Recently watched movies 2025

[CL82]

Monster Hunter (2020)

It's fine. It is a video game based movie about interdimensional travel, and, unsurprisingly, monsters that stars Milla Jovovich. I wasn't expecting it to be Citizen Kane. It will occupy your time while you watch it and be forgotten shortly thereafter. Sometimes that's enough.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Monster Hunter (2020)

It's fine. It is a video game based movie about interdimensional travel, and, unsurprisingly, monsters that stars Milla Jovovich. I wasn't expecting it to be Citizen Kane. It will occupy your time while you watch it and be forgotten shortly thereafter. Sometimes that's enough.

Plus, those eyes.

 

[Dove]

One Battle After Another (2025)

I feel like Paul Thomas Anderson has fallen in to the same situation as Wes Anderson. With Wes I go into every movie wanting it to be as good as "The Royal Tenenbaums" or even "The Life Aquatic". Lately the movies have all the visual appeal but they are missing that something special.

That's really exactly how I feel about One Battle After Another; I was really hoping this would be as great as "There Will Be Blood". It's based on or it basically ripped off a Pynchon book. Ultimately, it's good but not truly great.

The movie is set in alternate timeline, it starts somewhere around what would be 2008ish. The US government is seemingly the Confederacy had they not only won the Civil War, but also conquered the north. Dicaprio and company are basically revolutionaries verging on being terrorists. His girlfriend Perfidia Beverly Hills (Tayana Taylor) is a hardcore warrior type. She crosses paths with Colonel LockJaw (Sean Penn). Perfidia shames him and he becomes obsessed with her in every possible way.

Fast forward into the future. Dicaprio is raising the daughter he had with Perfidia in secret hiding from the authorities. Perfidia is elsewhere in hiding. Old Colonel Lockjaw gets invited to join the "Christmas Adventurers" sort of like Skull and Bones but for wealthy and influential white supremacists. But, he can't join before his past and character have been properly vetted. So Lockjaw has some cleaning up to do. And this is essentially the movie.

What the movie does well is hold you attention for 3 hours. There are some hilarious scenes with Dicaprio arguing on the phone. The dialogue is good, the portrayal of "The Christmas Adventurers" was pretty far out on the absurdity scale. While it's funny it's so absurd it's jarring. At times it was like it was trying to "O Brother Where Art Thou".

There is a car chase scene at the end that I think will be the iconic scene of this film. Sean Penn's performance was every bit as good as Daniel Day Lewis's when it comes to portraying someone irredeemably bad. Benicio Del Toro is great in support as a sort of kingpin in a sanctuary city.

Watch it on a snowy day without interruption.

3 hours?!?

 

[nwhoopfan]

Took a flyer on a B grade sci fi that I don't recall hearing anything about, was briefly in theaters apparently a couple months ago--"Xeno". Streamed it on hoopla. Just a misfit teen girl and her alien dog/murder machine/thing. Stars Lulu Wilson from "Becky" and "Wraith of Becky," which I haven't seen but am aware of. I quite enjoyed it. Fairly good production values for what it is. Also they used old school practical F/X, which makes SUCH a difference. I wish there was more of that. CGI is so overused and is getting so lazy. I thought Wilson was good. Also while he wasn't on screen very much Omari Hardwick as a government agent tracking the alien thing gave a strong performance.

 

[HuskyHawk]

Jurassic World Rebirth (2025). Free now on Peacock. Some biotech dude named Krebs (Rupert Friend) says they need the blood of the three biggest dinosaurs of land, water and air so he can cure heart disease and make billions. Dinosaurs live around the equator because it's more like the world they once ruled. Travel there is banned. Krebs hires SpecOp fixer Zora (Scarlett Johansson) to put together a team to go there and get that blood. She brings in Matershali Ali and others. ScarJo is thicc. Looks 15 pounds heavier, some of it is muscle, some isn't. Predictably, the Dinos don't really go along with this plan, wreak some havoc on the team. Filmed in Thailand and Malta, many of the locations are breathtaking. It's well done and fun, with fewer ridiculously implausible plot points than some others.

 

[Palatine]

Jurassic World Rebirth (2025). Free now on Peacock. Some biotech dude named Krebs (Rupert Friend) says they need the blood of the three biggest dinosaurs of land, water and air so he can cure heart disease and make billions. Dinosaurs live around the equator because it's more like the world they once ruled. Travel there is banned. Krebs hires SpecOp fixer Zora (Scarlett Johansson) to put together a team to go there and get that blood. She brings in Matershali Ali and others. ScarJo is thicc. Looks 15 pounds heavier, some of it is muscle, some isn't. Predictably, the Dinos don't really go along with this plan, wreak some havoc on the team. Filmed in Thailand and Malta, many of the locations are breathtaking. It's well done and fun, with fewer ridiculously implausible plot points than some others.

I just don't think this seems realistic.

 

[ZooCougar]

Jurassic World Rebirth (2025). Free now on Peacock. Some biotech dude named Krebs (Rupert Friend) says they need the blood of the three biggest dinosaurs of land, water and air so he can cure heart disease and make billions. Dinosaurs live around the equator because it's more like the world they once ruled. Travel there is banned. Krebs hires SpecOp fixer Zora (Scarlett Johansson) to put together a team to go there and get that blood. She brings in Matershali Ali and others. ScarJo is thicc. Looks 15 pounds heavier, some of it is muscle, some isn't. Predictably, the Dinos don't really go along with this plan, wreak some havoc on the team. Filmed in Thailand and Malta, many of the locations are breathtaking. It's well done and fun, with fewer ridiculously implausible plot points than some others.

I thought the scene on the ocean was decent. But the Air Land and Sea thing was very Pokémon.

 

[HuskyHawk]

I just don't think this seems realistic.

Within the realm of these movies, this one has less eye-rolling improbabilities than the others. Chris Pratt isn't communing with Velociraptors here. I forgot to add, there are several nods to Jaws in this movie, which was kind of fun. Also, as someone who played ARK Survival, it was nice to see the Spinosaurus be as big a PIA as it is in the game.

 

[ZooCougar]

Within the realm of these movies, this one has less eye-rolling improbabilities than the others. Chris Pratt isn't communing with Velociraptors here. I forgot to add, there are several nods to Jaws in this movie, which was kind of fun. Also, as someone who played ARK Survival, it was nice to see the Spinosaurus be as big a PIA as it is in the game.

I really don’t think there has been a good one since the first. But the Jaws homage was nice.

Otherwise Michael Crichton’s masterpiece devolved into a marketing vehicle for dinosaur toys.

 

[CL82]

I really don’t think there has been a good one since the first. But the Jaws homage was nice.

Otherwise Michael Crichton’s masterpiece devolved into a marketing vehicle for dinosaur toys.

Crichton has great way of making plots seem plausible, even likely due to the research and level of detail he works into good novels, but it doesn't always transfer to the screen. Disclosure was a good novel and a mediocre movie. Congo was a decent novel but an abysmal movie.

 

[ZooCougar]

Crichton has great way of making plots seem plausible, even likely due to the research and level of detail he works into good novels, but it doesn't always transfer to the screen. Disclosure was a good novel and a mediocre movie. Congo was a decent novel but an abysmal movie.

The first movie was great.

 

[nwhoopfan]

Jurassic World Rebirth (2025). Free now on Peacock. Some biotech dude named Krebs (Rupert Friend) says they need the blood of the three biggest dinosaurs of land, water and air so he can cure heart disease and make billions. Dinosaurs live around the equator because it's more like the world they once ruled. Travel there is banned. Krebs hires SpecOp fixer Zora (Scarlett Johansson) to put together a team to go there and get that blood. She brings in Matershali Ali and others. ScarJo is thicc. Looks 15 pounds heavier, some of it is muscle, some isn't. Predictably, the Dinos don't really go along with this plan, wreak some havoc on the team. Filmed in Thailand and Malta, many of the locations are breathtaking. It's well done and fun, with fewer ridiculously implausible plot points than some others.

I watched it. Reasonably entertaining. I enjoyed it more than the previous several movies in the franchise. Whoa, drex was UGLY! I think something from the Alien or Predator universe snuck into that DNA soup.

Did you notice during an early scene, evil corporate dude was in a traffic jam in NYC and next to him was a school bus, the school name was Crichton.