CAPSULE MOVIE REVIEWS: 8-15-25
- Aug 16
- 13 min read
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My Film Critic pants are quite fetching; they are on, pressed, and ironed. I'm ready to review five new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, August 15th, 2025.
So here we go again. Nobody, the 2021 "let's make Bob Odenkirk an action hero" experiment, was already a middle-of-the-pack John Wick knockoff, and now we get a sequel. Why?
Who knows. Maybe to prove that lightning can strike twice… or maybe to prove that you can milk a joke until it's bone-dry. Spoiler: it's the latter.
Hutch Mansell (Bob Odenkirk) is a former government assassin now working jobs to pay off some mysterious debt.
Deciding he's overdue for family time, he drags his wife (Connie Nielsen) and kids to Plummerville, a small tourist trap with a theme park, water slides, boardwalk, the whole Hallmark Channel vacation setup. Of course, because this is a Nobody movie, the place is crawling with crooks.
We've got John Ortiz as the corrupt theme park operator, Colin Hanks as a sleazy small-town sheriff, and Sharon Stone as Lendina, the criminal mastermind pulling all the strings.
Throw in RZA, Christopher Lloyd, and Michael Ironside, and you've got a cast that sounds fun on paper but in practice… yeah, no.
Let's talk about Sharon Stone. She plays Lendina like she's auditioning for a bad, adults-only community-theater production of Cruella. The performance is so over-the-top it practically needs a ladder.
There's a scene where she walks into her casino, deals blackjack, chops off a guy's hand, stabs him, then orders her goons to machine-gun the place and burn it down, and it still somehow manages to feel flat and embarrassing.
Stone has given plenty of bad performances over the years, but this might be her crown jewel in the "What was she thinking?" category. It's all forced menace and bad tough-guy one-liners, with zero actual menace.
This is one of the worst screenplays of the year, no exaggeration. Every single beat is recycled from better (or at least more energetic) action flicks. There's not a single surprise, not a single clever twist. The dialogue sounds like it was generated by an AI fed only late-night cable thrillers.
The whole thing kicks off because Hutch's kid gets into a fight with the sheriff's kid in an arcade. That's it. That's the big inciting incident. From there, we get cliché after cliché until we limp into the "big" climax.
The last 20 minutes take place at the amusement park, with Hutch, his dad (Christopher Lloyd), and Ortiz rigging the whole place with booby traps. Cue endless shootouts, explosions, and blood squibs. It should be thrilling. Instead, it's lifeless. Every bullet, every explosion feels like a rerun.
The fight choreography is sloppy. The editing is choppy. And Odenkirk, who's supposed to be the heart of the joke here, looks like he's counting down the minutes until he can get off set.
I love the John Wick movies. But I'm officially over the knockoffs. Nobody 2 joins Bullet Train, Silent Night, Monkey Man, Fight or Flight, Ballerina, and a half-dozen others in proving the trend is dead. The rapid-cut gun-fu, the close-quarters brawls, the neon lighting... all of it has been Xeroxed so many times it's just a blur now.
This one doesn't even try to put a new spin on the formula. It's a knockoff of a knockoff.
Nobody 2 is an empty, noisy, painfully derivative mess. Director Timo Tjahjanto delivers nothing but recycled action beats, flat humor, and zero stakes.
One of the worst movies of 2025 so far, and a perfect example of why this trend needs to die already. - ⭐️
It's been way too long since Spike Lee made a New York movie that felt this alive. His last true fictional NYC story was Red Hook Summer in 2012, and now, with Highest 2 Lowest, he returns to the city like a man on a mission. From the first frame, you know you're in the hands of a filmmaker in full command of his powers.
We open with "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'" blaring over Matthew Libatique's gorgeous cinematography, sweeping, vibrant, loving shots of the city skyline.
It's an affectionate but electric tribute to New York, and it instantly echoes the haunting, post-9/11 opening credits of 25th Hour. But here, the tone is bright and bustling, setting the stage for what is, no question, Spike's best film since 25th Hour.
Denzel Washington plays David King, a hip-hop mogul at a turning point, poised to buy a controlling stake in the record label he co-founded decades ago. He's betting everything, liquidating assets, mortgaging homes, to take back his crown in the music business.
He's got his wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) and his talented son Trey (Aubrey Joseph) by his side… until the phone rings.
The call: Trey has been kidnapped. The ransom: 17.5 million Swiss francs. From there, the tension ratchets up as David is forced into a ransom hand-off that Spike turns into one of his most thrilling set pieces: a ransom delivery by subway during a Yankees-Red Sox game and the Puerto Rican Day Parade, with surprise cameos from Rosie Perez, Anthony Ramos, Eddie Palmieri, and even Nicholas Turturro as a rabid Yankees fan.
The editing, energy, and cultural texture in this sequence are vintage Spike Lee: chaotic, funny, tense, and alive.
The movie is an English-language reimagining of Kurosawa's 1963 masterpiece High and Low, but Spike and screenwriter Alan Fox expand it in ways that make it urgent and modern.
Jeffrey Wright's Paul (David's longtime driver and friend) isn't just a side player. He's central, with a role equal in weight to Denzel's. And the film doesn't shy away from showing how differently the police treat these two men because of race, background, and class.
There's also a sharp layer about public perception in the social media age. In a world where your name can be destroyed by a single viral post, the decision of whether to pay a ransom isn't just about morality; it's about optics. Spike captures that shift with precision and bite.
Denzel is on fire here. He is looser and more layered than he's been in years. This is his fifth collaboration with Spike, and he uses every ounce of his charisma and gravitas.
His David King is ambitious, proud, ego-driven, loving, and deeply flawed. Some of the best scenes are just conversations, like the one-take bedroom exchange between David and Trey, where Aubrey Joseph more than holds his own against Denzel in a sequence that swings from tense to funny to heartbreaking.
And then there's A$AP Rocky. He plays Yung Felony, a rapper tied to the kidnapping, and his face-off with Denzel, separated by studio glass, trading words and freestyle bars, is electric. It's a battle of wills, intelligence, and artistry that could be studied as a masterclass in cinematic tension.
Ice Spice makes a surprisingly strong film debut, Wendell Pierce and Michael Potts deliver as always, and Dean Winters ("Mayhem" from the Allstate commercials, which inspires a hilarious inside joke in the film) brings grit and humor to his detective role.
Like Inside Man, this is both a crackerjack thriller and a movie with something on its mind. It's about Black culture, family, legacy, New York itself, and the way the modern world (social media, AI, the 24/7 outrage cycle) has reshaped crime, business, and human relationships. It's also about music as identity, memory, and connection.
And yes, it works as a remake. High and Low is a masterpiece, and Spike pays homage without being wedded to it. He tips his hat, then makes it his own. It's modern, urgent, funny, and politically sharp. The closing title card, "To the Master, Akira Kurosawa," feels entirely earned.
Highest 2 Lowest is vibrant, thrilling, and one of the smartest remakes I've ever seen. It's a New York movie, a music movie, a family drama, and a suspense story all in one. It has big ideas, big emotions, and filmmaking swagger to spare.
For me, this is absolutely one of the best films of 2025, and the best Spike Lee film in over two decades. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Writer/director Tony Tost, making his feature debut after working on TV stuff like Damnation and Longmire, has delivered a modern-day Western that's bloody, funny, well-acted, and… actually pretty damn good.
It's called Americana, it's set in present-day South Dakota, and it plays like one of those revisionist Westerns we've seen before, but with enough surprises and weird little flourishes to keep you watching.
And yes, it's got a definite Quentin Tarantino vibe. The non-linear storytelling, the rapid-fire dialogue, the bursts of ridiculous violence, and the parade of deeply flawed characters who you probably shouldn't root for but kind of end up rooting for anyway, it's all there.
The difference is, unlike many Tarantino wannabes from 25 years ago, this one actually works most of the time.
The plot centers on a Lakota ghost shirt (an actual Native American artifact tied to the Ghost Dance movement of the 19th century) that's worth a fortune and carries serious cultural weight. Naturally, it ends up in the hands of the worst possible people.
Halsey (yes, that Halsey) plays Mandy Starr, living a dead-end life in a double-wide with her small-time criminal boyfriend Dillon (Eric Dane) and their son Cal, who insists he's the reincarnation of Sitting Bull.
Dillon gets hired by shady antiquities dealer Roy Lee Dean (Simon Rex) to steal the shirt. He screws it up, Mandy sees her chance, knocks him out cold with a hammer, grabs the shirt, and takes off in his muscle car, leaving her kid behind because he refuses to go with her.
Meanwhile, Sydney Sweeney plays Penny Jo, a waitress who wants to be a country singer. She overhears Roy Lee talking about selling the shirt for half a million bucks and decides that could be her ticket out.
She ropes in Lefty Ledbetter (Paul Walter Hauser), a lonely guy hopelessly in love with her, to help. Cal ends up with Ghost Eye (Zahn McClarnon) and Hank Spears (Derek Hinkey), two Native Americans who want the shirt returned to its rightful place. Inevitably, everyone converges for a bloody, chaotic, and very satisfying final showdown.
The cast is ridiculously good. Paul Walter Hauser nails it (as always). Sydney Sweeney is strong here, giving Penny Jo a sweetness and vulnerability that's a nice departure from the roles she's usually handed.
Eric Dane is solid. Simon Rex (who should be in everything after Red Rocket and Blink Twice) steals every scene he's in.
But let's talk about Halsey. She's incredible here. And I mean, she completely carries this movie. I've seen her in concert, I know she's a gifted singer, songwriter, and visual artist, but as an actress? She's the real deal.
She's tough, she's layered, she's vulnerable, she's magnetic… and she blows seasoned actors off the screen. It's a legit "oh wow" performance.
Visually, it's gorgeous. Tost uses the South Dakota and Wyoming landscapes beautifully. You get that wide-open, sun-bleached Western feel, but with modern grit.
The action scenes are brutal and inventive. At one point, we get some wild stuff involving bows, arrows, and hunting gear that had me grinning.
The movie is also refreshingly unafraid to make a point about cultural theft and exploitation without turning into a lecture.
It's not perfect. It runs long, and a few stretches drag. You could trim 15 minutes easily. And while the Tarantino energy mostly works, there are moments where you feel like you've wandered into a 2001 knockoff.
But honestly? These are minor problems compared to the stuff that works.
Americana is a sharp, bloody, well-acted, and entertaining ride. It's a revisionist Western that actually gets the genre and knows how to update it. If you're debating whether to see this or Ari Aster's bloated, awful, self-indulgent Eddington… please, I'm begging you, choose Americana.
One of the more satisfying surprises of 2025. Bring on whatever Tony Tost does next. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
There's something to be said for sheer, stubborn dedication. Writer, director, editor, special effects guy, art director, and, God help us, star Joe Begos spent four years making Jimmy & Stiggs in a single apartment, starting during COVID.
Budget? Around $200,000. Shot primarily on 16mm film with a skeleton crew. That kind of commitment is admirable. I'm all for low-budget, independent horror passion projects. But here's the problem: dedication doesn't equal talent. And Begos, unfortunately, has none as a filmmaker.
Begos plays Jimmy Lang, a once-promising indie filmmaker now in a full alcoholic, drug-fueled tailspin. He's alienated his girlfriend, stopped working with his old partner Stiggs, and spends most of his days stumbling around his apartment with a bottle in one hand and a joint in the other.
Then, because sure... why not, he claims he's been abducted by aliens. He calls Stiggs, and they patch up just enough to team up for war against rubbery extraterrestrials that look like they were bought at Walmart's post-Halloween clearance sale.
The film opens with a 5-minute POV shot from Jimmy's perspective. We see what he sees as he snorts, drinks, takes phone calls, and slowly realizes he's in alien trouble. The movie closes with another POV sequence, this time about 10 minutes long.
That's a decent stylistic choice… on paper. In execution? Sloppy, awkward, and nowhere near as immersive as Begos thinks it is.
Everything in between? Two bearded guys screaming "f***" at each other a few hundred times while occasionally hacking up aliens in neon gore.
I'll give Begos this: some of the practical gore gags are cute, in a backyard-haunted-house kind of way. But most are cheap and laughable, not in a clever Evil Dead way, but in a "we seriously spent four years on this?" way.
The aliens themselves are the most generic big-head, glowing-eyes designs imaginable. There's no inventiveness, no personality, nothing to make them memorable.
It's mostly Begos and Matt Mercer (Stiggs) in a room, screaming profanity at each other like two drunk guys arguing over whose turn it is on the beer pong table. Every line is shouted. Every exchange is obnoxious. It feels like first-take improv from people who think volume equals comedy. Spoiler: it doesn't.
Begos clearly wants this to be in the spirit of Peter Jackson's Dead Alive or Sam Raimi's Evil Dead. Hell, he even stages a self-amputation scene that's a direct lift from Evil Dead II.
But here's the thing, Jackson and Raimi had wit, creativity, and actual filmmaking chops. They could balance gore with style and humor with pacing. Begos replaces all of that with louder yelling and more goo.
And while he name-checks Jackson and Raimi in spirit, the real sensibility here is pure Rob Zombie. It's trashy, juvenile, vulgar-for-vulgarity 's-sake, with dialogue that sounds like it was written by a 5-year-old who just learned to swear.
Which makes sense, because Rob Zombie is one of the worst filmmakers of all time, and Jimmy & Stiggs plays like a cheap knockoff of a director who's already terrible.
I'm not knocking low-budget horror. Terrifier was made for peanuts and became a phenomenon (even though I think those movies are garbage). Sean Baker just won Oscars for Anora, which was indie and pretty good.
You can make something great with almost nothing. But Jimmy & Stiggs proves that four years of work and 16mm film stock can't save you if your script is garbage, your acting is worse, and your "style" is just aping better directors without understanding why they worked in the first place.
A couple of okay gore gags. Some credit is due for the commitment to shooting on film. But otherwise, Jimmy & Stiggs is a loud, obnoxious, repetitive slog.
It wants to be mentioned in the same breath as Evil Dead or Dead Alive. It shouldn't even be mentioned in the same breath as Leprechaun 4: In Space. - ⭐️
Horror fans, rejoice: Chuck Russell is back in the genre where he belongs. This is the guy who gave us A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (still one of the best chapters in that series) and the gloriously gooey, vastly superior remake of The Blob.
After that, he moved on to bigger Hollywood fare like Eraser with Arnold Schwarzenegger and The Mask with Jim Carrey, movies with their own weird effects sensibilities, but it's been decades since he's made a straight-up horror film.
With Witchboard, Russell revisits familiar territory but updates the material with a bigger scope, a slicker look, and a New Orleans setting dripping with atmosphere.
Loosely tied to Kevin Tenney's 1986 Witchboard, the Tawny Kitaen cult favorite about a Ouija board possessed by the spirit of a dead child, this version isn't so much a direct remake as a reimagining. Sure, a couple of kills and scares nod to the original, but the story is entirely new.
Emily (Madison Iseman) and her fiancé, Christian (Aaron Dominguez), are opening an organic café in the French Quarter. Out foraging for wild mushrooms, Emily stumbles across a mysterious circular board covered in strange symbols.
Turns out it's a 17th-century French Wiccan spirit board, and once it's in her possession, it's not Emily playing with the spirits… It's the spirits playing with her.
Soon enough, bodies start piling up in inventive, gory fashion, and Christian has to enlist help, including from his antiquities expert ex, Brooke (Melanie Jarnson), and her wealthy Wiccan friend Alexander Babtiste (Jamie Campbell Bower, doing a full-on "vampire Lestat" routine).
There's also the looming presence of Naga Soth, Queen of Witches, and a backstory that reaches centuries into the past, complete with flashbacks and occult history lessons.
As the plot deepens, Witchboard starts to feel less like a straightforward haunted object movie and more like a supernatural Final Destination entry. There are elaborate kills, Rube Goldberg-esque sequences of doom, and a giddy sense of "who's next?" that keeps things moving.
At times, it even plays like a horror version of Jumanji, with the cursed board driving the action and each "move" leading to another deadly set piece.
Russell knows how to stage these moments, the practical effects work is strong, and the cast has enough charm to carry you through the sillier bits. Madison Iseman is a solid modern "final girl" and carries the emotional weight well.
Aaron Dominguez brings humor to Christian without undermining the stakes. And Jamie Campbell Bower chews every piece of scenery he can find, delivering all the ominous exposition you need in a movie like this.
Witchboard runs just under two hours, and it doesn't need to. A good 15–20 minutes could be trimmed without losing a thing, especially the flashbacks and setup scenes that drag the pacing down.
The 17th-century backstory is interesting in theory, but in practice, it slows the film and feels like filler between the good stuff.
It's also undeniably derivative. You'll see echoes of the original Witchboard, flashes of Final Destination, a dash of The Conjuring here, a bit of The Skeleton Key there. Russell doesn't reinvent the wheel, but he polishes it up and spins it fast enough to keep you entertained.
Is Witchboard great? No. Is it fun? Absolutely.
It's a slick, crowd-pleasing supernatural romp that works as both a love letter to the original and a solid standalone. The New Orleans setting is rich and atmospheric, the kills are creative, the cast is likable, and it's simply nice to see Chuck Russell back doing what he does best.
If you love the original movie, you'll get a kick out of the nods and homages. If you're into modern supernatural horror, especially Final Destination-style mayhem, you'll find plenty to enjoy.
Yes, it's too long, yes, it could be tighter, and yes, it borrows liberally from other films. But as a return to horror for Chuck Russell? I'm recommending it. Not great, not groundbreaking, but worth a look. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
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