I took many trips to movie theaters this month, prioritizing 35mm film print screenings whenever I could. That exposed me to my second favorite film of 2025 so far (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You) as well as some absolute stinkers, both old and new.
Jack Be Nimble
New Zealand | 1993 | 95m | English
Miserable, just miserable. Am I talking about the tone? The acting? The script? The confused mess of half-baked supernatural plot elements? Yes.
The theme music was great, though. Too bad there are no other songs in this movie, so most of the scenes are in dead, awkward silence. That does enhance all the unintended laughs, though. See: the opening scene with the mom inexplicably crying and gnashing her teeth at the laundry until it loudly whips her in the face.
Tron
United States of America | 1982 | 95m | English
What an odd, fascinating, weirdly compelling mess. I respect Tron to some degree for swinging for the fences. Clearly a ton of work went into the visuals, but I wish the same could be said for the story. The script feels like it was butchered from something way more ambitious into something disjointed and incomprehensible. Nothing is set up properly, and the world building doesn’t come anywhere close to living up to its potential. You could put this on mute and enjoy it just the same. Tron looks extremely dated but at the same time it’s so incredibly unique and memorable.
TRON: Legacy
United States of America | 2010 | 126m | English
What a visual feast!
Now that I’m done mentioning Olivia Wilde, I should also note that Tron: Legacy’s art design and production values are top-notch as well.
This movie has always been on my radar because of its association with one of my favorite musical groups, Daft Punk. Maybe, subconsciously, I avoided it all this time because I always regarded it as a symbol of Daft Punk’s repudiation of their musical style that I loved so much. I wanted another Discovery, not some orchestral soundtrack. It’s strange; everybody else loves this movie for its music but to me its music is the very thing that I found so repellant—not because of its quality as a film soundtrack but because it signalled the end of the French House phase of the best French House musicians ever.
So how is the movie now that I’ve seen it? Well, for starters there’s actually a competent script this time around, which admittedly shines more when it tackles the father/son dynamic than when it gestures half-assedly toward some wider point about God and creation. Once again there is untapped potential; the relationship between the Programs and the Users could be fertile ground for Matrix-esque insights on free will or reality vs. simulation. I mean, our protagonist is basically the “Son of God” in this world! There’s a lot to work with here. But Tron: Legacy isn’t quite ambitious enough to pursue a story like that. Instead it doubles down, just like the original movie, on visual pizzaz above all else. It’s not bad—in fact, it’s far more watchable than the original—but once again I’m left feeling like it could have been more.
Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
Czechoslovakia | 1970 | 73m | Czech
Being able to watch Valerie and Her Week of Wonders on this 35mm print was introduced to the TIFF Lightbox audience as an especially rare opportunity because it included English subtitles; part of me would like to imagine it’s also because copies of this are liable to be seized in transit by the police. Are we really all just gonna act like it’s totally copacetic that the director auditioned 1,500 girls until he found the 13-year-old that he wanted to film naked?
Creep factor aside, I hated the incoherent story. “Dream-like,” “surreal”—miss me with that cope. This movie makes no goddamn sense and you know it. My patience for this kind of loose, nonsensical narrative has been wearing thin lately. My time is valuable and “vibes” can only take me so far. I will say that the cinematography is almost always interesting and artistic, but that’s no excuse for the rest of the film’s flaws. I regard anyone who recommends this with suspicion and that is 100% not a joke.
Good Boy
United States of America | 2025 | 73m | English
Good Boy is not a good movie. Narratively it’s too confused, jumping between imagined and real moments so often to the point where nothing ever feels like a threat because the audience has been conditioned, much like Indy the dog, into not getting worked up. At no point did I ever feel like there was any danger. This is truly one of the least scariest horror movies I’ve ever seen, which sucks all the more given the long, long set up before anything really happens. How does a 70 minute movie feel this long?
This one was ruff. Sit, stay at home and don’t come to the theater.
TRON: Ares
United States of America | 2025 | 119m | English
Wow, I really don’t get all the hate this has been receiving.
Having watched all three Tron movies for the first time in a week, Ares is by far the one I’ve enjoyed the most. The soundtrack kicks Daft Punk’s ass so much it’s unbelievable. The story is focused and coherent—maybe a low bar, but this is Tron we’re talking about—and the pacing leaves no room for boredom, which I can’t say about the last two movies.
The standout aspect, though, is the action, with one awesome chase scene after another. Each action set piece is something that would be at the climax of most other films. Bringing the “snake” game on motorbikes into a real world setting is such a clever and satisfying step up from how those sequences were previously handled. And—not to spoil anything—there is a callback to the first movie that brought a huge smile to my face. Tron: Ares is a visual spectacle and demands to be seen in some kind of premium, big-screen format: IMAX, 3D, take your pick. I saw it in “ScreenX,” with parts of some scenes projected onto the side walls of the theater, sort of like a successor to Cinerama. If you liked the last two Tron movies, I don’t know why you wouldn’t like this one. It’s baffling to me that people aren’t vibing with it.
Army of Darkness
United States of America | 1992 | 81m | English
If I had seen this when I was, like, 10, I think I would have loved it. Seeing it now for the first time (clearly in the minority at the sold-out Revue Cinema screening, given the hands raised by those who hadn’t seen the movie), I found Army of Darkness to be very silly, of course, but enjoyable. Sam Raimi employs every camera trick he can, just because he can. It’s like the cinematic equivalent of a Buckethead guitar solo—showing off technical aptitude just because it’s fun, even if the end result isn’t the deepest, most emotionally moving piece of art ever made. I wonder how many 90s boomer shooter video games took inspiration from the one-liners and shotgun warfare against demonic baddies. Probably all of them.
Frankenstein
United States of America, Canada | 2025 | 150m | English, Danish, French
A big, meaty epic that lended itself well to a 35mm projection. Many people at my screening at the TIFF Lightbox stayed until the very end and cheered/snapped photos at certain points of the end credits, making me feel that at least a few of those in attendance were part of the large Toronto contingent of this film’s production crew.
I think that a lot of those who watch this on Netflix will pause to check the runtime a few times, especially during Part 2, which drags compared to the first half. But I appreciated the very apparent money and effort that went into this. I mean, the credits included more than one “Wolf Wrangler,” to give you a sense of the lengths to which they avoided unnecessary CGI. Who knows if this will make back its money, but I liked it!
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
United States of America | 2025 | 113m | English, Spanish
Stunned. Gobsmacked. Awestruck. If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is a masterpiece. Rose Byrne commands every moment of the film with the one of the best acting performances… ever? Certainly among the movies I’ve seen, her work here is basically unparalleled.
You’ll notice I gave this five stars but not a heart. Maybe because it’s not the most “fun” movie to watch. It’s stressful from start to finish. It’s emotionally exhausting. (“Exhausting” doesn’t feel like a strong enough word.) The camerawork is claustrophobic and the audio design is sometimes grating on purpose. While it can be funny, it’s more often than not harrowing, devastating, and heartbreaking. The depth of the emotions this movie conjures… well, it’s something that only the medium of cinema can convey, really. The complexity of the feelings I felt at that final sequence and especially that last shot… wow.
This movie gives a voice to some of the darkest feelings parents can have: parents who love their children, who push themselves to the brink for their children… but who also sometimes can’t help but fantasize about abandoning their children. Killing their children. What an unbelievable film—moving, empathetic, hilarious, horrifying. Detestable and affirming all at the same time. I don’t know when I’ll be ready to watch it again but it won’t leave my mind any time soon.
Sailor Suit and Machine Gun
Japan | 1981 | 131m | Japanese
The most interesting thing about Sailor Suit and Machine Gun is not its goofy but promising premise, squandered on characters who don’t behave in believable ways in a plot that’s weirdly devoid of any charm. No, the unexpectedly compelling parts of this movie are the blocking and shot composition. Many times scenes are filmed from far away, high-up vantage points for seemingly no reason other than the director found an interesting spot to shoot from that day. These shots work until they don’t: too many times they begin beautifully but end up with foliage blocking the camera, characters delivering lines with only the backs of their heads in view, or the objects onscreen devolving into meaningless, messy asymmetry. The other strange thing about this movie is how long and unbroken most of the scenes are. With better acting on display, this could have led to some great moments; here, I just get the feeling that the director wasn’t creative enough to come up with any better cuts or camera angles.
I think the premise of this film—high school girl suddenly and unexpectedly becomes the head of a Yakuza family she never knew she had—could have been made into something fun given better direction; instead we get a strangely artsy and slow movie with a forgettable story and performances that never draw you in. Worse, the “machine gun” scene teased by the title is totally lame! Its inexplicable slow-motion only serves to highlight the uneven acting of the heroine. Also, wtf was that crucifixion scene? Or that ending line? This one is hard to recommend.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2
United States of America | 1986 | 100m | English
Not what I would have expected as a sequel to such a gritty and relentless nightmare-in-a-bottle as the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The silliness didn’t always work for me but I can respect the over-the-top approach to everything: the sets, the screams, the macabre face gore. Plus the soundtrack rocked. Hard to feel the stakes, though, when Leatherface prefers to do a little shimmy and bumble around every time he gets an easy chance to chainsaw someone.
X
United States of America | 2022 | 106m | English
To me, X is a totally fine but mostly unremarkable film that takes itself a bit too seriously. I imagine the title X is supposed to be some kind of double-entendre around both the explicit movie they’re making and the cross of Christianity, which they see as the source of the sexual mores that they’re rejecting. If the point was to portray Christians as villainous hypocrites, who love boning as much as the heathens do, this message was muddied. We’re supposed to feel that, for all their godless sex-having, the porn star characters are actually more righteous than the kooky, old religious weirdos—their physical ugliness representing the ugliness of their souls, of course—but then the main character also chooses needless violence against the defenceless. So… no one here is really “good” by the end of the story. (But to paraphrase one character, we’re not watching this for the story—we’re watching this for the blood and side boob.)
I did think it was kind of funny, though, that the old lady kills because she can’t get laid. Does that make this an incel slasher? Well, okay, fakecel, given a certain later scene, which I think tried to invoke tension and horror but really just came across as uncomfortable.
Oh! Also, this movie did the Easy Rider thing where the transitions flip back and forth between the upcoming and current scenes a few times. Not sure why they did that, but I thought that was neat.
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
United States of America | 1987 | 92m | English
Watched at the TIFF Bell Lightbox followed by a Q&A with Paul Myers, author of a new book about John Candy, and his brother Mike Myers. I think he’s the most famous guest speaker I’ve seen at the Lightbox so far. As for the movie, it’s a classic, of course. I can’t really fault it at all. The 80s music cues are great. The ending scene is emotional. Made me love my wife even more.
Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc
Japan | 2025 | 100m | Japanese
Sticks to the manga shot-for-shot, for better or worse, until getting to the fights, where the animators let loose and come up with some of the wildest sakuga we’re going to see in a while. Pour one out for all the Mappa animators who undoubtedly sacrificed their home lives so we could watch this peak.
I’ll be honest though, this excerpt of the Chainsaw Man story doesn’t fit perfectly as a self-contained film because certain characters come and go without enough time to contextualize them. And, flashy as they are, a lot of the fights can be pretty disorienting. Maybe that was partly because I watched this in 4DX, with the seats jostling like a rollercoaster along with every punch and kick. I was also distracted by an entire row of drunk BAKAS who would not shut up for even one moment of the entire movie. I might watch this again in the theater for a better experience. I will always support Chainsaw Man because the last arc of Part I (yet to be animated) is truly the best manga I’ve ever read. And re-read. And re-read.
Halloween
United States of America | 1978 | 91m | English
Please, 🙏 please I’m begging you to write more than 3 songs for the entire soundtrack.
This was actually the first time I’ve seen Halloween. On Halloween and in a theater, no less. It starts strong and has some good moments for sure, but overall it felt to me like it wore out its welcome. There are simply too many similar scenes; it’s all for build-up and suspense but all I could think was, “Come on, do something already!” Then the kills themselves are pretty lame. Not quite as lame as Friday the 13th but still not as shocking as the hype around this movie had me expect. The problem is that no one acts like someone getting stabbed. There’s barely any screaming or struggle or anything. It’s like these actors don’t understand how humans work. (I could say the same with the sex scenes—damn, they’re quick!)
Other Movies I Saw This Month
- The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) [5/5]
- The Killer (1989) [3/5]
- The Descent (2005) [3.5/5]
- Poltergeist (1982) [4/5]
- Evil Dead II (1987) [3.5/5]
- A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) [3/5]
- Evil Cat (1987) [3.5/5]
- Mr. Vampire (1985) [2.5/5]
- Demon Pond (1979) [3/5]
- Ernest Scared Stupid (1991) [2.5/5]
Best Movies I Saw This Month
- The Grand Budapest Hotel
- If I Had Legs I’d Kick You
- Planes, Trains and Automobiles
Worst Movies I Saw This Month
- Jack Be Nimble
- Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
- Good Boy
Josh Anderson 