Ranking the 2025 films I have seen from best to worse. Hard to believe my top 3 are all horror movies.
Weapons
Frankenstein
Sinners
The Phonican Scheme
One Battle After Another
28 Years Later
I Saw the TV Glow
Thunderbolts*
Avatar: Fire and Ash
Companion
Mission Impossible; The Final Reckoning
Superman
The Thursday Murder Club
Another Simple Favor
G20
This is the Katherine Heigl / Alexis Blidel lesbin wedding movie; with the emphasis being on Heigle and her family. That 3 out of 4 of Katherine's parents and siblings (way to go brother) couldn't figure out that she was a lesbian, seems pretty dense. Watching this 2015 film is an interesting artifact to examine a decade later, but Katherine's family's reactions to the news seem more like something out of 2005 or even 1995. But they are a fairly conservative, reasonable religious bunch, and they do live in Cleveland. Tom Wilkinson's performance as Katherine's dad is a real highlight, while Grace Gummers lawn care subplot seems an odd choice. **1/2
I love that the title of this movie dosen't make any sense until the final minutes of the film. The Venture Brothers movie gives us one last look at the lore rich world of the TV show, it also tackles some lose threads from the series, teases an answer to the mystery of who Hank and Dean's birth mother is, but then choses not to tell us. The film does make cannon what should have been pretty obvious concerning the relationship between Dr. Rusty Venture and his arch nemesis The Monarch. ***
Following many of the same beats as 'Way of Water', the Avatar films are becoming increasingly episodic, but do still feel like they are building to something, and the world building remains interesting. Oona Chaplin's secondary villian is a real psychopath; I love Cameron's decision to make sure the Chaplin family is represented in the newish world of film he's making. ***
Low budget Australian action film has a literal debt collector take out the priests who abused him as a child, unforseen blow back from these killings results in white supremacists and the mob trying to kill him. Not a great or even very good movie, but the filmmakers use their limited resources well and this was a reasonabley entertaining watch. **1/2
Fine example of the Bridgett Bardot sub genra, where she causes the male characters all kinds of trouble, but they are so happy just having her around that they don't complain much. Co-written by the 21 year old starlet's then husband Roger Vadim, plot concerns a night club, a forging scheme, assumed identities and fantasy dance numbers. Really good at what it is. ***1/2
Tarantino borrowed this movie's title for his far better known film. Italian made explotation picture set shortly after D-Day, has a group of American solders bound for trial on charges ranging from petty theft to disorderly conduct, freed when a German straffing attack kills their guards. They set out for the Swiss boarder sixty miles away, and proceed to take out Germans while in route to freedom; before stumbling on a secret Allied mission that could use their help. Fun, rather watchable. ***
As she approaches her 16th birthday, Texas girl Melissa Morgan finds the men in her life mysteriously dying off. I waited too long after watching to write this review and I don't remember much about the movie, other then I liked it well enough, my one note on the film said I give it ***
Action/crime movie concerns a cop (Robert Z'Dar), who is also a Samurai, loaned out by the LAPD to the San Diego PD for a case that also involves a Samurai. Cult film is notable for how everything in it just feels off, the acting, the story, the sets, the action sequences, the dialouge, the effects, EVERYTHING in this movie is not quite right, producing an uncanny oddness that gets you through the film. Still not sure what to make of it. *1/2
It's August, 1943, and Chloë Grace Moretz shows up in her WAC uniform at a New Zealand airstrip, with a closely held carrying case and orders to accompany a bomber crew on a supply mission to Samoa. The crews reaction to haveing a female aboard with them is at first mixed, but Chloe will prove her worth, as the plane finds itself attacked by the Japanese on the outside, and actual bat-like Gremlins within; which is to say nothing about the complications that arise when the contents of her case are made known. There is alot about this film that is ridiculous, but the movie is so action packed, tense and harried, that I found it an absolute joy to watch. I can't think of another feature film that has Gremlin show up in the World War II setting from which they gained their fame. Film leaves room for a sequel, which I'd love to see, but doubt ever gets made. ***
It's March of 2020 and Karan Soni and Geraldine Viswanathan, are Indian-American young people set up by their mothers on a bind date via an online matchmaking service. The date is middling, and is interrupted by text messages advising them that a lock down has started. Karan lives some distance away and can't get a hotel room, or a rental car and Geraldine dosen't have a car, so they have little choice but to quarantine together.
They are very different people, Karan is an engineering researcher, a mommas boy and very traditional, while Geraldine is very westernized, she dosen't want to get married, but goes on dates as a condition of her mother paying the rent. At first the two clash, then Geraldine gets Covid as the result of leaving the house for a few hours to get away from Karan, who must then try to nurse her back to health. Close quarters bring understanding and perhaps these two young people are more compatible then they first thought. A warm and endering little film. ***
Klaus Kinski is a doctor, and the son of a Nazi doctor. He keeps up his father's work, experimenting with the attractive female tenants of the apartment building he owns. He uses the venting system as a "crawlspace" for access. This move ain't good, but the behind the scenes stories, some of them are pretty wild. *
