Avidavr: Media Reviews

Author: Avidavr

  • One Battle After Another (2025)

    Modern day America set in a slightly dystopian alternate reality? Could it work?



    When I first heard about this, I thought it had potential to be a disaster. Leonardo DiCaprio plays a down-on-his-luck American revolutionary whose daughter is kidnapped, so he must use the revolutionary system to get her back. What?! The American Revolution? 1776? No — this takes place in modern day.

    The world needs a revolution because the American government has been overtaken by a party of white supremacists. The president is part of an organization known as the Christmas Adventurers Club. “Hail Saint Nick!” is their salute and greeting. We never hear the name of the actual political party in power or whether they’re openly racist.

    I was cautiously excited: can this premise possibly work? Do we really want to see an Oscar-contending film that shows America in such an absurdly negative light? Will this movie seem to have anything to do with the real world at all?

    > “I don’t want you. I just want your money. Your money paid for my artillery, my supplies, my transportation, my dynamite, my message. I am what black power looks like.”




    By the time the movie got to this speech, I knew I loved it. Sure, you could try to read political relevance into it — something about the state of the world right now — but I think that would be reaching. At worst, the movie is a far-fetched suggestion for black power: if the world ever does turn to ****, this is what you can do about it.

    The speech above is given by a character named Junglep****, played by an actress who performs under the same name when she raps. So Paul Thomas Anderson is letting real life filter into his movie, even when the context seems to relate to nothing. This world, with its crass language and pseudonyms, feels influenced by what happens when the 21st century’s hacking and hip-hop communities are pushed to a breaking point.

    The language is actually very restrained compared to what it could have been. The p-word for female anatomy seems to be the dirtiest word in the world of One Battle After Another, but compared to the kinds of usernames used on the dark web by hackers, it’s remarkably tasteful. Quaint, even.

    I had read that the first hour of One Battle After Another was constant action, which isn’t actually true. What it is is exciting. New ideas are constantly being introduced — every scene, every cutaway. There are brief action scenes, but only about a minute’s worth in any one sequence. Then it cuts, and suddenly we’re months or years later. There are no extended battle or chase sequences. Those are saved for the very end.



    This is being touted as a Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle since it’s only the fourth movie he’s made since winning the Oscar in 2015 (The Revenant). However, Sean Penn is the one getting all the awards buzz, with him being the odds-on favorite to win Best Supporting Actor — which would give him Academy Award number three. It feels like forever since Sean Penn mattered in Hollywood, and the industry seems to be realizing, “Oh yeah. There is sort of a second Daniel Day-Lewis in the world.”

    Penn plays Col. Steven J. Lockjaw, who appears to be in the U.S. military (implying that in this dystopia, even military leaders are expected to have pseudonyms). Lockjaw isn’t a true white supremacist, though he goes through the motions — fetishizing the taboo of lusting after what he can’t have. The movie has a lot to say about the mindset of white supremacy: how much of their hogwash do they actually believe, and how much are they willing to tolerate?

    There is no calm before the storm. Every scene is filled with tension, and the script follows the “two things at once” rule, meaning nothing is ever written that isn’t also saying something about something else. Being a revolutionary in the 21st century is about the hardest job there is, so it makes sense that the characters wrestle with occupational substance use and post-partum jealousy. The intensity of trying to do the right thing only appeals to people who are likely borderline addicts — to sex, to drugs, or both. One likely intensifies the other. This phenomenon carries over into the real world too: righteous, highly demanding jobs — emergency medicine professionals, public defenders, war journalists — are likely to have a Bon Ferguson in their midst.



    I suspect Paul Thomas wrote One Battle as a world that could have franchise potential. The movie is definitely complete, which is a relief. I thought the only problem Anora had was that it didn’t really feel satisfying as the last time we’d ever see its characters. One Battle has no such issue. The world is so well thought out that it would be a shame if it weren’t mined for more stories. If PT is done with this world, expect a TV series remake within ten years.

    In the Magnolia DVD documentary, Paul Thomas Anderson screened a movie every day during pre-production — Short Cuts, Nashville, Melvin and Howard. One of those movies was Network, which he prefaced with a warning: “I will not make a movie as good as Network. You won’t see a movie as good as Network.”

    I disagree with PT. He managed to one-up it. He’s created a setting that’s an upside-down version of the real world and proven: this isn’t real, and it probably won’t be — but it still has plenty to say about where we’re going, and where we are right now.

    One Battle After Another is a Chuck Palahniuk novel done right.

    10/10

  • Day 2: Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

    Goal: Find a classic monster movie.

    I’m using “classic monster” loosely. Last year I saw Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Invisible Man. This year I considered Cat People and Them! — not traditional monsters, but they’d fit the idea.

    Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

    What I know about it:

    When I was at Earlham College in the 2000s, I was in movie club. We screened The Return of the Creature in a room that doubled as a physics lecture hall and a weekend theater. It had a real projection booth and 16mm equipment.

    We showed it in 3D — the red-and-blue kind. Technically, it worked, but with a nauseating color filter. You’d want to take the glasses off after thirty minutes, try watching without them, then say, “Dear Lord. Guess I gotta put these back on.” Nauseating either way.

    The plot? Something about a swamp creature in a rubber suit carefully picking up women who faint — one arm under the knees, the other behind the neck. No strong character work. Cheesy but nostalgic. I hoped the original Creature would make the sequel feel more complete. I gave Return a 7.

    Shortly after starting it:

    Wow — this score! The music in these old Universal horror films makes or breaks them, and Creature succeeds. It was shot in 1.37:1 but composed to be cropped to 1.85 (widescreen). It looks forward-thinking — similar to Touch of Evil, though that one was cropped more seamlessly.

    After the movie:

    This movie is quite a spectacle for 1954. Every shot has layered detail. It’s a “made-for-the-trailer” film in the best sense. Much of it takes place underwater — the Avatar: The Way of Water of its day. Tarzan and His Mate (1934) had six minutes of underwater footage; Creature has about fifteen, using new camera tech that would soon be used in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. For 1954, that was groundbreaking.

    Thematically, I admire it. It’s about scientists exploring a fossil discovery and realizing they’ve found a living species worth protecting — years before “endangered species” became a household term. The script feels philosophically progressive for its time: pro-science, anti-hunting, closer to King Kong than most monster pictures of the era, or since. (Them!, Jaws)

    Problems: It wears out its welcome around the halfway mark. Once the underwater cinematography and creature design are established, there’s not much left. It has that “good enough” B-movie philosophy — great setup, undercooked follow-through. The dialogue is utilitarian, often missing chances for real thought or character. “Hi Jim.” “Did you check the meters?” “They’re fine.” That’s not an actual quote, but it captures the vibe. Very quick dialogue that doesn’t even need to be there. This was not written by a poet laureate.

    What elevates it is the score — some of the best classical writing in any monster movie. The dissonant brass motif (DUH-duh-DUUUH!) is iconic, with strings rippling like water. Composers Hans J. Salter, Herman Stein, and a young Henry Mancini stitched together a Frankenstein’s-monster of a score that somehow actually succeeds in sounding like a single piece of music. It’s beautiful and should be adapted into a drum and bugle corps or high school marching-band show.

    Watching it reminded me of The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, one of my favorite B-movie spoofs. This is where all those tropes were born — and it’s easy to love Creature sincerely while still thinking, “man, this is silly. I have got to tell the world about this ”

    8/10

  • Day 1: Dead Calm (1989)

    Goal: Find a move that might actually scare me.

    For October, I came up with a system: every day I pick a new goal, call it a ‘theme-of-the-week,’ and then track down a movie to match.

    Day 1

    Goal: find a movie that will actually scare me.

    Dead Calm (1989)

    What I know about it:

    I watched this on HBO when I was about 14 years old. I came in after it had already started and only caught about 20 minutes. I remember recognizing Sam Neill as “the guy from Jurassic Park” and nothing else. I had no idea who Nicole Kidman was at the time. I’m guessing it’s Australian?

    From what I pieced together, it’s about a couple sailing on a boat through very isolated waters. They meet a visitor who seems friendly at first but turns out to be nefarious. I remember thinking, this is scary. I don’t want to watch the rest of this now if it’s actually good. I wanted to see it from the beginning, but I never did. The premise also says something about them going out to sea “after a tragedy,” which I completely missed.

    Shortly after I started watching it this time:

    I remembered, this was too scary to go back to. It was intimidating to me.

    After the movie:

    Watching this movie at age 44 is akin to seeing the hill outside my grandmother’s old house and expecting a mountain. The idea of Dead Calm is terrifying. I don’t like the thought of being alone in the middle of the open sea and encountering a stranger that might be dangerous. But this has problems that keep it from seeming in any way true.

    First is the coincidence problem. The central coincidence (every film should have only one) is that the stranger’s ship is sinking at exactly the right moment so that Rae and John Ingram (Nicole and Sam) find it while it is still above sea. But the whole movie is full of coincidences. A character falls into a wall, which causes a spear gun to fall on top of them. The water in a ship causes the microphone to short right after the last message of importance. Characters shoot each other blindly and hit perfectly. They step into strange environments and find the perfect piece of evidence immediately.

    This is one of those movies. It feels like there is little natural logic. The world is at the whim of a screenwriter who is in “and then THIS happens, and then THAT happens” mode. I much prefer the “yes, and…” philosophy of screenwriting. “This happens. And so this happens.” Natural cause and effect.

    Case in point: at one point Rae (Nicole Kidman) picks up a knife to use as a weapon. Hughie (Billy Zane) sneaks up behind her, and Rae pretends she is cutting a lemon. He curls up behind her and shows her how to properly cut the fruit. Of course this guy is ready and able to properly explain how to cut a lemon.

    But — a lemon? They say earlier in the film that they haven’t seen another boat in weeks. How large is the refrigerator in the galley? They don’t have a bottle of lemon juice, they have actual lemons? What are they eating, anyway? What else doesn’t make sense? (Kind of everything…)

    My neighbor said it best: “That movie wasn’t as good as I expected. I kept expecting something to be on the other boat.” Another character, maybe? Dead Calm has scares and an ominous sense that the worst possible thing is going to happen, but it wastes opportunities to really ramp up the tension.

    This is very much a movie of its time. It is the kind of movie that is aching for a remake, and it kind of has one. Michael Haneke liked this basic premise so much he made a movie and then made it again. That one is on land, though, which would no longer work in our modern world. Someone working with AI tools could think of ways to expand the constraints and scope of the story.

    A few genuinely great things. While the script is slightly hokey in execution, the direction is not. Philip Noyce provides an excellent ear and eye for detail. The cinematography and editing show master craftsmanship, and the score is just about perfect. The movie deserves to be remembered for one thing and one thing only. This is Nicole Kidman’s show, and part of me wonders how this role somehow existed and that she got the part. It is the type of role she would kill to get after being an A-list actor for decades. This is the type of role that seems written specifically for a Meryl Streep caliber actress.

    Overall, not scary. But compared to Babygirl, which I just saw and thought was a much stronger movie, this has the better performance.

    6/10

  • Mickey 17 (2025)

    Similar, but nothing familiar.

    One of my movie ideas 20 years ago was going to be an interstellar journey very similar to Mickey 17. It was about a machine that could clone a human mind, put it into a machine, and send it into space far, far away. These clones would go to a dangerous planet to save the president’s daughter, and the best person they could find for the job was a college professor not prepared to have the speed and strength of a T-800.

    They made five of these robots, and when one died, the memories were sent back and inserted into the next machine. When the professor completed the job, he dies in a sacrificial gesture and returns with no memory of what he did deep in space, but he can analyze the data and figure out what choices he likely made and why. “Huh. I don’t think I could have done this any better myself.”

    If this idea — sort of John Carpenter’s Escape From New York via James Cameron’s Avatar and Terminator — had been turned into Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, how happy would I be with the final product? What type of grade would I give myself?

    Firstly, Mickey 17 is an original idea that doesn’t seem quite like anything else I have seen, even in my imagination. A few movies that informed this one: Looper, The Edge of Tomorrow, Arrival, and Pitch Black. What genre does that sound like? Sci-fi? Sure, but is it funny? Scary? Intense?

    Mickey 17 is a very satisfying drama that teased being a true genre picture, but Bong Joon Ho does not push it in that direction. His first theatrical motion picture after his “best film of the twenty-first century,” Parasite, has him returning to Snowpiercer and Okja mode.

    Based on a novel, Mickey 17 probably had him saying, “Cute alien monsters. An icy planet? These are my tropes. I can do this.” The marketing gave me the strong impression this would be a thriller/horror — one where a multitude of Mickey Barnes would duke it out in a battle royale, Hunger Games-style. But the actual story is small.

    Mickey is an expendable, a worker who doesn’t realize the position means dying over and over again. Someone higher up goes to the ice planet to save his flamethrower but leaves him to die — it’s not in the budget to save them both. Mickey 17 miraculously survives and returns unscathed. This now makes Mickey 17 and Mickey 18 “multiples,” which, because of politics and religion, makes them eligible for permanent deletion. No more clones. Just death.

    Hollywood would be salivating over turning this premise into a thriller spectacle, but Bong resists anything YA-novel-ish. It feels very literary in execution, as if a novel was deemed unfilmable and he just wanted to shoot it as is. Bong actually made a lot of changes, but overall it felt like a story most fun to read, savoring Mickey’s prose before finding where the plot lands next.

    The best part is the characterizations. Robert Pattinson, Toni Collette, and Mark Ruffalo all give extremely affected, almost stilted performances, considering who we know they are. But I can’t point to another character like the total sum of their personalities or what they represent.

    The movie is extremely nuanced, and Bong avoids a single cliché or archetype when painting a world of colorful, believable characters. The same goes for the supporting cast. This world feels applicable to modern workplace situations. It’s easy to imagine saying, “You are such a Mickey,” or “Our boss is such a Kenneth.” The premise isn’t 100% believable or logical, but there is real wisdom behind how the characters interact.

    Robert Pattinson has come a long way as a performer. Mickey speaks like Ray Liotta in Goodfellas, explaining the ins and outs of being an expendable with a strange but memorable Brooklyn accent. He commits from beginning to end. It’s not transformative acting, but it’s unforgettably distinct.

    The performances and ideas in the script are the best I’ve seen this year. To be honest, my old script idea was more obvious studio shock than this (though I might still turn into a Hollywood screenplay one day). The mechanic of taking the “extra lives” part of video games and inserting it into philosophy still excites me, but Bong Joon Ho reminds me: “Make something truly new if you can. Actually be happy with what you did, for yourself.”

    It took five and a half long years after Parasite (almost) swept the Oscars for him to release a kinda funny movie about clones and cute alien monsters. Mickey 17 might be a B+ of a movie, but it’s one I’ll reference for many years.

    8.5/10

  • Halloween 2025: The Film-of-the-Week Horror Odyssey

    My plunge into the best of what horror offers continues.

    Find the full list of movies here:

    https://avidavr.wordpress.com/halloween-2025-the-film-of-the-week-horror-odyssey/

    In October 2024, I went overboard and tried to watch as many horror movies as possible. The final count was 47 — a number that feels almost absurd looking back. This year I’m taking a different approach.

    For October 2025, I’ll be watching 16 horror films I’ve never seen, and I’ll write about each one. Every pick will be guided by a theme-of-the-week. First I’ll write what I know about the film (and what I expect it to be), then I’ll follow up with my review.



    The themes are:

    1. Find a horror movie that may actually scare me


    2. Find a classic vintage horror movie


    3. The horror movie everyone will watch for Halloween 2025


    4. The one I can’t believe I haven’t seen


    5. The rising star horror with the most buzz right now


    6. The one everybody loves


    7. The biggest modern-day midnight horror


    8. The best reviewed


    9. The one I wish I saw when I was a kid


    10. The one everyone knew about (except me)

    The Wailing (2016)



    11. A modern classic (two slots)


    12. A horror movie from a favorite director


    13. The horror movie EVERYONE has seen


    14. A classic horror movie I should really have an opinion on


    15. The horror movie I am most missing


    16. Save for last: The biggest modern-day midnight horror (Mandy)

    Strange Darling (2022)





    I’m not committing to an itinerary — part of the fun will be curating as I go, seeing what feels right after each week’s film.

    The Goals

    1. Cause Fear. Can horror movies still scare me? Can they still scare anyone?


    2. Fill the gaps. My horror knowledge is diverse, but limited. I want to meet every type of horror watcher where they are.


    3. Celebrate variety. Horror is not one thing. I want to experience surprises and shifts in tone, style, and culture.

    One Cut or the Dead (2017)


    4. Find new personal classics. Some of my favorite discoveries in recent years — The Wailing, One Cut of the Dead, Strange Darling, Diabolique — came from projects like this. I hope to walk away with one or two more that I can recommend wholeheartedly, not just as horror, but as great cinema.


    Let’s see what surfaces this October.

  • Superman (2025)

    Maybe if we gave him a cute dog, that would help?

    Superman has had a rough 21st century. We used to think he was the only superhero that mattered. Back in 1992, I read part of The Death of Superman and thought, Wow. This is some mega weird stuff. Can this possibly be earned? I tried reading it cold, but the sheer pileup of details left me bewildered. Halfway through, I admitted, “This sure is cool,” then shut the comic and never returned.

    Watching James Gunn’s Superman (2025) gave me that same feeling. His approach is to skip the backstory, skip the origin, and just plunge us in. Suddenly there’s a Superdog, robots in the Fortress of Solitude, an unusually honest relationship with Lois Lane, and even Supergirl flying in. The villains aren’t streamlined either.

    What has always made sense to me about Superman is simple: Clark Kent came from Krypton, which made him invulnerable on Earth, and he could fly because of the gravity difference. Mythic, clean, logical. Now here comes a villain whose hand turns into a spinning buzzsaw. Who is she? Does this character have any story at all?

    I looked it up: she’s The Engineer, a.k.a. Angela Spica. In the lore, she served in the army, was gravely injured, and got noticed by Lex Luthor. He rebuilt her with nanites — microscopic machines that can reconfigure her body into programmable metal, like the T-1000 in Terminator 2. On paper, that’s a solid origin. But how much of that backstory makes it into this movie? Absolutely none. She just appears at Luthor’s side, her hand turning into a blade because it looks cool. Casting a sympathetic actress is the only hint that she might not always have been evil.

    I skipped the Zack Snyder era. From the outside, those films looked joyless, and if Gunn’s movie is this desperate to course-correct, maybe they really were. Snyder was never the right choice anyway. Nolan could balance absurdity, self-seriousness, and spectacle into something resembling art. Snyder, the guy who made 300, was never going to walk that line with Superman. Did we really need to see him slugging it out with Batman in what looked like a truck-stop men’s room? That was the big payoff?

    The last Superman movie I saw before this was Superman Returns (2006), and I really didn’t like it. Supposedly a direct sequel to Superman II, it cast 23-year-old Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane, suddenly the mother of a five-year-old. (She was apparently 18 when Superman left Earth.) Did people actually like this movie? Superman was a godlike voyeur, eavesdropping on every conversation on Earth, while Lex Luthor, villain realtor extraordinaire, finally achieved his dream of building a Kryptonite continent that would sink the world’s coastlines. Real estate. Yawn.

    By then, my stock in DC superheroes couldn’t have been lower. Wonder Woman (2017) was the first sign they could still get one right. Gunn was clearly hired to do for Superman what Taika Waititi did for Thor in Thor: Ragnarok: break him down and reintroduce him as fun. But while Waititi’s absurdity produced one of Marvel’s crown jewels, Gunn’s film feels more like a WB-themed screensaver.

    Take the ending. Superman sits in the Fortress of Solitude, surrounded by robot attendants, watching a Kryptonian home movie while Iggy Pop’s “Punkrocker” plays. Iggy sings, on repeat, “I am a punk rocker, yes I am.”  You can almost picture Gunn pitching this exact scene to WB: stylish needle-drop, warmth, nostalgia, cool factor. And it is appealing — until you think about it. The Fortress is supposed to be Superman’s retreat, the place where he wrestles with loneliness and the burden of saving the world. “Punkrocker” is ironic fluff, a song about being punk without rocking at all, wrapped in cheerful synths like a hug from your older sister. It’s clever, but does clever fit Superman? And beyond that: if Iggy Pop exists in this universe, what does that say about Metropolis and Superman’s Earth? Did anyone even ask that question? At Marvel, someone would have.

    Rewatching Superman (1978) and Superman II, I was struck by how those films were both spectacular and modest, stories simple enough for kids but mythic enough for adults. DC hasn’t known what to do with the character since. Superman (2025) doesn’t feel like a movie at all. It feels like a Cliff’s Notes guide to a Superman show that ran for two unseen seasons. It isn’t a trailer for the movie. It is the trailer.

    I want to know what actually happened. Where is the movie?

    5.5/10

  • Splitsville (2025)

    A surreal, funny, and slightly chaotic warm-up for future giant Michael Angelo Covino.

    Is it possible to be happy while you and your partner are clearly heading to splitsville?

    That’s the question at the heart of Michael Angelo Covino’s second feature, a film about four good people (well, three and a half) struggling with traditional fidelity. Each character is grown yet surprisingly inexperienced, caught between wanting more from their partner and bracing for what happens when that partner moves on.

    Of course, that premise alone doesn’t explain why this film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. Splitsville is surreal, bravura filmmaking. Covino takes the idea of a relationship in decline and asks: What if Splitsville were an actual place? What would it look like?

    Life in Splitsville is deceptively serene, yet shocks lurk at every corner. Car accidents, brawls, incidents with the law, even fires punctuate the landscape. Just as destabilizing, though, are the quiet tremors in relationships—emotions threatening to bubble to the surface at any moment.

    And if there’s one thing the film never forgets, it’s to be funny. Action scenes drag on far past comfort, with intent, and the movie delights in setting up expectations only to veer sharply off course. The IMDb lists the nudity level as “severe,” and if the sight of an unremarkable, non-erect penis offends you, consider this your warning. One member makes repeat appearances—comic relief when maybe least expected.

    Splitsville feels rooted in mumblecore, recalling the Duplass brothers or Joe Swanberg’s Happy Christmas. But Covino isn’t interested in fly-on-the-wall realism. He smooths out the genre’s rough edges and perhaps parodies it, creating something both more mainstream and more cinematically ambitious. The result feels closer to French absurdist comedies of the ’60s and ’70s—think Blier’s Get Out Your Handkerchiefs or Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie—but with the kind of gonzo set pieces Scorsese might secretly agree to direct.

    Still, it plays like a warm-up lap for Covino rather than the main event. It’s witty and energetic, but a little slight and long-winded compared to contemporaries like Sean Baker (Anora) or Ruben Östlund (Triangle of Sadness).

    The cast is uniformly strong—except for Dakota Johnson, the film’s marquee name. Marketed as its centerpiece, she’s instead the weak link, playing what feels like a variation of her usual role. Too prim and flawless for the messiness the film celebrates, she seems miscast. By contrast, Kyle Marvin and Adria Arjona shine as the central couple. Marvin feels like a Seth Rogen shorn of stoner shtick—an everyman capable of working any job—while Arjona recalls a young Salma Hayek, approachable and magnetic. They both feel like people you’d actually want to hang out with, yet not quite like anyone we’ve seen on screen before.

    Ultimately, Splitsville is well-made, funny, and visually exciting—worth the trip to the theater even if it doesn’t reinvent the wheel. What it does do is remind us that Hollywood’s hit-making machine could use a new set of tires.

    7.5/10

  • The Naked Gun (2025) movie review.

    Is this the Marx Brothers of the modern age?

    From the trailer:

    “What do you want, little girl?”

    “I’m not your little girl. I’m Liam Neeson in a little girl mask. Want to dance?”

    Cue Neeson enacting frontier justice — ripping off appendages and beating people with their own arms. (Paraphrasing.)

    Who greenlit this movie? An outwardly funny comedy for adults, in 2025? I scrambled to list five other comedies from this decade that worked for me in this genre: Strays, No Hard Feelings, Bros, Champions, Bottoms. None set the world on fire — and that’s exactly the point.

    This project’s roots stretch back to 2009, when Paramount toyed with a direct-to-TV fourth Naked Gun. Alan Spencer was hired to salvage what sounded like a doomed sequel, with Leslie Nielsen attached. The plan collapsed when Nielsen’s role was cut, then he passed away.

    Later, Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant (Night at the Museum) drafted a reboot with Ed Helms. David Zucker declined to join, saying the tone strayed too far. Zucker himself wrote a parody sequel (The Naked Gun 444 1/4: Nordberg Did It, later Naked: Impossible), a spoof of Mission: Impossible that briefly had traction before the industry moved on.

    In 2021 Paramount turned to Seth MacFarlane, who’d long wanted Liam Neeson in the lead. With MacFarlane producing and Akiva Schaffer (The Lonely Island, Hot Rod) directing, the project finally clicked.

    The result is an easy movie to root for, though it feels like a relic of another era. Neeson had dabbled in comedy before with MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West, but his late-night “serious tough guy as a punchline” persona makes him a natural here. Pamela Anderson looks like stunt casting, but she’s got experience skewering her bombshell image — from the failed Barb Wire to the self-aware late-night press tour that followed.

    The difference from the original trilogy is clear: The Naked Gun (1988) built out a full world of characters spun from a TV show. This 2025 version plays closer to late-night sketch comedy. Imagine Conan O’Brien’s Oscars monologue stretched into a feature. If you liked the 2025 Academy Awards, you’ll recognize the cadence.

    My favorite gags are when the film leans into “Yes, and…” character absurdities. Drebin meets a femme fatale, Beth Davenport, who writes books about ordinary people solving crimes with uncannily correct hunches. The irony lands, especially with villains. And Neeson’s Drebin Jr. inherits his dad’s clumsiness — even worse behind the wheel. Yelling “Get out of the road!” at pedestrians on the sidewalk is a highlight, as is the inventive string of GPS-related disasters.

    The downside? Too often the movie feels built around trailer moments rather than a story. Big gags land harder in a promo than in the film. That’s the MacFarlane effect: at his best (American Dad), he grounds characters in a world of competing rights and wrongs. Here, he doesn’t always extend the same care.

    One low point: Drebin and Beth are spied on with heat-vision goggles. The movie nods to the trope’s worst offenders (Chris Cooper in American Beauty comes to mind), but doesn’t decide whether the characters should believe the ruse. It just hangs there.

    Still, The Naked Gun (2025) is silly, sometimes too broad for its own good, but undeniably funny. The trailer may have been the silliest ever cut, but there’s enough in the full film to justify the revival. The original Naked Gun remains endlessly quotable and prescient; this one feels like a small miracle in 2025, even if it would’ve been ho-hum thirty years ago.

    7/10

  • Weapons (2025) movie review

    Zach Creggor’s latest taps into many of the most expected small town fears.

    Early in the movie Arrival, the feeling of fear seemed very familiar. When Louise (Amy Adams) walks into her classroom to teach at her prestigious university, only a handful of students are present. Didn’t you hear? Alien spaceships are hovering over our largest cities. The human race might be done.

    Sigh… everyone go home.

    As Arrival was to 9/11, Weapons is to Columbine, or perhaps Sandy Hook. Early in the movie, there is a town hall meeting for all of the parents of the students who ran out the front door in the middle of the night into the darkness and haven’t been seen since. They were all from the same classroom, which drives the parents to dabble in conspiracy theories. Witchcraft?

    Julia Garner as Justine, one of the many lead characters that swap in and out in Weapons.

    The principal invited the teacher of the classroom, which quickly becomes a notable mistake. “Why is she here?,” exclaims Archer (Josh Brolin), as he explains, rather ignorantly, why she is the only plausible explanation for what happened. If there is one thing I know about town hall meetings from TV shows (Parks and Recreation), it’s that they tend to groupthink themselves into the lowest common denominator.

    The characters, who swap in and out as leads across a half-dozen overlapping stories, are rough clichés for this type of suburban town—which is probably the point. Everyone is drawn quickly and given a quirk or two, but there’s nothing to anyone that makes them feel like more than archetypes. This story could happen anywhere, we come to believe.

    The villain here is likely to be referenced among horror movie buffs as one of the best of the twenty-first century so far. Does the occult really work like this? How does one acquire the capabilities of a level 16 wizard? Could no one roll a die and escape the cold grasp of a terrifying lich that seems to acquire whatever they want?

    Cary Christopher as Alex. Terrified of terrifying?

    The movie doesn’t quite make sense. The biggest problem is the ease with which Archer triangulates the exact location of the destination point that the kids ran to in the middle of the night. He knows the degree by counting the number of concrete slabs the kids ran over. The problem? All of the kids ran out the front door and then straight ahead. What is the likelihood of that? Every kid’s house pointing directly to the same center point? It’s as though everyone built their home so they could walk out the door and be inspired by the emperor’s glorious house on a hill. City planning doesn’t work that conveniently for amateur sleuths trying to solve an implausible mystery.

    Nonetheless, Weapons is atmospheric and extremely satisfying. The split narrative works well, showing several different characters, flaws and all, in ways that overlap and converge unexpectedly. I thought of Doug Liman’s Go mixed with Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. I hope that reads like high praise, because it is. Director Zach Cregger almost convinces us that this silly premise contains a story that needed to be told. I don’t believe the evils of the world work this way—but this movie made me feel like they could, and that’s what makes it linger.

    7.5/10

  • Wednesday, “Elderberry Wine” (2025)

    An alt-country ode to those who celebrate by trying to get along.


    The Title:

    What is elderberry wine?

    Elderberry wine is a bittersweet, earthy drink made from elderberries. If not made properly, it can taste slightly off—more like a medicinal tonic than a celebration drink. It has a lot of depth, but in a way that tastes like memory. It’s easy to imagine drinking it in a hobbit’s hovel. Its most famous use in cinema is in Arsenic and Old Lace, where two conniving old ladies lure men into their home and poison them with elderberry wine. The only other notable pop culture reference is Elton John’s 1973 song “Elderberry Wine.” It’s not a beverage that comes up often. I certainly had never heard of it before this.


    —

    The Lyrics:

    Sweet song is a long con
    I drove you to the airport with the E-brake on
    Ain’t heard that voice in a long time
    Had to check back there to make sure you were alive

    I imagine Karly driving a family member to the airport, but she really doesn’t want to. She’s driving as slowly as she possibly can—potentially even damaging her car—playing a love song so they’ll have something to remember her by. Even though they mean something to Karly, they’re sitting in the backseat. Quiet, possibly sleeping. A sibling, maybe? An ex-partner she hasn’t quite gotten over?

    Angel hum of an electric car
    Reverses towards me
    Sometimes in my head I give up and flip the board completely

    Her passenger is always pulling away from her—headed toward bigger things. They’re silent, perhaps sophisticated and modern, while Karly is old-school. She wants her engine to roar, her emotions on display. She views this relationship like a chess game—one she’s considered quitting in a spectacular way. She knows she won’t win, but she wants her loss to matter.

    But everybody gets along just fine
    ‘Cause the champagne tastes like elderberry wine
    And the pink boiled eggs stay afloat in the brine
    ‘Cause even the best champagne still tastes like elderberry wine

    Karly shifts focus. This song isn’t just about her relationship with the passenger—it’s about how people put on an air of pleasantness even when things are quietly breaking down. You might drink champagne to celebrate, but buy the cheap bottle because it tastes sweet and slightly wrong. Instead of crisp and bubbly, it tastes like fermented fruit juice that sat out too long. You remember the last time you drank it—not because it was good, but because it felt familiar.

    Even the best champagne tastes like elderberry wine. It’s a metaphor for disappointment dressed as contentment. Everyone knows how to make do. They carry disappointments and keep going anyway.


    —

    You’ll cry at commercials
    At an unbolted leg scraping against the ground
    As the tilt-a-whirl goes around

    Karly is back to singing about the same partner. He’s emotionally scattered—more moved by thirty-second commercials than by the woman sitting across from him. He sees art in everything. Karly counters with the most mundane image she can think of: a chair leg scraping the floor—and somehow, even that becomes poetic to him.

    Roll one up say it’s mostly CBD
    Say I wanna have your baby
    ‘Cause I freckle and you tan
    I find comfort that angels don’t give a damn

    This partner still isn’t fully present. Even the act of lighting a joint is undercut—he says it’s “mostly CBD.” There’s no high, no release. He wants to have a child, so he’s sort of in the relationship—at least until something better comes along. But Karly wants more. It’s exhausting to be with someone who’s always halfway gone. This is the person she gets to be with—and he’s never all the way there.

    To want a child just to see whether their skin freckles or tans strikes Karly as absurd. If someone were watching your life from the outside, the detail that would matter least is the exact shade of your hypothetical child’s skin—especially between two people who know they aren’t meant to stay together.

    And your eyes are the green of tornado sky

    The first chorus included a tangible detail: pink boiled eggs floating in brine. That felt like rural atmosphere, something drawn from real life—a hallmark of alt-country. Think Lucinda Williams: “Cat wheels on a gravel road.”

    But the second chorus replaces that homespun image with a comparison to tornado sky. Instead of seeing warmth in her partner’s eyes, Karly sees the sickly, ominous green that signals coming destruction. Out of all the things she could think of when she looks at him, this is what rises to the surface.


    —

    The Music:

    The #1 thing to highlight is Karly Hartzman’s voice. On most Wednesday records, she sounds like someone who maybe took a few vocal lessons years ago, but who mostly goes to rock shows and screams along with every lyric.

    For instance, watch a live clip of Wednesday performing “Bull Believer.” She yells the apex lyric—“Finish him”—again and again over a wave of shoegaze guitars. It’s a little like My Bloody Valentine, but Karly is delivering a full Mortal Kombat incantation at full volume. When you see her sing that live, you know her voice will be hoarse for days.

    But “Elderberry Wine” is something else. Karly uses that hoarseness like texture, delivering a pretty, pure vocal with a distinctive edge. On Rat Saw God, her voice wasn’t bad, but it may have been what held the band back from wider appeal. “Chosen to Deserve” is a great song, but she sings it so softly and flatly that it has no dynamic range. Karly seemed to think that singing quietly and emphasizing the crack in her voice would give the song power. It worked in the way Mumblecore movies work: for every person who loves them, nineteen walk away annoyed.

    But “Elderberry Wine” avoids that trap. Even die-hard country fans will likely find her voice perfect here. She controls the fragility, using cracks only for emphasis. In the chorus, she finally jumps up to a mezzo-forte and dials back down just in time for the titular line. She sings: “And the champagne tastes like elderberry—wi^ine.” And on the final line, she lets herself leap up into a high register: “El—derber—ry w^i—i—i…i ne.” That moment couldn’t be more beautiful. (Great work, Karly.)

    As for the instrumentation—what usually turns me off in country music is the lead instrumentation, especially pedal steel. It often feels cloying or overplayed, like a session player trying to make sure his paycheck is audible. Even in loud country songs, pedal steel has the potential to be subtle and expressive. Xandy Chelmis is likely one of the very best. He always knows what to add and what to leave out, whether it’s screeching distortion in shoegaze or melancholy tenderness in this quiet country track.

    MJ Lenderman had a great 2024, releasing Manning Fireworks and scoring a minor chart hit with Waxahatchee on “Right Back To It.” He’s poised to be a major alt-country star. As Wednesday’s secondary vocalist, MJ’s rising profile may have nudged the band into making a real, classic-sounding country song. “Elderberry Wine” sounds so classic, it feels new.

    Wednesday knows their audience now. The music video is perfect. It opens with a man in his late 50s driving his Jeep to a bar, where he drinks, watches sports on TV, and plays cards with guys older than he is. The band knows their fans are often 15+ years older than them—people who’ve seen music evolve half a dozen times and just want to feel something familiar again.


    —

    Wednesday is a bit of an enigma. Their influences aren’t obvious, but they seem to pull from ‘70s country, Wowee Zowee-era Pavement, and Loveless-era My Bloody Valentine. I saw a YouTube comment under their cover of Gary Stewart’s “She’s Acting Single (I’m Drinking Doubles)” that said:

    > “I remember this song. I never thought I’d hear a shoegaze version of it, but here we are.”



    The world at large probably doesn’t want a band that’s only partly traditional country. When they scream through layers of guitar, they likely lose 90% of one audience. When they cater to old guys in bars, they lose the other 90%. But if you stick around for the entire set and never want it to end—you’ve probably just found your new favorite band.

    Wednesday does too much. Their pieces don’t make obvious sense together. But what they do has never been done better.

    Karly and MJ dated for years. I have a sneaking suspicion MJ is the passenger in “Elderberry Wine.” His biggest solo hit right now is “Wristwatch,” where he brags his watch is “a compass and a cell phone.” It’s one of the saddest brag songs I’ve ever heard, ending with the watch telling him when he’s “all alone.”

    There’s clearly history behind the scenes. It’s a minor miracle the band kept MJ as a member, considering both his rising solo career and a relationship with Karly that clearly ended in disappointment. But the band went on and tried to celebrate anyway—to raise a toast when nothing tastes like it should, and still call it home.

    Hmm. “Maybe this is the slice of pie that will make me happy…”

    Lyrical Content: A-

    Overall: 4.5/5