Flash Frames

“Some search for battle, others are born into it…” Director: Paul Thomas Anderson Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, and Chase Infiniti Synopsis: “Bob is a washed-up revolutionary who lives in a state of stoned paranoia, surviving off-grid with his spirited and self-reliant daughter, Willa. When his evil nemesis resurfaces and Willa goes missing, the former radical scrambles to find her as both father and daughter battle the consequences of their pasts.” __________________________________________________ Writer/Director Paul Thomas Anderson has already cemented himself as one of the go-to directors of this era, and even if you don’t know that name, you’ve at least heard of the movies he’s made. There Will Be Blood , Punch-Drunk Love , Boogie Nights , The Master , Magnolia , Phantom Thread … He’s rarely missed, at least for me. It’s been tough to wrap my head around his latest film, One Battle After Another , and I’ve seen it twice. I gotta...

“All $$ ain’t good $$” Director: Spike Lee Cast: Denzel Washington, Jeffrey Wright, Ilfenesh Hadera, A$AP Rocky, John Douglas Thompson, Dean Winters, LaChanze, Princess Nokia, and Ice Spice Synopsis: “When a powerful music mogul is targeted by a ransom plot, he is forced to fight for his family and legacy while jammed up in a life-or-death moral dilemma.” __________________________________________________ Spike Lee is undoubtedly one of the biggest living legends in cinema. I don’t think anything is ever gonna take away the impact he’s left. Admittedly, his filmography is a terribly embarrassing blind spot for me, but I’ve seen most of the heavy hitters, barring Malcolm X . Wild that I haven’t gotten to that yet. That’s besides the point, though. The next point is… another movie I haven’t seen, and that’s High and Low , one of the many celebrated movies from the just-as-celebrated Japanese director Akira Kurosawa. I’m not gonna make this a history lesson or anything, but to keep things...

Caught Stealing (2025) Director: Darren Aronofsky Cast: Austin Butler, Regina King, Zoë Kravitz, Matt Smith, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D'Onofrio, Benito Martínez Ocasio, Griffin Dunne, and Carol Kane. Synopsis: Burned-out ex-baseball player Hank Thompson unexpectedly finds himself embroiled in a dangerous struggle for survival amidst the criminal underbelly of 1990s New York City, forced to navigate a treacherous underworld he never imagined.

Eddington (2025) Director: Ari Aster Cast: Joaquin Phoenix ,  Pedro Pascal ,  Luke Grimes ,  Deirdre O'Connell ,  Micheal Ward ,  Austin Butler , and  Emma Stone . Synopsis:  During the COVID-19 pandemic, a standoff between a small-town sheriff and mayor sparks a powder keg as neighbor is pitted against neighbor in Eddington, N.M.

  28 Years Later (2025) Director: Danny Boyle Cast: Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Alfie Williams, and Ralph Fiennes. Synopsis:  It's been almost three decades since the rage virus escaped from a biological weapons laboratory. Still living in a ruthlessly enforced quarantine, some have found ways to exist amid the infected. One such group of survivors lives on a small island connected to the mainland by a single, heavily defended causeway. When one of them decides to venture into the dark heart of the mainland, he soon discovers a mutation that has spread to not only the infected, but other survivors as well.

I'm deciding to try out video reviews again, so please let me know if you like this format! Ballerina  (2025) Director: Len Wiseman Cast: Ana de Armas, Anjelica Huston, Gabriel Byrne, Lance Reddick, Norman Reedus, Ian McShane, and Keanu Reeves Synopsis:  An assassin trained in the traditions of the Ruska Roma organization sets out to seek revenge after her father's death.

Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning I’m not gonna lie, this review is tough to put into words. Mission: Impossible is personally one of my favorite franchises ever, handily the most consistent one since the first film’s release in 1996. I personally haven’t seen the original show, but I did end up buying the whole series right after I watched this movie, so I’m hoping to watch the series, or at least start it, soon. I could also easily say that Fallout , the sixth entry, is one of the best action movies ever made. I know it’s not a rare opinion to have Fallout as the best entry (shoutout Rogue Nation ), but any franchise would be lucky to have a movie with such a striking banger:flop ratio. In my opinion, only one M:I movie is bad, and it’s the second one. Every other one is a banger, some of them for completely different reasons. As much as I love the last entry in the franchise, 2023’s Dead Reckoning , I did think “how could they possibly one-up this after the ...

Sally Hawkins in Bring Her Back A movie that came out a few years back that ended up being a nice surprise was a supernatural horror movie called Talk To Me , which is the directorial debut of brothers Danny & Michael Philippou. They also have a YouTube channel called RackaRacka, which is how they blew up. Do you remember those old YouTube videos about the creepy Ronald McDonald trying Burger King or something? That’s them, and learning after watching Talk To Me that it was directed by the guys behind RackaRacka was incredible to see. On top of that, Talk To Me is a lot of fun and what a modern horror movie should be: great premise, a good blend of funny and scary moments, and once again, just a fun time to watch. That made me even more excited to see what they’d do next, and Bring Her Back (which opens tonight) is the complete opposite of fun, but intentionally so. It dips its toes in the same water as Talk To Me with its premise, which follows a brother and sister being adopt...

Abel Tesfaye in Hurry Up Tomorrow What I like to show in these reviews is an exercise in bias. Every single person has their own bias to something, whether they realize it or not. I feel like I’ve stated this in at least one other review on this site, but let me promise you this: The statement “exercise in bias” will permeate throughout this review, mainly because of this movie’s star/driving force. I like Abel Tesfaye, who grew to popularity as his stage name The Weeknd, a lot. The man’s got insane musical talent, and as I think you know, he’s not a great actor. Some people say that he isn’t an actor at all. If you don’t know, Tesfaye has already tried acting in the HBO series The Idol , which was a massive disaster for nearly everybody involved. You know a show is bad when they cut the last episode and gaslight everyone into thinking that it was 5 episodes instead of 6 the whole time (yes, that’s real). However, it’s not to say that he won’t quit. This movie here, Hurry Up Tomorrow ,...

Michael B. Jordan and Michael B. Jordan in Sinners (Michael C. Jordan…?) Look, I know this is late. Plain and simple reason for it. I wanted to get out and watch Sinners again before I wanted to write about it. I finally ended up doing that, so I now feel pretty confident in how I want to put into words just how incredible Sinners is. If you didn’t know already, this is the latest film from Ryan Coogler, who’s directed Creed and Fruitvale Station , as well as the Black Panther films. Already, Coogler has been a part of huge hits like the Black Panther movies, the first arguably being a cultural phenomenon that hasn’t really happened yet. We often forget that Black Panther made more money than Avengers: Infinity War , and while Coogler wasn’t at the forefront of that conversation, he was the writer and director, and that alone may be enough. Sinners is the first original movie Coogler’s made, not based on any existing material or a real event, and just to keep it simple, it real...

Charles Melton in Warfare War movies usually aren’t my thing. I think that a lot of them do end up having the same message of “war is bad,” but there are certainly ones that I respect a lot. The big modern ones like Saving Private Ryan , Dunkirk , and The Hurt Locker are all great stuff, but I’d never go back to them personally. I’ve seen the recent remake of All Quiet on the Western Front , mainly because it was a big Oscar contender that year, but even then, war movies still aren’t my cup of tea. Alex Garland, however, has been someone I’ve at least admired. Even though Men is probably one of the worst movies of the decade so far, he’s got a really good track record as both a writer and a director. He’s directed Ex Machina , Annihilation , and the FX series Devs , as well as being a writer on Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later , who he’s reuniting with this summer for 28 Years Later . Garland’s last movie, Civil War , ended up stirring a lot of controversy with its depiction of a civil wa...

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...

Anthony Mackie in Captain America: Brave New World Since this is the first MCU movie I’m actually talking about and reviewing, I might as well start off with a little preamble on where I think this franchise is heading. Right now, it feels like Marvel is too big to fully collapse like the past DC movies, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn't at least concerned. I understand that their original plan with Jonathan Majors playing Kang as the big villain pretty much fell apart at the seams, so even if it’s cope, I think they’re still trying to figure out what exactly is happening with these movies. To me, the past few MCU movies have been fine. Not disasters or masterpieces, they ended up somewhere in the middle: watchable while they’re on. There are some that have risen above that like Deadpool & Wolverine , the last Doctor Strange movie, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 , and that’s not even mentioning the shows. Loki hit hard for me, but the rest I’ve seen have just been okay. E...

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 ...

Mark Wahlberg in Flight Risk Guys, what are we doing here? At this point, you probably know who Mel Gibson is. Actor, director, a man of many controversies. That’s not what I’m here for, though. I’m not here for the controversies. What I’m here for is the movies. I’ve seen two of Gibson’s past directorial efforts, and both of them are pretty great. It still makes sense why Braveheart , a rousing historical war epic, won five Oscars including Best Picture and Gibson for his direction. The other Gibson film I’ve seen is his most recent, Hacksaw Ridge . Another war epic that followed a WWII Army medic, it also was embraced by the Academy, earning Gibson another Picture and Director nom, alongside Best Actor for Andrew Garfield’s magnificent performance. I know it seems like I’m just rattling off some facts about Gibson, but it really is worth noting that Gibson just gets it. Saying that I “disagree” with what he thinks is an understatement, but there’s a reason why his comeback with Hacks...

Naomi Scott in Smile 2 It’s not too often that we get a major glow-up for a practically immediate horror sequel, maybe outside of the Saw movies. The original Smile , which was released back in 2022, was a massive surprise for me. It looked like a really corny Truth or Dare -adjacent cheap jumpscare horror, a comparison that became even more apparent when it was supposed to be a Paramount+ original that got sent to theaters due to positive test screenings. However, it was a genuinely bleak, atmospheric, and straight up terrifying look into how traumatic events can twist and bend a person so out of shape that they may never return to who they were before. It was a pretty impressive outing for a streaming movie, especially as a debut feature from writer/director Parker Finn. That being said, it’s certainly one of those movies where you stare at the blank screen for a good 20 minutes, just processing what you have just seen. Sosie Bacon made for a great lead in that movie, but we’ve got ...

Channing Tatum and Naomi Ackie in Blink Twice We’ve been in an interesting era for pop culture and how we deal with consequences for our actions, and I’m surprised that there really hasn’t been a horror movie that doesn’t directly attack the mentions of “cancel culture” and things like that. Well, at least ones that don’t come off as preachy. Blink Twice really doesn’t come off as preachy in most parts, but it’s practically tackling “cancel culture” head on. Naomi Ackie plays Frida, a cocktail waitress at tech billionaire Slater King’s annual gala. He invites Frida and her friend, Jess, to his private island with his buddies for a dream vacation, where something sinister begins to creep in. It’s not exactly subtle with what it’s trying to say, but maybe it’s best to use a hammer rather than a pair of scissors for this topic. Blink Twice is very much a thriller in the vein of Get Out or even Don’t Worry, Darling (a movie I like quite a bit), with the first half being a very accompli...

Avantika in Tarot We’re at the point in the year that I like to call “The Catch-Up,” at least for movies. Not everyone can watch every new release in a year, myself included. So, looking around streaming services and even looking at places like the local library are usually on schedule. For the end of December and most of January, The Catch-Up is in effect, and Tarot , which can be boiled down to a sauceless Final Destination , is the first of them. This is nearly every classic horror trope in one movie: a group of friends spend some time in the woods and do tarot readings together, and they break the rules of the readings, releasing curses that will kill each person based on the reading they received. The idea of cursed tarot cards certainly has potential, but to put it bluntly, the movie is just so bland. Believe it or not, there are some positives here. The monster designs are surprisingly inventive, and both Jacob Batalon and Avantika try their best to save a lifeless script. Both ...

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...

Ralph Fiennes in Conclave This has been on my radar for a few months now. I’ve enjoyed director Edward Berger’s previous effort, his German-language adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel All Quiet on the Western Front , which was a surprise Oscar contender and won in nearly every technical category, as well as being nominated for Best Picture. That being said, whatever he did next would have some big names attached to it. Conclave has that in spades. After the death of the Pope, Ralph Fiennes’s Cardinal Lawrence has to oversee the election process while reconvening with all of the different contenders at play, all of them wanting to become the new Pope. The process of this election is very in-depth, and for someone who didn’t too much about the subject going into it, it feels like there was a lot of care and effort put into the different strategies that are in place to make the process move smoothly. Berger’s direction is the standout here, his smooth style lending well to a poli...