Category: now in theatres

400 Words on: Until Dawn (2025)

or, “Buying-In to the Confusion”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.

3 out of 5

While my wife would call me a “gamer”, I don’t clock nearly as many hours as when I was a kid: life gets in the way. So when I do play, it’s almost exclusively ‘arcade-style’ games that I can disconnect from quickly – physically & mentally – and there must be a Pause button.

Though I can’t attest, “Until Dawn” seems regarded as one of the premier, Western-made, story-driven video games of the previous console generation: a group of disposable teens trying to survive a throng of wendigos, with a branching narrative based on player interaction. “Until Dawn: The Movie” swaps out the choose-your-own-adventure input for a “Groundhog Day” esque time-loop, with some other surprises meant to mimic the discovery a player would get from the game.

My surprise was palpable. Though lacking the original’s star-power (which featured Rami Malek & Hayden Panettiere), the movie’s twenty-something players do a convincing job and, tonically, all five are spotlighted equally throughout the script. The savagery is effective, including a show-stopping water tower sequence & a close-up of a crushed face that gave me “Irréversible” flashbacks. The dialogue isn’t bad either, often breaking the fourth-wall to cheekily address the core plot’s uninspiredness, or the suicidal inclinations of its protagonists to reset the loop & try again.

[cont’d]

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400 Words on: The Amateur (2025)

or, “Bringing the Chicago-Wednesday Vibes”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.

1.5 out of 5

In an effort to engage more with my fellow hobbyist writers, here’s a tip that’s been beaten over my head through the years: use a thesaurus. Getting started is as easy as searching “synonym for word” on Google, and sprinkling some five-dollar expressions like Meghan Sussex sprinkles edible flowers is a good thing.

Let’s tutorial this by deep-diving into a few curated terms that I would use to describe “Mr. Robot” & “Bohemian Rhapsody” star Rami Malek’s new film, “The Amateur”:

en’co’pre’si’tic

A made-up adjective from the medical diagnosis “encopresis”; or, as 2001’s “Rat Race” calls it, “prairie-dogging.” The Amateur made me feel encopresitic: it was engaging enough to have convinced me to hold it in, so as not to miss anything.

bull’shit

Oxford calls it “stupid or untrue talk… typically to be deceptive.” The last ten minutes of The Amateur are bullshit, and ruin it. There’s no twist; no full-circle; and no viewer catharsis, anticlimactically concluding with little more than a subdued conversation, and a “where are they now.” I held my poop in for that?

[cont’d]

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400 Words on: The Alto Knights (2025)

or, “Running Around the Woods with Shrimp Cocktails”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.

2.5 out of 5

There are few things more comforting to a cinephile than Robert De Niro calling someone an expletive & unloading an entire pistol clip into them.

It’s unwholesome, but this has been his playground for decades. The Alto Knights is an impassioned throwback to the Scorsese/De Niro collaborations of old, but lacks the oomph of those masterpieces.

GQ’s 2006 interview with Bob is required reading for anyone wanting an encapsulation of the stubborn actor. I’m not here to rag on De Niro: he’s had many legendary performances over his long career. But like any artist (*cough* senior), he’s set in his ways, rejects change, and becomes crotchety when he feels disrespected.

Now an octogenarian, Bob can’t just go back & retroactively change his De Niro-isms, no matter how much digital technology de-ages him (like in Scorsese’s The Irishman). Now forced into ‘grandpa’ roles that he may or may-not feel are beneath him (being a new dad at 81 certainly increases that obligation), audiences know exactly what to expect.

[cont’d]

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400 Words on: Snow White (2025)

or, “A Big Studio Budget Retained for Payroll”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.

1 out of 5

Snow White 2025 is as much a product for consumer consumption as it is a snapshot of Disney’s current socioeconomic agenda – from Lion King’s Pride Rock in the background of their vanity card; to bookending sequences so similar to Beauty and the Beast’s you’d swear copycat if they didn’t both originate from the same company; to Dopey’s now-curable neurodivergence.

It attempts to redux the material as a feminocentric Robin Hood with a protagonist who’s ‘her own woman,’ but she’ll still drop everything to jubilate musically about her new White beau.

As the titular character, Rachel Zegler opts for the Queen of the High School Drama Department approach: she’s kinda hot and can carry a tune, but emotionally empty from crying about her now off-again boyfriend right before showtime. Watch her strain during the movie’s one big moment for her to act: like Zachary Levi’s recent dramatic try in The Unbreakable Boy, Zegler lacks the skill required to convincingly portray painful remorse. Go do some indies and get back to us.

[cont’d]

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Dub’s Take: Ne Zha 2 & Night of the Zoopocalypse

Two Spoiler-Free Family-Friendly Micro Movie Reviews

NE ZHA 2

3.5 out of 5

I’m a cultured guy: my favourite movie has a naked French lady in it. But “Ne Zha 2” is a movie from China, rooted in its mythology, without conceding to a global audience.

Despite every barrier to enjoyment possible (I haven’t seen the first film; super-quick & error-ridden subtitles; what I thought would be a 10 minute recap being a 30 second ‘last time on’; did I say fast subtitles?), Ne Zha 2 earned my part of its astonishing $2 billion in global profit through spectacle & gut reaction alone.

Who cares if the human characters are animated out of a PS2-era musou game, or if the whole third act reminded me of twenty seconds from “Akira”? Highlights include a scene with photorealistic gophers that almost made me throw up in the theatre; a heroic sacrifice that had me teary-eyed (only for a late twist to make me realize I didn’t actually know what was going on); and my 73-year-old father enjoying it, too.

I don’t foresee an English dub being possible without huge script revisions, and 10 minutes of Coles Notes at the beginning.

NIGHT OF THE ZOOPOCALYPSE

2.5 out of 5

Being a writer, I know what it’s like to fall in love with your words, whether those be poeticisms, a sudden revelation, or building to a literary crescendo.

“Night of the Zoopocalypse’s” scribes didn’t think objectively enough when it came to divvying traits out to its protagonists. The cinema-loving lemur Xavier won’t shut up about film theory as it pertains to every situation (like the critic from Shyamalan’s “Lady in the Water”), but capybara Frida is stuck reiterating that she doesn’t know anything because she’s “just a capybara.” Not a great start for a comedy that relies on the camaraderie of its core team.

But kids probably won’t care, so I’m trying not to, either. Zoopocalypse is a quick, cute time, most successful in its visual details than story ones. Gracie’s voice-actress Gabbi Kosmidis says in the pre-show that it’s a good entryway for young horror fans-to-be, and while that’s just a publicity quote to get butts in seats, I don’t disagree on its sanitized zombie-movie status, with enough neon colours & felty CGI fuzz to keep everyone entertained.

Some of the soundtrack was a little weird and could be triggering for kids with hearing sensitivity.

Posters sourced from impawards.com (1; 2). Are you going to see either of these? Do you agree that everything yanks something from Akira at one point or another? Let us know your impressions in the comments below!

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