Flash Frames

Together (2025) Director: Michael Shanks Cast: Dave Franco, Alison Brie, Damon Herriman, Mia Morrissey, Karl Richmond, and Jack Kenny. Synopsis: Years into their relationship, Tim and Millie find themselves at a crossroads when they move to the countryside, abandoning all that is familiar in their lives except each other. With tensions already flaring, a nightmarish encounter with a mysterious, unnatural force threatens to corrupt their lives, their love, and their flesh.

Materialists (2025) Director: Celine Song Cast: Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, Zoë Winters, Marin Ireland, Louisa Jacobson, and Pedro Pascal. Synopsis: Set against the backdrop of New York City's luxury-driven dating culture, it follows a love triangle between a matchmaker, her aspiring actor ex-boyfriend, and a charming billionaire.

Jack Quaid in Novocaine I’m fully aware that this is probably going to be a shorter post, but I’ve been busy as hell recently and I just gotta get this thing out there. Honestly, though, Novocaine might be the perfect movie to just get a quick post out there and in the open. This is the newest movie in a now-typical sort-of conceptual action movie that’s been going on for the past few years, and I really think John Wick really opened the floodgates with this archetype: someone who’s mild-mannered, whether it’s really who they are or they’re hiding a part of themself, has to get out there and save someone/enact revenge for something that was done to them. If anything, this could also be attributed to David Leitch, one of the co-directors of the first John Wick and the founder of 87North, a studio that specializes in bloody, brutal movies that are reminiscent of the John Wick franchise: Nobody with Bob Odenkirk, Bullet Train , Violent Night , and The Fall Guy are probably the main ...

Rachel Zegler in Snow White Okay, I know I’m stepping into a bit of a landmine here. Before I start off, I gotta get something off of my chest about all this controversy surrounding Snow White , the latest movie that Disney’s decided to remake out of their own catalog of animated movies. I haven’t really been all that harsh to any of the ones I’ve seen. At their best, they’re jolly good shows. Not too much to think about, but maybe it’s because I grew up in a family that was essentially tied to Disney. The Beauty and the Beast remake is probably my personal favorite, even though the original animated movie never really stood out to me as a kid. I’m partial to the Jungle Book remake too, honestly. At their worst, they’re lifeless husks of movies that everyone knows. Somehow, the worst part about the Lion King remake isn’t its tragic waste of Donald Glover: it’s just… The Lion King . Not bad in spirit, but you’re literally watching the exact same movie. I like it when movies shake up ...

Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender in Black Bag Earlier in the year, I mentioned that one of my biggest disappointments of the year so far is Presence , a horror movie from the perspective of a ghost haunting a house when a new family moves in. That movie has a lot of talent behind it, with Steven Soderbergh directing and David Koepp writing. While Soderbergh’s direction wasn’t the problem (it typically never is), Koepp’s writing was shockingly bad. That’s the guy who wrote Jurassic Park , Spider-Man , the first Mission: Impossible , and a good amount of Indiana Jones . While watching this, though, I was aware that they already had another collaboration locked and loaded in a few months: Black Bag , a sleek spy thriller led by Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett. It’s a completely different vibe from Presence , but not only is Black Bag leagues ahead of it: it’s probably the first great 2025 movie. He’s already got some great spy or spy-adjacent movies in him like the Ocean’s mo...

Robert Pattinson and Robert Pattinson in Mickey 17 I had a certain experience with this movie that I’ve had with very few: bewilderment. When a movie ends, I usually have my mind made up on if I liked it or not. This time, though, I had no idea what to make of Mickey 17 , the latest movie from Bong Joon-ho and his first since the historic, Oscar-winning Parasite . I meant to publish this review a few days back, but I was just stunned by this movie for a while. Whether or not it was positive or negative, Mickey 17 genuinely did stump me for a while. This is based on a novel by Edward Ashton, Mickey7 , and mainly follows Mickey Barnes, a man who joins an ambitious space colony to work as an “expendable,” a disposable employee for the company that’s sent to die in various ways in the name of science to develop ways that humanity can move to a new planet. After he dies, he’s cloned with all of his memories and personality in place and sent back to work, just to die over and over again. Th...

Still from Heart Eyes I’m sort of stunned by the response to this one. I’m not entirely sure where this came from, but Heart Eyes has really become the big discussion of January/February horror movies. Granted, there haven't been a lot of movies or shows (or really anything) that’s come out this year so far, but hey, we’ve got something to talk about now. Why I think this is happening is because of Eli Roth, who’s only really made one good movie, and that’s Thanksgiving . It’s an absolutely ridiculous movie, framing a slasher/murder mystery around the Thanksgiving/Black Friday holiday, but unlike Roth’s other horror movies, it leans much more into how silly the premise of a serial killer dressing up like a pilgrim and cooking one of his victims like a turkey is. That’s silly, and it knows it. Heart Eyes doesn’t lean into how goofy this idea is, which follows the “Heart Eyes Killer,” a methodical serial killer that’s been killing couples on Valentine’s Day in different cities for ...

Sophie Thatcher in Companion For clarity reasons, I actually saw this nearly a week ago. While Companion did open this weekend, the theater near me did a mystery screening and it ended up being an early showing of Companion . That being said, I waited this long to put up my review because this is a *very* tough movie to review without spoiling the main twist. Granted, the twist of the movie is shown in the trailer I linked at the bottom of this post, just below the grade. If you want to just skip to that letter grade, go right ahead. And if you want a very brief review, Companion is just a damn good horror-comedy, which is something that we really don’t get a lot of these days. Okay, now is **SPOILER TIME** , which means I’ll just be going into the main premise of the movie. Not detailed plot points or anything, but what this movie is has to do with why I liked it. What makes talking about Companion so interesting is the two differing synopses for the movie. The first one, which is ...

Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey in  Queer Luca Guadagnino has slowly become one of my favorite directors working right now. Ever since 2017’s gorgeous  Call Me by Your Name  (which helped rocket Timothée Chalamet into stardom), Guadagnino has just been, as most filmmakers do, making films. His loose remake of Dario Argento’s cult giallo flick  Suspiria  and  Bones and All , his reunion with Chalamet, were fascinating dips into horror. Earlier this year, though, was when  Challengers  exploded, which is one of the best movies of the year. He’s not stopping there, though.  After the Hunt  with Andrew Garfield and Julia Roberts, an Austin Butler-led  American Psycho  adaptation, and  Sgt. Rock , a potential dip into the world of comic book movies with Daniel Craig, are all on the horizon. Right in the middle of all that is  Queer , an adaptation of the William S. Burrough’s novella, and it’s Guadagnino’s most surreal film ...

Karla Sofía Gascón and Zoë Saldaña in Emilia Pérez Movies with ambition are always something to appreciate. It’s a very vague sentence, but I can’t be the only one with that sentiment. A project like Emilia Pérez , at least on paper, is also something we don’t come across too often. The film is based on writer/director Jacques Audiard’s opera of the same name, which in turn is based on a novel by Boris Razon titled Écoute . The movie spread like wildfire with its premiere at Cannes last May, where its main actresses took him the Jury Prize for Best Actress, those performers being Zoe Saldaña, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, and Adriana Paz. That goes without saying what the actual movie is: a crime/thriller/comedy/musical about a feared Mexican cartel leader that hires a lawyer to help him disappear while attaining his dream of transitioning into a woman. The highlights here easily have to be Saldaña and Gascón, making the movie not only watchable but enjoyable whenever they’re on s...

Vera Drew in The People’s Joker Boy, did this have a rocky road. I remember reading articles about The People’s Joker , actress/director/co-writer/editor Vera Drew’s low-budget, punk rock, mixed media comic book parody of various DC properties, and how it was hit with a cease-and-desist at the Toronto Film Festival back in 2022 by Warner Bros. itself. It wasn’t until April of this year when it finally received a small theatrical release, and I’m kicking myself for not making the time to see it in a theater. At first, I thought I hadn’t seen anything that Drew has worked on, but after looking over her credits, I saw that she edited An Evening with Tim Heidecker , an hour of comfortably unfunny stand-up that’s practically anti-comedy. The People’s Joker lays claim to the term “anti-comedy,” and this Joker runs wild with it. For its characters alone, it’s a surreal remix of what Batman fans and DC fans in general know that feel almost nonsensical. Ra's al Ghul isn’t the head of the L...

Mikey Madison in Anora AUTHOR’S NOTE : This review is copied right from my Letterboxd, tweaked slightly to fit for the profile. If you want to follow me there, you can click this link . Getting this right out of the way, I did like Anora . You can see the grade below. If anything, it's a showcase of Mikey Madison and a bunch of fantastic Russian actors I've never heard of before. As you've probably seen before, Madison is probably gonna get a bunch of awards for this that are rightfully deserved, but I also think Yura Borisov should get just as much praise as one of the two bodyguards with the Russian family. He's just as fantastic as Madison. I haven't seen too much of writer/director Sean Baker's work. I've only seen the great The Florida Project , and both Tangerine and Red Rocket have shot up my list because of Anora , and I just loved the look of this movie. I'm not sure how much of the lighting is natural, but a lot of the movie certainly looked ...

Sports movies have never really been my thing. To double down on it, sports in general really isn’t my thing. Sure, I like watching basketball and baseball, but I don’t want to actively play them. I’m admittedly partial to some baseball movies like Field of Dreams and Moneyball , but I don’t know anything about tennis. Like, anything at all. The most I know is from Wii Sports, just to give you a sense of how much I really know. However, I am familiar with director Luca Guadagnino, even though I haven’t seen what’s probably his most popular movie, Call Me By Your Name . The only movies I’ve seen of his are his remake of Dario Argento’s Suspiria (which I think is one of the only horror remakes that has elements that surpass the original) and Bones and All , his last film. This movie, Challengers , originally was supposed to come out in September of last year but was delayed because of the strikes in Hollywood from last summer, but I do think it benefitted Challengers because it’s curr...