"Lurker"

 ☆☆☆½ 

There's something about the title Lurker that implies — not quite promises, but more than suggests — a very different movie than Lurker turns out to be. It isn't about a stalker, not in the traditional sense, and it isn't about someone who sits around on the sidelines and watches. So if you go into this movie as I did, knowing nothing about it except the title, you'll be in for a lot of surprises.

There's no way I'd ever want to ruin any of them, because, at least until it starts to come apart a bit in its final third, Lurker is a movie that is worth seeking out. It will come as no surprise to anyone who has read this blog even a little that I recommend seeing Lurker in a movie theater, and if you do and you're lucky enough to see it with a responsive, appreciative audience as I did, you'll have a classic moviegoing experience — feeling absorbed by the movie, yet also responding to the vibe of the audience. Lurker benefits from that sort of response.

Revealing anything about the story will be saying too much, but it bears mentioning that Lurker has a long and impressive lineage, not just in the background of its writer-director, Alex Russell, who wrote for the TV series Beef and The Bear, but also in intense movie thrillers that ...

Damn it. There I go again. Okay, fine, it's giving nothing away to say that Lurker is a thriller, and a very good one, though also one that falls victim to the same things that have long tripped up thrillers — it's got a great setup, an amazing follow-through, but it stumbles as its nears its end. The careful structure and intricate plotting that sees everyone in the film wind up in the same awful place near the end starts to come undone. Lurker lets the audience do what a thriller like this must never, ever let the audience do: ask questions. "But what about ... " and "Wait, didn't he say earlier ..." and "I don't understand, I thought ..." are not things that should run through an audience's mind in the last 20 minutes of a movie like this, but phrases like that kept creeping into my thoughts.

Key moments that should surprise or shock or unnerve and vaguely confusing, and even though — this is important — Lurker ends on a perfect note, there's no way to deny it gets there in the hardest possible way. I wanted Lurker to be as clear about its intentions and its characters' motivations near the end as it was at the beginning, and the movie frustrated me.

That's not the fault of its cast, particularly its two lead actors, the unnervingly ingratiating Théodore Pellerin and the effortlessly charismatic Archie Madekwe, who perform an odd and unexpected dance that in some of the best possible ways reminded me of characters in a Hitchcock film. The way they meet and then ...

Oops. No. I'm not going to reveal more. Despite its flaws, which are not inconsiderable, Lurker remains spellbinding in part thanks to these two actors and a flawless supporting cast who manage to feel relaxed and natural and effortless even while they tell a story that is far more deeply plotted and carefully controlled than it seems.

There are so many ways in which Lurker could have been better ... but even more, and more catastrophic, ways it could have gone wrong. That it mostly gets it right is worth celebrating, and Lurker is a movie worth seeing, and letting get under your skin — which it will. Those two lead actors will be sure of it.

AMC Burbank 6 — Sept. 6, 2025

2000

"Weapons"

 ☆☆☆½ 

It would be hard to conceive of a better set-up for a movie than the one Zach Cregger has dreamed up for his new thriller Weapons: 17 of the 18 children in one elementary school classroom get up out of bed at 2:17 a.m., leave their homes and run, arms trailing behind them like airplane, into the night.

They vanish.

Why?

Who's responsible?

Has some terrifying force, some evil spirit, taken possession of all of these children? And why is one boy left in the classroom where Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) teaches?

It's a story filled with tension, with deep uncertainty, a paranoia that goes far, far deeper than any ordinary tragedy — say, a school shooting, which the movie wants to evoke — would have generated. As a directer, Cregger has an amazing gift for milking that tension, both visually and through montage. This is a finely crafted movie, and though it utilizes many of the tropes of horror films, it plays much more like a disturbing, anxious update of the paranoid thrillers that were popular in the 1970s.

There is so much tension, that just the sight of a woman walking toward a car can get an audience screaming and fidgeting. The audience I saw it with seemed to regard this movie with a genuinely rare sense of dread, and Weapons leaves no doubt — particularly coupled with his previous horror film Barbarian — that Cregger is an incredible filmmaking talent.

It's in the fulfillment of the promise of those first 30 minutes that Cregger falters. Weapons bears more than a passing resemblance to the films of M. Night Shyamalan, even down to the rural Pennsylvania setting (though the film was shot in Georgia). The comparison extends to a fascination with creating a twisty, unpredictable plot that never quite connects all of its various threads.

Strangely, perhaps, there's another movie that came to mind while watching Weapons, one that I learned Cregger acknowledged served as sort of storytelling inspiration: Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 masterpiece of anxiety, Magnolia. Thematically, the movies couldn't be more different, but certain elements — an overwound cop, a constant rain, a cascade of interrelated stories, an oppressive sense of foreboding — combine to make Weapons ambitious and impressive. But still ...

Like Magnolia, Weapons begins with an omniscient narrator who establishes the mood and then disappears. What the narration and the first third of Weapons never hints at (just as Magnolia didn't) is the out-of-nowhere event that will change the course of the story. In the case of Weapons, it's impossible to describe this event without spoiling things — and this is a movie that, despite my reservations, shouldn't be spoiled. In Magnolia, the event (frogs raining from the sky) needed no explanation; its randomness, its weirdness, its lack of any greater meaning was the point.

In Weapons, the event and the character who embodies it also get no explanation, and that proves to be the movie's undoing. Without a sense of motivation, without crucial details about what this person wants, exactly, and why, the story begins to fall apart. Weapons is a movie best enjoyed in the moment, and the good news it can be enjoyed in the moment, quite a lot. But if you're like me, and you begin to try to answer any of the many questions Weapons leaves wide open, the car ride home after watching this movie is going to be a long one. And frustrating.

Weapons needs, earns and demands a sense of mystery. But ultimately even David Lynch needed to offer contextual explanations for a lot of his weirdness. Weapons not only doesn't offer the explanations, the movie left me wondering if it even cared that people might wonder. It's a puzzle, all right — a moody, tense, sometimes frightening puzzle, but every puzzle needs to have a solution. I'm not sure there is one for Weapons.

Viewed August 10, 2025 — AMC Burbank 16

1240

"Sketch"

  ☆☆☆ 

Many movies make the mistake of having a great setup with a disappointing payoff. They've got a great idea, communicate it perfectly, and get the audience so excited that the inability to stick the landing makes the whole film suffer by comparison.

Sketch does things the other way around, which works to the movie's benefit. The opening 20 minutes are rushed and don't take the time to explain what it is we'll be seeing, that it's easy to imagine the rest of the movie failing on similar terms.

So, it's nice to report that after that failed opening, Sketch just keeps going and keeps on getting better and more intriguing, until its final few minutes, which are every bit as good as you may have hoped.

Those opening scenes, though, feel like something's missing — the story is about two motherless children, siblings Jack and Amber. Since the death of their mother, their father (Tony Hale) has been struggling, too, and has recently put the house up for sale, to both the delight and chagrin of a neighborhood real estate agent who's also a family friend (D'Arcy Carden).

The kids discover that a nearby pond holds the power to fix things and make artistic submissions come to life. Bianca Belle is the daugher, about 11 years old. She's been coping with her sense of loss and helplessness by drawing pictures in her notebook and posting them social media. They're odd pictures. They are mostly of giant creatures and imaginary monsters.

Then, Jack accidentally tosses the notebook into the pond, and before you can say lickety-split, the monsters are running amok.

The performances are the key in Sketch, and the performers are all uniformly game, especially Kalon Cox, a child actor who has impeccable timing. All of the performers, especially the adults, are subjected to some terrible indiginities, but they all are impressive under the circumstances, particularly the adults. Tony Hale and D'Arcy Carden seem both aware and committed to the idea that they are making a family film that may be aimed at kids but isn't made solely for kids.

The action leads up to a sincere, cathartic climax that feels earned and appropriate, and underscores the movie's wisdom about the impossibility of moving on in the face of devastating loss.

But something feels off about the whole endeavor. Sketch follows in the footsteps of Weapons, a movie that couldn't be more different in tone, in refusing to explain anything about its central conceit. Anything. Why is the pond magic? How is it possible they've never noticed? Does a movie made primarily for a family audience need to explain a lot? After all, Mary Poppins could do all sorts of magical things, but no one ever knew or cared to ask why.

It may be fair to say the same concept should apply, but Sketch exists in an arguably more sophisticated world, and its kids have come of age in the time of cell phones and instant communication. The movie stumbles around as it tries to get us to buy into its basic approach. Kids will be less critical. They'll accept the explanations for the magic, and they'll probably be delighted (if not a little traumatized — parts of Sketched are undeniably scary).

Adults: your mileage may vary. 

***

Postscript: It's worth noting that Sketch was produced and released by Angel Studios, which says it has a mission to release uplifting, family friendly films. Hardcore Christian messaging is usually part of these movies, and after further digging it's clear that Angel Studios is a faith-based film company. Sketch does not contain any overt messages about Christianity or religion. But Angel Studios has a clear, stated goal, and some viewers may want to know that before going in so they can make informed choices. The movie also contains an explicit fundraising message in its end credits, which may also turn off some viewers.

Viewed August 9, 2025 — AMC Universal

1915

"East of Wall"

  ☆☆½ 

The indie vibe that suffuses many major film festivals is at the heart of East of Wall, an intriguing and not altogether successful blend of fiction and reality, a documentary that tells a story, or a story that fits into a documentary. Without the big question-and-answer sessions that follow most film festival screenings, it's difficult for an audience to know quite what to make of this film, though that doesn't mean it fails. Not quite.

East of Wall "stars" Tabatha Zimiga and Porshia Zimiga, who are real people whose lives on a horse ranch in South Dakota form the basis of the movie. Tabatha is the matriarch of the farm, Porshia is her oldest daughter, and together they are part of an expansive, eclectic household of many, many children, some of whom were adopted by Tabatha, others of whom live with her in loose relationships.

Tabatha trains wild horses, then sells them at auction. After the death of her husband, Tabatha is struggling. The film feels a little bit like a documentary, but not quite, and for anyone who doesn't know what to expect — for instance, for those who didn't read about it in a film festival program — it's an odd an unsettling experience.

I went into East of Wall with no awareness of it whatsoever — it screened as part of AMC's "Screen Unseen" program, which presents movies before they open without revealing the titles. I walked into East of Wall not even knowing what movie I was going to watch, much less anything about its genesis, and I couldn't figure it out. The performers seemed simultaneously authentic and stilted, like they were reality show contestants trying to recreate moments from their own lives.

It turns out, that's pretty much exactly what East of Wall is — neither fiction nor cinema verité documentary, it's an uncomfortable but sometimes affecting exercise in creating docudrama with real people. And some not-real people. For instance, actress Jennifer Ehle plays Tabatha's mother. Actor Scoot McNairy plays a wealthy Texan who tries to convince Tabatha to sell her farm to him.

Other real people appear, sometimes acting out written scenes, sometimes letting the camera capture their lives, and it's never quite clear what's what.

The story sort of meanders along without much plot — which is odd. Writer-director Kate Beecroft has invested a lot of passion in making her story feel authentic and real, as if it weren't scripted. But it is. So, why make a movie utterly devoid of the kind of storytelling beats that work best in movies? Why create a story that's both hard to follow and lacking in tension?

Which isn't to say that East of Wall doesn't have some fine things to recommend it, including the quasi-performance (or is that performance-based reality) of Tabatha Zimiga in the lead role. She's playing herself, mostly convincingly, and she's quite a character — bold, independent, strong-willed, yet vulnerable. When the movie finally gets where it's going (which, truth be told, isn't very far), it's hard not to feel a little proud of this woman for what she accomplishes.

As a slice of modern Americana, a look at the way people live amid desolation and hardship, it's never uninteresting. It will probably best appeal to people who love horses and the broad, uninterrupted vistas of the midwest — the movie is partly set in the surreal, windswept crags of the Badlands. Whether that audience is likely ever to encounter this movie is a legitimate question. For those who harbor less affinity for its setting or its subjects, East of Wall may be a struggle.

Viewed August 4, 2025 — AMC Burbank 16

1900

"Superman"

 ☆☆½ 

Every generation, it's said, gets the government it deserves. The same, it appears, is true for Superman, whose debut in comic books was followed quickly by on-screen appearances, first in animated shorts, a serial, and some cheesy B-movies that captured Superman as a hero for a post-Depression and post-War America.

After a TV series came, of course, Richard Donner's 1978 film Superman — a sincere, even simple hero in a world that had been rocked by moral, ethical and political complexity. Superman was a salve. But the sequels got progressively worse as studios chased dollars. When the films collapsed came TV shows that reformatted the story not just for the small screen but for teen audiences.

By the 2000s came the age of the franchise, when studios started to please shareholders and equity investors, showcasing "risk aversion." Superman movies largely gave way to superhero movies. Marvel took the spotlight. Despite attempts to revive him, Superman seemed an anachronism.

Now, James Gunn, who helped make Marvel into the juggernaut it became, particularly with the jokey, music-driven Guardians of the Galaxy movies, has moved to DC, and is the primary creator behind the newest version of Superman. It should come as no surprise, then, that Superman has, for a generation that grew up on Marvel movies, become, well, a Marvel movie — not just any Marvel movie, but a jokey, music-driven one. In 2025, Superman is determined to fit into the mold that has been created by previous similar films — the "comp titles" of a risk-assessment justification. It's a movie made to please a Wall Street investor, first and foremost.

This Superman is anchored by the formidable, appealing, comfortable presence of David Corenswet. He looks and feels just right in the role of Superman, the alien (we are told, over and over and over) come to Earth to do good deeds. He is, without doubt, the best part of this Superman. More than anyone who has donned the cape since Christopher Reeve, he looks, sounds and behaves the parts of both Superman and Clark Kent.

He does that in spite of working with a script that goes more or less disastrously wrong from the start. This isn't an origin story for Superman — we're expected to know a lot of his background going in, and the movie cuts corners in its first scene, giving us a written prologue that establishes we're already 33 years into the Superman story. There's no scene-setting, no exposition, no introduction to characters; Superman jumps right in and expects us to keep up.

That's mostly all well and good, except it gives us no emotional center to the film — we don't know what this Superman's personality is, what he believes in, who he is, only the trope that's in our heads when we walk into the auditorium. Superman and Lois Lane? They've been dating for three months when this movie starts. Superman's secret identity? It's hardly a thing, and Lois knows it, anyway. Lex Luthor? He's the bad guy — you don't need to know why.

The first third of Superman is an abject disaster, skimping on characterizations, plot set-up and dramatic exposition. These aren't small things for a movie to dispense with. Eventually, Superman gets going, though it seems almost by accident. None of the actors are given any time to create characters, the movie assumes you'll do the heavy lifting. This proves particularly problematic for Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane, who never develops as a character throughout the entire film. She's plucky, she's got the voice down, and Brosnahan does more than try, but this Lois isn't much more than window dressing.

She's lost in a film that has far too many characters — other superheroes from the "Justice Gang"; not just Lex Luthor, but his henchmen and cronies; warring (and fictional, lest the film offend anyone) nations somewhere in some weird part of the globe where Eastern Europe abuts Pakistan, plus a host of other minor players who become all but impossible to keep track of. By the time the movie reveals a — SPOILER ALERT — dark and evil clone of Superman, the whole thing feels off the rails.

As Superman encounters black holes, proton rivers, "pocket universes," and much more, it's almost impossible not to long for the simplicity of putting one hero up against one grand villain until Superman wins and proves he's fighting for truth, justice and the American Way.

It's hard to know what this movie wants to be, except, of course, a franchise extension, a lucrative new effort to tell a Superman story for a new generation.

But like I said up front, every generation gets the Superman it deserves — so this one seems particularly telling and disconcerting. It's a meaningless piece of "action-adventure" overstuffed with CG monsters (and, sadly, a CG dog, who's adorable despite not being an actual dog at any time); saddled with the dullest, most generic and least inspiring musical score in Superman history; and directed by a man whose overriding objective is to "extend franchises," not simply make good movies.

At its best, this is an entirely adequate Superman movie, one that looks and feels like a Marvel movie, one that is, first and foremost, a superhero movie in the ways that bean-counters like best. It's essentially risk-free. It's designed to maximize value, to inspire consumer products, and to do very, very well on streaming — which is where it will find its largest audience, who will be forgiving, uncritical and largely unaware that 47 years ago the movies proved Superman could be a real movie star.

Nearly a century after he was created, Superman deserves so much better than this. David Corenswet deserves so much better than this. It's frenetic, it's illogical, it's slavishly faithful to its comic-book origins — and it's usually minimally entertaining. It's the Superman this generation deserves.

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird ... it's a plane ... it's an IP-forward entertainment franchise extension with strong consumer product potential and long-term revenue-value as a streaming title!

Viewed July 20, 2025 — AMC Burbank 16

2000

"Sorry, Baby"

   ☆☆☆☆ 

Agnes isn't the most comfortable person to be around. Even when she's trying to get cozy, there's something ever so slightly off about her. So as Sorry, Baby begins, it takes a little while to understand just how profoundly disturbed she is, how difficult life has become for her.

This small, profoundly insightful movie is written and directed by Eva Victor, the woman who plays Agnes. She is a fascinating person to watch. As the movie jumps around in time — a method of storytelling that is as effective as it is sometimes distracting — it is clear that Agnes has never had the same ease in life that comes so naturally to others. She is always just a little nervous, always just a little tentative. She looks like she might break easily.

It turns out Agnes does not break easily at all. What she does is bend — uncomfortably, perhaps unnaturally, and in ways she never expected.

Sorry, Baby is about the way Agnes experiences, survives and then recovers from a sexual assault, but it isn't a Movie of the Week or Afterschool Special sort of story, where lots of people misunderstand what happened or don't believe her or think she must have brought it on herself. It's about the way she comes to terms with what happened, and the way everyone around her, like her close friend Lydie (Naomi Acker) and rural neighbor Gavin (Lucas Hedges) try in their limited but loving ways to help.

This is a slow, quiet movie, filled with uncomfortable silences and scenes that feel disjointed and moments that seem emotionally inappropriate and half-formed, and none of that is meant to imply that Sorry, Baby isn't a tremendously well-made, deeply insightful movie. It's just that for someone like Agnes, life after her experience is slow, filled with uncomfortable silences, and often feels disjointed and half-formed.

This is a rare movie, because it tries to observe a truth — not delve into the mind and heart of a character, but to watch as she struggles with the kind of ordinary tragedy and bland betrayal that exists in too many lives. There are moments when Agnes struggles to recount just what happened, or to clarify for others why it matters to her so much; it's a movie about people who have trouble expressing themselves, so in that way, it's a movie about pretty much every one of us.

There are times when it feels almost too slow, when it seems to meander a little too much, and then Sorry, Baby does something wonderful and completely untelegraphed in its final few scenes. Agnes meets a stranger who seems fundamentally to understand what she cannot make sense of. Their interaction is brief but deeply moving. And then there is one more moment between two important characters.

I'm not going to explain what it is or how it happens, only to say that in the final moments of Sorry, Baby, the title makes perfect and beautiful sense, and suddenly this movie about one very specific person dealing with one very specific moment in her life becomes —spectacularly but quietly — about everyone in the audience who is just trying to find a way forward in a world that doesn't make enough sense. Or, really, maybe, any sense at all.

Viewed July 4, 2025 — AMC Century City

1545

"The Life of Chuck"

  ☆☆☆½ 

It seems so long ago, but it wasn't, that TV commercials used to be slick affairs with significant budget, little 30-second movies unto themselves. They could make us cry. Back when we used to care enough to send the very best or to reach out and touch someone, commericals about parents and children — or, especially, grandparents and children — were enough to make grown people teary.

Here we are in the ad-free-tier 21st century, when commercials tell us we smell or we need pharmaceutical intervention for diseases we never imagined we could have. Trying to make us cry with sappy sentimentalism is no longer the purview of advertisers.

Leave it, then, to Stephen King. Yes, the conjurer of nightmares is an old softie at heart (something, to be fair, we've known at least since Stand By Me), and he is the master manipulator behind The Life of Chuck, which began as a novella-length short story and now is a movie from the man who directed Doctor Sleep.

I wasn't a fan of Doctor Sleep. which struck me as dull and reverential. The Life of Chuck is reverential, though it's never dull, but its sentimentality has about as much depth as those old commercials. It involves parents and children — and, especially, grandparents and children — and at times it is enough to make grown people teary.

Yet it earns those tears about as fairly as the ads did. It takes a hard heart to watch (this will seem like a spoiler, but isn't) a dying person wish for more life, to watch his family cry for him, and not feel something.

The Life of Chuck is about a dying man whose story is told roughly backward, from the actual moment of his death through to his youth. It's got an interesting structure, and even though I knew the basic contours of the plot (as most people likely will) going in, the first third of the movie was incongruous and puzzling enough to draw my attention. Chiewetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillen star in the first third, playing engaging but weirdly anonymous who are living through some odd sort of apocalypse in which the strange presence of a man named Chuck plays a vital role.

The second third tells us more about Chuck (mostly played by Tom Hiddleston, also weirdly anonymous), and the third third tells us about Chuck as a youngster, when he learned to dance — a fact that makes the second third much more interesting in retrospect.

It's a curious and almost-effective structure, with genuine pathos in the second third that is largely undone by a final act that — despite the animated presence of Mark Hamill — is unexpectedly anodyne and inert. The last couple of shots should wrap everything up, but don't; and the movie, which already feels long, seems to be truncated.

None of which is to imply that The Life of Chuck is bad or not recommended. It's worth seeing, but only just, and only by those who don't easily get toothaches from sweet things. It's very sweet. Very, very sweet. So sweet, it might make you cry just a little ... and maybe want to brush your teeth after.

Viewed June 19, 2025 – AMC Topanga 12

2015