CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 6-6-25

[Get the exclusive video version of these weekly reviews each Friday by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon!]

I enjoy wearing nice pants, but it's getting warm out there, so how about some shorts? Some Film Critic Shorts? They fit. They are on, and I am ready to review five new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, June 6th, 2025.

1) THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME

It is now official: I've had it with Wes Anderson.

And that's not something I say lightly. I loved his early work. Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, and especially The Royal Tenenbaums — that's a perfect three-film streak.

Tenenbaums is a masterpiece, still his best film by a mile. And ever since that high watermark, Wes has been trying — over and over and over again — to make that movie again. But here's the thing: he already did it, and he hasn't even come close to reaching that level since.

I've run hot and cold on his other stuff. The Life Aquatic left me cold. Darjeeling Limited was fine. Fantastic Mr. Fox was a nice diversion. But the last truly good Wes Anderson movie was Moonrise Kingdom, 13 years ago. Since then? Aesthetic overkill, narrative nonsense, and one unwatchable indulgence after another.

The French Dispatch? Awful. Asteroid City? Barely watchable.The Phoenician Scheme? More of the same.

Set in 1950, The Phoenician Scheme stars Benicio del Toro as Zsa-Zsa Korda, a shadowy tycoon of ambiguous origin who survives yet another assassination attempt and has a vision of heaven.

Inspired (sort of), he rewrites his will to leave his empire to his estranged daughter Leisl (Mia Threapleton), now a nun because he shipped her off to a convent at age five to "keep her away from boys." The inheritance? Complicated. The family history? Suspicious. His business? In chaos.

What follows is a whirlwind journey involving terrorist plots, economic espionage, and Korda's wildly inappropriate efforts to charm everyone from his own cousin (Scarlett Johansson) to local royalty (Riz Ahmed). Michael Cera plays his Norwegian secretary. Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston play American power brokers.

There's a nightclub, a conspiracy about the "rivet" market, and frequent trips to heaven — where Bill Murray plays God (finally, a casting that actually makes sense in one of these).

But let's be honest: the plot barely matters. This movie exists for one reason — so Wes Anderson can play with his toy box.

Let me repeat it loud and clear: Wes Anderson is now making the same movie over and over again. It's a very pretty movie, with symmetrical framing, pastel color palettes, and characters who speak in hushed, deadpan riddles.

But it's the same every time. At this point, his signature style isn't a style anymore — it's a trap. A prison. A slow, suffocating death by quirk.

Every shot is a diorama. Every line is clipped and quirky. Every scene plays like it's happening behind glass. And every actor, no matter how great, becomes a muted marionette serving Wes's vision. These aren't performances—they're puppets.

Benicio del Toro has moments, but even he's shackled by the Anderson glaze. Mia Threapleton gives it her all, but the material gives her nothing to work with. Aside from the wild beard and fierce stare, Benedict Cumberbatch does very little until he's required to run around in the final fifteen minutes and participate in a fight/chase sequence that had me fighting to keep my eyes open.

Michael Cera? Unbearably annoying. He's doing a weird half-Swedish accent that comes and goes. Honestly, it feels like he's doing an SNL parody of himself, specifically, Taran Killam doing a parody of Michael Cera. It's grating, confusing, and deeply unfunny.

Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Jeffrey Wright — all wasted. Scarlett Johansson barely registers. And the basketball scene? Dear God. It's just characters throwing the ball wildly and letting it clang off metal walls while we're supposed to laugh at the sound of it. That's the joke. The sound. It's like Wes Anderson saw funny from a distance and decided to walk in the opposite direction.

There's also this whole black-and-white subplot where we visit heaven, complete with Greek chorus-style commentary and F. Murray Abraham showing up like it's Mighty Aphrodite all over again — a movie I never wanted to remember. It's like Wes saw that terrible Woody Allen movie and said, "Yes! Give me that tone."

Even Bill Murray's casting as God feels like a hollow nod to longtime fans. It should be funny and poetic, but it's just tired.

Meanwhile, there's a recurring grenade gag that fizzles fast. There are plane crashes. Multiple murder attempts. Twists, betrayals, and eccentric relatives with names like "Excaliber" and "Uncle Nubar." And somehow… none of it matters.

The movie is cluttered with actors, plot points, costume changes, and faux-whimsy. It's so obsessed with being offbeat that it forgets to be good.

Look, Wes Anderson movies are always nice to look at. The production design is meticulous. The color work is flawless. But it's the cinematic equivalent of standing in Walgreens, opening one of those 3D musical greeting cards that pops up and plays a little tune. Now imagine holding that greeting card for two hours. That's The Phoenician Scheme.

There's no soul anymore. No spontaneity. No risk. Just aesthetic control and forced whimsy.

I miss the Wes Anderson who made Rushmore. I miss the raw emotion of Tenenbaums. I miss movies that felt like stories about real people, not dollhouse dioramas with voiceovers.

The Phoenician Scheme isn't quite as unwatchable as The French Dispatch, but that's faint praise. It's still overstuffed, underwhelming, and locked in a prison of its own making. It's not charming. It's not clever. It's exhausting. - ⭐️1/2

2) BALLERINA

So I guess the official title of this movie is From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Yeah, no. I'm not calling it that. We all know it's part of the John Wick universe—you don't need a clunky branding label to tell us that.

And frankly, using that title feels like a desperate attempt to ride the coattails of four action masterpieces.

Let's be clear: the John Wick films are phenomenal. Each one—yes, all four—has delivered some of the most jaw-droppingly choreographed action, beautifully designed set pieces, and elegantly brutal stunt work of the last two decades.

They raised the bar for action movies, thanks to director Chad Stahelski, a former stuntman who brought a stuntman's understanding of movement, rhythm, and tension to the big screen. The Wick films are about elegance in violence, clarity in chaos, and Keanu Reeves in top form.

Now cut to Ballerina. It's supposed to be a cool spin-off, expanding the Wick universe by following Eve Macarro (Ana de Armas), a ballerina-turned-assassin out for revenge. She's trained in the traditions of the Ruska Roma under the mysterious Director (Anjelica Huston) after witnessing her father's murder as a child.

Now she's targeting a branded tribe of killers in a snowy assassin-infested Austrian village run by a crusty, underwhelming Gabriel Byrne doing his best Ian McShane impersonation.

Sounds cool, right? Nope. Ballerina is the cinematic equivalent of flat pop. It has all the ingredients of the John Wick magic but none of the fizz, none of the energy, and zero staying power.

And here's why: Chad Stahelski didn't direct it. Len Wiseman did. Let me say as plainly as possible: Len Wiseman is a hack. His cinematic graveyard includes the DOA Total Recall remake, the lifeless Live Free or Die Hard, and a bunch of blue-washed Underworld movies that wish they were The Matrix.

He has no sense of style or rhythm and no ability to cut or frame action in a way that makes it even remotely engaging. Despite being handed a crew of Wick veterans and some of the best stunt folks in the business, he somehow manages to make every fight scene feel dull, choppy, and CGI-laden.

This is the anti-John Wick. Where those films thrived on physicality and amazing long takes, Ballerina leans into cheesy digital blood, generic shootouts, and cartoonish choreography. It's the cinematic version of watching a rubber knife fight on a green screen.

Let's talk about Ana de Armas for a second. She is a phenomenal screen presence—electric, magnetic, and completely believable in physical roles. She trained hard for this, and it shows.

But when your dialogue is this stale, and your character is this one-dimensional, there's only so much an actor can do. She deserves a showcase; instead, she's stuck in a highlight reel of missed opportunities.

The same goes for Norman Reedus, who is completely wasted in a role that's basically a walking plot device. Poor Gabriel Byrne is clearly directed to channel Ian McShane right down to the line deliveries, but it feels sad. It's like getting the Wish.com version of The Continental.

Keanu Reeves shows up—briefly—as John Wick, which, in theory, should be thrilling. But the fight sequences he's given? Forgettable. The dialogue? Bland. If this were your first time seeing John Wick on screen, you'd wonder why everyone in the movie treats him like the Boogeyman. There's no evidence of that reputation here.

There's a hand-to-hand scene between Keanu and Ana de Armas that's supposed to be intense but just made me long to rewatch Knock Knock—a far more interesting collaboration between the two of them.

There are a few clever kills—one involving a grenade and a table is a standout—but that's about it. Every fight plays out the same way: punch, shoot, spin, repeat. There's no build, no variation, no suspense.

Even an early car crash that leads into a shootout—promising with its long crane shot and decent FX—ends up devolving into the same rinse-and-repeat action we've seen a million times before, only better.

The story? Boring. The mythology? Bloated. The pacing? A slog. By the time we get to the snowy village of assassins, I was hoping for an avalanche to just end it all.

You want to see a great female-led action movie? Watch Atomic Blonde. Or Fury Road. Or better yet, stream Ballerina—yes, another one—from 2023 on Netflix.

It's a South Korean revenge flick starring Jeon Jong-seo. It's about 45 minutes shorter, way more emotional, and packs way better action. Trust me, you'll thank me later.

Ballerina is the worst kind of franchise spin-off: one that leeches off a great series without understanding what made it great in the first place. It's a bad knockoff, both figuratively and literally. The action is dull, the direction is lifeless, the writing is lazy, and the CGI is distracting. This isn't John Wick. It's John Meh.

Skip it. Rewatch the original quadrilogy. Or if you're really curious, go rent Knock Knock and let Ana and Keanu show you how chemistry and chaos are actually done. - ⭐️1/2

3) DANGEROUS ANIMALS

There's nothing I like more than smart, tight, no-BS genre filmmaking — the kind of movie that knows exactly what it is and executes it with intelligence, style, and ferocity.

Dangerous Animals, the long-awaited return of Australian filmmaker Sean Byrne, is precisely that kind of movie. A stripped-down, blood-soaked, suspense-laced, character-driven survival horror flick that delivers everything it promises — and then some.

This is unapologetic B-movie excellence, made with skill, energy, and wicked humor. If you love horror, if you love sharks, if you love a lean, mean, expertly edited thriller with a terrific villain, a badass final girl, and killer use of music — this is the movie for you.

The premise is deliciously simple and gloriously nuts: A shark-obsessed serial killer named Tucker (played to sinister perfection by Jai Courtney) abducts a surfer and plans to feed her to sharks. Literally, that's his thing. He believes sharks are gods. He videotapes his victims getting torn apart and watches the tapes while having breakfast like they're home movies.

His next intended victim is Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), a lone-wolf surfer who lives out of her van and trusts no one. She's tough, guarded, and way more than Tucker bargained for. Toss in Moses (Josh Heuston), a good guy who gets involved after a brief spark with Zephyr, and you've got a nasty little three-way dance of survival on the open water.

It's essentially Jaws meets Wolf Creek with a little Zodiac psychological twist, and some Don't Breathe-style siege energy. And it works.

Sean Byrne hasn't made a feature in way too long. The Devil's Candy was truly fantastic, and The Loved Ones is still one of the better horror films of the last twenty years. The guy has a real sense for tone, dread, and character, and he brings that same intelligence and sharpness to Dangerous Animals. It's brutal, intense, but never dumb. He respects the genre and, more importantly, respects the audience.

Everything here is tight. Nick Lepard's script is economical but still gives you just enough backstory and emotion to care about the characters. These aren't just shark chum. Zephyr and Moses have texture, pasts, and chemistry. And Tucker? What a villain.

Let's talk about Jai Courtney for a second. He's never been better. Forget Suicide Squad — this role shows what he can do. Tucker is chilling, hilarious, charismatic, and completely unhinged.

One minute, he's calmly explaining shark behavior like your favorite nature show host; the next, he's slicing someone open and dumping them overboard. He's got framed newspaper clippings of his childhood shark attack on his boat walls like family photos. He's fascinating—and terrifying.

This guy doesn't need a machete or a chainsaw — he's got sharks. That's his slasher weapon. And it's genius.

Hassie Harrison, who folks might know from Yellowstone, is phenomenal here. She brings real presence, physicality, and emotion to Zephyr. She's not a damsel. She's not a scream queen. She's a fighter. A survivor. She reminded me of early Jennifer Lawrence — grounded, gritty, and completely compelling. Her performance anchors the movie.

Josh Heuston is also solid as Moses, a nice guy with real stakes. Their chemistry—brief though it is—feels real, which is crucial in a movie like this.

The suspense in this movie is off the charts. There's a mid-film sequence—Moses sneaking onto the boat while Tucker's out getting supplies—that is one of the most nerve-wracking, beautifully edited pieces of suspense I've seen in a long time. The timing, the editing, the music, the sound design—it's a chef's kiss.

And the shark attack scenes? Brutal. Not overdone. Not cheap CGI nonsense. Just incredibly well-built tension and payoff. There's blood, sure, but it's not gratuitous — it's impactful. It feels earned.

Also, this is one of those rare horror movies where you root for the victims AND the villain. You don't want Zephyr to die, but damn, Tucker is entertaining.

Another standout? The music. This movie uses songs in a pitch-perfect way. The opening credits slam into the screen to The Donnas' cover of "Dancing With Myself," and it rules.

You've also got Creedence's hilariously dismissed "Ooby Dooby" popping up multiple times in brilliant fashion, Stevie Wright, Crowded House, Russell Morris — a killer Aussie-heavy soundtrack used with wit and power.

The score itself? Fantastic. Tense, propulsive, moody when it needs to be. It's one of the best-scored horror films I've seen this year.

Dangerous Animals is 98 minutes of pure genre joy. It's tight. It's mean. It's smart. It's scary. It's funny. It's bloody. It's beautifully shot and edited. And it has one of the best horror villains in long time.

This is exactly what I want out of a survival horror-thriller, and it delivers. It's not about reinventing the wheel — it's about making it turn so fast it takes your breath away. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

4) THE RITUAL

The Ritual is just another carbon-copy, by-the-numbers exorcism flick trying desperately to summon some originality from the bottom of a puke bucket. And I have no idea who keeps asking for these things. Seriously, how many more times do we need to rewatch the same damn movie?

It's 2025, folks. It's been over 50 years since William Friedkin redefined horror with The Exorcist, the greatest—and still unmatched—film of its kind. And yet, here we are again, another year, another bad wig, another crusty priest yelling Latin while some poor actress writhes in bed like she's having a seizure in a haunted Planet Fitness.

So here's the premise. The Ritual follows two priests—Father Joseph Steiger (Dan Stevens), who's having a crisis of faith because his brother died (cue sad monologues and brooding stares), and Father Theophilus Riesinger (Al Pacino), the "legendary" exorcist who's already tangled with this particular demon once before.

They team up to save Emma Schmidt (Abigail Cowen), a young woman plagued by demonic possession since childhood. Along for the ride is a ragtag group of nuns (some of whom exist solely to get punched in the face or yanked around by invisible forces), and of course, there's a dark secret and some Catholic guilt sprinkled in.

It's all "based on a true story," of course—because saying that magically makes tired, recycled material feel somehow sacred, right?

Al Pacino plays Father Riesinger like he's starring in a completely different movie. His accent is all over the map (Transylvanian? Italian? Wisconsin barfly?). He mumbles, he shouts, he monologues about God and Hamlet like a dollar-store Max von Sydow, and he wears a wig so bad it should've gotten its own screen credit.

It's not "so bad, it's good"—it's just bad. Pacino either didn't read the script or did and said, "Screw it, I'm gonna do my version," which somehow involves whispering theology one minute and roaring scripture like King Lear the next.

I don't get Dan Stevens. I never have. I didn't like him in Abigail, didn't buy him in Godzilla x Kong, and I certainly don't buy him as a tortured priest here. He plays Father Steiger like a low-rent Jason Miller with none of the quiet power or pathos that made The Exorcist's Karras unforgettable.

He's got this weird flirty thing going with Sister Rose (Ashley Greene, doing the best she can with a nothing part), but it feels like a subplot yanked out of a forgotten Hallmark Channel script about forbidden love at a monastery.

We've got all the tropes, all the clichés. Spinning heads? Close enough. Growling voices? Check. White contact lenses? You bet. Buckets of vomit? Oh yeah. Cheap jump scares that rely on ear-splitting sound design and shaky-cam chaos? Absolutely.

There's even a scene where a nun gets her scalp ripped off. Like, really? Why? Because it's "shocking"? Because we're supposed to gasp and forget that the rest of the movie is a dull, dark slog?

The climactic demon-hunting portion of the movie takes place in a shadowy, underlit church basement where people scream, the walls crack, and furniture flies around like we're watching a haunted IKEA. There's not a single fresh idea in any of it.

Patricia Heaton shows up as Mother Superior in what might be the most miscast role since Denise Richards played a nuclear physicist. Her accent comes and goes like a broken GPS signal, and she spends the movie's climax locked in a room, reacting to cracks in the wall.

And Patrick Fabian pops in as a bishop long enough to yell a little and vanish. You get the feeling everyone involved got a call that said, "It's an Exorcist-type movie. You'll be in robes. We shoot for a week. Quick payday."

Abigail Cowen, bless her heart. At least she gets to chew some scenery. Possession roles are always a blast for the actor—guttural growls, body contortions, projectile fluids—and she dives in. She's no Linda Blair, but she's game, and in a better movie, she might've had a shot at being memorable.

The film divides the exorcism into labeled chapters—Ritual One, Ritual Two, etc.—like that's supposed to make it feel important. By Ritual Six, I was actively rooting for the demon.

The priests bicker endlessly about psychology vs. faith, repeat the same theological arguments every 15 minutes, and there's zero momentum. You could fall asleep, wake up an hour later, and still be caught up.

David Midell, who directed this thing, seems to think that shaky cam, brown filters, and loud noises equal suspense. The movie has no visual identity. It looks like every Paranormal Activity sequel spliced with a bunch of outtakes from The Nun. The editing is jarring, the camera won't sit still, and the score just yells at you the whole time.

It all reeks of trying way too hard to be "Important Horror" when it's just another bottom-tier Exorcist knockoff.

Look, it's not just that The Ritual is bad. It's that it's lazy. It's tired. It's just another cash grab in the ever-bloated graveyard of exorcism movies. It brings absolutely nothing new to the table. It's just loud, overacted, badly directed nonsense that pretends to be deep because it quotes scripture and throws around the word "faith" a lot.

When it finally, mercifully ended, I immediately put on Beyond the Door, a truly idiotic 1974 Exorcist ripoff. And you know what? I had more fun watching that than this. At least Beyond the Door knows it's garbage, and it rules.

We don't need more exorcism movies. And if you somehow land Al Pacino for one and still screw it up this badly? That's all the proof you need that the devil isn't in the details—he's in the director's chair. - ⭐️

5) THE LIFE OF CHUCK

There's nothing worse than a movie that screams, "THIS IS IMPORTANT," while offering nothing but soft-focus nonsense and shameless manipulation.

That's The Life of Chuck, one of the most unbearably cloying, pompous, and emotionally dishonest films I've sat through in years — a treacly slog that somehow manages to be about life, death, the universe, and dancing… while saying absolutely nothing meaningful about any of it.

Based on the novella by Stephen King — a man who's cranked out more words than the Library of Congress and occasionally dips into Hallmark territory when he gets sentimental — this "three acts in reverse" adaptation comes courtesy of Mike Flanagan, who has done great work with King (Gerald's Game, Doctor Sleep), but here loses the thread so badly it's as if he dropped the entire spool down a philosophical black hole.

The film starts with promise — a moody, end-of-the-world scenario where sinkholes swallow traffic, Pornhub is offline (an actual crisis, apparently), and people are offing themselves so frequently that Karen Gillan's hospital ward is dubbed the "suicide squad."

That's the strongest chunk of the movie, with some intriguing tension and a great little performance from Matthew Lillard, of all people, but even this chapter quickly descends into a swirl of half-baked monologues and apocalyptic metaphor soup.

From there, we go backward. Chapter Two is essentially a single long dance number where Tom Hiddleston — who is completely wasted here — joins a stranger on the street in a toe-tapping routine that is supposed to represent the "joy of life" but instead feels like it was directed by someone who saw La La Land once on an airplane.

Chapter One? Chuck's childhood, haunted cupolas, a tragic backstory, and yes, Mark Hamill acting like a Victorian ghost crossed with a bad SNL impression. It's the kind of "important" performance that should come with subtitles and a warning label.

Let's be clear: this movie is full of it. Not full of heart. Not full of insight. Just full of it.

Cloying music from the Newton Brothers tinkling away at every emotional beat, monologues that feel like rejected TED Talks, and a narrator — Nick Offerman — who sounds like Ron Swanson reading a eulogy written by a ChatGPT trained on fortune cookies and pop psychology. His delivery makes the movie feel like a 90-minute audiobook designed to put you to sleep or into a coma.

This is a movie about "The Big Stuff™: mortality, memory, the beauty of a life well lived. But it approaches these themes with all the subtlety of a pie in the face. It's not profound; it's pretending to be profound. There's a big difference.

Every moment, every cut, every musical cue is engineered with a smug, self-satisfied importance. The whole film feels like it's daring you not to cry. I didn't cry. I just squirmed. A lot.

Tom Hiddleston is stuck with a role that requires him to smile soulfully and dance like no one's watching — except everyone is, unfortunately.

Karen Gillan, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Jacob Tremblay, David Dastmalchian, Annalise Basso, even the always-welcome Heather Langenkamp… this is an amazing cast reduced to delivering mawkish speeches and staring meaningfully into the distance. There's no room for character here — they're all just vehicles for "deep" ideas written in crayon.

Also, Mark Hamill. I realize he's Luke Skywalker, but the man is not a good actor. His performance here is so exaggerated and drenched in vocal affectation and bizarre tics that it's as if he wandered in from a completely different movie—one I wouldn't want to see.

By the end, The Life of Chuck feels less like a narrative and more like a spiritual screensaver. Emotional fireworks that never go off. It's the cinematic equivalent of one of those inspirational posters you see in a dentist's office: "Dance like nobody's watching. Live like you're dying. Hug your dad." Ugh. Kill me.

To be fair, maybe it worked better on the page. I haven't read the novella, and I'm guessing King's prose could add dimension where Flanagan's syrupy adaptation doesn't. But as a film, this is as shallow and smug as prestige filmmaking gets. A movie that insists on its own importance without ever earning it.

Flanagan's been a solid horror director and has done King justice before. But this? It is a failure on nearly every level. It is a painfully manipulative, visually bland, overly narrated, emotionally dishonest mess. It wants you to cry, but all it did was make me cringe.

Skip The Life of Chuck and instead rewatch The Shawshank Redemption or even Stand By Me — movies that actually understand how to explore life, loss, and love without demanding that you FEEL IT, DAMMIT!

One of the worst movies of the year. - ⭐️

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!