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The murder fights are fantastic: creative, emphatic, and executed with commitment.

But several times during the course of watching the movie, I wrote in my notepad: "This dialogue is going to kill me."

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-06-05/ballerina-john-wick-review-ana-de-armas-keanu-reeves-gabriel-byrne-norman-reedus

It’s a heartening, humanistic thesis that even a rather dull dude like Chuck has an inner life that rivals “The Iliad.” Paradoxically, that way of thinking belongs specifically to storytellers like King, who make up whole yarns about anonymous humans on the street. My mental landscape may just be grocery lists and song lyrics.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-06-05/life-of-chuck-review-stephen-king-mike-flanagan-tom-hiddleston-chiwetel-ejiofor-karen-gillan

I’m not sure what happened to the Australian twins Danny and Michael Philippou that explains why their horror movies are swollen with grief. And I don’t need to know. What matters is how expertly, and jarringly, the Philippous show us how grief feels.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-05-29/bring-her-back-review-sally-hawkins-horror-a24

It’s not that you have to believe that there is a force out there more powerful than Zsa-zsa, or heck, even money itself. But if that doesn’t move you, at least Anderson deserves reverence for negotiating how to get all these A-list talents to act in his movie for peanuts. He’s managed to build yet another dazzler, a shrine to his own ambition and craft. And while it sometimes feels a bit drafty in the corners, the accomplishment itself is plenty.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-05-29/phoenician-scheme-review-benicio-del-toro-scarlett-johansson-wes-anderson-jeffrey-wright

The whole film is a panegyric: big speeches and weighty moments with very little sense of play. Tonally, it starts with an ending and keeps on ending for the next two hours and 49 minutes.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-05-15/mission-impossible-the-final-reckoning-review-tom-cruise-christopher-mcquarrie-simon-pegg-hayley-atwell-ving-rhames

The prickly comedy “Magic Farm” is a trip to rural Argentina that feels like flipping through a carousel of ironic souvenir postcards. The latest bit of mischief by filmmaker Amalia Ulman (“El Planeta”), it’s about how making the world smaller hasn’t widened our curiosity as much as shrunk it into snarky bites — in short, it’s about going everywhere and seeing nothing.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-05-08/magic-farm-review-amalia-ulman-chloe-sevigny-alex-wolff-simon-rex

We keep hearing that we’re in a male-loneliness epidemic. The agonizing and hilarious “Friendship” makes it feel like the Black Death. Written and directed by debuting filmmaker Andrew DeYoung (TV’s “PEN15,” “Shrill”), this bromance trembles as guy meets man-child, guy dumps man-child and man-child burns everything down. It’s a reflection of the adult struggle to make new friends as seen through a spook-house mirror.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-05-09/friendship-review-tim-robinson-paul-rudd-andrew-deyoung-a24

It’s a film in which the mythic crashes into the ridiculous, the intersection where its star Nicolas Cage has also staked his career. Playing an unnamed surfer stuck high and dry atop a parched parking lot, Cage stares down at the waves below with the thirst of a battered cartoon coyote. You half-expect to see his pupils pop out of his binocular lenses.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-05-01/the-surfer-review-nicolas-cage-lorcan-finnegan-julian-mcmahon

Really, the whole movie feels like an asterisk. Don’t expect too much of me, it says.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-05-01/thunderbolts-review-florence-pugh-david-harbour-julia-louis-dreyfus-lewis-pullman

Divide my affection for the first movie by the few clever beats here and it’s enough to get me to see what O’Connor is calculating for “The ant 3.” But for the love of Gauss (as in Carl Friedrich Gauss, the prince of mathematics), I hope that sequel isn’t any more serious than “Who Shorted the ant’s Bitcoin?”

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-04-24/ant-2-review-ben-affleck-jon-bernthal-gavin-o-connor

Come to think of it, this redo doesn’t even have a banquet. There’s just leftovers.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-04-17/wedding-banquet-review-bowen-yang-lily-gladstone-kelly-marie-tran-andrew-ahn

What a blood rush to exit Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” aware that you’ve seen not merely a great movie but an eternal movie, one that will transcend today’s box office and tomorrow’s awards to live on as a forever favorite.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-04-17/sinners-review-ryan-coogler-michael-b-jordan-delroy-lindo-miles-caton-hailee-steinfeld

Watched on Sunday April 13, 2025.

Watched on Saturday April 12, 2025.

Clever in an Alfred Hitchcock-meets-ChatGPT kind of way. The plot is silly and the climax is at once too fast, too slow and too ludicrous. Really, there are too many things on the menu.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-04-11/drop-review-meghann-fahy-brandon-sklenar-christopher-landon

“Warfare” wants to live in the dictionary shoehorned between war cry and war hawk. This short and gripping thriller nails its Oxford English definition — “the activity of fighting a war” — while stripping away the clichés that have come to signify a Hollywood war movie. There are no speeches, no teachable moments of the farm boy and the Brooklyn kid learning to depend on each other, and not one instance of someone brandishing a photo of their sweetheart and promptly getting blown to smithereens. “Warfare” is strictly the facts, and those alone are terrible, brave, intense, random, tedious and captivating.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-04-10/warfare-review-alex-garland-ray-mendoza-will-poulter-joseph-quinn-cosmo-jarvis-charles-melton

Watched on Tuesday April 1, 2025.

Watched on Friday April 4, 2025.

Most of the places and some of the people are real. But the star is the movie’s hyperactive, even overwhelmingly contradictory nostalgia. Not only does the film feign to be on VHS with white static tickling through the segment breaks, it also has cigarette burns on the upper corners of the frame to pretend we’re simultaneously watching it on a 35mm reels at the local theater.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-04-04/freaky-tales-review-oakland

Hold up: Not “The Minecraft Movie”?

Exactly. That humble title acknowledges the hubris of forcing one story onto a game that’s popular exactly because it doesn’t have characters or a plot.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-04-02/a-minecraft-movie-review-jack-black-jared-hess-jason-momoa-jennifer-coolidge

A WORKING MAN tries to weld a connection between THE BEEKEEPER in which Statham played an assassin turned hive master, and this one, in which he plays an ex-soldier who’s handy with a hammer.

Honey turns out to be funnier than hard hats

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-03-27/working-man-review-jason-statham-david-ayre-michael-pena

This twee-sounding British comedy about a folk music duo
stuck on an island with their strangest fan sounds like a throwback, and it is.

But it's something almost as rare as a revelation: a crowdpleaser I’d recommend to everyone.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-03-27/ballad-of-wallis-island-review-carey-mulligan-tim-key-tom-basdan-james-griffiths

In “Magazine Dreams,” Jonathan Majors plays a volatile bodybuilder named Killian Maddox, presumably because the writer and director Elijah Bynum thought calling the character Murderguy Sulkface was too on the nose. This downbeat drama is as overwrought as Killian’s muscles — it’s a steroidal portrait of a man in distress.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-03-21/magazine-dreams-review-jonathan-majors-taylour-paige-haley-bennett

A fascinating case study in today’s impossible contradictions — a magic mirror reflecting the tensions of the current times.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-03-19/snow-white-review-rachel-zegler-gal-gadot-live-action-marc-webb

The unwieldy action rom-com “Novocaine” makes a convincing argument that its lead, Jack Quaid, can do it all: Woo the girl, shoot the goon and tickle the audience. The movie itself has a harder time, screwing its three genres together so awkwardly that it tends to limp.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-03-13/novocaine-review-jack-quaid-amber-midthunder

The actual spy games are merely a bit of lingerie tarting up a story about trust. Call it “sex, lies & videotape & guns” — and a sign that Soderbergh doesn’t have faith in today’s audiences to be interested in that kind of thing unless someone might get shot.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-03-13/black-bag-review-steven-soderbergh-michael-fassbender-cate-blanchett-tom-burke-pierce-brosnan

The movie is essentially “Willy Wonka & the Hot Take Factory.”

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-01-28/opus-review-ayo-edebiri-john-malkovich-juliette-lewis

Johnson has been trying to adapt “Memory” for 10 years. But of all the amnesia tales in existence, I’m not sure why he wanted to make this one? He's bent the novel inside out and turned it into, of all things, a romance.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-03-12/the-actor-review-andre-holland-gemma-chan-duke-johnson-toby-jones

Long live Steven Soderbergh, a filmmaker who resists any premature obituaries that the movies are a dying art form. Soderbergh rarely rests. He’s made 14 movies since he first teased retirement in 2010 and, over the course of his career, has helped boost two innovations: first, the indie revolution with 1989’s “sex, lies and videotape,” and then, the digital camera. Lately, Soderbergh has invested some of his energy into a promising modern Hollywood template — prestige directors making high-concept films on low budgets. (See also: M. Night Shyamalan.) He’s earned the right to carry himself as one of cinema’s elder statesmen. To my relief, he’s still acting like a young rebel.

So what if Soderbergh’s latest attempt to blaze a new path in storytelling stumbles a bit?

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-01-23/presence-review-steven-soderbergh-lucy-liu-chris-sullivan

Filmmaker Matthew Rankin is a Canadian history scholar who switched tracks from academia to art. Maybe there’s something in the frigid water, as both he and the town’s other beloved cult curio, Guy Maddin, make eccentric odes to their humble homeland. Or maybe there’s something in Winnipeg’s video stores. Their touchstones are silent auteurs and surrealists: F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Luis Buñuel. Not only does it feel that neither ever wanted to be Steven Spielberg, it feels like they’ve never even heard of his movies.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-02-13/universal-language-review-matthew-rankin-guy-maddin

Of course Bong Joon Ho is an environmentalist. He recycles his own ideas.

“Mickey 17,” a sloppy but enjoyable sci-fi comedy set in the year 2054, mashes together the monsterphobia of “The Host,” the animal-rights activism of “Okja,” the environmental doomsaying of “Snowpiercer” and the social inequality of “Parasite,” that last one the Oscar winner that handed Bong the blank check to make a combo platter of his greatest hits. It’s the equivalent of the lunch tray that Mickey 17 (Robert Pattinson) gobbles up in his outer-space cafeteria: squares of the same nutritious gunk. But I’m not complaining. Some filmmakers deliver sermons; Bong serves entertainment.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-03-07/mickey-17-review-bong-joon-ho-robert-pattinson-toni-collette-mark-ruffalo-steven-yeun-naomi-ackie

Watched on Tuesday March 4, 2025.

Sing L. Lee’s strong debut is a human-sized thriller set across several blue-black nights off the grid in Orange County.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-03-01/the-accidental-getaway-driver-review-compelling-real-life-thriller-orange-country-vietnamese

RIFF RAFF starts dumb and '90s formulaic but you eventually get why so many movie stars signed up for this script.

(Bill Murray! Pete Davidson! Gabrielle Union! Ed Harris! Jennifer Coolidge!)

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-02-28/review-riff-raff-bill-murray-pete-davidson-gabrielle-union-ed-harris-jennifer-coolidge

HEART EYES has decent gags, middling scares and a rationale sloppier than two dogs sharing a strand of spaghetti. As date night fare, it’ll do.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-02-05/heart-eyes-review-josh-ruben-christopher-landon-olivia-holt-mason-gooding-jordana-brewster

“Love Hurts” is an action-romance that fizzles like a science-class volcano made of baking soda and cheese. The individual ingredients are fine: two killers on the run from punishment and their personal feelings for each other, played by Oscar winners Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose. But their chemistry is all wrong.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-02-06/love-hurts-review-ke-huy-quan-ariana-debose-sean-astin

To be an artist, or not to be? That is the question of “Grand Theft Hamlet," which stages Shakespeare in GTA's Los Santos, an L.A. analogue where even the good guys have weapons and a nihilistic streak — the vengeful Prince of Denmark fits right in.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-01-17/grand-theft-hamlet-review-gaming-shakespeare-machinima

A treat to be gobbled up like pancakes at midnight. Fittingly, one of the heroines, Dreux (Keke Palmer), works the red-eye shift at the Norms restaurant on La Cienega. That humble 24-hour diner has been deemed a Historic-Cultural Monument. This too is the kind of casual crowd-pleaser that’s come to feel special: an R-rated hangout movie like “Friday” or “Smiley Face” that might once have been taken for granted but today whose very existence deserves applause.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-01-16/one-of-them-days-review-keke-palmer-sza-katt-williams-lil-rey-howery

There’s so much interior creaking and panting, and so little dialogue or plot, that if you closed your eyes, the projectionist could have swapped reels with a different genre of doggy style.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-01-15/wolf-man-review-leigh-whannell-christopher-abbott-julia-garner-horror

THE LAST SHOWGIRL is less a story than a vibe. Pamela Anderson is great, but the movie can feel as padded as a push-up bra -- it’s trying to convince us that it’s a full-grown feature film.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-01-09/last-showgirl-review-pamela-anderson-jamie-lee-curtis-dave-bautista

HARD TRUTHS is about a world class complainer, a personality type so familiar and triggering that my friend and I left the theater and ran immediately across the street for a glass of wine.

Nevertheless! I'm convinced it's a pro-complaining film.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2025-01-09/hard-truths-review-mike-leigh-marianne-jean-baptiste-michele-austin

My fave movie played at the Egyptian tonight and some of the dancers were there 👯🏼‍♂️👯🏼‍♂️👯🏼‍♂️

If you could tear your eyes away from the screen enough to check a stopwatch, not one minute goes by without a flourish that’s either funny, ridiculous, stunning or emotional.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-12-24/better-man-review-robbie-williams-take-that-biopic-profile

A thorny pleasure by the filmmaker Halina Reijn, this Manhattan-set movie starts with Romy’s fake orgasm and ends with a real one. Her narrative arc is an O.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-12-24/babygirl-review-nicole-kidman-antonio-banderas-harris-dickinson

A straight adaption would pack power, but it’s even better that the book came into the hands of a true humanist like RaMell Ross.

Making his feature debut, the director not only turns anonymous bones into people, he turns his people into the camera: The audience sees the world literally through the eyes of Elwood and Turner. We couldn’t be hugged any tighter to their point of view.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-12-20/review-nickel-boys-ramell-ross-daveed-diggs-aunjanue-ellis-taylor

Disney’s zeal for prequels results in a movie about two kittens who we’ve all seen meet a grisly death. To my morbid delight, MUFASA starts off by killing one of them *again.*

(Full disclosure: I've been bopping to the Mads Mikkelsen villain song all week.)

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-12-19/review-mufasa-barry-jenkins-beyonce-lin-manuel-miranda-donald-glover

Leonard’s reveries are less surreal and more uncanny valley, so the film feels a bit flat-footed when it plops Thurman in a dual role belabored by a distractingly bad fright wig

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-12-12/oh-canada-review-paul-schrader-richard-gere-uma-thurman-michael-imperioli-jacob-elordi

You can easily imagine “Network’s” Howard Beale sermonizing about four years later as a shining example of a TV-weaned generation who worship the tube as “the gospel, the ultimate revelation.”

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-12-12/review-september-5-john-magaro-peter-sarsgaard-ben-chaplin

Oppenheimer is after something that drives right at the heart of what a musical is. To harmonize means to agree. It’s a public display of solidarity — a pact to parrot the same delusions.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-12-06/the-end-review-tilda-swinton-michael-shannon-george-mackay-joshua-oppenheimer

Larraín, perversely and underwhelmingly, chooses to respect Maria Callas' imperious veneer. If she’s the big boss-level diva he’s been working up to, Larraín lets her win.

www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2024-11-27/maria-review-angelina-jolie-callas-pablo-larrain-netflix