Awards Update: The Eye of the Hurricane November 9, 2024 By: Hunter Friesen Welcome to an ongoing series where I cover the 2024/2025 awards season. On a regular basis, I will update my Oscar predictions, taking into account the new information that has been received since the last update. Full predictions in every category can be found on the Home and Awards page. We're in the eye of the hurricane now; after the flurry of the fall and regional festivals, and before the onslaught of guild and critics awards that will commence in December. Granted, we've still got some awards buzz in the form of the Gotham Awards, and some rumors/reactions from screenings for upcoming titles. It's not much when you put it in the context of the whole season, but it's definitely part of the process that gets the snowball rolling down the hill. The Gothams are an esoteric bunch with their tiny and segregated nominating committees, and now unwritten rule that all eligible films must have some sort of independent quality to them. Can we say that Challengers is firmly an Oscar contender because the five-person nominating committee put it in the Best Feature Category (and nowhere else)? No. But we can always glean a few things from this list, such as the fact that Anora and Nickel Boys continue to be the critics' favorites that they were during their respective festival runs. Those two films, along with The Brutalist , are the ones I expect to get the most love from the top critics groups like NYFCC, LAFCA, and NSFC. Anora will be especially strong if it continues the outstanding box office run it's been on. Nickel Boys and The Brutalist don't release until December, so they'll need all the love they can get to boost their financial prospects when it comes time for the Oscars to weigh in. There were also nominations given to films like A Different Man, I Saw the TV Glow , and Good One . They'll likely repeat some level of that success at the Independent Spirit Awards and a critics group here and there, but this will likely be the end of the road for them. Moving from the little to the big fish, both Wicked and Gladiator II ("Glicked" if you're tuned into the forced marketing campaign) have been seen by a wide enough sample of people for us to make some assumptions. The reactions to Wicked have been almost all glowing, with many saying that it's much better than they expected. The combination of several craft nominations (with possible wins), good enough critic scores, a big box office haul, and fervent fan support have convinced me to slot it into my predicted Best Picture lineup. We're also in a year that's leaning very indie, especially when you compare it to the behemoths that lined the Best Picture category the past two years. I think there's a want by people and voters to get another blockbuster in along with Dune: Part Two . Gladiator II could very well be that additional big player instead of Wicked , although the reactions haven't been as enthusiastic and Ridley Scott isn't exactly an Oscar-favorite. Plenty of craft nominations will be in order, and a strong box office may let it sneak its way into the final Best Picture slot. At the moment I'm predicting that it will follow a nearly identical path to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever , another sequel that had the daunting task of following--up an unexpected Oscar juggernaut. Denzel Washington will once again be an Oscar contender, and he could win one of the televised precursor awards. One film that didn't fare so well from reactions is Steve McQueen's Blitz . I was extremely high on the film going into this season, the combination of McQueen's visceral filmmaking and the classical story being undeniably potent. I liked the film when I watched it at this year's Twin Cities Film Fest, although there's a lingering feeling that it could have been so much better. That seems to be a common opinion and is why I've considerably scaled back its prospects. I still think Apple can use its heavy hand to keep it in the race, but it'll be difficult to sustain that needed level of momentum when everyone walks away from the film with a half-hearted shrug. The BAFTAs might be the place where it gets a new lease on life or dies with a whimper. Even though I've just spent three paragraphs using reactions to influence my predictions, I won't be doing the same for Emilia Pérez . There's usually one film per year that is met with disdain amongst the social media crowd once it becomes publicly available. Maestro was that last year, and Don't Look Up two years before that. It's the Netflix special at this point, and we need to learn that the echo chamber of social media doesn't reflect the industry's opinion. The film has been successful at every festival stop it's made, and the cast has been warmly received. Don't be surprised if it ends up being our nomination leader, especially as it has the benefit of multiple original songs and a virtually guaranteed slot in Best International Feature as France's selection. A Complete Unknown and Nosferatu remain as the only contenders that have gone unseen so far. I'm still holding strong on James Mangold's Bob Dylan biopic, and less so on Robert Eggers' adaptation of the famed Gothic tale of vampirism. Things could turn out the opposite, which I would be totally supportive of as long as the quality is there. More Reviews Tony August 18, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Buddy August 25, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Colony August 26, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Teen Sex & Death at Camp Miasma August 12, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen

The Death of Robin Hood June 17, 2026 By: Button Hunter Friesen An unfortunate part of growing up is uncovering the truth that the adventures of many of your childhood heroes did not lead them to living out the rest of their days under sunshine and rainbows. No, they almost all exclusively became sad and embittered, with years of fighting corrupting their once optimistic morals. Luke Skywalker exiled himself and believed that the Jedi Order should end with him in The Last Jedi , Daniel Craig’s later James Bond films reckoned with his mortality in a modern world, and Rocky Balboa lived alone in the Creed films. No actor has capitalized on this trend better than Hugh Jackman. At the time, his seemingly final performance as The Wolverine in Logan was a fitting conclusion to the character. Blending both the history of the character with that of a Western, director James Mangold and Jackman examined the shattering consequences of what it means to be a hero. Visceral action and a touching story made it not just one of the best comic-book films of all time, but an altogether poignant human drama. Jackman’s scars may have healed while playing the adamantium-infused Logan throughout the years, but they do not in The Death of Robin Hood . Looking as grizzled as the famed comic book character, the body of the Prince of Outlaws tells a life full of violence without mercy, serving as the only way to separate fact from fiction. Like Batman, everyone in 1281 has a story about Robin Hood. Some say he killed hundreds for the fun of it, the charity work being an unintended benefit that covered for his many sins. Others say he died years ago, a victim of revenge from one of the many who would seek it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlSDDuWxO_0 In the frozen, windswept steppes of England, a death for his crimes would be the preferred choice by Robin. Instead, his superior fighting skills against his mostly peasant opponents force him to endure living with his regrets and increasingly decaying body. Eventually, he nearly meets his maker, becoming mortally wounded when he becomes embroiled in a revenge plot along with his longtime sidekick, Little John (Bill Skarsgård), who murdered a man and stole his identity to have a family. The first act of The Death of Robin Hood is as brutal and violent as a movie can be. Slashed throats spew with blood, heads are smashed in with rocks, arrows pierce flesh, and bones are bludgeoned. Reminiscent of Justin Kurzel’s 2015 adaptation of Macbeth , writer/director Michael Sarnoski paints everything with fire and brimstone, letting the blood flow heavily on already-soaked fields. PTSD is heavily implied for Robin, with his sunken eyes, scraggly beard, and weathered face constantly being captured in close-ups. Unluckily for Robin, he is saved from death by the prioress Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer). On her island, she runs an orphanage (not for gifted mutants, like Charles Xavier), taking in the young and decrepit. Robin fits closer to the latter, although the adoptive daughter of Little John is also on the island. Although feral to everyone else, she takes a liking to Robin, and he finds a comforting innocence in her. Sarnoski made his feature debut in 2021 with Pig, a brilliant subversion of revenge actioners that featured a mesmerizing performance from Nicolas Cage. Next came A Quiet Place: Day One , a director-for-hire job that netted him some nice box office points. As much as A24 sunk into this production, they’re unlikely to see much of it back. Once on the orphanage island, this story slows to a crawl. Conversations about the nature of legacy and the cycle of violence make up most of the runtime, each of them placed and delivered in an increasingly predictable manner. Thanks to its top-notch technical merits, such as Pat Scola’s 35mm cinematography or the period-accurate hair and makeup, the whole endeavor never fully becomes boring (although it does threaten that on multiple occasions). Jackman is obviously game for the part, but that also means there’s hardly anything surprising about his performance. Comer is compelling in a limited role, as is Murray Bartlett as a leper who opens his heart as he must constantly be bandaged up. Robin Hood has been many things over the years. For as much as this tries to recontextualize his legend, I don’t think it’s successful enough as a piece of entertainment to make a real difference. A24 will release The Death of Robin Hood in theaters nationwide on June 19th. More Reviews Tony August 18, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Buddy August 25, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Colony August 26, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Teen Sex & Death at Camp Miasma August 12, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

The Exorcist: Believer October 4, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen Urination, the c-word, “help me” etched on skin, spitting blood, demonic voices. These are the trademarks of William Peter Blatty’s 1971 novel The Exorcist , adapted to the screen by The French Connection director William Friedkin just two years later. The reader’s worst fears from the pages of the novel were turned into ungodly imagery; many of these moments are even more terrifying now than they were fifty years ago. David Gordon Green’s The Exorcist: Believer has all those same beats, many of them shot-for-shot. But just like how a joke is never as funny the second time, those images seem tamely pedestrian this go around. It’s the curse of the legacy sequel, or “requel,” where the iconic moments of the original material are treated like scripture. They have to be “honored” by being trotted out the same way you’ve seen them before, as if doing anything different would cause hell on Earth. But things become less iconic the more you see them, especially when they’re cheaply remade without heart and soul, lessening what made the whole thing special, to begin with. It’s a creatively bankrupt process, but very few franchises that have done so are literally bankrupt. The Jurassic World trilogy may have never come within a mile of the playful virtuosity of Spielberg’s original, but they made just as much money. There’s also the Halloween (also revived by David Gordon Green) and Scream franchises, both churning out more dough than they know what to do with. There’s no doubt The Exorcist: Believer will follow suit money-wise, but I seriously question whether anyone will have any connection to this movie, even a day after they’ve seen it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIxpPMyGcpU Unsurprisingly, the story opens in a foreign land outside of America, this time being Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Victor Fielding (Leslie Odom Jr.) and his extremely pregnant wife quickly find themselves caught in the middle of the infamous 2010 earthquake. A fatal injury to the mother means only the unborn baby can survive. Thirteen years later, Victor is an overprotective single dad to his daughter, Angela. One day, he lets his guard down and allows Angela to hang out after school with her friend Katherine. Instead of doing homework like they told their parents, the pair goes into the deep dark woods and performs a seance. It’s all done with childlike curiosity, but the results are sinister as the girls stay missing for three days, mysteriously reappearing with no memory and different personalities. The central mystery of the middle act is all about finding out what happened to the girls and what needs to be done about it. Except it’s not a mystery, as we all knew how this story would go before we even sat down, making those middle 40 minutes a tedious bore. Things only get moderately interesting once the series original Ellen Burstyn comes back into the picture as Chris MacNeil. She delivers an “I’m just here for the money” performance, which can’t be blamed considering Green and co-writers Peter Sattler, Danny McBride, and Scott Teems can’t find much of any reason for her to be here besides replicating exactly (it’s literally the same demon) what she did a half-century ago. The child performances from Lidya Jewett and Olivia O'Neill are quite incredible. They have a handle on the range needed, delivering both innocence and perversity. Odom Jr. is a capable lead, and Ann Dowd might as well be playing her character from Ari Aster’s Hereditary . The rest of the supporting characters are blandly drawn and forgettable. For all the scares he tries to conjure up on the screen, the most frightening thing Green does here is take another beloved horror franchise and turn it into a lesser version of itself. I’m not sure where they’re going to go with the two planned sequels. That would be cause for excitement most of the time, but I’ve lost all faith considering the lazy path they took here when total freedom was available. Universal Pictures will release The Exorcist: Believer in theaters nationwide on October 06th. More Reviews Tony August 18, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Buddy August 25, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Colony August 26, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Teen Sex & Death at Camp Miasma August 12, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Bones and All November 13, 2022 By: Button Hunter Friesen At this point, I have to ask, “What can’t Luca Guadagnino do?” For as much as his signature brand of visual poetry seems to stay consistent throughout his films, the genres he chooses to instill them upon cannot be more wildly different. 2009’s I Am Love had Tilda Swinton speak Italian with a Russian accent in a story of romantic affairs. Swinton stayed with him for his next film, A Bigger Splash , except this time her character, a rock star on vacation, doesn’t speak to save her vocal cords. The nastiness of that film would not be found in 2017’s Call Me By Your Name , with a vulnerable star-making performance by Timothée Chalamet grabbing headlines and awards attention. But then, not even a year later came a wild pivot in the form of his (excellent) remake of Dario Argento’s 1977 horror classic, Suspiria. Adding an extra hour to the runtime, Guadagnino’s take on the material was both depressingly realistic and batshit crazy, stripping the original of its distinct color palette while still maintaining its own sense of beauty. And now, after a brief detour into television with his 8-part HBO miniseries We Are Who We Are , Guadagnino seems to have finally found a project that takes elements from each of his past works and combines them into something extraordinarily original. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjMt1MIk2EA Maren (Taylor Russell) has a problem. Apart from living on the fringes of Reagan-era American society, she also has an uncontrollable tendency to consume human flesh. She’s a full-blooded cannibal down to her DNA, thanks in part to her mother’s genes. She tries her best to suppress these urges, but every once in a while, they get unleashed, leading someone to get hurt and Maren and her dad to skip town. After years of this torturous cycle, Maren’s father decides that enough is enough, leaving her to fend for herself. He leaves behind her birth certificate, a clue she uses to track down her long-lost mother to understand this affliction. On the road, she comes across an assortment of crazy creatures, the first being Sully (Mark Rylance), a fellow “Eater” who talks to himself in the third person and drifts across the country fulfilling his thirst. A strange, yet also oddly educational, experience with him pushes Maren further down her path. She bumps into another Eater named Lee (Timothée Chalamet), who seems to be living by himself just as she is. From there, the two disillusioned youths trek across middle America, finding out more about themselves and their place in all this mess. Adapting Camille DeAngelis’ 2015 book of the same name, Guadagnino and writer David Kajganich drip-feed information about the condition of Eaters. The first half hour, with much playing out during Maren’s encounter with Sully, dedicates itself to understanding the physical and mental pain of needing to consume human flesh. How can a person live with themselves knowing that they’ll always have an unsatisfying hunger, and the only way to temporarily cure it is to eat another human being? It’s a dangerous question, one that doesn’t have a perfect answer that keeps everyone from getting hurt. Lee thinks he has it figured out, as long as he doesn’t think deeply about the repercussions of his actions. Chalamet’s performance is the serious version of his role from Adam McKay’s Don’t Look Up , going mostly with the flow as he accepts his fate. Rylance, on the other hand, might as well still be playing his character from Don’t Look Up , with his awkwardly creepy demeanor and southern cadence hinting at the anguish he’s been through. Russell, who burst onto the scene with Trey Edward Shults’ 2017 family drama Waves , finds the perfect balance between youthful naivety and real-world ruggedness. And then there’s also the brief Call Me By Your Name reunion as Michael Stuhlbarg wreaks havoc on your nerves as a redneck Eater that may or may not have a taste for his own kind. Even with all the gruesome body horror, Guadagnino fills this story with rich emotional resonance. At the center of it all is a love story between two young adults who must come to terms with who they are individually and together. It just so happens that the film with the biggest heart this year also contains several sequences of actual human hearts being devoured. Amazon MGM Studios will release Bones and All in select theaters on November 18th, followed by a nationwide expansion on November 23rd. More Reviews Tony August 18, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Buddy August 25, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Colony August 26, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Teen Sex & Death at Camp Miasma August 12, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

80 For Brady January 20, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen Lighter than a feather and filled with enough New England Patriots propaganda to get itself banned in Atlanta, Buffalo, New York, and Miami, 80 for Brady would probably have cleaned up at this year’s AARP Movies for Grownups Awards if it had been given a timely qualifying release. Of course, there’s always next year, where there’s potential for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon to be upstaged in the categories of “Best Buddy Picture” and “Best Intergenerational Film.” At the time of the film’s announcement, famed Patriots/Buccaneers Quarterback Tom Brady had just announced his retirement from football after 22 seasons, which included 7 Super Bowl titles, 3 NFL MVP honors, 15 Pro Bowl selections, as well as an extended list of other career achievements. It does take a certain amount of hubris on Brady’s part for his first post-football move to be the commissioning of a movie about four fans who worship him as a god. Granted, this is inspired by a true story, even if the script by Emily Halpern and Sarah Haskins, part of the writing team behind 2019’s Booksmart , takes some very creative liberties with the truth. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UeGXB2NjR8 The 80 in 80 for Brady denotes the ages of four friends who have centered their strong friendship over their love of Tom Brady and his New England Patriots. It all started on September 23, 2001 (a date celebrated every year by Patriots fans) when Lou (Lily Tomlin) was stuck at home recovering from her last round of chemotherapy. Her close friends Trish (Jane Fonda), Maura (Rita Moreno), and Betty (Sally Field) tried to entertain her by getting the TV to work, but it was stuck on one channel. At that exact moment, young Tom Brady steps into the pocket after regular starter Drew Bledsoe was taken out of the game due to a nasty sack. From there, the rest is history, for both Brady and his cohort of dedicated octogenarian fans. Fast forward to 2017 and the Patriots are going to another Super Bowl. Instead of staying home like they always do, the group decides to make the trip down to Houston for the big game. “The Super Bowl is no place for four old women,” says Maura, who happens to be right. But that statement being true is what makes for the most of the fun within 80 for Brady , as four Hollywood legends with effortless charm and chemistry blaze through the biggest event of the year. Much of the material is light and fun, made to purely entertain you for the ninety-eight-minute runtime and nothing more. And compared to most of the entries in this specific genre, which include Book Club (plus its upcoming sequel) and Poms , this one works fairly well. Moreno, who technically doesn’t qualify for the club, considering she’s 91, clearly has the most fun within the ensemble. It’s unfortunate that the only dance routine within the film is poorly choreographed and doesn’t allow the original cinematic Anita to show off her long-lived talent. There are some attempts at drama, but it’s all so clean and shallow that it barely even registers. The stakes are pretty much nonexistent, and the jokes can be seen from a mile away. Director Kyle Marvin keeps everything breezy, and cinematographer John Toll (recipient of two Academy Awards) makes the Super Bowl festivities look as appealing as possible. Football fans may not be totally won over by 80 for Brady , but its intended audience of retirees will undoubtedly eat it up. And in a time when one of the largest sustainers of adult theatrical programming is not returning to the cinema, we’ll take all the help we can get. So, take your parents and/or grandparents out for a nice time, and maybe try to convince them to get back into their old cinemagoing habits. Paramount Pictures will release 80 for Brad y in theaters nationwide on February 03rd. More Reviews Tony August 18, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Buddy August 25, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Colony August 26, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Teen Sex & Death at Camp Miasma August 12, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Maria November 25, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen Maria concludes Pablo Larraín’s unofficial melancholic trilogy of iconic women of the 20th century. Jackie started it all in 2016, with Natalie Portman’s Jackie Kennedy forced to witness the end of her Camelot after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Then came Spencer in 2021, a portrayal of a hellish long weekend Princess Diana (Kristen Stewart) had to endure over the Christmas Holiday with the Royal Family. But while Jackie and Diana only found themselves at the end of an era, Maria sees its titular subject, opera singer Maria Callas, at the end of her life. Bolstering that sense of finality even further is veteran screenwriter Steven Knight’s (also the writer of Spencer ) decision to start this story at the very end. Callas’ body is found by her loyal butler (Pierfrancesco Favino) and maid (Alba Rohrwacher) on the floor of her Parisian apartment. She was only 53 at the time, although her frail physical condition from years of seclusion would lead anyone to guess she was much older. She ran away from the stage years ago, although she can’t escape it in her mind. It’s the only thing she’s ever known, a former blessing that’s become a curse due to her strained vocal cords. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7_ze9palm0 Larraín separates the tone of this story from his other two biopics, substituting the frenzied claustrophobia with something more hauntingly elegiac. Maria's apartment is just as luxuriously furnished as the White House or the holiday estate of the Royal Family, but there's a stillness in the air. For Maria, that silence is deafening, and the absence of music forces her mind to wander between the past and present. Production designer Guy Hendrix Dyas has recreated the opera houses of Europe with exquisite craftsmanship, each captured beautifully by legendary cinematographer Ed Lachmann, who reunites with Larraín after their impeccable work on last year's El Conde . It doesn't matter if the frame is filled with the golden hues of autumnal Paris or the stark black-and-white of the mid-20th century; the result is always mesmerizingly gorgeous. Larraín and Lachmann have each set a high bar for themselves over their careers, but this might be their respective magnum opuses on a technical level. The likes of Mica Levi or Jonny Greenwood aren't around this time to supply the music. That role has expectedly been handed over to Callas herself. In a pre-recorded segment, Larraín introduced the film, explaining that for centuries, opera was an art for the common person, only for the wealthy class to subsume it. Maria serves as his act to give the music back to the people, complete with all the extra heft that cinema allows. Subtitles are not included for any of the performances, as the emotion in the words and on Angelina Jolie's face tells us all that we need to know. Callas described each of her performances as miracles, an opinion that grows more accurate the longer she stands upon that stage. Similar to Demi Moore in The Substance , the casting of Jolie brings an additional layer of context to the role. Here's a performer who was at the top of her profession for two decades, relatively vanishing from her stage over the past few years. Calling this a "comeback" for Jolie would be a disservice to everything she's done during her acting sabbatical (charity work, directing, family, etc.). It's more of a reminder of her immense screen presence and poise as a performer. We hang on every word as she describes her past to a noisy television reporter (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and share in her sorrow as she unsuccessfully tries to mount a comeback. Sure, she doesn't fully sing the words of Callas, opting for lip-syncing. But the passion is there, and that's what really sells it. As the biopic genre has continued to stay relatively tame over the last decade, let's give thanks to Larraín for steering it in a new daring direction not once, not twice, but on three separate occasions. He saved the best for last with Maria , defying his own specific genre trappings. I very much look forward to what he does next, although I wouldn't complain if he reversed that decision and stayed in this mode forever. Netflix will release Maria in select theaters on November 27th, followed by its streaming premiere on December 11th. More Reviews Tony August 18, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Buddy August 25, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Colony August 26, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Teen Sex & Death at Camp Miasma August 12, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Ferrari December 17, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen Michael Mann is back. That statement should end with an exclamation point, but, unfortunately, the famed director’s comeback vehicle (pun intended), Ferrari , doesn’t have the juice for anything more than a ho-hum period. Mann has been away from the cinematic landscape for quite some time, his latest venture being the 2015 studio-overhauled thriller Blackhat . Mann made sure not to make the same mistake twice, accumulating nearly $90 million worth of independent financing for his newest feature, a fact symbolized by the film’s dozens of credited producers, executive producers, associate producers, consultant producers, and co-producers. It’s an admirable move both artistically and professionally that also serves as a depressing illustration of where the studio money is being allocated these days. Then again, I’m not exactly sure where the $90 million fully went, as I only saw about half of it on the screen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oOVNMjM1Jk The majority of that half surely went to the cast headlined by Adam Driver as the titular Enzo Ferrari, Penélope Cruz as his wife and business partner, Laura, and Shailene Woodley as his mistress, with whom he shares a young illegitimate child. The 40-year-old Driver dons a rather unconvincing wig and forehead lines to play the nearly 60-year-old Ferrari, who has been besieged by tragedy after the double whammy of suddenly losing his young adult son Aflredo to muscular dystrophy last year and his car empire on the verge of financial collapse. Driver is no stranger to playing downtrodden figures, but he’s still very much a stranger to the Italian accent, which gravitates towards the parodic style in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci . It’s hard to take an A-lister seriously in a heavy scene when he’s only a few hand gestures away from being a credible cousin to Tony Lip from Green Book . The answer to Ferrari’s money troubles is to win the 1957 Mille Miglia (translated to Thousand Miles ), an incredibly dangerous (at least one fatality occurred for thirty consecutive years, with a total death count near sixty) open-road race that often set the stage for the biggest rivalries in sports racing. Victory would reclaim the prestige the Ferrari brand once had, meaning more sales of luxury cars. Mann works with David Fincher’s now-regular cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt to capture the overall sense of violence this race involves. There’s a speech that Enzo gives to his team just before they go out about how “two objects cannot occupy the same point in space at the same moment in time.” It’s a metaphorical way of saying that his drivers need to fight for every inch on the track, even if it means pushing someone out of the way and potentially sending them to their death. It’s just a real shame that the instances of vehicular carnage are made unintentionally hilarious by abysmal uses of visual effects. There is no clear-cut answer for Enzo’s trouble with Laura and Lina. His affairs with other women were well known to Laura, but the fathering of a child with Lina was kept hidden from her until the boy was twelve. Cruz is fiery and totally convincing next to Driver and Woodley, the latter given a thankless role that mostly involves her folding her arms and waiting for Enzo to come home. And while he’s a distant supporting player compared to this central trio, it would be a sin not to mention the dashing silver fox that is recently crowned People's Sexiest Man Alive, Patrick Dempsey. He plays Piero Taruffi, the elder statesman of the Ferrari racing team that also includes Gabriel Leone and Jack O'Connell as the young guns. Ferrari feels both nothing less and nothing more than a mild disappointment, which somehow feels worse than if it landed on either one of the extreme sides of the spectrum. Mann has already confirmed that Heat 2 will be his next film, with Driver rumored to be part of the cast. Maybe Ferrari was just a warm-up exercise, something to get Mann back in the groove of making large-scale adult dramas? It definitely feels that way, although I’m not sure enough was achieved here to make that crime prequel/sequel the on-paper slam dunk it should be. Neon will release Ferrari in theaters nationwide on December 25th. More Reviews Tony August 18, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Buddy August 25, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Colony August 26, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Teen Sex & Death at Camp Miasma August 12, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera January 9, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen January has never been a month known for quality when it pertains to the yearly cinematic timeline. While everyone's eyeballs are trained on the artier Oscar contenders, the studios dump their unwanted offspring into the multiplexes (this time last year featured such "classics" as Nightswim, I.S.S., Founders Day , and Miller's Girl ). Every once in a while, you get a better-than-expected gem like my beloved The Beekeeper , an indulgent slice of junk food that hits the spot after months of vegetables. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera , the sequel to the 2018 crime film that has amassed a decent following over the years, aims to be that greasy burger you hate yourself for loving, although it leans a little too close to gas station quality rather than fast food. Donnie Wilson (O'Shea Jackson Jr.) has moved up in the world since we last saw him, graduating from the banks of Los Angeles to the diamond district of Europe. "It's the most secure building in continental Europe," says the concierge to Donnie as he goes undercover as a diamond seller to provide surveillance for his crew, a line that tells us all that we need to know about the outcome of this heist. 'Big Nick' O'Brien (Gerard Butler), on the other hand, is pissing his life away (both literally and figuratively) since Donnie outsmarted him. His divorce has been finalized, and his job security is hanging by a thread, giving him enough of a reason to embrace the "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" mantra and become part of Donnie's crew. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kmjAnvFw3I Sequels are about doing more than the original, which Pantera does in a literal sense. The locations are swankier, the stakes are higher, and the plan is more complicated. However, all the supporting details are less valuable than before. The cast is less interesting, and the plot is less comprehensible, leaving you yawning throughout the first half of this 148-minute beast. The only thing there's more of in those departments is the clichéd elements of previous heist films: people standing around the blueprint table explaining their roles, then later leaning over a balcony giving their backstory for why they got into this line of work. Those missteps can be slightly forgiven once the sun sets and the black ski masks are donned. Writer/director Christian Gudegast showed some remarkable chops as a first-time director of set pieces with the 2018 predecessor. He levels up his game here, trading in the loud bangs of gunfire for the silence of a job that goes according to plan. There's a great amount of tension as the crew shimmies across rooftops, moves through rooms undetected by security cameras, and places barriers at just the right angles to avoid motion detectors. Of course, things still go boom. Fast cars and machine guns become the weapons of choice, making this a gnarlier version of a Fast & Furious movie. Jackson Jr. and Butler match that brute explosiveness fairly well, although their chemistry works much better as antagonists as opposed to reluctant allies. All of this felt a little outdated in 2018, making it straight-up ancient in 2025. But that creakiness is part of the charm, flooding in rose-tinted memories of the heist movie of yesteryear. And as long as Michael Mann keeps taking his sweet time to deliver Heat 2 , these retrograde knockoffs are the best we're going to get, so we might as well be content with them. Lionsgate will release Den of Thieves 2: Pantera in theaters nationwide on January 10th. More Reviews Tony August 18, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Buddy August 25, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Colony August 26, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Teen Sex & Death at Camp Miasma August 12, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

The Brutalist September 7, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen The more that The Brutalist progresses along its 215-minute track, the more it becomes evident that co-writer/director Brady Corbet sees himself in his protagonist, László Toth (Adrien Brody), the overlooked genius who seeks to reform modern architecture away from its ugly preconceptions and must put himself through the wringer to prove the doubters. A later scene sees Toth introducing the design for his wildly ambitious project, a sort of shrine to a capitalist’s deceased mother. It’s going to house a worship center, gymnasium, library, auditorium, and several pathways lined with marble and concrete. There’s never been anything like it, which is why, while curious and attracted to the ambition, the investors are trepidatious about its feasibility. One could imagine Corbet employing the persuasiveness of Toth’s design and vision in the pitch meetings for the film as a whole. With a runtime eclipsing that of any American feature in decades, photography in VistaVision that is projected in some combination of 70mm (Note: The projection I saw at the press and industry screening at the Toronto International Film Festival was in 35mm), an overture, an intermission, and an epilogue, nothing about The Brutalist screams commerciality. But like Toth and his monument, every dollar that Corbet’s behemoth sacrifices at the box office will be used to better the art form. The only currency that matters in cinema is the experience you carry with you long after the viewing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6d7yU379Ur0 Such a grandiose production must also house a grandiose story, with Corbet and his often co-writer and partner Mona Fastvold saddling themselves with nothing less than weaving a rich tapestry of the modern American experience. In a nearly identical vein to what has made Francis Ford Coppola’s Godfather films filled with eternal beauty, Corbet identifies that the truest Americans were those carried by steamship through Ellis Island. Toth snakes his way through the bowels of the ship, the foreboding score and canted angle of the Statue of Liberty signifying the joys and dangers of what’s to come in his new life. Loneliness is his most potent quality, as his wife (Felicity Jones) and niece (Raffey Cassidy) are still trapped in post-WWII Eastern Europe. The American Dream is more about the freedom to assimilate than the freedom to be yourself, which is why Toth’s successful Philadelphia cousin (Alessandro Nivola) has westernized his last name to Miller, married a Catholic girl, and reluctantly talks about their upbringing in the Old World. Toth can’t blend in so easily, with his features (an in-joke is made about Toth’s nose being broken) and accent too recognizable. Collaboration, conflict, and compromise are the tools to his success, each made all the more possible with the financial backing of Harrison Lee Van Buren (Guy Pearce). It doesn’t matter if his interest in Toth’s work is genuine or just a temporary distraction to amuse himself with. His money is very real , and so are his ambitions for Toth. He parades him around his socialite friends at his swanky gatherings, using Toth’s struggles as conversation starters. With his previous two features, Corbet has trained his sights on the costs of being someone and creating something. While the deal Toth makes is not as literally Faustian as it is in Vox Lux , he does have to tear pieces of himself away for the project. Brody is tremendous, reaching a new dramatic height after years of only gaining notice within the whimsically stacked casts of Wes Anderson. The comparisons to his work in The Pianist , both in terms of what’s on the screen and how it is rewarded, are appropriate. He buries himself within his work, with his creation destined to become his salvation. What Corbet is crafting is just as alluring, with Lol Crawley’s cinematography ranging from hauntingly claustrophobic to sweepingly beautiful. Even in the gloomy Pennsylvania countryside, a place where the frost tinges the corners of the frame, he and production designer Judy Becker make those slabs of steel and concrete pour out with Toth’s soul. With the added time, each scene flows with more freedom and weight, all of them simultaneously epic and intimate as the camera glacially passes through the years. This 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. This review was originally published from the North American premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. A24 will release The Brutalist in select theaters on December 20th, followed by a nationwide expansion on January 24th. More Reviews Tony August 18, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Buddy August 25, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Colony August 26, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Teen Sex & Death at Camp Miasma August 12, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One July 5, 2023 By: Button Hunter Friesen It’s been close to four years now since, while on a press tour for his newest film, The Irishman , Martin Scorsese expressed his opinion about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. “That’s not cinema” is one of the lines he said, equating the ever-expanding franchise of films to a theme park. It was a statement that spawned a million clickbait articles, a follow-up op-ed by Scorsese in The New York Times , and caused an uproar amongst the fans of the superhero genre. While those who are likely to don Batman’s cape and cowl and Superman’s red tights for Halloween may have tossed a few darts toward a Scorsese-framed board since then, the fans of the Mission: Impossible franchise would be ecstatic to hear the world’s preeminent filmmaker label their favorite films as theme park rides because that’s exactly what they are. The seats shook violently, and the sound system endlessly roared as I sat to watch the seventh and newest entry in the now thirty-year series: Dead Reckoning Part One . The only thing that prevented my hair from sticking up, as I had just gotten off a roller coaster, was that I didn’t have enough of it on my head to begin with. But the one thing I did walk away with was a smile on my face and a sense that I had been dazzlingly (and smartly) entertained on a hot summer night, which is a reward that seems to be coming at a premium this year (cue the camera pan over to the dumpster where The Flash sits surrounded by flies). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avz06PDqDbM The beginning of this thrill ride starts in the past as a Russian submarine carries on board a super-powered artificial intelligence program known as The Entity. It makes trillions of computations per second, using past data to predict the future with unprecedented accuracy. Just as the laws of screenwriting would dictate, something that smart can only be caged for so long. The machine eventually gains sentience, sinking the ship and unleashing itself onto the entire global network. It essentially becomes the HAL-9000 on steroids, unable to be stopped by anything except the conjoined halves of the key that originally powered it on. The mission to find those keys in the present, should he choose to accept it, lies upon the shoulders of Ethan Hunt. He still has his core team of Luther (Ving Rhames), Benji (Simon Pegg), and Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson), with a new addition in a pickpocket named Grace (Hayley Atwell) who gets tangled in the web of interested parties, which also includes a mysterious figure from Ethan’s past known as Gabriel (Esai Morales) and the various agencies of the US government, who always seem to have a reason for wanting to arrest Hunt. Very few movies can attempt to go from the Bering Strait to Yemen to Amsterdam to Venice within their first hour. Dead Reckoning does it with ease as writer/director Christopher McQuarrie propulses the story with a bit of visual and written flair. There’s always an amount of giddy wit involved in the movement of a scene, just like it’s a dance to one of your favorite songs. The ultimate kineticism of the previous entry, Fallout , may not be surpassed, but it is closely reached on a few occasions. No one does a chase scene better than Cruise, with a last-minute one in Venice being a clear highlight because of the sheer athleticism involved and Lorne Balfe’s hard-charging score. These Mission: Impossible movies aren’t the kinds of films you get pumped for because of the performances, but they’re still better than average here. The character of Ethan Hunt may not stretch Crusie’s acting chops like Magnolia (I’m contractually obligated to myself to mention his brilliant performance and Oscar snub for PTA’s best movie), but there’s a strong dramatic core that goes along with every physically death-defying stunt. This is all still a vanity project for him, which makes it a little hard to buy each of the several times he speechifies about how much he cares about his friends and family. Humility does not serve Cruise well, which has made him a questionable person and a fantastic movie star. There are also several speeches - some extremely theatrical ones - that are littered throughout the movie so it can properly explain what The Entity is and how big a threat it poses. To be honest, I’m still not exactly sure what the limits of its power are, as many of the twists it employs on the characters feel like they were just made up on the spot. That’s not really a hindrance to the overall enjoyment since this franchise is built upon pretty silly stuff and pulling one over within the blink of an eye. And when you get to witness another incredible setpiece like the highly publicized motorcycle jump, the complications around the motivations for the action don’t matter that much anymore. All that matters is what’s in front of you at that exact moment, which is usually quite a sight to behold. Not many franchises and movie stars can boast about getting better with age, especially when you start entering into the third decade of their existence. Tom Cruise and these Mission: Impossible movies have continued to push the envelope not just in terms of action filmmaking, but just plain filmmaking altogether. Dead Reckoning Part One has placed the ball on the tee with gusto, and I’m looking forward to the latter part to blast it away. Paramount Pictures will release Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One in theaters nationwide on July 12th. More Reviews Tony August 18, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Buddy August 25, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Colony August 26, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Teen Sex & Death at Camp Miasma August 12, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

Daddio June 24, 2024 By: Button Hunter Friesen A 2024 release that could have easily found a better home in 2020, Christy Hall’s Daddio is one of those single-location films that popped up time and time again on streaming services during the waning days of the pandemic. It was almost a cheat code for stars and filmmakers to keep themselves active, limiting the action of the project to one location and keeping the number of cast members to less than you can count on one hand. The problem was that many felt exactly like that: an excuse to get back to work rather than a genius idea that plays with time and setting (examples include Locked Down and The Guilty ). But there were also some gems like One Night in Miami… and The Outfit . Daddio falls somewhere in the middle, never irritating because of its pandemic-esque presentation, but never unique enough to break through this subgenre. The concept is as simple as the setting: An unnamed woman (Dakota Johnson) hails a cab from JFK airport to get home. The driver, Clark (Sean Penn), and she start to share a bond during their late-night journey, striking up conversations as they deal with traffic, construction, and all the other things New York throws at them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJrr2amlFyc Clark is a vulgar driver, one of those who “tells it like it is” as he spouts some pseudo-intellectual mumbo jumbo about the way humans behave. At first, he’s pretty courteous, complimenting Johnson’s character for not being on her phone as they drive away. Quickly, that turns into a monologue that starts with him saying, “We used to be a culture…” filled with mini-rants on credit cards, technology, and apps. It’s this opening stretch of Daddio that’s the roughest, as Hall’s weakest material is used to acclimate us to these characters and the setting. The weakness has less to do with the quality of the writing, lying more with the tiredness that comes from the specific points it is trying to make. The generational archetypes that these characters possess have been mined over and over again throughout the years, almost to the point where there’s nothing left to explore. That’s not to say that filmmakers should steer away from the material altogether, but there definitely needs to be something truly special to incite even a modicum of interest. Hall doesn’t possess that with her script, even if the actors show a great ability to hold our attention. Johnson often lives and dies by the material she’s been given (see The Lost Daughter compared to Madame Web ), with this being closer to the former example. There’s an aura of confidence radiating from her in attempting the one-location challenge, something that Penn also matches from the front seat. His casting is almost too perfect, which may come from the fact that he played a very similar role as a no-nonsense ambulance driver to a much younger co-star, Tye Sheridan, in last year’s Asphalt City . The streetlights on the highway are always perfectly angled to illuminate Penn’s eyes, and the distant skyscrapers reflect in the windows. Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael makes the brief glimpses outside the cab incredibly gorgeous, with the steam from the sewers and stoplights creating a smoky, cool setting. The edges of the frame are tinged black, almost as if you’re looking through a half-awakened eye that just got off a red-eye flight. Hall places importance on the little things inside the cab just as much as what goes on outside of it. The camera will catch a twitch of the eye or a certain hand gesture, all of them adding up to reveal more about the characters. It’s an impressive showcase for her as a director, one that inspires confidence for the future. Sony Pictures Classics will release Daddio in select theaters on June 28th. More Reviews Tony August 18, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Buddy August 25, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Colony August 26, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Teen Sex & Death at Camp Miasma August 12, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen

The Accountant 2 April 23, 2025 By: Button Hunter Friesen As a real-life accountant, there’s a guilty sense of pleasure I get seeing someone with my job title kick ass and take names. It must be what every police officer feels when they watch Die Hard , or a doctor whenever reruns of ER and Grey’s Anatomy appear on television, or archaeologists with the Indiana Jones franchise. Then again, all those films could be considered some of the least realistic depictions of said jobs, becoming a burden on the real professionals who have to endure countless questions about the practicality of what the on-screen protagonists do. Luckily for me, nobody went into the 2016 film The Accountant thinking it was going to be an honest reenactment of the day-to-day lives of your friendly bean counters. Never mind all the guns and talk about drug cartels, I can already tell you that the total absence of Microsoft Excel is an immediate red flag for believability. In a move that made me quite displeased but is admittedly the wiser business decision, The Accountant 2 (titled The Accountant² within the film for no logical reason) features just about the bare minimum of actual financial work. Mentions of 1040 tax returns, fraudulent claims of depreciation, and EBITDA are the only buzzwords handed out here. The moniker of “The Accountant” has as much to do with bookkeeping for our returning protagonist, Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck), as real bats have to do with Batman, or wolverines with The Wolverine. Considering Affleck’s previous stint as The Caped Crusader within Zack Snyder’s DC films, there’s a comfortable familiarity to seeing him again don superhuman abilities within the shell of a mortal man. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wRCOqyDI6E Previously depicted as a sort of antihero, returning screenwriter Bill Dubuque and director Gavin O’Connor have morphed Christian into a full-blown crime fighter. Mentions of his criminal past are kept to a vague minimum, and the mystery he sets out to solve here is of the murder of Ray King (J.K. Simmons, who, at seventy years old, finally gets the action setpiece that his exceptional physicality deserves), the federal treasury agent who was once on Christian’s tail. Ray’s death unveils a spider’s web of drug cartel dealings, human trafficking, and several illegal activities surrounding our southern national border. The plot is borderline incoherent for much of the runtime. Worse, it’s horribly uninteresting once everything starts clicking into place. The stakes eventually become so high that they become instantaneously weightless, the villains' threats so heinous that there’s no way they would ever be executed in a studio blockbuster. Dubuque doesn’t seem to care all that much about that, instead dedicating more time to Christian’s antics away from the criminal underworld, such as rigging a speed dating system (complete with comedic slideshow transitions!) and reconnecting with his equally violent brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal). Leaning on the chemistry of Affleck and Bernthal is this film’s saving grace on several occasions. Their comedic banter is reliable, and even a few touching moments of reconciliation are put in for good measure. O’Connor struggles to merge the clashing tones, creating a hilarious whiplash effect between a scene where Christian gets a girl's number at a line dancing bar, only for the next scene to mention human trafficking of children and that a person’s attempted murder is why they have superhuman cognitive abilities. There’s also a team of similarly skilled autistic children who provide intelligence to Christian from afar, which makes them fully complicit for each of the dozens of corpses that are stacked up. The ludicrousness of this plot point still has me questioning if I should take offense to it or not. Despite its ho-hum competence, the original The Accountant packed a semi-interesting exploration of a morally grey protagonist who hides behind a black-and-white profession. In the act of making the sequel as fun as possible, those edges have been severely sanded down. Sure, there’s more personality than before, but not a sense of a unique identity. In an effort to please everyone, the creators have blocked all potential for someone to find something special here. Amazon MGM Studios will release The Accountant 2 in theaters nationwide on April 25th. More Reviews Tony August 18, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Buddy August 25, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Colony August 26, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Teen Sex & Death at Camp Miasma August 12, 2026 By: Hunter Friesen Hunter Friesen