All posts by Stephen Michael Brown

I've reviewed films for more than 35 years. Current movie reviews of new theatrical releases and streaming films are added weekly to the Silver Screen Capture movie news site. Many capsule critiques originally appeared in expanded form in my syndicated Lights Camera Reaction column.
2025, Rent It Tonight

Kathryn Bigelow Lets Nobody Off the Hook in Powerful Nuclear Cautionary Tale “A House of Dynamite”

Leave a comment

A discomforting topic in an obtuse format unfocused on any single character for long, punctuated with ambiguous outcomes, seems a formula for frustration; and yet Kathryn Bigelow imprints her signature hyper-realism with panache onto a fictional but not far-fetched situation, and the result – A House of Dynamite (B+) – is an intense, often riveting political think piece. Instead of a straight-up doomsday clock thriller, it is divided into three acts depicting the same critical moments of escalating activity as an unattributed nuclear missile careens toward the American homeland. The only edge-of-your-seat part is the first act from the White House situation room POV featuring an effective Rebecca Ferguson, who pulls viewers directly into the propulsive real-time plot. The remaining acts center on less interesting characters, a gruff general and an early-term commander-in-chief, embodied well by Tracy Letts and Idris Elba, respectively. These second and third parts pull back the microscope and introduce different degrees of decision making into the narrative, allowing viewers multiple portals for determining how they would react if faced with a similar scenario. These acts of subsequent diminishing intensity admittedly  let some air out of the story momentum but not out of the argument against mutually-assured annihilation. Bigelow peppers in matter-of-fact moments of daily life to heighten the realism and emotion, which is helpful except in at least one location laden with heavy-handed symbolism. Viewers can’t help but confront the nuclear issue and how one would respond after viewing many competent and well-trained characters struggle under the spotlight of real impending terror. Noah Oppenheim’s script offers no easy answers. Volker Bertelmann’s stirring score is a standout feature. In total it’s a flawed but vital conversation-starter movie.

2025, Rent It Tonight

Linklater’s “Nouvelle Vague” Celebrates Artistry in Purest Form

Leave a comment

Indie auteur Richard Linklater sets the table for a French New Wave banquet complete with dishy performances, select servings of asides, a main course with temporal tastings, napkin scrawls as spontaneous cues and signature jump-cutlery in a tasty treat for cinephiles, Nouvelle Vague (A-). Expect to sleuth diligently on the Netflix menu come November for this obscure bonbon, a subtitled 4:3 aspect ratio black and white tribute to the rebel filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard as chronicled through the ragtag production of his unconventional and groundbreaking first feature film, 1960’s Breathless. Guillaume Marbeck is wonderful as the obstinate, improvisational iconoclast Godard, pioneering an on-the-fly guerrilla style; and Zoey Deutch is a sublime standout as his film’s glamorous leading lady Jean Seberg, often aghast at her helmer’s terse techniques. Among a delightful largely unknown supporting cast of real people behind a turning point in world cinema, Matthieu Penchinat is a hoot as accommodating and towering cinematographer Raoul Coutard whom, at one point on the shoot, hides in a tiny wagon to capture Parisian street crowds of accidental extras. This dramedy deftly covers the landmark high-flying act of Godard’s 20-day film shoot, complete with frustrated crews and producers and ample helpings of wit and wisdom. Linklater’s approach is that of admiration rather than mimicry or experimentation, although only a modern director this creative would conceive the go-for-broke concept and film it so elegantly in the French language. It’s madcap and maddening at times but a fun ride for those who care to hop onboard. The pace isn’t exactly breathless. The director overuses famous quotes as convenient stand-ins for more original dialogue. And some characters could have used more development. But the placemaking and insights are first-rate, with find crafts all around carrying on a grand tradition. It’s a film about the tempestuousness of artistry and the effect of timing in invention; and like Ed Wood and The Disaster Artist before it, serves up its own distinctive and layered souflee.

2025

“Shelby Oaks” Squanders Promising Found Footage Horror Premise

Leave a comment

Film review YouTube personality turned writer/director/producer Chris Stuckmann’s Shelby Oaks (C) gets points for chutzpah; it’s one thing to critique others’ movies and another thing altogether to conceive of and mobilize for one’s own full debut motion picture production. The film does a good job setting up the premise of a missing paranormal/occult documentary crew last seen alive in a rural region known mainly for an abandoned amusement park and jail. Seemingly the scene is set and the mixed media atmosphere established for a deep dive into what happened. Camille Sullivan plays the protagonist, older sister of the missing blond at the center of the mystery; neither she nor other incidental characters (the venerable Keith David among them) have the script or the presence to pull off anything too out of the ordinary from the proceedings. Both the derivative procedural and supernatural elements don’t break any new ground, and the ending is rushed. It shows promise more than mastery in terms of sustained suspense, What could have been radical or revolutionary is mostly merely routine. 

2025

Cerebral “Springsteen” Film a Fascinating Anti-Crowdpleaser

Leave a comment

Hollywood of late is so dead-set against presenting a typical “Behind the Music” style biopic treatment of its legends that it often feels like tough medicine is being administered instead of rousing entertainment, and this modern elixir of choice leveraged to tackle the subject of Bruce Springsteen is fittingly far from formulaic. Writer/director Scott Cooper’s Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (B) is a provocative glimpse at a time period of deep introspection for the Americana pop music purveyor; and while this epoch for reflection and stripped-down creation makes for a stimulating intellectual exercise, it doesn’t always pop off the screen with accompanying bombast. Jeremy Allen White is a sly, snug choice for the title role, as his brooding character endeavors to exorcise the demons of an abusive childhood and finds himself a bit paralyzed by the notion of superstardom while transitioning from bar shows to arena tours. The plot centers around Bruce’s relentless self-recording of demos for the album Nebraska, comprised of personal fever dream confessions, folksy remembrances and intimate rock fable tone poems a far cry from the pop crossover juggernauts of his most popular “Born in the USA” era. Cooper’s film is fully committed to the artist’s evocation of his most raw and direct personal statements and tracing his singular obsession with placing the artifacts of his youth in their proper place. The movie deals with mental health struggles, which White handles deftly. And there are mere moments of fan service with only a few tunes covered in their entirety. The talented Odessa Young is wonderfully endearing as love interest Faye, although her lively contributions are somewhat dismissed, a more rotation around an Atlantic City boardwalk carousel, amidst the songwriter’s overall cycle of moodiness. Jeremy Strong and Paul Walter Hauser are effective in small parts as the manager/producer and recording engineer, respectively, who help the Boss be his best. The film is best in its moments of heightened emotion. It needed more music, though, as White channels the gravel-throated crooner with stirring authenticity. The film is overall a unique glimpse into the man and musician and gives a rather full picture of his emotional landscape even as it may leave many fans wanting more.

2025, Rent It Tonight

Hey Ya, Frankonia/Outcast: “Frankenstein” Format Presents Identity Issues

Leave a comment
Frankenstein Film Netflix

One of culture’s most enduring pop duos occupies an often fascinating double bill in Guillermo del Toro’s idiosyncratic retelling of classic gothic horror fantasy, marked by exploration of self-loathing and shared identity. The august director’s expansive Netflix adaptation of Frankenstein (B), is divided in half, focused at first on narcissistic Dr. Victor Frankenstein, played by Oscar Isaac, displaying epic rage, and then following the sapient creature’s perspective, embodied by Jacob Elordi, often more pensive and philosophical as he grapples with the dysphoria and isolation imbued in his cobbled together reanimated body. The presentation in two chapters, each from a different man’s POV, is almost too on the nose about the identity of the real monster. Call it ego then emo. The first half about ambition and scientific ethics is very much alive, with a very committed Isaac energized by experimentation, with grand production design and some grisly effects, plus some spry scene work opposite Christoph Waltz, a hoot as a curious benefactor. Horror staple Mia Goth is intriguing in her arrival but underused in this section, sidelined as the father figure tale takes full center stage. Chapter two largely tackles societal rejection through Elordi at the center and not fitting in very well; but this part of the tale is a letdown, downplaying action for more interior case study that just doesn’t pulse the same way as the preceding passages. The creature is a sympathetic character, born this way and yearning for answers, but the aesthetics and plot don’t do him any favors in emoting and connecting through the pancaked prosthetics to the audience. The towering Elordi looks the part, for sure, but his character just doesn’t land with intended gravitas. The directorial choice of how all this is framed drains life out of the film rather than amplify the intrigue. The film’s crafts are roundly impressive, ranging from Kate Hawley’s distinctive costumes to Alexandre Desplat’s lyrical score. There’s lots of good creative work here; it’s just put together in ways that don’t always elevate the familiar into the fantastic. For the two-chapter Netflix mentality, it’s one part binge, one part cringe and most parts a thing of beauty.

2025

“Re-Election” is a Hanging Chad of a Comedy

Leave a comment
Re-election film 2025

We’ve all had the dream of going back to school, armed with what we know now, imagining the power of what we’d do differently; but a new film squanders the conceit. In his unsuccessful comedy Re-Election (D), director Adam Saunders plays an aimless middle-aged sad sack who re-enrolls in high school to run for class president again after an epic fail, desperate to capture the mojo he lost as a teenager. The goofball character at the center of the film is the first of its problems. The script does a disservice to everyone involved as the comic parts aren’t particularly distinctive, and the dramatic parts feel like an afterschool special. And for a film about a political campaign, there’s not really an insightful takeaway there either, as one can’t help but think of “Tracy Flick” and all the pioneers of wry modern electioneering allegory. The serious presence of Bex Taylor-Klaus as an earnest character schooling the protagonist about issues of non-binary identity and of Tony Danza as a father figure of sorts prattling on about something or other do little to overcome the notion thst everyone acting in this film seems to be in a different universe, and few of those universes feel like a real modern high school. There also seems to be a fire sale on the song “Here Comes the Hotstepper,” which serves as an inexplicable nostalgia stand-in a time or two. Like the Howard Dean scream that doomed a campaign some two decades ago, this film seems ready to roar and then sort of prattles off the dais. 

2025

As “Roofman,” Channing Tatum is Prancing on the Ceiling with Endearing Performance

Leave a comment

Equal parts chewing the scenery and emoting with grace, a modern matinee idol has matured into an ideal role for his talents. – a true step-up, if you will. Derek Cianfrance’s true crime comedy Roofman (B+), so named because of its antihero’s penchant for entering his retail robbery targets from above, is a tour de force for Channing Tatum in the title performance. It’s a wild real-life story of a down-on-his-luck U.S. Army veteran who uses his skills at observing patterns to commit a crime spree to provide for his Charlotte family, and Tatum clearly relishes both the comic and tender side of the role and the fancy footwork of action in the exciting escapades. The better part of the film takes place in a secret bunker hideout the character creates inside a Toys “R” Us superstore, and many of the film’s joys are akin to those of Castaway, in which playing off physical objects becomes a central acting challenge. Along with the strong title character, Kirsten Dunst is the film’s other major standout as a toy store associate and single mom whom Roofman encounters via surveillance and at a local church; the “meet cute” has darker undertones as it’s fairly clear things may careen into danger for the unconventional couple. Tatum and Dunst bring their finest energies to their respective roles; and although there isn’t a hugely consequential theme to the proceedings, the featherweight story is consistently witty, touching and engrossing. In his screenplay collaboration and direction, Cianfrance also proves a deft observer of human intimacy and draws consistent excellence from his ensemble. This movie is a shaggy, entertaining romp with hearts worn on even the sleeves with guns. 

2025

Jenny from the Cell Block Intrigues in “Kiss of the Spider Woman” Musical Film

Leave a comment
Kiss of the Spider Woman 2025 Roadside Attractions

Translating a stage musical based on a non-musical movie back into a film musical is a tricky translation (musicalized movies of The Little Shop of Horrors, Hairspray and The Color Purple largely worked, while 2005’s The Producers was a slog). The 2025 film Kiss of the Spider Woman (C+), directed by Bill Condon and based on the original Oscar-winning 1985 movie and its 1993 Kander & Ebb Broadway musical adaptation, suffers from awkward pacing, tonal dissonance and, ironically, an inert staginess. The premise, that an odd couple of Argentine political prisoners bond over a parallel tale of a classic movie star in an iconic double role including the titular character embodied by Jennifer Lopez. Tonatiuh and Diego Luna are terrific as the inmates, doing their best possible acting in a format conceit that can’t quite figure out if the prison-set framing device is the central story or the Technicolor film-within-the-film actually is. Lopez acquits herself admirably with good singing and excellent dancing – and style for days – but still her work is a bit distant. Plus the musical numbers, sometimes inventively realized, don’t often move the narrative forward. Strangely some of the film’s final act sequences reflect Condon’s aim, but the movie fails to fully come together for much of its duration. Art direction and costumes are strong. Alas the potential for razzle dazzle here proves as dim as its likely awards prospects.

2025, Rent It Tonight

PTA Has a Lot on the Mind in “One Battle After Another”

Leave a comment

Writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson has honed a singular cottage filmmaking industry lending a sympathetic gaze to insular groups such as the denizens of the Hollywood hills, religious cultists, oil tycoons and fashion house provocateurs. Now he leverages the lives of an interlocking series of domestic terrorists to make points about humanity and society, with mixed and sometimes muddled results. His One Battle After Another (B-) explores the notion of passing along to a next generation an uncanny revolutionary spirit via the explosive relationship of American vigilantes played by Teyana Taylor and Leonardo DiCaprio and their teenage offspring played by newcomer Chase Infiniti. In modern times, DiCaprio’s character is regularly killing a few brain cells, but he’s also a protective father living off the grid who gets pulled into a propulsive powder-keg when a villain from the past (a white supremacist military man played by Sean Penn) threatens his beloved daughter. Anderson’s kinetic visual style is well-suited to a series of action set pieces traversing cramped immigrant camps and hideaways, the wide desert canvas of hilly highways and the parkour of it all with escapes atop and across city rooftops. The movie’s story and script are lacking, and the characterizations lose focus amidst the progressive acts of chaos. The film’s long running time, seemingly enough space to adequately explore its characters, strangely sidelines and shortchanges members of its otherwise fascinating family. Penn actually gets the showiest part, but even the choices he makes in portraying this quirky character don’t always make complete sense. The film is frisky and funniest when featuring  DiCaprio’s misanthropic humor as his character forgets passwords and chides those easily triggered. Despite some grace notes in the final act, Anderson doesn’t fully sell his thesis, and his hot takes aren’t even pointed enough to provide direct allegory for contemporary times. This loose adaptation of the novel Vineland is either an overlong lark or a short shrift to characters needing more developing. It’s sometimes PTA’s perpetual prattle that keeps happening again and again.

2025

“The Smashing Machine” Not Quite a Knockout

Leave a comment

This is a movie in which acting itself is a combat sport. Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt offer transformative performances, but it’s not always clear to what end in Benny Safdie’s real-life mixed martial arts fighting origin story The Smashing Machine (C+). Johnson plays MMA fighter Mark Kerr at the plateau of career success while simultaneously fighting painkiller addiction and a toxic marriage. It’s a film of very few surprises. Safdie’s watchful camera traces the pugilistic protagonist through globetrotting sports adventures and intimate domestic drama sequences, all the while artfully showcasing the man’s bombast and vulnerability. Emily Blunt is feral in her role as the spouse competing for his attention versus the sport itself. She chews whatever scenery her husband isn’t smashing; it’s a bit like another universe is calling and wants her performance back. Ryan Bader as Kerr’s longtime friend and fellow fighter actually comes across most interesting in the mix with empathetic Everyman appeal. It’s refreshing to see Johnson try a more overtly dramatic role on for size, and he acquits himself admirably on the journey, fully inhabiting a real guy seemingly very different from his own persona. Alas the film’s story doesn’t fully deliver on what clearly fascinated its makers, and no amount of artifice can conceal it’s just not all that interesting. In fact, at its most indulgent moments, the film feels a bit fabricated for awards season clip reels. See 2011’s Warrior for a more absorbing and nuanced take on the drama which can be harvested from the MMA.

2025

Grim and Graphic “The Long Walk” is Revelatory for Those Joining the Journey

Leave a comment

Call it a self-help book on film for becoming a man. It may be based on one of Stephen King’s earliest writings from 1979, but the grim dystopian domestic future of Francis Lawrence’s The Long Walk (B+) now feels like it could be happening in today’s America a few weeks or months from now, with lessons of utmost consequence. The fleeting facade of wistful young male life gets full anthropological examination here, prescient in a week characterized by cauldrons of vengeance, violence, chasms of disagreement and debate about forgiveness, martyrdom and legacy playing out in real time on everyone’s feeds, cable news and conversations. The story goes like this:  Each year a group of 50 fresh-faced young men take part in a televised walking contest across a stark, abandoned U.S. highway, marching continuously or else they’ll be individually executed, until only one remains. The film zeroes in on one of these consorts making their mostly futile trek. Although undoubtedly an allegory for a Vietnam War platoon when written, the reverse-purge survival of the fittest events depicted in the film, set in totalitarian times, reveal a stunningly diverse set of behaviors about male bonding, toxicity and both hopeless and hopeful life philosophies not so far removed from young male life in the evolving experiment of today. Cooper Hoffman and David Jonsson are flat-out phenomenal as the dual protagonists who become best friends on the journey; they provide indelible characterizations and much of the heart and humor in an otherwise brutal environment along the intersection of Pier Paolo Pasolini and the Marquis de Sade. There are such shades here of King’s own The Shawshank Redemption (unexpected venue for spiritual dialogue) and the Lawrence-directed The Hunger Games (lottery ticket with human stakes), it’s no wonder the source material and director were so lock-stepped. Mark Hamill is nearly unrecognizable as a ubiquitous hybrid TV host/drill sergeant who is chilling but underdeveloped in his blissful menace. The film opts to be very graphic in its parade of cranium kills, and candid in its language and depiction of anatomical challenges along the journey, almost daring audiences to turn a wincing eye from the horrors of the propulsive proceedings. The very nature of the film being told in what amounts to near perpetual motion makes for a singular experience of naturalistic moviemaking. Many details about the story’s exact time and location are left to the imagination, a la Civil War, a curious choice sometimes freeing and equally often perplexing. Evoking the literate and pop culturally attuned characters of The Outsiders or Stand by Me, there’s a feeling this talented ensemble is recognizing its place in a Mark Twain meets Aldous Huxley universe, or even Biblical end times, grasping for the meaning of it all. It’s a very tough watch but thoughtful and rewarding to those on its wavelength. There are universal takeaways and truths in what feels both contemporary and bygone. For all of its chilling carnage, this sturdy dying-of-age film reveals glimmers of hope about how people can attune personal outlook to approach every next step with purpose.

2025

“Twinless” a Rollicking Requiem for Modern Male Bonding

Leave a comment
Twinless Film

Note: Thanks to Out On Film for an early screening as this buzzy Sundance acquisition gets a theatrical run in select markets starting this week.

Between seclusion from common COVID-era customs, confusion over gender roles, delusion over modern etiquette and illusions of relationships forged online or in video games, it’s no wonder IRL has mainly been WTF, and male friendships have become a contemporary casualty. Following a riff on similar themes in this summer’s Friendship, James Sweeney writes and directs Twinless (B+) in which he also co-stars as a gay man who meets a straight man in a support group for people whose twins have passed away, and the memories of lost siblings are stand-ins for the macro mystery of fallen fraternity and restoration of the bygone brotherly bond. Although Sweeney’s character’s “sus” motivations tend to derail the most realistic parts of the droll dramedy, his Dennis benefits from acting opposite Dylan O’Brien’s brilliant takes as the hot-tempered and sometimes air-headed Roman and his confident flamboyant flashback brother Rocky. He’s doubly an on-screen revelation. The film’s fog of grief and despair is soon punctuated by displays of public bonhomie: shooting whiskey, cutting up courtside and co-crooning with abandon behind the wheel. Aisling Franciosi is terrific as the workmate of Dennis and love interest of Roman caught slackjawed amidst the bromantic bliss and bluster. Greg Cotten’s cinematography smartly evokes two parts of a whole in so many ways, via reflective surfaces and split screens and even divided sandwiches, viewers will truly discover visually and viscerally how the other half lives. Add to all this a very memorable score by Jung Jae-il, and it’s a stunning original marked by offbeat humor and universal yearning. The filmmaker is willing to face some ugly truths as he holds a mirror up to the modern world and finds what may look like identical scenarios to some can actually harbor multitudes.