Shelter
There is an unspoken agreement between Jason Statham and the ticket-buying public, and it has been running smoothly for about twenty years now. He shows up. He squints. He hurts a lot of people very efficiently. We go home satisfied. Nobody gets hurt. Shelter honors that contract fully and completely, which is both its greatest strength and its most limiting quality.
The Wrecking Crew
This movie made me audibly laugh. It made me audibly gasp. I nearly woke up my two-year-old, which is the highest possible review I can give anything that streams after 9 PM on a Tuesday. Director Ángel Manuel Soto — who proved with Blue Beetle that he understands spectacle and heart aren’t mutually exclusive — leans fully into the absurdity of the premise without ever condescending to the audience.
Greenland 2: Migration
I’ll watch the third one. I already know I will. That’s the tax you pay for loving this genre.
People We Meet On Vacation
People We Meet On Vacation is a great new-age romcom — the kind that trusts its audience to sit with complicated feelings and wait for the payoff. Book readers will notice what’s missing. Everyone else will fall in love with what’s there.
Marty Supreme
There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from watching movies that want to be important but never quite earn it. Prestige without pulse. Ambition without blood. For the better part of the last few years, cinema has been stuck in that loop—well-made, well-acted, utterly forgettable. Marty Supreme breaks that cycle like a fist through glass. Josh Safdie’s film doesn’t politely ask for your attention; it hijacks it. This is a movie that hums, rattles, and eventually roars. It’s the first film in a long time that feels genuinely great—not because it aims for greatness, but because it refuses to settle for anything less than obsession.
The Smashing Machine
Benny Safdie’s solo directing debut is a choice, not a gimmick. The Smashing Machine leans fully into a 90s camcorder, vérité vibe—blown-out whites, rolling shutter, clipped dialogue, the occasional warble in the tape. It’s not nostalgia; it’s a design principle. The film looks and sounds like the decade it’s interrogating, and that technical conviction is its sharpest edge.
Dead of Winter
Grief is the marrow of Dead of Winter, and it’s where the film is at its most convincing. This isn’t just another snowbound survival tale—it’s a study of how loss reshapes instinct, how silence can weigh more than dialogue, and how holding on to memory can be both an anchor and a burden. That emotional core is where the film thrives.
K-Pop Demon Hunters
There are movies that catch you off guard—not because of a shocking twist or groundbreaking visuals, but because they deliver an experience you didn’t know you needed. K-Pop Demon Hunters is exactly that kind of film. Going in, I wasn’t a K-pop fan. In fact, I’ve never listened to a full K-pop track (save for BTS’ Dynamite) in my life. But within minutes, I was caught in the dazzling neon vortex of this movie, and by the end, I realized it had done something remarkable: it made me care deeply about three global pop stars who moonlight as defenders of humanity.
The Pickup
In the end, The Pickup feels like a decent weeknight watch rather than a must-see event. It’s carried more by the actors than the script or direction, with KeKe Palmer once again proving that even in a role written without much nuance, she can bring authenticity and heart. While not a disaster by any stretch, it’s a film that leaves you wishing its creative risks matched the talent of its cast.
The Naked Gun (2025)
From the opening scene—where Neeson inexplicably dons a schoolgirl disguise to thwart a bank robbery—the film sets its frenetic, absurd tone. The jokes land with gleeful abandon: pratfalls, visual gags, meta-references that wink at fans, and a shameless dose of slapstick. The action sequences blur into comedic chaos—electric cars gone haywire, nightclub brawls, and a climactic emergency at a mixed martial arts match coincide with the unveiling of the film’s high-stakes tech villainy. It’s silly, absurd, full of momentum—and it works.
Superman
Under the direction of James Gunn and a screenplay he co-wrote, Superman delivers what feels like a new dawn for the DC Universe. David Corenswet plays Clark Kent/Superman with an earnest optimism and boy-scout charm that he infuses with real emotional depth. Rachel Brosnahan brings Lois Lane to life as sharp, driven, and thoroughly modern—and the chemistry between them crackles with real heat. Seriously, these two look and feel like they belong together, making this not just a good superhero movie, but a damn good movie overall—possibly the best of the year so far.
Ballerina
Ballerina maintains a thematic layer in the John Wick franchise—one where violence is not only physical but artistic. It explores how tradition, discipline, and tragedy shape a warrior. Ana de Armas delivers a performance brimming with precision and heart. The film stakes are smaller than a global super-villain showdown, but they feel intimate, lived-in, and compelling.
Lilo & Stitch (2025)
The film smartly doesn’t try to replicate the cartoon’s zany energy beat-for-beat. This is a more contemplative, grounded take. Some viewers may find the pacing slower, but that slowness gives space for quieter, more meaningful character beats. You feel Nani’s exhaustion. You feel Lilo’s isolation. You feel the weight of trying to hold a family together with duct tape and desperation.
The Thunderbolts*
Could it suffer from franchise familiarity? Sure. It borrows structural beats from team‑up films of the past. But this time, the Marvel machine feels intentional, not rote. There’s murder, betrayal, redemption, and even a psychological twist hinting at upcoming Avengers split arcs.
G20
Slick, smart, and fueled by a powerhouse performance, G20 is exactly what you’d want from a modern political action thriller. It’s fast, fun, and anchored by one of the greatest living actors proving once again that there’s no role too large, no challenge too intense, and no genre she can’t conquer. Viola Davis isn’t just the President in G20—she’s the whole damn movie.
Novocaine
Quaid brings his full range to the role, flexing both his comic timing and increasingly impressive dramatic chops. Between Novocaine and his equally strong turn in Companion, he has somehow managed to dominate the first half of 2025 with two wildly different but equally captivating performances. In this film, he gets to be charming, goofy, vulnerable, and convincingly heroic, all without losing the character’s everyman appeal.
The Electric State
Set in a retro‑futuristic alternate‑1990s, The Electric State begins with a lonely orphaned teen driving across a desolate landscape alongside a mysterious robot in search of her long‑lost younger brother, with the help of a smuggler and his goofy mechanical sidekick. All the pieces are in place for an emotionally rich, odd‑couple road epic. Instead, what plays out is a visually polished, high‑budget spectacle that fails to ignite.
Zero Day
Netflix’s new miniseries Zero Day is a gripping and thought-provoking thriller that raises pressing questions about truth, control, and the very fabric of reality in an era dominated by conspiracy and uncertainty. At its core, the series forces viewers to examine whether the crises tearing the world apart are the work of external forces beyond our grasp, or whether we ourselves are complicit in their creation. It’s a timely, relevant, and unsettling watch that refuses to provide easy answers, making it one of the most compelling shows of the year.
Captain America: Brave NewWorld
What’s most frustrating is how Brave New World fails to justify its own existence. It doesn’t push the MCU forward. It doesn’t deepen the character of Sam Wilson in any significant way. And it certainly doesn’t offer anything we haven’t seen, multiple times, in earlier films. At this point, even the structure of these movies feels templated—there’s no spontaneity, no surprises, and no pulse.