Month: October 2025

“Ballad Of A Small Player” (** out of four) was an insubstantial psychological drama about a gambler (Colin Farrell) running from his past who holes up at a glittering casino hotel in Macau and engages in endless self-indulgence and then becomes entranced and fascinated by an enigmatic woman (Tilda Swinton) he meets at the baccarat table whom he sees as an emblem for trying to turn his life around. Beautifully shot by James Friend on stunning Macau locations but film is alternately weird and uninvolving and never becomes engrossing or rewarding. By the end, it just seems a pointless waste of time. Farrell is ideally cast but even he just seems to be going through the motions here.

Continue reading →

“Meteor: Final Impact” (* out of four) was a bewildering bore set in the Pacific Northwest in the midst of a meteor storm in which a man and his fiancee and also his girlfriend (Justin Higgs, Chase Bloomquist, Samantha Anne Kessler) try to evade a violent gang and stay alive and eventually reach shelter. Film looks like it was shot on someone’s cruddy Obamaphone which is matched by terrible acting and dialogue. For anyone who disliked “Deep Impact” or “Armageddon” 27+ years ago, this makes those look like “Citizen Kane” by comparison.

Continue reading →

“Helloween” (** out of four) was a middling horror psychodrama set in 2016 in which a maniac (Ronan Summers) is on the loose and it’s up to a determined doctor (Jeanine Nerissa Sothcott) and a television personality (Michael Pare) to track him down and his followers and end their reign of terror. Derivative but not entirely disposable as it’s directed with some style by Phil Claydon and Pare is rock-solid as usual in the lead. Not a film you’ll likely remember next Halloween but far from the worst of its kind.

Continue reading →

“A House Of Dynamite” (** out of four) was an unexceptional political action melodrama about a deadly missile that’s fired at the U.S. and various political and law enforcement figures (Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Gabriel Basso, and others) race against the clock to find out who’s responsible and why and how they have to respond to save the country and stay alive. Surprisingly pedestrian outing from director Kathyrn Bigelow in what sounds like a sure-fire potboiler as she recycles various scenes and story elements from (the far superior) “Thirteen Days” and her own “Zero Dark Thirty.” Elba adds some style and panache with his effortless charisma but still can’t enliven this to actual “dynamite.”

Continue reading →

“One Battle After Another” (** out of four) was a long-winded political melodrama about a former revolutionary (Leonardo DiCaprio) whose life of perpetual stoned paranoia is altered when his daughter (Chase Infiniti) is kidnapped and his comrades (Benicio Del Toro, Regina Hall, and others) reform to find her with various military personnel (Sean Penn, Tony Goldwynn, and others) pursuing them all. Director Paul Thomas Anderson tackles numerous topical issues of military oppression and incarceration with some scattered moments of engrossing emotional power but (like a lot of Anderson’s other works) it meanders too much and goes on far too long and loses most of its dramatic interest. Del Toro stands out as usual but his 2000 “Traffic” was a far richer and more powerful work about politics and the drug trade.

Continue reading →

“Tron: Ares” (**1/2 out of four) was a flashy but hollow third entry in this influential series about the title program which is highly sophisticated and dangerous and crosses over from the digital world into the real one which results in various C.E.O.’s and A.I. figures (Jared Leto,, Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, and others) all vying for control and domination. A visual tour de force with lots of psychedelic imagery and visual effects to give hardcore fans and computer geeks their money’s worth but they have to combat a muddled script and story which isn’t always that compelling (and doesn’t always make sense). A definite improvement over last entry “Tron: Legacy” but still feels untouched by human hands and maybe that’s the point. Original “Tron” star Jeff Bridges returns for a few key scenes as Kevin Flynn.

Continue reading →

“Nanoshark” (* out of four) was a brainless horror comedy about a group of none-too-bright scientists (Trevor Payer, Peter Whittaker, John N.E. Hill, and others) who use nanotechnology to shrink a shark which is then injected into people to cause a rare blood disorder; when this soon leads to problems, the scientists have to shrink themselves to enter the blood and try and kill the smallest shark ever. Outlandishly stupid premise might have been fun had it been played for high-camp and with flair and conviction but is crude and dumb all the way through. It’s movies like these that make you realize maybe “Jaws3 and 4” really weren’t as bad as we thought at the time.

Continue reading →