an apostle sent to serve the family in their time of need never feels like the revelation Daniels and screenwriters David Coggeshal and Elijah Bynum want you to believe it is. Daniels is still a mighty fine director for actors, previously guiding Mo'Nique - also reuniting with the director here as the CPS officer Cynthia - to an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Precious . Between Day and Mo'Nique’s more grounded work, one would have hoped that this project would have ditched the whole demonic angle and focused squarely on the social drama. Then again, we wouldn’t have gotten scenes of a bald Glenn Close wielding a baseball bat, or of the youngest child flinging his feces at his teacher as an act of possession. These unintentionally hilarious moments keep the horror elements tolerable, although that definitely wasn’t the plan. The Scary Movie franchise might have just as much in common with this story as the others mentioned earlier. There’s also humor to be found in how the film tries its damnedest to avoid the term “exorcist,” instead referring to all of it as a “deliverance.” What goes on during a deliverance? A religious figure comes to the home of a possessed person, warning the other family members that the demon has a strong hold on the victim and that they must not believe anything it says. The religious figure then sprays holy water on the demon and recites verses from the bible. Hmmmm… sounds like an exorcism to me. Between last year’s The Exorcist: Believer and two unrelated Russell Crowe movies ( The Pope’s Exorcist and The Exorcism ), Daniels was entering the exorcism genre at the perfect moment to shake things up and be its temporary savior. What’s the point of a horror movie (or any movie, for that matter) if you’re going to play it safe when it comes time to deliver the goods? I’m not mad, I’m just really, really disappointed. Netflix will release The Deliverance on its streaming service on August 16th. 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

Heads of State June 27, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen Heads of State doesn’t take the positions of the president of the United States or the prime minister of the United Kingdom very seriously, which, considering the current and recent real-life figures who have held those positions, is mostly a replication of how the world currently sees them. US President Will Derringer (John Cena) ascended to the Oval Office through the box office. Modeled after Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, he was the lead of the ultra-violent, gun-toting action franchise Water Cobra . Those good looks, millions of dollars, and a legion of fans made up for the lack of political experience, which is why he approaches his role as commander in chief like he were in a movie, making brazen speeches that are meant to inspire his constituents and instill fear in his enemies. In contrast to the fresh-faced Derringer, Prime Minister Sam Clarke (Idris Elba) has been in office for over six years, having spent a few more decades in the lower-level political trenches. He’s all business and no thrills. Every speech is picked over with a fine-tooth comb, every decision is backed with mountains of intelligence, and there’s absolutely no room for sensationalism. By the laws of movies and magnets, we know that these two opposites will eventually attract. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J646zM7UM8 The catalyst for their bonding comes when both are on Air Force One. Aided by an unknown traitor on the inside, terrorists shoot down the plane. Everyone on board, including the leaders, is presumed dead. They miraculously survive and now have to work together to return to their positions of power and stop these terrorist killers. While watching this, I was repeatedly reminded of the mostly forgotten 1996 comedy My Fellow Americans . In that movie, Jack Lemmon and James Garner play former presidents who hate each other. The current president is Dan Aykroyd, who frames them for a kickback scandal (remember when that actually meant something?!?). Enemies must now become friends, but not without hurling insults and committing slapstick harm to each other. Heads of State is pretty much a remake, even down to the gag about leaping from a moving train. Anything not lifted straight from that movie is plucked from somewhere else. The separating factor is supposed to be the action, a bylaw now for every streaming comedy. But it’s as weightless as the opening scene food fight in a Spanish village. Director Ilya Naishuller doesn’t bring the same kineticism from Hardcore Henry or Nobody , and everything is drenched in cheap special effects. There are flashes of nifty camerawork, most notably in the brief appearance of Jack Quaid as a covert agent who is eager to protect his leaders against hordes of villains. Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Paddy Considine, Carla Gugino, and Stephen Root comprise the rest of the cast, each of them going through the motions. Cena and Elba have decent chemistry, with this being a reunion from their bitter rivalry in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad . In a charged political climate such as this, there’s some merit to being able to laugh at and with political satire, even if it’s not that good. Amazon MGM Studios will release Heads of State on its streaming service on July 02nd. 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

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die February 7, 2026 By: Button Hunter Friesen As evidenced by a robust sampling of films over the past few months, the bulking battleship that is Hollywood seems to have finally caught up with the headlines that artificial intelligence has been producing over the past few years. Tom Cruise stopped an AI program called the Entity from initiating nuclear armageddon in Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning , Chris Pratt had to prove his innocence to Rebecca Ferguson's AI Judge Maddox in Mercy , and Jason Statham was framed and hunted down by his own government after an AI surveillance program went rogue in Shelter . Even at this year's Sundance Film Festival, Oscar-winning documentarian Daniel Roher tackles both sides of the coin in the aptly titled The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist . Between these grand theatrics and matter-of-fact stories, the unlimited potential of artificial intelligence has become inescapable, its demeanor seemingly a reflection of its creator. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die , the first film from director Gore Verbinski in a decade, falls right in line with those previously mentioned blockbusters. But just as its title suggests, its warnings about the grave dangers of this awesome superweapon are served with a wink and a smile. You just have to remember not to die. For The Man From the Future (Sam Rockwell), that last bit of instruction hasn't come easy, having nearly met his maker on several hundred occasions. His improbable luck comes from the time loop device strapped to his body, which inconveniently makes him look like a suicide bomber. His scraggly beard, haggard rainsuit, and wily demeanor also don't help his marketability when he enters a present-day Los Angeles diner looking to recruit people for his world-saving mission. Inside that diner are people looking down at their phones, oblivious to the fact that the world is teetering on the edge of the apocalypse. The Man's future has been overthrown by artificial intelligence thanks to humanity's inability to use caution on the slippery slope of technological progress. Just down the road from this diner, a computer prodigy is creating that AI program, and The Man has been sending himself back in time to stop that from happening, hoping to recruit the correct combination of strangers to aid him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm4WbapDzDQ Matthew Robinson's script is entirely in service of Rockwell's extreme charisma in this opening setpiece. Pages upon pages of exposition are dumped on us and the diner's patrons, all of it serving as a grave warning for both the fictional and real-life world. This is the 117th time The Man has performed this song and dance, the constant failure wearing him down to just going through the motions. Rockwell more or less choreographs his movements like a dance, balleting upon tables, twirling through the barstools, and precisely hitting the cues he's memorized from repetition. It's a bit of old-school Hollywood showmanship, Rockwell's infectious spirit being just convincing enough for some people to buy into his ludicrous mission. A conflict forms here, which continues throughout the film, between the performances of the highly qualified cast and the words they've been paid to recite. The Man's criticisms and prophecies about modern society are all valid, but that doesn't automatically make them compelling to hear. It seems to stem from an older man who has slowly become out of touch, always having something to say about "kids these days" and that we need to go back to the way things were. Zazie Beetz and Michael Peña play a couple of teachers that The Man recruits. In an extended flashback explaining how they got to be at the diner at that exact moment, they teach at a high school to students who are "barely people." Phone addiction and a narcissistic attitude run rampant in the classrooms, leading to teacher shortages and weekly school shootings. The mothers of the slain kids treat it as a minor inconvenience, with one treating her fourth dead kid as if it were the fourth time her goldfish died. Flashbacks are also given to Juno Temple as the seemingly only rational parent of a dead child, and Haley Lu Richardson as a young woman who was literally born with an allergy to cell phone and internet signals. She falls for a man who willingly rejects technology, their love portrayed as being more pure. Running an almost unforgiveable 134-minutes, nearly half of the film is spent on the past actions of each individual supporting cast member, bloated filler taking away from the far superior zaniness Rockwell supplies in the main storyline. That length isn't a surprise for Verbinksi, the filmmaker who pleasantly pushed the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films towards the three-hour mark, and then unpleasantly stretched The Lone Ranger and A Cure For Wellness to two and a half hours. But what Verbinski lacks in brevity, he always makes up for it with ingenuity. The lack of financial resources doesn't hinder his ability to create moments of visual splendor; a well-timed camera move or edit is all that's needed to raise the stakes. Its scattershot energy feels reminiscent of Everything Everywhere All at Once , the pieces of the puzzle not coming together as neatly as they should. This very much feels like it has all the elements of a cult movie, with its devoted followers seeing themselves in the random strangers that join the fight alongside The Man, and the rest of us being the other ambivalent diner patrons who just want to tune out all that's bad in the world. Unfortunately, judging by this film's timeline, we may not be around for the necessary amount of years it takes for a cult status to form. In the meantime: good luck, have fun, and don't die. Briarcliff Entertainment will release Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die in theaters nationwide on February 13th. Early access PLF screenings will take place on February 10th. 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

M:I - The Final Reckoning May 14, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen Although the title would give you that impression, everything and everyone connected to Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning has been extremely coy about this eighth installment in the franchise being the capper. Even the opening to the film - a hall-of-fame induction montage of all highlights across the previous seven films - provides yet another mythological introduction for what we infer to be the final mission (should he choose to accept it…) for Ethan Hunt. How long can one man continually double down at the blackjack table until he inevitably gambles away everything? And by extension, how long can the sixty-two-year-old Tom Cruise expect to perform these death-defying stunts until he inevitably fails to defy their definition? Of course, going out in a blaze of glory for our entertainment is probably Cruise’s preferred way to go out, just as long as it’s caught on camera. Those lines of questioning propel the strategy behind The Final Reckoning , which is to go big or go home. Even the opening studio logos fly by at an unusually accelerated pace. That sense of urgency never ceases across the nearly three-hour runtime, with every loose end needing to be tied up. It makes the creation of a few more loose ends all the more puzzling, with the earlier mostly standalone entries now being connected to the events of this film through some convenient retconning. Jason Bourne may share his initials, but Ethan Hunt is the American James Bond. And just like the Daniel Craig era of 007, the sum of every previous adventure has led to this moment for Hunt. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsQgc9pCyDU The story jumps immediately from the end of Dead Reckoning Part One (the “ Part One ” has more or less been dropped at this point), with Ethan and his team in a race against time to find the downed Russian submarine that contains the kill switch source code for the supervillain artificial intelligence known as The Entity. It’s already taken command of most of the world’s nuclear warheads and has beaten Twitter at its own game by fully dismantling the line between fact and fiction by altering what everyone sees online. The world has been plunged into anarchy, with a common enemy that can’t be dealt with through traditional means. To complete this mission, Ethan will need the full cooperation of the US government, a body that’s put a bounty on his head more times than someone can count on one hand. This leads to the introduction or return of several cast members, such as Angela Bassett as President Sloane, her cabinet (Nick Offerman, Holt McCallany, Charles Parnell, Mark Gatiss, Janet McTeer), Hannah Waddingham as a US Navy ship commander, and Tramell Tillman as a submarine captain. Of course, there’s also the more notable characters played by Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Ving Rhames, Shea Whigham, and Esai Morales. To accommodate a cast like this that would make Wes Anderson blush, co-writer/director Christopher McQuarrie doles out the exposition like a dealer at a poker table. Thankfully for them, there’s plenty to go around, as each hopscotch to a new location means a plan has to be devised, broken, and improvised. Everyone sits in a circle and waits their turn, one sentence at a time. It’s an amusing, overdramatic cheat to get around the “boring” parts, although it gets quite distractingly repetitive the longer it goes on. McQuarrie and Cruise also overplay their hand at the sentimentality of this adventure, cramming several reminders of how much Ethan cares for his friends. More is more, obviously, the mantra of this franchise, but less would have been more in this case. The more you insist upon something, the less genuine it becomes, especially when it’s coming from someone like Cruise. He’s not a normal person with normal emotions, which makes him both an incredible movie star and unable to be fully empathized with. Words and emotions are not the weapon of choice for this franchise, with its visual arsenal being just as stocked here as it has been in the previous few entries. Each setpiece would be considered the showstopping climax in any other action franchise. Here, they’re just one piece to this extremely kinetic puzzle. A clear highlight would be Ethan’s solo descent into the submarine to retrieve the source code. It’s an almost wordless extended sequence, with panicky editing and heightened sound design playing on our fears of being at the bottom of the ocean. Oh, and there’s also a moment Ethan/Cruise dangles from a biplane thousands of feet from the ground. It’s astounding that, within the context of this franchise, that statement seems pretty tame. But it’s anything but in practice, the wind whipping as one finger separates Ethan from the plane and the ground. The Final Reckoning will play significantly better later once you’re able to watch like a kid again and skip all the talking bits. Then again, this movie should also never be seen on anything less than an IMAX screen. Anything less would deserve the same level of vitriol that David Lynch has for telephones. My cynicism leads me to believe that this isn’t the end of this franchise, and that Ethan Hunt will return one day. But, for the sake of argument, let’s say this is the end. In that case, mission accomplished. Paramount Pictures will release Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning in theaters nationwide on May 23rd. 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

Murder Mystery 2 March 31, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen When I’m watching a new movie, I always bring a small notebook and jot down observations and things I want to mention in my final written review. Usually, I fill up about a page or two with bullet points, most of them almost illegible due to me having to write them in the dark while still trying to look at the screen so as not to miss anything potentially important. But for Murder Mystery 2 , now available on Netflix, I wrote only two lines: “Happy Madison logo usually signals a movie being cheap and artificial” and “bad jet ski greenscreen.” Both of those observations were made within the first five minutes, and neither of them required much critical thinking on my part. For the next eighty minutes, I just sat in my chair and watched the movie with as much attentiveness as a student during the last class before Spring Break. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM2F56uK0fs There were definitely things that happened in the movie: people got killed, Sandler and Aniston did their usual married couple banter, and the mystery was resolved through some sort of twist ending. But for the life of me, I can’t recount anything else more specific than that. I was neither fully entertained nor bored, neither liking nor hating what I was watching, and probably was somewhere between asleep and awake during long stretches. That’s the Netflix national anthem at this point, with 90% of their content just being the air that fills the room, with the other 10% that is worth your time ( The Irishman , The Meyerowitz Stories, Private Life ) being suffocated into relative obscurity. This is also why, in an act of full transparency, the information provided in the screener email is doing most of the heavy lifting in this next paragraph that summarizes the setup for the main plot. Nick and Audrey Spitz are now full-time detectives after solving the case in the first movie (I’ll give $100 to anyone who can remember how that movie ended). They’re about as competent as you would think, which is why they gleefully accept an invitation from The Maharajah (also from the first movie) to his wedding on a luxurious island. But the circumstances that seem too good to be true turn out to be exactly that, as the couple finds themselves framed for murder. They must now clear their name once again and unveil the real killer (or killers). I feel like I’m not properly doing my job as a critic by keeping this review so brief, but there’s really not much else to say. If you’re the type of person who wants to watch something like this, then you’re not likely to be stopped by a bad review. And if you’re someone who isn’t immediately clamoring to see this, then there won’t be any good reviews to convince you otherwise. It doesn’t matter which bucket you fall into, as no one is going to be thinking about (let alone talking about) this movie by Monday. Netflix will release Murder Mystery 2 on its streaming service on March 31st. 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

Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 June 29, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen It’s almost impossible to judge Kevin Costner’s grand return to the Western genre on its own terms, as Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 truly lives up to the foundational groundwork its title implies. The structure and pacing of television have never been more replicated in the cinema than this, save for maybe those The Chosen specials that sneakily top the box office every few months. Storylines are picked up and put down like a kid surrounded by toys, with their only moment of intersection coming in the form of a flyer with the words “HORIZON” printed across the top, acting as a calling to move to where it beckons. With a sprawling runtime of 181 minutes and nearly 181 names within the cast, there’s both plenty of time and plot elements to keep track of. The seemingly most important one leads us off at the titular town, a makeshift place nestled right at the bend in the river in the San Pedro Valley. The settlers founded their homes atop the graves of those who had come before and been murdered by the Apache. Ignoring that warning leads to more bloodshed, which Costner films with clear-cut brutality. The threat of death looms as large as the prospect of personal freedom, with the settlers feeling akin to their ancestors on the Mayflower. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYsReoZMj1k Costner and co-writer Jon Baird offer some time away from the white settlers, giving a glimpse into the politics within the Apache. An eye-for-eye mentality forms, dividing each camp between those who seek carnage and those who just want to survive. The one thing that remains constant is the fact that the wagons won’t ever stop, with two settlers arriving for each one killed. Where this angle goes is still up in the air, with this chapter only featuring the initial trading of blows. But considering Martin Scorsese just delivered what could be considered the seminal modern take on this topic in Killers of the Flower Moon , it’ll be hard for Costner to reach the bar. It takes nearly an hour for Costner to show up as his character Hayes Ellison, who gets entangled with a local sex worker (Abbey Lee), the child she cares for, and a Montana crime family hunting them down. As the only A-lister in this mammoth cast of semi-famous and unknown players, Costner’s presence makes you sit up a little straighter and lean forward. That shine from Yellowstone hasn’t worn off, although his romance with a woman thirty years younger than him doesn’t come across as sensually as he thinks it does. There isn’t a clear best and worst storyline, with all of them falling near the middle, give or take a few notches in either direction. However, it’s not exactly a fair fight as some characters appear much more than others. Sienna Miller and Costner are given multiple pass-throughs, while Isabelle Fuhrmann and the fourth-billed Giovanni Ribisi hardly have a line of dialogue. The final five minutes are reserved for a montage of what’s to come in the next chapter, which, I’ll admit, looked pretty decent. What also looks decent is J. Michael Muro’s photography. He perpetually captures the grandeur of the plains and desert rocks, creating a barren paradise where the danger is just as captivating as the reward. This is epic, old-fashioned filmmaking, the likes of which we haven’t seen before in a long time. The sense of Costner laying it all on the line permeates every moment, especially with John Debney’s sweeping score providing several enrapturing moments. The track “End of Massacre,” which featured heavily in the trailer, is one of the best of the year. Chapter 2 arrives in a little under six weeks, a blessing as I don’t think I’d be able to remember every character and plot point if I had to endure the traditional one-year wait. Although I’d probably never rewatch it just for itself, this first chapter is a serviceable beginning with just enough little nuggets here and there to sustain my interest. Warner Bros. Pictures will release Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 in theaters nationwide on June 28th. 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