Review: ‘Superman’ (2025), starring David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult

July 8, 2025

by Carla Hay

Rachel Brosnahan and David Corenswet in “Superman” (Photo by Jessica Miglio/Warner Bros. Pictures)

“Superman” (2025)

Directed by James Gunn

Culture Representation: Taking place on Earth and in outer space, the sci-fi/fantasy/action film “Superman” (based on DC Comics characters) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans, Latin people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Superman, who has an alter ego as journalist Clark Kent, battles against evil billionaire Lex Luthor.

Culture Audience: “Superman” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of superhero movies, DC Comics and action films that appealing interpretations on familiar characters.

Nicholas Hoult in “Superman” (Photo by Jessica Miglio/Warner Bros. Pictures)

The Superman franchise has a new lease on life with this engaging reboot. This superhero movie (which has Kyrpto as a scene-stealing dog) can get overstuffed with subplots, but it’s got plenty of thrills and comedic moments. The 2025 version of “Superman” is a promising step in the right direction for a new era in movies based on DC Comics.

Written and directed by James Gunn (who became DC Studios’ co-chairman/CEO in 2022), “Superman” is not yet an origin story. The movie takes place during a time when Superman (played by David Corenswet) is already a known superhero in Metropolis, the large U.S. city where he lives and works. (“Superman” was actually filmed in Georgia, Ohio, and Norway.) In the movie, caped crusader Superman is vilified through media manipulation from ruthless billionaire Lex Luthor (played by Nicholas Hoult), who wants his weapon-making company LutherCorp to profit from a European country’s invasion of a Middle Eastern country.

The movie shows through flashbacks and conversations the necessary details of Superman’s backstory: He was born with the name Kal-El on the planet Krypton, and then sent to Earth by his parents when he was baby before his parents died when Krypton exploded. He landed in a field in Smallville, Kansas, where he was found and raised by two working-class farmers—Jonathan “Pa” Kent and Martha “Ma” Kent—who gave him the name Clark Kent. Superman has X-ray vision, the ability to fly, and superpowers in strength and speed. His biggest weakness is an element on is planet called Kryptonite, which has poison effects on Superman if he is exposed to Kryptonite.

Thirty years after baby Clark arrived as a baby on Earth, Clark (also played by Corenswet) is now a somewhat socially awkward journalist at the Daily Planet newspaper. It should come as no surprise that Clark has been the only journalist to be able to get exclusive interviews with the mysterious and elusive Superman. Only a few people on Earth know Clark’s true identity as Superman. One of them is his journalist co-worker Lois Lane (played by by Rachel Brosnahan), who is dating Clark, but the couple decided to keep this romance a secret.

The beginning of “Superman” shows a bloodied and wounded Superman collapsed in the icy snow somewhere in Antarctica. His loyal “superdog” Krypto (a medium-sized male white mixed-breed dog with some Labrador retriever genes) enthusiastically jumps on Superman. A caption in the beginning of the movie mentions that Superman is wounded because three hours ago, he lost his first battle. It’s later revealed what that battle was.

Suddenly, giant stalagmites rise up from the ground, revealing a secret hiding place called the Fortress of Solitude that can emerge and submerge from its underground station. Robots and drones work in this fortress, where Superman is rescued by robots that take him to get medical treatment on an operating table. After an evaluation, Superman is told he only has 83% of his strength, but he is determined to leave and finish the fight, which ends up causing $22 million in property damage and 20 people needing hospital treatment.

During this medical emergency, Superman’s biological parents—Jor-El (played by Bradley Cooper) and Lara (played by Angela Sarafayan)—are seen in hologram form and talking in their native Krypton language. (In this movie, it sounds a lot like Latin.) This hologram recording will play a significant role later in the story.

Someone who has tracked Superman to Antarctica is The Engineer, also known as Angela Spica (played by María Gabriela de Faría), Lex Luthor’s robot that has been manufactured to be a mercenary with superpowers. The Engineer has been given the task of finding and destroying Superman. But by the time she gets to Antarctica, Superman has already left. However, Angela does see signs of the underground fortress.

“Superman” has several different storylines that don’t always mesh well together in the movie. There’s the storyline about Superman wanting to stop the European country of Boravia from invading a more economically vulnerable Middle-Eastern country named Jarhanpur. Boravia’s president Vasil Glarkos (played by Zlatko Burić) is a disheveled brute who is a stereotypical dictator.

There’s also a storyline Superman’s testy and volatile relationship with the Justice Gang: a trio of superheroes sponsored by the corporation LordTech. The members of the Justice Gang are arrogant Green Lantern (played by Nathan Fillion), impulsive Hawkgirl (played by Isabella Merced) and uptight Mr. Terrific (played by Edi Gathegi), who all think that they are better superheroes than Superman. The Justice Gang members are among Superman’s critics who believe that Superman causes too much destruction of property during his heroic deeds.

There’s a storyline of about LuthorCorp inventing a superpowered robot called Ultraman that Lex touts as being stronger than Superman. Ultraman is operated by a team of tech engineers in a control room with video monitors. The engineers all work under the direction of Lex. Ultraman wears a metallic-looking mask. And as soon as you see Ultraman, you don’t have to know DC Comics lore t know there’s going to be a big fight between Ultraman and Superman.

And there’s a storyline about Clark’s relationship with Lois, which has hit a rough patch because Lois has doubts that she and Clark/Superman are a good match for each other. Lois (who describes herself as a former emo rebel) has struggles with the ethics of pursuing stories about Superman while knowing the secrets that she and Clark know. One of the best scenes in the movie between Clark and Lois is when she challenges him to let her interview him as Superman.

The other Daily Planet co-workers who get speaking lines are somewhat underdeveloped in the movie. Jimmy Olsen (played by Skyler Gisondo), a nerdy photojournalist, gets the most screen out of all of these Daily Planet side characters. Daily Planet editor-in-chief Perry White (played by Wendell Pierce) is somewhat generic. Gossip columnist Cat Grant (played by Mikaela Hoover) doesn’t do anything significant and will be remembered more for her cleavage-baring wardrobe than any lines of dialogue that she has in the movie.

Lex’s girlfriend is a giggly social media influencer named Eve Teschmacher (played by Sara Sampaio), who constantly films herself and takes selfies when she tags along as part of Lex’s globe-trotting entourage. Eve might seem like a shallow gold digger at first, but the movie eventually shows that she’s not as dimwitted as she first appears to be. There’s also a dark side of her relationship to Lex that’s briefly shown when he physically assaults her.

“Superman” has some sly jokes that poke fun at the DC Comics franchise. There’s a snide comment made about people not being able to figure out that Superman looks exactly like Clark without glasses. The Green Lantern character is more buffoonish than how he’s usually depicted on screen, with the intention that audiences are supposed to laugh at Green Lantern than laugh with him. Mr. Terrific has a few memorable deadpan jokes.

A character who appeared in 2021’s “The Suicide Squad” (also written and directed by Gunn) and a character from 2026’s “Supergirl” movie make a brief and hilarious cameos. And the Krypto character (who is also from the planet Krypton) is not as trained as the Krypto depicted in DC Comics or animation based on the comics. In this “Superman” movie, Krypto (who does not talk, as he does in other versions of Krypto) is a lovable but very unruly companion, which can be a help or a hindrance.

There’s a fairly good balance of the comedic and serious moments. One of the tearjerking scenes involves Superman’s visit to his adoptive parents Pa Kent (played by Pruitt Taylor Vince) and Ma Kent (played by Neva Howell) when Superman has an identity crisis. Some viewers might think that the Justice Gang makes the movie too crowded with superheroes, while other viewers might think it’s important to show that not all of Superman’s opponents are villains.

Corenswet capably handles the movie’s lead duel role. Brosnahan also does a good job in portraying Lois as independent and a free thinker. But as far romantic sizzle goes, the Superman/Clark and Lois in this movie don’t generate a lot of heat. Hoult’s depiction of chief villain Lex is effective, but there are billionaire moguls in real life who are a lot more menacing. The truth is that the villains in “Superman” comics and movies just aren’t as interesting as the villains in “Batman” comics and movies.

“Superman” is not an overtly political film. However, the movie has pointed observations on how immigrants can be perceived and mistreated by those who are “natives.” Cultural supremacy is also inflicted by the story’s war villains. The cast members mostly have believable chemistry, whether they are allies or foes.

The movie’s visual effects live up to expectations. The movie’s mid-credits scene and end-credits scene do not tease what could happen in a sequel but are instead very short comedic scenes that aren’t crucial to the story. The 2025 version of “Superman” might not rank in the Top 5 as one of the all-time best superhero movies, but it’s certainly one of the best “Superman” movies that should please most fans.

Warner Bros. Pictures will release “Superman” in U.S. cinemas on July 11, 2025. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on July 8, 2025.

Review: ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ (2025), starring Mason Thames, Gerard Butler, Nico Parker and Nick Frost

June 11, 2025

by Carla Hay

Nico Parker, Mason Thames and Toothless in “How to Train Your Dragon” (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures)

“How to Train Your Dragon”

Directed by Dean DeBlois

Culture Representation: Taking place on the fictional island of Berk, the fantasy/action film “How to Train Your Dragon” (based on the 2003 children’s novel of the same name) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a multiracial people, black people and indigenous people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: In a Berk culture where humans are supposed to hunt and kill dragons, the misfit son of Berk’s leader befriends a dragon and doesn’t want to kill any dragons.

Culture Audience: “How to Train Your Dragon” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the “How to Train Your Dragon” franchise and family-oriented fantasy films that teach respect for animals.

Gerard Butler and Toothless in “How to Train Your Dragon” (Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures)

The unsurprising live-action remake of the 2010 animated film “How to Train Your Dragon” has engaging performances and is more visually dazzling than its fully animated counterpart. The remake falls short in the personalities of the teen supporting characters. The sidekick teen characters in the 2025 remake just aren’t as amusing or as interesting as they are in the 2010 movie.

“How to Train Your Dragon” is based on author Cressida Cowell’s fantasy book series that began with 2003’s “How to Train Your Dragon.” The book series has spawned several feature films and short films. The “How to Train Your Dragon” book series is aimed at children, but the movies have wider appeal to many generations.

The 2025 version of “How to Train Your Dragon” reunites some of the same principal filmmakers who worked on the 2010 “How to Train Your Dragon.” Dean DeBlois, who co-wrote and co-directed the 2010 “How to Train Your Dragon” movie, returns as the sole writer and director of the 2025 “How to Train Your Dragon” and adds the title of producer. John Powell continues as the franchise’s music composer for the “How to Train Your Dragon” movies.

Unlike other live-action remakes of beloved animated films, 2025’s “How to Train Your Dragon” doesn’t make any drastic changes to the plot of the animated movie. This “play it safe” approach is fine, but it doesn’t leave room for doing anything groundbreaking or truly unique to the story. Fortunately, the remake has talented cast members who do the best that they can in bringing these characters to live-action life.

In both “How to Train Your Dragon” movies (which take place in an unspecified period time where there is no electricity or modern technology), the Viking humans on the fictional island of Berk are at war against dragons, which are blamed for killing hundreds of people. The human residents of Berk have retaliated by killing thousands of dragons. Dragons are also blamed for killing livestock that are used for Berk’s food supply.

The dragons come in many shapes and sizes. Most of them live in a secret underground nest that the Berk residents are trying to find. Night Fury dragons are considered the most dangerous and the most elusive dragons to kill. The most important residents of Berk are those who are the most successful dragon slayers. Anyone who finds the secret dragon’s next would be considered a hero in Berk.

The chief of Berk is Stoik the Vast (played by Gerard Butler, who reprises the same Stoik role from the animated “How to Train Your Dragon” films), a gruff and macho widower who hates dragons because his wife was killed by a dragon several years ago. Stoik is raising his and wife’s only child—a 15-year-old son named Hiccup (played by Mason Thames)—to become Stoik’s heir. But so far, Stoik is disappointed because he and many other residents of Berk think that Hiccup is a wimpy coward when it comes to many things, including combat and killing dragons.

Hiccup gets empathy from a grizzled blacksmith/dragon trainer named Gobber (played by Nick Frost), who sometimes acts more like a father figure to Hiccup than Stoik does. Gobber is also Stoik’s longtime best friend. Hiccup is an introverted, misfit loner who lacks confidence and wishes that he could get the respect of Stoik.

Hiccup shows skills in making things with his hands. To prove he has some worth as a potential dragon slayer, Hiccup makes a dragon trap that he places in a remote wooded area. This trap will lead to events that will change the lives of Hiccup and many other people in Berk.

Teenagers in Berk are trained to kill dragons. Gobber leads an elite dragon-slaying training program, which is also an intense competition. The winner of the competition is considered to be on the fast track to becoming a future leader of Berk.

Stoik pressures Hiccup to enroll in this training program, even though Hiccup doesn’t want to kill any dragons. The other teens who are in Gobber’s program are ambitious Astrid (played by Nico Parker); insecure Snotlout (played by Gabriel Howell); goofy Fishlegs (played by Julian Dennison); and bickering fraternal twins Ruffnut (played by Bronwyn James) and Tuffnut (played by Harry Trevaldwyn).

It should be noted that in this fantasy world, Berk is a place where people have varying accents, for no reason given. Stoik has a thick Scottish accent. Hiccup and Astrid have American accents. (Parker is British in real life.) Fishlegs has a New Zealand accent because Dennison is from New Zealand. Almost everyone else has English accents.

In the early days of the training program, Astrid is resentful of Hiccup because she thinks he is underserving scion who gets unfair advantages in life because of nepotism. Astrid, who comes from a working-class background, openly tells Hiccup that she plans to become the next chief of Berk when she’s old enough. Hiccup responds by saying that Astrid, not Hiccup, is the type of child that Stoik wants.

Snotlout has similar “daddy issues” because he desperately wants the respect and approval from his emotionally aloof father Spitelout (played by Peter Serafinowicz), who is one of the dragon-slaying warriors in Stoick’s army. Fishlegs is mainly the training group’s comic relief. Ruffnut and Tuffnut are bratty and try to outdo each other, but these two characters are less appealing in the 2025 version of “How to Train Your Dragon” than the 2010 version.

One day, Hiccup finds out that a jet-black, young male Night Fury dragon has been caught in his trap. Hiccup takes out a knife to kill it, but he can’t do it. Instead, he lets the dragon free from the trap. The dragon is hostile to Hiccup but doesn’t hurt Hiccup.

Half of the dragon’s tail is missing from a trap injury, which prevents the dragon from flying. Hiccup feels guilty about making the dragon disabled. And so, he brings food to the dragon and eventually makes a prosthetic that he attaches to the dragon’s tail so the dragon can fly. Hiccup names the dragon Toothless because the dragon has retractable teeth.

As already shown in the movie’s trailer, Hiccup eventually earns the trust of Toothless and learns to ride on Toothless like someone would ride on a flying horse. Hiccup keeps his budding friendship with Toothless a secret because he knows it’s taboo and he could get punished for befriending a dragon. The movie’s trailer already shows that Toothless won’t be kept a secret for very long.

The rest of “How to Train Your Dragon” plays out exactly like you think it will, if you’ve seen enough of these types of movies and especially if you saw the 2010 “How to Train Your Dragon.” The characters of Hiccup, Astrid, Stoik and Spitelout greatly benefit from live-action performances. Thames is especially good at making Hiccup believable in the action and dramatic scenes.

The 2025 version of “How to Train Your Dragon” excels the most in its visual effects, which are award-worthy. Toothless is even more adorable and soulful in the 2025 version of “How to Train Your Dragon” than he was in the 2010 version. The action sequences in the 2025 movie are thrilling, immersive and occasionally stunning. The 2025 version “How to Train Your Dragon” didn’t take any risks in changing major parts of the story, but sometimes it’s better not to mess with a classic.

Universal Pictures will release “How to Train Your Dragon” in U.S. cinemas on June 13, 2025. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on June 11, 2025.

Review: ‘Thunderbolts*,’ starring Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, Olga Kurylenko, Lewis Pullman, Geraldine Viswanathan, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen and Julia Louis-Dreyfus

April 29, 2025

by Carla Hay

Hannah John-Kamen, Lewis Pullman, Wyatt Russell, David Harbour, Florence Pugh and Sebastian Stan in “Thunderbolts*” (Photo by Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios)

“Thunderbolts*”

Directed by Jake Schreier

Culture Representation: Taking place in the Washington, D.C., area and in New York City (and briefly in Malaysia), the sci-fi/fantasy/action film “Thunderbolts*” (based on Marvel Comics characters) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with a few African Americans, Asians and multiracial people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A ragtag group of superheroes battle against a corrupt CIA director and a mysterious supervillain, as some of the superheroes cope with mental health issues.

Culture Audience: “Thunderbolts*” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and superhero movies that offer a more psychological perspective of the effects of superhero activity.

Pictured in center: Geraldine Viswanathan and Julia Louis-Dreyfus in “Thunderbolts*” (Photo by Steve Swisher/Marvel Studios)

“Thunderbolts*” could be subtitled “Therapy for Superheroes” because the overarching theme is how superheroes cope with depression, guilt and anxiety. Thrilling action scenes and wisecracking jokes are mixed with trauma bonding, to mostly effective results. It works well-enough in this superhero movie because of the talented cast and because the movie’s tone and direction handle these issues with enough realistic compassion instead of wallowing in mawkishness.

Directed by Jake Schreier, “Thunderbolts*” was written by Eric Pearson and Joanna Calo. The screenwriting duo of Pearson and Calo is an inspired pairing because Pearson is mostly known for writing action films (including the 2021 Marvel superhero movie “Black Widow”), while Calo is known as an Emmy-winning co-showrunner for the FX on Hulu series “The Bear,” a show that mixes comedy with drama. “The Bear” tackles a lot of issues about how people are affected by families and childhood experiences. Many of these issues are in “Thunderbolts*” without the movie losing its superhero focus.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has become a complex web of stories that usually require seeing at least one previous Marvel movie to fully understand the plot and characters’ motives. In order for “Thunderbolts*” to resonate the most with viewers, it’s helpful for viewers to have at least seen “Black Widow” and the 2021 Disney+ limited series “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” The 2018 movie “Ant-Man and the Wasp” and the 2019 movie “Avengers Endgame” are also suggested viewings, but they’re not essential to understanding the “Thunderbolts*” plot.

“Thunderbolts*” (the asterisk in the title is explained in the movie) begins by showing trained mercenary Yelena Belova (played by Florence Pugh), a native of Russia, standing on the top of the Merdeka 118 skyscraper building in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. In a voiceover, she’s heard saying in a morose tone: “There’s something wrong with me—an emptiness. I thought it started when my sister died, but it’s something bigger—a void. Or maybe I’m just bored.” Yelena then jumps off of the skyscraper.

Is Yelena suicidal? Maybe. But she isn’t attempting suicide in this scene. She’s testing her aerial limits before doing what she has vowed will be her last mercenary job for the U.S. government. As already seen in the prequel movie “Black Widow,” Yelena is the younger adoptive sister of Natasha Romanoff, also known as Black Widow (played by Scarlett Johansson), who were both underwent brutal assassin/spy training as children in Russia. They trained in a notorious facility called the Red Room. Natasha/Black Widow died at the end of “Avengers Endgame.”

Yelena is currently living in the United States (in or near Washington, D.C.) and works as a mercenary for hire dong covert missions. In the beginning of the movie, she reports to CIA director Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus), who made a brief appearance at the end of “Black Widow” and had a prominent role in “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.” Valentina is corrupt and devious but hides her true nature by pretending with perky mannerisms and by saying that her life mission is to protect the people of the United States.

After this confessional monologue where Yelena says she’s feeling depressed, Yelena is seen invading a scientific lab and getting into fights to complete a mission to defeat people (scientists and armed guards) in the lab. One of the scientists who’s captured asks her why she’s there. “I’m in the cleanup business,” Yelena says in a deadpan voice. During this battle, one of the scientists says to Yelena: “Tell Valentina she’s making a mistake.”

What is this lab? And why does Valentina want it shut down? Those questions are answered in the movie. In the meantime, Yelena eventually tells Valentina that Yelena wants to quit the mercenary work because of job burnout. Yelena says that she would rather do more positive “public-facing” work where she gets to interact with people in more heroic and feel-good situations.

Also living in or near Washington, D.C., is boisterously loud Alexei Shostakov, also known as Red Guardian (played by David Harbour), who is Yelena’s adoptive father. Yelena goes to visit Alexei to tell him that she’s quitting her line of work. She hasn’t seen Alexei in years because of the events that happened in “Black Widow.”

Alexei is also going through his own depression issues for the opposite reasons: He misses being a “superhero” who works for a government, which is the status that he had in Russia about 30 years ago. Alexei and his former partner Melina Vostokoff (played by Rachel Weisz) raised Natasha and Yelena as a dysfunctional yet loving family of spies. Melina’s fate is shown in “Black Widow.”

Yelena sees that Alexei (a bachelor who lives alone) is living in a messy house, drinking a lot of alcohol, and operating a small business called Red Guardian Limo service, where he is the only employee and he has only one ramshackle old limo. The limo has the company slogan on the side of the car: “Protecting You From Boring Evening.” This slogan becomes a little bit of a running joke in the movie.

Alexei tries to hide his depression by pretending to Yelena that he’s doing well. She doesn’t believe him because she sees how unkempt Alexei and his home are. When Yelena tells Alexei that she wants to quit her job, Alexei is alarmed and disappointed. He tells her that he “would kill” to have the type of job that Yelena is about to quit.

Valentina is going through her own career problems. She is in the midst of impeachment hearings, where she denies all the accusations of corruption against her. In one of these hearings, she makes a statement what she has fully divested herself from any ownership in O.X.E., a company involved in secretive scientific research, but she still is a consulting member of O.X.E.’s board of directors.

Valentina’s main enemy in this impeachment proceeding is Congressman Gary (played by Wendell Pierce), who is leading the interrogations during the hearings. Congressman Gary only has a few scenes in the movie, but he’s made it clear that he doesn’t trust Valentina and he thinks she should be impeached. Anyone familiar with the Valentina character will already know that she’s the chief mastermind villain in “Thunderbolts*,” although she gets help from some other people whom she manipulates.

Bucky Barnes, also known as the Winter Soldier (played by Sebastian Stan), is also in Washington, D.C.—this time as a first-term U.S. congressman. In Marvel Comics and in the MCU, Bucky is a “frenemy” of Captain America and has been a mostly a hero but sometimes a villain. In the MCU, Bucky was born in 1925, but his Winter Soldier superpowers have extended his life and allowed him to keep his physical appearance as an adult under the age of 50.

Valentina wants Bucky to be her ally, so Valentina sends her loyal assistant Mel (played by Geraldine Viswanathan) to reach out to Bucky and see if he can be helpful to Valentina. Mel is a mostly wide-eyed sidekick. The more that Mel finds out about Valentina’s real agenda, the more that Mel starts to question if she should stay loyal to Valentina.

Valentina isn’t ready to let Yelena go when Yelena tells her that Yelena no longer wants to be an undercover mercenary. Valentina orders Yelena to do one last mission: Go to a secret facility that has O.X.E.’s most secretive assets, find out who’s been stealing the assets, and kill whoever is responsible for the thefts. Yelena reluctantly does what she has told but finds out it’s a trap set by Valentina, who lured some other people in the trap.

At this facility, Yelena battles with arrogant John Walker, also known as U.S. Agent (played by Wyatt Russell); tough-minded Ava Starr, also known as Ghost (played by Hannah John-Kamen), who has the ability to make herself invisible for a few minutes at a time; and mute Antonia Dreykov, also known as Taskmaster (played by Olga Kurylenko), who have all been villains at one time or another in the MCU. Taskmaster is not in the “Thunderbolts*” as much as these other characters. She remains the most mysterious character in the group.

For reasons shown in “Thunderbolts*,” Taskmaster eventually goes away in this battle. Yelena, John and Ghost find out that they are stuck in the facility with a confused and mild-mannered man named Robert “Bob” Reynolds (played by Lewis Pullman), who suddenly appears during the ruckus. Bob is wearing the type of outfit that hospital patients wear. It’s later revealed that Bob has a troubled past as a meth addict, and he is a survivor of childhood abuse from his father.

As already revealed in the marketing for “Thunderbolts*,” the people in this ragtag group of superheroes and anti-heroes are Yelena, Bucky, John, Red Dragon and Ghost. Bob (who doesn’t remember certain things) has sides to himself that are eventually revealed in the movie. Valentina has plans to introduce a “supersoldier” named Sentry who will do her bidding. The movie’s visual effects are adequately convincing but not outstanding.

Another running joke in the movie is how the group got the name Thunderbolts, which is a name that most of the members do not want for the group. There’s a scene where Yelena and Alexei reminisce about something embarrassing from her childhood that she doesn’t want a lot of people to know about her: When she was a girl, Yelena was part of a junior soccer team called the Thunderbolts, which never won a game. Compared to the highly admired Avengers, the superhero/anti-hero Thunderbolts are misfit underdogs, which is why Alexei thinks that Thunderbolts is a perfect name for them.

“Thunderbolts*” doesn’t have a lot of big surprises because the movie is very transparent about Valentina being the chief mastermind villain. There’s a big reveal at the end of the movie, while an end-credits scene shows the aftermath of this reveal 14 months after the reveal happened. What might surprise viewers the most is how deep the movie goes in intended tearjerker flashback scenes that show children being murdered or abused. (The violence against children is not seen on screen but is implied.)

There’s a flashback scene with childhood Bob (played by Clayton Cooper) and his unnamed parents (played by Joshua Mikel and Molly Carden) that is harrowing to watch. Valentina has her own disturbing flashback showing how she was trained from an early age to betray those who are close to her. (Chiara Stella has the role of childhood Valentina.) And Yelena, the movie’s “trauma queen,” has her own painful childhood memory depicted in a flashback scene. (Violet McGraw reprises her “Black Widow” role as childhood Yelena.)

The MCU has shown superheroes experiencing mental health issues before, but these issues were treated in a more superficial manner and were sometimes used as comedy. This tone of putting serious health issues in a joke-filled MCU superhero movie was most evident in 2022’s “Thor: Love and Thunder,” which got very divisive reactions from audiences. People who dislike “Thor: Love and Thunder” (written and directed by Taika Waititi) had a lot of criticism for how the movie infused comedy in areas that some MCU fans think should’ve had a more serious tone.

For example, Thor (played by Chris Hemsworth), the Norse God of Thunder, is shown being depressed in the beginning of “Thor: Love and Thunder.” That movie starts out with Thor abusing alcohol, overeating, losing his zest for life, and gaining enough weight to have a pot belly, because he feels lost and useless after the end of the epic war depicted in “Avengers Endgame.” Thor eventually is able to shed his fat and climb out of his depression, but this recovery is treated in a flippant manner where a narrator says that Thor goes from having a “dad bod to a god bod.”

“Thunderbolts*” takes time to meaningfully explore the psychological repercussions experienced by superheroes who have shady pasts where they were villains who murdered people. Yelena is struggling with massive amounts of guilt about what she did when she was a Red Room-trained assassin for the Russian government. Unlike the transformation of Thor in “Thor: Love and Thunder,” Yelena’s mental health struggles in “Thunderbolts*” don’t go away just because she starts doing good deeds as a superhero.

Bucky is supposed to be the unofficial leader of the Thunderbolts because he’s the oldest and most experienced member of the group. However, Yelena is the heart and soul of the “Thunderbolts*” movie. In many ways, she’s the leader of the group’s collective conscience—as tattered and conflicted as that conscience can be at times.

In “Thunderbolts*,” Pugh (who continues to excel in her acting performances) brings a soulful energy to her role as Yelena, who was more of a hardened warrior in “Black Widow.” Yelena is coping with depression but she isn’t entirely depressing because she still manages to say some comedic zingers to lighten the mood. She looks out for Bob (who is often in a fragile mental state of mind) and has some very effectively emphathetic scenes with him.

The other scene stealer in “Thunderbolts*,” is Louis-Dreyfus, who doesn’t play Valentina as an over-the-top villain but as a skilled con artist who is always working an angle that will be to her advantage. Even when things start to fall apart for Valentina, she remains relatively calm and projects an upbeat image. Valentina is masterful at putting a positive spin on something negative that she caused. This characteristic is most evident in the movie’s final scene, when Valentina makes a bold move.

The other principal cast members in “Thunderbolts*” stick close to their established personalities and handle their performances accordingly. Alexei continues to be the buffoonish comic relief. Bucky is mostly stoic and sidesteps the childhood trauma trajectory of the movie by saying he didn’t have any chldhood trauma. Even less is shown or told about the personal history of Ghost in “Thunderbolts*,” which makes Ghost a very underdeveloped character.

John is grappling with insecurities and loneliness because his wife Olivia Walker (played by Gabrielle Byndloss) has left him and has taken their underage son with her. A flashback scene shows that the marital problems had a lot to do with John being too self-absorbed in a personal scandal to be an attentive parent to his son. John wants to be the “alpha male” in any group that he’s in, so this personality trait will be problematic in many situations.

Pullman’s Bob Reynolds character makes his first appearance in the MCU. He leaves a memorable impression, although it’s very easy to figure out Bob’s purpose from the moment you see him in a hospital patient outfit in a secretive O.X.E. facility. If Bob had been seen first in regular clothes, then it wouldn’t be so easy to predict what eventually happens to Bob in the movie.

“Thunderbolts*” took somewhat of a risk by putting a lot of psychotherapy elements in what some people think should be a lightweight superhero movie. Without seeing the movie, some people might assume that these superheroes have become a bunch of wimpy whiners. Far from being about self-pity, “Thunderbolts*” takes a very mature look at what recovery from mental illness can look like for people who are expected to be strong for others but aren’t necessarily getting the psychiatric help that they need for themselves.

Walt Disney Pictures/Marvel Studios will release “Thunderbolts*” in U.S. cinemas on February 14, 2025.

Review: ‘The Legend of Ochi,’ starring Helena Zengel, Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson and Willem Dafoe

April 18, 2025

by Carla Hay

Baby Ochi and Helena Zengel in “The Legend of Ochi” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“The Legend of Ochi”

Directed by Isaiah Saxon

Culture Representation: Taking place on the fictional island of Carpathia, the fantasy film “The Legend of Ochi” features a cast of working-class human characters and monkey-like creatures called Ochi.

Culture Clash: After a hunting attack separates a male baby Ochi from his mother, a teenage girl rescues the baby Ochi and goes on a quest to reunite the baby with his mother at the same time the girl looks for her estranged mother.

Culture Audience: “The Legend of Ochi” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and are interested in uncomplicated family-friendly entertainment where magical creatures are big parts of the story.

Willem Dafoe and Finn Wolfhard in “The Legend of Ochi” (Photo courtesy of A24)

“The Legend of Ochi” isn’t quite the epic adventure that this fantasy movie’s title implies. It’s a simple and sentimental story about woodland creatures, lonely humans, and family reunions with obstacles. The creature puppetry steals the show. Although there’s competent acting from the cast members, the movie’s biggest flaw is that not enough information is given about many of the characters and the island they inhabit.

Written and directed by Isaiah Saxon, “The Legend of Ochi” is his feature-film debut. The movie had its world premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Saxon has a background in directing music videos and short films. At times, “The Legend of Ochi” looks like it could have been a short film, because there are parts of the movie that could have been removed and it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the story.

“The Legend of Ochi” takes place on the fictional island of Carpathia, which is in an Eastern European country that is not named. The people in the movie speak with a range of accents that sound German, Russian, and everything in between. “The Legend of Ochi” was actually filmed in Romania in the Carpathian Mountains region.

In the production notes for “The Legend of Ochi,” Saxon says that Chinese golden snub-nosed monkeys were the main inspiration for how the Ochi creatures look in the film. The Ochi might also remind people of how the gremlins look in the “Gremlins” movies before the gremlins transform into monsters when doused with water.

Later in the movie, it’s explained that Ochi are mysterious creatures who hide in the woods. They communicate by making siren calls that sound a lot like the combination of a monkey screeching and a bird cooing. It’s later explained in the movie that when Ochi creatures talk in a collective chorus, the sound is magical and powerful.

“The Legend of Ochi” begins with exposition-dump narration from the movie’s protagonist: a girl named Yuri (played by Helena Zengel), who’s about 15 or 16 years old. Yuri is the only biological child of a pompous and domineering man named Maxim (played by Willem Dafoe), who lives with Yuri and her adopted brother Petro (played by Finn Wolfhard), on a farm. Petro, who is about 17 or 18 years old, was adopted by Maxim when Petro became an orphan at age 14.

Petro is conflicted between being loyal to Maxim or loyal to rebellious Yuri. There are also seven boys (ranging in ages from about 10 to about 14 years old) who have been entrusted in Yuri’s care by the boys’ families so Yuri can teach the boys how to hunt and become self-sufficient with military-styled training. The boys spend a lot of time with Maxim inside and outside the household, but he is not their adoptive father. Petro gets training along with the boy, but because Petro is more experienced than the younger boys, Maxim expects Petro to be a role model to the younger boys.

In the movie’s opening narration, Yuri has this to say about her life: “I was born on a small island in the Black Sea. Most people here live right from the land. It’s how we’ve always survived. For a long time, nothing much changed here. But things are starting to feel different. People say it’s a dangerous place. There are bears and wolves. And something else—something people feel is much worse.”

She is then seen going to a library and getting a 1992 book titled “Carpathian Beasts & Demons.” (The movie doesn’t specify what year the story takes place, but it appears to be in the early 1990s, before smartphones and social media existed.) Inside the book, there are illustrations of the Ochi as demon-like creatures. The illustrations indicate that humans have been battling Ochi for centuries.

Yuri continues in her narration: “For as long as I’ve known, I’ve fought them. I’ve never seen one myself, but I’ve heard them at night by going down from the mountain. I still don’t know the whole story. But since I was 4 years old, the one thing I knew for sure is that it destroyed my family.”

Maxim has repeatedly told Yuri that Yuri’s mother Dasha (played by Emily Watson) abandoned the family. Maxim also forbids Yuri from trying to find Dasha. “I’m going to find her!” Yuri shouts at Maxim during an argument at the family dining table.

The village where Yuri lives is a mixture of ancient and modern. People travel by horse-drawn carriages, but people also travel by car. Yuri lives on a farm and the people in the community “live off of the land,” but there are also contemporary grocery stores in the area.

Yuri lives in a household that does not have a TV or a computer. Her main connection to the outside world is music that she listens to on headphones. Her father and other people in the community are very religious. However, Yuri seems to be in defiance of her strict religious upbringing because she listens to death metal music.

One of the movie’s first scenes shows Maxim taking Yuri and some of his boy trainees into the woods for a nighttime hunting expedition. The purpose is to find and kill Ochi. “The Legend of Ochi” raises questions that the movie never bothers to answer. The biggest question is “Why are Ochi considered such a threat to humans?”

Another clue is a quick glimpse early on in the movie that shows a herder of Highland cows in a field. One of the cows is dead and appears to have been mauled by an unknown animal. Considering that there are wolves in the area, a wolf could have killed this cow. But the movie constantly shows that Ochi seem to be blamed and feared as the worst creatures and enemies of humans living on Carpathia.

Yuri mentions that there are wolves and bears in the area, but these wolves and bears are never seen in the movie. Based on what’s seen in the movie, the Ochi do not kill people, but people have been taught that Ochi will kill people. There is a curfew at night to avoid being near Ochi, who are mostly nocturnal creatures.

The only animals the Ochi are actually seen eating are insects. Humans don’t kill Ochi for food. Humans hunt Ochi simply because Ochi have been described for centuries as “predators” of humans. The point that the movie seems to be making is that if mythology is told enough times and for an extended period of time, people will believe it.

Yuri is the first person in her family to seriously question what she’s been taught about the Ochi creatures. During that nighttime hunting trip to kill Ochi, several of them are seen by Maxim and his squad of young people. Maxim orders them to shoot as many Ochi as they can. Luckily, none of the Ochi gets wounded. But in the chaos, a male baby Ochi gets separated from his mother. Maxim and his squad go home.

The next morning in a barn, Maxim gives a lecture to Yuri and the boys by telling them, “Last night was beautiful,” even if they didn’t hit any of their targets. Maxim warns them the demon is still upon them. “We are cursed with a wickedness.” And he tells them they must all give their hearts to “the cause.”

The isolation that Yuri feels in this male-dominated environment is obvious and doesn’t seem to faze Maxim. During this lecture in the barn, Yuri is crouched quietly on a perch, while the boys are gathered in unity around Maxim. He mentions the problems in some of the boys’ families (such as alcoholism, mental illness, poverty) that led these boys’ families to give Maxim the responsibility of looking after them. “You are all my sons,” Maxim says as he tells them he expects obedience and loyalty from them.

The boys who are not Petro barely talk or don’t talk at all. Their names are Ivan (played by Răzvan Stoica), Oleg (played by Carol Borș), Vlad (played by Andrei Antoniu Anghel), Gleb (played by David Andrei Bălțatu), Pavel (played by Eduard Oancea), Tudor (played by Tomas Otto Ghela) and Edi (played by Eduard Ionut Cucu), whose personalities are blank slates. In fact, the only people in the movie who have significant lines of dialogue are Yuri, Maxim, Petro and Dasha. As already revealed in “The Legend of Ochi” trailer, Dasha is a pivotal character in the film.

The night after the hunting trip, Yuri goes back to the area in the woods where Ochi creatures were seen. And that’s when she sees the lost male baby Ochi, who has a leg caught in one of the traps that Maxim and his squad set in the words. Yuri sets the baby free, and it runs away in fear. However, Yuri manages to coax Baby Ochi into a backpack and takes Baby Ochi home and hides it in her bedroom.

Yuri treats Baby Ochi’s leg wound. And slowly, Yuri and Baby Ochi learn to trust each other. One of their first bonding experiences is when Yuri shows Baby Ochi a caterpillar from her vivarium. When Yuri sees that the Ochi doesn’t hurt the caterpillar, she quickly figures out that Ochi are not as dangerous as she’s been told they are.

Although Yuri is lonely and wants to keep Baby Ochi as her friend, she knows the right thing to do is to return Baby Ochi back to his family. It isn’t long before Yuri (who is very unhappy living with Maxim) decides to run away from home to find Ochi’s family and to find her mother Dasha. Predictably, when Maxim finds out that Yuri has run away from home and has an Ochi with her, there’s a “race against time” hunt when Maxim and the boys go looking for them.

For an unknown reason, Maxim is dressed as a gladiator when he goes on a hunting mission. It seems to be the movie’s way of showing Maxim’s over-the-top, bombastic personality. Dafoe portrays Maxim almost at cartoonish levels, but the character becomes a little bit more grounded in the last third of the movie.

The Ochi, which are combination of puppetry and visual effects, have wonderfully expressive faces and a combination of intelligence and empathy. Baby Ochi is quite simply adorable and is by far the most charming character in the movie. Some viewers might not like the “cuteness” that the Ochi bring to the movie, but other viewers will welcome it once it becomes obvious that “The Legend of Ochi” is a sweet-natured family film and not an edgy movie.

That doesn’t mean it’s a perfect movie. A few scenes are very awkward and nonsensical. For example, after Yuri has run away with Baby Ochi, she goes into a supermarket to get (steal) some food. Even though she hides Baby Ochi in her backpack, he makes himself known when he reaches for some eggs, and some people in the store see him. Customers scream and run in fear.

That’s not what’s odd and ridiculous about this scene. What’s odd and ridiculous is that during this panic, a cashier takes out a shotgun that he had stashed near the cash register and starts shooting at Yuri and Baby Ochi. Who does that to an unarmed kid? Yuri gets away with Ochi in a rolling cart and crashes through the front window with the cart when store employees lock the front doors. She then steals a car in the parking lot because the car just happens to have the keys in the ignition.

None of this is really spoiler information because “The Legend of Ochi” is the type of movie where you can tell how it’s going to end the minute that Yuri runs away from home. The movie’s trailer also reveals that Yuri suddenly and inexplicably begins to understand the Ochi language, so she begins communicating with Ochi in this language, which is subtitled in the movie. The parallels between Yuri and Baby Ochi are obvious because this is a story about a child wanting to be reunited with the child’s mother, despite forces who don’t want this reunion to happen.

The movie’s performances are capable, although “The Legend of Ochi” doesn’t explain a lot of things about Yuri and her family. It should come as no surprise that Dasha has a very different version of why she stopped living with Maxim and Yuri. Dasha’s story of how she lost her left hand (which has been replaced with a wooden prosthetic) indicates that this family’s history is very dark and troubled.

Watson gives the best performance of the cast members, as is often the case with any her projects. It’s too bad that the character of Dasha is in less than half of the movie. Zengel is convincing as introverted teen Yuri, but she mumbles some of her lines. Wolfhard doesn’t have much to do as Petro, the quasi-mediator between the feuding Yuri and Maxim.

“The Legend of Ochi” has excellent cinematography by Evan Prosofsky and has some heart-tugging moments (including an emotion-stirring music score by Evan Prosofsky) that will either endear or irritate viewers. The movie follows a lot of familiar formulas but has a positive message (without getting preachy) about showing compassion for those who are misunderstood and mistreated. Despite the movie’s flaws, the story can’t be faulted for this overall impactful message.

A24 released “The Legend of Ochi” in select U.S. cinemas on April 18, 2025, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on April 25, 2025. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on May 20, 2025. “The Legend of Ochi” will be released on Blu-ray on July 8, 2025.

Review: ‘A Minecraft Movie,’ starring Jason Momoa, Jack Black, Danielle Brooks, Emma Myers and Sebastian Hansen

April 3, 2025

by Carla Hay

Emma Myers, Danielle Brooks, Sebastian Hansen and Jason Momoa in “A Minecraft Movie” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

“A Minecraft Movie”

Directed by Jared Hess

Culture Representation: Taking place on Earth and in a magical place called the Overworld, the fantasy/action film “A Minecraft Movie” (based on the “Minecraft” video game series) features a predominantly white group of people (with a few African Americans) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: Five people get caught up in the Overworld, where there’s a battle over a magical cubed crystal and a magical orb.

Culture Audience: “A Minecraft Movie” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the “Minecraft” video game series, the movie’s headliners and fantasy action flicks that use visual effects to distract from a weak story.

Piglins in “A Minecraft Movie” (Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures)

“A Minecraft Movie” should be called “A Minecrap Movie.” This adaptation of the “Minecraft” video game series is a sloppy mishmash of incoherent action, bad jokes and a messy plot. It’s also a flimsy excuse for Jack Black to sing forgettable songs. Even though this movie is geared more toward children than adults, it’s an insult to people’s intelligence, regardless of age. And there’s more idiocy to come: “A Minecraft Movie” has an end-credits scene that’s a thinly veiled announcement that a sequel has already been planned.

Directed by Jared Hess, “A Minecraft Movie” had the freedom to make an entirely new story because the “Minecraft” games are about users building their own worlds with their own rules and inhabitants. The common denominator in “Minecraft” (which is the best-selling video game of all time) is that things and creatures are look like cube-shaped blocks. Unfortunately, that freedom to be clever is squandered in “A Minecraft Movie.” Chris Bowman, Hubbel Palmer, Neil Widener, Gavin James and Chris Galletta co-wrote the screenplay for “A Minecraft Movie,” which definitely looks like the screenplay suffers from “too many cooks in the kitchen” syndrome.

“A Minecraft Movie” is the type of movie where if you miss the first five to eight minutes, you might be confused for the rest of the movie. That’s because “A Minecraft Movie” begins with an overly long, rambling exposition dump from a narrator named Steve (played by Black), who says when he was a kid, he wanted to work in the mines to discover treasures. The only problem? Kids weren’t allowed to work in the mines.

Steve, who lives in a fictional U.S. city called Chuglass, grew up to work in a drab office in an unnamed job. (“A Minecraft Movie” was actually filmed in Auckland, New Zealand.) Steve compares how he is as an adult, compared to when he was a child: “Same shirt, same pants, no soul.” Steven revived his childhood dreams and went back to the mines. “This time, I was unstoppable,” Steven says.

During this mining excursion, Steve discovered a glowing cubed crystal and a glowing orb. When he put these two objects together, it opened a portal to a magical land called Overworld, which is described in the movie’s production notes as “a bizarre, cubic wonderland that thrives on imagination.” Keep that “imagination” part in mind when you see how little imagination this movie has.

Steve found out that he could create his own world, which he called Steve’s World, by using magical power that makes cube-shaped objects, similar to how people can build Lego objects. Some of the things he created included a loyal dog named Dennis and a casual restaurant called Steve’s Chicken Shack, which serves lava chicken. (Lava chicken is supposed to be spicy and hot, just like lava.)

Overworld has an area called Nether (which is Otherworld’s version of hell), where villains called Piglins (which look like pig mutants) live and have an insatiable desire for gold. The Piglins are led by Malgosha (played by Allan Henry and voiced by Rachel House), who is dressed like she thinks she’s the Grim Reaper. Malgosha is quite dull and predictable.

The Piglins tried to capture Steve and Dennis, but Steve and Dennis escape. During this escape, Steve give Dennis the glowing orb to hide underneath Steve’s waterbed back in Steve’s house on Earth. In hindsight, Steve thinks this was not a good hiding place. And he’s right because someone else ends up with the orb.

“A Minecraft Movie” then has a jumbled introduction to the four people who eventually end up joining Steve in Overworld to fight the Piglins.

  • Garrett “The Garbage Man” Garrison (played by Jason Momoa) was a teenage world champion of a “Garbage Man” video game in 1989. Garrett acts like he’s stuck in 1989, including wearing a fringed leather jacket and singing along (very off-key) to Skid Row’s “I Remember You” when he’s driving in his beat-up car. Garrett lives and works in Chuglass, where he owns a video game store that’s close to getting evicted and going out of business.
  • Natalie (played by Emma Myers) and Henry (played by Sebastian Hansen) are teenage siblings who have recently moved to Chuglass because Natalie has gotten a job as the social media manager for Chuglass Potato Chips. Natalie is supposed to be about 18 or 19 years old, but she looks like she’s about 15 or 16. Henry is about 14 or 15 years old. Their single mother recently died, which is why Natalie and Henry have moved to Chuglass to start a new life.
  • Dawn (played by Danielle Brooks) is the real-estate agent who did the deal for the house where Natalie and Henry are living in Chuglass. Dawn (who is sometimes upbeat and sometimes sassy) also has other “side hustle” jobs, including providing zoo animals for parties and other events. She drives around in a car with the company name Zoo on Wheels, with some of the zoo animals in the car.

Garrett is desperate for money, so he goes to a place called Storage World, which is run by a sleazy operator named Daryl (played by Jemaine Clement) because Garrett thinks he can find something valuable in a box for an old video game called Cosmos. Garrett pays $900 in a Storage World auction for the box, but he is disappointed to find nothing of value in it. Instead, there’s a glowing object in the storage unit. Guess which glowing object it is.

“A Minecraft Movie” has a poorly written sequence of events to show how Garrett, Natalie, Henry and Dawn end up in the Overworld. Henry is a new student enrolled at Chuglass High School, where he’s immediately bullied by some other students for being a nerd. Natalie and Henry have very generic personalities that do not enliven this already limp story.

Vice Principal Marlene (played by Jennifer Coolidge) is the school official who meets with Natalie and Henry. She gives them an earful about having recently gone through a bitter divorce from her ex-husband Clemente, who is never seen in the movie. If you know that Coolidge has been typecast as playing flaky and weird characters, then you can easily predict what type of personality Vice Principal Marlene has and how she will act.

One day, Henry goes into Garrett’s video game store and thinks Garrett is so cool, he agrees to Garrett’s con game of saying he can be Henry’s life coach for $50 an hour. Henry is an aspiring rocket scientist, so he tries to impress his schoolmates by taking a life-sized skeleton model from biology class and attaching a jet pack to it. It’s a complete disaster, of course: There’s a big explosion that damages the some of the school’s property.

Henry is called into the office of Vice Principal Marlene because he’s in big trouble. Natalie is too busy at work and Henry doesn’t want her to find out. And so, Henry calls Garrett and asks Garrett to pretend to be Henry’s uncle who will be the adult to meet with Vice Principal Marlene about Henry causing this property destruction problem.

Garrett agrees to pretend to be Henry’s uncle, for a price. When Vice Principal Marlene sees Garrett, she acts horny and starts flirting with him. Later, the movie goes to unnecessary and very unfunny scenes of Vice Principal Marlene on a dinner date with a mute creature from Overworld.

Henry’s trouble at school leads up to a scene where he goes missing because he’s hanging out with Garrett but didn’t tell Natalie. Natalie panics when she can’t find Henry, so she calls Dawn to help her look for Henry. Dawn and Natalie eventually find Henry at Garrett’s house, shortly before Henry finds the glowing orb and the glowing cubed crystal in Garrett’s garage.

Even though there’s a handwritten note (presumably from Steve) saying not to put the crystal and the orb together, it should come as no surprise that curious Henry puts the crystal and the orb together. The portal opens and drags Henry, Natalie, Garrett and Dawn into the Overworld, where they meet Steve. If you don’t like the way this sequence of events is described, then imagine watching it all happen in the movie, where seeing it unfold is infinitely worse than getting a description.

“A Minecraft Movie” (whose visual effects are not as great as they should be) then becomes a chaotic blur of chase scenes and people inventing weapons in the Overworld to battle against the Piglins and other opponents. A place called Woodland Mansion is the key to getting the “heroes” back home. The movie gets even more tiresome when Steve and Garrett (who are both very loud and insecure) compete to be the “alpha male” of the Overworld. Meanwhile, the male characters in “A Minecraft Move” get the best action scenes, while the female characters spend half of their action scenes cheering on the male characters.

Throughout this dreadful movie, Garrett tells terrible jokes that shows he has a fixation on rear ends because he has say something vaguely sexual or violent in references to bottoms. For example, Steve breaks out into song about four times, which must’ve been something that actor/singer Black insisted on in his “Minecraft” contract, since he sings some songs (none of them award-worthy) that were written specifically for the movie. At one point, Steve sings his jingle for Steve’s Chicken Shack. Garrett’s response: “I have a small business too. And one thing I try not to do is have my jingles suck butt.”

The low-quality of the screenplay, the unimpressive acting performances, and the overall substandard filmmaking for “A Minecraft Movie” won’t make a difference to people who just want to see a “Minecraft” movie, no matter how terrible it is. Children under the age of 10 might be dazzled by the movie’s visuals, but experienced moviegoers can spot the raggedy computer-generated imagery in some of the scenes. “A Minecraft Movie” is a mind-numbing experience, which might satisfy viewers who don’t care about having an inventive story in a “Minecraft” world. People who care about preserving their brain cells should steer clear of this cinematic abomination.

Warner Bros. Pictures will release “A Minecraft Movie” in U.S. cinemas on April 4, 2025.

Review: ‘Death of a Unicorn’ (2025), starring Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega, Will Poulter, Téa Leoni and Richard E. Grant

March 26, 2024

by Carla Hay

Jessica Hynes, Téa Leoni, Will Poulter, Paul Rudd, Jenna Ortega and Anthony Carrigan in “Death of a Unicorn” (Photo by Murray Close/A24)

“Death of a Unicorn” (2025)

Directed by Alex Scharfman

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed U.S. city, the fantasy/horror/comedy film “Death of a Unicorn” features a predominantly white group of people (with one Latina and two Asian people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: An attorney and his college-age daughter go on a weekend business retreat at the mansion of the rich family who employs the attorney, and they all fight for their lives when unicorns appear and go on a killing spree.

Culture Audience: “Death of a Unicorn” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and people who don’t mind watching empty and repetitive horror movies.

Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega in “Death of a Unicorn” (Photo by Balazs Goldi/A24)

“Death of a Unicorn” isn’t as scary or funny as this horror comedy thinks it is. The cast members give capable performances, but the movie sinks due to a weak script that doesn’t go beyond unicorns on a deadly rampage and tired clichés of wealthy villains. The unicorns are simply a gimmick to an over-used concept about rich and greedy people getting their come-uppance in a slasher flick.

Written and directed by Alex Scharfman, “Death of a Unicorn” is his feature-film directorial debut. Scharfman has previously been a producer of several other movies, including the horror films “Resurrection” (2022) and “House of Spoils” (2024). “Death of a Unicorn” had its world premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival.

Although “Death of a Unicorn” has a very talented cast, the movie is a collection and checklist of horror movie stereotypes. The story takes place in a remote wooded area in a unnamed U.S. city. (“Death of a Unicorn” was actually filmed in Hungary.) And every single character in the movie becomes a hollow parody at some point. It should come as no surprise how the movie uses the Final Girl horror stereotype.

The beginning of “Death of a Unicorn” shows widowed attorney Elliot (played by Paul Rudd) driving himself and his sullen college-student daughter Ridley (played by Jenna Ortega, in yet another role as a pouty young adult) on a road trip to this remote area for a weekend retreat at the mansion of the snooty and greedy Leopold family. Elliot works as a business attorney for the Leopolds, who made their fortune in a pharmaceutical business called Leopold Laboratories.

The mansion is located on the Leopold Wilderness Reserve in an expansive wooded area. Elliot tells Ridley what his agenda is for this trip: ingratiate himself into Leopolds’ inner circle so that he can be named to the Leopold corporation’s board of directors and earn enough money for Elliot and Ridley to be comfortable for the rest of their lives.

On the way to this mansion, Elliot and Ridley do some boring father/daughter squabbling, where Ridley tries to prove she’s anti-establishment by saying things such as, “Philanthropy is just reputation laundering for the oligarchy.” That’s about as “edgy” as the dialogue gets in this movie. Elliot and Ridley are both grieving over the death of Elliot’s wife/Ridley’s mother (played by Denise Delgado), but Elliot thinks Ridley should at some point not use this death as an excuse to be perpetually mopey and negative.

Elliot suddenly sneezes while driving, which causes him to temporarily take his eyes off of the road. He ends up hitting what he thinks is a deer because it’s about the size of a young deer. But when Elliot and Ridley get out of the car for a closer inspection of the injured animal on the road, they’re shocked to see that it’s not a deer. It’s a unicorn. And the unicorn’s blood is purple.

Aside from this initial shock, there’s no lengthy discussion between Elliot and Ridley about why unicorns exist. They act like it’s rare to see a unicorn but not completely bizarre. The movie apparently takes place in an alternate universe where seeing a unicorn isn’t enough to question one’s sanity.

The unicorn is injured severely enough that it looks unlikely to survive. Ridley touches the unicorn’s glowing horn and suddenly has a psychedelic-like experience where she’s in a pulsating, kaleidoscope-looking world that seems to have no time or space. Ridley gets snapped out of this trance when she sees Elliot take a tire iron and beat the unicorn for a “mercy killing” to put the animal out of its misery.

Ridley and Elliot do not leave the unicorn outside, which is what most people with common sense would do, especially since no one else saw the car accident or Elliot beating the dying animal. Instead, Ridley and Elliot put the unicorn in the back of the car and leave the animal uncovered. The movie doesn’t really show why they made this decision, but it’s implied that it was probably Elliot’s idea so he could figure out a way to cash in on the rarity of this unicorn.

There are three Leopold family members at this mansion: demanding patriarch Odell Leopold (played by Richard E. Grant), who has a terminal illness; shallow matriarch Belinda Leopold (played by Téa Leoni); and their spoiled bachelor son Shepard “Shep” Leopold (played by Will Poulter), who are all as pretentious and entitled as you think they will be in a movie that makes everyone a two-dimensional caricature. Belinda explains to Elliot and Ridley that there are very few staffers in the mansion because the Leopold family wants to keep Odell’s illness as private as possible.

The Leopold family’s sycophantic employees who are part of the story include a stern personal assistant named Shaw (played by Jessica Hynes) and a haughty British butler named Griff (played by Anthony Garrison), who has some of the best lines in a movie that doesn’t have a lot of great dialogue. Two scientists named Dr. Bhatia (played by Sunita Mani) and Dr. Song (played by Steve Park) become part of the story when they are recruited to figure out the mystery of the unicorn’s magical powers.

The unicorn’s magical powers are first discovered by Ridley in an awkwardly staged sequence. “Death of a Unicorn” is so sloppily written, Elliot tries to pretend to the Leopold family that nothing unusual happened to cause Elliot and Ridley to be tardy when they arrived at the mansion. And yet, there’s a unicorn in plain view in the back of Elliot’s car that’s parked in the driveway. The front of Eliot’s car is also noticeably damaged.

When Ridley and Elliot arrive at the mansion, Ridley has some of the unicorn’s purple blood on her face. Shepard points out to Ridley that she has something on her face. (There’s no explanation for why Elliot didn’t notice this blood first.) Ridley excuses herself to go to a bathroom to wipe off the blood. Shaw and Griff notice Ridley nervously looking out a window at the car, as Ridley as walking to the bathroom. And that’s when these two employees see what looks like a dead animal in the back of the car.

Inside the bathroom, Ridley wipes her face with a towel and notices that her acne has disappeared as soon as she touched her face with the parts of the towel that had the unicorn’s blood. That’s how she discovers that the unicorn’s blood has self-healing powers. She also deduces that when she touched the unicorn’s horn, some type of bond or connection was formed with the unicorn.

These healing powers won’t be a secret for very long. Elliot tells Ridley that he got some of the unicorn’s blood in his eyes when he bludgeoned it. Elliot soon discovers that he now has perfect vision and no longer needs to wear the eyeglasses that he was wearing when he arrived at the mansion. When he wears the eyeglasses, his vision becomes blurry. Elliot also had allergies that have now disappeared.

All the people at the mansion soon find out that the unicorn in the back of Elliot’s car is not really dead. The unicorn bursts out of the car, and all hell breaks loose. As already revealed in the synopsis for “Death of a Unicorn,” the unicorn is an infant. And its parents eventually come looking for it.

The rest of “Death of a Unicorn” clumsily tries to balance a storyline of the corrupt Leopolds trying to figure out how they can make huge amounts of money from this magical unicorn with a rushed-in storyline of the unicorn parents going on a rampage. The Leopolds become more ruthless and unhinged (including recovering drug addict Shepard going on a binge of snorting unicorn dust, like it’s cocaine) in trying to capture these unicorns, while everyone else does some version of trying to stay alive.

After a while, “Death of a Unicorn” just becomes another horror film with an unsurprising body count. The movie tries to shoehorn in a redemption arc for Elliot that just doesn’t ring true, considering Elliot aspired to be just as unscrupulous and elitist as the Leopolds. Ridley also goes through a sudden personality transformation that is not convincing, just so the movie can pander to horror stereotype that a Final Girl has to be likable and sympathetic. Even with the novelty of unicorns killing people in a horror movie, “Death of a Unicorn” doesn’t quite live up to its potential.

A24 will release “Death of a Unicorn” in U.S. cinemas on March 28, 2025. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on March 24, 2025.

Review: ‘Disney’s Snow White,’ starring Rachel Zegler, Andrew Burnap and Gal Gadot

March 19, 2025

by Carla Hay

Andrew Burnap and Rachel Zegler in “Disney’s Snow White” (Photo by Giles Keyte/Disney Enterprises Inc.)

“Disney’s Snow White”

Directed by Marc Webb

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed magical kingdom, the fantasy musical film “Disney’s Snow White” (based on a Brothers Grimm story) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Latin people and black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Exiled princess Snow White, with the help of seven dwarfs, falls in love with her future prince and battles against her evil stepmother queen, who wants to kill her.

Culture Audience: “Disney’s Snow White” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movies headliners, the original Brothers Grimm story, and the 1937 animated “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” but this live-action remake is too formulaic and is missing a lot of the original story’s magic.

Gal Gadot in “Disney’s Snow White” (Photo by Giles Keyte/Disney Enterprises Inc.)

Even though Rachel Zegler shines as the title character of “Disney’s Snow White,” the rest of this remake’s live-action performances are mediocre or terrible. No magical spells can erase this cash-grab film’s unconvincing visual effects and other missteps. One of the worst things about “Disney’s Snow White” is the villain is too campy (because of awkwardly hammy acting from Gal Gadot as Evil Queen), instead of being menacing and terrifying. The quality of the movie goes downhill in all of the scenes with Gadot.

Directed by Marc Webb and written by Erin Cressida Wilson, “Disney’s Snow White” is based on the 1812 German fairy title “Snow White,” written by the Brothers Grimm in the first edition of their collection “Grimms’ Fairy Tales.” In 1937, Walt Disney Pictures released “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” an animated film version of the story. Although “Disney’s Snow White” admirably doesn’t make the story an exact copy of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” some of the changes look overly contrived, including making the Seven Dwarfs all animated characters instead of having these little people portrayed by live actors.

Another big change (and not for the better): The altered fate of Evil Queen at the end of the movie is not as effective in “Disney’s Show White” as her fate was at the end of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” And for baffling and unnecessary reasons, “Disney’s Snow White” also significantly changes the story arc of one of the Seven Dwarfs, in what seems to be a manipulative way to jerk some tears from audience members. And this live-action version of a classic Disney animated film has the same problem as all of the other live-action remakes that have a Disney princess: Her love interest (in this case, a good-looking future prince named Jonathan, played by Andrew Burnap) is bland as bland can be.

Unlike “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” which only showed Snow White as a young adult, “Disney’s Snow White” shows Snow White’s childhood when she was about 7 or 8 years old. This backstory takes up the first 15 minutes of this 109-minute film. The movie seems to want to silence the controversies over the “ethnic” casting of Zegler (who is mixed-heritage Hispanic and white) by showing (not telling) that Zegler’s Snow White character is also biracial. She was named Snow White because she was born during a snowstorm. In the original fairy tale, the magical kingdom where the story takes place is called Germonia. But since that name sounds too much like Germany, “Disney’s Snow White” simply gives no name to this magical kingdom.

An unseen narrator (whose identity is revealed at the end of the movie) says in a voiceover that Snow White in childhood (played by Emilia Faucher) was the only child of kind and loving parents. These parents are royalty and don’t have names in the movie. Snow White’s father was a king (played Hadley Fraser), while her mother (played by Lorena Andrea) was a queen. Snow White’s mother died suddenly for unnamed reasons. An “enchanting woman from a far-off land” (played by Gadot) then charmed the king and married him.

But this Evil Queen has sinister motives: Get rid of the king and Snow White, so the Evil Queen can be the only ruler of the kingdom. The Evil Queen lies to the king by telling him about an imminent invasion threat in the southern kingdom, so he goes away to defend his people. With the king away, the Evil Queen takes resources away from the kingdom’s residents (causing shortages of food), and she forces a lot of civilians to become soldiers to do her bidding. Snow White’s father has disappeared and is presumed dead.

The Evil Queen also banishes Snow White from living in the royal palace and forces Snow White to become a maid. And if you can believe it, people in the kingdom didn’t notice. Maybe they were too caught up in their own problems. Princess Snow White soon becomes mostly forgotten and presumed dead, as she toils in obscurity.

The Evil Queen has a magic mirror that talks back to her and has a shadowy face that can appear. (Patrick Page is the voice of the mirror.) The Evil Queen asks the mirror, “Who’s the fairest of them all?” to fish for compliments that the Evil Queen is the most beautiful female in the kingdom. The mirror tells the Evil Queen that she is the fairest,

“Disney’s Snow White” changes the “meet cute” moment for young adult Snow White and her future prince, but that doesn’t mean it’s an improvement for the romance part of the story. There is more chemistry between Evil Queen and her mirror, compared to the lack of sizzle for would-be couple Snow White and Jonathan. In the movie, Jonathan isn’t a royal. He’s a commoner who meets Snow White when she catches him stealing potatoes because he says he’s hungry. The Evil Queen finds out about the theft and orders Jonathan to be tied to an outside gate as punishment. Guess who comes to the rescue and frees Jonathan?

One day, the magic mirror tells Evil Queen that Snow White is the “fairest of them all.” This statement enrages the Evil Queen, who orders an unnamed huntsman (played by Ansu Kabia) to find and murder Snow White, who has run away to the Enchanted Forest. The Seven Dwarfs, who are diamond miners, live together in a small house in this forest. One day, when the dwarfs are away at work, Snow White ends up at the house and falls asleep in one of the beds.

Doc (voiced by Jeremy Swift) is the bossy leader of the Seven Dwarfs. The other dwarfs have names that are supposed to be descriptions of their personalities: Happy (voiced by George Salazar), Bashful (voiced by Tituss Burgess), Grumpy (voiced by Martin Klebba), Sleepy (voiced by Andy Grotelueschen), Sneezy (voiced by Jason Kravits) and Dopey (voiced by Andrew Barth Feldman). Dopey is the physically smallest dwarf and is non-verbal, but he can make sounds, such as when Snow White teaches him how to whistle.

Dopey is teased and bullied by some of the other dwarfs for being the misfit of the group. In “Disney’s Snow White,” Dopey is sweet-natured and is supposed to be very misunderstood, in terms of his intelligence. In this respect, “Disney’s Snow White” improves from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” The 1937 “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” movie has a way of demeaning a non-verbal person that would be considered problematic if that movie were released today.

“Disney’s Snow White” has some fairly good musical numbers, with original songs written for the movie by Oscar-winning “La La Land” songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. “Waiting on a Wish” is the obvious Oscar-bait song from “Disney’s Snow White.” Zegler’s skillful vocal talent is undoubtedly one of the highlights of “Disney’s Snow White,” as she is the cast member who is best able to infuse heartfelt emotions in her singing. (The less said about Gadot’s singing, the better.) As for songs carried over from the original “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the classic tunes “Heigh-Ho” and “Whistle While You Work” get competent cover versions in “Disney’s Snow White.”

The old-fashioned and patriarchal song “Someday My Prince Will Come” (from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”) is removed from “Disney’s Snow White” and replaced by new and original songs where Snow White expresses more independence—just to let the audience know that her life doesn’t revolve around finding a man to take care of her. It all sounds very feminist-forward, but it’s just performative (not genuine) feminism. The big rescue scene in the movie’s climax still has the story’s Prince Charming (in this case, Jonathan) being the reason why the movie ends the way that it does. And the “Princess Problems” duet peformed by Snow White and Jonathan is about Jonathan being snarky to Snow White about her royal status.

The movie’s large budget is certainly seen in the plethora of visual effects. Viewers who like watching cute animated animals will find a lot to like in “Disney’s Snow White,” which has an overload of adorable creatures (birds, rabbits, squirrels and deer) who befriend Snow White and tag along during her journey. However, the movie never lets you forget that these animals are “too adorable to be true” visual effects, making these effects look forced and fake instead of looking believably natural in this fantasy world. “Disney’s Snow White” is missing a great deal of magic that the original story had. And that magic is undeniable charisma for all the characters that need it.

Walt Disney Pictures will release “Disney’s Snow White” in U.S. cinemas on March 21, 2025.

Review: ‘Kraven the Hunter,’ starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ariana DeBose, Fred Hechinger, Alessandro Nivola, Christopher Abbott and Russell Crowe

December 11, 2024

by Carla Hay

Aaron Taylor-Johnson in “Kraven the Hunter” (Photo by Jay Maidment/Columbia Pictures)

“Kraven the Hunter”

Directed by J.C. Chandor

Culture Representation: Taking place in Europe, the United States and Africa, the superhero action film “Kraven the Hunter” (based on Marvel Comic characters) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some black people and Asians) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: The estranged son of a Russian crime boss becomes a superhero with lion-like abilities, and he is called on to rescue his kidnapped younger brother.

Culture Audience: “Kraven the Hunter” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of movies based on comic books, the movie’s headliners and action movies that are empty spectacles.

Alessandro Nivola and Christopher Abbott in “Kraven the Hunter” (Photo by Jay Maidment/Columbia Pictures)

The misfire “Kraven the Hunter” has a lion-inspired superhero and wildlife protection themes, so it’s ironic that this mind-numbing film acts like a drugged lion trapped in a cage. It stumbles repeatedly and is barely coherent. “Kraven the Hunter” is yet another example of a comic book adaptation that had a big budget but a small imagination. Adding to this fiasco is the fact that the principal cast members are very talented, but even they seem bored and/or unconvincing when they utter their awful dialogue in the movie.

Directed by J.C. Chandor, “Kraven the Hunter” is based on Marvel Comics characters. Richard Wenk, Art Marcum and Matt Holloway co-wrote the dismally dull screenplay. “Kraven the Hunter” takes all the worst clichés of superhero origin movies and crams them into a soulless movie where the characters have about as much personality as cardboard cutouts. What’s even more embarrassing for “Kraven the Hunter” is the fact that two Oscar winners are among the principal cast members of this atrocious movie.

“Kraven the Hunter”—which clocks in at 127 minutes, but this monotonous movie feels longer than that—is another superhero movie where the superhero has “daddy issues,” either because his father is dead or emotionally distant. The movie takes entirely too long (more than 20 minutes) showing a repetitive childhood backstory about how Sergei Kravinoff (played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson), who renames himself Kraven the Hunter, becomes estranged from his father Nikolai Kravinoff (played by Russell Crowe, the Oscar-winning actor of 2000’s “Gladiator”), who is a wealthy and ruthless crime lord in Russia.

Flashbacks show teenage Sergei (played by Levi Miller) was considered the “brave” son, compared to Sergei’s more sensitive younger brother Dmitri (played by Billy Barratt), who was considered the “cowardly” son by their father Nikolai. The mother of Sergei and Dmitri committed suicide when the boys were teenagers. A scene in the movie shows Nikolai abruptly taking Dmitri and Sergei to Africa for a hunting trip so he can teach them predatory skills.

During this hunting trip, a lion attacks Sergei, who freezes when he had a chance to shoot the lion. Nikolai doesn’t hesitate to shoot the lion but he’s not able to kill it right away. The lion runs away and carries a severely wounded Sergei in its mouth. A drop of the lion’s blood enters one of Sergei’s wounds. (And you know what that means in a superhero movie.)

The lion leaves Sergei to die in a grassy area. But lo and behlod, here comes a teenager named Calypso Ezili (played by Diaana Babnicova), whose tarot-reading sorceress grandmother (played by Susan Aderin) just happened to have given her a magical potion that can heal severe wounds. Calypso applies the potion to Sergei, who ends up in a hospital, where he is told he was dead for three minutes but made a miraculous recovery. Calypso left behind the tarot card for Strength, which Sergei keeps with him for years.

Teenage Sergei soon finds out that he has the same physical abilities as a lion. Expect to see multiple scenes of Sergei climbing trees like a big cat, having acute vision, and extraordinary skills at maiming. As a young adult, Sergei gets fed up with living with Nikolai, so he leaves home and says a sad goodbye to Dmitri (played by Fred Hechinger), who loves Sergei but is somewhat resentful of him because Dmitri knows that Nikolai prefers Sergei.

Dmitri has an exceptional talent of mimicking people and things. He works as a singer/pianist at a nightclub, where the movie has a comically bizarre scene of Dmitri singing Black Sabbath’s 1972 ballad “Changes.” And if you know enough about the Kraven stories Marvel Comics, then you can easily guess why Dmitri has these uncanny mimicry skills.

Sergei, now known as Kraven, makes a home for himself in the forests of Russia. He has reunited with an adult Calypso (played by Ariana DeBose, the Oscar-winning actress of the 2021 remake of “West Side Story”), who works as an attorney and occasionally pilots a helicopter whenever Kraven needs help getting out of a bad situation. Kraven gets pulled back into his estranged family’s orbit when Dmitri is kidnapped.

The two main villains in the movie are Aleksei Sytsevich, also known as the Rhino (played by Alessandro Nivola) and a mysterious operative named the Foreigner (played by Christopher Abbott), who forms an alliance with the Rhino. Nikolai could be considered another villain. Greedy poachers are other villains in the movie. The Rhino is someone who wants revenge on Nikolai because Nikolai humiliated and rejected him to become part of Nikolai’s inner crime circle. The villains in this movie aren’t very menacing and are almost like cartoon characters.

“Kraven the Hunter” also falls short of having thrilling action scenes, which all seem utterly generic. There is much more bloody violence in “Kraven the Hunter” than in the average superhero movie, but that doesn’t give the film any interesting edginess. The acting performances in the movie are quite stiff and often awkward. And the visual effects are mediocre and often look took fake. “Kraven the Hunter” won’t be considered the worst superhero movie ever, but this disappointing dud proves that this Kraven origin story does not deserve a franchise of several movies in a series.

Columbia Pictures will release “Kraven the Hunter” in U.S. cinemas on December 13, 2024.

Review: ‘Red One’ (2024), starring Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, Lucy Liu and J.K. Simmons

November 12, 2024

by Carla Hay

Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans in “Red One” (Photo by Karen Neal/Amazon Content Services)

“Red One” (2024)

Directed by Jake Kasdan

Culture Representation: Taking place in the United States and in the fictional North Pole, the sci-fi/fantasy/action film “Red One” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some African Americans and Asians) and fictional creatures representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A rebellious bounty hunter/computer hacker and Santa Claus’ uptight security chief meet each other and team up to find and rescue Santa Claus, who has been kidnapped.

Culture Audience: “Red One” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and Christmas-themed movies that are loud, hyperactive and silly.

Kristofer Hivju and Dwayne Johnson in “Red One” (Photo by Frank Masi/Amazon Content Services)

The Christmas action comedy “Red One” is the equivalent of Santa Claus delivering an avalanche of coal. The incoherent plot is about rescuing a kidnapped Santa, but viewers will feel like the ones being taken hostage by this unfunny and bloated abomination. It’s the type of big-budget movie that looks like it came from a low-rent concept for a video game with product placements.

Directed by Jake Kasdan and written by Chris Morgan, “Red One” lurches from scene to scene, often by explaining what’s going on in a sloppy and hyperactive way. There is no character in this movie that has an emotional range that goes beyond (1) inflicting chaos or (2) reacting to the chaos inflicted. There’s some half-hearted preaching about adults keeping their inner child alive during the Christmas holidays, but it all comes across as tacked-on sentimentality.

Product placements and visual effects are the main priorities for “Red One,” which has a story that’s overstuffed with stupid distractions and moronic dialogue. The movie clumsily begins with a scene showing future bounty hunter Jack O’Malley as a kid (played by Wyatt Hunt), who’s about 8 or 9 years old and has an enthusiasm for using the Internet. Jack doesn’t really believe in Santa Claus, even though Jack’s Uncle Rick (played by Marc Evan Jackson) tells Jack that Santa Claus really exists. It’s mentioned that Rick is a father figure in Jack’s life because Jack’s biological father abandoned Jack and Jack’s mother.

Thirty years later, Jack (played by Chris Evans) is a bounty hunter and an elusive hacker on the Dark Web, where he has the nickname The Wolf. Jack is a freewheeling bachelor with commitment issues. It’s one of the main reasons why he’s been a flaky and frequently absentee father to his son Dylan (played by Wesley Kimmel), who’s about 13 or 14 years old.

Dylan lives with his mother Olivia (played by Mary Elizabeth Ellis), a medical doctor who is currently married to a husband who is not named or seen in the movie. It’s implied that Jack and Olivia were never married, never lived together, and never even had a committed relationship, but they decided to co-parent Dylan. So far, self-absorbed Jack has been failing miserably at being a responsible parent.

Meanwhile, Santa Claus (played by J.K. Simmons), also known as Nicholas or Nick, has been dutifully making an appearance at a shopping mall to meet children who tell him what they want for Christmas. This Santa Claus is not a traditional jolly and plump Santa. The Santa in “Red One” lifts weights for physical workouts and has an attitude of a cynically wise grandfather who knows what he has to say to make kids happy, even if he really doesn’t mean it.

Santa Claus’ security chief is Callum “Cal” Drift (played by Dwayne Johnson), a muscular and stern protector who has been working with Santa Claus for the last 542 years. (Johnson is also one of the producers of “Red One.”) Callum has recently given his resignation to Santa Claus because Callum believes that things have gotten worse in the world and there are more naughty people than nice people. Callum says he can also no longer see the inner children in adults. Christmas no longer makes him happy but has made him sad for this reason.

This is the type of abysmal dialogue that’s in “Red One.” In a scene where Callum and Santa discuss Callum’s impending exit from the job, Santa Claus says about the world’s people: “They need us now more than ever.” Callum responds: “You need someone younger.”

Santa comments, “We don’t need to change them. They need to change themselves. We work for the kids, Cal—even when they’re not kids anymore.” Santa adds, “Let’s have a cookie.” Callum replies, “The answer to everything.”

Santa is obviously disappointed that he is losing Callum, but Callum has made up his mind that he wants to retire from this line of work. Callum works for the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority (MORA), a secretive security corporation where he reports to Zoe Harlow (played by Lucy Liu), a no-nonsense supervisor. MORA looks out for mythological beings and protects them at all costs. Santa Claus’ code name with MORA is Red One.

Jack was hired by an anonymous entity to hack into a computer system. Unbeknownst to Jack, this hacking exposed the secret location of Santa Claus on the North Pole to the entity that hired Jack. Santa Claus is then kidnapped from his home on the North Pole. MORA finds out that Jack was indirectly responsible for this kidnapping, so Callum is dispatched to force Jack to help Callum find Santa Claus.

If you’re already rolling your eyes at the description of this plot, “Red One” gets even worse as it goes along. Other characters who are part of the story are Krampus (played by Kristofer Hivju), the horned mythological creature who punishes naughty children; a Christmas witch named Gryla (played by Kiernan Shipka); and a sleazy business jerk named Ted (played by Nick Kroll), who is tracked down by Jack and Callum on a Hawaiian beach. It’s all just an excuse for “Red One” to be filmed partially in Hawaii, where the movie filmed on the island of Oahu.

In “Red One,” Krampus is supposed to be Santa’s brother, with no explanation for why human Santa and non-human Krampus could be related. Krampus is also an ex-lover of Gryla, who is described as a “900-year-old ogre with 13 sons who work at her command.” The scenes with Krampus are some of the worst in this already bad movie, which didn’t need the Krampus character at all.

The visual effects in “Red One” also include life-sized villain snowmen that are about as exciting as watching snow melt. There’s a North Pole security team called ELF (an acronym for enforcement, logistics and fortification) that includes a talking polar bear named Agent Garcia (voiced by Reinaldo Faberlle), another character that didn’t need to be in this movie. There are also humanoid robots that show up with no real explanation of their origin. And, of course, there are Santa’s reindeer, who have no names and no personalities.

Jack and Callum go through the usual formulaic motions of two characters with opposite personalities who must learn to work together for a common goal. The expected bickering and wisecracking banter ensue. And almost all of it in “Red One” fails to be funny or entertaining. Johnson and Evans have played these types of roles in many other movies. There’s nothing new to see here in their mediocre performances in “Red One.”

Except for Gryla, female characters in “Red One” are merely sidelined observers of most of the action. “Red One” mainly has Mrs. Claus (played by Bonnie Hunt) in a small role as the worried wife at home who bakes cookies. Hunt’s considerable comedic talent is wasted in this movie, which relegates her to a shallow and almost useless role. Zoe is Callum’s boss, but Callum gets to make the biggest and boldest moves. Shipka looks like she’s having fun playing a villain, but this villain’s personality is restricted to being one-dimensional stereotype.

“Red One” tries to juggle many different subplots like a juggler who ends up dropping too many things thrown in the air. There might be enough in “Red One” to satisfy viewers looking for some fantasy genre visual effects, but the movie’s main characters and story are extremely derivative and fail to be interesting. “Red One” is just an unimaginative mush of ideas using the same formula as comedic movies about buddy cops with clashing personalities. “Red One” is also a shameless showcase of what people dislike the most about the crass commercialism of Christmas.

Amazon MGM Studios will release “Red One” in U.S. cinemas on November 15, 2024. A sneak preview of the movie was shown in U.S. cinemas on November 10, 2024. Prime Video will premiere the movie on December 12, 2024.

Review: ‘My Old Ass,’ starring Maisy Stella, Percy Hynes White, Maddie Ziegler, Kerrice Brooks and Aubrey Plaza

September 13, 2024

by Carla Hay

Maisy Stella and Aubrey Plaza in “My Old Ass” (Photo by Marni Grossman/Amazon Content Services)

“My Old Ass”

Directed by Megan Park

Culture Representation: Taking place in the Muskoka Lakes area of Canada’s Ontario province, the comedy/drama film “My Old Ass” features a predominantly white group of people (with a few black people) representing the working-class and middle-class.

Culture Clash: In the summer before she goes away to college, a restless teen takes psychedelic mushrooms on her 18-year-old birthday and meets her 39-year-old self, who gives her some advice that the teen is reluctant to take.

Culture Audience: “My Old Ass” will appeal mainly to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and well-acted stories about growing pains in young adulthood.

Kerrice Brooks, Maisy Stella, and Maddie Ziegler in “My Old Ass” (Photo courtesy of Amazon Content Services)

“My Old Ass” capably blends comedy, drama and fantasy in this sarcastically sweet coming-of-age story about an 18-year-old communicating with a manifestation of her 39-year-old self. Maisy Stella gives a standout performance as a teen on an identity quest. The movie isn’t for everyone but it will find appeal with open-minded people who aren’t offended by how obscene cursing, casual sex and illegal drug use are presented as part of a teenager’s life.

Written and directed by Megan Park, “My Old Ass” had its world premiere at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. The tone of the movie is much lighter than 2022’s “The Fallout,” Park’s feature-film directorial debut about teenagers dealing with the aftermath of a mass-murder shooting at their school. Park has a knack for casting very talented people in the roles that are right for them because they inhabit their roles in authentic ways. “My Old Ass” is Stella’s impressive feature-film debut after having roles in television, such as the TV series “Nashville.”

“My Old Ass” takes place during a summer in an unnamed city in the Muskoka Lakes area of Ontario, Canada, where the movie was filmed on location. Main character Elliott (played by Stella) lives on a cranberry farm owned by her parents Tom (played by Al Goulem) and Kathy (played by Maria Dizzia), who are very loving and supportive of each other and their three children. Elliott is the middle child.

Elliott’s older brother Max (played by Seth Isaac Johnson) is about 19 or 20. He has chosen to be in the family business of cranberry farming. Max and Elliott have an emotionally distant relationship because they are almost polar opposites of each other. Max is introverted and straight-laced. At one point in the movie, Max says to Elliott: “I’m everything you hate. I like farming. I like sports. I hate [the TV series] ‘Euphoria.'”

The younger brother of Max and Elliott is Spencer (played by Carter Trozzolo), who is about 10 or 11 years old. Carter is nice but doesn’t have much of a personality. Elliott definitely likes Spencer more than she likes Max. Still, Elliott doesn’t really hang out with her brothers very much. Elliott also tells anyone who will listen that she can’t wait to move away from this cranberry farm and live her life in the big city of Toronto. In the meantime, Elliott spends a lot of time cruising on a motorboat in a lake.

In the beginning of the movie, Elliott will be leaving in 22 days for her freshman year at the University of Toronto. Also in the beginning of the movie, Elliott identifies as a lesbian, but that will change when she falls for a guy about a year or two older than she is. Elliott has a flirtation with a teenage woman named Chelsea (played by Alexandria Rivera), who’s about the same age, and the flirtation turns into a sexual fling.

Elliott’s two best friends are also free spirits: Ruthie (played by Maddie Ziegler) is tactful and a romantic at heart. Ro (played by Kerrice Brooks) is more outspoken and pragmatic. For Elliott’s 18th birthday, the three pals plan to go camping overnight in the woods and take psychedelic mushrooms that were purchased by Ro. Elliott doesn’t bother to tell her family about these camping plans, so there’s a scene of Elliott’s family waiting forlornly at their dining table with a birthday cake that Elliott never sees on her birthday.

While high on the mushrooms, Elliott is near a campfire when she suddenly sees a woman (played by Aubrey Plaza) sitting next to her. The woman says that she is Elliott at 39 years old. Elliott doesn’t believe her at first until the woman shows Elliott that she has the same torso scar that Elliott got from a childhood accident. Both of the Elliotts have some back-and-forth banter—younger Elliott thinks 39 is middle-aged, while older Elliott thinks 39 is still a young age—and trade some snide quips about what the future holds for Elliott.

The older Elliott will only reveal that she is a Ph. D. student in Toronto and is dating a woman. Younger Elliott asks older Elliott for life advice. Older Elliott tells younger Elliott to be nicer to her family and not take them for granted. Younger Elliott also asks older Elliott what her definition is of healthy love. Older Elliott says that healthy love is safety and freedom at the same time. After some of the jokes and semi-insults, older Elliott gets serious and gives younger Elliott a dire warning to not have sex with someone named Chad, but older Elliott won’t say why. It’s a warning that confuses and haunts younger Elliott for most of the movie.

Elliott goes home after the camping trip and thinks older Elliott was just a hallucination until she sees that older Elliott had put her phone number in younger Elliott’s phone. Not long after this psychedelic experience, Elliott is skinny dipping in a lake when has a “meet cute” experience with a guy named Chad (played by Percy Hynes White), who’s also in the lake for a swim. It turns out that Chad is an undergrad college student who is working at the farm for the summer. He has plans to eventually get a master’s degree in pharmacology.

“My Old Ass” then becomes mostly about Elliott trying to navigate and understand her growing feelings for Chad, who is intelligent, funny and kind. Elliott is confused not only because her older self told her to stay away from Chad but also because Elliott had always assumed that she would only be sexually attracted to women. Chad is clearly attracted to Elliott too, but she is very reluctant to get involved with Chad.

“My Old Ass” has a lot of familiar “will they or won’t they” scenes in movies about two people who are romantically attracted to each other, but one person is hesitant to act on these feelings. The movie has some quirky comedy, including another hallucinogenic experience involving Justin Bieber’s 2009 hit “One Less Lonely Girl.” All of the principal cast members are utterly believable in their roles and have great comedic timing in the performances.

What might surprise viewers and is perhaps somewhat disappointing is that the older Elliott isn’t in the movie as much as the trailer for “My Old Ass” would lead people to believe. In fact, there’s a great deal of the movie where younger Elliott is frantic and frustrated because older Elliott won’t return younger Elliott’s phone calls. There are also huge parts of the movie where Elliott’s best friends Ruthie and Ro aren’t seen at all.

“My Old Ass” has themes that are timeless, but a lot of the movie’s jargon and pop culture references are very mid-2020s and already kind of outdated. Some of the dialogue sounds forced, like an adult’s idea of what a progressive-minded, motormouthed teen (Elliott) would sound like when it just sounds like movie dialogue, not real-life dialogue. These are small flaws in a movie that is overall well-paced, fairly unique and elevated by a very talented cast.

Even though there could have been more scenes between younger Elliott and older Elliott, the movie makes a point of showing that this story doesn’t want to rely too heavily on a time-traveling gimmick. And although the movie’s title is “My Old Ass,” the story’s focus remains consistently from the perspective of younger Elliott. Viewers will be curious to know what older Elliott’s secret is about Chad, but the most interesting and best part of the movie is how Elliott reacts when she inevitably finds out this secret.

Amazon MGM Studios released “My Old Ass” in select U.S. cinemas on September 13, 2024, with an expansion to more U.S. cinemas on September 27, 2024.

Copyright 2017-2025 Culture Mix
CULTURE MIX