Tag: 2025

The Electric State (2025) | REVIEW

Millie Bobby Brown as ‘Michelle’ alongside Cosmo the robot in THE ELECTRIC STATE — PHOTO: Netflix (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Anthony and Joe Russo — Screenplay by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely.

Based on Simon Stålenhag’s retro-futurist illustrated novel Passagen (international title: The Electric State), Anthony and Joe Russo’s The Electric State is set in the 1990s after the events of a war between humans and robots (who were apparently created by Walt Disney in this universe), which has changed our world immensely. Humanity won the war and banished all robots into an exclusion zone, while humanity decided to become sedentary with VR helmets (called Neurocasters) that allow you to upload your mind and control drone robots, as avatars for yourself in the real world. In this world, we meet Michelle (played by Millie Bobby Brown), who lost her family in a car crash and who refuses to wear these modern helmets. One day, she meets and befriends a robot named Cosmo (voiced by Alan Tudyk). Together, they team up for a mission that will take them across the dystopian world and into the exclusion zone. Along the way, she meets and befriends a war veteran, Keats (played by Chris Pratt), who has a very good friendship with a robot named Herman (voiced by Anthony Mackie).

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Novocaine (2025) | REVIEW

Jack Quaid mid-action in NOVOCAINE — PHOTO: Paramount Pictures (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Dan Berk and Robert Olsen — Screenplay by Lars Jacobson.

Dan Berk and Robert Olsen’s Novocaine follows Nathan Caine (played by Jack Quaid), an introverted assistant bank manager, who has the condition known as ‘congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis’ meaning that he doesn’t feel pain and temperature. This diagnosis means that he lives a life defined by his own attempts at protecting himself, by, among other things, avoiding solid foods as he could conceivably bite off his own tongue due to his issues with the sense of feeling. However, one day he runs into someone who could change his life. That person is Sherry (played by Amber Midthunder), an extroverted co-worker, who he is immediately smitten by. They eventually establish a connection, but, right as he is finally starting to discover happiness in his life, she is kidnapped and taken as hostage during a bank robbery. Desperate to save her, he follows in pursuit and is willing to put his body through hell to get her back.

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Adolescence (2025) | REVIEW

Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper in ADOLESCENCE — PHOTO: NETFLIX (Still image from trailers).

Series created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham.

Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s Adolescence tells the story of a 13-year-old boy, Jamie (played by Owen Cooper), who is shockingly arrested in his family home on suspicion of the murder of a female classmate. When Jamie is questioned at the police station, he repeatedly insists that he is innocent, while his father, Eddie (played by Stephen Graham), is at his side. Later, a child psychiatrist seeks to evaluate the young boy, and the police start to ask questions at Jamie’s school.

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Black Bag (2025) | REVIEW

Michael Fassbender in BLACK BAG — PHOTO: Focus Features / Universal Pictures (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Steven Soderbergh — Screenplay by David Koepp.

When it comes to filmmaking, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who is a more prolific filmmaker than Steven Soderbergh. Since the 2020s began, he has had six feature films released — some in theaters, some on streaming services. Incredibly, it’s not like his films suffer from the speed with which he gets them out for the public to see. In the case of No Sudden Move (2021) and Kimi (2022), those were some of the best surprises of their respective years. Soderbergh is also quite experimental, as he has tried his hand at using iPhones to shoot major motion pictures, like Unsane and High Flying Bird. His latest film, Black Bag, never feels like an experiment, rather it feels like Steven Soderbergh at his very best. It’s a sleek relationship spy drama with a terrific ensemble cast led by Michael Fassbender in top form.

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Control Freak (2025) | REVIEW

Kelly Marie Tran in CONTROL FREAK — PHOTO: DISNEY PLUS (Still image from trailers)

Directed by Shal Ngo — Screenplay by Shal Ngo.

Shal Ngo’s generically titled body horror flick Control Freak follows Valerie (played by Kelly Marie Tran), a motivational speaker, who, in her first scene, talks to her audience about rejecting and resisting the voice inside of your head that keeps you down. Valerie, who is struggling with a constant itch in her scalp, is quite popular, it seems, as she is getting ready to go on a tour of Asia. This world tour requires her to go find her birth certificate, which forces her to face her troubled family history. When she meets with her father, who fought in the Vietnam War and is now a Buddhist monk, she is told that the itch, as well as the frequent visions of both ants and a dark figure, is a direct result of a demonic parasite that will attach itself to a host and will continue to gnaw away at them until they’re all gone. Valerie initially refuses to believe her father, but when things start to escalate, she realizes she has to do something drastic. 

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Mickey 17 (2025) | REVIEW

Robert Pattinson and Robert Pattinson in Bong Joon-ho’s MICKEY 17 — PHOTO: Watner Bros. Pictures (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Bong Joon-ho — Screenplay by Bong Joon-ho.

It boggles the mind that it’s been more than half a decade since the release of Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite, the first non-English language feature to win Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Director Bong’s Oscar-winning magnum opus is a widely recognized 21st Century masterpiece, and, thusly, the director’s follow-up to such an achievement would always be hotly anticipated, especially given the fact that his next release was a blockbuster-budgeted American studio release. In fascinating fashion, Bong Joon-ho has spent his Hollywood blank cheque, or carte blanche, on a scathing but funny political satire sci-fi flick about the way capitalist governments, whose leaders may use religion to gain and exercise power, view and treat the common person, women, and foreign territories, as well as its inhabitants. Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, an adaptation of Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7, is ambitious, messy, strangely predictive about the time we’re in, and very much a Bong Joon-ho film, even though it is very different from Parasite.

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The Monkey (2025) | REVIEW

The titular toy monkey in Osgood Perkins’ THE MONKEY — PHOTO: NEON / Black Bear.

Directed by Osgood Perkins — Screenplay by Osgood Perkins.

Filmmaker Osgood Perkins is fast becoming one of the most interesting horror filmmakers on the rise. Following three relatively unknown features, including the quite good The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Perkins finally had his breakthrough as a filmmaker in 2024 with the excellent horror-thriller flick Longlegs. Now in 2025, he’s hoping to fully etch his name into stone, as a prominent horror filmmaker with Keeper, releasing later this year, and The Monkey, an adaptation of a Stephen King short story, which was released in theaters at the end of February. Here Perkins is trying to prove himself in another horror subgenre, namely that of the horror-comedy, but, while there is a lot to like here, it isn’t quite as effective as his 2024 hit.

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Captain America: Brave New World (2025) | REVIEW

Red Hulk (Harrison Ford) hulking out in CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD — PHOTO: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures.

Directed by Julius Onah — Screenplay by Rob Edwards, Malcolm Spellman, Dalan Musson, Julius Onah, and Peter Glanz.

Despite the huge success of Deadpool & Wolverine last year, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is in an unsteady moment currently due to an inundation of Disney+ series, and several rushed and poorly received films. In the post-Avengers: Endgame era, Marvel Studios still needs to get back on track, and, unfortunately, Captain America: Brave New World isn’t the film to do that. Though it’s not the worst film in the connected universe of films, I believe that it is, however, a lower-tier MCU film that feels messy, tinkered with, and sometimes even soulless. This is despite the fact that certain elements and scenes are quite satisfying. Although Marvel die-hards will probably still have a decent-enough time with it, but outside of the massive Red Hulk sequence teased in the marketing, the film arguably fails to justify its existence on the big screen. 

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The Gorge (2025) | REVIEW

Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy in “The Gorge,” now streaming on Apple TV+.

Directed by Scott Derrickson — Screenplay by Zach Dean.

Scott Derrickson’s The Gorge follows two elite snipers, an American man named Levi Kane (played by Miles Teller) and a Lithuanian woman named Drasa (played by Anya Taylor-Joy), as they are both independently recruited for a top-secret mission in the middle of nowhere. At some unknown place in the world, there are two watchtowers standing across from each other, one representing the Western Bloc and another representing the Eastern Bloc. Each watchtower is guarded by mechanized turrets and bombs, and between the two watchtowers is a giant long hole in the ground — hence the title. Levi and Drasa have been hired to do maintenance on the weaponry and, at the same time, defend the world from what is hidden inside the mysterious valley. As they are the only two people in the vicinity, Drasa and Levi establish a connection, but when one of them accidentally falls down into the valley, everything changes and top secrets are revealed.

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Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy (2025) | REVIEW

Renée Zellweger as Bridget Jones (in the middle) in BRIDGET JONES: MAD ABOUT THE BOY — PHOTO: Universal Pictures (Still image from trailers).

Directed by Michael Morris — Screenplay by Helen Fielding, Dan Mazer, and Abi Morgan.

Based on the Helen Fielding novel of the same name and, obviously named after the iconic song, Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy finds Bridget Jones (still played by Renée Zellweger) at a particularly challenging moment in her life. Her husband, Mark Darcy (played by Colin Firth), has passed away, and she and their two children now struggle with grief in their own ways. At the same time, though, so many people around her are suggesting that Bridget should get back out there and date again. Back on the market, she develops a surprising romantic connection with a much younger man (played by Leo Woodall), while she also gradually grows closer to a schoolteacher (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor).

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