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Review by Adam Donato  Colleen Hoover is blazing the trail for romance films right now. It Ends With Us was a big box office hit and just a year later, Regretting You hits theaters. Instead of one big lead in Blake Lively, this is more of an ensemble. Dave Franco had great success earlier this year in Together and has a third Now You See Me movie out next month. Allison Williams starred in the failed M3GAN sequel this summer. McKenna Grace is graduating from family horror in the Ghostbusters requels to the upcoming sequels to Scream and Five Nights at Freddy’s. Mason Thames currently has the hottest hand at the moment as Black Phone 2 opens the weekend before this and just launched the live action How to Train Your Dragon franchise. A collection of hot young names that are in movies that appeal to young people and specifically women. In a box office sea of horror films and awards season hopefuls, can Regretting You bring out the love in audiences? Regretting You tells the story of a mother and daughter picking up the pieces of a fatal car crash and how that affects their love lives. The themes of toxic relationships from It Ends With Us are shared with this Hoover adaptation as well. This film does have a more comedic tone this time around. There’s an attempt to balance the more heavy emotional drama with some broad relatable humor. The demographics of Hoover’s audience says fifteen to twenty four year olds, but this will definitely appeal to moms and adult women in general. There’s an escapist romance paired with a nostalgic teenage romance that seeks to satisfy all ages. Both romances are predictable and cliche.  None of the cast manages to stand out among the pack. All three have comedic moments here and there. Williams is given the most opportunity so if there had to be one in the ensemble at the head of the pack, it’s certainly her. This film is good exposure for the cast and show off some range as most of them have been operating in the horror and blockbuster spaces as of late. Scott Eastwood and Willa Fitzgerald have small roles as well in the film and leave an impression.
A box office win here would be a big win for everyone involved. It Ends With Us didn’t have good ratings and Regretting You will live in a similar area quality wise. The target demographic doesn’t care about that as much as they want a movie with good looking people in dramatic tea spilling romantic situations. Lots of giggling and gossiping in the full auditorium at the press screening. Fans of the book may enjoy the movie, but everyone else is gonna get dragged to a pretty vanilla romance flick. Regretting You is in theaters on October 24. Rating: 2/5
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Review by Camden Ferrell  Richard Linklater is no stranger to the dialogue-heavy comedy drama. One could argue that this is the realm in which he thrives the most. But for the first time since 2001’s Tape, we see Linklater trying to operate primarily in a single location, a narrative restriction that even seasoned directors can have trouble pulling off. Having its premiere at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival, Blue Moon is one of two films that Linklater has releasing this year. Supported by a tight script from Robert Kaplow and featuring another outstanding performance from Ethan Hawke, this is a movie that makes the most of its single setting and complex characters. Lorenz Hart is a lyricist that was known for some iconic tunes and Broadway songs. We watch as he struggles with alcoholism, depression, and self-deprecation. The vast majority of this movie takes place on the opening night of Oklahoma!, the new hit musical written by his former partner Richard Rodgers. What is a night of jubilation for some quickly becomes a night of waxing lyrical for Hart to anyone who would listen. Kaplow, who is primarily a novelist, writes a sharp script that revels in its crass dialogue. Hart immediately comes off as a man with no filter and no concern other than letting his thoughts flow freely through the open bar. One of the more interesting details in this movie is how Hart engages in conversation with the people in the bar, but it almost ambiguously feels like it could work as a monologue more times than not. It can sometimes tread into an indulgent territory, but it usually corrects itself before going too far off that path.  The highlight of this movie is the powerhouse lead performance that Ethan Hawke delivers as Hart. He yet again proves why he’s one of the great actors of his generation. His portrayal is layered and nuanced to an incredible degree. He balances the vulgar and crass envy with the self-deprecation and anguish that make this character study so captivating. He’s a broken man who we can’t help but sympathize with despite his glaring flaws as a person. From the supporting cast, Andrew Scott makes the most of his limited screentime while Bobby Cannavale and Margaret Qualley are serviceable with the material they are given.
Like Tape, there are moments where it felt like it started to meander in parts, but this movie does a better job at recovering. Linklater knows how to leverage small-scale movies into big emotions, and this is no exception. It may not be life-changing like his Before trilogy, but it’s still a fine film from the veteran director. Blue Moon may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there’s a lot to enjoy from a character-driven standpoint. Hawke transforms into a complex role that is what keeps the movie afloat. It may not go down as one of Linklater’s finest, but after more than 20 movies, he still has his unique touch. Blue Moon is in theaters October 17. Rating: 4/5 Review by Adam Donato  Scott Derrickson brings the gang back together for a sequel to The Black Phone called Black Phone 2. Drop the “The” and slap a two on it like The Evil Dead franchise did. This isn’t the first sequel done by Derrickson as he directed one of the Hellraiser sequels. He was supposed to direct a sequel to his major Marvel blockbuster Doctor Strange, but left due to creative differences. Ironically, his spot was taken over by The Evil Dead director, Sam Raimi. Derrickson instead reteamed with Jason Blum and Ethan Hawke since they saw such great success with Sinister. The Black Phone was a big box office success and was enjoyed by audiences. If they play their cards right with the franchise going forward, The Grabber could become a modern day horror icon. Black Phone 2 does a lot of things that a good sequel does. One of the best parts about the first movie is the relationship between the two siblings, Finney and Gwen. Therefore, it’s interesting to catch up with them now to see how they’ve coped with the trauma they’ve experienced in the first movie. Their mission takes them to this snowy youth camp that makes for a great location visually. Everything is coated in snow and there’s opportunity for new set pieces like the sequence on the ice. This goes a long way to make this sequel visually distinct from the first one. Here we get to further develop the supernatural aspects of this world and flesh out the backstory of The Grabber. Finney’s personal beef with the Grabber is expanded on here. In a lot of ways, this is a very satisfying sequel.  While some may see this as a lateral move or even an improvement upon the first movie, it does read more like a minor step down. Ethan Hawke is a major draw for cinephiles here and he doesn’t get a lot of acting to do. He’s almost exclusively under the mask or a part of an action sequence. Some of the best scenes in the first movie were the one on one dialogue sessions between The Grabber and Finney in the basement and seeing the different iterations of the mask. In the sequel we get that great scene from the trailer where Finney is in the phone booth and we see The Grabber just outside talking with him. It’s less of a critique on something they got wrong and more of a critique where I wanted more of the things that made the first movie work so well. When Ethan Hawke is on screen, he is great and takes advantage of his opportunities. Also, this sequel is eleven minutes longer and has so many more supporting characters to develop. Gwen has a new boyfriend. There’s the ensemble that runs the camp. Gwen’s mother has a connection to the mystery at hand. The former victims of The Grabber need to be uncovered. There’s a lot going on, in a good way.
Black Phone 2 draws a lot from the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise as the story of this movie centers around the recurring dreams that Gwen is experiencing. Finney killed The Grabber at the end of the first movie and now The Grabber is back to show these siblings that revenge is a dish best served cold. This does lend itself to some confusing internal logic. It’s an interesting visual cue from Derrickson that all the dream sequences look like they’re shot on an old video camera. What’s confusing is the relationship between the dream world and the real world. Also the stakes are weird since the characters we’re trying to save are dead and the people we kill live on to affect the real world anyways. This makes for a climax that feels like going through the motions. It’s very easy to be cynical about obligatory sequels, but Black Phone 2 does a solid job continuing this story and these characters. It’s clear that this is the realm in which Derrickson thrives and hopefully this film will be a similar success to the first one so that he can move on to whatever he wants to do next. It’s a big year for Mason Thames who plays Finney as he headlined the live action How to Train Your Dragon earlier this summer and is romantically paired with McKenna Grace in Regretting You later this month. Black Phone 2 projects to be the main Halloween event at the cinema this year and is certainly more deserving of that title than surprise hit The Conjuring: Last Rites. For your horror fix, Black Phone 2 is a good choice to check out in theaters this week. Black Phone 2 will be in theaters on October 17. Rating: 3/5 Review by Daniel Lima  On the surface, After the Hunt seems like a dinosaur. A #MeToo thriller in 2025, rehashing the same arguments and conversations people were having almost a decade ago in a world that has so radically shifted away from those talking points, is a tough pill to swallow. For most of its runtime, it seems like director Luca Guadagnino has completely lost touch with where culture is at, offering nothing meaningful or insightful to say about a topic that is at once so sensitive and so well-trodden. It is only at the eleventh hour that the film finally reveals that it has more on its mind than relitigating old debates. Oh, but what a taxing journey that is at times. Set at Yale University and the surrounding town, the film follows the case of a grad student (Ayo Edibiri) that accuses a professor (Andrew Garfield) of sexual assault. The charge leads to major disruption of campus life, particularly for the professor’s highly respected colleague and close friend (Julia Roberts), who now must contend with interpersonal and professional challenges as well as a troubled past of her own. It is obvious that Guadagnino is not particularly interested in the he said/she said back and forth of these kinds of accusations, nor the actual mechanics of an investigation like this. Instead, he homes in on the effect on the individual characters, and what the situation reveals about who they are as people. Garfield goes from affable academic to frenzied and despondent pariah; Edibiri remains resolute, adopting the language of the so-called “social justice warrior”. Roberts own feelings and motivations remain vexing for most of the film, but watching her buckle under the weight of her allegiances and the expectations of others is perhaps the most nuanced that the film gets. The issue with the film’s examination of the fallout of a rape allegation is that it is so shallow. There are impassioned defenses, equally impassioned recriminations, yet it all has the tenor and complexity of a Jezebel article circa 2017. The dialogue never sounds like those of people in an emotionally fraught situation attempting to put into words feelings they’re only just beginning to untangle. Instead, they come out fully formed, as if the characters are all reading well-curated blog posts. To some extent this is a stylistic choice, as all these people are highly educated academics, but the effect is an emotional distance between the unfolding drama and the audience.  Though it is a bit expected that a movie like After the Hunt would remain coy about the exact truth about what happened between Edibiri and Garfield (after all, the general public rarely gets every detail of a rape accusation confirmed in real life) it is also fair to question where exactly does the artist in question stand on the issues being probed. If Guadagnino is willing to return to a time where buzzwords like “safe spaces” and “cancel culture” were all the rage, at a time where the former is under assault and the latter has greatly diminished — if it ever existed at all — then one would expect him to offer some insight, some perspective, at least voice an opinion of the time and its relevancy to the current sociopolitical moment. Nothing of the sorts ends up being articulated; if anything, even the surface-level jabs at liberal culture at the end of the 2010s are muddled by certain character revelations. Of course, artists are not moral guardians, and it would be wrong to go into a film like this assuming that the crew behind it has a moral imperative to articulate a grand statement on the nature of cases such as this. That said, they did choose to make this movie. Rape culture is real, women continue to be victimized by men with impunity, and at a time where even the minuscule gains on moving the is conversation to a more empathetic place are being actively attacked by those in power, it certainly comes across as tone deaf at best to present a story like this with absolutely nothing definitive to say on the matter. There is, however, more to After the Hunt than just this narrative. The film opens with a dinner party at the home of Roberts and her husband, a beautiful apartment playing host to a collection of bright minds and cultural elites. It is impossible not to think of how shallow this environment is: the ensemble verbally spars in philosophical debates that are surprisingly elementary considering their station, the partygoers so self-assured in their intellectual superiority, the gathering so sequestered away from the daily lived experience of so many.  This feeling never quite goes away. Every character is concerned not only with the allegation itself, but how it affects their social station. Both Garfield and Roberts are on a tenure track, influencing how they navigate the situation. Edibiri adopts much of the language of social activists of the time, emphasizing her position as black woman navigating male and white dominated spaces, but neglects to ever bring up that her parents are fabulously wealthy donors who have secured her place at the institution through their generosity. Even the tangled web of romantic interests is underscored by where everyone sits in relation to each other, with Edibiri’s fascination with Roberts rooted in her authority figure role as well as her age, while Roberts flirtations with Garfield come from his status as a peer. Then there is the fact that the very idea of tackling this subject in 2025 feels so… quaint. That’s not to say that the issue of sexual violence, particularly in institutional settings like higher education, is any less relevant today, but all the talking points of the film so closely mirror those from years ago that it all feels old hat. As books are added to ban lists, diversity initiatives are dismantled, student activists and protesters are prosecuted and silenced, how animated can one be about a plea for safe spaces? How important is this culture war flash point really, especially on an Ivy League campus among elites? SPOILER WARNING It is only in the closing moments of the movie, the part that is actually after the hunt, that Guadagnino reveals that this is actually the thesis. Skipping forward five years — revealing everything that preceded took place just before the COVID-19 pandemic — Roberts is seated in her lushly decorated office, watching news footage of the Palisades fire from January of this year. She remarks to her assistant, “Horrible, isn’t it,” then goes out to meet Edibiri for a drink. Through their rather testy discussion, it’s revealed that everyone is doing just fine. Edibiri is now engaged to a much older woman with a plump media job, the accused sex pest is a highly paid Democratic operative, even Edibiri’s college partner is a successful lawyer. She makes this clear to Roberts with her parting words: “You did it. You won.” When you’re let into the club, you come out a winner, no matter who else loses. All the drama in this cloistered, elite community ultimately did little to change their circumstances. News reports of terrifying natural disasters and the rolling back of diversity initiatives are background music for an upper class working professional meeting up with a former associate. The message is clear: these people get to float above the ugliness that the rest of us have to suffer through. What is hell on earth for us is something to watch disappear in the rearview mirror for them.  The specter of Woody Allen, the director accused of raping his adopted daughter and who is married to his former partner’s adopted daughter, hangs above the entire film. This is most obvious in the opening credits that copy the font and jaunty jazz tunes of his films, but also through the near caricature dialogue that never penetrates beyond the most rudimentary level of discourse. The epilogue, where the privileged intellectuals have weathered the storm of this sexual assault controversy and kept all their creature comforts and vaunted status, calls to mind a recent interview Allen gave on Bill Maher’s podcast Club Random. Even as the host vociferously defended the director’s name, invoking terms like “witch hunt”, Allen himself was far more blasé, insisting that he suffered no practical consequences and he was doing just fine. It is this truth that the closing moments of the film clarifies.
Does that justify the meandering, confounding, borderline offensive journey that After the Hunt takes to get there? Not entirely; even this conclusion seems to brush over that wealth cannot bandage the psychological trauma of sexual abuse. It does, however, re-contextualize the film as less a botherist treatise of the #MeToo movement and more a satire of the neoliberal slacktivism of the first Trump term that ultimately got us to a second. Real change will not come from Ivy League campuses, because at the end of the day these people have less at stake than the vast majority of Americans. To them, social change is a shaggy dog story. After the Hunt is now in theaters. Rating: 3/5 Review by Adam Donato  Derek Cianfrance hasn’t directed a movie in almost a decade. He did see critical success since then with Sound of Metal. Roofman is marketed like it's his most accessible movie to date. Channing Tatum is leading a goofy crime thriller wherein he has a romance with Kirsten Dunst. Not quite as depressing as Blue Valentine. Tatum has had his ups and down lately, but all his interview questions are about his involvement in Avengers: Doomsday. Dunst works sparingly but her last two films, The Power of the Dog and Civil War, were both successful. Roofman opens on a crowded weekend, but can good word of mouth cut out a good piece of the box office pie? Roofman thrives on the charm of Channing Tatum. Now he’s not doing anything crazy new here. It’s pretty standard Channing Tatum here, but this movie plays to his strengths and he’s surrounded by other talented people. He’s still got the Magic Mike sex appeal and is able to joke around a bunch. The emotional crux of the film is his desire to be a good person, despite feeling desperate enough to break the law to solve his problems on a regular basis. This is one of Tatum’s better performances of his career.  Kirsten Dunst is regularly working with talented directors and hitting her spots well. She doesn’t get the fanfare, but she’s one of the best actresses working today. Her pairing with Tatum is a curious one, but they pull it off well. Their relationship is the heart of the film. This is Dunst at her most relatable in a long time. The rest of the supporting cast is good with Ben Mendelsohn shining in his musical moments as this church pastor.
This is a true story so the narrative is somewhat predictable. That being said, the inevitability of the situation makes it all the more tragic. His pathetic circumstance contrasts well with the plastic prison he now finds himself in. The idea of an immature man hiding out in place with a slogan about not wanting to grow up is compelling. Roofman is the best version of this type of movie. It won’t be getting any nominations, but it’s certainly worth catching in a theater. Tatum has it and excels here along with Dunst. Cianfrance has his best chance for a commercial hit with this one here. Will be a crowd pleaser if it’s lucky enough to garner a crowd. Roofman is in theaters on October 10. Rating: 4/5 |