CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 10-24-25
- 2 days ago
- 29 min read
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My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review seven new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, October 24, 2025.
There's a line that keeps getting thrown around whenever Yorgos Lanthimos releases something new: you either get him or you don't. And that's exactly right. Because Lanthimos doesn't make movies for people who want comfort food, he makes cinematic fever dreams that leave you laughing, squirming, and deeply unsettled at the same time.
And with Bugonia, he's done it again. This is a film that's pitch-black, hysterically funny, philosophically brutal, and at times so absurd you can't believe what you're watching, but that's what makes it work.
Bugonia is technically a remake of the 2003 South Korean film Save the Green Planet!, but it's less a remake and more a reimagined Yorgos experiment filtered through his trademark lens of deranged absurdism and moral panic.
The premise: two delusional conspiracy theorists kidnap a powerful CEO (Emma Stone) because they believe she's an alien sent to destroy humanity. That's it. That's the plot. But in true Lanthimos fashion, it's not really about that... It's about us.
Jesse Plemons plays Teddy, a beekeeper and internet conspiracy guru whose brain has been rotted by online paranoia. He's convinced that his mother's (Alicia Silverstone) illness is part of a pharmaceutical plot led by Stone's character, Michelle Fuller, who is a cold, corporate power figure who he's decided is literally from another planet.
With the help of his naïve cousin Don (Aidan Delbis), Teddy kidnaps Michelle, chains her in the basement, shaves her head, greases her up (in classic Lanthimos "what the hell am I watching" fashion), and demands that she summon her alien mothership before the next lunar eclipse.
If that sounds nuts, it is. But it's also Lanthimos operating at full command of tone: absurd, violent, grotesque, and somehow still deeply funny.
I love Yorgos Lanthimos. I've loved his work since Dogtooth and The Lobster. I think he's one of the few directors alive who can take something that should never work (like a detached family drama about incest, or a world where people are turned into animals if they stay single too long) and make it gripping, hilarious, and devastating. He's fearless.
And people forget that before The Favourite and Poor Things made him a more "mainstream" name (if you can even use that word for him), he was an experimental filmmaker. Bugonia feels like a return to that earlier, rawer mode; it's claustrophobic, stripped-down, feral.
There's none of the ornate production design or fantastical scale of Poor Things. Most of Bugonia takes place in one grimy basement, in long, tense two-person scenes that twist from comedy to horror and back again.
Yet despite the smaller scope, this might be his most ambitious movie thematically. Lanthimos and writer Will Tracy (who co-wrote The Menu and used to write for The Onion, which absolutely tracks) go after the modern world with knives out.
It's a savage satire of conspiracy culture, internet misinformation, cultish thinking, toxic masculinity, and the blind worship of corporate power. And it's not subtle, but it's not supposed to be. It's angry, ugly, and unrelenting in its critique of how willingly we've all surrendered to madness.
Emma Stone, seriously, what can you even say about her at this point? She's one of the most fearless, versatile actresses alive, and Lanthimos brings out something primal in her every time they work together.
After The Favourite, Poor Things, and Kinds of Kindness, this marks her fourth (or fifth, if you count their short film) collaboration with him, and she's once again phenomenal.
Here, Stone walks a perfect line between defiance, terror, and manipulation. Her Michelle starts as a cold corporate caricature, but as the film unfolds, she takes control of the madness around her, turning the tables on her captors with unnerving intelligence and power.
There are moments, small, quiet ones, where she's both downright horrifying and strangely sympathetic. It's another fearless performance, one that cements her as Lanthimos's ultimate muse.
Jesse Plemons, meanwhile, gives one of the best performances of his career. His Teddy is pathetic, funny, and terrifying all at once. He's a man driven by loss, paranoia, and self-delusion.
Watching him unravel is both mesmerizing and deeply uncomfortable. He's that guy you see online who starts with "legitimate questions" and ends up ranting about lizard people.
Aidan Delbis is a revelation as the sweet, dimwitted cousin who just wants to do right by his family, and Alicia Silverstone gives a disturbing, haunted performance as Teddy's mother.
And then there's Stavros Halkias (yes, the comedian), who's perfectly cast as a local cop with a dark past that ties back into Teddy's trauma. It's a weird, loaded ensemble that all clicks beautifully under Lanthimos's direction.
Halfway through Bugonia, I realized I was watching one of the most disturbing comedies of the year, and one of the funniest horror films, depending on how you look at it. That's Lanthimos's sweet spot. He takes cruelty and absurdity and pushes them to extremes until you don't know whether to laugh or cover your eyes.
The last twenty minutes of this film are absolutely bonkers, with explosions of violence, twisted reveals, and one of the most insane (and oddly beautiful) finales I've seen all year.
It's gory, yes, hilariously so. But it's also weirdly emotional. Lanthimos never loses sight of the fact that underneath the satire and surrealism, this is about pain, grief, loneliness, and the way broken people build fantasy worlds to survive in a collapsing reality.
And that's what makes Bugonia so good. It's not just shock for shock's sake. It's a brutally funny, unflinching mirror held up to our world, which is a world of online lunacy, corporate greed, performative outrage, and collective insanity.
Yorgos Lanthimos doesn't make movies that go down easy. He makes movies that punch you in the gut while you're laughing, movies that make you feel complicit in the madness. Bugonia is exactly that kind of film: deeply weird, completely uncompromising, and unashamed of its darkness.
Is it for everyone? Absolutely not. It's violent, disturbing, and confrontational. It will infuriate as many people as it fascinates. But for those of us who love Lanthimos (who get him) it's another masterpiece.
It's also one of the best films of the year. A wild, blistering, absurdist black comedy that doubles as a scathing commentary on everything wrong with modern humanity.
The world is on fire, the bees are dying, and Yorgos Lanthimos is laughing in our faces... and somehow, that feels right. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke, now that's a great creative partnership. These two have been joined at the artistic hip for decades, making some of the best actor-driven movies of the last thirty years.
Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight, Boyhood, they are all examples of how Linklater and Hawke bring out the best in each other. Linklater gives Hawke room to breathe and ramble and think; Hawke gives Linklater's words texture, intelligence, and that slightly cracked-glass vulnerability that makes him one of the great modern American actors.
So when I heard that these two were teaming up again for Blue Moon, a film about legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart, my hopes were high. And while it's not quite a home run, it's a fascinating, talky, theatrical, sometimes frustrating, but ultimately rewarding film. It's another example of Linklater's uncanny ability to make dialogue dance.
The movie unfolds in real time on March 31, 1943: the opening night of Oklahoma!, the musical that would change Broadway forever. But instead of following the celebration at the St. James Theatre, Linklater's film plants us down the street at Sardi's, the fabled New York hangout for theater royalty.
There sits Lorenz "Larry" Hart (Ethan Hawke), the once-brilliant, now-broken lyricist who used to be one half of Rodgers and Hart, the songwriting duo behind classics like "My Funny Valentine," "The Lady Is a Tramp," and the song that gives this film its title, "Blue Moon." But tonight isn't his night.
His former partner Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) has a smash new show with Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney), and Larry's left to drown his jealousy and heartbreak in bourbon.
Over the course of one boozy evening, he flirts, reminisces, monologues, and spirals... all while surrounded by ghosts of the past and hints of the future.
Among them: his young protégé Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley), who might be his muse or might be a figment of loneliness; a kind-hearted bartender Eddie (Bobby Cannavale, effortlessly great); and cameos from real-life figures like E.B. White, Weegee, and even a 13-year-old Stephen Sondheim (yes, that one), who wanders in with Hammerstein as if destiny itself has shown up for a drink.
It's a movie about creation, failure, jealousy, queerness, addiction, and the sad, sobering truth of realizing the world has moved on without you.
Let's talk about the big problem right up front: Ethan Hawke is completely miscast. He's terrific, but physically, he's just wrong. Lorenz Hart was short, stocky, self-conscious, a guy whose insecurities were written all over his face and stature.
Ethan Hawke is tall, angular, charismatic, and all the stagecraft in the world can't really disguise that. They slap a bad hairpiece on him and try to make him twitchy and small, but you can't really hide the fact that he's a foot and a half too tall, and about ten degrees too handsome to be believable as Hart.
Now, that said, he still gives a fantastic performance. He's sharp, funny, pathetic, and human. His eyes have that gleam of the born entertainer who knows his best days are behind him but can't stop performing anyway.
Hawke's great at playing self-destructive geniuses (see First Reformed), and here he makes Hart both pitiable and electric. You can't look away, even if you know he's wrong for the role.
Still, I couldn't help but think of other actors who might've nailed it physically and emotionally. Tom Hollander would've been perfect. Matt Lucas, even James Spader or J.K. Simmons (older but right energy). There are actors out there who could've fit this part like a glove. But, when Linklater calls, Hawke answers. Their collaboration is a package deal.
Stylistically, this is Richard Linklater doing an old-school stage play. The entire movie (save for a quick opening prologue of Hart collapsing in the rain) takes place inside Sardi's. It's theatrical, confined, and unapologetically wordy.
There are monologues that go on forever, conversations that loop back on themselves, and moments where it feels more like an evening with Lorenz Hart than a narrative film.
Normally, that kind of talkiness could sink a movie. But Linklater, who's made a career out of filming people talking (Before Sunrise, Tape, Waking Life), knows exactly how to make conversation cinematic.
He and longtime cinematographer Shane F. Kelly move the camera with just enough grace to keep it alive (weaving through tables, mirrors, reflections), capturing the drunken swirl of a man's last great night.
The production design is exquisite: Sardi's recreated with every piece of velvet, glass, and cigarette haze perfectly period-authentic. The costumes are spot-on. The lighting evokes smoky golden nostalgia. From a purely technical standpoint, the film looks and sounds gorgeous.
Bobby Cannavale steals every scene as Eddie, the bartender who's seen this drunk genius hit bottom more times than he can count. He's equal parts compassionate and exasperated, with a Casablanca-style presence and genuine warmth.
Margaret Qualley brings her usual unpredictability and intelligence to Elizabeth, a character that's part muse, part fantasy, part emotional lifeline. The relationship between her and Hart is complicated; he's gay (semi-closeted here), but there's longing, mentorship, and delusion all wrapped up together.
Andrew Scott is quietly stunning as Richard Rodgers. He barely raises his voice, yet you feel every layer of history, guilt, and love between him and Hart. No wonder he won the Silver Bear at Berlin.
And yes, the little cameos are catnip for theater nerds. E.B. White, Weegee, and "Little Stevie" Sondheim show up like ghosts from the future, nodding to the artistic lineage Hart helped inspire.
The script by Robert Kaplow is overwritten; it is so in love with its own cleverness that it sometimes loses emotional focus. The dialogue occasionally sounds like it was written by someone trying to win a "Best Use of a 1940s Zinger" contest.
And yes, there are historical inaccuracies: dates that don't line up, references to songs or events that hadn't happened yet. Theater historians are going to tear their hair out. But for me, I didn't mind too much.
This isn't meant to be a dry, factually perfect biopic. It's more of a fantasia, a one-night fever dream of memory and regret. Linklater isn't doing history, he's doing theater, filtered through booze and longing.
Despite its faults, the movie sings, literally and figuratively. It's a meditation on creativity, on partnership, on what happens when you're the guy who got left behind. It's melancholy, funny, and occasionally devastating.
So yeah, Blue Moon isn't perfect. It's talky, stagey, historically fuzzy, and miscast at the center. But it's also beautifully made, wonderfully acted, and deeply humane; it's a film that celebrates the messy, magnificent, and often painful process of making art.
Linklater once again proves why he's one of our most thoughtful American directors. He can take a room full of people talking and make it feel like an entire world. And Hawke, despite the physical mismatch, gives one of his richest, most complex performances.
The film is about creation and loss, love and failure, ego and art. It's about how even the most gifted among us can crumble. It is also about how their words, their melodies, their mistakes, and their heartbreaks still echo long after they're gone.
I am recommending it...It is flawed, yes, but it's heartfelt, intelligent, beautifully shot, and anchored by performances that make it worth watching. And if you're a lover of classic musicals, Linklater's direction, or just watching Ethan Hawke wrestle with his demons over a bottle of bourbon, this one's for you. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere takes on an interesting challenge: turning one of the most creatively bleak and psychologically fraught periods in Bruce Springsteen's career into a two-hour movie.
It's the story of how, in the early 1980s, at the height of his fame after The River, Springsteen went home to New Jersey, stared into the abyss, and recorded Nebraska, which is a stripped-down, haunting, home-recorded album that captured his depression and alienation.
For die-hard fans, this period is mythic. For everyone else, it's a moody guy in his bedroom with a tape recorder.
And that's the problem. This isn't really a movie, it's a mood board with guitar twang.
Let me preface this by saying something that will make most classic rock purists foam at the mouth: I've never been a Bruce Springsteen fan. Never have been, never will be. His brand of earnest, blue-collar poetry has always left me cold.
So I came into Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere with low expectations. And, to be honest, I'm also not a fan of the actor playing him (Jeremy Allen White), who, to me, has always been a one-note, stilted performer. A guy who mistakes tight-jawed silence for depth.
So imagine my surprise when I say: This movie isn't quite the disaster I expected. It's not good, mind you, but it's not a total train wreck either. There are moments here that work, flashes of authenticity and texture.
Unfortunately, they're buried under layers of cliché, self-importance, and a visual style that feels more like a perfume commercial for melancholy than a movie about the making of one of rock's most haunting records.
The film, written and directed by Scott Cooper (the guy behind Crazy Heart and Hostiles), follows Springsteen in 1981 and 1982, as he holes up in a rented New Jersey house, trying to make sense of fame, depression, and the demons that have followed him since childhood.
Cooper and cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi shoot everything in a moody, desaturated haze, with long shadows, slow pans, lots of Bruce sitting in silence, staring at notebooks, guitars, and the void.
We get scenes of him rewatching Terrence Malick's Badlands over and over again, reading Flannery O'Connor short stories, and channeling his alienation into music. The movie wants you to see the spiritual connection between Springsteen's art and his mental state, but Cooper never finds a cinematic way to make that inner struggle interesting.
So instead, we get endless montages of him scribbling lyrics, mumbling, and gazing into the middle distance while snippets of Nebraska songs play.
Jeremy Allen White, who has always been stiff in The Bear, basically plays Bruce Springsteen the exact same way he plays Carmy, as clenched, haunted, brooding, and perpetually two seconds from a breakdown.
It's the same performance, just with a Telecaster instead of a chef's knife. He's just not good, and he's very, very limited.
He doesn't really look or feel like Springsteen, either; he's too contemporary, too self-conscious. You never forget you're watching Jeremy Allen White "act." He sings and plays guitar himself, and he's got a solid voice, but the man doesn't exude "Boss" energy.
Jeremy Strong, playing manager Jon Landau, is another problem. Strong is one of those actors who can be riveting when reined in (Succession) but unbearable when let off the leash.
Here, he's pure ham, all whispery gravitas and puffed-up intensity. You can practically see the acting technique dripping off him. Every line sounds like it's been polished in a mirror.
The Landau character could have been the grounded emotional core of the movie, but instead, he's an overly serious performance piece in a bad haircut.
Paul Walter Hauser (as engineer Mike Batlan) fares a little better; at least he's warm, funny, and human. Stephen Graham, as Springsteen's alcoholic father, and Gaby Hoffmann, as his mother, are, for most of the movie, trapped in black-and-white flashbacks that feel ripped straight from a 1990s TV biopic.
Odessa Young, as the single mother Bruce briefly romances, is saddled with the most thankless role in the film as the literal waitress-with-a-heart-of-gold cliché, who exists to remind Bruce of what he's running from. Their chemistry is nonexistent, and every scene between them feels like a bad deleted scene from Walk the Line.
And that's what Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere ultimately feels like, Walk the Line without the rhythm, Crazy Heart without the soul, A Complete Unknown without the passion. A by-the-numbers rock bio about a guy who doesn't want to be a rock star.
Scott Cooper has done this before (Crazy Heart was also about a musician in crisis), but that film had the great Jeff Bridges, whose performance felt lived-in, soulful, and real.
Here, Cooper leans on symbolism and heavy-handed visual metaphors to the point of absurdity. There are moments where adult Bruce walks into his own childhood memories, confronting his young self in bars, or stares down past visions of his father, as if his trauma were literally haunting him. It's not profound; it's pretentious.
The movie's best scenes come when it focuses on the actual music-making. Watching Springsteen struggle with the lo-fi equipment, fight with his label over releasing those rough tapes, and insist that the raw demo (recorded in his bedroom on a TASCAM four-track) should be the final version, those moments have real dramatic weight. You feel the tension between art and commerce, between purity and marketability.
There's a great little scene where David Krumholtz, playing a Columbia Records exec, listens to the haunting, low-fidelity Nebraska tape and flat-out says, "We can't release this." Krumholtz nails it, and he's the only actor who plays his part like a human being instead of a walking metaphor. That scene, between him and Strong, is easily the highlight of the movie.
Elsewhere, the film gets lost in repetition. How many times do we need to see Bruce watching Badlands? How many times do we need to see him gaze mournfully at the camera?
We get it. He's depressed. He's disillusioned. He's got daddy issues. But Cooper hammers those ideas home so relentlessly that the movie starts to feel like an overlong therapy session with a great soundtrack.
Some stylistic flourishes work: the way the film uses sound, blending the eerie, empty ambiance of the Nebraska recordings with the creak of Springsteen's house and the hum of Jersey backroads, is effective.
And the needle drops, which include "The Last Mile of the Way" by Sam Cooke, and Foreigner's "Urgent," occasionally jolt the movie awake. But those brief pleasures can't disguise how inert the rest of it feels.
In the end, Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere feels like a movie made by and for Bruce Springsteen devotees. It's exclusively for fans who've memorized every lyric, every outtake, every E Street anecdote. For them, seeing this chapter of his life dramatized might be thrilling. For the rest of us, it's a slow, humorless dirge with nice lighting.
I'll give it this much: it's a beautiful-looking bore. It sounds good, it means well, and everyone involved is clearly trying. But between a limited lead, a script that wallows in cliché, and a director who mistakes solemnity for depth, it never comes to life.
If you're a die-hard Springsteen fan, you might get something out of it. If you're not (like me), it's just another brooding rock biopic drowning in its own self-importance. - ⭐️⭐️
Shelby Oaks is a fascinating case study in how a movie's origin story can sometimes be more interesting than the film itself. Writer, director, and producer Chris Stuckmann was a YouTuber and film critic long before becoming a filmmaker.
He had millions of followers, an entire online presence built around his reviews. He even created fake found-footage shorts called The Paranormal Paranoids. Those shorts built a following, and when he decided to make a feature film expanding on that mythology, the internet showed up for him in a big way.
His Kickstarter campaign became the most-funded horror project ever, pulling in over a million dollars and catching the attention of Mike Flanagan, one of the most successful modern horror filmmakers, and the man behind The Haunting of Hill House and Doctor Sleep. Flanagan came aboard as executive producer, and that backing (plus the online hype) made Shelby Oaks something of an event for horror fans.
Unfortunately, the hype is where the excitement peaks. Shelby Oaks is an admirable first effort, but also a derivative, uneven, and often frustrating one. There's ambition here, and moments that hint at what Stuckmann might be capable of as he matures as a filmmaker, but this particular movie is stuck between fandom and filmmaking.
The setup is intriguing enough: Mia Brennan (Camille Sullivan) is a woman obsessed with the disappearance of her sister Riley (Sarah Durn), who vanished years earlier while investigating paranormal activity in the ghost town of Shelby Oaks.
Riley and her friends ran a YouTube channel called The Paranormal Paranoids, where they filmed spooky places and chased supposed hauntings...until they went missing.
Now, years later, Mia receives a mysterious videotape from a man who promptly kills himself on her doorstep, leading her back into her sister's mystery and into the decaying heart of Shelby Oaks itself.
On paper, that's solid horror material. There's a sister's guilt, creepy VHS imagery, old prisons, abandoned amusement parks, and demonic forces possibly connected to a forgotten town. But in execution, Shelby Oaks struggles to find a consistent tone or visual language.
The first third is presented in that tired found footage style that has been run into the ground since The Blair Witch Project. The faux-documentary opening feels more like an imitation than an evolution of that format.
Then, suddenly, the movie shifts into a more traditional narrative mode, the handheld cameras disappear, and we're in a conventional thriller. The problem is that these two styles never mesh. What starts as an experiment in realism becomes a clunky, overlit, generic horror film.
The found-footage format has produced a handful of genuinely great films (Blair Witch, REC, Lake Mungo), but for the most part, it's been overused to the point of parody. Here, it just feels like another filmmaker trying to recapture the magic without understanding what made those earlier films work.
In Blair Witch, the camera was the story; the act of filming was a psychological lifeline. In Shelby Oaks, the cameras are just props. The switch from shaky handhelds to clean digital cinematography only emphasizes how artificial it all feels.
That said, some things do work. Camille Sullivan gives the movie more gravity than it deserves. She's raw and committed, and her performance as Mia is genuinely emotional; she sells the desperation and obsession of someone haunted by both grief and guilt.
Brendan Sexton III and Michael Beach add solid support, and Keith David, as always, brings instant authority to his brief appearance. You can tell Stuckmann got himself a serious cast, and their professionalism helps elevate what could have been amateur-hour horror.
Visually, the movie is often atmospheric. Stuckmann knows how to shoot eerie spaces; the abandoned amusement park and prison sequences are nicely composed, and there's some mood in the way he uses light and shadow.
But the scares themselves are rote. Jump scares, glowing-eyed monsters, things lurking in the background. All of the standard buttons are pushed; none of them are particularly fresh.
There's also a weird tonal inconsistency that keeps the film from landing emotionally. The first act feels like a YouTube creepypasta, the middle section plays like a Netflix mystery, and the final act goes full supernatural thriller, complete with demons and hellhounds.
The pieces don't add up to a cohesive whole. It feels like three different movies stitched together by someone who loves horror but hasn't yet figured out how to make it their own.
Still, I have to give credit where it's due. For a YouTuber who started by making short videos and reviewing other people's films, raising over a million dollars on Kickstarter and delivering a feature with a legitimate theatrical release is impressive. That's an accomplishment in itself.
And the fact that Shelby Oaks is not terrible (just inconsistent, amateurish, and overly familiar) says something about Stuckmann's potential. This isn't House on Eden (another YouTuber-made horror fiasco earlier this year that's absolutely unwatchable). Compared to that disaster, Shelby Oaks looks like The Exorcist.
But when you step back from the backstory and look at the movie purely as a horror film, it's mostly forgettable. The pacing drags, the scares are predictable, and the found-footage gimmick feels tired. There are flashes of inspiration, but nothing that lingers. Horror fans will have seen all of this before, and better.
In the end, Shelby Oaks is a movie that's easier to admire than to enjoy. It's admirable as a story of perseverance, crowdfunding success, and a critic crossing over into creation. But as a film, it's derivative and bland; it's another found-footage-adjacent supernatural story that forgets to be truly scary.
The best thing I can say about it is that it's a solid first step for Stuckmann. He clearly knows horror, and maybe his next movie will be more original, more confident, and more his own.
As it stands, Shelby Oaks is not a disaster, but it's not a discovery either. It's a decent attempt from a first-time filmmaker who loves the genre a little too much to challenge it. Admirable, sometimes spooky, but mostly just average. - ⭐️⭐️
Regretting You is one of those movies that almost dares you to make a cheap joke about its title, and since the film itself has the subtlety of a sledgehammer, I'll go ahead and do it: I regret seeing Regretting You. There, I said it.
It's a bad joke, but it fits perfectly for one of the worst movies of the year. It is a cloying, tone-deaf, logic-free soap opera that mistakes melodrama for emotion and ends up being unintentionally hilarious instead of moving.
This thing is the cinematic equivalent of drinking a gallon of corn syrup while watching a Lifetime marathon; it's sugary, sticky, and somehow still flavorless.
The story (if you can call it that) centers on Morgan Grant (Allison Williams) and her teenage daughter, Clara (Mckenna Grace). Morgan became a mom at seventeen, gave up her dreams, and is now trapped in suburban monotony with her husband Chris (Scott Eastwood). Clara, of course, is a rebellious teenager, because that's the only character type allowed in this kind of movie.
Then tragedy strikes: Chris dies in a car accident alongside Morgan's younger sister, Jenny (Willa Fitzgerald). Grief quickly turns to shock when Morgan learns that her late husband and sister were having an affair.
Meanwhile, Clara falls for Miller (Mason Thames), a film-obsessed classmate whose hobbies include plastering his bedroom wall with every Paramount movie poster ever made... which becomes unintentionally hilarious when you realize that this movie, conveniently, is released by Paramount.
From there, Regretting You becomes an unholy fusion of Days of Our Lives, The O.C., and a Hallmark movie that accidentally wandered into an acting masterclass.
The pacing is insane. Within what feels like three weeks, we get death, funerals, a secret affair, a new romance between the grieving survivors, a high school prom, college acceptances, a virginity-losing scene, "inspiring" vision board scenes, and even a subplot about a dying grandparent.
It's like the screenwriter crammed an entire year's worth of melodrama into a single season of bad TV.
The strangest and most uncomfortable thing about this movie is its underlying message. By the time the credits roll, it's hard not to notice the bizarre implication that the deaths of the cheating couple were actually… convenient.
Like, "thank goodness our spouses died in a fiery car wreck so we can finally be together." I don't know what's creepier, that this made it into the final script, or that the filmmakers seem to think it's romantic.
Allison Williams is a terrific actress. She was brilliant in Get Out, great in Girls, and sharp in M3GAN. Here, she's stuck playing a caricature of a mother: alternately shrieking, crying, or delivering Hallmark-level monologues about forgiveness. You can see the talent there, but she's drowning in treacle.
Mckenna Grace, one of the most promising young actors working today, is similarly stranded. She's done stellar work in Gifted, The Handmaid's Tale, and even the Ghostbusters reboot, but here she's forced into a role that feels written by an adult who's never met a teenager. Her rebellion, her dialogue, even her big emotional scenes all feel phony.
Dave Franco shows up as Jonah, Jenny's widowed husband and Morgan's secret lifelong crush (yes, that's right), and he's as misused as anyone here. Franco's a solid actor; earlier this year, he starred in one of the best movies of 2025, Together, the bizarre romantic body-horror film he did with Alison Brie.
And now, just a few months later, he's stuck in Regretting You, playing an English teacher who somehow ends up in a love affair with the mother of his student. It's supposed to be tragic and healing. It's just weird.
Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald (the cheating couple) have very little screen time, and yet they might be the luckiest people in the cast, because their characters die early and get to skip most of the script.
Mason Thames, from The Black Phone and How to Train Your Dragon, is another talented young actor who deserves better. His character's "I want to be a filmmaker" subplot is laughable, especially once you realize that every movie poster in his bedroom is a Paramount title.
I get it, product placement keeps the lights on, but when a supposed future auteur has movie posters for Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Patriot Games taped to his wall like cinematic scripture, it's hard to take him seriously.
And speaking of product placement, the date scene where the kids use an AMC theater and watch Clueless on the big screen is so blatant that I half expected Nicole Kidman to pop up and give her "Heartbreak feels good in a place like this" speech.
Between the AMC plugs and Paramount cross-promotion, Regretting You sometimes feels less like a movie and more like a corporate brand exercise that forgot to tell an actual story.
The script, written by Susan McMartin and based on Colleen Hoover's novel, is relentlessly awful; it is full of clichés, on-the-nose dialogue, and lines that would make a soap opera writer blush.
Hoover's books have an enormous following, and last year's It Ends with Us adaptation (the Blake Lively movie that caused all that off-screen chaos) made a fortune. I suspect that's why this cast signed on; they saw the numbers, not the script. But man, they must've known early on that this thing was a dud.
Josh Boone directs, and if that name sounds familiar, it's because he's the same guy who made The Fault in Our Stars, The New Mutants, and the failed Stephen King miniseries The Stand. Boone has always specialized in glossy, manipulative melodrama, and Regretting You continues that streak.
It looks great though, thanks to the talented cinematographer Tim Orr, who's worked with much better directors like David Gordon Green and Mike White. But no amount of soft lighting can disguise how fake and hollow this movie feels.
The emotions are forced, the editing is choppy, and every big moment is telegraphed from a mile away.
Even the supporting cast can't save it. Clancy Brown, who's one of the best character actors alive, plays the "gruff but lovable grandpa" with cancer. He smokes too much, drops a few sarcastic one-liners, and mostly exists to deliver generic wisdom.
Sam Morelos, as Clara's comic-relief best friend Lexie, gives one of the most grating performances of the year. Every line she utters is written like a TikTok punchline, and the timing is brutal.
By the time the movie hits its so-called emotional climax (involving a prom, some fights, some confessions, and yet another round of overwrought tears) I was past caring. It's not just predictable; it's insultingly predictable. Every beat, every line, every musical cue is calculated to manipulate, and none of it feels genuine.
In the end, Regretting You is a film so desperate to wring emotion from its audience that it forgets to earn any. It's glossy, fake, and overstuffed. It's a prime example of how Hollywood takes popular novels and turns them into empty melodrama. The only real emotion I felt watching it was pity for the cast.
Allison Williams, Mckenna Grace, Dave Franco, Mason Thames... they all deserve better. The cinematography's nice, the score's fine, and everyone's trying their hardest, but this movie is still a mess. It's cloying, incoherent, manipulative nonsense.
So yeah: Regretting You? More like Regretting Sitting Through It. - ⭐️
George A. Romero was one of the most important American filmmakers who ever lived. The man didn't just invent the modern zombie movie; he redefined horror as a vehicle for social commentary.
Night of the Living Dead wasn't just about ghouls eating people; it was a reflection of the chaos of the late '60s: Vietnam, racial tension, and social upheaval. Dawn of the Dead skewered consumerism with zombies wandering malls like shoppers in heat. Day of the Dead ripped into militarism and power. And Diary of the Dead? Romero was warning us about social media before Twitter even knew what it was.
So now, decades later, his daughter Tina Romero steps up to the plate, and good God, she hits a home run. Her feature debut, Queens of the Dead, is not just a zombie movie. It's a love letter, a satire, a drag show, and a chainsaw all rolled into one glitter-covered, blood-splattered gem.
Set in Brooklyn on the opening night of a new drag club called Yum, the film follows Dre (the terrific Katy O'Brian), a stressed-out DJ trying to wrangle a group of misfit queens and club kids, including the seasoned Ginsey Tonic (Nina West), newbie Scrumptious (the scene-stealing Tomás Matos), and frazzled manager Kelsey (Jack Haven), while everything goes spectacularly wrong.
The star performer has bailed, the toilet's broken, and Dre's bigot brother-in-law Barry (Quincy Dunn-Baker) is being... well, a bigot.
Meanwhile, Dre's wife Lizzy (Riki Lindhome) and former performer Sam (Jaquel Spivey) get caught in the chaos as a zombie apocalypse breaks out mid-show. Soon, drag queens, nurses, and neighborhood weirdos are fighting flesh-eaters with stilettos, wigs, and sheer fabulous rage.
Throw in Margaret Cho as Pops (a gruff, scooter-riding queer elder leading a vigilante crew) and you've got the queerest, funniest, most heartfelt undead showdown you've ever seen.
Let's be clear: this thing is funny. Like, really funny. The gags fly faster than the blood sprays. There are whip-smart one-liners, beautifully dumb jokes, and visual gags that would make Mel Brooks proud. It's got the chaotic ensemble energy of Clue, the camp of RuPaul's Drag Race, and the splattery joy of Evil Dead 2.
But underneath all the glitter is something sharp and sincere, just like her father's best work. Queens of the Dead isn't just a zombie comedy; it's a satire about community, identity, and survival.
The film's queer perspective doesn't just color the story, it is the story. In true Romero fashion, the "outsiders" are the heroes, the bigots get what's coming, and society's real disease isn't the undead, it's ignorance.
And yes, this movie bleeds Romero DNA. There's an early zombie bite that lovingly recreates the iconic shoulder chomp from Dawn of the Dead. Tom Savini pops up (as the mayor of New York, hilariously insisting "This is NOT a George Romero movie!").
Gaylen Ross, the heroine of Dawn, makes a cameo as a stern nurse. And if you listen closely, you'll hear winks and nods everywhere: the line "They're coming to get you, Barbara" is reimagined, the classic Iron City Beer gets a shout-out, and there's even a cheeky line updating Romero's most famous quote: "When there's no more room in hell… there's an app for that." Beautiful.
What's remarkable is how Tina Romero manages to both honor and reinvent her father's legacy. She's inherited his bite, but her tone is all her own. Where George's horror was creeping and cynical, Tina's is loud, proud, and joyfully camp.
Her movie knows it's ridiculous, and that's the point. The apocalypse is drag. The end of the world is a show, and survival means lip-syncing through the blood.
The film also dives into some potent modern themes: social media addiction (replacing the "fireworks distraction" from Land of the Dead with cell phones hypnotizing the undead), the obsession with online validation, and intergenerational queer tension.
Pops' scenes with the younger queens are heartfelt and funny, evoking the spirit of queer elders who survived the AIDS crisis, now guiding a new generation through another form of apocalypse.
Everyone here brings it. Katy O'Brian proves again she's one of the most versatile actors working, she is tough, charismatic, and human. Jaquel Spivey is outstanding as Sam, balancing vulnerability and camp. Riki Lindhome adds emotional grounding.
And Margaret Cho? Steals every damn scene. The drag performers (including Nina West and Dominique Jackson) shine as both comedic and heroic figures. This is a movie where a high-heeled death scene can be both hilarious and weirdly moving.
The gore is deliciously old-school (practical, goopy, messy), and that's thanks to makeup effects clearly made by people who love this stuff.
The score, by Blitz//Berlin, channels John Harrison's synth work from Day of the Dead and Goblin's iconic Dawn soundtrack. It's eerie, campy, pulse-pounding, and perfect for a dancefloor full of corpses.
I absolutely loved this movie. It's wild, it's clever, it's gross, it's heartfelt, it's everything a great horror comedy should be. Tina Romero doesn't just carry her father's torch; she bedazzles it, sets it on fire, and twirls it on a pole.
Queens of the Dead is a hilarious, gutsy, and socially conscious debut that proves the Romero legacy is alive (and undead) and thriving.
It's a movie about outsiders becoming heroes, about laughter in the face of death, and about finding community even when the world's gone to hell.
A worthy tribute. A riotous debut. And as far as I'm concerned, George would be proud. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
When you think of writer-director Kelly Reichardt, your mind doesn't immediately go to heist movies. You don't think about elaborate plans, quick cuts, or thumping soundtracks while a group of crooks cracks safes in slow motion. That's just not her world.
She's not Michael Mann, she's not Soderbergh, and she's definitely not Guy Ritchie. She's Kelly Reichardt, one of the most patient, observant, and humanistic filmmakers working today. So the fact that her latest movie, The Mastermind, is technically a heist film is both hilarious and completely perfect, because, of course, in her hands, the heist isn't the point.
Yes, there's a robbery. Yes, it's planned, executed, and (sort of) successful. But as always with Reichardt, it's what happens after that that matters. It's about what the act of stealing says about a person's life... about failure, self-delusion, desperation, and what it means to be invisible in your own family, your own town, your own country.
And that's where The Mastermind lives, in the quiet, strange, deeply human space between crime and consequence.
The film takes place in early 1970s Massachusetts, long before anyone thought to install security cameras in art museums, which is a key detail here. Josh O'Connor plays James Blaine "J.B." Mooney, a suburban husband and father who lives what looks like a dull, ordinary life.
He's got a wife (Alana Haim), two sons, a stern father who's a judge (Bill Camp, absolutely perfect), and a gentle, enabling mother (Hope Davis, sublime as always). But J.B. has a secret: he's planning to steal four Arthur Dove paintings from a small-town museum.
Not a Picasso. Not a Rembrandt. Not a Vermeer. Arthur Dove. That's so Reichardt, to make a heist film where the target is a relatively obscure modernist painter known for his quiet abstractions. It's both funny and sad.
The first thirty minutes of the film are pure observational brilliance, with the dinner scenes, the family dynamics, the awkward small talk, the vintage mashed potatoes-and-meatloaf Americana.
Reichardt nails the period without ever rubbing your face in it. No title cards are screaming "1970." You just feel it in the cars, the clothes, the faded kitchen wallpaper, the politics humming in the background.
When the heist finally happens, it's so uncinematic it's hilarious. The guys wear L'eggs pantyhose on their heads (yes, the kind that came in those weird plastic eggs), they grab the paintings, one idiot pulls a gun he wasn't supposed to have, and it's all over in minutes. No chase. No slow motion. Just chaos and incompetence.
And then Reichardt does what she does best... she lets the aftermath breathe.
Like Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy, Meek's Cutoff, Certain Women, First Cow, and Showing Up, this movie lives with the people the rest of the world ignores, like the fringe dwellers, the quiet failures, the folks who thought they'd have a better life but somehow ended up lost. Reichardt loves these characters, but she never pities them. She studies them.
J.B. Mooney is another one of these classic Reichardt creations. He's a man who thinks he's clever but isn't. A guy desperate to impress his disapproving father while leeching money off his mother.
A husband who wants to be seen as competent but is really just flailing. His heist is less about greed than ego. It's a way to prove he's not the disappointment everyone quietly thinks he is.
Josh O'Connor gives an extraordinary performance. He's charming, pathetic, and strangely sympathetic all at once. You hate him, but you also recognize him. He's the embodiment of that '70s malaise. He's a man living through a cultural revolution who still can't see beyond his own narrow problems.
The supporting cast is uniformly terrific. Alana Haim is wonderful as Terri, the weary wife who seems to know more than she lets on. Bill Camp and Hope Davis are pitch-perfect as his parents. Camp full of pompous authority, Davis heartbreakingly kind.
John Magaro and the great Gaby Hoffmann, as the old friends who reluctantly give J.B. shelter, feel like they've stepped right out of a Robert Altman film. Terrific stuff.
Cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, who's been working with Reichardt for years, shoots this thing like it was made in 1974: the brown-and-orange color palette, the film grain texture, the natural light. You can practically smell the polyester. The production design and costumes are so authentic it's eerie. It's not nostalgia, it's immersion.
This is also one of Reichardt's funniest films, believe it or not. There's a bone-dry humor running through it, with the absurdity of the situation, the cluelessness of these small-time crooks, the banal family dinners that contrast with the crime.
It's like A Serious Man crossed with Dog Day Afternoon, but filtered through Reichardt's minimalist sensibility.
And like most of her films, it ends ambiguously. You don't get a big showdown or a clear resolution. You get a man boxed in by his own bad choices, literally framed by the world closing in on him. It's quietly devastating.
The Mastermind is both a heist movie and an anti-heist movie. It's about failure, delusion, and the strange poetry of ordinary lives. It's beautifully acted, gorgeously shot, and full of the small human details that make Kelly Reichardt's work so powerful.
Yes, it's slow. Yes, it's quiet. Yes, there are long stretches where "nothing happens." But that's the point. The suspense doesn't come from the heist. It comes from watching someone's life collapse in slow motion.
Josh O'Connor delivers one of the best performances of the year, and Reichardt once again proves that no one makes films like she does: small, precise, empathetic, funny, and deeply American.
It's not flashy. It's not loud. It's not designed for algorithms or TikTok edits. It's the kind of film that breathes. The kind that sticks with you. The kind that reminds you that cinema is about observation, not manipulation.
And even though it's technically about stealing art, The Mastermind is really about the art of being human. It's about being flawed and foolish, and forever searching for meaning in the wreckage of your own decisions.
Kelly Reichardt does it again. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
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