Category: Movies

Aye gods what a flick. 

So much to unpack here and despite the jokes about spoilers for a several thousand year old story — that most of us were taught in school — there will in fact be spoilers in this review. 

First, I joked with a friend before seeing this movie that if Sir Christopher Nolan told this tale with a timeline that went from the middle out I was going to scream so loud the sirens would cover their ears.

Well, Nolan gonna Nolan. 

Still, the master has mixed the spectacle and storytelling chops of Steven Spielberg with the frenetic pace of Martin Scorsese. 

So, while it’s epic in scope, no one scene or shot or moment is epic in length. This gives Nolan the freedom to make it through a saga in 2 and a half hours. However, like Oppenheimer, once the show starts it ramps up to a frenetic pace and never slows down. 

To be fair and to do Nolan’s particular skills justice this is not a timeline experiment or a puzzle like several of his other works. Instead, it is a tale told by several storytellers who are weaving in and out of various parts of the yarn. 

Nolan doesn’t really depict the gods here, you will get no Olympus and the one god who moves through the story is a manifestation of Odysseus’ guilt and not truly noble Athena. 

This narrative gives Nolan a bit of a cheat as nearly every fantastic thing that happens is not presented as fact but rather as the memories of a veteran suffering from enormous guilt and post traumatic stress disorder. 

So you can see the magic and monsters as true or you can see them as the symbols of tragedy, loss, and despair of a man who sacrificed most of his life to war. 

This idea is not new to me but it is correct that Nolan’s Odyssey is somehow a thematic sequel to Oppenheimer.  Both are about men who believed they were doing what they must do to defeat implacable enemies only to find that their ingenious solutions destroyed themselves and their civilizations. 

Nolan, being Nolan, somehow gives even this tale a central mystery that deepens the narrative and provides structure to the whole enterprise. 

Why does brave and cunning, Odysseus choose not to return home? What truly keeps him from his wife and son? 

Ages ago, when I was in high school, Mr. Cramer told us of the Greek Myths and explained Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 

Almost every hero will have a mysterious birth, be trained by a mentor, overcome challenges that most men cannot and then die and be reborn. 

These similarities connect all of our great myths from Odysseus to Hercules, to King Arthur and on to Luke Skywalker. 

Arrogant Odysseus loses his entire crew and his ship and goes into the water to his death, Mr. Cramer said. When he comes out of the water he is finally humbled and now reborn and can return home. 

Nolan depicts this slice of the movie as a man who must finally give up control and give himself over to the will of the gods. 

Which is interesting coming from a guy who turned a whole industry around by resurrecting film, and then branding it in such a way that almost guarantees whatever he makes will be a blockbuster. And, and, and, he is almost alone in shooting movies in a practical way that is exorbitantly costly but somehow incredibly lucrative. 

So when exactly does Sir Christopher Nolan give up control?

Perhaps when you let go of the film and give it to theaters? 

On this it seems that Nolan should have no fears. Screenings of The Odyssey sold out a year in advance. People are literally delaying pregnancies in order to make sure they can travel and see this thing in 70 mm. 

Of course, I do wonder if that tale is true or if it’s just a myth invented by a canny filmmaker who has mastered both the art and the commerce of Hollywood. 

Let’s wrap this up Nolan style with some breakneck final thoughts. 

1. Odysseus and his crew spend so much time running away from danger and back to their ships that I thought Matt Damon should have been replaced with the king of running in movies: Tom Cruise. 
2. They flee so much that someone should have hired John Cleese to shout, “Run Away!”
3. The cast is stacked and Nolan makes excellent use of everyone. Except maybe Zendaya. Anne Hathaway steals the thing from all the boys though. 
4. This is more a horror movie than an action tale. Was not quite prepared for that. 
5. Nolan gives you the cyclops, Circe and her magic, Scylla, Charybdis, the sirens, Penelope’s loom, Agemmenon’s fate, Hades, Calypso’s island vacation, the sack of Troy and the most violent homecoming in myth. All this, and he still leaves enough room for you to treat Troy as a prequel. 
6. Seen in IMAX 70 mm at Indiana State Museum about an hour away from home with a sold out crowd. Had to watch it at 9:30 pm to get a seat. Took a vacation day the next day. Worth it.

What a picture! 

I can, I think, nail this down for you quickly. 

If you can suspend disbelief enough that when the bumbling human detective thanks a group of sheep for solving a murder then this is the whimsical, charming flick for you. 

I loved it. My mystery loving mother will love it. You mileage may vary. 

There are several lovable characters in this thing. Not all of them sheep but a lot of them are sheep. The sheep can talk to each other but not to the humans. 

The difficulties of life as a sheep and the philosophy of sheep are discussed in great detail. 

There is also murder. And the sheep turn into very good detectives. 

There is a lot going on here both in the text and the subtext. Just listen as the sheep try to decipher God. But it’s also a movie that recognizes and discusses the plot points of mystery novels and then proceeds to follow them point by point. 

Look, if Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Bryan Cranston, Rhys Darby, Regina Hall, Brett Goldstein and Sir Patrick Stewart all want to voice a flock of CGI sheep I say let the wool fly. 

A cozy, funny, sad and at times action packed murder mystery.

I guess now if they ever make a movie about those cats who solve crimes I’ll have to watch it.

Minus half a star for changing the name of the book into something bland. 

Three Bags Full was a perfect title for a sunshiney and crackling sheep murder mystery. 

Vampire’s Kiss

This actually happened to a buddy of mine. 

Anyway, this is a one or two star movie with a five star Nic Cage performance in it. 

Every so often I try to make it through a series of Nic Cage films just because the completionist in me can’t help it and because you never know when the next Pig or Joe could be lurking in the shadows. 

This viewing of Last Kiss was prompted by the latest wild interview Cage gave to The New York Times. 

I don’t want to give anything away but there is a reason I think he’s one of our finest actors and perhaps one of the greatest bullshit artists of all time. 

I don’t think he’s lying to us or the interviewers or the world at large. I think he’s lying to himself because he has to in order to justify himself. He has to convince himself that he’s doing art and not just cashing a check even when he is starring in what most of us would recognize as 0 star dreck. 

There was an interview with Bill Murray where he said he took the Garfield movie because he thought the Coen Brothers were doing it. Then when he realized that he got the names wrong and what he had signed up for it was too late. 

But instead of backing out he read the script and said to himself, “I can fix it.”

Maybe all actors do that or maybe just the guys and girls who need a check. 

I dunno. 

But I believe in Nic Cage.

So the one thing that I want to draw your attention to is that amazing accent Cage is living with in this film. That accent is from outer space. But it’s clear that it’s what the character things a wealthy successful young New Yorker should sound like.

So it isn’t Nic Cage acting it’s Cage’s character doing a something with more and less emphasis depending on who he’s with at the time.

Cage is a big comic book guy so maybe he will enjoy this reference. You know when he reads a blog as he is want to do.

Issue 14 of Nth Man: Beyond World War III has statement on it’s cover that has never left me since I saw it in 1990. The comic was written by Larry Hama and drawn by Ron Wagner.

Galactus the giant world eating Jack Kirby and Stan Lee creation is being bullied by a demonic creature that is bigger than him and another person towers over them all.

And the demon says, “There are worlds within worlds little man!”

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Lord of war

Two good Nic Cage movies in a row. I feel like I hit … snake eyes 🐍. 

Anyway deadly funny and a decent amount of tension. It falls apart when it’s about anything (marriage problems, addiction) other than gun running. 

But it is very very good when it gives you that inside look at the criminal enterprise and personalities involved.

Predictable in parts — I literally said, “car bomb” before it happens in the flick — but not so predictable that you can call it all.

Cage’s final speech to his law dog adversary (Hello Ethan Hawke) is not quite up there with the final comments in Casino, Goodfellas, Fight Club and the utterly perfect Killing Them Softly. 

But it is a sneaky rage filled little diatribe. There is solid work here all around. Precious few explosions but the speechifying mostly makes up for it.

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Spider-Noir

It’s good. I’m enjoying it. I’m only a couple of episodes in so a full review is not something I want to do.

Cage doing Bogart with some super hero hijinks thrown in. And Brendan Gleason as the heavy! Just excellent work.

I should probably watch it in Black and White like Cage wants. But I’m a heathen.

The color pops though.

Despite all the effort, dollars spent, words written and time wasted there have only been two good Hannibal Lecter movies. 

This and Silence of the Lambs. 

Director Jonathan Demme brought the Thomas Harris book to life in Silence of the Lambs. And Michael Mann took a Harris book and turned it into a Michael Mann movie. 

Harris and Mann were so early to serial killers and profilers in popular fiction that they are basically inventing the formula here. 

The next four or five decades of television and film are filled with variations of cops hunting serial killers and serial killers hunting each other and diminishing returns of Hannibal Lecter sequels and prequels. 

I have never seen the show but the fact that there is a show is a particular kind of failure no matter how good the episodes might be. 

Anyway, this is visually stunning, cause of course it is, the synth score speaks to me and if the whole enterprise doesn’t quite hit a high note for me it’s just because, once again, Mann is forever more interested in visuals than he is with dialogue. 

William Peterson really rocks here and if you have seen this and To Live and Die in LA you have to wonder how he never managed to really break through or break out. CSI was a hit, of course, but this guy was magic when you handed him the ball on the big screen. 

To be fair, no one, except maybe Harris knew what they had in a character as intriguing as Hannibal Lector so you shouldn’t fault Mann for limiting his screen time in a story that doesn’t really have much to do with him. 

But I’m a catty old man and I do fault him. Mann literally told people he thought he should limit Lector’s presence in the movie. What an incredible mistake. 

Ah well, you must give credit where it is due and if this is only the second best Lector movie that’s still quite the achievement. They’ve come at it one way or another for four decades and most of them still haven’t topped it. 

I would not call myself a fan of the genre but in the world of film there’s only like what 4 or five really great serial killer flicks? 

This, Silence of the Lambs, Seven and Zodiac. 

Funny thought, but we really should hand Lecter down generation after generation like Hamlet. 

So I say it’s time for a remake. Get Tom Hardy to play Lecter and Timothy Chalamet to be Will Graham. Jenna Ortega can cameo as Clarice at the end. 

Hardy would be great even if none of us will understand a damn word he says. 

It’s the last day of middle school and she broke up with you again. 

You don’t know why because you don’t understand these things at all. Summer is almost here though and it promises an endless series of sunny days in a quiet neighborhood. There will be movies and pool parties and other girls that you also can’t quite talk to or understand. 

As you move from class to class you hear snippets of conversations about other lives and vacations to far away places and people who are doing better than you or worse or the same depending on how you judge these things. 

After lunch, when everyone’s really given up on teaching and learning your favorite teacher puts in a movie. 

It’s really good, but he is the coolest teacher in the school. There’s something about the sun dying, and Ryan Gosling plays the smartest scientist on earth and he solves all the science problems and then he’s in space. 

If those problems he’s solving are complicated you don’t notice cause everything flies by really fast and then, boom, a funny alien shows up. 

His name is Rocky and he’s great. You like that he takes everything literally. It will be years before you notice how often aliens have that problem and how its used for laughs. 

The movie ends, other kids almost clap, the girl who didn’t say anything to you all year writes, “stay cool” in your yearbook. 

You walk out into the sun. It’s warm and you smile and you feel free. 

———

Anyway, Project Hail Mary is by the same novelist who gave us The Martian. And it has that Goodfellas to Casino thing going on where it is not a sequel but it very much feels like a sequel. A spiritual sequel. 

Maybe the most spiritual sequel of all time given that a man names Grace rides a spaceship called the Hail Mary so that he can die for everyone on the planet. 

Well he has to play some hero ball first, and crack wise with his new alien pal. But yeah, death is coming for our man Grace even if he completes his mission and saves every one of us. 

It’s a bum wrap. Or a calling. Or a fine chance for Ryan Gosling to show us why he’s the man. 

Visually stunning, strong character work from Gosling and Sandra Huller and all that pesky science, which truly drove me nuts when I was listening to the audiobook, is kept to the barest of minimums. 

When I was listening to the book, knowing the movie was coming I kept wondering how they would handle the deep dives into archane science and explanations. 

Silly me, they just ignored nearly every bit of that. The book did move me though, when it spent time with either Rocky or Huller’s character. And screenwriter Drew Goddard knows where his bread is buttered. 

This movie was the longest of long shots and they sailed it through the uprights. Thumbs up. I Watched it on 70 millimeter.

If you haven’t seen it yet and you enjoy movie stars, big science fiction things and visually interesting films then you should go forth and watch this on the biggest screen you can find.

Nobody’s Fool was one of those movies that was always on television when I was coming up. 

Either on HBO, or basic cable, I would catch bits and pieces of it. I’m sure it was years, and probably didn’t happen till the rise of Netflix, that I ever saw it all the way through. 

Even now, watching it again for the first time in at least a decade or two, there is an opening I didn’t remember. 

Anyway, watching it I had nostalgia for the days when you would discover a movie this way. One scene at a time, if you got bored you flipped the channel, and if it was good you watched it and then tried to find it again from the start. 

I think nearly every time this popped up I watched it all the way through. 

This flick has a murderer’s row of acting talent. Paul Newman is the lead and Bruce Willis is his frenemy and sometime boss. It’s delightful how much the two men like crossing swords with each other even if the stakes mostly stay very low. 

Willis commits to being a jerk all the way to the end of the movie. No redemption arc for him. Wonder how many big action stars would let themselves do that today?

Jessica Tandy, Beloved Character Actress Margo Martindale, young Philip Seymour Hoffman, Dylan Walsh and Pruitt Taylor Vince all create characters that feel lived in and real. 

Newman’s plays Sully, a rascal who abandoned his family and suddenly at 60 finds he has a second chance with both his son and a grandson. Most every scene is just a bit of light comedy and drama. The movie is happy to just meander through Sully’s life and his small challenges. 

A lot of movies suggest how great life is in a small town but this one shows you a version of it that feels real and mostly believable. It’s not sugar coated and it’s not Hallmark. But the movie excels at showing Sully as human who would let you down most of the time but would also be the first guy you would call if your ailing mother went wandering down the street.

He’s not heroic, and he knows it, but sometimes he’s decent.

If nothing else Newman is clearly having a great time. He knows what a magnificent character he’s got here and he’s hitting each little moment with sly charm and the right amount of melancholy. 

Newman made a ton of great movies and if you are just getting started there is plenty see before you get to this one. But, make sure it’s on your list.

As we go through this a couple of thoughts. 

First, I did order this list as the year went on so I suppose, especially, in the top 10 that you should consider that numbered from the movie I liked best on down. 

But also, the order does not actually mean all that much. Either on my list or anyone else’s list. Some of these movies are five star, perfect movies and I will never watch them again. They are brilliant and brilliantly executed and I doubt I will want to live through those emotions anymore. Hamnet is one of the great movies of 2025 and I think it’s beautiful and tragic and everything some movies should aspire to become. 

But that was a one time date for me. I doubt I will feel the need to cry for two hours again anytime soon. 

Avatar: Fire and Ash is not even on this list, but there is a decent chance I’m going to catch it two or three or four more times over the next few years. I think I will be rewarded on the rewatches. 

Also, if you know me you know I’m constantly pointing out that Big Jim films always feel lacking to me in the dialogue department. 

But I’m betting for the next few years I’m going to randomly yell, “You can’t live like this, baby, in hate!” 

For me, it’s the new, “You were the chosen one!”

Movies, books, comics, music, these are the things that make life worth living. The things that those money people, those masters of politics, the ones who think they hold the strings of our lives will never understand. 

Great art changes minds, soothes the soul and, in more than one case, ignites revolutions. 

I will admit that’s a high minded sentence for a guy who picked these particular films out of the 2025 barrel. But it’s what I believe and it’s why I love the movies. 

Sinners

Simply the best movie of the year. 

There are few things in life better than watching a confident filmmaker do his or her thing. 

When I got to the song that took us to the past and the future of music I was struck by joy. There wasn’t anything more daring than that this year. 

One Battle After Another

Paul Thomas Anderson has one of the best if not the best bodies of work of any director. So I judged this not by how good it was but how good it was compared to Anderson’s filmography. And while it’s not the best film he’s ever made (either There Will Be Blood or Phantom Thread) it’s in the conversation. 

Superman

I was a bundle of nerves walking into this. I am unapologetically a comic book guy and Hollywood hasn’t gotten Superman right since Superman: The Movie. And that’s the last time they got it right. 

Go see the Richard Donner Cut of 1 and 2 and realize how great those films are and how much better the second one could have been. 

Anyway,  I walked out of this and said, “Oh Thank God.” Or if you prefer, “Oh thank Rao.” 

If you didn’t cry when Superman tells Lois why he’s going to turn himself in then you don’t understand how great a real Superman story can be. 

Marty Supreme

This had the best opening and closing scenes of any movie this year. And when Odessa A’zion starts cooking this whole enterprise climbs to another level. 

28 Years Later

I was completely done with zombies as a genre. But, a coming of age zombie movie? Directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland? Oh my. This was the stuff. 

Weapons

Small spoiler here. I always say I don’t like horror. But that’s not exactly true. What I don’t like is when evil wins. I want the evil person, creature, or thought defeated in the end. And I was so completely satisfied with the end of this. The best comeuppance of the year.

Black Bag

A slinky smooth spy movie. And a spy movie for adults who like spy movies. 

Train Dreams

There were a lot of movies about trauma this year. And this was the best one. 

Hamnet

The best movie about grief this year. Maybe the best movie about grief this decade. If you need to cry for two hours this is the one. 

Highest to Lowest

Spike Lee keeps the first half of this movie in a low boil. Then he plays his ace. A kinetic sequence involving a street festival, a money drop, and genuine hatred of the Boston Red Sox. I hate the Yankees and I still loved this. 

Eephus

“Is there anything more beautiful than the sun setting on a fat man stealing second base.” 

I have seen baseball movies about winning it all, and baseball movies about childhood, and baseball movies about noble knights fighting corruption and more than a few about a buncha losers who keep on playing just cause they love the game. 

This is the first one I’ve seen that was explicitly about death. 

Nevermind, turn on the headlights and keep playing till the end comes.

Kill Bill: The Whole Bloody Affair

If you count this as a 2025 film then it’s actually number 1. I don’t see it that way. But I do think this is the superior way to see this now four-hour motion picture. 

Here’s 10 more I really liked

Americana

It Was Just an Accident

Wake Up Dead Man 

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

The Phoenician Scheme

Fantastic Four: First Steps 

Sorry Baby

On Becoming a Guinea Fowl

Roofman

By the time the ball drops on New Years Eve I will have watched close to 160 films for the first time. 

Of those about 75 of them were released in 2025. I also rewatched about 30 movies, so we’re close to 200 films watched in 2025. 

This does not fill me with a sense of accomplishment. It makes me think I should work on my emotional problems. 

You know the old joke: A man will watch 200 movies rather than go to therapy. 

To understand how this happened, we need to talk a little about my life. 

First, I don’t drink and I don’t go to bars. 

So, every other Friday, I would take a night off from my responsibilities as a husband and father. Our children are autistic and can’t be left with a babysitter. So my wife and I have lunch dates when the kids are in school but have no way to go out on a weekend date. 

My wife is in plays and when she is in one she goes to rehearsals and gets to get away several nights a week. And I watch the kids at other times on weekends so she can recharge. 

On my Friday nights off I would head to Indianapolis, about an hour away from where we live and go to the comic book store and then to a movie; preferably something in IMAX. Sometimes this year I went to a second movie in town late on Saturday or Sunday nights. The kinds of movies that weren’t playing in IMAX anyway. 

My kids generally control the tv but I have an iPad and AirPods so if we weren’t going anywhere I might watch something on a streaming service while Finding Nemo, Encanto or Sesame Street played on the big screen. 

I certainly watch television shows, and some sports. This movie watching thing is not a new phenomenon I have always watch a ton of movies, tv and read a bunch of comics and a few books each year. 

Letterboxd changed my habits and made me more driven, I think, to see more new movies. I suspect that in past years I saw far fewer movies that were brand new. I have a sense that I saw whatever I was generally interested in and then the next year I tried to watch whatever got nominated for best picture at the Oscars. 

In the past two or three years, because of Letterboxd and this blog I think I have tried to watch stuff I was interested in as it came out. Also, social media is going to give away huge parts of most movies within hours of release. Sometimes I’m just trying to stay ahead of that. 

I generally say something about every movie I watch on Letterboxd. If I have a lot to say, I put it on here. The quality of the movie does not necessarily reflect whether or not I’ve got anything to say about it. 

I think of all the movies I saw about trauma this year (and there were too many of them) that Train Dreams was the very best one. It’s in my top 10. And I don’t have a review for it and don’t think I will. It’s very good though, you should see it if you haven’t already. 

Couple of other notes. I am not a professional critic. I can hear some of you now: “We’ve read your reviews. We know.” 

Shut up. 

Anyway, because I’m not a professional I don’t get screeners. I also don’t illegally download movies. So if something is not playing in Indianapolis between Jan 1 and Dec 31 or could be found on a streamer or rented digitally I had no way to watch it. 

In November I made a list of movies that came out in 2025 that I wanted to see. This strategy was actually very successful. I like lists, and it helped me focus on the titles that I was still interested in. I started with somewhere like 45 movies and in the last week of the year I’m down to 10 or so movies that are really 2025 movies.

Some movies are only 2025 movies if you live in New York or Los Angelos. They will go nationwide during Oscar season in 2026 in hopes of making money in middle America. 

Here are the ones on my list that haven’t played in town yet. 

The Testament of Ann Lee, Sound of Falling, Resurrection and No Other Choice. 

I am very interested in Park Chan Wok’s No Other Choice because I’ve found every movie of his that I have seen so far (Oldboy, Decision to Leave) to be extraordinary. I heard good things about Testament and will certainly check it out at some point. Sound of Falling and Resurrection don’t look like the kinds of movies I usually enjoy but you never know. (It’s that kind of thinking BTW that got me to 200 movies this year.) 

Here are the ones I could have seen and in some cases could still see but it’s looking increasingly unlikely. 

Good Fortune, Black Phone 2, Lone Samurai, If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Nuremberg, The Running Man, Blue Moon, Ella McCay and Hamnet. 

All of these can be watched right now. Currently, my plan is to see Hamnet on the 31st. 

The others? Guess we will see. In some cases they are in that early rental period where they cost $20 to rent. I’m probably not doing that. In some cases my interest is not so strong that I can’t just wait for them to show up on a streaming service. 

And there were certainly some of these where the reviews were so bad they dampened my interest. Hello, Ella McCay. 

I was set to go to the Running Man this year and after the reviews came out I went to Sentimental Value instead. That was probably a mistake. Sentimental Value is very good for what it is. But what it is is another exploration of trauma and 2025 was full of those and most of them left me cold. 

I think I would have had a better time watching Glen Powell crack one liners and kill bad guys. 

In January, I will, of course, have a list of the best movies I watched in 2025. 

This column was a way to clear the decks and clear my throat and explain why some movies won’t be on my list that might be on some others. 

And the year is almost over and we’re still here.

Harlan Ellison was objectively one of the very best authors of the 20th century. 

He was also, well, he was a lot. I once witnessed him throw a guy out of an autograph line because he wanted Harlan to sign a Babylon 5 poster. Harlan, a creative consultant on the television show, was incensed. 

“Have you read any of my books?” He yelled. The guy didn’t say anything but the battle was already over. 

“I’m not signing that,” Harlan shouted. 

And that was that. Next up was me. I can assure you I told him how much his work meant to me. 

There are a million stories like that. Harlan was rough to people he thought deserved it and he was fiercely loyal to his friends. 

One of those friends, Robert Bloch, the author of Psycho, described Harlan this way: “the only living organism I know whose natural habitat is hot water.” 

Well, in the movies at least, we have found a second organism who naturally lives in hot water. 

Timothee Chalemet’s Marty Mauser, is constantly finding trouble, and when he’s in the midst of the chaos brought on by the first set of problems he’s somehow still looking for more trouble. 

The movie opens with Marty and his girl succeeding in the kind of thing young couples succeed at all the time. Whether they want to or not. 

The movie then, in one of several cheeky moments, lets the audience graphically know that Marty was in fact supreme in that moment.

And from then on Director Josh Safdie along with co-writer Ronald Bronstein put their foot on the pedal and never let the movie run out of gas. 

Safdie directed two features with his brother, Good Time and Uncut Gems before directing this on his own. Their style is this: What if the whole movie was the rapid, paranoid, cocaine fueled final 20 minutes of Goodfellas. 

Good Time is a good movie but it’s too much. Uncut Gems is great but it’s also much closer to a heart attack than it is a dramatic presentation. 

Marty Supreme finds a nice balance, or maybe I had just steeled myself to the Safdie style. 

I’ll tell you what I really loved here. Marty has a girl in his life, actually he has two girls and both of them are married to other guys. He has a type. 

Rachel is brilliantly played by Odessa A’zion. And at one point you realize that Rachel is Marty’s fast talking, scheming equal. She’s his match in all the ways that matter. 

And when that happened I felt safe in this hectic, dangerous movie. My dad once told me he felt better about me once I got married. And it was the same thing for me watching this. Will Marty ever get his life together? Well, he will have to won’t he? Because that girl needs him, and while he won’t admit it he needs her too. 

The rest of this, and there are whole worlds in here, I will leave for you to discover. 

I don’t know if this is the best movie of 2025. But it’s a contender. And it has the best opening and closing scenes in any movie I saw all year.