Category: 2025

FROM THE WORLD OF JOHN WICK: BALLERINA

By Marc S. Sanders

Her father gets killed.  She grows up to become a skilled assassin.  She seeks revenge.

There’s your story.

Ana de Armas headlines this extended branch off the John Wick franchise called Ballerina.  She plays Eve.  I like her.  The same way I liked her all too brief appearance in No Time To Die.  

Keanu Reeves’ Mr. Wick makes some scant appearances to escort Eve into the ring where she can use guns, lots and lots and lots of guns, plus a bunch of knives too. Kitchen utensils including stacks of dish ware along with pots and pans.  Grenades to tape inside an goon’s mouth.  There’s also a flame thrower and to counteract against another flame thrower, there’s a fire hose.  

Ballerina takes a break acknowledgment when a flat screen appears behind Eve to quickly show the channels change from the slapstick beatings by The Three Stooges and then over to a Looney Tunes short.  Get the idea?

If there’s a story, it’s not even a full one note.  Gabriel Byrne is the distinguished Chancellor who Eve has a target for.  Despite his armada of endless assassins that come from every corner of the screen, and maybe they leap off from Lilo & Stitch playing in the theater next door, The Chancellor demands that Eve’s controller known as The Director (Anjelica Huston) call off her underling’s agenda.  Clearly though, Eve is under no one’s control.

Ballerina is high stakes action, and you get what you pay for.  However, I’d also pay for the 64 oz porter house and my middle age body will plead with me to slow down my pace before my gastrointestinal system implodes.  Every morsel of this movie is great and terrifically assembled but man is it an overindulging two hours and four minutes of slashing, shooting, exploding, breaking, crunching, pounding, punching, elbowing, kneeing, kicking, choking and strangling.  You drown in the beefy mayhem.

This actioner plays like a combat video game.  Drawn out fight sequences happen in one setting.  Then, Eve traverses to another location and the violence resumes.  It amuses me how Eve will do a number on one bad guy and once he’s permanently put away, only then does the next guy enter.  Wash, rinse, repeat. Whoa!!!! Here’s the next guy and then the next and next thereafter.  No one thug walks in to interrupt a one-on-one fight until Eve’s current opponent is put down with a bullet to the head or a grenade in the mouth or a flame thrower scorching.

It’s fun.  Yes.  However, there is a character that Eve encounters played by Norman Reedus, and I told Miguel later that I could not recall what his final fate was when we last left him in the picture.  I truly forgot that he’s a proud dad to a nine-year-old girl.  I mean, I truly forgot there was a little girl who was seen earlier in the movie.  I don’t even recall Reedus’ pertinence to the film. My mind was so paralyzed of thought process with the action overdose, that the few minute details there are, have escaped my short-term memory. I must have been suffocating in the fast-moving edits of the fight choreography and ballistic weaponry at play.  

After the film ended and considering what I know was left off with last year’s John Wick 4, I inquired of Miguel to piece together when this movie took place.  He looked it up.  I pondered for a millisecond at best, before I finally concluded it makes no difference.  Finally, after the production expended every penny on the last stunt man extra, the movie stops and the credits roll. Time to escape to the peaceful tranquility of my home.

The settings for Ballerina are marvelous and truly worthy of an Art Design Oscar.  I loved running up and down staircases and through underground corridors with Eve leading the way.  A snowy, mountaintop village occupies all of the action in the second part of the film, beginning in the saloon/dining hall, then going upstairs, then out a window, or three, and all over.  Director Len Wiseman cuts in great close ups of Ana de Armas in intense black leather with her hair in a neat ponytail.  Keanu Reeves is granted his own well-placed shots too.  

Wiseman also gets overhead shots to see the twisted stone walkways and stairwells of this area and where they navigate towards.  There are cuts to what comes around the corner and what’s thrust through doorways and windows, or down from the ceilings and rooftops.  It’s maddening and precisely cut.  The editing is superb despite how overstimulating all of the action becomes.  Eventually, you want to say “Oy!  Enough already!”

The script for Ballerina can’t be more than five pages.  It’s short on dialogue and what stands out to me is after Eve has set the whole town on fire and dispatched about three-thousands of The Chancellor’s militia, does his top henchman approach him and request to “Give the order!”  Buddy, after all this, if you have to ask, then this must be your first rodeo.  The Chancellor clearly overpaid for your services.

Ballerina is the female equivalent of the John Wick franchise.  Ana de Armas stands where Keanu Reeves stood for four pictures thus far.  If you’ve seen his four entries in this series, then you’ve seen Ballerina.  

Is it entertaining? Yes.  Is it mind numbing? After fifteen minutes? Definitely!  Do the filmmakers serve the product that was promised? Absolutely!  However, how does that ginormous porter house steak feel when it’s still lodged in your gut two hours later, and on until sunrise?

BRING HER BACK (2025)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTORS: Danny Philippou & Michael Philippou
CAST: Billy Barratt, Sally Hawkins, Jonah Wren Phillips, Sora Wong
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 89% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A brother and sister uncover a terrifying ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother.


Bring Her Back is a supremely disturbing modern horror film from the two directors of 2022’s celebrated debut film Talk to Me; it’s right up there with Hereditary [2018] and The Babadook [2014].  It brazenly opens with creepy black and white footage of…something…then appears to drop into “Lifetime-movie” mode, lulling us along until WHAM, something truly unbelievable occurs, and it’s just a roller-coaster ride the rest of the way.  It’s bloody ingenious.  (Emphasis on the “bloody.”)

Andy (Billy Barratt) and the visually-impaired Piper (Sora Wong) are step-siblings who experience an early tragedy, resulting in the two of them being assigned as foster children to Laura (Sally Hawkins), a single mother who has experienced a tragedy of her own.  Her child is Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), a 10-year-old boy who has been voluntarily mute since his sister, Laura’s daughter, drowned in their pool, now kept empty.

Ominous signs abound.  Laura’s house is completely encircled by a strip of white paint.  She locks Oliver in his room whenever she leaves the house.  At a funeral, Laura surreptitiously clips some hairs from the body in the casket.  Andy discovers he has started wetting the bed, but he’s 17 years old; Laura ascribes it to stress, but the real reason is far more…invasive.  And over everything is the mute Oliver, lurking in the background, occasionally banging on doors and windows, and more.

Another superb element to the story is the character of Piper, Andy’s visually-impaired sister.  I mention this because the filmmakers deliberately held a casting call for actual visually-impaired actresses, settling on the completely non-professional Sora Wong.  This aspect of her character is utilized to the hilt throughout the movie, in ways I can’t even hint at without spoiling any surprises.  (Okay, I’ll mention one moment…where she knows someone is front of her, feels their head, then turns and asks someone else, “Who is this?”  BRRRRR…)

When the Philippou brothers do drop the hammer and get started with the real horror elements, they do not hold back.  There are scenes here as terrifying and as off-putting (in a good way, I guess?) as anything in [insert your favorite horror film here].  There are images here that I will not soon forget.  In a perfect world, this movie would become so popular among horror fans that those scenes would become part of a pop-culture shorthand.  “The knife scene.”  “The table scene.”  “The Russian videos.”  “The ‘self-snacking’ shot.”

I initially had an issue with the very ending, which felt more, shall we say, heartfelt than the rest of the movie implied was coming.  However, I learn from IMDb that the Philippous had a much grander ending planned.  But everything changed when a close friend of theirs passed away unexpectedly during production; the film is dedicated to him in the closing credits.  Danny Philippou is quoted: “[The film’s ending] goes against the conventions a little bit, but it feels more true to life.”  Watch the film and judge for yourself if he’s right.  As for me, now that I know that piece of trivia, the film’s ending is easier for me to accept.

Here’s hoping that Bring Her Back becomes at least a cult classic.  For someone like me, who’s a bit picky with this genre, it’s an easy pick for a new movie to throw into my annual Halloween rotation.  I enjoyed the hell out of this movie.

MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE THE FINAL RECKONING

By Marc S. Sanders

The blessing behind Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning is that it opts not to follow the uninspired routine that was settled for with the previous entry, Dead Reckoning Part I.  With myself included, that film was poorly received overall (look for my review on this page). It performed way below box office expectations as well.  After its release, writer/director Chrisopher McQuarrie and producer/star Tom Cruise were in a quandary.  The hanging thread of a magical key/MacGuffin and the answer to destroying the omnipotent Entity were left unresolved.  A new film had to be made, despite an empty storyline.  Money had to be spent.  So, the guys needed to invest it wisely.  For the most part, the finances were used quite well as the pair learned what worked. More importantly they steered away from what didn’t.

What this movie improves upon is a hearkening back to some of the favorite elements of almost all of the prior films in the series, now on its eighth chapter.  Naturally, some citations cover what occurred in the last film to drive the continuous thin story of Final Reckoning. There are references made to the mysterious Rabbit’s Foot from the third picture, a favorite of mine.  Most notably, is the return of a long-lost character that no one would ever expect to turn up again. The best thing is that he truly serves the mission.  He’s not just a cameo blink and miss it.  Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire repeated that terrible grievance over and over.  The return of this particular guy actually makes you smile, laugh and cheer.  Yes, believe me when I tell you that marketing for Final Reckoning thankfully do not share every detail.  There’s more here than Tom Cruise running and running some more. 

Miguel and I took advantage of an IMAX presentation, and for two guys who normally favor Dolby, this action/adventure should only be seen on IMAX.  Probably the best film I’ve ever seen in this medium and I saw Dead Reckoning Part I this way, but that did not measure up to what’s offered this time.

Tom Cruise is absolutely nuts.  He’s over sixty and he’s doing some of the most daring stunts he’s ever accomplished.  The insurance bill to cover his safety must be at least half the budget to make the movie.  The famed biplane scenes that you likely caught in trailers, even on the marquee poster, is so much more impressive on IMAX.  You are seeing every limb of the actor’s body stretch to their breaking points to hang on to first a red plane and later a yellow plane.  Cruise’s facial muscles stretch against the G-force that is giving him resistance at ten thousand feet in the air.  McQuarrie makes sure to cover every inch of these flying machines from the cockpit to the wings and the tail rutters and the landing wheels underneath.  Cruise’s superspy, Ethan Hunt, has to climb all over these things as they go up and down and upside down and right side up on top of bursting into flames.  This scene is not even over in ten minutes.  It feels like a good twenty-five minutes and it looks like it’s no easy feat for Mr. Hunt.

Midway through the film finds Ethan Hunt deep sea diving to a shipwrecked submarine.  This sequence might rely more on set design, but I was convinced the entire time that Cruise was actually that deep below the surface of the water.  Memories of James Cameron’s The Abyss come to mind, but McQuarrie’s craft of this middle sequence within his three-hour film is so well edited and designed.  On IMAX you feel yourself submerged with the weight of the ocean above you.  The film will cut to the outside of the sub to show it drifting as Ethan Hunt shifts from one side of the interior to the other.  Whatever action the guy takes, the sub works against him leaving you wondering if the vessel is going to topple over an ocean floor cliff to even greater and unescapable depths. 

I will never like this movie as much as when I saw it in the IMAX screening.  It’s impossible to feel the same way on a large in-home flat screen.  This is a giant movie.

Grand set pieces with the sub or the planes had me thinking that Christopher McQuarrie should get a Best Director nomination.  I know it won’t happen but not everyone can accomplish what’s offered in Final Reckoning.  Could Martin Scorsese or Francis Ford Coppola?  I question that, because this is an altogether different kind of beast.

McQuarrie must have done a polish on the violations he committed with the last film.  The story remains to be nothing but a chase with countdown digital clocks and the urgency for all of these tasks to be accomplished by Ethan and his team at the exact same second (a repeat M:I staple), but the dialogue does not drive in literal circles of similar vocabulary this time.  Terms like “the key” and “the entity” are not so exhaustingly uttered over and over in this film.  Esai Morales, as the conniving Gabriel, is much more interesting.  In the last movie he was terribly boring.  No charm.  No anger.  No brattiness.  Here, he at least gleefully laughs at Ethan’s demise.  He’s still far from a great villain and totally forgettable, but at least he’s given something more to do than just stand menacingly behind Tom Cruise. Morales is not just donning a dark tan and a salt and pepper goatee. 

Most of Ethan Hunt’s team is given something to do, particularly Ving Rhames as Luther and Simon Pegg as Benji, always reliable.  Hayley Atwell was the best feature of the last movie and she’s great here too as the pickpocket, and now supposedly a quick learning kick ass superspy.  Kind of—No-VERY ridiculous but I stopped asking questions.  Atwell deserves a franchise series of her own.  She’s charming and lights up the screen.  Great actor too.

Pom Klementieff as the dangerous assassin Paris is now a good guy and other than speaking eloquent French she’s regrettably become a ho hum element.  There are other unnecessary characters including Kittridge (Henry Czerny) and those two guys who were chasing Ethan in the last movie.  One carries a stupid secret that’s more like an unwelcome surprise.  The other joins Ethan’s team to shoot a gun and look panicked. 

It will only frustrate you to follow when Ethan or Gabriel has the upper hand.  Christopher McQuarrie fleshes out his overly long three-hour picture playing games like that, and I stopped trying to pass his impossible SAT exam.  The attractions are a few of the characters who work with Ethan and the great feats of strength that the hero attempts to overcome. 

It is not the best in the series.  It is a huge improvement over the last picture, though.  What’s most significant is that Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning is a gorgeous, mind blowing and breathless visual opus.

SEE IT ON THE IMAX before it self-destructs on your flat screen in five seconds.

DRAGON HEART: ADVENTURES BEYOND THIS WORLD

By Marc S. Sanders

Dragon Heart: Adventures Beyond This World is an ambitious animated film catered towards a young audience, but carrying a lot of imagery and themes designed for an adult crowd.  The film, directed by Isamu Imakake (Cowboy Bebop: The Movie) performs as a Sunday School lesson where the students were never picked up by their parents at the end of the day.  The artwork is incredible and some of the best I’ve ever seen, but there’s a lot of heavy material to weigh here with allegorical visuals that justify a very stern PG-13 rating.

Ryusuke is a middle schooler from Tokyo who spends the summer with his cousin Tomomi.  One day the boy and girl go on a nature walk and get swept away with the strong current of the Anabuki River.  They encounter a wise old man named Ameno Hiwashino Mikoto and a beautiful wide eyed green dragon in flight.  The old man explains to the teens that they are dead and now must sojourn through the spiritual worlds of hell where devious serpents interfere and butchering surgical doctors are thirsty for hacking patients into bloody pieces.  One embodiment dons sunglasses and a tropical shirt.  He cages a frightened Tomomi, while her cousin dodges the god’s attacks with tennis balls in an attempt to rescue her.  I’m not sure of the design options in this particular sequence.  The action is quite engaging, though.

The children’s race to avoid these harsh encounters occupy the center of the picture.  The last act reunites them with Ameno Hiwashino Mikoto who arranges for the kind dragon to escort them to Shambhala, a heavenly locale consisting of a variety of thousands upon thousands of gods. Vishnu, the god of India, is singled out for a select ritual.

In spite of my Jewish upbringing, I do not consider myself very spiritual or religious any longer.  I applaud anyone who safely adheres to what guides them in a positive light of assurance, safety and peace.  The adventure of Dragon Heart serves as a vehicle towards spiritual awakenings from a source of Eastern and Asian culture.  The film seems to expect any disciple to witness the worst in humanity if their soul is ever to discover the best within a realm of the afterlife.  Reader, that is likely you and me and everyone else in the theater.  

I may be speaking vague, but so is the gospel of Dragon Heart.  Naturally, children, who are green at being tested, are selected for going on this adventure.  This mysterious and wise old man entraps them to choose for themselves how to lead their lives and use their souls.  It is their souls that are important because the script tells us that we do not merely live within flesh and bone.  Our soul and spirit live on after our physical body expires.

By the end of the film, I fear that Ryusuke and Tomomi will be knocking on my front door with scripture pamphlets with their bicycles parked on my driveway.  Personally, that does not leave me feeling very comfortable.  It’s the preachiness of Dragon Heart: Adventures Beyond This World that leaves me feeling queasy.

This is a gorgeous picture of radiant color.  Outdoor natures look so absorbing.  Green grass flows naturally in a breeze.  Rivers cheerfully flow and you want to drink from them.  Ryusuke is especially enthusiastic to explore the various mountain landscapes including Everest and thus you want to accompany him.  The skies are bright enough to glide through the air.  

The various dimensions of hell are equally convincing.  In many circumstances, you’re looking at some of your worst nightmares come alive.  In fact, for a pre-teen watching this film might incur a fear of doctors whose bloodthirsty grins emote through their surgical masks as they race at you with chainsaws and curved knives.  Freddy Krueger is like a Disney character compared to these guys.  My wife would never get past the snakes either.

Dragon Heart: Adventures Beyond This World does its job, but perhaps it works too well.  The animated imagery is so powerfully strong in what it shows that it is potentially traumatizing to certain viewers – definitely children and those who embrace the spiritual potential of religion.

While the film intends to conclude on a soaring positive note, it’s the journey to this destination that is quite unsettling.  

Once again, who is this film catered for? I know that god fearing worship is often sermoned by ministers, prophets and scriptures, but should any kind of religion or spiritual guidance put us in therapy too?

SINNERS

By Marc S. Sanders

Ryan Coogler is one of the most inventive writer/directors working today.  This is a filmmaker who will assemble a hundred different ideas into one body of work. All of it makes sense when blended together.  A movie musical sourced in blues and grassroots instruments like banjo, piano, harmonica, foot stomping and guitar stitched together on to a horror film?  Once the wheels get turning, Coogler can’t see it any other way and so he lands upon October 15, 1932, one day and one very long night in Clarksdale, Mississippi where Sinners takes place. 

The smokestack twins – Smoke and his brother Stack – return from working with Al Capone in Chicago.  They’ve got lots of money and big plans to open up the Juke Joint when the sun sets.  Michael B Jordan plays the charming gentlemen. Smoke is donned in blue accents, while his brother Stack is identified primarily in red.  Jordan is such a skilled and aggressive actor in everything he does. I truly did not realize he was playing both roles until about a third of the way through the picture.  His performances are so tantalizingly unique and memorable that Jordan has to be a contender for an Oscar nomination.

The boys circumvent the Clarksdale area. First they purchase a barn and the land it dwells upon.  With their pistols at the ready, their purchasing agreement is that the seller’s Klan associates do not come around here.  They go to the train station to recruit Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo) for the piano and harmonica.  Smoke visits Ruthie (Andrene Ward-Hammond) to prepare the most delicious crawfish and shrimp.  Ruthie is also the mother of Smoke’s deceased infant child and they need to catch up on some history that was not tied off.  Stack needs to contend with Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), his sultry lover from the past who was also left behind unexpectedly. 

Most impressive is a debut performance from Miles Caton as Sammie Moore, the local preacher’s son, and the kid who can strum a mean guitar in the back seat of a car or down at the joint.  Sammie looks up to the twins. They will show him how to carry himself.  There’s a history to everyone the men encounter.  Sometimes they are welcome.  Sometimes they’re not, like the Klan, and sometimes they’d rather avoid who they come across as they continue to spread the word about the Juke Joint celebration that’s too come with all the liquor, food, and music they can imagine. 

Michael B Jordan and Miles Caton are definitely Oscar worthy; two very hot properties.  Caton can do it all.  He can sing and act.  He’s as big a surprise as Mikey Madison was with Anora.  You can’t take your eyes off of him and if the guy goes on tour, I’m buying a ticket to see him. 

A prologue narration followed by a disturbing, eye-opening epilogue scene within a town church opens Sinners.  Something unfathomable must have happened at the Juke Joint on this particular night. 

I went into this film having not seen a trailer, a commercial or even reading an article about it.  I was not aware of the blazing bluegrass root music that populates this film, nor of the surprise monster fest that eventually takes overtakes the story.  It was a better viewing experience for me than I imagine had I known some of the details of Coogler’s film.  This gorgeous film accompanied by magnificent sound and visual details with award caliber editing and direction steers into so many different curveball surprises and genres.  Sinners is a film that you go see in the movie theater.  The Juke Joint alone is worth the price of admission.  As memorable a setting as Rick’s Place in Casablanca, the Cantina in Star Wars or Jack Rabbit Slim’s in Pulp Fiction. 

You read it here first!  The Juke Joint is sure to be a haunted house at Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights.  I promise you.

That being said, my love for the two-and-a-half-hour film dwindled during its last third when the monsters are revealed and the picture spirals into a blood fest battle between heroes and villains with spurting blood, fiery Molotov cocktails, guns and screaming and wrestling and chases upstairs and out the doors and off the balconies.  I’ve seen all of this a hundred times before and as well constructed as a film this is, nothing was surprising me anymore.  Nothing was giving me jump scares. 

For such an imaginative picture, the inventions went into neutral.  The dialogue starts to drain in lieu of schlock gore and the intelligence of this abundance of characters checks out at the door.  Some of what you see looks like material that could have been in Friday The 13th Part 14.  And, well, a lot of the material is a rehash of Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s very proud B movie From Dusk Til Dawn.

Until the final act of Sinners, Ryan Coogler incorporates so much researched and genuine attention into this Jim Crow era film.  I read that while he was making the Creed and Black Panther films, he was feeling withdrawn after a favorite uncle passed away.  This uncle told stories of this Mississippi area, complete with a small immigration of Chinese populace.  Coogler capitalized on that idea and a well-drawn couple named Bo and Lisa Chow (Yao, Helena Hu) are weaved into this story to supply food and drink for the party that’s to come.  No one would ever question if these two were not part of this cast.  They could have been two black actors or even a pair of whites, but Coogler ensures additional flavors are worked into the film with the authenticity to back it.  These are not even walk on roles.  They own two different mercantile stores within the heart of town. 

The best idea to Sinners is when the music is most entertaining at the Juke.  Ryan Coogler has fun with the clay he infinitely molds.  A long Steadicam shot is the centerpiece of the film as it travels through the whole barn that has been transformed into the Joint.  Coogler seamlessly goes for an ethereal or maybe spiritual feel as the sweaty, sexy and rhythmic performers and their music blends into all kinds of jazz, rap and soul found within the future generations of this community.  A turntable scratcher is positioned next to an acoustic guitar player or a banjo, and as deliberately anachronistic as this seems for 1932, it all belongs together within this seasoned stew.

Outside the Juke Joint are the monsters priming for their own celebration to come with Celtic harmonies, clogging and river dancing to get their appetites drooling, literally drooling.  Two communities will clash and it will be for more than just than standard prejudices found along the cotton fields of Jim Crow Mississippi.

This was not an easy review to write.  I do not want to disclose the surprises and turns that Sinners takes.  As well, my experience with the film is a mixed bag.  There is so much new and fresh material found in Ryan Coogler’s picture, but there’s also a lot of staple work that’s all too familiar as well.  What I recognize is not the least bit surprising and it is frankly uninteresting to me.  Sinners needed the creation of a new kind of cinematic monster to uphold its inventions. 

Especially considering that the body horror film The Substance and Jordan Peele’s terrifyingly smart Get Out earned tons of accolades recently, it will not be a surprise if Sinners earns a lot of end-of-the-year nominations as well.  The direction, editing, art design and costume design are equally worthy of large appreciation.  Sinners has likely clinched a spot for Best Picture nomination.  Only the wrap up will deny itself of the trophy though. 

I must end with a long overdue BRAVO to horror.  Often the genre does not get deserved recognition, because so much of it runs on cheap gross out junk or jump scares with no sensible reasoning behind any of it.  Guys like Coogler and Peele are finally working on the braininess which can be found in this area of storytelling and craftmanship.  They know there are scarier things to imagine than a foreboding hockey mask. 

THUNDERBOLTS*

By Marc S. Sanders

Thunderbolts* is the next Marvel movie out of the assembly line, the second of 2025 (after Captain America: Brave New World).  A new team is haphazardly assembled and the witty lines come through that poke fun at their idiosyncrasies and their origins.  Yelena (Florence Pugh) is the Russian assassin with a daredevil streak.  John Walker (Wyatt Russell) is the wannabe Captain America known formally as U.S. Agent.  There’s Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) who can teleport in and out of places, and Red Guardian (David Harbour), the Soviet equivalent of Captain America with a shaggy beard, a beer belly and an adorably estranged father/daughter relationship with Yelena.  Bucky, The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) is back too.  We’ve talked enough about him though.

Marvel and Disney are advertising this cast as the anti-heroes, or anti-Avengers and the film lives up to that mantra.  However, it still has the witty banter of those other superhero team up pictures.  What sets this one apart though is that eventually the characters and the story use their brain and a little welcome psychosis for a thrilling final act that leaves you alarmed while welcoming you to empathize. 

The strongest actor and most dimensional character portrayal belongs to Florence Pugh.  No doubt that she carries the film as she leads us into an unexpected underground trap where the other members of this cast are all trying to kill each other at the assigned behest of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus).  Yelena quickly figures out Valentina’s deceit while overlooking an innocent looking Frankenstein’s monster of a young man named Bob (Lewis Pullman).  The others are there to just exercise their skills for some cool action scene edits, and tag along with Yelena and Bob.  An escape out of the underground structure might overstay its welcome, but fortunately the characters are fun.

Once the escape is complete, the action gets better from there with explosions and fire power and such.  Cars and a limo go boom.  Bullets deflect everywhere.

Naturally, disaster eventually has to arrive in New York City and it is up to these Thunderbolts* to save the city.  Honestly, as the citizens kept on disappearing into blackness, I kept asking myself why Dr. Strange or Spider-Man didn’t show up.  That’s the become the unwelcome problem with the Marvel films and their ongoing connections to each other.  Why would I expect a teleporter and a group of acrobatic fighters who carry shields and handguns to stop a godlike entity that is destroying New York City?  Last I recall, Stephen Strange was not dead.  I had to look past the obvious though because there’s interesting material that harbors itself during this third act. 

Florence Pugh and Lewis Pullman steer the reins to triumph, and it is more so done with an underlying, bordering hokey message that these two capable actors balance quite well.  There’s punching and running and screaming and superpower stuff, yes.  However, the win works on an emotional level too, setting itself apart from the various Avengers movies.  There’s good editing to be found here as the characters jump from one room to another as personal demons are confronted.  The room jumps make you feel like you are in that inflatable wonder wheel you would walk on in the swimming pool. It certainly keeps you alert. All the while, Yelena, the skilled martial arts assassin, uses her brains and instinct to rescue her teammates and especially Bob.

The debate rages on the oversaturation of superhero movies and how they might be destroying cinema.  I’ve never been so quick to surrender to that argument.  The box office of these films keep jobs in place for a large multi-billion dollar industry and the profits to be made allow for small more arthouse like films to be produced.  Also, they are still so fun and entertaining if you allow yourself not to be such a film snob. So, stop complaining so much. 

As for the material of these pictures, Thunderbolts* is a good, up to date example of not simply relying on special effects and city destruction with another villain of the week.  It has a Ghostbusters/Men In Black humorous vibe to it while still catering to intrinsic insecurities and personal baggage that all of us carry through life.  Sometimes, when we want to escape to the movies, it helps to uncover someone telling a story that gets me, gets you…gets all of us. 

SINNERS (2025)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Ryan Coogler
CAST: Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caton, Delroy Lindo, Hailee Steinfeld, Wunmi Mosaku, Jack O’Connell
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 98% Certified Fresh

PLOT: Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that even greater troubles are waiting to welcome them back home.


“You keep dancin’ with the devil…one day he’s gonna follow you home.” – Jedidiah in Sinners

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners pulls one of the best head-fakes I’ve seen in a long time.  The initial trailers would have had you believe the film was basically a character study (albeit an intense one) of identical twin brothers trying to run an illegal business in 1932 Mississippi.  Since both brothers are being played by the excellent Michael B. Jordan, aided by a stellar supporting cast, I got the impression it would be a hybrid of Heat, The Cotton Club, and Michael Mann’s Public Enemies.

Sinners does cover much of that fertile ground…for its first half.  Read no further if you’ve been lucky enough not to have seen what the main attraction is, plot-wise, for the film.

We first get a prologue depicting a bloodied young black man bursting into a Sunday church service while holding the top half of a broken guitar neck.  This is Sammie Moore, played by Miles Caton in his film debut.  The rest of the film is a flashback to the previous day.

The Smokestack brothers have returned home.  Smoke and Stack are identical twins, although one of them (Smoke, I think?) has some visible gold in his smile, so that helps distinguish them from each other.  They are both sharply dressed, having returned from Chicago after working for Al Capone for a spell.  They plan to open a juke joint in a building they purchased from a smarmy character named Hogwood, a white man who grins and assures them they won’t have any trouble from the Klan ‘round here.

This whole first half of the movie is masterfully told.  We are presented with fully drawn characters, not generic placeholders to be shuffled randomly later on.  We find out that Sammie is cousin to Smoke and Stack.  We meet Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), a mixed-race woman who was left high and dry romantically when Smoke left for Chicago.  There’s Delta Slim (Delroy Lindo), a nearly-ancient man who plays a mean blues harmonica, whom the brothers want to hire to play in their new joint.  There are the Asian owners of a grocery store, hired to cater their grand opening.

And then there’s actress Wunmi Mosaku, who gives a luminous, heartbreaking performance as Annie, a woman who bore Smoke a child that died as an infant.  One of the highlights of the film shows Smoke reconnecting with Annie in a scene that at first invites some crude jokes, but which later provides a deep emotional resonance in the movie’s closing passages.  I only remember Mosaku as a sizable presence in the one-and-done HBO series Lovecraft Country (2020), but she was also apparently in Deadpool and Wolverine (2024), so now I gotta go back and watch THAT again.  Twist my arm.

The movie plays more like a really good Stephen King novel than any other movie I can think of since Pan’s Labyrinth (2006).  The film’s canvas is painted beautifully and crisply, moving smartly without rushing.  I would hope Sinners gets nominated for its film editing (provided by Michael P. Shawver), not because of the thrilling later sections, but because of how economically the first half of the film provides us with the perfect amount of information to understand everyone’s motivations when the second half arrives, when all hell breaks loose.

I must also mention the film’s, I guess, “mystical” content when it comes to African American history.  Early on, Annie, who is a “hoodoo” practitioner (I don’t think “witch” is the right word here), tells a lovely story about how, every once in a while, a musician comes along who can play so beautifully that their music “pierces the veil” between past, present, and future, inviting the spirits of all three to come together and enjoy the music as one.  There is a magnificent sequence where we get a visual representation of exactly that when Sammie starts to play the blues in the juke joint.  Trying to describe it in print is a fool’s errand, but it is one of the film’s many visual highlights.  Trust me.  You’ll know it when you see it.  It’s as elegant a representation of Black history as I’ve ever seen, and I don’t know how anyone will be able to top it in the future.

All of that, though, is just prologue for the main event: the vampires.  If you’ve read this long and didn’t know that was coming, I’m sorry I spoiled that for you, but you were warned.

The whole second half of Sinners flirts with becoming a straight-up genre picture, which is not a bad thing in itself, but which would have been almost disappointing when stacked against what came before.  However, because we have been given such a thorough grounding in all the characters beforehand, there are real stakes involved in trying to predict who will live and who will die.  Some deaths are almost foregone conclusions, but even those are more affecting than they would have been in other similar films.

Traditional vampire lore is very much at play, especially the bit about having to be invited into a house.  But the filmmakers did add one new bit, which I thought was EXTREMELY effective.  As a vampire is about to feed (or thinks it’s about to), it begins to drool…a thick, gooey saliva that drips from its mouth like ectoplasm.  This is a cool touch, and it makes perfect sense, a Pavlovian response to an imminent meal.  Don’t be surprised if another vampire film in the future steals that from Sinners.  I’d steal it.  Wouldn’t think twice about it.

Sinners undoubtedly has some deeper meanings that I am not qualified to unpack, and I leave it to you to find them.  This is one of the best films I’ve seen this year, and it is deservedly making bank at the box office.  (Over $200 million globally as of May 3rd, 2025.)  It is surprising, it is dramatic, it is thrilling, and it is worth seeing on the big screen.  Trust me.

NOVOCAINE (2025)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTORS: Dan Berk, Robert Olsen
CAST: Jack Quaid, Amber Midthunder, Ray Nicholson, Jacob Batalon
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 82% Certified Fresh

PLOT: When the girl of his dreams is kidnapped, a man incapable of feeling physical pain turns his rare condition into an unexpected advantage in the fight to rescue her.


Just when I thought the John Wick franchise had shown me everything there was to see in terms of modern action films, along comes Novocaine.  If there are philosophical rumblings at the heart of the screenplay, I didn’t see them.  There is a brief scene where a character says probably the deepest line in the film, something along the lines of, “We all have something to hide.  Maybe we’re just looking for someone to show it to.”  Apart from that, though, this movie is a machine designed for one thing: thrill you and make you laugh and cringe all at the same time.  That’s three things, but you get the point.

Because this machine has only one purpose, any criticisms accusing it of not doing something it wasn’t designed for are moot.  You don’t eat a cheeseburger and then complain it didn’t taste like chateaubriand.  I got what the movie’s goals were after 10-15 minutes – or, actually, even after just watching the red-band trailers.  I went in with eyes wide open, and I was not disappointed.  My only real complaint is that those same trailers gave away a little too much of the very best fight scenes in the film, ruining two of the best gags (the deep fryer and the ball-and-chain).  But I forgive the trailer editors because the rest of the movie was so freaking entertaining.

Nathan Caine (Jack Quaid, whose father’s famous smile will haunt his face for the rest of his life) is an assistant bank manager living with a very real genetic disorder called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain, or CIP.  He literally cannot feel pain, to the degree that he can’t even chew solid food because he could theoretically chew off bits of his tongue and not realize it.  His obligatory meet-cute with the love interest, Sherry (Amber Midthunder), involves him spilling scalding hot coffee on his hands, but of course he doesn’t feel a thing.  One thing leads to another, and they spend the night together.  Apparently, Nate can’t feel pain, but pleasure is another story.  (I thought that scene might include a homage to Marilyn Monroe and Tony Curtis’s love scene in Some Like It Hot [1959], but alas.)

Next day, as is revealed in the trailers, three robbers dressed as Santa Claus rob his bank, kill his boss, and take Sherry hostage.  On impulse, he takes off after them in a stolen police car, which of course leads authorities to believe he’s in on the case.  This also leads to the first of several jaw-dropping fight scenes, not because they’re insanely choreographed like a Jackie Chan movie, but because the physical violence shown on screen goes beyond anything I can remember seeing before in a fight scene.  Maybe Oldboy (2003) comes close.

Fair warning: if you are squeamish, this movie is simply not for you.  Just in the first fight scene alone, we see Nate get kicked, punched, seared by a scalding hot frying pan, and burned horrifically, which results in him wearing a bandage (and a disturbingly realistic prosthetic) on his hand for the rest of the movie.  The comedy comes from equal parts watching as Nate gets injured and simply powers through it, and from cringing and cursing and covering your face as those injuries occur.

I won’t give anything else away.  The movie does include an intriguing story development that I did not see coming.  My fellow Cinemaniac, Anthony, also made an interesting observation.  It was unusual to see a clearly comic film featuring so many actual deaths: multiple cops murdered after the bank robbery, a death inside the bank itself, and the body count keeps adding up as Nate gets closer and closer to rescuing Sherry.  Nate himself contributes (minimally) to the body count, but it’s mostly the bad guys killing anyone who gets in their way.  Is it possibly to balance almost slapstick physical comedy with so many, almost gratuitous deaths?

For myself, I didn’t think so.  I look at a movie like Tarantino’s Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003), with umpteen deaths, but it’s a movie that’s clearly having fun with the kung-fu genre, which requires lots of death.  Novocaine felt to me like a riff on the John Wick movies.  John Wick mows through LEGIONS of bad guys, getting punched and shot and sometimes falling from four-story buildings onto vans and just getting up, brushing himself off, and moving to the next fight scene.  Nathan Caine does the same thing, just not with legions of bad guys, but you’re constantly aware that he could be killed at any minute.  That kept the stakes raised, so I didn’t feel like I was watching a video game come to life.

Novocaine might be the most fun I’ve had at the movies in 2025 so far.  I laughed a lot, I CRINGED a lot (usually while I was laughing), and uttered more curse words at the screen than I have in a long time (usually “JEEEsus!” or “Oh SHIT”).  The story doesn’t quite reinvent the wheel, but the execution is superb.  Just to restate my warning from earlier: if you don’t like graphic onscreen violence, stay away.  Everyone else, enjoy!

CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD

By Marc S. Sanders

Captain America: Brave New World does not invent any new motifs you have not seen before, but it maintains the magic that have made all of these movies fun in the mighty Marvel way.  It’s well cast with well-edited direction and there actually are a few surprises that did not appear in the countless trailers that have been spread on line. 

Anthony Mackie took over the title character at the end of a Disney + streaming series.  I like him.  He is very vanilla.  Not smart alecky like Robert Downey Jr.  or revolutionary like his predecessor, Chris Evans, and definitely not brash like Thor’s Chris Hemsworth.  He’s Sam Wilson – a guy with a smile who wants to be a friend to everyone.  Hokey?  Sure.  Though that’s not a bad thing.  It’s nice to just like your heroes again.  Danny Ramirez is the sidekick ol’ chum as a new Falcon named Joaquin Torres, and together the pair soar the skies with outstretched feathered wings while trying to save the world.  Harrison Ford is a welcome replacement in the space left open by William Hurt following his passing.  General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross is now the President of the United States and I believe this guy could also thrwart a terrorist hijacking of Air Force One if it happened again. 

Following a successful mission that opens the film where a precious cannister has been recovered, a worldwide peace treaty is on the horizon, and this could be a big win for the President.  However, a surprising assassination attempt interferes, and now Sam and Joaquin must go rogue to exonerate a friend who has been framed and uncover the mastermind behind this plot.  The story is simple and after a million and a half Marvel movies, series and cartoons, I’m grateful.  You can follow this picture without having to catch up on details from earlier installments.  Though, if you do you’ll likely appreciate some surprise appearances that turn up going all the way back to the earliest films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

My major critique with Captain America: Brave New World is the marketing campaign.  While I’m not entirely confident that Anthony Mackie can carry an entire franchise yet, the Marvel brand sells itself and much of the advertising for this picture threw out some of the best goodies that the picture offers.  Was it necessary?  This franchise has a built in following and name brand.  You likely know what I’m referring to but I won’t surrender to the masses and reveal the best attraction of the film.  You just might be the one person reading this who returned from a desert island where you lived alone in a dark cave.  I had a lot of fun with this movie.  I would have had my mind blown had I not known as much as I did.  Still, there is a major player who has hardly been discussed or tossed around of late who makes a nice return.

Julius Onah directs this time and has assembled a well cut action movie.  Most of the scenes are in bright daylight so every soar through the sky with Cap’s colorful wings is easy to follow.  Punches and acrobatic flips are well choreographed.  Military jets thunder across the screen.  Missiles race towards and away from Cap and Falcon.  It’s as colorful as the Marvel artwork found in the original source materials.  A final battle is lots of fun, but the wrap up looks a little odd with the characters supposedly standing amid the wreckage of a Washington D.C. park amid cherry blossom trees.  Just that material alone looked a little too artificial but no matter.  A close up shot of Mackie in his patriotic regalia looks terribly fake and needed another coat of paint to look more convincing.  On a massive Dolby screen (the best way to watch a movie like this because your seats rattle against the sound design), you can easily see the brief eyesore of this moment.  Maybe that will be improved upon when the film hits Blu Ray and streaming. 

As well, the soundtrack is a little intrusive.  It’s adventurous for sure, but the instrumental music never turns off.  There are moments where the heroes are investigating dark rooms and corridors, or Sam and Joaquin are pondering and the music carries on and just feels unwelcome.  Good one on one scenes between Mackie and Ford work on their own, but the soundtrack is just too much for some of these moments.  Let these guys talk and don’t add what isn’t necessary.

Overall, this is a movie I’d watch on repeat.  I like all of the characters.  I appreciate a Parallax View conspiracy kind of plot which is what caters to the Captain America character the best and the dots connect sensibly. 

Captain America: Brave New World is not the best of the Marvel films.  Never needed to be.  It only has to be entertaining, and it more than accomplishes that feat.