Category: Drama
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Train Dreams: Pictures and a Thousand Words
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. Train Dreams (2025) Clint Bentley As the only truly film-obsessed member of my family, I’ve spent considerable time convincing my wife, parents, and siblings to watch movies with me that they’ve never heard of. Train Dreams was the movie today as we’re all together for Thanksgiving, and I know for a fact my family missed out on one hell of a film as I watched this one by myself.…
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Die My Love: The Dog Told Me Everything I Needed to Know
Die My Love (2025) Lynne Ramsay I’m sorry, I raced to the theater from school this afternoon for this? With Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson at the helm, I figured that Die My Love would be an easy win, but this film instead became one of the few examples of a bad movie with multiple outstanding performances. Simply put, the story and subtext of the movie just never came together for me. I’m…
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Blue Moon: Appreciating Beauty Wherever You Find It
Blue Moon (2025) Richard Linklater I knew that I was going to love Blue Moon when I first put it on my watchlist at the beginning of the year. A Richard Linklater film about Rodgers, Hart, and Hammerstein with Ethan Hawke and Margaret Qualley? It was settled then and there, and predictably, I was bewitched by this movie. I’m not the most versed in Linklater—though I’ve loved Hit Man, School of Rock, and Dazed and…
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Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere: Stuck in the Biopic Blues
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (2025) Scott Cooper Much like the superhero fatigue that has plagued society for the last few years (funny, though, considering that’s when I decided to start watching them), it feels like the music biopic’s time in the sun has come and gone, yet a new music biopic comes out every six months. Even with some fatigue in the genre, I wanted…
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After the Hunt: Call Me By Your Next Movie
After the Hunt (2025) Luca Guadagnino My first two Luca Guadagnino experiences—Call Me By Your Name and Challengers—were both knockouts, so I came to expect greatness from Guadagnino, only to be let down last year by Queer. Like Ariana Grande in the late 2010s, Guadagnino seems to be prioritizing quantity over quality recently, and that continued with After the Hunt. I was definitely drawn in by the director’s pedigree and the stacked primary cast…
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Roofman: The Man Who Stole My Heart, Among Other Things
Roofman (2025) Derek Cianfrance Heading into Roofman tonight, I had been led to believe by its marketing that this was going to be a straight studio comedy, and that couldn’t have been much further from the truth. While there were certainly plenty of laughs to go around—and I mean plenty—Roofman really surprised in its emotional storytelling and family dynamics, which had me not only cheesing for most of the movie, but on the…
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The Smashing Machine: The Boulder Has Entered the Ring
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. The Smashing Machine (2025) Benny Safdie I’ve always been a fan of athletes finding a second life in acting, whether they gun for the more dramatic roles like Dave Bautista or they go full comedy like John Cena and Marshawn Lynch. I’ve always enjoyed The Rock’s movies, but his résumé was always missing a dramatic turn that The Smashing Machine has now impressively satisfied. I totally get that…
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Light of the World: Redeeming the Age-Old Narrative
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. Light of the World (2025) Tom Bancroft and John J. Schafer I remember hearing about both The King of Kings and Light of the World around the same time this year, and I initially believed Angel Studios would come out on top. Angel Studios left the door open for Light of the World to take the top spot on my 2025 Animated Jesus Movie List, and boy, did it ever do just…
