2025 Noteworthy Films

 SPOILER ALERT! The plots will be discussed.

Marty Supreme:

This film has a dynamic performance by Timothee Chalomet. He has already received the Critics’ Choice Award and the Golden Globes Award for Best Actor, and he is the favorite for the Oscar. He plays an unlikable person who wants the recognition of being the best table tennis player in the world. The story shows how the single-minded obsession to achieve notoriety can create havoc and collateral damage in that pursuit. In the end, he finally can show his talent without actually being the world champion, and he begins to care for others. The movie is too long and a bit of a mess in the middle (especially the part with the gangster, his cash, and the dog) as Marty moves from one ridiculous situation to another.

After the Hunt:

The title may deal with the results following a trauma. This movie will be seen by some as a betrayal of the MeToo movement and views about discrimination. However, it should not be dismissed on that basis. It challenges entrenched views and can be admired for its courage to take on so many issues without becoming muddled. The story portrays the scholastic community, represented by Alma (Julia Roberts), a philosophy professor at Yale, and Hank (Andrew Garfield), a colleague, vying for tenure. They along with others come off as pompous elites. The film presents the advantages of white privilege. It also shows the devastation of sexual abuse in the person of Maggie (Ayo Edebiri), a PhD student, who says that Hank assaulted her. However, she is not your typical Black oppressed person, since her parents are rich, she plagiarized material in her dissertation, and she violates Alma’s privacy. Alma lied about a sexual assault on herself, and gives advice to Alma that entails surrendering to male oppression in the workplace. Her ulcers symbolize her guilt, and she fakes a prescription to obtain pain killers. The supporting performances by Garfield and Michael Stuhlbarg as Alma’s neglected husband are particularly good.

Bugonia

Here’s another odd and inventive film from director Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favourite, Poor Things). This one involves fringe characters kidnapping a female business executive, Michelle, played by Emma Stone, who they believe is a member of an alien race eliminating the world’s honeybees and manipulating people into passive victims. The story shows her at first to be a victim of a deranged man, Teddy (Jesse Plemons), who puts her in restraints and shaves her head, Samson-like, because he believes it is the source of a power to communicate with her fellow aliens aboard a mothership. He tortures her by inflicting electric shock treatments to prove his theory that the aliens can withstand high voltage. She eventually plays along with him, it seems, but as it turns out she really is the top extraterrestrial. Her race has found that their experiment of creating humans has failed since earthlings are too destructive to exist, and they terminate the species. The other creatures are allowed to live, and the bees again flourish. (The title refers to bees springing forth from the carcasses of animals, which fits here). The problem with the film is that it may inadvertently encourage conspiracy theorists to go down misguided rabbit holes. That is not what the film is saying. Instead, it points to people looking for hidden reasons outside of themselves for answers when it is they who are the problem. A Good performance by Emma Stone, who is again nominated for an Oscar. But the superior performance here is by Plemons, who was snubbed by the Academy.

Hamnet:

Chloe Zhao (Oscar winner for Best Director for Nomadland) directed this movie that uses the loss of William Shakespeare’s young son to place the writing of the great play Hamlet in the context of how to deal with the grief of such a tragedy. Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) is withdrawn, dealing with his emotions, it seems, internally, and not capable of comforting the grieving mother, Agnes, played by Jessie Buckley (Buckley is the favorite to win the Oscar for Best Actress). However, her husband is channeling his emotions into the play. Agnes witnesses the premier of Hamlet, in which Shakespeare plays the ghost of the main character’s father. Mescal, shrouded in white bandages and makeup, is like an apparition of himself after Hamnet’s death. Earlier, the playwright taught Hamnet sword fighting. Now the actor playing Hamlet repeats those moves, and the character becomes Shakespeare’s attempt to say goodbye to his son and grant immortality through the main character in his play. At the end of the performance, Agnes, at the front of the stage, reaches for the actor playing Hamlet, and he holds her hands in his. The rest of the audience extends their hands out also, showing how art and reality join together to raise tragedy beyond grief. It is a transcendent moment.

 One Battle After Another:

This may be director/writer Paul Thomas Anderson’s year. The film may win Oscars for Best Picture, Screenplay, and Directing. Like After the Hunt, this movie, derived from the novel Vineland by acclaimed and reclusive author Thomas Pynchon, critiques the many sides of the social and political landscape. Left-wing radicals are exposed for their violent tendencies, and the right-wing fanatics are satirized for their bigoted, sadistic ways. Sometimes some become attached to a cause just so they can be with the ones they love. That is the case with Pat (aka Bob) (Leonardo DiCaprio, Oscar-nominated for Best Actor). He is romantically involved with Perfidia Beverly Hills (Tevana Taylor, rightly Oscar-nominated nominated for her role), a Black woman who is a leader of the revolutionaries. The name Perfidia implies being deceptive with hidden motives, and the Beverly Hills name suggests Hollywood liberalism. She is not admirable because she later leaves her child with Pat (now Bob after they acquire new identities) and betrays her comrades to gain safety in witness protection. Her name fits as she has a sexual attraction for Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn, in a Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his scary, over-the-top portrayal), who presides over a detention camp she liberates. (Anderson is not subtle with his character names). Lockjaw admits later to Pat that he “loves” Black women. Thematically, the relationship between the two works as the they are hypocrites to their causes. But, in reality, it is easier to accept a white man’s exploitation of a Black woman as opposed to that woman being attracted to a fascistic white oppressor. The scenes with DiCaprio becoming exasperated by trying to remember the paranoid leftish code word security are hysterical. That Lockjaw becomes a victim of his own people shows how the right-wing white supremacists eat their young if they discover anything that deviates from their agenda. Benicio Del Toro plays a laid-back neighborhood protector who aids Bob. (Del Toro’s performance, in my opinion, is not as good as either Stuhlbarg’s or Garfield’s in After the Hunt). Perfidia’s grown-up daughter, Willa (Chase Infiniti), goes off at the end of the movie to join protesters, showing how there is, indeed, one battle after another. 

Sinners:

The title of this movie may be exploring who really are sinners given the context of the story. Writer/director Ryan Coogler does not use horror until later in this movie. He first deftly reveals the main characters and their plight. Michael B. Jordan, nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, portrays twin brothers, Smoke and Stack Moore. The last name suggests that these two men can accomplish a great deal more than one might think. Their nicknames suggest fire, implying they are two fellows not to be trifled with. They have been living in Chicago, and their sojourn in the North has given them a news perspective on life. They bring a feeling of empowerment back to their hometown in Mississippi. With the money they earned working for the gangsters up north they buy an old sawmill and turn it into a music club, hiring local talent.

When the vampires do show up, they are symbolic of how the scary local Klan and “crackers” have been scaring the Black folk here for generations. They whites drained the life out of the African American population and now are there to do the same to the formidable Moore brothers. An epic battle occurs with many losses, but there is survival until dawn and the vampires are vanquished.

There is a remarkable scene at the club before the fight. The brothers recruited their cousin Sammy (Miles Canton) to play guitar at their joint. His magical music channels the indomitable African American spirit that can be found in this form of artistic expression. This surrealistic sequence transcends time as we see primitive performers and others that represent modern hip-hop artists.

This is a rich film, and I hope to do an in-depth post on it in the future.

Frankenstein:

Writer/director Guillermo del Toro (disappointing that he was not nominated for this film), as he did in his Oscar-winning The Shape of Water, subverts our preconceived notions of who are the true monsters. The film is structured to show the story from two viewpoints. It begins near the North Pole where an injured Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is brought aboard a ship. He tells his story. His father, Leopold (Charles Dance), an aristocrat, was a tyrant. He controlled every aspect of his son’s life to make him into a surgeon. He beat him in the face with a cane to enforce his agenda. Victor lost his mother in childbirth which suggests that is why he wants to use science to defeat death (the subtitle of Shelley’s 19^th century work is The Modern Prometheus which reminds us of the mythological being representing hubris and human advancement because Prometheus stole fire from the gods).

Victor is able to fashion the Creature (Jacob Elordi, nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar), because arms merchant Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz) offers Victor all the funding he needs. Harlander is dying and wants his brain transferred to the Creature so he can live forever. The film here suggests the power of the ultra-wealthy. The Creature’s body heals any wound and is extremely strong. Victor repeats his father’s cruelty when he tries to teach his creation how to speak. Victor also is attracted to his brother’s fiancée and lies when he says the Creature killed Harlander, who died trying to subvert the experiment for his own purposes. The thrust here is that humans are selfish and sadistic toward the outsider, the other, who is an innocent. Victor tries to burn his lab and the Creature, but he does have a change of heart. However, he is unable to stop a catastrophic explosion.

The Creature, after fighting the sailors in self-defense at the North Pole, then tells his story to Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen). He says that he escaped the explosion and was attacked by hunters who killed him, but he revived. He eventually helps a family of farmers, which shows his natural benevolence. He then encounters a blind man (David Bradley) who teaches him to excel in reading and writing. His blindness appears to signify that he can relate to the Creature without any prejudice, just like the statue of Blind Justice. His teacher dies when wolves attack the man, so the Creature is on his own again.

The Creature says he returned to get Victor to make him a companion since he knows he is immortal and suffers from extreme loneliness. Victor refused, and the Creature attacked him. Elizabeth (Mia Goth), the fiancée of Victor’s brother, sympathizes with the Creature. Victor is jealous of the Creature. He accidently shoots and kills her when he attacks his creation, afraid that the Creature might have offspring. It’s as if the proliferation of purity must be stopped by selfish humans. Victor pursued his creation to the Arctic, where the Creature failed to destroy himself out of despair with an explosive that harmed Victor. “Father,” Victor, and “son,” the Creature, reconcile in the end as Oscar succumbs to his wounds. At the end of the film, the Creature follows Victor’s early advice of reaching for the sunlight, a suggestion that we must try to illuminate our souls with acceptance of others.

Reversal of Fortune

 SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

The title, Reversal of Fortune (1990), can refer to several aspects of this film, which is based on a true story. It can point to the change from consciousness to a coma that Sunny Von Bulow (Glenn Close) endures. It can also indicate what happens to her husband, Claus Von Bulow (Jeremy Irons, who won an Oscar for Best Actor for this role), who is accused of trying to kill his wife. It may be that Claus literally receives a fortune because if his wife dies, he inherits her extreme wealth. And finally, the word “reversal” could mean reversing a conviction of murder on appeal. The film also presents a situation where what is real can be difficult to determine.

The first shot of the film shows the opulent estates of the rich in Newport, Rhode Island from the air, as if the rich soar above others, and it highlights the reference to “fortune” in the title. But then, shot shifts to a hospital, pointing to that reversal of fortune. Sunny is on life support. The film has Sunny narrating while in her coma, a device that allows Glenn Close to add her voice in addition to the scenes where she is in flashback. The voiceover allows suggestions as to whether her condition was the result of her own actions or due to her husband’s intent. She recovered from an earlier coma which could suggest she is at fault, but there is the possibility that Claus just used her tendencies to cover up his own murderous intent, and his first attempt failed.

The maid, Maria (Uta Hagen) and Sunny’s children from a prior marriage were suspicious after the first coma and the second put Sunny in a persistent vegetative state, from which she did not recover. The police found that Sunny’s insulin level when she entered the hospital was high enough to cause a coma or kill her, most likely due to an injection. They found a needle supposedly encrusted with insulin residue, which pointed to Claus as the perpetrator. Claus could inherit fourteen million dollars, so there is motive. In addition, Claus and Sunny had an arrangement where he could have mistresses. Claus was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to thirty years. These are the general facts of the case.

The real story begins when lawyer Alan Dershowitz (Ron Silver) becomes involved. He says he takes cases that for him have either a moral or constitutional imperative. The contrast in the fairness of the justice system here occurs because Alan loses a case about two innocent Black youths at the time the wealthy Claus wants to hire him. Alan is skeptical of Claus’s innocence and will charge him a great deal to help him defend the more disadvantaged.

Claus has a snobbish voice, and Irons said it was the hardest part of his performance. He makes a reference to admiring the Jewish people, which, when going out of the way to be stated, sounds prejudicial. At lunch, when Alan wants to talk about the “unpleasantness,” Claus thinks he means the lawyer’s fee, not the health of his wife. It highlights Claus’s lack of empathy. Alan says that one thing in Claus’s favor is that everybody hates him, which means one can show that Claus can be a victim. Of course, it’s a left-handed comment.

Maria the maid testified that she found a vial of insulin and a hypodermic needle, yet Sunny was not diabetic. Alan at the beginning feels that he would have voted to convict Claus if on the jury. He says if Hitler had asked him to defend him, his choice would have been to defend him or kill him. He admits that he would take the case and then kill Hitler. That shows both sides of Alan, a person who wants to follow the law, but also thinks outside it when it comes to morality. (Alan was part of the defense teams for O. J. Simpson and Jeffrey Epstein trials, and defended President Donald Trump in the impeachment trials. It’s up to you to judge his legal and moral codes).

Alan gathers a team around him to question him, to keep him thinking objectively and considering different strategies. It shows how Alan is willing to let his ego come under scrutiny. In contrast, you have Claus, who says, “Let the chips fall where they may,” to which Alan says that is what an innocent person would say. Claus’s response with a sly smile is, “I know.” The scene reveals that Claus is a schemer who is centered on his own self-interest.

Claus adds context to the basic charges by saying Sunny detested doctors and that is why he didn’t call one immediately. He knew there were hypodermic needles because they injected themselves with vitamin B12 shots at one time. He also says that Sunny took some of his prescriptions.

One of Alan’s team members is Minnie (Felicity Huffman) who argues that Claus, a privileged aristocrat, is despicable and that by trying to get him off, they are culpable as “accessories after the fact” in allowing a heinous man to go free. Generally, Alan gives the usual argument that everyone must have a fair trial to ensure that the innocent ones “falsely accused” have the same rights to even the playing field. In Claus’s case he says he is “pissed off,” because the children hired their own investigator to search for evidence. If rich people can decide what the evidence is in a case, then that precedent will make it difficult for poor people to be investigated in the same way the privileged are.

The investigation reveals how unsavory characters get involved, trying to cash in on a high-profile case, or hiding mistakes, which shows the road to justice can be a deceptive one. For instance, there is the slimy David Marriott (Fisher Stevens) who says he helped deliver drugs to Sunny. He later edits a tape to make it look like Alan was paying him to falsify evidence. We don’t learn why he did that (an example of how truth can be twisted). The lawyer in the earlier trial has notes that he is unwilling to share, but which eventually become known. Alan feels that there was no finding of insulin until after the fact. Alan suggests there may have been a frame-up of Claus by Sunny’s children, the next in line in inheritance. But as one student later says, the children could have framed “a guilty man.” There is a news article which has author Truman Capote revealing that Sunny showed him how to inject drugs. So, there are several layers muddling the attempt to get at what really happened.

Claus has a very dark sense of humor, which alienates him from others. When he meets Alan’s defense team, he says, “What do you give a wife who has everything? …An injection of insulin.” And, “How do you define a fear of insulin? … Claus-traphobia.” In another conversation with Allan, who says that a priest is an ideal witness, because “it’s like getting the word of God,” Claus says, “I checked. God is unavailable.” The last lines of the film have Claus getting cigarettes at a pharmacy. After the clerk recognizes him, he says he also wants, “a vial of insulin…just kidding.”

At one interview, Alan, trying to decipher Claus’s psyche, asks why he stayed in the flat where his mother died for five days until reporting the death. Claus is not forthcoming, saying, “My mother is my own business.” Who is this guy? Is he innocent or a killer? That is what Alan is trying to figure out. Especially when we have the narration of the comatose Sunny saying that she took huge amounts of laxatives and aspirin, used an assortment of sedatives, smoked a great deal, and drank to excess on certain occasions. We have a situation where it is difficult to determine what is true and what is false about the circumstances surrounding her vegetative state. Given her self-destructive actions, there is the possibility of her being suicidal.

Claus does not demonize Sunny. Quite the opposite. He says that she was “lovely,” and loved Christmas because more than anything else, she enjoyed giving gifts to others. The couple weren’t intimate for quite a while, but even though she allowed Claus his brief infidelities with call girls, she was hurt when Claus became attached to Alexandra Ises (Julia Hagerty) who sent his love letters to her to spite Sunny. According to Claus, they did discuss divorce, but he wanted to stay with Sunny. However, he wanted to work to have a sense of value, but Sunny wanted him to herself. As Claus tells Allan’s team, she thought her husband was confusing since he married her for her money but still wanted to have a job. Claus tells the team that the second coma was “much more theatrical.” An outraged Alan asks if Claus even cares about his wife’s horrible predicament. He claims he does, but he says. “I don’t wear my heart on my sleeve.” The audience can never get a true fix on what makes Claus and Sunny tick.

Comatose Sunny rightfully says, “it’s easy to forget this is all about me.” The whole story focuses on Claus, but she is the one who is hopelessly confined to a bed, needing others to maintain her existence. That may say something about the rest of us who would rather center on a scandal than on someone’s suffering, or her prior life full of passion and tenderness with Claus, and love for her children. There is a scene where she and Claus meet early on at an outdoor party where a pet tiger approaches her and she is bold about giving the creature a snack. Claus is excited by this act and joins Sunny near the animal. Sunny says, “I never liked people much, not as a rule.” She says that Claus was “different. Not a normal person I guess.” Here we have a sense of how out of the mainstream they were, more comfortable with a wild beast than other humans. Sunny’s voiceover states that things later became “brutish” and “cold,” and she wonders, “is he the Devil? If so, can the Devil get justice?” She wonders if all the legal activity is “in Satan’s service.” That sounds like what Alan talked about earlier concerning how even the guilty must have a fair trial.

Alan’s personality is not free of guilt, also. He sacrifices his personal relationships for his work, which he concedes is “all that I care about.” His own son interrupts him and sarcastically introduces his daughter to Alan, as if he hasn’t had time for her. His ex-girlfriend, Sarah (Annabella Sciorra), who is helping him with the case, says he doesn’t pay attention to those he cares about. He may have invited her to the team so he can be close to her, without being emotionally available.

After describing what happened the night of the second coma, Claus says he discovered Sunny passed out in her bathroom, her “sanctuary,” an almost religious word ironically attributed to a very non-spiritual place, He tells a doubting Alan, “I don’t know the whole truth.” That goes for the audience as well. As Alan says it’s very difficult to trust a man one doesn’t understand. Alan says to Claus, “You’re a very strange man.” To which, Claus responds, “You have no idea.” He admits not only to his “strangeness,” which is off-putting, but that Alan can’t fathom him, and neither can we.

The team eventually gets tests that show that the prosecution’s evidence of residual insulin on a hypodermic needle was inconclusive. Sunny was hypoglycemic, and then would overdose on sweets, which could lead to overcompensation by the body to produce insulin. Alan is able to introduce the new evidence despite the fact the case is on appeal by citing a Rhode Island Supreme Court justice’s prior ruling. They are able to reverse the convictions.

But Alan and Sarah tell Alan’s son two differing versions of what could have happened. Sunny was suicidal, could have taken too many medications, wanted the windows opened, and passed out in her bathroom while Claus was walking the dogs, exercising, and showering. She was ready to pee, and that’s how her nightgown was hiked up. Or, Claus opened the windows and dragged her into the bathroom, which hiked up the sleep clothes, and his actions helped the barbiturates on the way to her destruction, So, we are still in the dark.

Sunny’s last words are that we will only know the truth “When you get where I am,” which means not in this life. After Alan tells Claus about the good news, Alan, again showing the division on how he lives his life, says to him, “Legally, this was an important victory. Morally, you’re on your own.”

As are we.