Review: Weapons (2025)

I'm a bit surprised at the critical response to this film.  As I write this, Rotten Tomatoes has the film at 95% positive from critics and 87% positive from audiences with Metacritic also having it at an 81. This is a very acclaimed horror film in a year filled with such, and this is possibly the weirdest one to be so warmly received.

Not that the plot is too far out there.  As famously shown on the poster and in trailers, the basic plot is that all of the students (save one) of a third grade class taught by Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) get up at 2:17 a.m. and leave their houses and disappear.  The film starts about a month after the event with Justine ostracized and the parents still angry that no progress has been made on finding their children.

The movie is broken into several different parts, each named after the character that it focuses on.  It starts with Justine, but also follows parent Archer Graff (Josh Brolin), police officer Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), principal Marcus Miller (Benedict Wong), drug addict James (Austin Abrams) and Paul (Cary Christopher), the lone student that came to class that fateful day.

The timelines of all of these characters all intermingle with one another - Justine's part starts after Archer's but before James, that sort of thing - but tie together in ways both obvious (seeing a scene start from a different character's point of view) and subtle (the film shows but does not tell who vandalizes Justine's car).  None of this is hard to follow, though it might take a moment to figure out certain timeline events until the point where they collide occurs, and it likely rewards the audience for multiple viewings.

The movie takes its time getting to the eventual reveal of what happens, and uses its story structure to show escalations out of order to keep you guessing as to the answer.  All of the actors do a great job tying everything together and no performance feels out of place, either in the various timelines or the film overall.  Tonally, there isn't much to criticize: the film is somber all throughout with just enough jump scares - usually delivered via dream sequences - to keep the audience from getting too comfortable or complacent.

There are a few minor criticisms to be made. The first would be the ending of the film.  Not the entire ending, mind you, but part of it.  Part of the ending is so darkly comedic and perfect that I almost don't want to criticize it at all, but what follows that particular moment of catharsis feels rushed.  I don't want to give spoilers, but the cathartic moment and what leads up to it is amazing, so having the movie end so quickly after it feels like a proper denouncement is missing.  Again, not a large complaint, just a small wish for a bit more to properly wrap up.

(The other complaint involves some very minor spoilers, so feel free to skip this paragraph to avoid those if so inclined)  The other problem is that, for a very large portion of this film, it reads as an metaphor for a school shooting - even going so far as to show an AR-15 with the time of the children's disappearance in one of the dream sequences.  It plays into the title of the film and hangs over movie up until the actual reveal.  But once it drops that, it completely drops it.  Nothing even hinting at the previous metaphor comes up for the remainder of the film.  It makes it lose a bit of energy.  Nothing too detrimental to the film, but I can't help but wonder how it would've changed the film if they had held onto it all the way to the end.

It also indulges in the 'bury your gays' trope that I could very much do without.

But aside from those small quibbles, this is a solid film.  Not my favorite of the year, but a damn good piece of filmmaking that really makes me feel like I should check out director Zach Cregger's previous feature Barbarian.

8.5 out of 10

Review: Elio (2025)

Sometimes, a studio is a victim of its own success.  Pixar has created so many stone-cold classics in the animation genre that even a mediocre outing feels like a huge disappointment.  And while I'd argue that Elio is a perfectly fine animated film, I can see why so much about it is considered such even before getting into its anemic box office numbers.

Elio follows the titular character, Elio Solis (Yonas Kibreab), a young boy who longs to be abducted by aliens after his parents die and he moves in with his aunt, Olga Solis (Zoe Saldana).  Elio is an outcast who spends the majority of his time in his pursuit of abduction.  Eventually he actually is abducted and finds himself representing Earth as its ambassador in the Communiverse.  And I'll stop the summary there.

There are so many tropes in that short description of the film that it could easily be a dozen other films up until the alien abduction.  The film originally had a bit more characterization for Elio and you can feel the gaps in the screenplay (I won't go into details but the removal of said characterization was enough that original director Adrian Molina and original voice actress America Ferrera both left the project).

It's sad, because the film is missing a personality that it desperately needs for both its lead character and for its alien plot.  Several of the alien ambassadors are a marvel of animation, but 15 minutes after the movie it's almost impossible to name a single one of them.  Even the antagonist of the film is a stock character that's been seen a hundred times before and will be seen a hundred times after.

None of these criticisms are unforgiveable sins, they just add up to make this one of the lesser efforts from Pixar.  It's worth seeing, especially compared to the lesser efforts of the other major animation studios, but it might be that Pixar film that most people forget about.

6.5 out of 10

Review: Death of a Unicorn (2025)

There's a delicate line that must be walked when doing a horror comedy, particularly one that indulges in gore in the manner of Death of a Unicorn: If someone is going to be killed by a unicorn kick to the face - and we are meant to laugh at said death - the character needs to have 'earned' that end and we need to be removed enough from the horror that we can laugh at said death.  Death of a Unicorn mostly succeeds at this, though not enough that it doesn't complete avoid tonal issues.

The film follows Elliot Kintner (Paul Rudd) and his daughter Ridley (Jenna Ortega) as they travel to visit Elliot's dying boss Odell Leopold (Richard E. Grant).  As they travel through the Canadian Rockies, they hit and apparently kill a unicorn which they end of bringing with them to the secluded Leopold estate.  Once there, they discover the healing properties of the unicorn and encounter its angry parents.

The film tries to be a bit of a satire by having the Leopold family - Odell, wife Belinda (Tea Leoni), and son Shepard (Will Poulter) - aggressively start working to monetize the use of the dead unicorn while also having Ridley be a 'pure-hearted maiden' who happens to espouse many liberal viewpoints, but there isn't too much meat to it, and the film could've easily left most of it on the cutting room floor without hurting the overall product.

The film is much stronger when it goes wider in its target through the use of The Unicorn Tapestries - focusing more on those that want to capture and abuse the magical powers of unicorns vs. the more specific target that the Leopolds represent - and might've benefitted from a more subtextual approach to the politics.

All of the actors do a great job: Paul Rudd plays a slightly more mature character than normal, and Jenna Ortega continues to cement her Scream Queen status.  It feels as if Tea Leoni is playing a reference to a particular person, but I couldn't name who, though she is very much having fun with the part.  Of the smaller parts, Sunita Mani somewhat surprises with much richer character work for her Dr. Bhatia than I think the film called for, but it was appreciated nonetheless.

Really, it's just frustrating that the film almost hits a home run but keeps getting in its own way with the early asides that go nowhere and throwaway bits that too sparse to break the tension effectively or played down in a way that limits their effect.  A reference to a character eating unicorn steak could've been a darkly hilarious moment or could've pushed the satire further, but instead it's just a quick sequence where the meal is handed to a character and then... moves on.

Those quibbles aside, it is still a mostly-funny movie that I think most people would enjoy.  It took a big swing (I don't think I have seen unicorns used as a movie monster outside of a short bit in 2011's The Cabin in the Woods) and while it might not have gone the distance, I appreciate that it went for it.

7 out of 10.