James Gunn’s vision of Superman is a guy who is constantly knocked around but keeps getting back up. It never slows down and never quite hits the points it wants to make because it won’t slow down long enough to make them. 

It’s a little nervous or maybe I was nervous watching it but it mostly works out and I feel I will grow more comfortable with it the more I see it. 

I think what affects this version of Superman, more than anything else, is that Gunn is in competition with every other version of Superman. And that’s not just dealing with the legacy of Snyder and the bros but also with three popular television series adaptations since the 1990s, an animated universe that is widely considered the best representation of all of these characters and a mountain of comics that Gunn mixes and matches as he sees fit. 

Gunn eliminates the origin story (he figures you know it) in favor of a Superman who has already been active for a few years and has a new relationship with Lois and several friendly super co-workers.

It’s an unusual way to reboot Superman and an unusual way to make the first big statement in a new version of the DC movie and television franchise. 

If you have been following Gunn online then it should not come as a surprise that this Superman is faithful to the spirit of the comics. 

That’s such a loaded thing but the best way to explain it is that Raimi’s Spider-Man movies always felt like they were ripped from the pages of Stan Lee Steve Ditko and John Romita’s first 100 issues or so of The Amazing Spider-Man. 

The same for Batman: The Animated Series which hewed close to Batman comics from the Dennis O’Neil, Neal Adams and a host of others from the 1970s and 1980s. 

This Superman comes from the Silver Age and comics that were either homaging the Silver Age or responding to it. 

But if I handed you any of the really good Superman comics from the last 40 years or so they would look and feel a lot like this. 

Superman is a good guy in a science fictiony future city who tries to help people and deals with his love life, super villians and annoying problems like social media, his dog and the US Government. 

Lex Luthor hates him because of what he represents and uses all of his money, power and genius to not only try to kill him but to show the world that he is a danger to humanity. 

Nicholas Hoult was the real deal before he was cast as Luthor but he hits nothing but dingers all the way through the movie. Watch his face as things explode around him in the Fortress of Solitude. 

Gene Hackman’s Luthor was a comedy villian in the Donner Superman, a character that Superman almost always outsmarted. Here, Luthor really could kill Superman and really wants to and is a solid, dangerous, deranged villian. 

David Corenswet and Rachel Brosnahan get a few fleeting scenes as Clark and Lois. Skyler Gisando’s Jimmy Olsen is a treat and Wendell Pierce’s Perry White is just a background character. He’s fun though, for a moment or two. 

The other superheroes all get one scene to shine except for Mr. Terrific who is almost a costar and a killer character. 

One final thing, if you ever asked me at any point what makes Superman, Superman I would have told you it was not his powers or his Kryptonian origins. It was that he was raised by kindly Americans who told him that anyone with power has a duty to help people who need it. 

He’s a creation of people who saw themselves and their country as a force for good in the world. 

He’s not a God, he’s just an American who understands that his highest calling is to do right by other people. 

By the end of this movie I was certain James Gunn agreed with me. 

This is probably the only movie I will see twice in theaters this year. I’m already looking forward to going back. 

Brad Pitt plays a former F1 driver whose entire life is a washout and now lives in a van and goes from town to town trying to win various types of races. 

It’s not about the money, he says when anyone offers him any money to drive. 

Well what’s it about then? They ask. 

And when they do that Pitt gives them a laconic movie star smile. 

So, Pitt’s not playing a human being in this flick — he’s a myth. An old gunslinger who’s trying to prove to himself and the world that he’s still the fastest guy in the west. 

While everyone else presumably walks through doors to get to the F1 team center Pitt will just appear on racetracks and do a cowboy walk toward his crew in jeans, boots and his pack on his back. 

Is it ridiculous? My god yes. But Director Joseph Kosinski’s has a great reason to do it this way. That reason? 

The cowboy walk looks cool as hell. 

If anybody else did this you would laugh your ass off. But when Brad Pitt does it … I believe. 

Damson Idris does a great job as The Kid who has lessons to learn from the old cowboy. Kerry Condon is too good an actress to be playing The Girl but she’s here anyway and she does a fine job with it. 

Javier Bardem is the Town Marshall (team owner) who needs the gunslinger’s help. The movie spends a little time with a slimy bad guy and no time at all with the other drivers who are just minor obstacles on the way to Pitt’s final glory. 

As a movie this is all fine. If you see it on your iPad in a month you will wonder what anyone thought was good about it. As an IMAX spectacle it rumbles and it’s glorious. 

I saw it at 10 p.m. on a summer night in Panama City Beach with a crowd of high school and college kids who all knew each other and took up the last four rows. 

They yelled all through the trailers but if they talked through the movie I couldn’t hear them over the sound of squealing tires and crushed metal and a thumping rock soundtrack. 

When it was over I couldn’t help but hear them celebrating as we walked out. 

My ultimate review is the same as one of them who turned to his pal and said, “That movie was peak, bro.” 

I’m sure in my excitement I will just spoil this so pre-spoilers just know that is one of the best movies of the year. 

It’s certainly a horror movie but it also transcends the genre (or does what genre should do) to deal with eternal questions about families, community, tragedy, life and dealing with pain and death. 

Ok now here come the spoiler parts. 

As they were planning this thing I hope director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland threw themselves a little party when they decided on “Coming of Age tale after the Zombie Apocalypse.” 

If we have done this before I missed it. And I’m willing to bet it’s never been done with the care and detail of this flick.

The first third of the movie is a walk in the woods with a boy, Spike (Alfie Williams), and his father, Jamie (Aaron Taylor Johnson). Now these are English woods and this is after the events of 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later so they are somewhat infested with zombies. 

The rest of the world goes on but England is quarantined and alone. Brexit allegory or just what is required in a zombie movie? I’ll let you decide. 

It’s important to note that you do not need to watch either film to enjoy this. I would suggest you watch 28 Days Later because it’s awesome and skip 28 Weeks Later. But all you need to know is that there are zombies and England is quarantined.

In this part of the film there is both adventure and dread. Some of it created by piping in Rudyard Kipling’s poem Boots as read by Taylor Holmes in 1915 and flashes of film footage of English soldiers and history. Archers, waiving flags, other things. I don’t have the kind of recall to tell you exactly. 

Without dissecting it too much it’s grand when a movie does this. Boyle shows such swagger and confidence here because if anyone got pedantic about it “where is this coming from” it would take them right out of the movie. 

But Boyle correctly assumes that the viewer will be having to much fun to care. 

The only answer to this question that matters was given to Sean Astin while filming Lord of the Rings. 

Astin asked cinematographer Andrew Lesnie where the light was coming from in a dark tower. 

Lesnie replied, “Same place as the music.” 

Exactly. 

So the first third of this is a father and son adventure. Then there is a party at their home village. What I was struck by was how much love there was there and how much love Jamie has for his son. Now, there is clearly some creepy things going on in this village. Hints of The Wicker Man. Or maybe it’s just that cloistered English villages are inherently terrifying no matter how friendly the community seems.

Jamie is no hero as evidenced by his actions during the party. But just look how proud he is. He beams. 

There is, in my opinion, a shaky start to the second half of the flick. While the movie does everything possible to explain Spike’s actions I had a hard time with it. It’s too much “idiot ball” for me. Something dumb that a character must do in order for the movie to continue. Of course, I’m also willing to admit that I am too conservative a person to have ever defied authority the way Spike does here. 

But despite that caveat the rest of the movie is scary, disturbing and hopeful in a way that you just can’t anticipate. 

Screenwriter William Goldman writing about Fargo said that the first part of the movie had too much crazy violence to the point that he wasn’t sure if he could get through it. But then Marge Gunderson, the police chief shows up, correctly assesses a triple homicide and then proceeds to begin her full investigation. 

At that point he was able to sit back, relax and enjoy the rest of the flick. It helped that he knew she was married to one of the Coen Brothers and would likely not be at risk of the same terrible fate that befell some of the other characters. 

I went through the same thing with 28 Years Later when Ralph Fiennes character finally shows up. “Oh he’s that sort of person. Whew. I’m good.” 

In the final third of the movie we get the most important lessons the film has to teach. 

Then there is a surprise sort of ending. And here we can probably have a debate. Because the ending of 28 Years Later is not an ending to the movie you have been watching but rather the set up to the sequel. 

I liked it. But it’s an end credit scene. And it’s amusing to me that 28 Years doesn’t do an end credit scene where it should and Sinners treats the real end of the movie as an end credit scene. 

Strange choices abound for the two best films of the year so far.  Also, I don’t know what it says about me or us that we have a vampire film and a zombie flick as two best examples of filmmaking in 2025. 

Perhaps this:

Great monsters never die and great filmmakers can always find new ways to light up the dark. 

I avoided 28 Weeks Later when it came out in theaters and only watched it this weekend so that I could catch up in time for 28 Years Later. 

I have a touch and go relationship with horror. I’ve probably never seen anything that might be labeled as torture porn. No Saws or Terrifiers or whatever. There’s a level of cruelty that’s part of the inherent structure of those things that I do not enjoy. 

Or another way to put it is that I am a huge Stephen King fan and I am never going to read or watch Pet Cemetary. 

I’m out. 

28 Weeks Later has a cruel but wickedly fun opening that gave me hope for the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie was mostly just a collection of miseries and horrible deaths inflected on characters who were mostly noble. 

On the one hand you could argue that this is what happens in war (this one is a war allegory) the bravest and most noble often die horribly. But mostly it felt ugly and violent for the sake of being ugly and violent. 

I do not go to movies to see what I already suspect – that life is often merciless, capricious and pointless. I go to movies to be uplifted. 

However, there is a scene where a helicopter takes on a hoard of zombies that you really should check out. Likewise that solid opening. 

And, at least so far, this film has nothing to do with 28 Years Later and likely will not need revisiting to enjoy it or the upcoming sequels. 

Watch the first one. Jump to the third one. And unless you feel the need for some pointless, ugly violence, skip this altogether. 

This is a movie that has the goods, and knows it has the goods almost from the start. 

Confidence means an awful lot in a horror flick. 

Not so much in the actual start of the film which is a bit of business to explain the Rage virus which will create fast zombies and set up the entire movie. 

It’s the kind of scene that multiple people probably decided was necessary so that you wouldn’t lose the audience.

It feels like a scene in a lesser movie. 

However, the real opening of the real movie is Cillian Murphy waking up 28 Days Later (natch) in a hospital after being in a coma. 

He is completely alone and walks through an empty London trying to determine what happened and what he should do. 

It’s a stunning and eerie scene and its power is only heightened because we have now seen similar images in real life thanks to COVID-19. 

I feel certain I saw this when it came out though I don’t know if it was in a theater or at home. Watching it again I remembered several story points but forgot others. It feels familiar, not only because it’s been copied in television and film for 30 years but also because it’s built on the bones of great zombie and horror films of the past. 

These aren’t George Romero zombies but the movie is full of Romero’s themes. 

What’s striking about it, I think, is that this is a zombie film that has insight into our basic humanity. 

It’s not a film about goblins and jump scares (though there’s plenty of both) but a film about families struggling to survive and about how hardship can turn us into our best and worst selves. 

It’s also just a banging action picture with inventive cinematography, an amazing score and out of their world acting by four premiere talents in Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleason, Naomie Harris and Christopher Eccleston. I mean … read those names again. 

There are all kinds of great movies and ways to make great movies. This one is a propulsive thriller that makes every moment count. Even in the down times the sense of dread and tension remain. It doesn’t have a false scene (except for the previously discussed plot required opening) or a false note. 

As the hype for 28 Years Later got serious I decided I would revisit the first one, watch the sequel — 28 Weeks Later —- and go see the new one this weekend. 

I’ll save my thoughts on the other two for later this week. 

Pop culture is a funny thing because in revisiting this I’m confident that 28 Days Later is a perfect horror film and probably should be in a top 100 list amongst the greatest films (just films) ever. 

And yet, I had completely forgotten it until this week. But it isn’t it grand to find an old love and discover she is as wonderful as you remembered. 

I’ve struggled to figure out what to say about this movie but after some time with it I think I have my answer. 

It’s funny, shocking, surprisingly complex and Tim Robinson gives me the icks. 

The closest comparison I can think of is Chris Elliott and also possibly Ricky Gervais. I find them so off putting that I struggle to enjoy any time with their various projects. 

There is also, I think, an inherent cruelty to what they do — sometimes directed at others — often directed at themselves that I do not enjoy. 

Some people love to cringe. I am not among them. It’s not my scene man.

Borat is like that for me too. Lots of people found that movie funny. I gave up. I thought it was mean. 

I once struggled through Dumb and Dumber as a large crowd of family members around me laughed at every moment. 

I’m not saying anyone who enjoys any of this is wrong I’m just saying I’m out. The same is true for body horror movies. I get why people like them but they are not for me. 

I just present all this so you know where on the spectrum to place Friendship. If any of those things I mentioned really do it for you then Friendship is almost certainly your jam. 

And I must say that I laughed at a lot of this but the laughs usually gave way to the ick. 

And there is real genius here. Getting Paul Rudd to essentially reprise his Anchorman character is big plus. 

I was invested in the marriage between Robinson and Kate Mara’s characters Craig and Tami 

The little things that keep coming back, like Tami’s frequently mentioned ongoing connection to her ex-boyfriend or Craig’s obsession with a large meal, made me cackle. 

It’s a well made movie, in the way that The Substance is a well made movie. 

Something can be great but still not be your jam. 

Stephen King can do anything. 

This is King in mostly human form, concerned with real people — how we live our lives, how we end our lives and the state of the world. 

Not horror, although the first third of the story/movie has a little edge to it. Especially if you are the type of person who doomscrolls every day. But this flick is mostly amusing and has a lesson to teach. 

If there is a problem with King it’s that not every story can be The Stand. Nor every movie made into The Shining.

I’m tempted to argue with the Kubrick disciples on here because where would your master be if King hadn’t breathed life onto an empty page. 

But I won’t. 

I have read a bunch of King but I hadn’t obtained this one which was in a collection of novellas. When the trailer came out I ran out and grabbed it. 

I was moved by it, though certainly not as much as I was moved by The Shawshank Redemption (on the page and on the screen).

But they can’t all be perfect. 

Nick Offerman is a very good narrator but he’s no Morgan Freeman alas. However, the kid actors are suitably cute, Tom Hiddleston is amusing and Mark Hamill is clearly relishing a meaty role that doesn’t involve a lightsaber. I hope he, in particular, gets to do more of this in his golden years. 

The movie is solid and faithful and I loved the little story again even though I knew all the twists and turns. 

It’s clear that director Mike Flanagan is a fan and he approached the material as a fan which is great for those of us who just want to see the story we read on the screen and probably a strike against him for those of you who believe the auteur theory. 

I do think it’s true that a great director can take coal and squeeze it into diamonds. It’s also true that everything King ever wrote is not gold (Insomnia is not just a bad book it may be one of the worst books ever written). 

But this tale didn’t need extensive rewrites and just presenting it with solid actors, decent direction and cinematography is enough to make us all have a good time. 

There was at least one change Flanagan should have made. The movie, like the novella, stops cold with its final lesson. That works for a story on the page. But here, Flanagan should have let everyone dance, one last time, with a classic movie flashback. 

There should have been joy in the morning.

A woman once told me her highest philosophy. 

“My mama always said it was as easy to fall in love with a rich man as it is with a poor man.” 

She did, I think, marry a rich man who was the son of a rich man. They live in a nice house and I’m sure take nice vacations. On the weekends they go out in the boat and she lives less than 50 miles from the place she was born. 

I don’t know if there is any lesson here but Writer/Director Celine Song has one in mind with Materialists. 

Materialists is about a matchmaker catering to the upper crust of New York City. She sees both sides of the equation. The girls want them tall and rich. The boys want them young and “fit.” Both sides say they want to marry but only the right one. Only the perfect one. Certainly you concede that they deserve it. 

Having seen write director Celine Song’s debut Past Lives I suspected that the marketing for her latest was bullshit. 

I like being right almost as much as I like a sad, cutting, adult drama.

Materialists mimics some aspects of rom coms, including a love triangle, beautiful cinematography and expensive looking weddings. Sadly, we never get to go on an Iceland vacation. 

I suspect that was never even in a draft of the script but I also would not be surprised if the trip was scrapped somewhere during production for lack of money. Most modern movies always give away the truth of our current situation, that only bankers run movie studios anymore.

Song even has her own twist on the When Harry Met Sally vignettes. Giving us a glimpse of what upscale NYC men and woman want in a spouse. 

The joke being how incredibly shallow everyone is about these things. 

The movie suggests that there is more to life than wealth and I honestly believe that. Wealth won’t save you from a rotten marriage or a rotten life or a rotten heart. 

But I have been poor and I have been, if not wealthy, then financially healthy. Finachially healthy is better. 

There are certainly some other arrows you could aim at this flick.

If Past Lives felt like it was very much about real people Materialists feels like storybook people moving through a mostly real world. One of these guys is a billionaire, the other is a failed actor and she’s a matchmaker. Most of us might know one of these people in real life maybe, but few of us would ever meet all three.

Dakota Johnson seems a lot more charming and edgy in her interviews than she ever does on screen.

Pedro is very good but a lot of his storyline involves he and Johnson just straightforward explaining things to each other. Including the kind of things that should probably create more tears than they do.

Evans knocks it out of the park though.

At one point he turns to Johnson and says, “I’m a beggar for you.”

Folks, if any decent man or woman ever sincerely says that to you I hope you love them back no matter what their checkbook might say.

This week I decided on the cinema of John Flynn. 

Best Seller is a fairly mediocre entry in Flynn’s tough guy corner of the video store. 

You know that thing where a bad guy turns to a good guy and says, “We are not so different you and I.” 

James Woods (playing a mob hitman) says something like this to Brian Dennehy (a good guy cop) about half a dozen times. 

Woods wants Dennehy (a successful author who is still on the force) to write a book about his life and the murders he committed on behalf of his former boss. 

The boss is opposed to this idea and sends various henchmen at various times to express his displeasure. 

There are a couple of decent turns here. You will figure out the connection between Woods and Dennehy before the movie reveals it. But I like it when a story point pays off. A side mission to meet Woods’ family is amusing even if it doesn’t go anywhere. 

The flick also features Dennehy saying with utmost seriousness, “I’m gonna kill you” to Woods. 

Woods reply? “Fair enough.” 

Fair enough is about as good as it gets. 

Ultimately, I just couldn’t suspend my disbelief enough to enjoy this thing. The overall plot is nonsense and most of the scenes along the way are ridiculous too. I mean, Dennehy and Woods kill a bunch of guys who were attacking them in a laundromat and when it’s over … they just leave. 

Action movies need that to happen so the plot doesn’t get bogged down with police investigations. But it’s ridiculous and hard to ignore how nonsensical it is for a cop to leave a crime scene. 

Still, there a few bits of action and decent tough guy lines in this thing. May we all be so cool that we would say this if anybody puts a firearm to our heads. 

“You ever aim a gun at me again it better be loaded.” 

Just don’t forget to have your spare gun handy. 

If you want a real deal Paul Schrader outing, I can recommend Light Sleeper.

The final part of an unplanned trilogy that began with Taxi Driver, continued with American Gigolo and ends with this Willem Dafoe flick.

I made some jokes about it on Letterboxd:

Gotta be the most high-class movie that ever made me say, “Now go kill that son of a bitch too.” 

Also, Schrader invented the male loneliness epidemic.

Schrader has a joke of his own given the names of the first two in this trilogy Light Sleeper doesn’t exactly fit. But Schrader said he figured no one would go see a movie called, “Drug Dealer.”

Again, I wouldn’t recommend this descent into the despair of a drug dealer to just anyone off the street. If you know the kinds of movies Schrader delivers, then this is a very good example of that. Schrader has some writing tics that simultaneously annoy and amuse me. The first is that his male protagonists are always writing in a diary and then doing voice overs about the state of society or their own souls.

One of those things that you just accept when you walk in no matter how you feel about it. Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter. Schrader gonna have someone writing in a diary.

There are some fun cameos here of drug users who give Dafoe a hard time. And Dafoe, Susan Sarandon and Dana Delany are all excellent.

Light Sleeper mostly breezes by with a perfect 80s soundtrack and is content (seemingly) to show us Dafoe’s work and romantic troubles. A shock towards the end sets up a final bit of business and something Schrader almost always handles really well: Righteous Vengeance.

Schrader would probably disagree with my assessment. He would tell you (correctly) that he writes tragedies about the human condition and warnings about what society is doing to young and not so young men.

But also, I am a simple creature. And if you give me a villain and then give me a shootout at the end of your movie I will probably be satisfied.

Yes, all those other things Schrader was concerned about, commentary about societal ills, the personal cost of being trapped in a soulless job, and strong character development. They are all here too.

But also, my reptile brain still shouted to Dafoe at the climax, “Now go kill that son of bitch too.”