Train Dreams (2025)

This felt more like having a book read aloud by a gifted reader, with the images my own brain might have conjured as the words' accompaniment. A lovely celebration of a small life as full of tragedy and beauty as any "big" life could possibly be.

A-

Anaconda (2025)

Jack Black and Paul Rudd as lifelong friends separately experiencing disillusionment in their careers deciding to revisit their love for the movie Anaconda by making a "spiritual sequel" together? Yes, yes, yes, yes!!

But then I actually saw the thing and it is an absolute nonsensical jumble. The acting abilities of Thandiwe Newton and Rudd seem to fly out of the window and into the realm of "desperate sitcom actors who know they've lost the studio crowd so are going broader and LOUDER in hopes that will win them back." But, as evidenced by Jack Black (giving it his all), it doesn't matter how seriously you take the material, when it's this shit there's no disguising it.

I don't even understand how a movie can be this terrible when it has these actors and this premise. Mind-blowingly disappointing.

D

The Forgiven (2022)

When a young man is hit and killed by a couple on their way to a lavish party in the middle of an impoverished area of the Moroccan Sahara, it's treated like an annoying inconvenience by the host, the other attendees, and even the at-fault couple. It's only when the boy's father arrives to claim his son's body that it becomes apparent that it won't be possible to resolve the situation without an act of contrition. The driver reluctantly agrees to accompany the father back to his home more than a day's drive away. 

We go back and forth between his experience in the stark environment of those native to the land and the bacchanalian excesses of the estate party. While he's learning that he's taken something from a community that had little to spare, the partiers are consuming many times their fair share of pleasure in every form. Can he ever return? 

Though it took me a little bit to acclimate, the driver is the perfect avatar here. Even though he lives a life much more privileged than mine (and probably most viewers'), my easy life is much closer to his than those he'd wronged. Ralph Fiennes inhabits it perfectly and helped me feel the journey.

B+

F1: The Movie (2025)

Brad Pitt plays an aging driver known for his out-of-the-box risky style who's brought in as a last-ditch attempt to turn around a failing F1 team. It's extremely predictable and would've been a complete waste of time if it weren't for a handful of driver's-view race segments.

C-

Bugonia (2025)

Michelle (Emma Stone) is CEO of a high-profile biomedical company: rich, demanding, materialistic. Teddy (Jesse Plemons), a low-level laborer in that company, is convinced she's not what she seems to be. To stop her plans, Teddy ropes his trusting cousin into abducting her and holding her hostage until she admits the truth.

Yorgos Lanthimos movies are hit-or-miss for me. Sometimes I am annoyed by what feels like a deliberately false style while, in other films, the weirdness just works. Bugonia is one of hits, right up there with The Favourite and Poor Things. I really liked the slow reveal of Teddy's backstory and how trauma could have driven him to seek a concrete target to slay. I was also really into Michelle's savvy manipulations -- her refusal to admit the upper hand may no longer be hers.

This one's a winner.

B+