"After the Hunt"

 ☆☆

I could lie. Lying would be thematically appropriate when talking about Luca Guadagnino's After the Hunt, which is a movie about truth, lies, beliefs, philosophies, all that heady stuff. So, I could easily lie and tell you that the movie had me riveted. But here's the truth, and it's one I don't like to say: I dozed off watching After the Hunt.

On paper, After the Hunt should be fascinating and compelling, but something goes terribly wrong, and the movie is only interesting in fits and starts and sometimes it moves so slowly, so coyly, that ... well, I can't make excuses. Yes, I nodded off, and I'm embarrassed about it, so take that into consideration.

Is it fair to write a review about a movie that I watched in such a state? What's fair, anyway? Maybe I'm entitled to do so simply by virtue of having been in the theater while it screened. It's the kind of argument that one of the film's characters might make.

They're all academics — not just any sort of academics, either, but professors and students at Yale University, where Julia Roberts is Alma Imhoff, a philosophy professor who lectures about Foucault's Panopticon and is on the tenure track. So is Andrew Garfield's Hank, who she used to mentor. Alma has a long and passionless and shockingly unbelievable marriage to Frederik (Michael Stuhlbarg, playing it soft and emasculated), and they have an even more shockingly unbelievable house where they hold a party at the beginning of the movie.

During the party, a PhD student of Alma's named Maggie (Ayo Edibiri) engages in the kind of witty banter in the warmly lit living room that might feel like it was lifted straight out of a Woody Allen film shot by Carlo DiPalma or Sven Nykvist. To a large degree, After the Hunt seems to revere Allen, down to the opening titles — white Windsor Light lettering against a black screen.

But ... Woody Allen? The once-hallowed director brought down by allegations of sexual misconduct? What is Guadagnino saying here? Within moments, it's clear: After the Hunt exists less as a melodrama than as a political statement against the sins of political correctness, cancel culture, and ultra-liberal moral relativism.

After that opening party, Hank takes Maggie home. The next day, she alleges that Hank may have done ... something. She tells Alma, who is not just good friends with Hank, but also has had an affair with him. All of which sounds intriguing, except After the Hunt takes a ... very ... very ... long ... time ... to establish all the contours of its plot, and when it finally does, all of it feels half-thought.

It's as if Nora Garrett, the screenwriter, is aware of all the hot-button topics the movie covers, but just barely. The movie doesnt' dive too deeply into any of them. After the Hunt takes about a dozen big issues, ranging from trans rights to cancel culture to academic politics, and gives all of them lip service but can't figure out how to narrow in on the most salient ones. It's a weirdly unfocused movie, which combined with its glacial pace makes it a challenge to sit through.

Is it about the aftermath of sexual assault? Is it about personal responsibility to speak out against injustice? Is it about entitlement? Gender disparities? The decline of patriarchal authority? Sexual identity? Academic integrity? Maybe it's about all of those things, but scattered among them is a specific story about Alma, her problematic past and her (yes, really) pill addiction. 

It's no wonder, then, that as good as the actors are — and there are moments when Roberts comes close to equalling some of her best work — they often seem lost. When Chloë Sevigny comes on screen in an unflattering wig and glasses, she seems genuinely confused about what she's supposed to be doing. If the other actors appear relatively more confident, they're also perplexed about the film's viewpoint and motivations. The performances may be technically sound, but they're uniformly unconvincing.

So's the film — so much so, I lost the struggle it posed. The final third is nominally better than the rest of it, until a final epilogue scene that feels so irrelevant and unbelievable that it undermines the already shaky ground the rest of the movie occupies and presents such a morally and ethically unlikely scenario that it seemed to undermine many of the film's primary arguments.

Frustrated, often confused by motivations, I finally had to give up. You may have a different response. But if you do go see After the Hunt, go ahead and bring along a pillow. Just in case.

Viewed October 28, 2025 — Regal Sherman Oaks

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"Frankenstein"

 ☆☆☆☆

More and more, the question to ask about movies isn't, "Is it any good?" but, "Can I watch it at home while doing sixteen other things?" Movies are being made to appeal to viewers who treat "content" (Hollywood's favorite word of late) as "second-screen" or even "third-screen" entertainment. They've turned their streaming service to a movie, but they're watching Instagram videos on their iPhone while talking with a friend on FaceTime.

When it comes to movie watching in 2025, the movie is almost beside the point.

Netflix has come to excel at these sorts of disposable movies for fractional attention spans. It doesn't matter if they're good or bad, as long as they're ... on.

And yet, once a year Netflix comes out with a half-dozen movies made to feel like old-fashioned movie theater movies, the kinds of films that compete for Oscars and get recognized by critics. This year, Netflix begins its "halfway-decent-movies" juggernaut with Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. What an odd thing to do. Anyone who tries to watch this movie while doing something else will come away perplexed.

To most people, even after 90 years, Frankenstein's creature is still Boris Karloff with the flat head and the neck bolts and those boots. To those who know anything about Mary Shelley's novel — and Guillermo del Toro knows a lot about it — Dr. Frankenstein and the creature he creates is not like that at all.

Viewers expecting a "horror movie" will be nonplussed to discover del Toro's made a gothic melodrama, a movie in which one character dies so beautifully that crimson blood spreads under her stunning dress as she's laid on a rock and whispers words of love that Jane Austen might have found a bit too silly.

Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein demands patience, attentive viewing, and careful listening — not qualities that Netflix has tended to encourage in viewers. And despite the existence of 55-inch and 65-inch and even 95-inch TVs, much of what del Toro has created for this film will be lost on motion-smoothing home screens.

That's because del Toro has made a real, honest-to-God movie with Frankenstein, and I had the pleasure of seeing it in a movie theater, projected on 35-millimeter film, and it’s a captivating experience. If nothing else, the movie is masterful at creating and sustaining the exaggerated, almost campy, high emotions and extreme drama of Gothic fiction. If you thought del Toro indulged his gory, Gothic whims a little too much in Crimson Peak, wait until you see Frankenstein.

The general contours of the tale are well known — the "mad scientist" who stitches together corpses and re-animates them through electricity, creating a fearsome and often pitiful creature. The surprisingly large scope of Mary Shelley's original novel is maybe less known (though it has been adapted rather faithfully a number of times), so del Toro plays with a lot of the ideas in it.

He plays a little too much (and illogically) with the ways Frankenstein's "monster" can be killed, and because del Toro takes a lot of liberties here, the movie winds up being almost ponderous in its repeated ruminations on life, death and the meaning of existence. 

But del Toro has assembled a cast that is more than game and willing to risk looking very, very silly in billowing costumes with wild hair that blows in the wind to help express emotion. Oscar Isaac, Christoph Waltz, Charles Dance, Mia Goth and most especially Jacob Elordi are unafraid to look silly — courage del Toro's direction rewards.

Isaac is the doctor and Elordi is his creation, and while we remember from the 1930s (and 1974's "Young Frankenstein") that the creature mostly expresses himself through grunts and moans, that's neither true in Shelley's novel nor here, where the "monster" becomes more and more eloquent. Since he's played by tall, handsome Jacob Elordi, he also becomes almost comically sexy, though Elordi always finds a strong beating (if undead) heart. He's impressive, expressive and surprisingly elegant.

So is the movie. It really is. True, it goes on for about 20 minutes too long and contains far, far too much CGI (the central set looks like it was digitally ported over from Wicked), but this is a compelling, thoughtful and exciting movie. Is it any good? It most certainly is — but will anyone notice?

How strange and sad (much like the monster itself) to imagine how little attention most people will pay to watching it. It's a movie truly designed to be seen in a movie theater, yet like the poor monster himself, it is fated to have a miserable, ignoble existence that ignores its true potential. It’s going to be another piece of interchangeable content.

Viewed October 21, 2025 — Egyptian Theater

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"Good Boy"

☆☆☆½ 

As a horror movie, Good Boy is pretty toothless. It's an okay haunted-house story with a couple of really nice jolts and a PG-13 rating that seems a bit on the strict side. There's a solid argument to be made that on the horror scale, Good Boy is more of a family film, pretty safe for everyone who wants some gentle scares.

But as a star vehicle, a movie that exists to present the world to a new screen sensation, Good Boy excels.

The performer in question is named Indy, a Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever who technically co-stars alongside a few human performers, but because the whole movie is told from Indy's point of view, they're almost never seen.

What happens to Indy's human, a man named Todd (played, almost incidentally, by Shane Johnson) moves into a remote house in the middle of some rather forbidding woods. Todd is suffering from a serious illness, and he's having a hard time. His sister, Vera, doesn't like the idea of him being out there in the house that used to be owned by their grandfather, who died under some rather awful and potentially horrifying circumstances. Grandpa had a loyal dog named Bandit, who has been missing since the old man's death.

Indy is a loyal dog, a good boy if ever there was one, and watches Todd go through his physical decline, all the while paying attention to a rather sinister presence in the house that he, but not Todd, can sense.

The presence comes closer. It's shadowy and scary and lurks in all the dark corners, and Indy is ... aware.

Indy worries about Todd. And when the thing comes closer, it coincides with Todd's decline in both physical and mental health. Todd does some very mean (but don't worry, dog lovers, not that awful) things to Indy, but Indy never loses his faith in the man.

Indy doesn't understand what is happening. Then again, neither does Todd. But Indy knows that there's something in the house.

That's pretty much the whole movie. Indy watches this thing in the shadows, which sometimes makes an appearance.

When I was a kid, the dog movie Benji became a huge hit. Benji wasn't about much. The filmmakers kind of constructed a movie around the things that Benji (the actor) did as Benji, the character. But we all loved it, because Benji seemed so ... human. What an actor! Well, let's just say that Benji has nothing on Indy. Benji was a performer. Indy is a star. It's possible to imagine other movies told from Indy's perspective. Indy manages to hold the film in ways most human actors can never manage.

Like I said, Good Boy is just passable as a scary movie. It's only 72 minutes long, for one thing, barely long enough to qualify as a feature film. It turns out there's a reason. Playing with Good Boy when I saw it, placed after the film, is a five-minute featurette with writer-director Ben Leonberg, in which he explains how the movie was made.

It turns out that the secret to this movie was an almost infinite amount of patience. Leonberg took an interesting concept — telling a story from the dog's point of view — and pulled it off by using a film technique known as the Kuleshov effect. It's a fascinating thing: a man with a neutral expression is juxtaposed with a bowl of soup, a girl in a coffin, and a pretty girl, and even though the man's expression never changes the audience perceives him as hungry, sad, and lustful based solely on what he's implied to be looking at. It's this effect, Leonberg explains, that allows Indy to become a great performer.

Indy is mesmerizing. He makes the film. So what if the performance happened in the editing room? It might be a first for a dog, but it's happened to plenty of human actors who became stars.

The dog should have such a fate.

Viewed October 17, 2025 — AMC Universal 16

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"One Battle After Another"

 ☆☆☆☆☆

Don't be fooled by appearances. Although it's been more than a month since my last post about a current film, those weeks have been filled with moviegoing. The focus, however, has been on the growing number of theaters in the Los Angeles area that specialize in older films, and given the selection of big-budget studio releases lately, watching the massively underrated Joe Versus the Volcano or Terry Gilliam's messy and disjointed marvel Brazil have seemed far better options.

Paul Thomas Anderson's sprawling, unpredictable, and almost impossibly entertaining One Battle After Another makes for quite a spectacular return to the current cinema. No Anderson film has ever been without its interesting qualities, and some, like There Will Be Blood and Magnolia, are among cinema's great achievements.

So it's no small feat that with One Battle After Another, Anderson tops even himself. While there are moments in which it can seem too overstuffed, too complicated and byzantine, every excess is ultimately forgivable in a film that makes a 2 hour, 50 minute running time seem like nothing at all.

Even more astonishing is how One Battle After Another was decades in the making and more than a year in production, but is so prescient and pointed about current political flashpoints that conservative, MAGA-style pundits have begun actively complaining about the movie, saying it's loaded against them, that it glorifies left-wing politics and makes heroes out of its "Antifa-style" protagonists.

Which it does. Gleefully. Proudly. Inspired by or loosely based on Thomas Pynchon's Vineland (enough that Pynchon and his novel get on-screen credit), the movie telegraphs its political leanings right from the start, putting us into the thick of a mission by leftist revolutionaries to free hundreds of detained immigrants from the clutches of a militarized police force so vile it's run by a man with the cartoonish name Lockjaw (Sean Penn). The revolutionaries are called French 75 and are led by Perfidia Beverly Hills  (Teyana Taylor) and Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio). She's a fierce, committed warrior, unafraid to come face-to-face with Lockjaw, and certain about her cause. He's idealistic, laconic, and hopelessly in love with Perfidia Beverly Hills.

But she won't let love get in the way of her fight, and after she gets pregnant, she leaves the baby girl in the care of Bob and fellow French 75 member Deandra (Regina Hall), and sixteen years later the girl is a young woman who is testing the boundaries of her life, which has been constrained by Bob's fear of being found. He's right to be afraid, because Lockjaw has vowed to hunt him down.

Most of the movie, while set against some extreme (and distressingly familiar) political violence, becomes the story of Lockjaw's relentless pursuit of Bob and the daughter, Willa (played with incredible intensity by Chase Infiniti), after Perfidia — following an incident of terrifying violence — drops out of the world. To escape Lockjaw's dogged determination to find them, Bob and Willa seek the help of a Spanish-speaking karate sensei who leads a sort of underground railroad allied with what's left of Bob's revolutionary idealism.

For a moment, it looks like Bob and Willa might be safe, but Lockjaw won't let it go. He is Ahab to Bob's constantly stoned, Dude-abiding whale. The setup, both complicated and, ultimately, remarkably simple, gives Anderson the opportunity to do something he hasn't done before — show that he knows how to make an action movie. Does he ever. Woven into his story of politics, loyalty and relentless dedication to a cause are scenes of seat-gripping, gasp-inducing intensity. They're also — and this is the really unexpected thing — enormously fun and funny.

Anderson wastes no opportunity to make One Battle After Another into many things rolled into one: intense drama, sensational action, and, most satisfyingly, unpredictable comedy. I laughed harder than I have in even the highest-profile comedies, but they're mixed with bold and surprising action, so well edited and shot that a few of the chase sequences almost certainly will be included alongside the all time great action moments.

One Battle After Another is a movie that earns both the attention it receives from rapt audiences, and the many laughs and gasps it elicits along the way. It's a movie of big ideas, big images, and big characters. Penn's Lockjaw will go down as one of the most loathsome and wildly inappropriate military creations since Dr. Strangelove, a movie that shares some of the same DNA. Lockjaw's story leads to some of the most unexpectedly pointed political satire of recent years. It's no wonder conservative extremists are so worked up over One Battle After Another. They are the targets that this film aims for — and constantly, satisfyingly, always hits.

Viewed October 3, 2025 — Vista Theater

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