CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 5-2-25
- Nick Digilio
- May 3
- 16 min read
[Get the exclusive video version of these weekly reviews each Friday by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon!]
Film Critic pants - ON. Cubs Hat - ON. I am ready to review five new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, May 2nd, 2025.
Let me start by saying something I've said a million times before — if you've ever listened to me on the radio, on my podcast, or read anything I've written, I could not possibly care less about comic book movies.
Superhero films do absolutely nothing for me. DC, Marvel, MCU, whatever alphabet soup they want to call it — I don't care. When these movies are over, they disappear from my mind like smoke. Whenever a new one shows up, I spend the first 15 or 20 minutes wondering what the hell is even happening.
That absolutely holds true for Thunderbolts*, the latest interchangeable, one-dimensional comic-book assembly line product to emerge from the Marvel Studios machine.
This is the 36th movie in the MCU, and it feels like the 236th. Sure, they try to disguise this thing as a deeper, darker, more significant movie by tossing in themes of trauma, depression, addiction, and suicidal thoughts.
But just because you monologue about serious psychological issues doesn't mean you're making a serious movie. You're still slathering a stupid comic book in fake gravitas — and it fools nobody.
The screenplay, from Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo, is loaded with every cliché you expect from a Marvel movie. You've got your band of misfits (this time a pack of sad sacks with a collective mountain of trauma and daddy issues) being forced into a dangerous mission by Julia Louis-Dreyfus' evil politician character.
The group consists of Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Red Guardian (David Harbour), Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), Taskmaster (Olga Kurylenko), and John Walker (Wyatt Russell). They're all damaged goods, and the big uplifting message is, "Hey, you're not alone in your darkness!" Thanks, Marvel. Real deep.
The director, Jake Schreier, who actually did some very good work on shows like Lodge 49 and Beef, brings none of that creativity here. The action sequences are bland, and the special effects are fine (because Marvel has a billion dollars to spend), but the movie is dead on arrival. I don't care about any of the characters; none are developed beyond their trauma bullet points.
Florence Pugh is an incredibly talented actress — look at Midsommar, Dune Part 2, Fighting With My Family — but here she's stuck playing another brooding, traumatized action hero. Frankly, I'm getting tired of her signing up for these.
Sebastian Stan, also a great actor (A Different Man, The Apprentice), is wasted here, standing around tossing out wisecracks. Wyatt Russell, who can be really charming, has nothing to do. Hannah John-Kamen and Olga Kurylenko are glorified extras.
And then there's David Harbour, the poor man's John Goodman, hamming it up with a terrible Russian accent and dousing his scenes in overacting. He's been doing the same tired schtick since Stranger Things, and it's beyond old at this point.
As for Julia Louis-Dreyfus — she's basically just doing a warmed-over version of her Veep character. In fact, they even have her assistant (played by Geraldine Viswanathan) pulling a second-rate Tony Hale impression. Watching these scenes, you realize how bad Veep would have been if Armando Iannucci hadn't been running the show.
Now, let's talk about the villain. His name is Bob. Yes, Bob. (Or Robert.) Lewis Pullman, son of Bill Pullman, plays Bob. He is the "Void" — a walking manifestation of depression, sadness, and emo vibes. He spreads darkness across New York City.
I half-expected Bauhaus' Bela Lugosi's Dead to start playing every time he showed up. Honestly, I'm shocked they didn't just call him "Robert Smith" and have The Cure blasting over the soundtrack.
This is probably the first emo comic book movie ever made — and it's laughable. The villain is boring, his backstory is generic, and the metaphor (depression = spreading darkness) is so heavy-handed it feels like it was written in crayon.
And if you thought they couldn't make it even more ridiculous, the movie closes with Starship's Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now playing over the credits. Yes, the same cheesy '80s song from Mannequin. You can't make this up. Emo, meet mall-pop.
The audience I saw it with seemed to enjoy it—and I'm sure it'll make a truckload of money because these Marvel movies always do. But I am absolutely not the audience for these things. I don't respond to them. I don't care about the "phases," "Easter eggs," or mid-credits scenes teasing the next ten movies.
Thunderbolts* desperately tries to be the serious Marvel movie where trauma and depression matter. But it's just another disposable, unoriginal, loud, flashy, empty comic book movie disguised with faux seriousness. It's a waste of a great cast. It's a waste of whatever shred of creativity Marvel had left.
It's also a perfect reminder of why I don't give a damn about superhero movies — and probably never will. - ⭐️1/2
Directed by Lorcan Finnegan and written by Thomas Martin, The Surfer is easily one of the worst films of the year — a maddening, self-serious slog that wastes Nicolas Cage in a role that promises insanity but delivers nothing but sunburnt posturing and vague symbolism slathered in stale arthouse pretension.
Let's get the premise out of the way. Cage plays a guy known simply in the credits as "The Surfer" (always a bad sign when your character's name sounds like it was written by a film school freshman who just discovered metaphors).
He shows up in Luna Bay, Australia, in his Lexus, teenage son in tow, with plans to surf, reconnect with his past, and maybe win back his estranged wife. His dream? To buy back the childhood home he lost when his father died. Of course, someone outbids him. Then things go sideways.
He gets bullied by local beach jocks — the "bay boys" — who treat him like a foreign invader, beat him down, steal his board, and mock him in an increasingly cartoonish fashion. The cops won't help. His phone dies. His car gets stolen.
Eventually, this once put-together American becomes a dazed, shoeless drifter, crashing in an abandoned jalopy, drinking filthy water, eating trash, and hallucinating while slowly losing everything — dignity, grip on reality, and apparently his sense of sunscreen application.
So what's the point? The Surfer wants to say something about male ego, toxic masculinity, legacy, fatherhood, midlife crisis, and how the surf washes it all away. But it says all that in the most hamfisted, ponderous, and irritatingly vague ways possible.
It's a "psychological thriller" in name only. What it really is? A giant pile of sun-bleached nonsense masquerading as art.
The visuals? Over-saturated, fish-eye lens heavy, slow-motion nonsense. It looks like a Red Bull commercial got lost on the way to a Terrence Malick film. It reminded me a lot of Oliver Stone's awful U-Turn, and that's NOT a good thing.
The music is intrusive and bizarre, the editing is random and jarring, and the stylistic choices scream "This is a nightmare" without ever actually feeling like one.
It's a blender of soft focus, watery filters, and rapid cuts — the kind of filmmaking that says, "Look how weird we are!" without earning any of it.
And then there's Cage.
I've said it before: Nicolas Cage is talented. He can be great. Pig is proof. Leaving Las Vegas is proof. Adaptation is proof. Mandy was wild in a great way. But Cage makes 5-6 movies a year — and for every good one, there are four or five he clearly took for the paycheck. The Surfer is one of those.
He's a producer on this film, so he takes it seriously. Too seriously. This is a movie that needs crazy Cage. It screams for a batshit meltdown. It wants the wide-eyed, teeth-gnashing, scenery-chewing madness fans crave from Cage when he's set loose.
But here? He mopes. He grimaces. He sulks in the sun, scowls at the waves, and sleepwalks through existential despair. This is "restrained Cage" in a film that should've been Vampire's Kiss by way of Straw Dogs.
And look — I'm not even a big fan of the whole "let's celebrate every unhinged Cage performance" movement. I get tired of the "so bad it's brilliant" attitude surrounding half of his output.
But if you sell me a movie this deranged in style, at least give me a performance that matches the energy. Instead, you get a half-baked symbolic fever dream that never earns your time or interest.
The locals who torment Cage are cartoon villains. Julian McMahon (remember him from Nip/Tuck and the old Fantastic Four movies?) plays the lead alpha bully like he's trying out for a parody of a parody. There's no nuance. No stakes.
Oh, and the metaphor? Oh boy. Maybe the old bum on the beach is Cage. Maybe it's his future. Or his father. Or his soul. Or some other nonsense.
The movie clearly thinks it's profound, but it's all so vague and self-important that by the time the surfer finally paddles out to the ocean to reclaim his manhood or soul or whatever, I was rooting for a shark to show up and end it already.
And for all the arty attempts at being deep, this thing is painfully, painfully simple: "Rich dude has unresolved daddy issues, gets beaten down by life, and finds redemption by getting sand in his shorts."
That's it. There's no emotional anchor. No real character development. Just a lot of soft-focus staring and sweating. There's no catharsis. No payoff. Not even a decent surf scene. It's just 100 minutes of bad wigs, worse accents, and wasted time.
The Surfer is a shallow wannabe fever dream with the depth of a kiddie pool and none of the thrill. Nicolas Cage doesn't go nuts. The script doesn't go anywhere. And the style over substance is so aggressive it's exhausting. This movie will give you sunstroke. Avoid. - ⭐️
Let's just start here: Rosario is not a great horror film—but it's not terrible either. It's technically solid, features some impressive practical effects, and delivers its fair share of creepy, gooey visuals that genre fans (like myself) will appreciate.
But where it fails—and this is a big one—is in giving us a story or characters to actually care about. Which is a shame because director Felipe Vargas clearly knows how to direct horror. He just needs a better script—a much better script.
Emeraude Toubia plays Rosario Fuentes, a cold, ambitious, and sleek Wall Street stockbroker—at least that's what the movie tells us. The truth is, she doesn't actually seem that cold. She's successful. She drinks smoothies. She wears tight yoga pants and jogs.
She ignores the doorman in her fancy Manhattan building (which is the cinematic shorthand for "she's heartless," I guess). But nothing about her screams, "I'm a terrible person who deserves a night of hellish supernatural retribution." The movie kind of forgets to make that case. Which is problem number one.
After the sudden death of her grandmother during a brutal snowstorm that effectively shuts down New York City, Rosario returns to the old, crumbling apartment building where she grew up. She's tasked with dealing with the aftermath, and that includes—wait for it—spending the night in the apartment with her grandmother's corpse because of course.
That leads to uncovering a secret chamber filled with occult artifacts tied to dark generational rituals (as one does). Before long, all hell breaks loose.
We're talking voodoo magic, flaming spirits, hands coming out of throats, creatures oozing out of shadows, doors that shouldn't open suddenly opening, and the grandmother's corpse twitching back to life.
There's even a moment where Rosario ends up in a flashback sequence inside the back of a truck crossing the U.S.-Mexico border—which is as heavy-handed a metaphor for reconciling with your cultural roots as you'll find in a horror film this year.
And, yes, let's not forget the maggots. So. Many. Maggots. I mean, this movie has close-ups of writhing, glistening, disgusting maggots like it's gunning for a Guinness World Record. It probably got it.
The horror stuff? Pretty good! The cinematography is moody and atmospheric. The production design makes the haunted apartment complex feel alive with rot and shadow. The practical effects (there is very little CGI here, thankfully) are well done, and Vargas knows how to stage a jump scare or two that actually works.
There are some great moments when a creature moves just enough in the background while Rosario stands still in the foreground. That kind of thing, when done well, is gold for horror fans. And this movie delivers a few of those.
Performance-wise, Toubia handles herself well, even as the material asks her to scream, cry, and wrestle with the most absurd horror situations possible. She's a very watchable screen presence.
David Dastmalchian is reliably creepy as the overly familiar neighbor who really wants his air fryer back—yes, really. (Side note: Dastmalchian never phones it in. The guy's built a whole career on playing weirdos, and this is another great one.)
Paul Ben-Victor from The Wire shows up in a small role as the creepy building custodian, and José Zúñiga has some nice moments as Rosario's emotionally distant father.
But again, the main problem is the script. The whole "career woman rediscovers her roots through terrifying supernatural reckoning" trope has been done before—better.
The beats here are predictable: She starts off disconnected from her heritage, gets trapped in her grandmother's apartment, and, through a series of goo-soaked hallucinations and borderline demonic possession, learns the value of family, culture, and sacrifice.
Only…it doesn't land. The character arc isn't earned. The emotional revelations come way too late in the story. We're told there's a rift between Rosario and her grandmother, but we don't see it.
There's a vague suggestion that Rosario abandoned her mother and grandmother in favor of siding with her father during a divorce, but the film never fleshes that out in any meaningful way. It just drops these facts halfway through the runtime and expects you to retroactively care. Sorry, that's not how good screenwriting works.
Also, the immigration subplot is so tacked on. One flashback to a truck full of immigrants and a few lines of dialogue don't cut it. If you want to make a movie about the trauma and sacrifice of generational immigration, do that. Don't just use it as spooky backstory filler between gross-out horror sequences.
That said, I do want to give credit to Felipe Vargas. For a debut feature, Rosario shows a lot of promise. The guy knows how to shoot horror. He knows mood. He knows how to use space and shadow. He stages his scenes well.
His pacing is tight (the movie is refreshingly short—less than 90 minutes!), and the sound design is on point. I'm all in if he can pair up with a better screenwriter or develop stronger material next time. I'll definitely keep my eye on whatever he does next.
Final verdict? Rosario is a stylish, well-directed, occasionally creepy horror flick with some strong visuals and makeup effects—but it's also a shallow, underwritten story with a main character we never get to fully know and a theme that deserved a much deeper, more nuanced approach.
It's worth a late-night watch for the horror heads out there—especially if you're into maggots. But don't expect anything more than surface-level scares.
And maybe keep your air fryer close. Just in case. - ⭐️⭐️1/22
Let's be honest: when you hear "boxing movie about an aging fighter with family issues," your eyes probably roll to the back of your head. You've seen this before—Rocky Balboa, The Fighter, Southpaw, Creed, hell, The Champ if you're really going back.
This genre is one of cinema's most recycled tropes. But every once in a while, one of these movies rises above the punch-drunk pack by doing the basics really, really well—and Salvable is one of those.
Set in a grim but gorgeously photographed pocket of Wales, Salvable tells the story of Sal (Toby Kebbell), a down-on-his-luck former boxer scraping by in a rundown trailer, working days at a nursing home and training at night under the grizzled eye of his longtime coach Welly (James Cosmo).
His relationship with his teenage daughter Molly (Kila Lord Cassidy) is strained and barely holding on. His ex-wife (Elaine Cassidy) has no interest in letting him be a bigger part of Molly's life. When Sal loses his job and his custody battle falls apart, desperation creeps in.
That's when Vince (Shia LaBeouf), an old friend with a checkered past and bleached hair to match, slithers back into his life, promising a path to money through underground fights—and eventually, far darker things.
Make no mistake: Salvable hits every cliché in the "washed-up fighter" handbook. The broken family. The mentor who believes in "one last dance." The training montages. The ill-fated criminal detour. Even the redemptive arc that may or may not arrive on time. But what keeps this from becoming cinematic mush is the way it's executed.
The Welsh setting is a character in itself—rain-soaked streets, bleak hillsides, dimly lit pubs, all shot in a way that oozes mood and melancholy. The grainy, raw cinematography reminded me of The Wrestler—and yes, you will think of that Darren Aronofsky masterpiece while watching this.
The parallels are obvious, but instead of feeling like a knock-off, Salvable feels more like a spiritual cousin—less stylized, maybe, but just as emotionally earnest.
Kebbell, long one of those "oh that guy" actors from films like Dawn of the Planet of the Apes and Kong: Skull Island, absolutely owns this film. This is his best work to date, hands down. There's a vulnerability in his portrayal of Sal that's both heartbreaking and relatable.
You believe his pain, regret, and quiet dignity—especially in the scenes at the nursing home, which could've been throwaway moments in lesser hands but instead carry a gentle, affecting weight. He never plays the role for pity; he plays it for truth, and that makes all the difference.
Then there's Shia LaBeouf. Listen, I've always admired this guy, even as his real-life antics have veered into bizarre performance art and legal infamy. Underneath the chaos, though, is a genuinely compelling actor who's never dull and always committed.
And in Salvable, he turns in a performance that's twitchy, dangerous, and alive. From the moment his bleach-blonde Vince shows up, there's a buzzing unease in the air. He's the spark that ignites the story's downward spiral, and every scene he's in has an edge.
His chemistry with Kebbell is undeniable—they play off each other like two guys with decades of shared baggage, history, and damage. Vince is the devil on Sal's shoulder, and LaBeouf plays him with the perfect cocktail of menace, charm, and sadness.
It's a far cry from his early sunny Disney Channel days or his action-hero stint in Transformers. This is Shia as a character actor—risky, strange, and utterly watchable. And I loved it.
Salvable isn't here to reinvent the wheel. It's here to spin that wheel with care, craft, and real human emotion. The film is dour, yes. It's a bit of a downer, sure. But the title says it all—it's about people who might still have something left to save. And that theme resonates, even if we've heard the tune before.
Technically, the film is solid across the board. The boxing scenes are tight and gritty without being overly stylized, and the score underscores the mood without being manipulative.
The sound design is immersive. And while the narrative is as familiar as an old pair of gloves, the emotional punches land where they're supposed to.
There's no groundbreaking story here. You've seen elements of this film in a dozen others. But it doesn't need to break new ground when the acting is this good and the mood this palpable. It just needs to connect—and it does.
Salvable is a somber, well-acted little boxing drama that stands out because of its performances, setting, and willingness to live in the quiet moments, not just the ring. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Let's get this out of the way right now: I'm a Paul Feig guy. Always have been. The man has a very particular style—corny, cheeky, flamboyant, unapologetically camp—and I dig out of it.
Whether it's Freaks and Geeks, Bridesmaids, or the criminally underrated and (yeah, I said it) best Ghostbusters movie ever made (yes, the one with Wiig, McCarthy, McKinnon, and Jones), Feig brings a fearless flair to everything he touches.
And with Another Simple Favor, he's back doing what he does best: letting beautiful, funny women wreak comedic havoc in designer clothes against backdrops that make you want to sell your car and move to Italy.
This sequel to 2018's delightfully twisted A Simple Favor finds Anna Kendrick's hyper-earnest, compulsively vlogging Stephanie Smothers again tangled up in the dazzling web of Blake Lively's Emily Nelson. Five years have passed since the first film's events, and while Stephanie is still hawking her memoir, sales have flatlined.
Enter Emily—miraculously sprung from prison thanks to an army of pricey Italian lawyers—and she's getting married. To who, you ask? Oh, just a smoldering mafia heir named Dante (played by 365 Days heartthrob Michele Morrone) with a matriarch mom (Elena Sofia Ricci) straight out of a soap opera. Naturally, Stephanie's invited to be maid of honor at their wildly over-the-top wedding on the island of Capri.
From there? Chaos. Murder. Drones. Truth serum. Vulgarity. Wig jokes. Mafia feuds. Doppelgängers. More twists than a pretzel factory.
The movie is nothing if not gorgeous. Feig leans all the way into the destination wedding aesthetic, using Capri like a supporting character. Gorgeous cliffs. Glorious sun-drenched villas. And then there are the costumes—my God, the costumes.
Blake Lively doesn't just enter scenes—she arrives, like a couture-clad wrecking ball, each outfit more hilarious and insane than the last. Costume design becomes its own joke, with Lively delivering punchlines without speaking a word, purely through the fabric and feathers she's draped in.
Here's where things start to fray: it's too long. Way too long. At least 30 minutes of excess could've been snipped without losing anything essential. There's a moment about halfway through where the movie goes from fun and fizzy to bloated and baffling.
By the time you're on the 50th twist—and I'm not exaggerating—it's hard to keep track of who's faking what and why, and honestly, you stop caring. Mafia intrigue, mistaken identities, and some bonkers multiple-role shenanigans from Lively spiral into full-on nonsense.
But here's the kicker: you don't need to care about the plot. This movie isn't about narrative coherence. It's about the ride—the ridiculous, rude, and ravishing ride. It's about watching funny, charismatic people bounce off each other in wild settings, saying delightfully filthy things with charm and swagger. Think John Waters by way of Vogue Italia.
The real draw here is Kendrick and Lively. Their chemistry remains untouchable. Kendrick's no longer the shy suburbanite from the first film—she's got bite now and clearly loves every absurd second.
One extended sequence, where her character is tied to a chair and injected with truth serum, is pure gold. Kendrick lets loose in a way that's both physically manic and verbally masterful. It's the best scene in the movie, bar none and a perfect reminder of what an electric comedic performer she is when given the right material.
The supporting cast holds their own, too. Returning as Emily's ex-husband, Henry Golding is a standout, hurling boozy barbs like a charmingly bitter ex lounging poolside. Elizabeth Perkins replaces Jean Smart as Emily's mom, and they explain the recast with a snarky one-liner about excessive facial work. Perkins is hilarious—slurring, wig-wearing, and gloriously unfiltered. Add Allison Janney to the mix as a cranky, chain-smoking aunt, and you've got a murderer's row of scene-stealers.
Is Another Simple Favor better than the original? No. Not even close. The first film had a much tighter script and a real sense of mystery beneath the glossy surface. This one is messier, louder, and more cartoonish.
But is it fun? Absolutely. In the right mood, with the right drink in hand, it's a perfect couch-watch. Think of it like a bowl of candy: tasty, colorful, no nutritional value—but hey, it hits the spot.
If you're looking for deep storytelling or character arcs that go anywhere meaningful, keep walking.
But if you want to watch beautiful people be hilariously vulgar in fabulous clothes on a sun-drenched island while Paul Feig winks at every genre cliché he can cram into two hours, then grab the remote. Just don't expect to remember the plot tomorrow. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
Thanks for reading, and please SUBSCRIBE to my weekly NEWSLETTER!
Join me on Patreon as a paid subscriber to help keep this thing going.
Thanks again!