Sunday, February 1, 2026
Kokuho
Set in Nagasaki in 1964, the film begins with new year celebration when the life of Kikuo Tachibana (Soya Kurokawa), the 14-year-old son of a yakuza boss, is abruptly rerouted after his father's violent death. Recognized for his talent, Kikuo is taken in by the head of a prestigious Kansai kabuki household and raised alongside Shunsuke Ogaki (Keitatsu Koshiyama) of his age, the household's biological son and presumed heir. What begins as shared training and mutual dependence slowly curdles into a volatile bond of rivalry, resentment, and fragile loyalty, as the two boys come of age—Kikuo Tachibana (Ryô Yoshizawa) anointed to assume the mantle of the kabuki house and condemned as an interloper who seized it, and Shunsuke Ogaki ( Ryûsei Yokohama) fleeing the lineage meant for him, only to return and reclaim it.
Unfolding across half a century, the film traces their parallel rises and diverging fates through discipline, scandal, exile, and fleeting triumphs. Its operatic scale and tragic view of artistic devotion inevitably recall Chen Kaige's "Farewell My Concubine" (1993), another sweeping chronicle of performance and identity stretched across decades. The comparison flatters "Kokuho" in ambition, but it also exposes its limitations. While Chen's film binds personal tragedy tightly to emotional and historical consequence, Lee's narrative often feels more episodic, its time jumps serving scope rather than accumulation.
The film is at its strongest on the kabuki stage. The performances are filmed with grandeur and intimacy, capturing both the ceremonial beauty of the art form and the punishing physical control demanded of onnagata performers. Makeup, hairstyling, and costume are not ornamental but transformational, essential to how identity is constructed and dissolved before the audience's eyes. Both the adult and younger actors portraying Kikuo and Shunsuke are superb, sustaining continuity through posture, movement, and presence rather than overt imitation.
Offstage, however, the storytelling grows uneven. Several subplots remain underdeveloped or unresolved. The presence of Kikuo's daughter and lover never meaningfully reshapes his inner life, Shunsuke's exile from the stage and eventual return are treated more as narrative checkpoints than lived experiences, and how Kikuo survives the fallout of a failed act of revenge against a gangster remains frustratingly opaque. These omissions blunt what should have been the most devastating turns in an already tragic saga.
The handling of time further complicates the emotional impact. Major transitions arrive abruptly, with temporal markers that feel arbitrary rather than dramatically necessary. As a result, the characters' transformations, so meticulously rendered in performance and appearance, sometimes lack equivalent narrative weight.
Still, this arresting film remains a formidable cinematic achievement. Even when its storytelling falters, its devotion to kabuki and to the idea of performance as a consuming way of life is unmistakable. The film mesmerizes through spectacle, discipline, and craft, offering a rare and immersive window into a classical art form, even as it leaves lingering questions about the human cost hidden beneath the makeup, the gestures, and the applause.
In collaboration with The Roxie, New People Cinema reopens in historic San Francisco's Japantown with a special weekend celebrating Japanese cinema. "Kokuho" screens on Saturday, February 14, 2026 at 6 pm.
Thursday, January 29, 2026
Send Help
After a plane crash strands two colleagues on a remote island near Thailand, Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) and Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien) emerge as the only survivors, forced into an uneasy partnership to stay alive. What begins as a stripped-down tale of endurance quickly mutates into a battle of wills shaped by unresolved office politics and long-simmering resentment. When Linda finally states, "no help is coming," it states less as a discovery than a chilling confirmation, sealing the fact that the old rules of hierarchy, civility, and office politics have long since evaporated in this film.
The film largely operates as a focused two-character survival duel, with Rachel McAdams and (Dylan O'Brien carrying the tension without ever letting it sag.
Linda, initially presented as an overlooked, slightly nerdy employee, proves to be resourceful, adaptable, and unnervingly smart. Her job in strategic planning turns into a survival blueprint and, eventually, a tool for control. Rachel McAdams charts the character's evolution with unsettling precision, letting competence slide into calculation and then into something colder and more deliberate.
Bradley, by contrast, steadily unravels. Dylan O'Brien plays him as a smug, entitled boss whose authority evaporates the moment hierarchy disappears. His confidence collapses into panic and cruelty, and there is a grim, darkly comic pleasure in watching him discover just how useless charm and corporate posturing are without power to back them up.
Director Sam Raimi keeps the tone dancing on a razor's edge. The few jump scares are not only effective but mischievously funny, snapping into place with timing that turns fear into laughter. The violence can be gruesome, but it is staged with a heightened, almost elastic sensibility, while Danny Elfman's score nudges the madness forward, amplifying the uneasy blend of menace and amusement.
When the film reaches its final stretch, it has fully embraced its twisted identity. Part survival thriller, part workplace revenge fantasy, and part horror comedy, it delivers a savage amount of entertainment while proving that when escape is impossible and "no help is coming," the real spectacle is watching civility fall apart.
"Send Help" opens in theaters on Friday, January 30, 2026.
Wednesday, January 28, 2026
Shelter
Mason (Jason Statham), an ex-special MI6 agent living in isolation on a remote coastal island, is inevitably drawn back into danger after rescuing Jessie (Bodhi Rae Breathnach) from a violent storm at sea. Their encounter sets off a chain reaction, forcing Mason out of hiding and back into the orbit of enemies tied to his past. The setup is serviceable but deeply familiar, moving him toward confrontation with an efficiency that feels pre-programmed rather than discovered.
Where the film does deliver is in its action. Director Ric Roman Waugh stages the set pieces with muscular clarity, favoring physical impact over digital excess. The storm rescue, close-quarters fights, and shootouts are cleanly choreographed and easy to follow, making it very clear who is attacking and who is defending at any given moment. As a vehicle for Statham's bruising screen presence, the film works as intended, functioning smoothly as no-frills popcorn entertainment.
That clarity, however, doesn't prevent moments of unintentional comedy. A nightclub sequence stretches credibility when multiple operatives enter dressed in nearly identical suits and ties, visually clashing with the rest of the clubgoers. Rather than blending in, they announce themselves as targets and enforcers alike, as if the film is politely highlighting who exists solely to fight or be fought.
To add emotional seasoning, the film leans on the protective bond between Mason and Jessie. Breathnach brings genuine sincerity to the role, even if the dynamic itself feels prefabricated. Suspension of disbelief is further tested when Mason shrugs off stab wounds and gunshots, only to continue fighting with near-superhuman endurance. By the time the credits roll, the action has done its job, but the larger stakes feel disposable, leaving this movie as a competently assembled genre entry that satisfies in the moment and fades quickly from memory.
"Shelter" opens in theaters on Friday, January 30, 2026.
Thursday, January 22, 2026
Mercy
The story centers on Los Angeles detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt), who wakes up strapped into the Mercy Chair, accused of murdering his wife and given 90 minutes to prove his innocence before the AI judge, Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson), reaches a final verdict. Raven is assumed guilty from the start, forced to argue against an ever-rising probability meter fed by omnipresent surveillance footage, body cams, phone records, and social media data. As the trial unfolds, he attempts to reconstruct the missing hours of his memory while appealing to the cold logic of a system that claims to value facts over feelings. In theory, this setup should generate mounting dread. In practice, it mostly highlights how little agency the film gives its protagonist. Chris Pratt spends the majority of the runtime literally locked in place, reacting to screens and disembodied voices, with scant opportunity to shape the drama or reveal anything new about his character.
The film leans hard into director Timur Bekmambetov's screenlife language, filling the frame with overlapping windows, scrolling data, and digital overlays that never let the viewer's eye rest. At first, the design has a sleek, controlled rhythm, echoing the film's obsession with systems and efficiency. But the constant visual noise soon becomes numbing, less a storytelling tool than a stylistic reflex. Like an endlessly animated slideshow, the movie confuses motion with momentum, assuming that more information on screen automatically means higher stakes.
As the plot progresses, logic gives way to narrative desperation. Revelations arrive not because the story has earned them, but because it needs to keep escalating. The eventual explanation of the crime's motive strains credibility to the breaking point, tipping the film from implausible into outright preposterous. Twists are piled on with such force that they feel less like organic turns and more like emergency patches applied to a script riddled with holes. For a film so invested in the rhetoric of rationality and data-driven truth, this movie is surprisingly indifferent to coherence.
The film's themes about AI ethics and surveillance are timely, but they are treated superficially, gestured at rather than interrogated. Maddox, the AI judge, is framed as morally complex, yet the movie never fully commits to exploring that ambiguity. Instead, it relies on familiar warnings about technology run amok without adding much insight to the conversation. By the end, "Mercy" feels less like a cautionary tale than a hollow demonstration of its own concept.
Despite the push to experience the film in IMAX and 3D, there is little here that benefits from that scale. The spectacle is largely confined to screens within screens, and the emotional impact remains flat regardless of format. Stripped of its marketing gloss, this film plays like a middling streaming thriller, the kind of movie that fades into background noise while your attention drifts elsewhere. For a film obsessed with the future of justice, it delivers a verdict that feels rushed, overdesigned, and ultimately unsatisfying.
"Mercy" opens in theaters on Friday, January 23, 2026.
Tuesday, January 20, 2026
Mostly British Film Festival 2026
The Mostly British Film Festival returns to the Vogue Theatre for a week-long run from February 5-12, 2026, presenting 26 films drawn primarily from the UK while also embracing voices from across the Commonwealth and beyond. Blending recent releases with classic titles, the festival offers both discovery and rediscovery, giving audiences a chance to see acclaimed films on the big screen even if they have already played theatrically or on the festival circuit. Several selections are also upcoming releases, making the festival an early opportunity to see films before their wider U.S. theatrical runs. The festival also serves as a fundraiser for the San Francisco Neighborhood Theater Foundation, whose work has helped preserve neighborhood movie houses, including the Vogue itself.
The festival opens on Thursday, February 5 with "Mr. Burton" (UK 2025 | 124 min.), a British drama that traces the early life of Richard Burton and the mentorship that shaped one of the great acting careers of the 20th century. Closing Night on Thursday, February 12, features "Inside" (Australia 2024 | 104 min.) and "I Swear" (UK 2025 | 120 min.), followed by a Valentine-themed dessert after-party at the theater, bringing the week to a warm and communal close.
Recent films form the backbone of this year's program, many of them award winners and festival standouts from events such as Cannes and other major international showcases. Here are a few highlights (click on a film's title for showtime and ticket information).
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The History of Sound (USA/UK/Sweden/Italy 2025 | 128 min.)
"The History of Sound" unfolds as a profoundly sad and tender queer love story set in the early 20th century, following two men brought together by a shared devotion to music and the act of listening. As they travel to collect folk songs, their connection deepens into a romance shaped by circumstance, distance, and the unspoken limits of their era. The mesmerizing music becomes both a shared language and a vessel for memory, while the gorgeous cinematography captures landscapes and faces with a hushed, elegiac beauty. Brought to life by terrific performances from Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor, the film lingers on love, longing, and what survives after separation.
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Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (South Africa 2024 | 98 min. | My review)
Through the eyes of a child raised in a broken system, the film shows how the personal and political become inseparable, and how understanding begins when inherited narratives start to crack. One of my top ten films of 2025, "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" is not a coming-of-age tale in the traditional sense, it's a confrontation with legacy. Through the narrow lens of a child, it paints a vast canvas of colonialism, displacement, and identity.
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My Father's Shadow (UK/Nigeria/Ireland 2025 | in English/Yoruba | 93 min.)
As the UK's submission for the Best International Feature Oscar, "My Father's Shadow" is a terrific and deeply moving film set against the turmoil of Nigeria's 1993 presidential election, seen through the eyes of two young brothers who believe their father is larger than life. Sope Dirisu delivers a commanding performance as a man who takes his sons, played by real-life siblings Godwin Egbo and Chibuike Marvelous Egbo, on what they think will be a simple day trip to Lagos, only for fragments of adult reality to intrude. As the boys encounter strangers, they begin to sense that their father may be involved in dangerous political activity. The children's natural presence gives the story of family and political uncertainty an intimate, human scale, and as myth finally gives way to truth, the film lands with devastating force.
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Urchin (UK/USA 2025 | 100 min.)
Winning the FIPRESCI Prize in the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes, with Frank Dillane also taking Best Actor, "Urchin" is an impressive directorial debut from the multi-talented Harris Dickinson, offering a bracing yet compassionate portrait of life on the margins in contemporary Britain. Focusing on Mike (Frank Dillane), a homeless addict drifting through East London, Dickinson refuses the easy distance we often keep from people like Mike, fixing the film's attention on his desperation, volatility, and daily fight to survive. Frank Dillane is exceptional, drawing us in with a performance that balances raw vulnerability with flashes of charm beneath violence, deceit, and cycles of self-destruction. The film feels urgent and unflinching, even if its depiction of homelessness appears more contained than the harsher realities visible on the streets.
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Grand Tour (Portugal/Italy/France/Germany/Japan/China 2024 | in Portuguese/Burmese/Vietnamese/English/Thai/Mandarin/French/Spanish/Japanese | 129 min.)
"Grand Tour" offers a unique cinematic experience, traveling across Asia in both time and space, unfolding as much through mood, rhythm, and movement as through narrative. Written and directed by Miguel Gomes, whose boundary-pushing work earned him Best Director at Cannes in 2024, the film starts in 1917 Rangoon under British rule. Englishman Edward (Gonçalo Waddington), a remarkably swift runner, flees from his fiancée Molly (Crista Alfaiate), carrying him through Singapore, Burma, Vietnam, Thailand, China, the Philippines, and Japan. In the film's second movement, Molly follows his trail with equal determination. Visually enchanting, the film reflects on human longing, persistence, and the forces that drive us forward, reinforcing Miguel Gomes's reputation as one of contemporary cinema's most adventurous storytellers.
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Call Me Dancer (USA 2023 | in English/Hindi | 84 min. | Documentary)
The documentary "Call Me Dancer" offers an intimate portrait of Manish, a young Indian dancer driven by discipline and raw talent. The film is engaging in its close access to his daily grind, but it stops short of fully reckoning with a harder truth: without money and institutional support, talent alone rarely leads anywhere. Manish's breakthrough comes only after financial backing from arts organizations and a private patron, and his success is ultimately measured by entry into a Western dance company. The documentary gestures toward systemic barriers, but its uplifting spirit softens the reality that access, not just ability, determines who gets to move forward.
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I Swear (UK 2025 | 120 min.)
"I Swear" is a profoundly moving portrait of John Davidson, a man ostracized in his Scottish town for behavior no one understands, including himself. Based on a true story, the film traces his life before Tourette syndrome had a name, when involuntary outbursts and tics led him to be dismissed as dangerous or insane. Robert Aramayo delivers a magnificent performance, capturing John's confusion, shame, and resilience as bewilderment gives way to despair and, eventually, hard-won dignity. Often uncomfortable and charged with tension, the film ultimately proves deeply affirming, culminating in John's public recognition and the honor of receiving the Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) from the Queen.
In retrospect, the festival turns to landmark works that reward being revisited in a theatrical setting. Screenings of "Tom Jones" (UK 1963 | 129 min.) and "Chariots of Fire" (UK 1982 | 125 min.), both Academy Award winners for Best Picture, highlight different eras of British cinema while reminding audiences of their lasting cultural impact. The pairing of "Girl with Green Eyes" (UK 1964 | 91 min.) with the documentary "Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story" (UK 2024 | 99 min.) creates a thoughtful dialogue between classic fiction and contemporary reflection, underscoring the festival's interest in context, legacy, and artistic lineage rather than nostalgia alone.
Tickets can be purchased at Mostly British Film Festival Web Site or at the Vogue Theatre box office, located at 3290 Sacramento Street, San Francisco.
Tuesday, January 13, 2026
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
What's more frightening at the end of the world: the monsters who no longer think, or the people who still do? "28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" (UK/USA 2026 | 109 min.) picks up exactly where the previous film left off, plunging back into a dystopia where survival depends less on avoiding infection than on enduring the cruelty of those who exploit it.
As fractured communities struggle to hold themselves together, Dr. Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) works obsessively toward a discovery that could alter humanity's understanding of the virus. Meanwhile, Spike (Alfie Williams) falls in with Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell), the leader of a roaming zombie-killing squad not unlike the group that rescued him at the end of the previous film. What initially appears to be a necessary, even heroic, means of survival quickly reveals a darker underside, as the squad's violence turns inward and Spike's sense of safety gives way to entrapment.
The film offers only partial logic for how uninfected communities manage to persist. The infected are portrayed as unnervingly strong and feral, yet residents rely on wire fencing to keep them out, a defense that feels more symbolic than credible. The barriers don't truly protect so much as isolate, and the film never fully clarifies why they work at all. What actually destabilizes life inside the settlement isn't the threat beyond the fence, but the trauma inflicted by Jimmy Crystal's gang.
Jimmy is no visionary tyrant. He's a nasty, street-level thug who preys on the weak and unprotected. His menace lies not in physical dominance or appearance, but in the ease with which he commands others to carry out violence on innocents. Within the guise of a zombie-hunting unit, his authority thrives on intimidation and obedience rather than purpose, making his cruelty feel disturbingly plausible and, ultimately, more terrifying than the infected themselves.
Director Nia DaCosta stages the horror with unapologetic intensity, transforming gore into spectacle. The grotesque is treated with near-reverence. Dr. Kelson, coated in iodine to ward off infection, looks like a walking wound. His efforts to recover traces of humanity in the infected, particularly in Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), gesture toward hope, yet his intentions and methods remain frustratingly unclear. Even if one soul could be reached, the film makes clear that the apocalypse itself cannot be reversed.
The film closes on an exhilarating finale that offers a measure of release, delivering a sharp, visceral payoff that feels earned. In a world defined by suffering and moral collapse, that final surge of momentum provides a rare, hard-won satisfaction, a brief sense that the scales have shifted.
"28 Years Later: The Bone Temple" opens in theaters on Friday, January 16, 2026.
Monday, January 5, 2026
Dad Genes
The film traces Aaron's journey from a happily unmarried Seattle bachelor to the unlikely center of a newly formed family after he registers with a DNA ancestry site and discovers he has multiple biological children, with the possibility of dozens more. He invites several of them to a "Meet My Kids" gathering, a gesture that soon escalates into shared living arrangements involving two of his children, the mother of one of them, and Aaron's own aging mother.
As these genetically related strangers attempt to build a family from scratch, a romantic relationship develops between Aaron and Jess, the mother of one of his biological children. Media attention follows after Aaron's story reaches The New York Times, bringing both visibility and complications as the boundaries of privacy begin to erode.
Much of the film's success lies in its terrific editing, which keeps the story engaging, intriguing, and refreshingly concise despite the density of interviews. Aaron appears frequently on screen and speaks openly, yet he remains somewhat elusive. At times he seems to be performing for the camera, as if aware of the narrative gravity surrounding him, while deeper motivations or doubts stay carefully contained. The film lets this ambiguity exist without pressing too hard, which is both a strength and a limitation.
Given the extraordinary premise, one might expect sharper conflicts or tensions to emerge, moments that demand resolution or force uncomfortable reckonings. Instead, the film unfolds in an atmosphere of remarkable goodwill. Everyone is kind, agreeable, and easy to like, which lends the film warmth but also flattens its dramatic contours.
Aaron's personal evolution is genuinely jaw-dropping, a man single well into middle age who suddenly opens himself to intimacy, cohabitation, and romance. Yet the film stops short of examining why this shift happens now, or how fully it can be taken at face value. That unanswered question lingers as a shadow over the story, but it does not eclipse the film's achievement. Even with this reservation, the documentary remains a thoughtfully crafted work that expands our understanding of what family can look like today.
"Dad Genes" plays at the Dances with Films Festival on Friday, Janurary 16, 2026 in New York City.
Wednesday, December 24, 2025
Top Ten Films of 2025
It's time for the annual top-ten list. Below are the ten best films from the 236 feature-length narrative and documentary titles I watched in 2025, regardless of when or whether they were released in the United States.
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Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight (South Africa 2024 | 98 min. | My review)
Through the eyes of a child raised in a broken system, the film shows how the personal and political become inseparable, and how understanding begins when inherited narratives start to crack. "Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight" is not a coming-of-age tale in the traditional sense, it's a confrontation with legacy. Through the narrow lens of a child, it paints a vast canvas of colonialism, displacement, and identity.
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Caught Stealing (USA 2025 | 107 min. | My review)
With its blend of relentless action, bursts of grim humor, and a hero you can't help but root for, "Caught Stealing" is a masterfully crafted thriller that jolts, surprises, and entertains at every turn. Austin Butler electrifies as a washed-up ballplayer dragged into the underworld. This is a sizzling thriller that keeps raising the stakes until the final bite.
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Souleymane's Story (L'histoire de Souleymane | France 2025 | in French | 93 min.)
"Souleymane's Story" moves with a constant pressure, tracing a precarious slice of immigrant life with sharp focus and empathy. Abou Sangare delivers a deeply affecting performance, carrying the film with a natural, almost documentary-like presence that makes Souleymane's exhaustion, hope, and resolve feel lived-in rather than performed. The film's power lies not in melodrama but in accumulation, small daily pressures stacking higher and higher, capturing the grind of survival faced by undocumented immigrants navigating bureaucratic indifference and economic precarity. Timely without being didactic, it's a humane portrait of endurance in a system designed to look away.
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Familiar Touch (USA 2024 | 90 min.)
Kathleen Chalfant delivers a breathtaking performance in "Familiar Touch," a film that transforms the quiet rhythms of assisted living into a deeply human portrait of memory loss and the terrible erosion of self that comes with dementia. Sarah Friedland's direction is subtle yet piercing, allowing Chalfant to embody Ruth with both fragility and dignity, capturing the small gestures and disorientations that make the disease so devastating. What could have been a clinical depiction becomes instead a profoundly empathetic exploration of identity, desire, and care, reminding us that even amid decline there is resilience, humor, and connection. The film's power lies in its ability to make Ruth's journey universal, showing how illness reshapes not only the patient but the bonds of family and caregivers, and in doing so, the film achieves a rare balance of artistry and emotional truth.
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Following his breakout hit "Barbarian" (2022), writer-director Zach Cregger returns with "Weapons," a gripping and ingeniously crafted thriller that surpasses its predecessor in both ambition and execution. Suspenseful, eerie, unexpectedly hilarious, and wildly entertaining, "Weapons" is a bold and exhilarating ride from beginning to end.
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The President's Cake (مملكة القصب | Iraq/Qatar/USA 2025 | in Arabic | 105 min.)
"The President's Cake" is an arresting Iraqi tale that transforms a child's simple errand into a tense allegory of survival. Following nine-year-old Lamia, accompanied by her scene-stealing rooster, as she scrambles to gather scarce ingredients for Saddam Hussein's 50th birthday cake, the film delicately balances innocence and danger, revealing how life under sanctions turns the ordinary into a daily trial. Both mesmerizing and heartbreaking, the story allows the cake to stand as a fragile token for hope under tyranny, while Lamia's journey, part adventure and part ordeal, underscores the resilience of ordinary people living under extraordinary pressure.
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Sirât (Spain/France 2025 | in Spanish/French/English/Arabic | 115 min.)
Set against an unforgiving landscape and shaped by constant forward motion, Spain's Oscar submission "Sirât" thrives on its ability to surprise without losing control. The film repeatedly shifts direction in ways that feel purposeful rather than arbitrary, each turn tightening the narrative and raising the stakes. Its filmmaking is muscular and confident, especially in how it builds tension through rhythm, sound, and narrative escalation instead of exposition. What makes the film so gripping is its refusal to settle into a single mode, pushing onward with nerve and precision as it transforms unpredictability into a driving force rather than a distraction.
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The final and most affecting film in Dag Johan Haugerud's Oslo trilogy, "Dreams" is a deeply felt portrait of first love, self-discovery, and the role of writing in making sense of overwhelming emotions. It won the top prize at this year's Berlin International Film Festival and stands as the most emotionally resonant and fully realized entry in the trilogy. It captures the moment when love first takes shape—raw, consuming, and unforgettable.
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One Battle after Another (USA 2025 | 161 min. | My review)
What if today's political divides worsened into a future of repression, silenced dissent, and mounting violence? Acclaimed writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson takes that chilling premise and shapes it into his most electrifying work yet, "One Battle After Another" Both a fantastic thriller and a grand political fable rooted in timeless human struggles, the film feels piercingly of-the-moment while never losing sight of the intimate family story at its core. It is an electrifying, politically charged epic staring into our fractured future.
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Living the Land (生息之地 | China 2025 | in Chinese | 132 min.)
Chinese director Huo Meng's engrossing "Living the Land" (生息之地 | China 2025 | in Chinese | 132 min.) captures a world on the cusp of change with extraordinary warmth and beauty. Set in rural China in 1991, it tells the story of a ten-year-old boy left behind as his family departs for Shenzhen in southern China, unfolding as both a portrait of tradition and a fond remembrance of a way of life now fading into history. The film's rich, painterly cinematography lingers on landscapes, seasons, and the rituals of everyday existence, creating a sensory experience that feels both deeply affecting and universally nostalgic.
Tuesday, December 23, 2025
Anaconda
The premise is knowingly absurd. Four childhood friends, all wrestling with a midlife crisis, travel to the Amazon to remake their favorite horror movie from the 1990s. That movie happens to be "Anaconda" (1997), the famously bad creature feature. Reality, naturally, refuses to cooperate. A real giant anaconda appears, and what begins as a chaotic, low-rent filmmaking adventure turns into a life-or-death ordeal. The film is careful to clarify that this is not a reboot. It is an entirely original comedy that borrows the monster concept as a way to poke fun at the original and at the very idea of remaking it.
Much of the humor comes from self-awareness. The screenplay takes amusing shots at Sony itself, with moments of self-mockery that feel surprisingly sharp for a studio-backed comedy. Those jokes add humor that complements the broader physical gags.
The comic chemistry between Doug (Jack Black) and Griff (Paul Rudd) is deliberately lopsided. Jack Black is clearly the funnier presence here, relying on exaggerated physical comedy and shameless commitment. One of the film's biggest laughs comes when Doug's friends place a dead pig on his head in a desperate attempt to distract the snake, a gag that is as crude as it is effective. Paul Rudd, by contrast, plays Griff as a character whose humor is rooted in verbal wit and wordplay, a style that feels underutilized in a movie that overwhelmingly favors slapstick.
Some characters in the movie exist largely as decorative elements, most notably Ana Almeida (Daniela Melchior), who drifts through the story without much narrative or comic purpose. The film seems unconcerned with this imbalance, prioritizing momentum and gags over fully developed supporting roles.
This comedy is not believable, restrained, or particularly interested in coherence. It is loud, broad, and gleefully excessive. By openly mocking the original 1997 film and repurposing its already absurd monster mythology, it turns a once-ridiculous thriller into a self-aware comedy built on physical mayhem and industry satire. Audiences know exactly what they are signing up for, and the film delivers on that expectation with a straight face and a wink.
"Anaconda" opens in theaters on Thursday, December 25, 2025.
Tuesday, December 16, 2025
The Housemaid
Based on Freida McFadden's bestselling novel, the film begins as a sleek social thriller before sliding into horror comedy, keeping the audience hooked with the promise that nothing is quite what it seems. What starts as an escape fantasy steadily mutates into a story of buried rage, class tension, and karmic payback.
Millie Calloway (Sydney Sweeney) is desperate to outrun her past, and a live-in housemaid job with the wealthy Winchesters feels like salvation. From the moment she moves into the attic, the idea of escape hangs over her like a dare. Her employer, Nina Winchester (Amanda Seyfried), projects privileged perfection until her volatility turns daily routines into psychological traps. Nina's husband, Andrew Winchester (Brandon Sklenar), appears gentler and more trustworthy, further muddying Millie's sense of where the real danger lies. Even Enzo (Michele Morrone), the watchful gardener, adds to the sense that everyone in this house is performing a role.
Director Paul Feig and screenwriter Rebecca Sonnenshine insist that dark secrets lurk beneath immaculate surfaces. Gossip becomes a weapon, wealth a disguise, and karma an inevitability. Some plot turns stretch plausibility, but the film earns forgiveness by aligning the audience with Millie as an underdog. You share her fear and fury, and when the balance of power begins to shift, the pleasure is communal.
The satirical portrait of rich housewives is both comical and cutting, skewering curated perfection without softening the cruelty underneath. As the story accelerates, the pristine house becomes a labyrinth, restraint gives way to excess, and the film fully embraces its genre-blending instincts.
Stylish, nasty, and engineered for gasps and laughter, this movie is less interested in realism than emotional payoff, tapping into the satisfying fantasy of escaping a toxic world and watching polished facades finally collapse.
"The Housemaid" opens in theaters on Friday, December 19, 2025.
