Category Archives: 2025 Movies
Dust Bunny (2025)
Bryan Fuller is one of those names in television that is spoken of like an institution, at least for geeks. The man is responsible for short-lived but beloved TV series like Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, Hannibal, and launching the new Star Trek Discovery universe as well as cracking the “un-adaptable” Neil Gaiman novel, American Gods, at least for its brilliant first season before he and co-creator Michael Green were jettisoned for cheaper alternatives. That’s the other thing about Bryan Fuller, he tends to wear out his welcome fast for such an eponymous show-starter. Whether it’s work habits or ego, or just butting heads with foolhardy execs, Fuller tends to get pushed out on his projects. That’s why a movie written and directed by Fuller has immediate and immense appeal. Here’s a singular vision from one of TV’s most unique creators, and he doesn’t have to fret about having to craft a season of storytelling. He just has to concern himself with 100 minutes of hopeful entertainment. Dust Bunny has a crackerjack premise, a great leading man, and some stylish flourishes and fun, and yet I walked away, after eight years removed from seeing a Fuller project, not feeling particularly swept away.
A ittle girl, Aurora (Sophie Sloan), hires a hitman (Mads Mikkelsen) to kill the monster hiding under her bed. Boom. Sold. Naturally, the jaded hitman who’s seen it all doesn’t believe the little girl. Now not only will he have to defend the little girl from a potential monster, he’ll have to fend off other hired guns and assassins trying to take out this kid because she “knows too much.”
Given that hook, I thought that Dust Bunny was going to be a monster movie by way of a hitman movie, but really it’s much more of a glib and exhausting hitman movie with the idea of a monster until the final fifteen minutes of chaotic culmination. I thought there was going to be a much more compelling and charming relationship between the two characters, possibly forming a surrogate father/daughter relationship as they descend into a realm of danger even an experienced man of action is ill-equipped for. I thought Dust Bunny was going to be more of a Guilermo del Toro-style fantasia and instead it’s far more akin to those Tarantino ripoffs with a stilted attitude in place of stakes and originality. This is much more akin to flimsy style-over-substance dross like Gunpowder Milkshake or Polar (also starring Mikkelsen) than del Toro. This is far more of a hitman movie that occasionally remembers, oh yeah, there’s this whole fantasy/horror element that could make it stand out. There’s so much about our lead hitman having to worry about this little girl because she saw his face and can identify him. There are teams of other hitmen that want to bump her off, sent by his own handler, Laverne (Sigourney Weaver). As a hitman movie, it’s pretty dull because our hero is overpowered and under matched. At no point will you worry for his own sake, and plus, just sending disposable humans into the same apartment night after night is boring. I’ve seen those kinds of movies before, even the ones that are just self-infatuated style orgies of violence. What makes this movie unique is the freaking monster, and it doesn’t really take hold until the very end of the movie, not coincidentally the best part. At that point, Dust Bunny becomes a whimsical variation on Tremors, where the unwitting participants cannot touch the floor, lest they be eaten by a monster under the floorboards. It’s a lot harder to have your shootouts and fights while balancing on scarce end tables (what if the fantasy monster could really transform the floor into lava? Oh, the nasty possibilities).
If Dust Bunny was just an exercise in vacuous style, I might find some fleeting pleasures from it, but the whimsical tone takes the premise of an unorthodox fable and mutates it under insufferable irony. It’s the kind of movie that knows you’ve seen glib hitman movies before, and it’s playing into those expectations with an attempted ironic distance but instead it just comes across as annoyingly circuitous conversations. The pained banter became baffling as characters attempted to take what the previous character said and nothing while just pushing the conversation forward a millimeter. These are not funny exchanges. These are not examples of cutesy dialogue. It’s just maddening nonsense that runs in circles, and I found myself mentally tuning out whenever it kept repeating. For me, the dialogue was too irreverent for its own good.
There’s a really engaging and imaginative movie on the outskirts trying to push on through. Having a little girl with a monster following her begs for further world-building and examination, let alone integrating the monster’s unique abilities and dangers. As it stands, all one has to do is stay off the floor during nightfall (a reintroduction of bedpans is an unfortunate must). Early on, it feels like the little girl is in real danger, as the monster literally lifts her bed off the floor and seems to try and shake her loose. Although throughout the daytime she still canoes around her lonely apartment on a giant hippo on wheels. I guess it’s a precaution or maybe she just wants to get better at apartment canoeing before nighttime when she really needs to make sure she can paddle. This is the last time you’ll feel she’s in actual danger. I wanted far less of the overtly stylish hitman antics and more of the perspective of a hitman thrust into a fantasy. Dust Bunny is a disappointing inverse, turned inside out, with a hitman movie with a different Big Bad. I’m not saying Fuller had to rely on staid fantasy storylines, like the girl is really some long-lost royalty to a hidden realm, never knowing her true identity and inheritance, and under attack from otherworldly forces wanting to usurp her throne. I mean I probably would have enjoyed that more, pushing our flinty hitman into entertaining fish-out-of-water fantasia rather than more hitman shootouts on repeat.
Dust Bunny was a frustrating experience for me from a creator that I frankly expected more from. Fuller’s always had a penchant for twee whimsy, genre blending, dark humor and the macabre, but I didn’t find his film debut nearly as cute and quirky as his television output. I found much of the tone grating and overly stylized, and while I’m sure the mannered directing is meant to better convey a fable, I impatiently grew tired of the minimalist sets, the repetitive deadpan dialogue, and the surprising lack of imagination. I wish the last act had been the whole movie. I can see fans of more malevolent 1980s children’s movies finding something to enjoy here, and over decades Fuller has certainly established enough of a fanbase to declare any entity a possible burgeoning cult movie. There are moments that made me reminisce about Jean-Pierre Jenuet (Amelie, City of Lost Children), but then I wondered what he would have done with this same premise and the comparison wasn’t so favorable any longer. I’m coming across too harsh because I wanted Dust Bunny to be much more given its premise and creative voice. There’s enough here that will qualify as passing entertainment for most viewers, especially for fans of twisted fairy tales. There’s just not enough here in execution to make me as eager for Fuller’s next feature film.
Nate’s Grade: C
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If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025)
I have been told by numerous friends and other critics that If I Had Legs I’d Kick You falls in that dreaded entertainment zone of the “difficult watch.” These are usually made up of admired movies tackling challenging subjects in unflinching ways, movies that are easier to admire than love. I was girding myself to finally watch If I Had Legs (this will be the reference for the title from here out because, frankly, I’m too lazy to type out an extra three words every reference), I found it pretty despairing, especially for women, especially for parents of young children, and especially for those suffering or who have suffered through some degree of post-partum depression. This movie is a sensory immersion into the frazzled, anxious, and punishing existence of our heroine, just trying to catch her breath or get a break in a universe that seems cruelly engineered to only provide stressors. It’s a truly phenomenal movie giving bristling life to the perspective of writer/director Mary Bronstein (Yeast), with stylistic and surreal touches that reminded me of Charlie Kaufman or even Franz Kafka. The tragi-comic absurdity, as well as the unrelenting existential anxiety, is meant to provoke a primal, wince-inducing response, eliciting sympathy for the countless mothers coasting hour-to-hour looking for a little oasis of relief. If I Had Legs is one of those rare feel-bad experiences that I not only admire but I think I actually love.
Rose Byrne plays Linda, a forty-something woman being pulled in every direction. Her young daughter is suffering from a physical malady that requires her to have a feeding tube, and she needs to gain weight in order to have the tube removed, but the child can’t gain weight because she doesn’t want to eat, and this obstacle is compounded by the hospital telling Linda if the child doesn’t meet her goal weight, then it’s a reflection of neglect, and Linda herself will have to attend parenting classes. The child is also, let’s put this nicely, very high-maintenance and attention-demanding. There’s also Linda’s husband who is away at sea and generally unhelpful and curt whenever caught on the phone. Linda also has a therapist (Conan O’Brien) who is likewise generally unhelpful and seems disdainful even talking to her. Then the roof of her apartment explodes with a torrent of water, and now Linda and her daughter have to live out of a local motel, further exacerbating all of their personal problems. It’s forty minutes in when the movie reveals Linda’s profession and I genuinely gasped: she’s a psychiatrist with her own very demanding clients to counsel. It’s not easy being Linda, but then again, there are plenty of Lindas in the world just waiting to catch a break.
This movie is a lot. It’s a lot to process, and it’s very deliberately using disorienting creative decisions to test your limits. The sound design is an especially effective dynamic that raises anxiety. Bronstein never shows you the face of Linda’s daughter, at least not until the very end of the movie, and there’s a stark reason for this. Our identity is Linda, and this voice that keeps coming in, frequently interrupting, occasionally screaming, and often compounding the stress of her mom, is designed to be viewed as a primary source of agitation. We don’t see the daughter because in this vision she doesn’t exist as a character but more as a burden. We view the child as Linda perceives her. There’s a trying sequence where Linda’s client leaves her baby behind and vanishes, forcing Linda to cart around a crying baby while frantically looking for the mother. The soundtrack of a crying baby is like a direct line to your nervous system that something is wrong and all you want is for the child to be soothed, but it keeps going for nearly five minutes straight, with that screechy wailing eating away at you one cry at a time. I can readily imagine my wife watching this movie and just turning it off after ten minutes.
The movie is packed with these creative decisions, all designed to make Linda’s perspective that much more empathetic and exhausting. For those tut-tuting Linda viewing her daughter as a burden, I’d ask for some grace, but also the movie doesn’t withhold criticism from its protagonist. She can be selfish as she’s spiraling, even seeking comfort in bad places. It would be harder to endure if the perspective was purely Job-like, wherein Linda relentlessly suffers because the universe is indifferent, or God is unhappy and spitefully targeting this poor woman. It does feel like everything is going wrong, but that’s also because we’re anchored in Linda’s perspective. Seeing things from her daughter’s perspective would make for a fairly different movie, but that’s not what this movie aspires to be. It’s not meant to be balanced, it’s meant to convey a very specific viewpoint, and that perspective feels like everything is stacked against you. In one key moment, what my pal Eric Muller dubbed Byrne’s “Oscar clip moment,” she unloads on her therapist and desperately pleads for someone to just tell her exactly what to do, to have responsibility and uncertainty stripped from her life. She wants a clear direction and the relief of knowing what to do, something that is rarely so clear in the adult world. It’s hard not to feel for Linda in the movie unless you’re actively trying to reject the vision of the director. If I Had Legs is a movie deliberately designed to be overstimulating and upsetting, so it’s going to be a select audience willing to wallow in the discomfort for the insight offered. I can see plenty saying, “Yeah, I live this, so no thanks.” I get it. After becoming a parent myself, my tolerance for emotionally-draining media certainly lowered. However, I think there’s ample artistic accomplishment to be savored with If I Had Legs that is worth treading the discomfort.
Byrne has been playing around the world of comedies since 2010’s Get Him to the Greek (a peak candidate for “most canceled cast” of the modern era, Byrne excluded) that I forgot how great she can also be in dramas. This is my favorite female performance of 2025. She is astounding. It’s smart to hire an actress of Byrne’s caliber, someone capable of finding the dark humor and exasperated guffaws of a life that feels like an assembly line of slaps to the face. The camera also rarely leaves her orbit, tacitly tying our sympathies, and it takes a lot to command the screen knowing your face is often going to be the measured focal point of every reaction to every slight and surprise and shock. She is the face of beleaguered motherhood, and it’s hard not to relate to at least a dozen moments of this nuanced and transcendent performance.
I don’t believe that If I Had Legs is unforgivably bleak; it’s certainly intense and agitating, but in order to make my finer point I need to spoil the end of the movie. However, dear reader, I truly don’t believe this is a movie that can be ruined through spoilers. So much of its appeal is the execution of such a specific vision, and to give one’s self over to that voice and its effect cannot be diminished through prior knowledge. It’s about the experience. Consider yourself warned, folks. Throughout the movie, the hole in Linda’s apartment ceiling becomes a sort of metaphor for her experience, an empty void. She dreams about losing herself inside the void, giving herself to the emptiness, and it’s easy to make a connection to darker impulses of self-destruction. This comes to a head at the very end, when Linda literally tries to run into the ocean to escape the troubles of her life, and the sea won’t have it, repeatedly throwing her back onto the shore. Even her attempt to escape ends up in tragic-comic slapstick. But it’s here where the movie switches gears, and we now see Linda’s daughter for the first time just as Linda is promising to be better for her. This changing of perspective effectively communicates Linda seeing her daughter, actually seeing her as a person rather than a nuisance, a peripheral voice of need and stress. The movie ends not on the harried breathing of Linda trying to calm down but on the hopeful smile of her daughter, and it might be misplaced optimism after a movie that feels plenty pessimistic, but I viewed this as a meaningful change. Even after all her struggles, even after her mistakes, there’s still the desire to do right for your loved ones, to improve.
I originally wanted to do a double review, pairing If I Had Legs with Die My Love, the newest Lynn Ramsey movie that explores the inexplicable loneliness of post-partum depression with Jennifer Lawrence trying to reconnect with her body, her sense of self, and the world as it was and is. I felt beforehand that the movies would have the connecting themes of the difficulties of motherhood, and they do, but I feel both movies are so tonally different in approach and execution that they deserve to be judged separately. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You might just be that hard-to-stomach film-experience so many have warned about (don’t expect the hamster to last long), but it’s such a transporting, exhilarating, and deeply humane vision executed to a remarkable degree of vibrant life. It’s personal and yet easily empathetic. It’s an unflinching and unsentimental portrayal not just of motherhood but of the difficulties of maintaining sanity in a world that often feels indifferent to your needs. It’s a difficult movie to watch, yes, but that doesn’t mean it lacks value and impact. If you’re brave and willing to wade through the deliberate discomfort, If I Had Legs is a remarkably good bad time at the movies.
Nate’s Grade: A
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Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 (2025)
I wasn’t a fan of the original 2023 movie based upon the insanely popular video game series that serves as an entry point into horror for kids. It didn’t work for me but I thought fans of the series would have fun watching the characters come to life in live-action. Now with the sequel, I don’t know anyone that could enjoy this dreck except for the most diehard of the Freddy’s fanbase. I’ve watched the movie and I couldn’t understand it. I read the Wikipedia summary and that didn’t clear it up. So much hinges on so many characters having peculiar responses and relationships to what are… killer animatronics powered by the spirits and literal corpses of murdered children. Why is this pizza parlor even still standing? These robots went on a killing spree in the first movie, and yet this lonely little girl misses her “friends” and runs away to see them again. This isn’t E.T. here, it’s a weird killer robot horror movie that seems to be making up its lore and rules as it goes, like one unending “yes and?’ improv game you’re desperate to tap out from. I guess there’s more killer robots this time, and some unintelligible distinction between the good bad robots and the really bad robots. I don’t know. I gave up trying to comprehend what was happening and felt like maybe I could just try and enjoy the minimal PG-13 scares and tension. The animatronic designs are solid. Wayne Knight (Seinfeld) appears as a villainous robotics teacher. There’s a marionette character that’s kind of sinister to watch. That’s about it, folks. It’s a fairly nonsensical waste of 100 minutes, and unless you’re steeped in the lore and history of the series, you too will wish that this town would just set fire to the whole parlor.
Nate’s Grade: D+
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Oh, Hi! (2025)
This feels like a charming rom-com by way of a 2010s no-budget mumblecore character-centric dramedy. Oh, Hi! follows a couple (Logan Lerman, Molly Hopkins) on a small vacation to the country to stay at an Air B&B farmhouse. They discover a closet full of bondage gear and get silly with it, strapping Lerman to the bed post. After their fun, it becomes clear there’s a dramatic misunderstanding between the couple. She thought they were an official exclusive couple. He thought they were non-exclusive and he says he’s not ready for any commitment. She leaves him in cuffs attached to the bed and promises that, in 24 hours, she can convince him to agree to be official boyfriend and girlfriend. I thought Oh, Hi! was going to be one kind of movie, maybe a kinky sex comedy (the comedic version of Gerald’s Game?), but it’s really more of a quirky relationship drama by way of kidnapping. The tone is balanced so you never feel the characters are at great risk, but it’s also hard to fathom how this turn of events will be an unorthodox relationship-builder (definitely a scenario that would play very differently if the genders were reversed). Oh, Hi! becomes more of a vehicle to reveal whether this couple should stay together or not, with Hopkins unleashing all of her romantic neuroses as a cathartic deluge. There is an organic escalation as more characters get drawn into this anxious scenario, but the movie loses its comic momentum in the last 20-30 minutes. There really is only so far you can go with this scenario, and when characters are reaching out to witchy spells to instill memory loss, we’re probably tapped out of ideas. Hopkins, who also co-wrote the script with director Sophie Brooks (The Boy Downstairs), is a charismatic find who elevates the comedy while still finding room to ground it in emotional vulnerability. Lerman can only do so much tied to a bed for most of the movie. It’s a fun little movie that finds some natural and effective comedy from its absurd kidnap-for-the-sake-of-the-relationship premise but it ultimately stalls out. Still, Oh, Hi! is full of small pleasures for a good while, from its ensemble, to its surprises, to the ever-shifting dynamic between the couple, and may prove worthwhile even for the commitment-phobic.
Nate’s Grade: B-
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Die My Love (2025)
A new Lynne Ramsay (We Need to Talk About Kevin) movie should be a cause of celebration. She’s only directed three movies since 2002 and each is worth every ounce of your consideration. They’re typically genre-defying triptych character studies of people with deep reservoirs of pain and isolation, and so her latest, Die My Love, is a natural fit as it explores one woman’s headfirst descent into post-partum depression. Jennifer Lawrence plays our lead character Grace, a vaguely defined “writer” transplanted to rural Montana, living in her husband’s (Robert Pattinson) family’s old home, but in reality confined is the better term. Ever since her child’s birth, Grace has felt disconnected; from her body, from her feelings, from her husband, from her sense of self. This is a showcase for Lawrence to unravel in a stylistic manner that could feel deeply authentic to millions of women post-birth. She’s struggling to feel something as strongly as she used to, to lift her head above the stormy waters of depression that has engulfed her, and this can lead to some dangerous and impulsive outbursts, like throwing herself through a glass door just to feel something. Her husband is no help, who leaves for long stretches of time on business and tries to act like nothing’s wrong (example of reading the situation entirely wrong: thinking this woman needs a puppy – note, it will not end well for the dog). He also may or may not be having affairs with other women, it’s hard to say what exactly is literal reality here. Ramsay and her co-screenwriters have elected to make a movie more about evoking the feeling of our lead’s alienation and confusion. It’s less about plotting, which unfortunately also hampers the characterization, keeping Grace more of a symbol for accessibility. What she’s going through feels vivid and authentic but she rarely feels like a fleshed-out character rather than an archetype to examine. The same with the supporting roles, including Lakeith Stanfield as her neighbor who she may be fantasizing about or more, it’s hard to say. There’s plenty of unspoken commentary on mental illness and the unfair expectations thrust upon women, especially new mothers, but much of Die My Love feels like winding up Lawrence and setting her loose to make a scene. Make no mistake, she is very very good at being disconnected and angry and raw. There are some bold artistic choices throughout but ultimately, because I didn’t feel connected to the characters, by the end I felt more exhausted by the emotional tumult rather than gaining better awareness of her plight.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Blue Moon (2025)
Ethan Hawke is transcendent in Richard Linklater’s Blue Moon, a glorified play set on the opening night of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma! on Broadway, except our star is Lorenz Hart (Hawke), the former lyricist and creative partner of twenty-five years for Rodgers (Andrew Scott). He’s nursing his gripes and hard-won insights at Sardi’s, commiserating with whomever might listen. This is a man who would talk himself hoarse. It’s a great showcase for Hart to expound upon his life, perspective, and desperation, whether it’s re-teaming with his former partner, hoping to get ahead of his alcoholism, the reason for Rodgers’ split, or the hope for love from a college girl (Maragret Qualley) who he’s so clearly projecting confused infatuation upon. Hawke is sensational as the troubled, egotistical, catty, funny, and clearly flailing musical genius who has accomplished so much but is so restless. There is so much to this performance, and each new conversation with someone at this bar feels like it’s unveiling a new dimension to our understanding of Hart, who can be convivial one moment and lacerating the next. I could listen to him prattle for hours. The subplot with the college girl infatuation has some obvious Lolita overtures, though it’s less lecherous middle-aged lust than an over-the-hill artist trying to feel important and wanted by somebody, even if he’s abusing his teacher-student relationship to achieve this (Hart was dealing with his repressed sexuality on top of everything). I found it illuminating in how someone as creative and cutting and incisive as Hart could be taken by his own self-delusions. Linklater lets the story take center stage and gives his stars the needed room to shine. This is that rare character study that finds its perfect lead and the best creative team to bring it to life. Blue Moon is one of the best movies of 2025 and I feel that Hawke’s career-best turn is the best male acting of the year.
Nate’s Grade: A-
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Nuremberg (2025)
Taking an Oscar-winning courtroom classic and eliminating 40 minutes sounds like a surefire gamble, and while Nuremberg has its heart in the right place, bringing Nazis to justice, it cannot help but feel like a more shallow and rushed version of 1961’s Judgement at Nuremberg. That’s not to say different movies cannot exist from the same source material or true story, even in the shadow of famous stories. However, this version feels strangely perfunctory, condensing the worldwide judicial response to the horrors of the Holocaust into a simplified buddy movie about a psychologist (Rami Malek) who has to learn the hard way that maybe, just maybe, Hermann Goring (Russell Crowe) might not be trustworthy. It’s frustrating that the depth of this story and the plight of so many is reduced to one guy getting too close to his subject as well as having to learn the most obvious lessons about applied evil. Also, the culminating courtroom showdown, where so much hangs in the balance and Goring has been hyped as the most of challenging of cross-examination opponents, and it all resolves so easily, with a different prosecutor essentially using a cheat code to undo Goring’s pseudo-intellectual front. It’s quite a lot of buildup for a, “Wait, that’s it?” response, and much of the movie follows this same disappointing route. The acting is relatively good all around, with Crowe especially good as a chummy narcissist, and the production quality is sufficient to recreate its post-war period, but I couldn’t help but feel that I was missing out on a richer story. It’s so flattened out and self-important with its limited details to actually satisfy. The ending tries to draw a direct line to Trump today and I don’t quite know if it’s done the work. Nuremberg is one of those Important Movies that garners early Oscar buzz on paper, and then when people actually see it, falls away as an also-ran, mostly because it was missing a few too many important elements to resonate. It takes 130 minutes for Malik to learn that Nazis might not make good friends. You’ll probably know that already.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Hurry Up Tomorrow (2025)
The pop star vanity project is a dubious film enterprise, though it’s been quite a while since we had a theatrically released bauble from one of the most popular singers in the world. Typically, if musicians want to get experimental and “arty” with a visual medium, they turn to longer-form music videos for even the entirety of a new album release, like what Beyonce and Halsey have done. That wasn’t good enough for The Weeknd, a.k.a. Abel Tesfaye, as he co-wrote a starring vehicle for himself that could be filmed alongside his world tour where he essentially plays an enigmatic version of himself that Jenna Ortega is obsessed with. At this rate, I’m surprised he didn’t write a scene where a bunch of women congratulate him on being the world’s best lover. Hurry Up Tomorrow is a glorified longer-form music video collection of extended musical performances and some more trippy experimental videos in the second half. It’s also a low-rent Misery with Ortega being a crazy fan who eventually takes her target of obsession hostage. She thinks she can help the troubled singer confront his past through her extreme therapy. If this was the whole dynamic, this could have been the movie rather than the final twenty minutes of it. It’s gob-smacking that Tesfaye is able to spare his life through the unquestioned power of song and his talent (“You had it in you all along, most talented superstar”). By the end, I don’t think anyone has learned anything after all the kidnapping and murders and arson except that Tesfaye has a pretty high opinion of himself. Unless you’re the biggest Weeknd fan, you’ll be left blinded by the meandering artistic hubris of Hurry Up Tomorrow. There’s just nothing here to grapple with besides the self-serious self-indulgence. What to expect from two of the three credited creators of HBO’s abysmal and cringe-inducing canceled-after-one-season show, The Idol?
Nate’s Grade: D
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It Was Just an Accident (2025)
Iranian writer/director Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon, The Circle) is an example of an artist literally willing to put it all on the line for his art. He’s been banned by the authorities of Iran from making movies, and then Panahi secretly made a documentary of himself serving as a taxi driver in 2015. Scanning his filmography, all of his movies after 2000 were either made “illegally” or banned in his home country before their release. He was sentenced to a six-year prison sentence in 2022 and was released shortly after undergoing a hunger strike. Panahi filmed his latest movie, It Was Just an Accident, in secret without knowledge by the Iranian Authority, which makes sense considering how openly critical it is about the regime. It won the Palm D’or, the top prize, at the 2025 Cannes film festival and has been one of the most acclaimed movies of the year. It’s also likely going to make life much harder for Panahi, who was also sentenced in absentia by Iran to another prison sentence for “propaganda activities.” Yet his art persists, and It Was Just an Accident is easily one of the finest movies of 2025 and it’s no accident.
It begins simple enough. A middle-aged man and his family have car trouble after accidentally hitting a stray dog (sorry fellow animal lovers, but at least you don’t see it). They are taken into a nearby garage and that’s where the owner overhears the family man’s voice and then freezes in terror. He sounds EXACTLY like the man who interrogated and tortured him for the Iranian government years ago. Could it be the same man? How can he verify? And if so, what does he plan to do with his possible former captor?
What a brilliantly developed and executed movie this is, taking a concept that’s easy to plug right into no matter the language and cultural barriers, and then to unfold in such contemplative, bold, and unexpected ways. It captures mordant laughter, poignant human drama, and a nerve-wracking thrills. Most of all it’s terribly unexpected. As more and more people get brought in on the kidnapping, and more reveal their personal trauma from their shared captor, I really didn’t know what the fate would be for anyone. Would they kill this man? If so, what would that say and how would they view themselves after? If not, what lessons might they have learned from this ordeal and what lessons might their former captor have learned? It really kept me guessing and because it’s so exceptionally well developed and written, the script could have gone in any direction and I would have likely found satisfaction. There’s even the question over whether or not all these people are mistaken and projecting their fury onto an innocent man. However, I will say, the movie flirts with Coen-essque dark comedy, almost at a farcical level for its first half as these amateurs stumble their way through a kidnapping plot they are not equipped to control (a woman is stuck in her wedding dress for the entirety of these vigilante deliberations). Then in its second half it transitions into a really affecting moral drama about the lengths of trauma and the desire for forgiveness as a key point toward processing grief and preparing oneself to move forward. Even though the circumstances are specific to Iran, the movie is emblematic of accountability and reconciliation, and those elements can be easily empathized with no matter one’s cultural borders.
As you might expect, this is a movie brimming with anger, but it’s not suffused with bitterness, which is a remarkable feat given its subject matter. This is a movie that unfolds like a crime thriller, with each scene unlocking a better understanding of a hidden shared history. Each new character provides a larger sense of a bigger picture of oppressive state control and abuses, with each new person adding to the chorus of complaints. Naturally, many of these victims want to seek the harshest retribution possible for a man who tortured them with impunity. It’s easy to summon intense feelings of outrage and to demand vengeance. The filmmakers have other ideas in mind that aren’t quite as tidy. It’s easy to be consumed by anger, by outrage, that surging sense of righteous indignation filling you with vibrant purpose. It’s another matter to work through one’s anger rather than simply serve it. I’m reminded of the masterful 2021 movie Mass, a small indie about two groups of parents having a lengthy conversation; it just so happens one couple’s son was killed in a school shooting and the other couple’s son was the gunman responsible. It was a remarkably written movie (seriously, go watch it) and a remarkably empathetic movie for every character. It’s easy to pick sides of right and wrong, but it’s so much more engaging, intriguing, but also humane to find the foundations of connections, that every person lives with their own regrets and guilt and doubts. It Was Just an Accident follows a similar moral edict. Every character is a person, and every person is deserving of having their perspective better known, and we are better having given them this grace.
I think the movie is also especially prescient about this time and place in American history. It very well may prove a sign of the future, detailing a populace of the abused and traumatized and the former aggressors who worked for an authoritarian agent and administered cruel violence to cruel ends. It’s not difficult to see a version of this movie set in, say, 2035 America, with a ragtag group of characters discovering a retired ICE agent who they all have an antagonistic relationship with. In many ways the movie is about Iran and its history of an oppressive government turning on its own people, but in many ways it can also be about any system of power abusing that power to inflict fear and repudiation. It’s about a reckoning, and that’s why I think while the movie is clearly of its culture and time it’s very easy to apply the movie’s lessons and themes and larger ideas to any country, It’s all about characters coming to terms with harm and accountability, and sometimes it takes a long time after the fact for the perpetrators to accept that harm has been done, especially if they can fall on the morally indefensible “just following orders” defense. In the near future, will ICE agents, especially the ones who joined up after Trump took office for the second time, argue the same as the Nazis at Nuremberg? Will they rationalize their actions as just fulfilling a job to pay a mortgage? It might even be overly optimistic to believe a reckoning would even occur in the not-so-distant future, not to the profile of the Nuremberg trials but even just an individual accounting of individual wrongdoing. That assumes an acceptance of wrong and ostensibly a sincere request for forgiveness. As I write this, with an ICE officer whisked away to the protective bosom of federal government after executing a woman shortly after dropping her child off at school, it’s difficult for me to even accept that those in power and so eager to impose their bottomless grievances upon the vulnerable and innocent would ever allow themselves to accept the possibility of blame or regret. But then again this is perhaps what the citizens of Iran felt and they’re presently marching in the thousands to protest their authoritarian government in 2026, so maybe there’s hope yet for we Americans in 2026 too.
There is a deliberate sense to every minute of It Was Just an Accident, from its long takes to its interlocking sense of discovery, to the questions it raises, answers, and leaves for you to ponder. It’s a movie that drops you into a fully-realized world with rich characters that reveal themselves over time. If there’s one pressing moral for Panahi, I think it’s that every person matters, even the ones we’re told have less value. This is an insightful, searing, and ultimately compassionate cry for justice and empathy. It will be just as effective no matter the date you watch it, but with a movie this good, why wait?
Nate’s Grade: A
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HIM (2025)
Setting a horror movie in the world of competitive sports, especially American football with its fandoms akin to dangerous cults of zealots, is a smart concept that could have so much possible commentary, from the sacrifices and exploitation of the players for the blood-lust of the fans, to the conspiracy of a cadre of white owners profiting from the labor of black athletes, to even the blinding psychopathy of extreme tribalism as an identity and dividing line. HIM does little to none of this, and being produced by Jordan Peele, I expected so much more than what I got. We follow a college phenom quarterback who wants to be the greatest, so he accepts an offer to train with a famous champion (Marlon Wayans) who puts him through a series of intense trials to prove whether he has what it takes. The horror elements are more confusing and surreal than unsettling, often crashing into unintentional comedy, like watching mascots with sledgehammers. This is one of those movies that seems to shift from scene to scene, with murky elements meant to keep the main character guessing but really just keeps the viewer guessing if this will ever come to something meaningful. The horror grew tiresome and repetitive. I was hoping for more scenes like where our young QB’s misses in practice lead to other players being physically abused, but mostly HIM hinges on tired occultly leftover furnishings, including an ending that is simultaneously underwhelming and predictable, a shrug meant as catharsis. An electrifying horror movie can certainly be made about the world of football. HIM isn’t it, let alone the possible GOAT.
Nate’s Grade: D
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