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One Battle After Another (2025)

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Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Benito Del Toro, Sean Penn, Regina Hall et al. Directed by : Paul Thomas Anderson Where it’s Available : HBO MAX in the US and most territories, Crave in Canada. The first scene of PTA’s 2025 opus, ‘One Battle After Another’ literally involves a group of self-styled ‘revolutionaries’ breaking migrants out of an ICE internment camp. I texted a friend of mine, “Oh, so this film is POLITICAL political”. And it is. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Pat (later Bob), a bomb specialist of the ‘French 75’ revolutionary group. Their manifesto, while not explicitly stated on-screen, is clearly left-leaning (they protect immigrants and minorities, they threaten a senator’s campaign office because they voted for an abortion ban, etc). These are the film’s good guys. The primary antagonist is a white supremacist soldier with a fetish for powerful black women (played with sufficient malice and menace by Sean Penn). This is the playing field on which this film lives - which is why...
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2025 - A Year in Gaming

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In the Year of Our Lord 2025, I rolled credits on 11 games (okay, 10.5 anyway - you’ll see what I mean). That’s three fewer than last year. I blame the fact that I am still wasting a disproportionate amount of time playing Balatro (#2 from last year) and Baldur’s Gate 3 (#1 from 2023 and a top-5 all-timer). This year was ‘very’ strong overall in terms of product (you’ll notice the top two - and six of 11 overall - on my list were from this calendar year), but the state of the industry overall seems like it’s hanging by a thread. Let’s hope 2026 continues the quality output and steadies itself in terms of industry foundation (give talented people money to make games, folks. Please). 11. Night Trap (Limited Run Games - Originally Released 1992, 2017 ‘25th Anniversary Re-Release’) - Available on everything, played on Nintendo Switch. As someone of my vintage, this was more so I could say “I did it” than any real want or need to experience the deep narrative nuance of this infamous Sega CD...
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The Black Phone 2 (2025)

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  Starring : Mason Thames, Madeline McGraw, Ethan Hawke Directed By : Scott Derrickson Where It’s Available : A Theatre Near You, on-demand streaming at home digital rentals  The original ‘Black Phone’, released in 2022, was a rare beast in horror films - a truly original idea. Ghost stories have been around even longer than horror movies, but I don’t ever recall the ghosts being the ‘good guys’ in a slasher/horror genre picture before (we’re not talking about Casper here). In case you missed it (spoiler warning for the end of the original Black Phone - which is actually fantastic and well worth a watch if you have not seen it) - at the conclusion of the film, Finn Blake (Mason Thames) had escaped from the clutches of The Grabber (Ethan Hawke) thanks in no small part to his sister, Gwen (Madeline McGraw). In the course of the escape, Finn kills The Grabber (good riddance) and also helps avenge the five dead children who preceded him in being caught in The Grabber’s clutches. ‘...
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Sinners (2025)

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Starring : Michael B. Jordan, Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caron, Hailee Steinfeld et. Al. Directed by : Ryan Coogler Where It’s Available : HBO MAX in the US and most international territories, Crave in Canada It’s not often that a film can seemingly come out of nowhere based on a trued and true idea, take that concept, tweak it and set the world on fire, but in Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners’, that’s exactly what happened. Ostensibly a period-piece genre film, but in truth something that’s much more than the sum of its parts, Sinners is a film that years from now, when you look up ‘cool’ in the dictionary, a still from this film will be staring back at you. Michael B. Jordan stars in duel roles as the twin brothers ‘Stack’ and ‘Smoke’ - two wiseguy street toughs in depression-era Mississippi. The brothers have returned home after several years (where, among other things, they worked for Al Capone in an unstated capacity) with designs of opening up their own juke joint - a Chicago-style night sp...
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Captain America: Brave New World (2025)

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Starring : Anthony Mackie, Harrison Ford, Danny Ramirez, Giancarlo Esposito et al. Directed By : Julius Onah Where It’s Available : Streaming internationally on Disney-+ It’s funny - the fourth Captain America mainline film in the MCU (and first since Anthony Mackie took the shield from Chris Evans) ends up playing like a spinoff sequel to two of the franchise’s lesser-loved products - The Incredible Hulk and The Eternals. Sometimes it works. Sometimes… the film can be a tad dumb and borderline incoherent. In all its one of the most uneven MCU films in the 17 (Jesus) years the venerable franchise is around. But even a ‘bad’ MCU film still has some entertainment value. The film opens with newly-anointed Captain America, Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) raiding a compound in Mexico to retrieve… something. Basically it’s just a cool action set piece to show off Cap’s new moves with the shield and his now-vibranium-infused wings - and also to give the new Falcon, Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez) ...
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The Gorge (2025)

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Starring : Miles Teller, Anya Taylor-Joy, Sigourney Weaver Directed by : Scott Derrickson Where It’s Available : Apple TV  I’ve been watching a fair amount of Apple TV lately. Severance is the hottest shit on television right now. Before that, season two of Silo was fantastic, engaging, week-to-week television. Before what seems like every episode I was greeted with an ad for this movie. It looked interesting - who doesn’t like Anya Taylor-Joy, after all? I don’t think she’s capable of making a bad film. But I didn’t quite know what to expect going in. And now, after having watched it, this seems completely by design. The top-level description I can give you is that this movie is part-action, part-horror, part-espionage thriller and part-romance. If that seems like a lot, well… it kind of *is*? But for all those spinning plates, it’s remarkably competent and it does at a bare minimum a passable job in every one of those genres. The film is about two lonely special ops assassins who...
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Alien: Romulus (2024)

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Starring : Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Isabel Merced, the ghost of Ian Holm Directed by : Fede Alvarez Where It’s Available : Hulu in the US, Disney Plus in Canada and international territories. When I heard that Fede Alvarez (director of the recent-ish Evil Dead remake and, more recently, the intense “blind man kills a bunch of young no-goodniks” thriller ‘Don’t Breathe’) was helming a new addition to the Alien franchise, my interest was piqued, but tempered. This is, after all, a franchise that hasn’t had an arguably ‘good’ film since David Fincher’s ‘Alien 3’ 30 years ago for Pete’s sake (I see you, ‘Prometheus’ Stans. … you’re very, very wrong. But I see you). Colour me happily surprised when this film jumps out of the gates with a neat concept (anti-capitalist heist film gone *horribly* awry) and great action set pieces. I can say with all honesty, final act missteps aside (we’ll touch on those) this is the third best film in the Alien franchise (behind the iconic, genre-definin...
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