By: Henry J. Fromage –
This week was one to catch up on fairly major releases from 2025 that I’ve not yet had a chance to catch.
36. Train Dreams
I don’t know what’s kept me from watching this for so long- maybe because a gorgeously shot Malickian period drama set in the Northwest at the turn of the century amid logging camps with music by Bryce Dessner is so up my alley that I wanted to be sure I set it aside for a time I could give it my full, undivided attention. It’s exactly the kind of elegiac ode to simple lives and the poetry of the mundane I hoped it’d be, if not something that surprised or devastated as much as I secretly hoped it would. Two Beers.
37. Now You See Me: Now You Don’t
The formula for these movies is fairly simple- take a bunch of recognizable stars, give them a bickering comedic chemistry, place them in some flashily shot foreign locations, and have them do an escalating series of magic-themed heists. None of it is especially crisp or particularly surprising, but it’s all quite entertaining, especially when you mix in a villain like a vamping Rosamund Pike. Star-driven studio fare can be a lot worse. Three Beers.
38. Dead of Winter
This is a plane movie, but it played perfectly on the plane I watched it on. Emma Thompson plays a Minnesotan traveling to a remote frozen lake for reasons the film will reveal affectingly over time. She finds herself in a life or death struggle unexpectedly when she observes what appears to be the kidnapping of a young girl. Her uff da accent may come and go, but these kind of movies trade on the kind of gravitas Thompson brings to the table, and Judy Greer makes for a surprisingly formidable villain with understandable if indefensible motivations. Three Beers.
39. Holy Night: Demon Hunters
Nobody would call this a major 2025 release, but in my book any film that has Ma Dong Seok punching stuff is anything but minor entertainment. Here they plop him down in a standard-issue Catholic exorcism movie with just a hint of Korean flair. If you have the temerity to suggest that Ma Dong Seok can’t punch the Satan out of someone, this movie will happily correct that misconception. It’s some dumb shit alright, but I can’t be mad at it. Three Beers.
40. Honey Don’t
I also watched this one on a plane, but this time I had my expectations in the right place after watching the disaster that was Ethan Coen’s Drive-Away Dolls. He reteams with his wife Tricia Cooke in the second of their “Lesbian Trilogy”, and while it’s not as dire (or as disappointing, anyway) as the former film, it still manages to be less than the sum of its parts, which are considerable, from Margaret Qualley’s raspy-voiced gumshoe to a perfectly punchable Chris Evans to a highly qualified supporting cast delivering the quips in a quite quippy script indeed. What the script is missing is a particularly memorable and/or coherent plot. Four Beers.
41. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight
Every once in awhile you catch an international film on a plane that you may have a tougher time tracking down elsewhere. The directorial debut of South African actress Embeth Davidtz, it adapts the memoir of a young girl’s experiences at the end of White rule in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). She does a great job never straying from the POV of the girl while still showing the tumult around her through her eyes, both what she understands and what she does not. Two Beers.
42. Waco: The Rules of Engagement
This expansive retelling of the Waco tragedy and its ensuing investigation was nominated for an Oscar in 1998. While it’s undoubtedly more sympathetic to David Koresh and the Branch Davidians than I’m prepared to go, there’s no denying that the U.S. Government tied itself in knots trying to justify what was undoubtedly an unnecessary show of force that, like most of the time this kind of thing occurs, predestines a bad outcome. Two Beers.
