Tag: 2025

War of the Worlds (2025) | REVIEW

Still image of title card from trailers — PHOTO: Universal Pictures.

Directed by Rich Lee — Screenplay by Kenneth A. Golde and Marc Hyman.

Only rarely is a movie deemed to be so bad that its reputation takes on a life of its own. In the case of Amazon Prime’s War of the Worlds, we have one of the most critically derided films released by a streaming service, maybe ever. Not only is it narratively unsound, a visual disappointment, and a poor adaptation of a well-known narrative, but the film as a whole also represents everything film critics, cinephiles, and film historians fear about the state of cinema and its future. This is a film with shameless corporate self-promotion on the part of the streaming service, which shows no appreciation for the material it is adapting or any apprehension about what they might treat their audience to. The Ice Cube-led War of the Worlds film from Amazon is, like you’ve heard, the worst film you’re likely to see this year. It is, at once, both embarrassing and alarming how faulty and ill-conceived it is. 

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The Naked Gun (2025) | REVIEW

Liam Neeson in THE NAKED GUN — PHOTO: Paramount Pictures (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Akiva Schaffer — Screenplay by Dan Gregor, Doug Mand, and Akiva Schaffer.

One of the best pieces of marketing for a film that I’ve seen this year is an ad for The Naked Gun that features Liam Neeson prominently asking viewers to go back to theaters to watch comedy films. At the end of the ad, we hear Liam Neeson do a classic Leslie Nielsen-style fart-machine joke. It is a delightfully silly note to end on, but the message at the heart of the ad rings true. Comedy films have largely been relegated to being streaming fodder. If you want to watch a new comedy film, you’re more likely to find one on Netflix or on Amazon Prime Video than in the movie theaters. For example, Happy Gilmore 2 recently premiered on Netflix, just like the John Cena and Idris Elba vehicle Heads of State premiered on Prime Video. Unfortunately, major comedy stars have flocked to the streaming services and left movie theaters without successful comedies for quite some time. To reignite the spark that would keep comedy movies thriving on the big screen, we now have a reboot or legacy sequel of The Naked Gun, the Leslie Nielsen vehicle from the 80s and 90s, filled with spoof film humor, some of which has become quite iconic. For the legacy sequel, the studio turned to the Lonely Island member Akiva Schaffer, director of Popstar: Never Stop, Never Stopping, as well as producer Seth MacFarlane, with the hopes of finally releasing a good spoof comedy film in the theaters again. Thankfully, with screen legends leading the picture, the reboot of The Naked Gun is a success. It is, undoubtedly, one of the funniest films I’ve seen this year, and I hope it’s the beginning of a new trend where comedy films can once again thrive in theaters.

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The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) | REVIEW

The Thing, the Invisible Woman, Mr. Fantastic, and the Human Torch in THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST STEPS — PHOTO: Marvel Studios / Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Matt Shakman (WandaVision) — Screenplay by Josh Friedman (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes), Eric Pearson (Thunderbolts*), Jeff Kaplan, and Ian Springer.

Although the Avengers are today the most well-known superhero group, even though the X-Men dominated the big screen in the 2000s, it was, in actuality, the Fantastic Four that were the original Marvel Comics team. Though Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four and found great popularity for the team often referred to as the ‘First Family,’ the team of four has long struggled to find the same success on the big screen that the Avengers and X-Men have enjoyed. Prior to this new live-action attempt at making a successful Fantastic Four film, there were four other films, none of which found success with fans and critics. There was the 1990s Roger Corman-produced, low-budget, and unreleased adaptation, then Tim Story got to release two fairly campy films about Marvel’s First Family in the mid-2000s both of which were largely dismissed by critics, before Chronicle-director Josh Trank got to sit in the director’s chair for 20th Century Fox’s Razzie Award-winning dark and gritty reboot, which Trank, notably, disowned publicly on Social Media during its week of release. It seems that it isn’t all that simple to make a good film about four of Marvel’s most iconic characters. Thankfully, this latest attempt succeeds where prior films failed. The Fantastic Four: First Steps is a strong superhero film that possesses a strong audiovisual identity and aesthetic, and it also does a good job of honoring the characters and the original creators. 

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Christopher Reeve’s Superman Films | REVIEWS

Christopher Reeve as Superman in SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE — PHOTO: Warner Bros. (Still image from trailer).

With a new film in theaters titled Superman, now feels like an appropriate time to take a closer look at the primary films that inspired it, namely the Christopher Reeve era of Superman films in the 1970s and 1980s. Below you’ll find reviews of both Superman: The Movie, Superman II, Superman III, and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. But, as a special treat, I’ve also reviewed the 2006 Richard Donner cut of Superman II.

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I Know What You Did Last Summer (2025) | REVIEW

Jennifer Love Hewitt in I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (2025) — PHOTO: Sony Pictures Releasing (still image from trailers).

Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson — Screenplay by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson and Sam Lansky.

I often mention that my parents let my sister and me watch horror films when we were very young. We grew up watching and enjoying many of these, including especially the Kevin Williamson-written slasher flicks Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. Luckily, subsequent sequels and later legacy sequels of Scream have been very satisfying experiences for me to watch. Now, they’re trying to resurrect I Know What You Did Last Summer with its own legacy sequel from director (and Thor: Love and Thunder co-writer) Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. However, it pains me to report that, unlike the Scream legacy sequels, I found the reboot of I Know What You Did Last Summer to be a disappointing and often dreadful experience. It’s the movie this year that made me check my watch the most times, and also the worst film I’ve seen in a theater so far in 2025.

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Superman (2025) | REVIEW

Superman (David Corenswet) and Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) in SUPERMAN (2025) — PHOTO: Warner Bros. Pictures (Still image from trailers).

Directed by James Gunn — Screenplay by James Gunn.

I can’t stress enough how significant it is that the first image of the new live-action Superman is of him lying defeated in the snow, in need of healing and a pick-me-up, and, importantly, bleeding out of his mouth due to all the fighting he has just been through. It is an immediate act of flipping the switch on the modern cinematic understanding of what and who Superman is. When Marvel Studios launched a cinematic universe at the same time that Christopher Nolan was making self-contained and critically lauded Batman films for DC, they gradually set in motion a trend that Warner Bros. was eager to imitate. The head honchos at the studio gave filmmaker Zack Snyder the keys to their comic book movie empire, and, with his epic but divisive Man of Steel, he gave us a Superman born of a gritty, slow-mo heavy universe wherein he was presented as an Alien with god-like powers that was often paired with Christ-like imagery. Snyder notably had a character ask the godlike alien with an ‘S’ on his chest: “Tell me, do you bleed?”

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Jurassic World: Rebirth (2025) | REVIEW

Scarlett Johansson and Jonathan Bailey in JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH — PHOTO: Universal Pictures (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Gareth Edwards (Godzilla; The Creator) — Screenplay by David Koepp (Jurassic Park; Black Bag).

Despite Jurassic World: Dominion being met with horrendous critical reception, the film still made $1 billion at the box office, as the franchise appears to be critic-proof. Therefore, even though Dominion was marketed as the ‘conclusion to the Jurassic era,’ Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment fast-tracked a sequel that is here only three years after the release of the previous film. To kick off a new chapter of the Jurassic era, so to speak, the producers turned to Scarlett Johansson to be the new face of the franchise and hired Godzilla and Rogue One‘s Gareth Edwards to take on the directing duties. Even if you felt burned out on the film series following Fallen Kingdom and Dominion, you have to admit that the hiring of Johansson and Edwards — the former a world-renowned thespian and the latter a director known for his understanding of scale and visual effects-heavy filmmaking — was to be seen as good news. Indeed, their film together, Jurassic World: Rebirth, is a definite step in the right direction, as there’s a lot to like about it. That said, given some of its issues, I’m still not sure if it is a big enough step for it to be particularly noteworthy or praiseworthy.

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Deep Cover (2025) | REVIEW

Orlando Bloom as MARLON, Bryce Dallas Howard as KAT, Nick Mohammed as HUGH in DEEP COVER. Credit: Peter Mountain / © 2025 COPERTURA PRODUCTIONS LTD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Directed by Tom Kingsley — Screenplay by Colin Trevorrow, Derek Connolly, Ben Ashenden, and Alexander Owen.

Tom Kingsley’s Deep Cover is a crime comedy film about a group of improvisational comedy performers who are hired to use their talents to go undercover in London’s criminal underworld. The film follows Kat Boyles (played by Bryce Dallas Howard), an improv teacher, Marlon (played by Orlando Bloom), a struggling method actor, and Hugh (played by Nick Mohammed), a socially awkward IT worker, who has joined Kat’s comedy group to improve his communication skills and make friends. Their involvement with law enforcement begins when Kat is approached by Detective Sergeant Graham Billings (played by Sean Bean) following one of her comedy shows. Although their first attempt at improvising undercover has some rough edges, they soon find that they’re so convincing that it may get them into trouble.

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28 Years Later (2025) | REVIEW

A mysterious bone temple in Danny Boyle’s 28 Years Later — PHOTO: Sony Pictures Releasing (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Danny Boyle (Yesterday) — Screenplay by Alex Garland (Annihilation).

Nowadays, we’re inundated with zombie, or zombie-adjacent, entertainment, which, once upon a time, was popularized by George A. Romero. But before The Last of Us and before The Walking Dead, there was an early 2000s zombie movie revival — e.g., the Resident Evil film adaptation, Shaun of the Dead, and 28 Days Later — the effects, influence, and iconography of which are still being felt to this day. Two of the primary voices in this revival — though I doubt they thought of themselves as such — were Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, the director and writer, respectively, of 28 Days Later. Here was a film, which was filmed in the UK at the time of the 9/11 attacks in the US, about civilization breaking down, about how quickly we can be turned into people blinded by rage, and about how important it is to hold on to our humanity. Now, 23 years later, following both Brexit and the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown, Garland and Boyle have re-teamed to continue the story of the rage-virus that shook their world and humanity’s varied response to it with 28 Years Later. It’s one of the most anticipated genre films of the year, but does it live up to all the buildup? Well, I really like this film, but, due to certain elements that are sure-to-be divisive, I think it’s only fair to say that the answer must be a tentative ‘yes and no.’ Let’s dive in.

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Dangerous Animals (2025) | REVIEW

Jai Courtney in Sean Byrne’s DANGEROUS ANIMALS — PHOTO: IFC FILMS (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Sean Byrne — Screenplay by Nick Lepard.

Dangerous Animals is a survival horror shark film from Aussie director Sean Byrne that follows a female American drifter surfer named Zephyr (played by Hassie Harrison), who, after a romantic encounter with a young Aussie real estate agent (Moses, played by Josh Heuston), has cold feet and skedaddles away to to a beach to surf, without saying goodbye. However, before she can catch the waves late at night, she runs into Tucker (played by Jai Courtney), an eccentric Aussie boat captain who makes money taking tourists out to swim with sharks in cage dives. However, Tucker is not a friendly stranger, as he actually abducts Zephyr and traps her on his boat. It turns out that Tucker is a sadistic murderer who gets off on videotaping people getting eaten alive by sharks. While Zephyr tries to escape the boat, Moses partakes in an official search for the woman whom he was smitten by.

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