10 movies of 2025 – and more: Part 2

Posted on December 16, 2025 by kaist455

And here are the other 5 movies in my list – with other films good enough to be mentioned.

Continue reading →
Posted in Movies | Tagged | Leave a comment

10 movies of 2025 – and more: Part 1

Posted on December 16, 2025 by kaist455

So here are the first five films of my annual list.

Continue reading →
Posted in Movies | Tagged | Leave a comment

10 movies of 2025 – and more: Introduction

Posted on December 16, 2025 by kaist455

Again, we are at the end of one year as looking forward to another one to come, but things seem to get worse and worse during this year. While my country is still struggling to recover from a social/political disaster caused by that deplorable predecessor of the current president, many other countries have been threatened more and more by the ongoing rise of fascism. As a matter of fact, I often considered taking a long break from the Internet for avoiding more anger and anxiety, though I also know well that I must keep following how the world and its people keep going day by day.

Nevertheless, I kept watching movies and writing reviews as usual, because that is how I have gotten connected with more people out there. Good movies always make me feel and think more actively while also reminding that I am just a plain audience and human being who is also your average amateur reviewer, and I really like to share my rather inconsequential thoughts and feelings with you, regardless of whether we agree or disagree. In my humble opinion, any disagreement between you and me can actually lead to a fun and interesting discussion, just like any agreement between us can lead to an equally meaningful conversation.

Early in this year, I promised to myself that I would watch less movies than before just for reading more books and reaching for more human connection, but I found that I miserably failed again, as looking back at all those reviews of mine written during this year. Again, I wrote more than 300 reviews during one year, and I do not regret watching most of them, but, folks, the Penguin Books edition of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” remains mostly untouched in my bag even though I planned to read it before watching the recent movie adaptation by Guillermo del Toro.

Anyway, here is the list of many interesting films which I think are the highlights of this year. You will notice that I do not include several notable movies of this year such as “Hamnet”, “Marty Supreme”, “Rental Family”, “The Secret Agent”, “Sentimental Value”, and “Sound of Falling”, and they cannot be included because I could not watch them before making my list in last week. If they are as good as I heard from others, they will surely be included in the annual list of the very next year.

Posted in Movies | Tagged | Leave a comment

Eephus (2024) ☆☆☆(3/4): Their last baseball game

Posted on December 16, 2025 by kaist455

“Eephus” interests us for what is about and then touches us for how it is about. This is a very plain and simple story about a bunch of amateur baseball players trying to play their last game to the end, but it is alternatively amusing and moving to observe their little struggles along the game, and its eventual bittersweet ending will linger on your mind for a while.    

The movie is about one particular day at Soldiers Field, a little baseball field located in Douglas, Massachusetts. At the beginning, a local radio program tells us a bit about what is soon going to happen to this small place, and we slowly gather how important this day will be to the members of two local amateur baseball teams. It will be their last day at the field before it is demolished for building an art school, but they are ready to keep things going to the end, even though there are not many audiences from the very start.

As they prepare for their last game, the movie observes two old men who come for monitoring the game as they did many times for years. Both of them are not that enthusiastic, but they are willing to witness the last day of the field and its players as long as possible, and the movie often brings some nice details on how they record the scores of those two baseball teams, respectively.

Of course, things do not go very well right from the first inning. For example, one of the two baseball teams has a little problem due to one of its key members being quite late, and that leads to a little serious discussion on the possibility of their game getting forfeited according to the rule. In addition, many of the baseball players are not particularly enthusiastic as knowing too well that nothing will change in the end.

Nevertheless, the mood gradually becomes lightened up as the players continue their little game. Sure, their talent and physical condition do not reach to the level of Major League Baseball (MLB), but they cannot help but feel happy to have a bit more fun and excitement on their field. In addition, there are also several bystanders coming and then watching their game for a while, and these minor characters bring some extra humor to the story.

The screenplay by director/writer/co-producer/editor/co-composer Carson Lund, who made several short films before making a feature film debut here in this movie, does not delve that deep into its numerous main characters, but it subtly lets us get more accustomed to their humanity and personality along the story. I must admit that I cannot remember every baseball player in the film, but I remember well a number of small but colorful individual moments among their different personalities. For example, I am still amused by a scene where several baseball players deliberately tease one particular member of their opponent team who is supposed to be on a diet, and I also chuckled a bit when both of the two baseball teams come to run out of balls later in their game.  

And we also observe how serious they really are about their game. Although they do not talk that much about their respective lives outside the field, it is clear that baseball has been something to cheer them up in one way or another for many years, and the melancholic mood of resignation is all the more palpable as some of them become a little philosophic about their lives and baseball.

While adamantly focusing on what is happening inside and around the field, the movie indirectly reminds us of how the world keeps going as usual outside the field, and Lund, who also worked as the sound designer for his film, did a commendable job of utilizing various sounds for subtle dramatic effects to be appreciated. Whenever we hear the distant sound of a church bell along with the main characters of the film, we cannot help but become more conscious of that unstoppable current of time, and we also become more aware of how much they struggle to play against it more. Around the later innings of their game, some of them become too exhausted or disinterested to keep playing along with others, and that certainly makes the field all the emptier and more melancholic than before.

In the end, there eventually comes the end of the day, but the remaining players become quite resourceful just for playing to the end of the last inning of their game. It is quite apparent to everyone on the field that the time for the end of their inconsequential baseball career has come, but they do not give up at all, and that is the main reason why the finale feels so poignant under its mournfully somber atmosphere.    

The main cast members of the film, most of whom are not so recognizable to many of us, are effortless in their modest but well-rounded ensemble performance. As they have each own small moment along the story without being showy at all, we come to focus more on their characters instead of themselves, and their characters come to leave an indelible impression on us as a distinctive human group. 

I must confess that it does not come that close to me as a foreign guy who does not have much interest in baseball or any other sports, but “Eephus”, whose very title is incidentally a term for a certain type of curve ball, still engaged and then moved me enough on the whole. In short, this is one of the more interesting films of this year, and I think you should give it a chance especially if you are interested in baseball more than me.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Eddington (2025) ☆☆(2/4): A nihilistic ideological mess

Posted on December 16, 2025 by kaist455

Ari Aster’s latest film “Eddington” is a superficial genre exercise which did not amuse or engage me at all. Yes, I understand that the movie is supposed to function as a distorted mirror to the confusion and frustration in the American society during the COVID-19 pandemic era, but the movie only ends up being a nihilistic ideological mess, and I come to detest its ideas and attitudes more as I reflect more on its story and characters.

The main background is a small New Mexico town named Eddington during late May 2020, which was the peak period of the COVID-19 pandemic. When Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal), the mayor of the town, not only implements a lockdown but also enforces mask mandates for preventing more infection, some people in the town are not so pleased to say the least, and Sheriff Joe Cross (Joaquine Phoenix) is one of such people. Just because the town has not had any COVID-19 patient yet, he believes that the mayor is just overacting, and, not so surprisingly, he often watches and listens to numerous conspiracy theory stuffs on the Internet, which were incidentally increased a lot more during the COVID-19 pandemic era.

And a number of people around Sheriff Cross do not help or correct him much. While his two deputy sheriffs are not so competent to say the least, his wife Louise (Emma Stone) has been stuck in her own delusion, and the same can be said about his mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O’Connell). Dawn often talks about how petty and inconsequential he is compared to his father who also worked as the town sheriff before his death, and this certainly prompts him to do more willful defiance against Mayor Garcia, who is rather annoyed as preparing for the upcoming mayoral election in the town. 

In the end, Sheriff Cross decides to run for the election, and the movie surely generates a bit of amusement how woefully unprepared he is from the very beginning. First, he does not know much about how to register himself as an eligible candidate, and neither do his deputies, who also cannot think of any simple or effective slogan for his election campaign. Nevertheless, he manages to draw more attention and support from others in the town, and Mayor Garcia becomes more watchful about this possible competitor of his. Besides his election business, Mayor Garcia also must work on how to get a rather questionable business project approved, and Sheriff Cross is willing to make him look corrupt for that.

In addition, we come to learn later that there is a complicated history between these two opposing figures. Some years ago, Louise was Mayor Garcia’s girlfriend, but he eventually left her not long before she married Sheriff Cross. Just because of really believing that Mayor Garcia hurt his wife at that time, Sheriff Cross is willing to expose more of whatever happened between his wife and Mayor Garcia, but that is the last thing wanted by Louise.

Meanwhile, things keep getting more complicated in the town. After that tragic real-life incident involved with a black man named George Floyd, many young people become politically active to a considerable degree, and this certainly leads to more headache for Sheriff Cross. In addition, there is an anonymous vagrant who is clearly not that well in his mind, and we instantly sense a trouble right from his first appearance at the beginning of the story.

All these and many other elements including a radical cult leader who draws Louise’s attention are supposed to gel together for creating a big picture of the confusion and frustration in the American society during the COVID-19 pandemic era, but Astor’s screenplay merely juggles its clashing plot elements without generating much narrative momentum to hold them together. At one point in the middle of the story, there is a big protest sequence clearly intended to reflect and symbolize how confusingly disharmonious the American society was during that time, but you can only see Astor throwing a lot of different stuffs in the air without any clear direction at all.

Well, you might say this is actually the point of the movie, but it still feels quite aimless and confused about what and how it is about. As making almost all of the characters in the film unlikable in one way or another, the movie seems to take that typical stance of criticizing, yes, *both sides*, and I cannot help but think of how such a mindlessly irresponsible stance has led to the rise of fascism around our world during last several years. To make matters worse, the story only exacerbates this glaring ideological flaw during its second half with more viciousness and nihilism, and that makes the film more like tolerating a very confused and disagreeable dude for more than 2.5 hours. 

Joaquin Phoenix, who previously collaborated with Aster in “Beau Is Afraid” (2023), is certainly no stranger to playing a deeply troubled anti-hero, and he does his best for carrying the movie to the end, but it regrettably fails to support his efforts just like Todd Phillips’ equally hollow film “Joker” (2019). In case of many other notable performers in the film such as Pedro Pascal, Emma Stone, Deirdre O’Connell, Micheal Ward, Clifton Collins Jr., and Austen Butler, they are simply required to do no more than filling their respective spots, but Butler manages to bring some twisted humor to his few scenes in the film at least. 

In conclusion, “Eddington” is another disappointment from Aster after “Beau Is Afraid”, which is interesting to some degree but ends up becoming quite self-indulgent to my growing annoyance. Nevertheless, I still admire Aster’s two feature films “Hereditary” (2018) and “Midsommar” (2019), and I can only hope that Aster will be back in his element as soon as possible.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4): A new priest comes to the town…

Posted on December 15, 2025 by kaist455

Rian Johnson’s latest film “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery”, which was released on Netflix on last Friday, is another compelling mystery story to watch. Just like its predecessors, the movie throws an interesting murder case and then rolls its colorful story and characters for more fun and intrigue for us, and the overall result solidifies its franchise further while also doing its own different stuffs to observe and appreciate.

The early part of the film mainly revolves around Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), a young Catholic priest who was once a boxer before accidentally killing his opponent in his last match. Due to an unintentional recent trouble caused by his fist, he is subsequently sent to a little parish located somewhere in upstate New York, and he is certainly willing to do some good things for his parishioners as a new assistant pastor.

However, his main task turns out to be much more challenging than expected. The pastor of the town is Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), a charismatic man who has virtually dominated over his congregation for years. He is your average hardcore conservative pastor who usually emphasizes on intolerance and anger instead of acceptance and forgiveness, and Priest Duplenticy observes how most of his parishioners simply conform to the toxic preaching of Monsingnor Wicks due to each own reason.

Mainly through Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), a devout church lady who handles almost everything in the church as Monsignor Wicks’ right-hand person, Priest Duplenticy comes to know more about the rather complicated past of the church. The church was actually founded by the father of Monsignor Wicks’ prodigal mother, and we come to learn about a little mystery involved with the disappearance of the considerable asset belonging to the founder of the church.

However, there soon comes a much more serious mystery. Not long after Priest Duplenticy comes to have a big clash with Monsignor Wicks at last, somebody is murdered under a rather baffling circumstance, and, not so surprisingly, Priest Duplenticy quickly finds himself being accused of committing that murder in question. He surely insists that he is innocent, but he also cannot help but feel some guilt for an understandable reason, and that makes his circumstance all the more complicated. 

And that is when Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig), a brilliant private detective we previously met in “Knives Out” (2019) and “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” (2022), enters the picture. Right from when he comes upon the crime scene, he instinctively senses that the case is a challenging classic “locked room” mystery, and there is an amusing moment when a number of notable classic mystery novels including a certain famous one written by John Dickson Carr are mentioned in the middle of the story. As an avid mystery fan, I did read Carr’s famous novel a long time ago, and I was surely amused by when Blanc gives a brief lecture on locked room mystery, which is incidentally not so far from the one given by the detective in Carr’s novel.

While cheerfully toying with several possibilities surrounding how the murder was committed, Johnson’s screenplay shows some surprising emotional depth mainly via Priest Duplenticy’s emotional struggle along the story. As getting confounded more by what is going on around him, he also comes to question more about his religious mission, and it seems that this conflict of his is the only sure thing for him for now. Josh O’Connor, who has continued to rise as one of the most interesting actors in our time during last several years, brings a lot of gravitas and sincerity to the story, and his character’s intense spiritual struggle often complements the lightweight wit and humor generated around Blanc, who turns out to be much more thoughtful about the case than his colorfully quirky attitude suggests.  

In the end, everything predictably culminates to an obligatory climax scene where Blanc explains everything in front of several other figures including Priest Duplenticy, but the movie still balances itself well between drama and comedy. I will not go into detail here for not spoiling anything for you, but I can tell you instead that 1) Johnson distinguishes himself again as a masterful storyteller to admire and 2) you will appreciate how deftly he and his crew members including cinematographer Steve Yedlin and composer Nathan Johnson (He is Johnson’s cousin, by the way) unwrap the expectedly cathartic moment of revelation around the end of the story.

Again, Daniel Craig has a lot of fun with playing his eccentric but undeniably shrew detective character, and his solid and entertaining reprise is supported well by not only O’Connor but also a bunch of notable performers assembled around them. While Josh Brolin is deliberately hammy and obnoxious as required by his very disagreeable character, Glenn Close, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Thomas Haden Church, and Daryl McCormack are suitably cast for their respective supporting parts, and Jeffrey Wright and Mila Kunis lend some presence to their rather thankless roles.   

Overall, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery” another interesting entry to be added to its advancing franchise, and its rather long running time (144 minutes) will quickly pass by as you keep guessing on the mystery at its center and then get a lot more involved in its compelling drama on faith and forgiveness than expected. In my inconsequential opinion, this is one of the most entertaining genre films of this year, and I will certainly look forward to watching the next Knives Out Mystery.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

The Running Man (2025) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4): In a deadly reality show

Posted on December 14, 2025 by kaist455

Edgar Wright’s latest film “The Running Man” could be more entertaining in my humble opinion. While its overall result is as slick and competent as you can expect from Wright, the movie does not distinguish itself enough compared to many of those countless dystopian flicks out there, and that is a shame considering the glimpses of rich potentials along its story.

I guess this is probably because the story itself, which is based on the 1982 novel of the same name written by Stephen King under his well-known pseudonym Richard Bachman, is not particularly chilling or refreshing to us at present. When I read King’s novel in 2000, the extreme level of that dystopian reality TV show depicted in the novel felt rather outrageous to me, but that has become far less shocking to me and many others now for many good reasons including the rising vulgarity of numerous reality TV shows out there. After all, we are all pretty much like living in a very big and bad reality TV show especially after that shockingly unbelievable political rise of that orange-faced fascist/racist prick in US who was incidentally the star of a truly cruel and vulgar reality TV show, aren’t we?

Anyway, the adapted screenplay by Wrigth and his co-writer Michael Bacall is mostly faithful to the basic plotline of King’s novel. The hero of the story, an unemployed working-class family man named Ben Richards (Glen Powell), decides to try his luck on reality TV show because his young daughter is very sick and he and his dear wife do not have any money to buy the drug for their ill daughter right now. At first, he simply wants to appear on any kind of reality TV show except “The Running Man”, but, what do you know, he soon finds himself selected as one of the three contestants for the new upcoming season of that infamous reality TV show.

At first, Richards is not so amused by this situation, but then he is persuaded to go along with that selection by Dan Killian (Josh Brolin), the sleazy producer of “The Running Man” who is also one of the top-ranking executives of a very, very, very powerful network company which has dominated over the American society and its citizens for many years as producing “The Running Man” and many other trashy reality TV shows. In the name of more viewership, popularity, and, yes, power, Killian is surely ready to do anything, and he thinks Richards has all the right stuffs for throwing billions of viewers out there into more anger and excitement.

Around the narrative point where Richards are introduced on the stage along with the two other contestants, the movie lays out the rules of their deadly survival game. Exactly 12 hours after they are released right after their introduction time, not only a bunch of company hunters but also the police and the public will pursue after each of them, and they will earn more and more money as they manage to evade and survive day by day, though that is nothing compared to what they will get if they are still alive after 30 days.

As Killian correctly observed, Richards turns out to be quite tough, resourceful, and defiant. Once he gets released, he quickly works on disguising himself with some makeup and a fake identification card. In addition, he also gets some unexpected help from several rebellious persons, who are willing to help him instead of reporting or killing him for getting the bounty promised by Killian and his network company. There are two young brothers who hate the network as much as Richards, and they gladly lead him to an eccentric underground activist who may provide a safe shelter for him.

Needless to say, Richards is reminded again and again of how everything is already fixed for him as well as his two fellow contestants from the very beginning. However, this makes him all the more defiant than before, and we surely get several intense action scenes as he keeps trying to evade the pursuit of those company hunters, who are incidentally led by some menacing masked dude who is also another key figure in “The Running Man”.

While it did a fairly good job of keeping things rolling, the story is also often hampered by a lot of heavy-handed expositions and emphasis. Yes, our hero is surely destined to function as someone to ignite the massive public defiance against the network company, but the movie explains and emphasizes this to us too much and too long. In addition, it understandably makes its finale relatively less bleak compared to the ending of King’s book, but its attempts to lighten up the mood a bit during this part feel rather jarring instead, and that is where the movie comes to lose a considerable portion of its narrative momentum.

Anyway, the main cast members try their best for selling their materials. Glen Powell proves again here in this film that he is an engaging leading man to watch, though he is mostly required to look intense or desperate throughout the film. As the two main villains of the story, Josh Brolin and Colman Domingo are willing to throw themselves into a lot of sleaziness and nastiness, and Domingo chews every moment of his as gleefully as required for our guilty pleasure. In case of several other notable cast members, Michael Cera, Emilia Jones, William H. Macy, Lee Pace, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, and Katy O’Brian are rather under-utilized on the whole, but Cera impresses us again with another scene-stealing performance of his during this year after his delightful comic acting in Wes Anderon’s “The Phoenician Scheme” (2025).

In conclusion, “The Running Man” is not satisfying enough for recommendation, but I think it shows a bit of improvement compared to the 1987 film of the same name loosely based on King’s novel (The movie makes a little nod to that film via using a bit of the image of the famous leading actor of that film, by the way). Although it does not reach to the cheesy fun of the 1987 film, the movie is not entirely without good elements to enjoy while also showing more skill and competence in comparison, and that can be enough for you if you just want to kill some spare time.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Two Seasons, Two Strangers (2025) ☆☆☆(3/4): Journeys and Days

Posted on December 14, 2025 by kaist455

Japanese filmmaker Shô Miyake’s latest film “Two Seasons, Two Strangers” is another modest but engaging work from its talented filmmaker. Consisting of the two different parts, the movie calmly and sensitively follows the journey of its wandering heroine, and its simple but haunting presentation moments will linger on your mind for a while after it is over.

The heroine of the movie is Lee (Shim Eun-kyung), a female South Korean filmmaker living and working in Japan. During the brief opening scene, the movie observes her trying to begin the first scene of a short film to be written by her, and the first half of the film alternates between her writing process and the short film eventually made by her director.

The short film in the movie is set in some remote island, and it is mainly about the accidental relationship between two different young people. Nagisa (Yuumi Kawai) simply comes to the island for summer vacation just like a few other visitors in the island, but she cannot help but feel bored as she merely wanders around here and there in the island. At one point, she drops by a little museum presenting the old history of the island, but she does not seem to be particularly interested in anything inside the museum.

Anyway, as wandering more around the island, Nagisa eventually comes across a lad named Natsuo (Mansaku Takada), who comes to the island because it is his mother’s hometown and looks as bored as Nagisa. Although their first encounter is rather awkward, these two young people eventually come to spend more time with each other, and this makes them a bit less bored than before, even when they and the other visitors are subsequently stuck in the island due to the approaching typhoon.

In the end, the short film in the movie arrives at the dramatic finale at a beach during one rainy day. Natsuo impulsively decides to swim a bit in the sea, and the mood surely becomes intense as the weather becomes gradually stormier. Nevertheless, Natsuo becomes a little more energized than before, while Nagisa watches him from the distance.

And then the movie steps back from the short film in the story. After the little screening of the short film is over, the perfunctory Q&A session follows, and Lee struggles to answer the questions thrown at her and her director. It seems that nobody particularly understands or appreciates much of what she tried to do for the short film, and you may get amused a bit by the superficial commentary from a middle-aged professor.

And then something quite unexpected happens, and the movie soon moves onto its second half, which is beautifully started with the lovely shot of a train moving across the snowy landscapes of some rural area in Japan during one cold winter season. Lee happens to be on the train, and we come to gather that she is searching for any inspiration for her next screenplay to write.

However, things do not go that well for her right from when Lee arrives at some rural town. Unfortunately, all of the hotels and inns in the town do not have any spare room for her, so she has no choice but to go to some remote inn outside the town alone by herself. She eventually locates that inn in question, and its owner, who is a rather gruff bachelor guy named Ben-zō (Shinichi Tsutsumi), is not so delighted by her appearance, though he soon lets her in his empty inn.

Feeling as isolated as she did in the first scene of the film, Lee keeps trying to begin her new screenplay, but her mind becomes more focused on what she observes inside and around her current staying place. While the sense of isolation is more accentuated by the coldly serene atmosphere surrounding the inn, she also gets to know a bit more Ben-zō, who incidentally had a wife and a daughter but then got separated from them after his divorce.

And then Miyake’s screenplay, whose two parts are respectively based on Yoshiharu Tsuge manga short stories “A View of the Seaside” and “Mr. Ben and his Igloo”, adds a bit of humor and suspense. Lee and Ben-zō later decide to try a bit of winter adventure during one very cold evening, and that turns out to be a little riskier than she expected. As they come to commit a little thievery of theirs, the movie throws some small humorous touches such as the quiet stance of a cat which happens to witness them, and you will get some chuckle when Lee and Ben-zō face the consequence of their minor transgression.

Like Miyake’s previous films such as “Small, Slow but Steady” (2022) and “All The Long Nights” (2024), the movie is mainly driven by mood and nuance as rolling its simple and modest story, and cinematographer Yuta Tsukinaga did a splendid job of filling the screen with the two contrasting seasonal atmospheres for the two different parts of the movie, respectively. In case of its small main cast members, Shim Eun-kyung, who has appeared in a number of notable Japanese and South Korean films such as “The Journalist” (2019) and “Sunny” (2021), carries the film well with her diligent low-key acting, and she is also supported well by several other cast members including Yuumi Kawai, Mansaku Takada, Shirō Sano, and Shinichi Tsutsumi.

On the whole, “Two Seasons, Two Strangers”, which received the Golden Leopard award when it was show at the Locarno Film Festival several months ago, is recommendable for its skillful handling of mood, story, and character. I must confess that Miyake’s works are still sort of an acquired taste for me, but it is also undeniable that he is an interesting filmmaker to watch, and I will keep following his advancing filmmaking career as before.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

The Long Walk (2025) ☆☆☆(3/4): The Last Man Walking

Posted on December 11, 2025 by kaist455

“The Long Walk” is a modest but effective dystopian survival thriller driven by one simple but compelling story premise. Although we can clearly see where it is heading from the very beginning, the movie keeps things rolling before eventually arriving at its expected finale, and it is also supported well by a bunch of good performers to notice.

The movie, which is based on the 1979 novel of the same name by Stephen King (It was originally published under his pseudonym Richard Bachman, by the way), mainly revolves around a lad named Raymond “Ray” Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), and the early part of the story quickly establishes his dystopian world, which an alternative version of the American society during the late 20th century. After some big war, the American society in the story has been ruled by a military dictatorship mainly represented by an authoritarian figure called “the Major” (Mark Hamill, who feels as hammy as demanded), who supervises an annual national competition event called “the Long Walk”. Every year, 50 young men, who are respectively selected from the 50 states of the country, participate in this competition, and the rule of this competition is pretty simple: walk in the constant pace as long as possible until you become the last man walking.

While he could quit right before the beginning of the competition, Garraty is already quite determined due to a personal goal to be revealed later in the story. After arriving at the starting spot where many other young men are already waiting for the beginning of the Long Walk, he comes to befriend some of them including Peter “Pete” McVries (David Jonsson), and the mood seems casual among these young lads even though they all know well that they will end up competing with each other in one way or another.

And things gradually gets intense for them as the competition is started right after a big speech delivered by the Major. For whoever will eventually become the winner, there will be a lot of money in addition to one wish to be granted, and many participants are quite eager to win the prize despite the amounting challenge upon them. All they have to do is continuing to walk at the speed of three miles (4.8 km) per hour, but, of course, that becomes harder and harder as they keep walking for more than 24 hours without any rest at all.

The soldiers under the command of the Major provide some water at times as accompanying and monitoring the participants of the Long Walk, but their main purpose is eliminating anyone violating the rule of the competition. If anyone stops or becomes slower than three miles per hour, there will be a warning. Although this can be nullified if he continues to walk during next three hours, he will be instantly eliminated once he gets three warnings in row.

Needless to say, many of the participants get eliminated one by one along the story for various reasons such as a strained ankle. As their number is dwindling step by step, the remaining lads become more desperate for survival, but their competition seems endless as before, and they inevitably find themselves on the verge of facing each own breaking point.

Steadily maintaining its pacing along with its main characters, the adapted screenplay by JT Mollner occasionally allows some character development to engage us more. As they show more of themselves to each other, Garraty and McVries come to bond with each other more, despite still knowing well that only one person will survive and then win in the end. Besides them, we also get to know some of the other participants, and their broad but colorful personalities bring a bit of humor and pathos to the story.

 This is not alien territory at all for director/co-producer Francis Lawrence, who previously made several movies in the Hunger Games series including “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” (2023). Although the movie is far more modest and simpler compared to those Hunger Games movies, Lawrence did a competent job of making the story and characters look and feel convincing on the screen. While the story itself is more or less than a social allegory, it is filled with enough mood and tension at least, and that is the main reason why we come to care more about what may happen at the end of the story.

It certainly helps that the main cast members, who will receive the Robert Altman Award along with Lawrence at the Film Independent Spirit Awards early in the next year (The movie actually costs no more than 20 million dollars, folks), carry the film well with their solid ensemble performance. While Cooper Hoffman, who is the son of late Philip Seymour Hoffman and has already shown his considerable potential in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” (2021), holds the center as required, David Jonsson, who has been a new exciting talent to watch after “Rye Lane” (2023) and “Alien: Romulus” (2024), ably complements Hoffman, and several other main cast members including Garrett Wareing, Tut Nyuot, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Jordan Gonzalez, and Joshua Odjick are well-cast in their respective supporting parts.

On the whole, “The Long Walk” walks fairly well enough for holding our attention to the end, and I appreciate how it vividly presents some of the suspense and drama I experienced while reading King’s novel around 25 years ago. Yes, this is not exactly fresh in these days due to many of other similar movies ranging from those Hunger Games movies and Japanese film “Battle Royale” (2000), but it did its job well, so I will not grumble for now.

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

The Monkey (2025) ☆☆☆(3/4): This is one nasty monkey

Posted on December 10, 2025 by kaist455

“The Monkey”, one of the two films from Osgood Perkins during this year, is a creepy film about one nasty toy monkey and several people who unfortunately happens to get involved with it. As striking us hard with several moments as shocking and horrific as those death scenes in Final Destination flicks, the movie also has some naughty fun with the growing sense of dread around its main characters, and the result is another interesting horror film from Perkins.

Based on the short story of the same name by Stephen King, the movie mainly revolves around the troubled relationship between Hal and Bill Shelburn, two twin brothers played by Christian Convery at first and then Theo James later. On one day in 1999, Hal and Bill rummage those old stuffs left by their father who suddenly left them and their mother for no apparent reason some time ago, and then they find a box containing a toy monkey. It seems all they have to do is winding its key a bit and then seeing what it will do next, but, of course, this subsequently leads to a terrible incident which will make you think twice about going to a certain type of restaurant.

Once he comes to see what this malevolent toy monkey can do as beating its drum, Hal finds himself considering winding its key again. Having frequently been bullied by his older brother, he often wishes to kill Bill, so he eventually makes the toy monkey beating its drum. However, he belatedly comes to realize that it chooses its victim randomly rather than following its owner’s wish, and he and his older brother come to have another traumatic incident.

Needless to say, Hal tries to get rid of the toy monkey, but, not so surprisingly, he only comes to see that it will never go away no matter how much he tries. In the end, after confiding to Bill about what it can do, he and Bill decide to throw it away to the bottom of an abandoned well, and it seems that they are finally free from whatever may be caused by the monkey toy.

However, even after more than 20 years later, Hal still finds himself still under his traumatic memories of the toy monkey and all those horrible incidents caused by that. He married, but then he divorced his wife, and he is also not so particularly close to their adolescent son Petey (Colin O’Brien). In fact, Petey is not very willing to spend time with his father although that is recommended by his mother’s current husband, who is broadly played by Elijah Wood. Incidentally, I happened to watch Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” (2001) and “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” (2002) at a local movie theater, so Wood’s brief but amusing appearance in “The Monkey” reminds me again of how much he has advanced as a talented actor since that point.

Anyway, as Hal tries to spend some good time with Petey, there comes a sudden call from Bill. It seems that the monkey toy returns and then causes another terrible death, and Bill wants Hal to check whether it really comes back to haunt them again. Needless to say, Hal is reluctant at first, but he eventually agrees to look for the monkey toy, while not telling anything to his son.

Around that narrative point, Perkins’ adapted screenplay goes further as steadily building up the sense of dread on the screen, and we surely get a series of truly gruesome moments of death. I particularly liked the one which will probably make you hesitate to jump into a swimming pool, and I was also amused by a certain grim place filled with several fatal traps – and how one of them leads to an expected payoff moment in the end.

Meanwhile, the movie also shows some surprising amount of seriousness just like Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein’s “Final Destination Bloodlines” (2025). In both movies, death feels quite unstoppable and inescapable to say the least no matter how much their main characters struggle in one way or another, and “The Monkey” is relatively grimmer as Hal comes to face his longtime dread, trauma, and guilt along the story. While still feeling guilty about what he inadvertently caused, he becomes more traumatized and despaired due to his fateful association with the monkey toy, and we come to care about his plight more even while having some dark laugh from all those deaths happening around him.

The movie becomes a bit too preposterous during its last act, but it still works the effective dual performance by Theo James, who demonstrates his acting skill a lot here in here this film. Besides ably going back and forth between his two contrasting characters, he did a good job of illustrating the pain and trauma shared by them, and he is also flawlessly connected with young performer Christian Convery, who holds his own place well during the early part of the film. In case of several supporting performers in the film, they are mostly limited by their rather thin characters, but Tatiana Maslany and Adam Scott leave some impression during their short appearance, and Colin O’Brien is also solid as Hal’s teenage son.

Like “Longlegs” (2024), “The Monkey” is a more accessible work from Perkins compared to his previous arthouse horror films such as “I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House” (2016) and “Gretel & Hansel” (2020). While it is less subtle in comparison, the movie still provides a fair share of creepiness as you can expect from him, and you may chuckle a bit as appreciating an unexpected moment of acceptance at the end of the story. After all, who can possibly escape death?

Posted in Movies | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment