Director: Deborah Correa
Writer: Ron Yungul
Stars: Damian Conrad-Davis, Sam Bullington, Wayne Charles Baker

Synopsis: April 1862, set in Arizona territory during the opening months of the American Civil War, The War Between, is about two enemy soldiers who must cooperate in order to survive being stranded in the Sonoran Desert.

When we think about the “Wild West” we often imagine it after the Civil War. We think of outlaws, cowboys, lawmen, and frontier cavalry outposts. We think of mining towns, brothels, bullets, and booze. Yet, the period of westward expansion began before the tensions between the North and the South erupted. Because of the rapid expansion of people and policies into these new territories, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, passed in 1854, created a quagmire as it brought the idea of popular sovereignty to these new frontiers. Popular sovereignty meant the residents of these territories could decide for themselves whether or not they would own slaves.

This is what the film The War Between sets up. Two soldiers on opposite sides of the Civil War are brought into close quarters in the New Mexico Territory, in what we now call Arizona. This wasn’t the same kind of pitched battles happening in the east, but battles fought by people from the frontier who had fought and learned tactics from the Native tribes these men had driven off their ancestral lands. These men are more survivalists than soldiers. The truce between these two men exists solely to ensure survival, in spite of their warring philosophies.

The War Between toes that line of Israel Terry’s (Damian Conrad-Davis) belief in preserving the union and Moses Jennings’ (Sam Bullington) belief that the secession was justified so that the Southern way of life could be maintained. Ron Yungul’s script is not about black and white, but awash in the complicated grayness of people. Jennings’ staunch understanding that slavery is necessary is also friendly and respectful of the traditions and personhood of Great Seer (Wayne Charles Baker), an Apache the soldiers meet on their road. Terry, while never claiming to be, and balking at the term, abolitionist, freed and befriended his father’s slave Atticus (Tank Jones). At the same time, he is also vehemently against keeping Great Seer alive and dehumanizes him with harsh racial epithets.

This liminal state bucks the trends of the traditional Western. There isn’t a throughline of moral righteousness because neither man can hope to achieve such an ideal. Both men are inherently flawed, which is not what myth of the West classic Westerns force-fed us.

The War Between also doesn’t look like a traditional Western. Director Deborah Correa and cinematographer Even Jake Cohen create scenes that look more like they’re out of a Terrence Malick film than the grand vistas and horseback chases of John Ford. The West of The War Between is as sparse as the actual West, not the Hollywood version of the West. If there are other people, they’re antagonists or, barring animosity, obstacles to getting back to something like civilization. The filmmakers utilize the rocky and unforgiving landscape to great effect especially as we know it will take so much longer for these men to reach a populated area on foot.

If The War Between has a detriment it’s that while it’s meant to be a balanced portrait of these two men, there is far more interest in one over the other. Our focal character, Terry, has a significant backstory that barely explains why he’s out in the desert attempting to make it back home. On the other hand, Jennings has much more than mere backstory. He has a point of view and a thoughtful nature. It makes it hard to want to keep up with Terry at all or care about his wife waiting back home. It makes it all the more difficult as Jennings is a believer in the necessity of the reprehensible practice of slavery.

The War Between is a sparsely populated, but thoughtful Western. There are elements that make us hope this film can usher in a much more nuanced portrait of the West than what Hollywood spoon-fed us in the early 20th century. The characters are rich and the setting is harsh. It’s a film that breaks out of a mold and forms its own mythos in the best way.

Grade: B

Director: Gerard Johnstone
Writer: Gerard Johnstone
Stars: Allison Williams, Violet McGraw, Ivanna Sakhno

Synopsis: When M3GAN’s tech is stolen to create a military-grade weapon known as Amelia, Gemma realizes that the only option is to resurrect M3GAN and give her a few upgrades, making her faster, stronger, and more lethal.

Following the mega success of Blumhouse’s M3GAN in 2023, it would’ve been easy to tell a more simple revenge-driven story for the film’s inevitable sequel, but M3GAN 2.0 decides to take a page out of Terminator 2: Judgment Day’s book with a full-on change in genre. Instead of mixing the movie’s campy tone into horror, it instead goes full steam ahead into action, espionage elements, going full tilt into Mission Impossible territory. Director Gerard Johnstone certainly took a genre risk but it mostly pays off as an enjoyable time. The silly humor from the original is well represented, but there are solidly choreographed action sequences mixed in. However, along with its silly nature, the sequel has a number of competing ideas, including the dangers of AI consciousness in our world. These ideas, paired with its overlong runtime, keep it from greatness. But, M3GAN 2.0 comes out on the positive end by understanding its tone. It becomes an absurd, but playful way to spend a couple hours.

The sequel immediately establishes a new tone when we open with a new android, Amelia (Ivanna Sakhno), fighting in hand-to-hand combat with goons, going rogue against her government-issued operation orders. The first film’s events left the world at a standstill with Gemma (Allison Williams) now trying to put guards on AI ever since M3GAN’s (Jenna Davis) bloody rampage. Gemma soon learns that Amelia was created from her own M3GAN tech, leading her to realize that bringing back the killer robot is the only option for the safety of her and Katie (Violet McGraw). The film’s thoughts on the ever-growing debate of ethical AI usage is present throughout and serves as light commentary to surround the film with more intrigue but it never goes anywhere interesting besides dancing on topics until the end where it goes completely off the rails, over-explaining itself. These elements are where the film carries over this same commentary from the first film and it’s about the same level of window dressing in each film, light concepts that keep interest but never really go fully anywhere and it’s the weakest aspect of both movies. 

Where the movie does shine is through the surprisingly well-done spy/action film angle. With M3GAN now acting as a protagonist in the narrative, this movie goes the T2 route in more ways than one. Multiple sequences in the film are straight-up heist and spy-centric. Funny disguises for the characters to sneak around are used, and there are many action scenes to parse through. While this follow-up still retains its hammy tone, it’s surprising to see that so much of it is played straight, but never so much to the point where it starts becoming less clever because of the common genre tropes. It’s certainly a rare sight to see a Blumhouse film with car chases and 3rd act heists, but it is similar to another Blumhouse-produced film Upgrade (2018), especially with the similarities in action filmmaking. It feels twisty and precise in its robotic-like choreography and camera placement, which makes sense because M3GAN or Amelia are mainly the ones doing the fighting. The film never breaks new ground within the spy genre, action scenes, or espionage and one could say it even leans a little too hard into more predictable and boring genre tropes, especially with an exposition heavy 3rd act and unsurprising twist, but it mainly rides a line between a cool and spoofy nature.

The first M3GAN, while fun, was never truly an insanely entertaining movie because, for a film that’s supposed to be campy, it honestly took itself just a bit too seriously. There is still a lot of emotionality between our returning characters in this entry but because of the change from horror to action, it’s looser with the flow of its story. So, despite the unneeded 2-hour runtime, dull moments end up being few and far between. Of course, famous meme moments from the original are either recreated or have a new flavor to them here like a new M3GAN dance and another instance of cheesy singing that is sure to get a laugh out of audiences.

M3GAN 2.0 has a drawn-out runtime and just a bit too much clutter within it that keeps it from being great, but it was a pleasant surprise to see how effective it was with its genre change. It’s a sequel that still retains a tone that created such great success while also weaving in something new that will work for fans of the original and for those who wanted a little bit more out of it. M3GAN is a very flawed but creative shift to take a sequel to a modern hit.

Grade: B-

Director: Kang Hyeong-cheol
Writer: Kang Hyeong-cheol
Stars: Lee Jae-in, Ahn Jae-hong, Park Jin-young

Synopsis: The five ordinary people, who developed their superpowers after receiving organ transplants from a previously superpowered being, are fighting against another psychic, who also gained the power through transplant and covets their powers.

Superhero cinema has become a routine genre as of late, offering little to no surprises for moviegoers who seek out the latest Marvel or DC feature (that said, James Gunn’s Superman is poised to breathe new life into DC adaptations this coming July, so the jury is still out on that front). And the recent financial returns have also shown a trend of fatigue in mediocre comic book adaptations, from the dismally-received Captain America: Brave New World to even Thunderbolts*, which was much more critically acclaimed than the recent streak of MCU films. 

It’s almost as if superhero entertainment is in a perpetual rut of mediocrity because its writers have no idea how to reinvent a story that has been treated far too many times on screen. As good as Thunderbolts* may have been received, it was the MCU’s version of Suicide Squad – pretty much the same story, beat-for-beat, with a few modifications. None of it felt fresh and exciting. That’s why I’m a bit skeptical of the upcoming The Fantastic Four: First Steps reinventing the wheel, but we’ll see what Marvel has in store for us later down the line. For now, however, a brilliant movie from South Korea has recently released in cinemas and is the shot in the arm superhero filmmaking needs to continuously enthrall moviegoers and make them clamor for more by the time its credits roll. 

The film is called Hi-Five and, you guessed it, tracks the story of five super-powered individuals who each received abilities after successful organ transplants from mysterious, superheroic, donors. Our protagonist, Park Wan-seo (Lee Jae-in), has recently recovered from a heart transplant and can now move at the speed of light, and superkick baddies with ease. It’s at that point when she meets Park Ji-sung (Ahn Jae-hong), who received a lung transplant and can blow everything incredibly far in front of him. The other members, Hwang Ki-dong (Yoo Ah-in), can control electromagnetic waves at the snap of his fingers, after receiving a cornea transplant, while Huh Yak-sun (Kim Hee-won) can heal people’s wounds with the touch of his hands, after he recovered from a liver transplant. 

There is a fifth member, Kim Sun-nyeo (Ra Mi-ran), whose powers are still unknown, after she received a kidney transplant. Together, they must unite to fight against Seo Young-chun (Park Jin-young and Shin Goo), who dubs himself the “New God resurrected,” a cult leader who, after receiving a pancreas transplant, can absorb the youth out of other people and live eternally. As he gets younger and younger, he seeks to have each respective organ of the Hi-Five members for himself, so he can attain the same powers they have, in one entity. 

It’s a fairly straightforward plot, but one that gets elevated by its relentless, wall-to-wall maximalism and humanist approach to its respective characters. Each action scene is a pure aesthetic thrill to watch unfold, particularly a well-paced, humorous chase that, in the year of our lord 2025, is scored through the sounds of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.” The thing is, as outdated as this joke may be, we never cease to fall for it. It’s the one constant on the internet, ever since the popularization of the meme in the late 2000s. As on-the-nose as the scene may be, it works because the alchemy (or purposeful lack thereof) between the members is so strong that we ultimately root for their success as they overcome their inner demons to fight off against a seemingly invincible deity. 

In that confrontation, Hyeong-cheol throws literally everything at the screen and mixes all of the superheroes’ unique abilities in surprisingly fun and hyperkinetic ways, where their respective powers respond to each other, as they look to stop the Eternal Young-chun before he becomes the “New God” he has always dreamed of being. It results in action that transcends the artifice of comic book entertainment and visualizes things only our limitless imagination is capable of coming up with, in a succession of grandiloquent digital gestures that are often surprising as they are cathartic. It’s creative swings like these that will always ensure the perennity of this artform, in the hands of people who want to craft aesthetically (and thematically) thrilling sequences of great formal ingenuity that always puts its characters at the forefront of the picture. 

Because a film like Hi-Five! wouldn’t work if we didn’t care about the five protagonists on screen, who each have their own distinct vulnerabilities to overcome as the New God attains more powers. Hyeong-cheol ensures each member has their time to shine, both through their incredible acts of derring-do and as he pulls back the curtain on their more human aspects, both individually and collectively. I wouldn’t dare reveal how they surpass their most harrowing moments, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t shed a tear by the time they unite forces and do what must be done to ensure Young-chun does not become the “New God resurrected.”

As a result, it was easy for me to enjoy Hi-Five! Not only is its creativity unmatched in the landscape of superhero entertainment, but it contains enough interesting characters that it truly doesn’t matter if some of the narrative developments Hyeong-cheol takes aren’t up to snuff. When you let your imagination run wild, you can come up with some of the kookiest, most galaxy-brained stories you can think of. 

Sometimes, it doesn’t work and you’re left perplexed at how such a movie could ever get a green light. Other times, though, you get magical, once-in-a-generation entertainment like this one, where all you want as soon as you leave the theater is another one. Considering how many plotlines are left unresolved (notably one major aspect regarding a specific character), I can guarantee we’ll get a sequel much sooner than later, and I’ll be there on day one.

Grade: A-

Director: Elliot Kirschner
Writer: Elliot Kirschner
Stars: Robert Reich

Synopsis: The film follows former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich as he teaches his ‘Wealth and Poverty’ course at UC Berkeley for the final time, capturing a master educator as he wrestles with his own aging and the reality of his students inheriting a world of widening economic inequality.

In an era of fiercely partisan political documentaries, The Last Class strikes a conspicuously quiet and gentle tone. It presents an intimate portrait of Robert Reich, the former US Secretary of Labor, during his final semester of teaching. The film succeeds beautifully as a study of a beloved teacher, capturing the warmth and wit of its subject. However, its gentle focus on the art of teaching often comes at the expense of a clear point of view, leaving one to wonder if its affection ultimately smothers its fire.

Visually, the film has the polished aesthetic common to many contemporary streaming projects, for want of a better phrase, the ‘Netflix style’. Its handsome exterior shots wisely place the viewer on the sun-dappled Berkeley campus, creating an immersive academic world. Within this frame, the film presents its strongest case as a character study, carried by Reich’s undeniable charisma. He is a charming subject, full of self-deprecating wit, and the camera captures a man happiest when examining difficult subjects with his students.

The film truly excels when it showcases his teaching method. We see his delight in the “special kind of alchemy” that occurs when a teacher connects students to a subject, and one scene perfectly encapsulates this. Reich demonstrates the power of incentives by giving one student in a pair a hypothetical $1,000 to split; if their partner rejects the proposal, neither gets a penny. The joy he takes, not in the result, but in exploring with them why they made their choices, is palpable. It shows us a teacher who understands that great teaching is not about providing answers, but about cultivating a generous and infectious curiosity.

And yet, for all its success in capturing the man, the film’s central weakness is its reluctance to engage fully with his life’s work. He is presented by listing his previous job titles, but there is little more than a passing attempt to explore the substantive material he is teaching. There is a theme about Reich teaching his students how to think, rather than what to think. However, it seems like a waste of the subject to not explore in more depth what his views are on the world. For a film about a major political voice, this choice to remain amiable and uncontroversial feels less like a stylistic decision and more like a frustrating evasion, especially in our current political climate.

This avoidance is perhaps tied to the palpable sense of melancholy that hangs over Reich as he faces retirement. His sadness feels like more than just a personal milestone; it seems to symbolise the closing of a wider political era. His career, after all, was defined by a respect for institutions, the pursuit of fairness, and the effort to find common ground. What stands out is not just his views, but the respectful, compassionate, and curious way in which he expresses them, qualities that feel increasingly absent from modern politics.

We are never told why Reich is retiring, however as a viewer you get the sense that it was perhaps not totally his decision. As Robert Reich brings his last class to end, as a viewer you are left with the sense that this is a man with much still to offer his students, and perhaps the rest of us. You also get the sense that he knows this too, which is what makes his retirement seem, in the end quite unsatisfying. 

The Last Class is, in the end, a pleasant and heartfelt tribute. It is a warm and often moving documentary that is impossible to dislike. But in choosing to celebrate the teacher, it sadly refuses to engage with many of the vital lessons his work still has to teach us all.

Grade: C+

Director: Sarah Friedland
Writer: Sarah Friedland
Stars: Kathleen Chalfant, H. Jon Benjamin, Carolyn Michelle

Synopsis: An octogenarian woman transitions to life in assisted living as she contends with her conflicting relationship to herself and her caregivers amidst her shifting memory, age identity, and desires.

Film is an audio/visual medium. There have been attempts made to add smell to it (Smell-O-Vision), but really it comes down to just what we can see and hear. Though, there are films that can transcend beyond just these two senses. If the images and sounds are strong enough it may trigger our memory. It may be that if the characters are suffering from cold weather, we pull our sweatshirts tighter. It may be that if the characters are tasting something gross, we take a sip of our sodas to get the taste out of our mouth. It may be that if a character is lifted by the aroma of a terrific feast in front of them, our mouths may water in return. Film uses memory to engage all of our senses and there are very few that do it as well as Familiar Touch.

There is true brilliance in the way writer/director Sarah Friedland and her team evoke the sensation of touch and make it an impression the viewer can feel right along with the actors on screen. There are shots of Ruth’s (Kathleen Chalfant) hands as she touches people and objects and because of the way cinematographer Gabe Elder positions the shot, we get a sense that it could be any hand, even our own. The same way that editor Aacharee Ungriswong inserts just the right amount of these hands so that we understand the importance or heft of the gesture. The same can be said of the sound team, led by sound designer Eli Cohn, which gives us that additional and important sensory input to fully grasp the touch on screen.

So much of Familiar Touch is about the present. It’s because Ruth is losing her past bit by little bit and her future is at a place that rarely changes. The film moves Ruth through these days that stretch on in her new home with her new routine and the new people in her life. We see the triumph of her good days and the agony of her bad days. This movement and flow wouldn’t work if it weren’t for the delicate and realistic performance of Kathleen Chalfant.

Chalfant has been a character actress for decades honing her craft, which helped her, in this lead role, to create a portrait of a person going through a tremendous upheaval in self. Her timing lends itself to the lighter moments. Her anger to the fear we all have about the possibility of going through something like this in our own lifetimes. Her devastation is palpable as she learns multiple times that she is at the end, that her memory is never to return and her self is gone. Chalfant is so achingly good and real in Familiar Touch. It’s a performance that transcends beyond the screen and into our sudden realization of our deterioration as we age.

There is a scene in the film that combines all of these elements together so absolutely perfectly, from Chalfant’s performance, to the cinematography, sound, editing, writing, and directing. Ruth is being given a session with the aquatic bodyworker (Rotem Hershkovich, an actual practitioner of the craft). In this session, Ruth floats on her back with the assistance of pool noodles and her bodyworker. As she is moved and floated, the sound becomes not a pool in a retirement community, but a crowded shore on a hot day. We experience what is happening in Ruth’s mind as she experiences this therapy. As the session ends and Vanessa (Carolyn Michelle) tells Ruth it’s time to come out, Ruth, still lost in memory, murmurs a few things to her lingering memories before she fully realizes where she is and the body she now inhabits.

Familiar Touch is full of scenes like this, scenes of quiet, of contemplation and a jarring return to reality. It’s a touching, devastating film that tries to give us a glimpse of what it’s like to watch someone disappear without the grandeur or melodrama we typically get with other films that try and tackle similar themes. It’s a film that never tries to over explain what’s happening, but lets us understand through these sensations and emotions what Ruth is experiencing. It’s a film filled with beautiful performances and many breaks for levity. The levity is not at the expense of anyone, but at the experience of trying to continue on after the body has begun to give up. Familiar Touch will stick with you like the lingering feeling of a lover’s hand on your skin, or your favorite fabric as it slips along your body.

Grade: A

Directors: Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans
Writers: Hannah McMechan, Danya Jimenez, Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans
Stars: Arden Cho, Ahn Hyo-seop, Ji-young Yoo

Synopsis: When they aren’t selling out stadiums, Kpop superstars Rumi, Mira and Zoey use their secret identities as badass demon hunters to protect their fans from an ever-present supernatural threat. Together, they must face their biggest enemy yet – an irresistible rival boy band of demons in disguise.

Did I have any expectations for the direct-to-Netflix KPop Demon Hunters? Absolutely not. In fact, I had only heard of this movie just a few weeks ago, shocked that it was produced by Sony Pictures Animation, and dumped on Netflix, thinking we had moved past this and that this entity of Sony Pictures would resume releasing their library theatrically. Yet, some part of me felt that this production could be as worthwhile as The Mitchells vs. The Machines and Vivo, which were both unceremoniously dumped on the streaming service but became massive hits during the COVID-19 pandemic. And while KPop Demon Hunters doesn’t reach the same heights as those movies, it’s at least aesthetically exciting and thematically cogent enough to at least warrant a recommendation. 

This year, the animated landscape has been more than lacking. With the exception of the incredible Ne Zha 2 and Dog Man, many families have been left hanging as to when the next must-see offering will be released. Granted, audiences will have the chance to see Elio this week as well, but we’ve not had something genuinely creative from Hollywood in this medium of filmmaking in a long time, so much so that a small independent production from Latvia was able to beat the Pixar and Dreamworks of this world at this year’s Oscars. 

KPop Demon Hunters may not flow as easily as Gints Zilbalodis’ feature, but it is one of the most artistically interesting animated productions Sony has ever released. From its show-stopping, hyperkinetic action to songs of raw emotional power, wondrously visualized in a style blending the comic-book textures of 2D with the boundless spatial imagination of 3D, there isn’t a single frame in Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans’ feature that doesn’t look incredible, or won’t make your jaw drop. It’s a genuine shame that audiences will be unable to see this movie in a theater, when each large-scale action setpiece warrants the price of admission on the largest possible screen, especially when hearing its bevy of emotionally-stirring KPop music.

There’s also a tangible feeling in capturing the story of Rumi (Arden Cho), the leader of a popular KPop band known by the name of “Huntrix,” who, when they are not singing, hunts demons with her co-members Zoey (Ji-young Yoo) and Mira (May Hong). This is all well and good until we find out that Rumi herself is part-demon and begins to notice marks on her skin, which progressively get more significant as the malevolent presence of Gwi-Ma (Byung-hun Lee) starts to take hold of her body. The villain, while frequently omnipresent, is genuinely terrifying to the point where we actively feel for the people he successfully possesses, and the spirits he steals, even if they may not be truly good people. 

Case in point: Jinu (Ahn Hyo-seop), the leader of a rival boy band, Saja Boys, is a demon, and attempts to break Huntrix by getting under Rumi’s skin. He initially tells her of a miserable story that eventually led him to join forces with Gwi-Ma, until we learn more about him and see that he is far more than a “broken” individual. While I anticipated these developments, how Kang and Appelhans treat his story is honestly far more interesting than how most studio-driven animated films usually illustrate, and the alchemy between both Jinu and Rumi makes up for some of the narrative shortcomings and childish humor of this project. 

Because, yes, it’s easy to see where this scenario is going, even right at the top of the movie. It can act more as a bug than a feature, especially when the screenplay is filled with inconsistent comedy, but the directing duo more than makes up for their imperfections with a profoundly human story at its core, one that opens itself up in surprisingly cathartic corners as it reaches its climax. That scene is a perfect marriage of staggering visuals and musical editing, whose rhythm is created from the song Huntrix is performing, as we reach an apex bound to make everyone tear up, even non-fans of KPop alike. 

It’s so powerful, one has to ask if directors Kang and Appelhans played a Hideki Kamiya game before diving into the family-friendly world of the KPop Demon Hunters. The blend between music and images is the strongest it has been in an animated piece of media since Kamiya’s Bayonetta 2 – my eyes couldn’t believe it. I didn’t much care for the bog-standard, albeit universal, story, so much so that I thought I would forget KPop Demon Hunters as I do most Netflix films. Yet, the final half or so is immensely staggering that I’ll long think about why some of the most artistically exciting works of animation, which beg the big screen (IMAX) experience, are always relegated to streaming, whilst the ones that do nothing for the medium are played in a cinema. 

It’s a question to ponder, but, as of now, Kang and Appelhans’ film more than deserves your attention, and could act as a gateway to the incredible, highly imaginative world of KPop. You may never be the same after the credits roll, and that’s the best endorsement I could give for a film like this one. 

Grade: B+

Director: Danny Boyle
Writers: Alex Garland
Stars: Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Jodie Comer, Ralph Fiennes

Synopsis: A group of survivors of the rage virus live on a small island. When one of the group leaves the island on a mission into the mainland, he discovers secrets, wonders, and horrors that have mutated not only the infected but other survivors.

In 2002, Danny Boyle and Anthony Dod Mantle pioneered digital filmmaking by shooting 28 Days Later on a Canon XL1 DV camera, giving the Zombie apocalypse film a unique look and feel, while also paving the way for the acceptance of digital cinematography as the film industry began the transition from celluloid to memory cards. In the post-digital era we live in today, it is now routine for studios (and directors) to use newer cameras for their projects, as it is much cheaper and less cumbersome than film. And while there were formal innovations at the time where digital was not widely accepted, such as in Michael Mann’s Collateral and Miami Vice, the sludgy pictures filling our screens today is the most significant symptom of a desire to make each “big screen” experience as televisual as possible. 

Digital filmmaking requires different considerations than film, yet few directors are actively interested in exploring these newer technologies and offering never-before-seen images for the audience to question their place in society. However, in the year of our lord 2025, auteurs like Jia Zhangke, Steven Soderbergh, David Cronenberg, Takeshi Kitano, Leos Carax, and Joseph Kosinski have all begun to question how filmmaking in this era should be approached when the big-budget productions of this Earth have grown more and more sterile. It makes their movies stand out amongst the rest of the pack, as they figure out the purpose of cinema at a time when few moviegoers actively want to see a film on the big screen. 

For the much-anticipated 28 Years Later, Danny Boyle fundamentally understands that, for an audience to see his latest project in the cinema, he must offer them images they have never witnessed before, even if filmmakers like Sean Baker and Soderbergh experimented on the predominant device Boyle (and Dod Mantle) shot their Zombie film on: iPhones. Transcending the artifice Soderbergh established in Unsane and High Flying Bird, Boyle immediately jolts our attention with his perversely funny opening scene, as a group of children are mortified in terror as they are forced to watch the Teletubbies, whilst the rage virus outbreak is creeping at their doors. 

In a recent interview, Boyle had discussed how he wanted to “desecrate the innocence” of the popular BBC children’s television series, but how Dod Mantle shoots the dingy television gives us our first honest look at how genuinely terrifying Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa, and Po (alongside the Baby Sun, likely the most accurate visualization of Hell ever created) have always been. As editor Jon Harris cuts to the reaction shots of the petrified children who are attempting to ignore the horrors around them by watching the most horrifying television show made for kids, the outbreak begins to multiply rapidly, until it affects everyone in the room. It’s an intense cold open that primes the audience for the multiple tonal shifts Boyle’s latest film will play with, often darkly funnier than you expect, while also being unafraid to explore nastier, upsetting territories. 

The opening 35 minutes or so of the movie (it could perhaps be even longer, I don’t carry a watch, but there’s a clear shift between the first and second half that most will notice) is the franchise at its most cogent and aesthetically exciting. Screenwriter Alex Garland, with best screenplay since…2015 (Jesus), is not only angry at how pessimistic society has become, but also violently rejects what most fans have been looking forward to seeing in a movie like this. Instead of giving answers to how the world looks 28 years after the initial outbreak, he immediately subverts expectations by paralleling the present-day story of Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Isla (Jodie Comer), and their son Spike (Alfie Williams) to the darkest periods of world history and cinema. 

Through a riveting collage of archival footage as Jamie and Spike step out of the comforts of their remote island to hunt for the infected, Garland associates their actions to a bevy of medieval-set movies, as society has had to regress from the innovations of their times to the most primal human needs, with no access to cutting-edge medical treatment, weapons, and technologies. Spike has grown up in a closed-off community, away from the infected, and doesn’t know what a phone or the internet is. But they must do what they should to survive. However, when Isla begins to experience strange symptoms of an illness, and Jamie speaks of a doctor (Ralph Fiennes) who has gone mad, and lives away from the island, Spike takes her mother to him, hoping he will have an answer to her predicament. 

It’s at that point where the movie begins to slow down and remind us that what we’re watching is indeed a Part One™, replete with some of the worst tendencies these films usually have: endless bouts of exposition and lore-dumping that feels, through Garland’s dialogue, like dense plotting, unresolved character arcs, and a denouement that acts more as a tease for what’s to come than a satisfying conclusion that will bridge the gap between the first and second installment. 

The climax, in particular, is not at all one. It is more or less an extended teaser for what audiences will be getting in the Nia DaCosta-directed sequel, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, than wrapping up this part of the story in a way that will naturally encourage the audience to see what’s next instead of basically forcing the characters to go, “Did you like this? We’re not done yet, you better show up in January for Part 2!” Stuff like this halts the momentum of an all-timer opening section, one that’s filled with as much important commentary on the state of the world we live in today, in a post-COVID society, as it is with revolutionary filmmaking techniques, capturing Zombie action we’ve never seen before done at this scale, and with such a device. 

Formally, 28 Years Later is as much of a leap forward in digital cinematography as the first, though with different (and more exciting) considerations. The 2.76:1 aspect ratio adds immense texture to Dod Mantle’s staggering iPhone-shot frames of an orange sky bathing on the human characters, or nature being captured in ways I’ve simply never seen before. The lush greens of the grass, moss and leaves, the bright yellows of daffodils, the bluer-than-blue water that separates the island from the mainland. 

Every single image is jaw-dropping: the slight robotic freeze-frames as an infected, whether slow (Garland is finally tipping the hat to George A. Romero) or fast, is violently killed, the claustrophobic close-ups of Isla and Spike as they attempt to shield themselves from a massive gas leak, the slow-motion employed to demonstrate the Alpha Zombie’s strength (complete with an alpha dong, making Bruce LaBruce proud), as it runs in extreme conditions with the intent to dismember as many humans as it can. There’s so much one can extract by just looking at how Dod Mantle captures its characters, especially during its more melancholic conclusion, as Spike and Isla are directly haunted by the specter of Death, when they meet Fiennes’ Doctor Kelson, who tells them of a harsh truth Spike isn’t prepared to hear. 

That’s why I didn’t much care about the endless Part One-isms, because Dod Mantle’s cinematography is so revelatory we can dissociate the film’s plotting from its staggering visuals. In an era that has mostly forgotten how to shoot movies and formally innovate, Dod Mantle continues the legacy he began with Thomas Vinterberg in The Celebration and Harmony Korine in Julien Donkey-Boy to continue questioning how a film can be shot at a time where one simple phone (or 50 phones mounted on a rig) can create the most impeccable visual poetry you’ve seen. In a way, it acts as a companion piece to Joseph Kosinski’s incredible F1 The Movie, where cinematographer Claudio Miranda continues his collaboration with the TRON: Legacy filmmaker in their rethinking of large-format photography as they take the exact same set up they experimented with for Top Gun: Maverick, and mount it on racing vehicles. 

Kosinski is more of an architectural perfectionist than Boyle, who loves to showcase the imperfections of filmmaking (as demonstrated in 28 Days Later) and its artifice, which he frequently does in 28 Years Later, especially during its DIY-coded final scene, where everything is thrown at the screen in pure maximalism, a complete swing for the fences that will either make or break your appreciation of the work. The narrative paths of both Isla and Spike will also divide audiences, who were looking for a more thrilling affair, especially as Garland halts momentum and decides to ruminate on what life in a post-apocalyptic society means, as medical progress has ceased to exist. Still, Comer and Alfie Williams give the film’s best performances, while the contribution of Taylor-Johnson gets sidelined as soon as the movie shifts tonalities and becomes a more meditative affair. 

While I’m not entirely sold on which direction the upcoming Bone Temple will take, one can’t entirely dismiss Boyle and Dod Mantle’s formal daring based on a few baffling screenwriting decisions from Garland. After all, this is the best screenplay he’s written in a long time, but he still seems a bit wobbly from his past missteps. Perhaps the second one will be much clearer, though I’m afraid it will alienate audiences way more than this one does, especially in how it sets up a central character with a strange connection to those godforsaken, Satan-created Teletubbies, making them this franchise’s recurring motif?? What did the children of the world do to deserve such a horrifying show like this one…

Grade: A-

Director: Simon West
Writers: Cece Pleasants, Shaina Steinberg
Stars: Rebel Wilson, Anna Camp, Anna Chlumsky

Synopsis: When a mercenary group takes a lavish wedding hostage, they have no idea what they are in for as the maid of honor is actually a secret agent ready to rain hellfire upon anyone who would ruin her best friend’s wedding.

Bride Hard is a new action comedy designed as a vehicle for Rebel Wilson, the star of films like the Pitch Perfect franchise, Bridesmaids, Jojo Rabbit, and even a viral clip where she humorously told Idris Elba at an awards show that she’s socially programmed to want chocolate on Valentine’s Day. Wilson is hilarious and, at times, downright adorable, with a distinct comedic persona and a talent that stands apart from anything else in the industry. Given her physical transformation, one would expect a role that leans into her gift for physical comedy to be a natural fit.

However, Bride Hard ultimately misuses Wilson’s comedic strengths, resulting in a final product that fails to reach the low bar set by even Kevin James’s Paul Blart: Mall Cop films. It’s a tedious bore—and one of the worst films of 2025.

The story follows the genre playbook step by step, focusing on the strained relationship or lack thereof between Sam (Wilson) and Betsy (Cafe Society’s Anna Camp), childhood best friends. Betsy is now marrying Ryan (Sam Huntington of Jungle 2 Jungle fame) and has chosen her long-absent bestie as maid of honor, much to the irritation of her future sister-in-law, Virginia (Veep’s Anna Chlumsky). Sam is always too busy with work to help plan the wedding, but she has a good reason: she’s a secret agent, quietly serving and protecting her country from the scum of the earth. 

For example, during the bachelorette party—which she has the government relocate to Paris to multitask while on a mission—Sam disappears to hunt down a terrorist involved in a suspicious drop, presumably linked to nefarious activities. Her boss, Nadine (Joy Ride’s Sherry Cola), disapproves of her recklessness, while Betsy’s friends—including Academy Award winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph—resent Sam for never thinking of anyone but herself. However, everyone will be relieved later when the wedding is taken over by a band of terrorists, led by a no-nonsense muscle of the Columbian cartel, Kurt (Stephen Dorff), looking to break into Betsy’s future family’s vault to loot the family fortune, which looks like Fort Knox-lite.

Bride Hard was directed by Simon West, who has maintained an impressive streak of misfires since executive producing Black Hawk Down, making his directorial debut with Con Air, and capturing Rick Astley’s smooth pop ballad “Never Gonna Give You Up” on the small screen. Frankly, after his last thirteen films, we should be concerned that West took the title of that song a little too seriously—Rickrolling his way through Hollywood with jaw-droppingly bad efforts ever since. 

Bride Hard may be his crowning achievement: an action comedy with no thrills, no laughs, and no purpose beyond featuring Justin Hartley as an inept heartthrob—the film’s only mildly amusing element, which grows tiresome than the extra “F” is Stephen Dorff’s last name. 

Bride Hard is not worth watching—unless you’re a fan of flat jokes, predictable plotting, and a completely lazy, inept excuse for a cinematic swing. To put it politely, the freshman script from Shaina Steinberg is tedious; to be blunt, it’s atrocious. I didn’t think a movie could be worse than Flight Risk, but at least that film had an over-the-top, entertaining Mark Wahlberg reveling in its awkwardness. 

At least, with that film, you were not bored, whereas West’s film is so charmless that it has no sense of its own watered-down identity. 

You can watch Bride Hard only in theaters now!

Grade: D-