Fanatastic Four: First Steps (Matt Shakman, 2025)

Take four

You wonder why Marvel's First Family (and first collaboration between writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby) would have so much trouble transitioning to the big screen when predecessors (Captain America) and contemporaries (Iron Man; The Avengers) went on to cause a bigger splash; suspect it all stems from something folks behind those efforts remembered that folks behind this team's previous incarnations forgot: that it isn't the cosmic-ray powers that appeal to readers so much as the motivations they hold for fighting crime, supervillains, various forces of evil and injustice. Not the what, to paraphrase a key lesson taught in Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, as the why.

Superman (James Gunn, 2025)

The man with the golden Gunn

A lot riding on James Gunn's latest movie: not just the reboot of DC Films (now called DC Studios, with James Gunn and producing partner Peter Safran as co-CEOs) but also a reboot of not just a DC comic book superhero but arguably the foundational superhero (not the first ever but damned close and arguably the most influential)-- in effect, the salvation of an entire movie genre, which lately has been in a box-office slump generating more bad publicity than Elon Musk on a ketamine binge. 

So did Gunn do it? I'd say you're asking the wrong question. 

The Phoenician Scheme (Wes Anderson, 2025)

Trump, Inked

Wes Anderson should really preface his pictures with a paraphrase of Tolstoy: All Wes Anderson movies are alike; the better Anderson movies are better in their own way. Anderson's work has stylized (some would say calcified) to the point where nonfans have thrown up their hands in despair, while more persistent viewers (fans, even) still flock to screenings, still attempt to suss out what's different in this installment and what Anderson seems up to at the moment.

So it goes with The Phoenician Scheme (2025) and surfacewise I'd argue it's easy to see the diff-- in The Grand Budapest Hotel the palette is decidedly based on different intensities of pink; in The Fantastic Mr. Fox it alternates between earthy brown and fur orange-- very autumnal colors; in Asteroid City it ranges from bright Granny Smith to deep lime; he dabbles in both live action and stop-motion, sometimes with extensive use of miniatures in the former; his tone will range from gratingly twee to deadpan black, and he usually turns a monomaniacal focus on well-off folk with an array of mostly self-inflicted issues.

Again the question, and of course a follow up folks might be interested in: is Anderson's latest different, and is it worth catching? Well let me tell you

Jurassic World: Rebirth (Gareth Edwards, 2025)

It's Alive VII: Island of the Alive

As if anything could actually kill the franchise-- comes Jurassic World: Rebirth, and this time it's all dressed up in basic retro: reuse, refurbish, reboot.

New characters, same strategy: bunch of people on island, well equipped well organized; things go pearshaped, and what used to be a mission (fact-finding, creature-hunting) is now an escape drama, the survivors doing best with what they got, mainly wits and guts ready to spill at moment's notice.

28 Years Later (Danny Boyle, 2025)

Dead on arrival

Charles Dickens got it right.

Some hundred and eighty years ago, he wrote a passage in Oliver Twist describing a haunting: 

He could trace its shadow in the gloom, supply the smallest item of the outline, and note how stiff and solemn it seemed to stalk along. He could hear its garments rustling in the leaves, and every breath of wind came laden with that last low cry. If he stopped it did the same. If he ran, it followed--not running too: that would have been a relief: but like a corpse endowed with the mere machinery of life, and borne on one slow melancholy wind that never rose or fell.

That sentence-- not running too: that would have been a relief-- is key. The undead are not in a hurry, they are never in a hurry; if they ever for once hurried that would break the tension. 

Materialists (Celine Song, 2025)

Surface tension

Celine Song's Materialists on the surface is about the business of matchmaking-- an industry on the rise with the difficulty of online dating and of life in general (New York in particular); prices are not mentioned but looking at the clothes the characters wear and the milieu they inhabit you can probably figure it's in the five to six figure range for an annual service.

So the movie looks good and the cast looks handsome and the conversation in the trailer sufficiently sparkled (not Billy Wilder league much less Ernst Lubitsch divine but bubbles popped)-- is the actual experience worth it?

Bona (Lino Brocka, 1980) 4K Restoration on the big screen

Close to you

This early shot in Bona (1980) I think says it all.

What's so remarkable about Nora Aunor's face here is just how unremarkable it looks in that sea of faces, standing in the brainfrying streets of Quiapo. The biggest star in all of Philippine cinema crammed in a crowd like sardines in a can, and she doesn't just look as if she doesn't stand out, she looks as if she belonged there, milling among the pious, the pickpockets, the prostitutes, all out in force on the Feast of the Black Nazarene. After all when you think about it: what's the point of appearing as the lead in a Filipino film if you don't look like a typical Filipino?