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Crime 101 (2026)
Sleek, sexy, and surprisingly character-centric, Crime 101 isn’t so much a how-to guide on criminal activities, it’s more a how-to on successfully replicating Michael Mann style of urban crime thriller. Chris Hemsworth plays a meticulous gentleman thief whose last job went bad. The LAPD detective (Mark Ruffalo) is on the case and is convinced there is one master thief connecting several high-end robberies along the 101 Highway in Los Angeles (thus the title, not in reference to a college class). Monica Barbaro (A Complete Unknown) is the romantic partner tempting our thief to retire to a “normal life.” Halle Berry plays an insurance broker to the rich who is eager to be made partner in her firm. And Barry Keoghan is, you guessed it, playing a psychopathic chaos agent. Draw all these characters into one big score, throw in one-or-two-scene players like Jennifer Jason-Leigh as Ruffalo’s divorcing wife, Nick Nolte as a grizzled criminal middleman, and Corey Hawkins as a police detective, and it’s quite a stacked cast for your standard crime thriller. That’s because, thanks to writer/director Bart Layton, the man behind one of the best movies of 2018, American Animals, which was also an unusual take on dispelling our movie fantasy notions on crime, and also co-starred Keoghan. Layton’s adaptation of the novel by Don Winslow keeps the people at the heart of the action. Trust me, the actual chases and schemes are indeed thrilling, but it’s the rich and generous characterization that makes the inner life of this movie feel so much more bristling. You could have taken any of these major characters and made them the focal point, they’re that interesting and complicated. Mixing them together into an ensemble while still finding time for each of their perspectives and idiosyncrasies is just a feast for fans of engrossing and empathetic thrillers. Whatever you’re expecting, Crime 101 is likely better than that. Layton, already proven to be a master at genre replication, deserves more film opportunities when he’s delivering quality movies that know how to deliver the goods.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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The Drama (2026)
A provocative cringe-comedy with some pointed questions about how well you can ever truly know a person, what we can forgive, and the challenges to confront our pasts. The Drama is about an engaged couple, Emma and Charles (Zendaya, Robert Pattinson), preparing for their big day. During a night of drinking with their maid of honor and best man, who happen to be married, the couples confess the worst thing they’ve ever done. Everyone is laughing until Emma reveals (I’m going to spoil her secret because: 1) it’s early in Act One of the film, 2) it’s essential to better understand the movie’s drama, 3) people deserve to know who otherwise would have no interest because of it) that as a teenage victim of bullying she had planned a mass shooting that she never went through with after a peer died in a different shooting. Charles is trying to square his view of Emma before and after this revelation, scrambling for context and rationalization while haunted by questions over whether these thoughts might resurface. I’m glad that writer/director Kristoffer Borgli (Dream Scenario) didn’t just assign Emma some feat of sexual exploration that made Charles feel emasculated and insecure. That would be too easy and expected. The mass shooting plot is so much more to reckon with, complicated by the fact that Emma declined to make it happen and even became a fierce advocate against gun violence, finding a community in her school that she lacked before. There’s not much in the way of larger commentary specifically relating to mass shootings or gun culture in America, which is a shame. Dream Scenario had some fantastic satire and commentary relating to celebrity, cancel culture, and ownership of identity. Most of The Drama is an awkward comedy of people trying to pretend everything is normal. It can make for great squirm-inducing giggles, like a couples photography session that never loosens up, or Charles trying to come up with analogies to explain his plight but having to keep adding additional context to get people to see things the way he wants. The end is a spectacular combination of misunderstandings and secrets coming to a head. Perhaps most surprising is that The Drama is measured not by human darkness and the capability of harm or self-delusion but in our capacity for hope and empathy. The concept of radical empathy is discussed, about accepting people for who they are and not who you wish they were, and Borgli challenges the viewer to reckon with our own judgements, biases, and limitations. Are we more than merely our worst moments? The Drama thinks so, and so do I.
Nate’s Grade: B+
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Avatar: Fire and Ash (2025)
When Avatar: The Way of Water was released in 2022, it had been 13 years since a new Avatar movie, so the return to Pandora was a reminder about how immersive and captivating this world could be, and another reminder that writer/director James Cameron can deliver blockbusters of scale like few others. Now it’s been three years in between Avatar movies and the novelty is definitely missing. Fire and Ash feels in many ways like Avatar 2.5, a direct holdover of characters and plots languishing from the second film. Some of this continuity is a given considering it’s an ongoing series, but each movie should feel like it’s own complete story. Too many of the characters feel stuck in the same place we left them by the end of the second movie, which means it’s another sequel where Zoe Saldana’s Neytiri spends most of those three hours bereft and crying before getting into fighting mode in that last climactic hour. There’s a general sense of same-ness to this story, extending conflicts and character arcs from the second but forgetting to give them more to do. The Na’Vi teens feel disconnected from the larger storyline, off assembling aquatic allies. Primarily, Fire and Ash is the story of Spider (Jack Champion), the son of dead Quaritch (Stephen Lang), raised by stepdad Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), and pursued by the Na’vi clone of his biological father (also Lang). He undergoes a physical transformation that makes him the object of desire for the greedy humans exploiting the natural resources of Pandora. I just didn’t care about Sully child #5 (a.k.a. Spider) when he felt like a tag-along to the group anyhow. To base the majority of the emotional arc of the movie around him is a bold and unfortunately unsuccessful gambit. There’s also a flamboyant and unstable Na’vi antagonist played with magnetic allure by Oona Chaplin (Game of Thrones, Taboo). The character isn’t particularly interesting but the brash commitment of Chaplin and her high energy, especially in a movie where so many other characters are morose and dull, makes you draw a little closer every time she’s onscreen. Bringing the same villain back for a third movie in a row, while failing to explore the more existentially compelling questions of identity of a clone, is just boring. The visual spectacle of the world, the special effects, the different elements all mixing together into a stunning photo-realistic tapestry is still world-class and state-of-the-art. The plots of the Avatar movies have never been as groundbreaking as their special effects but they were serviceable, reliable, and sincere, and they followed plot formulas that worked. This time Fire and Ash feels too much like the cobbled together leftovers of the second movie, and with the longest running time of the series yet, the whole experience feels bloated and overburdened with tying up storylines and threads that felt mostly completed with Way of Water. This movie probably could have been condensed down into 45 minutes of additional footage for the second movie. Sorry, James, but this one was more listless than transporting.
Nate’s Grade: C+
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Project Hail Mary (2026)
Being stranded for two hours in tight quarters with Ryan Gosling sounds like a dream come true for many. Something tells me I made this same joke except using Matt Damon’s name for the 2015 release of The Martian, another winning mixture of nuts-and-bolts scientific problem-solving and sci-fi exploration from best-selling author Andy Weir. Project Hail Mary is one of those big screen adventures that nourishes your imagination and heart. In short, it’s a rare full-package blockbuster, something to excite the senses as well as appeal to your intelligence to leave you fully satisfied. If you enjoyed the book like myself, then breathe easy, because the film has done this story a great justice. Best of all, it’s the rousing, heart-warming buddy movie you never knew you needed, and it all starts at the end of the world.
In the near future, science discovers an alien microbe that is literally eating the sun. The estimates are that our sun will dim over decades, causing widespread cooling and threatening the lives of billions. The world needs a hero. It got middle school science teacher and disgraced molecular biologist Ryland Grace (Ryan Gosling) instead, who awakens on a spaceship in a different stretch of the galaxy far, far away from Earth and its dimming sun. He has little memory of what transpired before and must piece together not just his understanding of who he is but also his world-saving mission that he now, unfortunately, is the only one who can accomplish. He’s very literally tasked with saving the world, so no pressure.
I’m going to avoid major spoilers but there is one plot development I feel needs to be discussed as it gets to the core appeal of the movie, so if you want to go into Project Hail Mary completely unspoiled, and I would advise it if you could, then end this review and come back once you’ve enjoyed the movie. For everyone else, let’s proceed ahead. Thankfully, the amnesia setup isn’t dragged out long. The film is structured to alternate between present-day problem-solving in space and flashbacks to Earth when Ryland was contacted by the top levels of the U.S. government to determine the extent of the unusual problem with water-molecule microbes somehow living and consuming the sun. The microbes are termed “astrophage” and release tremendous amounts of energy, enough so that they become the unexpected fuel for this long-shot space mission that Ryland finds himself the only survivor. He was never supposed to be mankind’s only hope (the other astronauts, the professionals, died from the induced comas for travel).
However, Ryland isn’t alone for long in the movie, and that’s where Project Hail Mary reaches a new level of entertainment and imagination. Our sun isn’t the only one affected by the astrophage, and Ryland is greeted by an alien spacecraft that has also traveled the long journey to figure out why this one sun is unaffected by the astrophage. The sense of discovery is greatly entertaining and I appreciated that there is something remarkably alien about our alien. Our intrepid alien will be nick-named “Rocky” because he best resembles a spider made out of rocks. That’s different. It’s not the old Star Trek school of slapping a forehead ridge onto somebody’s head and calling it a day. A significant and very gratifying sequence of the movie is just watching these two different lifeforms interacting and learning from one another. The language barrier has been explored before, most effectively in 2016’s grounded and somber Arrival. If Arrival was more the contemplative indie about conquering the linguistic challenges of first contact, then Project Hail Mary is the feel-good Spielbergian popcorn spectacle about saving the day and having fun. That doesn’t mean it’s a dumbed-down version; it just has different priorities, and chief among them is the winning buddy comedy of Gosling and a cuddly alien, two humble representatives of distant worlds in shared desperation for saviors. The relationship that blossoms between Ryland and our plucky, curious little space spider is naturally funny but also refreshingly serious too. Rocky is treated like an actual character, not some glorified pet or something to sell toys and Happy meals. He has a distinct perspective, learning curve, peculiarities, and determination that makes him feel more fully-developed than many human characters in terrestrial cinema. If you don’t walk away from the movie wanting your own personal huggable rock spider, then you watched a different movie than I did and, frankly, I pity you.
In my review for The Martian, I wrote, “There is an inherent enjoyment watching intelligent people tackle and persevere over daunting challenges, and this sets up The Martian for lots of payoffs and satisfaction. We see both sides of the problem and it provides even more opportunities for challenges and payoffs.” It’s tremendously enjoyable to watch Ryland and Rocky resolve serious scientific problems, whether it be studying the astrophage, the alien sun and its immunity to astrophage, or even just how to interact with one another when there are different systems for breathing and eating. It’s heady without being weighed down by too much scientific jargon, making the analytical discussions accessible and thus engaging. The conflict of Project Hail Mary isn’t quite as realistic as The Martian, given to more convenient cheats with “alien technology,” though the resulting resolutions still felt well-earned and satisfying thanks to the setups and payoffs that screenwriter Drew Goddard (Bad Times at the El Royale, The Martian) has layered throughout. The source material’s author, Andy Weir, has found himself a very profitable and marketable niche, dropping science whiz everymans into impossible scenarios and having them think their way out of them. At least this time the entire world is working in tandem, and spending likely trillions of dollars, to save the entire solar system instead of just retrieving one misplaced American astronaut. Weir will likely be throwing darts at what new setting someone could be stranded in next.
Now, as a film adaptation, Project Hail Mary goes the distance. This is the first live-action movie directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller since 2014’s 22 Jump Street (granted, they were notoriously fired from finishing 2018’s Han Solo prequel). For those worried that the movie might be more anarchic or yuk-heavy like the duo’s animated oeuvre, such as The Lego Movie and the Spider-Verse films, they have adapted their style to best suit the material. There’s plenty of humor in this movie because of the ridiculously high stakes and general odd couple nature of our buddy dynamic, but the movie never feels like it loses its focus on the bigger world-saving picture. For Ryland, he knows this mission is a one-way trip, as the capsule doesn’t have enough fuel to make the return trip to Earth. He knows this is a sacrifice, but the entirety of all living things on the planet are holding out hope that his sacrifice is successful. Lord and Miller are able to balance the comedy and dramatic elements, as well as finding appropriate spaces for the viewer, as well as Ryland, to take in the natural majesty of space in another star system. The cinematography by Greg Frasier (Dune Parts One and Two) is grand and visually sumptuous, mixing in aspect ratios and focus depth to distinguish between timelines and emotional states. The musical score by Daniel Pemberton (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) is remarkably pleasing to the ears, finding room to be rousing and immersive and awe-inspiring, perfectly aiding the gorgeous visuals. At 150 minutes long, there’s the concern about pacing, especially with a movie that has so much to explain on the go as well devoting nearly half its runtime to flashback morsels doled throughout. I never felt lag. I also never felt crushed with the exposition, as the key details are expertly elevated, then as we progress from one challenge to the next, the screenplay keeps us keyed in on what matters in that moment.
And lastly, where this movie really hinges upon is on the relationship and performances of its two leads. I’m not talking about Sandra Huller (Anatomy of a Fall) as the head of the Project Hail Mary mission, assembling cooperation among the world’s countries and experts for this longest of long-shots. Gosling (Barbie, The Fall Guy) is an immensely charming actor, self-effacing and relatably overwhelmed by the faith entrusted to him. Gosling makes us instantly connect with the protagonist, feeling the same nagging pull of his curiosity and excitement when studying something as uniquely fascinating as alien microbes, as well as the mounting trepidation of being out of your depth and having to adapt quickly or else. The film is taken to another level of entertainment thanks to Rocky, who is the clear MVP of the movie. He’s brought to vibrant life through puppeteer James Ortiz, who also provides the computer translation voice, and through the magic of empathy, we’re shedding tears for a creature without a discernible face. The dynamic between the two characters is so enjoyable, so funny, and ultimately so poignant, that it warms your heart while making you feel full by its perfect closing image.
Project Hail Mary is a crowd-pleaser to its very DNA, big yet accessible, brainy but still capable of popcorn thrills and visual fireworks, heartfelt but mordantly funny and even goofy at points, and always engaging and rewarding. It’s also a hopeful movie, something the present world could use more of. In the face of epoch-ending cataclysm, human beings are capable of working together to solve impossible problems, and heroes can emerge from the least likely places. It’s inspirational without falling into sappier, inauthentic maudlin drama, and it’s a celebration not just of teamwork but interstellar teamwork, working across enormous barriers for a common good. It’s invigorating to watch human decency and noble sacrifices prevail but also just an enviable demonstration of competency. What a wonderful world where experts are given deference and praise for their expertise and professionalism (if only this didn’t feel so tragically the stuff of “fiction” in present-day America). Project Hail Mary is a superbly made adventure movie that has a little of everything we’re looking for in mass-appeal blockbusters, and there’s a considerable skill to hold all these parts together into a movie that feels complete and enriching. Fans of heady sci-fi, buddy comedies, disaster movies, and space operas should find plenty to enjoy, but really Project Hail Mary is the kind of movie that all you need is eyes and ears to understand the appeal.
Nate’s Grade: A
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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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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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