CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 7-18-25
- Jul 19
- 17 min read
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Despite the heat and humidity, I enjoy wearing my nice Film Critic pants, and they are official. They fit. They are on. I am ready to review five new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, July 18th, 2025.
There was a time, not that long ago, when Ari Aster was one of the most exciting new voices in genre filmmaking.
Hereditary was a shot of pure terror and emotional carnage, a brilliantly directed horror film with real psychological weight and one of the all-time great unhinged performances from Toni Collette.
Midsommar, his sun-drenched breakup horror follow-up, was longer, weirder, and more satirical, but still grounded in character and filled with disturbing imagery that stuck with you.
Then came Beau Is Afraid, and it all started to fall apart.
That film was three hours of indulgent, mumbling, surrealist nonsense, anchored (or rather, capsized) by a meandering Joaquin Phoenix performance and about 20 pounds of Oedipal baggage. It was a mess.
And now, with Eddington, Aster goes even further off the rails. This movie is an overlong, overstuffed, overconfident noise machine disguised as satire. And it's one of the worst films of the year.
Set in May 2020 in the fictional town of Eddington, New Mexico, Eddington follows Joe Cross (Joaquin Phoenix, doing his best "sad, sweaty man" schtick), a sheriff who refuses to enforce mask mandates because, of course, "freedom."
Opposing him is the town's more progressive mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), who also happens to be his political rival and, twist, his wife's ex.
Throw in some protests, a shady tech data center threatening the town's resources, some deeply confused Gen Z activism, conspiracy-theory paranoia, a cult-like guru (Austin Butler) who babbles about pedophile rings, and the mother-in-law from hell (Deirdre O'Connell) feeding everyone Alex Jones-level lunacy, and you've got yourself a Molotov cocktail of ideas that never ignite.
It's Network meets No Country for Old Men meets Beau Is Afraid meets… I don't know, a Twitter thread from 2020. But none of it works.
Phoenix once again plays a pathetic, emasculated loser. His Joe Cross is cut from the same sweaty, neurotic cloth as his character in Beau Is Afraid, complete with tics, mumbles, and half-formed sentences.
It's like watching a man slowly drown in his own method. And while Phoenix can be brilliant (The Master, Her, Walk the Line), here he's just a mumbling cipher. The character is such a passive void that by the time a supposed "twist" occurs halfway through, you're too numb to care.
And let's talk about that twist. About 90 minutes in, Eddington pivots hard into Coen Brothers territory: a botched cover-up, a crime gone wrong, a ridiculous shootout that ends in irony and bloodshed. It wants to be clever. It wants to be darkly funny. Instead, it's just noise. Literal and figurative noise.
This movie tries to satirize everything: COVID, BLM, ANTIFA, tech overlords, overzealous allyship, political polarization, toxic masculinity, online radicalization, influencer culture, you name it.
But instead of focusing its lens, Aster just machine-guns everything in sight. And like the literal giant machine gun that shows up in the final act, none of the bullets land.
The satire here isn't just toothless, it's idiotic. It's like Aster made a checklist of 2020 events and glued them together without insight, context, or character.
The BLM protests are led by horny teenagers trying to impress a girl. The conspiracy theorist characters are cartoonish. And when the film finally tries to say something, it collapses under the weight of its own smugness.
There are themes, sure. The fear of emasculation, paranoia, the failures of American masculinity. And of course, the mother issue. Because, once again, Aster drags out his recurring Oedipal obsession.
Deirdre O'Connell plays the emotionally abusive, overbearing mother-in-law whose presence looms over every scene like a bad smell. Enough already. We get it. Ari has mom issues. That doesn't mean the rest of us have to sit through two and a half hours of therapy dressed up as satire.
You've got Emma Stone, Austin Butler, Pedro Pascal, hell, even David Lynch would be jealous of this ensemble. But most of them barely register.
Stone is fine, but her character has no arc. Butler plays a whispering cult leader who feels like a reject from The Wicker Man. Pascal is underused. Only the two deputy characters (played by Michael Ward and Luke Grimes) bring any kind of energy or presence. Everyone else is trapped in Aster's web of "meaningful" nonsense.
Eddington wants you to think it's smart. It wants you to sit in the theater, nodding knowingly as it references things you vaguely remember from five years ago. And it wants you to walk out thinking, "Wow, that really said something." But it doesn't.
This is a film for people who mistake volume for depth. Who think referencing real-world events equals social commentary. Who believe that just mentioning toilet paper hoarding, George Floyd protests, or ANTIFA makes a film insightful.
It's not. It's lazy. It's shallow. It's satire written by someone who doesn't understand satire.
Eddington also pales in comparison to the brilliant, subtle, and accurate portrayal of the 2020 COVID-era found in Craig Gillespie's criminally underrated Dumb Money.
In that terrific film, Gillespie not only displayed a better understanding of the time period, but he also did it without the pompous self-congratulations that Aster jams into every frame of his movie.
Now, there is a version of Eddington that could've worked. Take the best of Hereditary's character-driven horror and Midsommar's biting relationship satire, apply it to a small-town COVID-era setting, and you might have something. But Eddington is not that movie. It's a confused, cluttered, arrogant mess.
And at two and a half hours, it's not just bad, it's exhausting.
Perhaps Ari Aster needs to take a break from filmmaking, or maybe make a movie about something other than toxic mothers and paranoid men. Because right now, he's gone from one of horror's most promising new voices to a filmmaker trapped in his own narcissistic feedback loop.
Eddington is a massive disappointment. An empty satire that screams in all directions and hits nothing. One of the worst films of the year. And maybe the clearest sign yet that Aster's brilliance might just have been a fluke. - ⭐️
I didn't see this one coming.
Seriously, if you had told me back in January that one of the most smartly written, laugh-out-loud funny, and flat-out entertaining movies I'd see in the summer of 2025 would be Smurfs, I would've thought you'd hit the bong too hard and wandered into the wrong cinema.
But here we are.
And I'm telling you right now: Smurfs is a delight. A weird, wild, joyously unhinged, and unexpectedly sharp animated satire that took my cynical film critic expectations and crushed them under a blue, mushroom-shaped house.
This isn't your grandpa's Smurfs. Or even your 2011 Smurfs. Or your 2017 Lost Village Smurfs. This is a full-blown reboot that somehow manages to respect the legacy of Peyo's original comic creations and toss them into a completely modern, high-octane, satirical world bursting with pop culture, musical numbers, and interdimensional mayhem.
The premise is simple: Papa Smurf (voiced with gravitas by John Goodman) is kidnapped by the ever-evil Gargamel (JP Karliak), who now has a sinister wizard brother named Razamel. (Of course he does.)
Smurfette (Rihanna, also a producer and songwriter here) rallies a team of misfit Smurfs and ventures out into the "real world," including Paris, outback Australia, and a few unexpected cosmic detours, to save him. Along the way, they encounter influencers, video game bosses, magical books, and yes… ninja Smurfs.
And the weird part? It all works.
A huge reason why Smurfs lands so perfectly is because of the script. The great Pam Brady, who is Trey Parker and Matt Stone's longtime writing partner (South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, Team America, Hamlet 2), wrote this thing. And boy, does it show.
Brady brings her trademark bite and weirdness to what could've been just another cash-grab kiddie film. Instead, she gives us a comedy with actual teeth. It's got satire, it's got character, it's got stakes, and it's got more than a few laugh-out-loud moments that adults will absolutely appreciate.
There are bits in this film that feel like they snuck in straight from South Park, and I mean that as a high compliment.
Want to skewer influencers, gaming culture, AI, political platitudes, and the state of pop stardom in 2025? Brady does. And somehow, she does it all through Smurfs.
Chris Miller, veteran of Shrek the Third and Puss in Boots, directs with verve and visual flair. The animation (handled by Cinesite) is a kinetic, bouncy, comic-inspired style that honors Peyo's original work while giving it a 2025 upgrade.
There are action lines, thought bubbles, and squash-and-stretch gags; it's genuinely fun to look at. The pacing never drags, the set pieces pop, and the musical numbers are stylish, toe-tapping bursts of energy.
You want voice talent? How about Rihanna, James Corden, Nick Offerman, Dan Levy, Amy Sedaris, Natasha Lyonne, Sandra Oh, Jimmy Kimmel, Octavia Spencer, Nick Kroll, Hannah Waddingham, Alex Winter, Maya Erskine, Kurt Russell, and John Goodman? It's insane. And they're all actually giving performances, not just phoning in lines for a paycheck.
Rihanna absolutely owns Smurfette, bringing both sass and soul. Offerman is gold as Ken, Papa Smurf's macho brother. And Karliak somehow manages to make both Gargamel and Razamel hilariously menacing. There's even a sentient book voiced by Amy Sedaris. What more could you possibly ask for?
This thing works for kids, there's no doubt. The color, the energy, the goofy humor, the songs (by the way, Rihanna's "Friend of Mine" is genuinely great), it all plays for a younger audience.
But parents? Film nerds? Sarcastic Gen Xers like me? You will be stunned. There's real adult humor here. Not wink-wink innuendo garbage, but actual satire. There are moments that will fly right over your kids' heads and hit you like a pie in the face.
Smurfs is not just a good animated movie. It's one of the most entertaining movies I've seen all summer. I came in rolling my eyes. Within 10 minutes, I was laughing. By the end, I was almost clapping. It's that much fun.
Beautifully animated. Witty as hell. Packed with clever jokes, catchy songs, and a killer cast. And at the center of it all is a razor-sharp script from one of the great comedy writers of our time.
Don't let the title fool you. Don't let the franchise's baggage stop you. Smurfs (2025) is a high-energy surprise that deserves your attention. And I can't believe I'm saying this, but, I can't wait for the sequel. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
In Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, actress Embeth Davidtz steps behind the camera for the first time and adapts Alexandra Fuller's deeply personal memoir into a film that hits you in the gut and stays there.
It's an impressive directorial debut, one that doesn't try to tackle the entire book, which covers a sprawling and tragic history of a white Zimbabwean family, but instead laser-focuses on one vital section: a child's view of civil war, loss, resilience, and the slow, painful unraveling of a family and a world.
Davidtz, whom most will remember from Schindler's List and Junebug, makes smart, economical decisions here. As a writer and director, she trims away the fat of Fuller's memoir and hones in on the raw nerves, those searing moments of trauma and absurdity seen through the wide (and often frightened) eyes of a seven-year-old girl.
And then, boldly, maybe even recklessly, she casts that little girl at the center of everything. She hands the entire emotional and narrative weight of the film to a child actress.
That child is Lexi Venter.
And holy hell, is she phenomenal.
This is not hyperbole: Venter's performance as young Alexandra "Bobo" Fuller is one of the most astonishing child performances I have ever seen. She's seven years old and carries this film as if she's been doing it her whole life.
She's dirty. She's barefoot. She smokes. She runs wild across the bushveld with a mix of fear, freedom, and feral energy that you just can't fake. Her delivery of the film's near-constant voiceover —dry, haunted, and even funny —is spot-on.
You feel what she feels: the heat, the confusion, the unspoken racial tension, the grief, the anger, the terror of needing to carry a knife to go to the bathroom at night.
And yet, she's a kid. Just a kid. Watching and absorbing everything.
The movie charts the Fuller family's chaotic, heartbreaking journey from pre-Independence Rhodesia through the upheaval of Zimbabwe's creation, and eventually on to Malawi and Zambia. They're not rich landowners; they're tenant farmers barely scraping by.
And as the war ends and Black families begin taking their place in the new social order, the Fullers are left adrift. Their farm is seized. Their world is stripped bare. They move south, to a rough ranch sustained by impala meat and brackish water, then on to other countries in the former Rhodesia and Nyasaland federation. The war might be over, but there's no peace in sight.
What Davidtz does is keep the narrative grounded in Bobo's POV. You're not watching this through the lens of a historian or an adult's hindsight. You're watching it through a kid's eyes. And that perspective makes the violence more terrifying, the moments of humor more absurd, and the tragedies more unbearable.
There's the sister who drowns. The brother who dies of meningitis. Another who's stillborn. The mother, played with frightening honesty by Davidtz herself, is an alcoholic, chain-smoking wreck of a woman, equal parts tragic and terrifying.
There's a scene early on where she drunkenly machine-guns a snake in the kitchen, then calmly asks for a mop-up of the blood and some tea. It's shocking. And funny. And horrifying. That's the tone of this movie. That's the madness Bobo lives in.
Lexi Venter doesn't act like a prodigy or a showboat. There's no sense that she's "playing serious." She just is. She's just being Bobo. This is the kind of performance we used to get from young Jodie Foster or the one that won Tatum O'Neal an Oscar in Paper Moon.
It's that level. And if there's any justice in the world, Venter should be up for every award in the book by year's end. I'm not kidding. You just don't see a performance like this from a child very often.
Sure, the film's not perfect. Some tropes, such as war-torn family drama, stoic voiceovers, and the exhausted mother slowly unraveling, have been done before. There are moments where the story pulls back when maybe it should've leaned into the politics a bit more.
And yeah, you might wish for a broader scope on the actual historical context. But Davidtz wasn't making a political statement. She was telling a story about a child growing up in chaos. A story about how you keep moving, even when everything around you falls apart.
The movie runs a lean 98 minutes. It never drags. It never preaches. It never stops feeling human. And for a directorial debut? That's saying a hell of a lot. Davidtz knows what she's doing, both behind the camera and in front of it. But this isn't her film. It belongs to Lexi Venter.
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight is intense, moving, occasionally very funny in the darkest way possible, and anchored by a once-in-a-generation child performance.
It will break your heart. It will make you laugh through your tears. And most importantly, it will make you see the world, this brutal, beautiful, insane world, through the eyes of a little girl who refuses to be broken. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Here we go again.
Yet another soulless, cash-grab reboot. Sorry, legacy sequel, designed to extract nostalgia dollars from the same people who probably barely remember the original. And yes, I'm one of them.
I barely remember the original I Know What You Did Last Summer from 1997. I saw it. I know I did. It was part of that post-Scream slasher wave that gave us glossy, teen-star horror knockoffs like Urban Legend, Disturbing Behavior, Valentine, and The Faculty, you know, movies with those posters where impossibly attractive WB Network actors stared dead-eyed at the camera while a vaguely supernatural killer lurked behind them.
They were polished, they were shallow, and they were trying very hard to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle that Scream conjured with its whip-smart satire and meta brilliance.
I Know What You Did Last Summer, written by Scream scribe Kevin Williamson, was a dull, derivative slasher that somehow spawned a sequel, a straight-to-video third film, and even a short-lived Amazon Prime series that I, and the rest of the planet, completely ignored.
And now, 28 years later, the hook is back. And so is the rain slicker.
Same setup, same story. A group of attractive, annoying 20-somethings, including Madelyn Cline, Chase Sui Wonders, Jonah Hauer-King, Sarah Pidgeon, and Tyriq Withers, accidentally cause the death of the driver of a car, panic, and decide to cover it up.
One year later, surprise! They start receiving ominous messages from someone who knows what they did. And then, one by one, they're hunted down by a hook-wielding maniac dressed like the Gorton's Fisherman.
Sound familiar? That's because it is. This is not just a sequel, it's a Xeroxed copy of a franchise that wasn't particularly good in the first place.
In desperation, the new kids seek out help from the OGs: Julie James, now a trauma-specialized psych professor (Jennifer Love Hewitt), and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr., now best known for being a surprisingly great WWE creative guy). These characters exist here to do two things: deliver exposition dumps and cash their checks.
Let me be crystal clear, I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) is one of the worst examples of IP regurgitation I've seen in years. It's not scary. It's not clever. And it's certainly not original.
This thing is so lazily constructed, they didn't even bother to give it a subtitle. Just reusing the exact same title from 1997, as if no one would notice, or care.
Hollywood's in a dangerous loop of recycling IP with the same names (Scream, Halloween, Superman, Lilo & Stitch, How to Train Your Dragon) and calling it innovation. This isn't innovation. It's bankruptcy. Creative bankruptcy. And it shows in every frame of this movie.
Jennifer Kaytin Robinson directs this thing like she's never seen a horror movie before, bad or otherwise. The kills are unimaginative. The suspense scenes are ineptly edited. You never know where the killer is in the room or who he's targeting.
There's a dumbwaiter attempted kill that's so poorly choreographed you wonder if the camera operator was asleep. The geography of these sequences makes no sense.
There is absolutely zero suspense. None. Zilch. Nada.
Even the gore is phoned in. One semi-graphic hook-to-the-throat moment is the only time the movie wakes up, and even that's brief. For a slasher film, this is as bloodless and toothless as it gets.
Most of the young actors are completely interchangeable. They're bland, they're pretty, and they're here to either scream, make out, or die.
Tyriq Withers is the only standout, playing the jocky rich kid with a little charisma, a bit of comedic timing, and actual presence. He has the film's only surprising laugh when his character mocks Nicole Kidman's notoriously awkward AMC Theaters promos. He'll be in Jordan Peele's Him soon, and frankly, that can't come fast enough.
As for our returning heroes? Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt look bored and checked out. Freddie has more to do than Hewitt (who has about three facial expressions on display), but honestly, all I could think about was how much better he is working behind the scenes in pro wrestling than in this generic slasher slop.
And yes, there are surprise cameos in this film. I won't spoil them, but let's just say, even those surprises do nothing to elevate the film. They're cheap nostalgia bait.
There's a podcaster character because, of course there is, who exists solely to give us exposition and then get fridged in an uninspired death. There's a corrupt landowner (Billy Campbell) who wants to "keep the beaches open" like it's Jaws, only this time the threat isn't a shark, it's a guy with a meat hook.
There's the usual set of red herrings, false scares, and "gotcha!" moments that have been done a hundred times before and better.
Even the ending is painful. I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) ends like Peter Jackson directed it... about ten times. Every time you think it's over, there's another scene. And another. And then a post-credit sequence that adds nothing.
This thing clocks in at almost two hours. It should be 85 minutes max. I thought I was stuck in a time loop. I was afraid to leave the theater for fear the movie would somehow start again.
Look, I'm a horror guy. I love the genre. I'm even down for a dumb slasher if the kills are good, the direction is tight, or at least there's some self-awareness.
But this? This is the worst kind of genre film: uninspired, unscary, and utterly joyless.
The original I Know What You Did Last Summer wasn't even that good, but at least it had a place in the late-'90s horror boom.
This rebootquel legacy mess has no reason to exist, other than to cash in on a name that barely has cultural cache to begin with. It's a fake-out. A bait-and-switch for fans who deserve so much more than recycled garbage.
If you "know what they did last summer," trust me: it wasn't worth remembering then, and it's sure as hell not worth revisiting now. - ⭐️
Sometimes a movie has a title so good, so attention-grabbing, that you want to root for it out of the gate. Guns & Moses? That sounds like a Mel Brooks-style satire waiting to happen. Something irreverent, smart, maybe even blasphemously hilarious.
But then the movie starts. And within minutes, you realize: nope, this ain't satire. This is a sermon disguised as a thriller. And not a very good one.
Directed by Salvador Litvak and written by him and Nina Davidovich Litvak, Guns & Moses is yet another offering from Angel Studios, the Christian media outfit best known for its low-budget, high-preach, emotionally manipulative output.
When you see the Angel Studios logo, you pretty much know what's coming. We're not talking about thoughtful religious exploration here. We're talking about blunt-force moralizing wrapped in the flimsiest of cinematic packages. Think propaganda, not artistry.
This particular slog of a film stars Mark Feuerstein as Rabbi Mo Zaltzman, a Chabad leader in a California high desert town who becomes an unlikely gun-toting avenger after a violent attack at a synagogue fundraiser.
On paper, this could be a potent exploration of antisemitism, grief, and how far a man of faith can be pushed before he breaks. But that's not what we get. What we get is a sloppy stew of mismatched genres, wildly uneven tones, and a script so poorly written it makes high school plays seem Pulitzer-worthy.
Feuerstein, who's usually fine in lighter fare, is completely lost here. He's too intense, too theatrical, and has all the subtlety of a foghorn in a funeral home.
The character of Rabbi Mo, who should be the emotional core of this revenge tale, never feels grounded or even remotely believable. Instead, he's written like a noir-obsessed rabbi who secretly wishes he were a detective in a CSI: Mojave spinoff.
The rest of the plot, what there is of it, is a convoluted maze of twists that go nowhere, characters who pop in with dramatic weight only to vanish without consequence, and a tone that whiplashes between brooding drama, wannabe action-thriller, and after-school special. One minute it's trying to be Unforgiven, the next it's Touched by an Angel with Guns.
And then there's the cast.
Angel Studios movies have this fascinating pattern: they somehow manage to cobble together these weirdly eclectic, borderline-random ensembles. Guns & Moses is no exception.
We get Neal McDonough, who at this point I fully expect to be contractually obligated to appear in every single Christian-themed film released in the U.S. He's the mayor here, hamming it up and chewing scenery like he's in a different, even worse movie.
Then there's Dermot Mulroney (because sure, why not), Christopher Lloyd (completely wasted and clearly in paycheck mode), Jake Busey (screaming things), Craig Sheffer (barely recognizable), and a few others thrown in for good measure. It's like they opened a 2003 TV guest-star directory and just started dialing.
Christopher Lloyd plays a Holocaust survivor, but the script gives him nothing. Zero depth. Zero meaning. He's a prop with a backstory. And that's criminal, especially for an actor of his caliber.
Even with a runtime of around 90 minutes, Guns & Moses somehow feels like it lasts two and a half hours. The pacing is glacial, the structure incoherent, and the emotional beats are so overplayed they start to feel like parody.
The direction is clumsy, the action scenes are laughably staged, and the script? Dear God. Stilted, on-the-nose, completely lacking in wit or nuance. A first-year film student would be embarrassed to turn this in.
Which brings me back to the studio.
Angel Studios has made a name for itself churning out these aggressively moralistic, "faith-based" movies that pretend to be entertainment but are really just sermons in disguise.
There's nothing inherently wrong with message-driven films. But this? This is not thoughtful. This is not artistic. This is ideological bludgeoning disguised as drama. And when you couple that with subpar filmmaking, the results are disastrous.
What's most frustrating is that Guns & Moses is trying to tackle real issues—antisemitism, faith under fire, moral courage in the face of violence. These are big, important, timely themes.
But it handles them with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer and the grace of a runaway bulldozer. There's no insight. No complexity. Just bad guys, guns, grief, and God, all mashed together in a blender of mediocrity.
In the end, the only thing memorable about this film is the title. Guns & Moses is a clever pun. Too bad it's wasted on such a joyless, ham-fisted, amateur-hour mess. One of the worst films I've seen this year. - ⭐️
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