From the World of John Wick: Ballerina

Posted on June 5, 2025 at 12:50 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for strong/bloody violence throughout, and language
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended very graphic peril and violence, including two fathers shot in front of their young daughters, many disturbing images, guns, knives, martial arts, grenades, flame throwers, car, much more
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	June 6, 2025

Yes, the stunts are always spectacular, but what makes the John Wick movies enthralling is the world, a parallel universe where rival international groups of assassins operate in ultra-elegant hotels and nightclubs without any interference from law enforcement or, well, reality. No matter. We’re not there to clock the believability. We’re there to enjoy the fantasy. Wouldn’t we all love to have a gold coin to check into one of the glamorous Continental hotels (it is bittersweet to see Lance Reddick in his last role), understanding that the unbreakable rule prohibiting killing anyone on the premises sometimes, like the bodies of the hotel guests, sometimes gets broken? Philip Ivey’s production design continues to entice and dazzle – more on that later.

For those paying close attention, this movie “from the world of John Wick” takes place not after the most recent film, Chapter 4, but between the third and fourth installments, making it a “midquel.” John Wick (Keanu Reeves), the greatest assassin of all, who left the profession to live a normal live but came back in when the puppy his late wife left him was killed by the spoiled son of a crime kingpin. Unforgettably, when he first heard who it was that his son had offended, the brutal crime kingpin paled. “John wasn’t exactly the Boogeyman. He was the one you sent to kill the f-ing Boogeyman.”

We will see Wick in this film. But the title character in this chapter is Ana de Armas as Eve. We first see her as a child (Victoria Comte), holding onto a music box with a mechanical ballerina dancing to Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake.” She is sitting on a bench in some kind of institutional hallway and both she and the music box are smeared with blood. A character we know well, Winston, the founder of the Continental Hotels (rumble-voiced Ian McShane), asks if he can be honest with her. He knows her father has just been murdered (though after killing a dozen or so of the thugs sent to kill him), and he offers to take her to a school where she can study dance. She puts her hand in his, and they go to meet The Director (the heads of assassination organizations are known only by their titles), played with implacable sang-froid by Anjelica Huston.

The Director runs a ballet company that trains, wait for it, ballerina assassins. “You will always be smaller. You will always be weaker,” the martial arts trainer tells now grown-up Eve. So, she has to learn to “fight like a girl,” to her opponent’s weight and strength against him.

There’s an important difference in Eve’s training, though. Her role will not be to kill people, though that will happen as she does her job, which is to protect those who are vulnerable to attack. Her first assignment (after her final test, with real bullets and real killing this time), is protecting the daughter of some powerful person with powerful enemies. The daughter, is, of course, dancing in a stunningly designed night club that appears to be made in part out of ice and snow. The dancing continues while Eve takes on the goons, wearing, of course, a spangly red gown.

Then we jump ahead a few months to the aftermath of another of her assignments, as she retrieves her knives from a lot of dead bodies and we have to imagine what the fight was like. Not for long, because she is in another one very quickly.

And soon she is tossing something onto The Director’s desk. “Is there a reason you brought me a severed

hand?” the Director asks cooly. There is a mark on the wrist Eve saw on the men who killed her father. So, now we are in revenge territory, with escalating stakes and even more escalating weapons and opponents. We will see some firepower, and I mean that literally.

There’s an intriguing shift from the ultra-urban sophistication of the settings to this point, the wonderful old-school phone and retro computer operators, who use vacuum tubes instead of email or texting to transmit documents, the sleek city skyline, the gracious, Victorian-influenced ballet offices. The last series of confrontations are in the kind of charming Bavarian-style village you might see in early Disney or Studio Ghibli, or perhaps in one of those carved wooden chalets with figures that swing in and out to tell you the barometric pressure.

This group is overseen by The Chancellor (a stoney Gabriel Byrne). And even by John Wick standards (and yes, he shows up), there are some wowza confrontations, fights, and stunts.

The movie does not pretend to be anything but 80 percent style and stunts, 20 percent meaning, but that 20 percent hits on issues of choice and purpose that are as much as we need to give us character and motivation. Given the preposterousness of notions like a training academy for ballerina assassins and dialogue like “The pain is what drives you,” it’s good to have some grounding.

Coming next: An animated prequel about the Winston and Charon characters

Parents should know that this movie, like the other John Wick movies, has non-stop peril and violence including martial arts, knives, guns, grenades, flame-throwers, a car crash, and more. There was some graphic and disturbing images including parents killed or attempted to be killed in front of young children. Characters use strong language.

Family discussion: Who has a choice in this movie and how did they decide? Why are the operators in the Continental so low-tech?

If you like this, try: the other John Wick movies

Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning

Posted on May 19, 2025 at 11:18 am

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence and action, bloody images, and brief language
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended peril and violence, guns, fire, fights, chases, explosions, stunts, some graphic and disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	May 23, 2025

Yes, Tom Cruise runs. Very fast. Even at one point when he is in London and could probably get there faster in a cab, though for some reason there are no cars anywhere as he races across Westminster Bridge. He also does that mask thing where the disguise is so good that no one can tell it is him until he dramatically lifts the prosthetics from his head. And he attends a black tie gala. This is all in the first 15 minutes or so.

Thus, we are able to get what we came for and get on with the new stuff, which also includes running and fight scenes, sometimes shirtless, blue wire/red wire bomb defusing decisions under extreme time pressure, Ethan Hunt telling everyone to just trust him, several people telling him that he is the only one who can save the world (“although you never followed orders, you never let us down”), recaps of the previous films with some reckoning and a bit of retconning, a very welcome return of a character from the first Cruise “Mission Impossible” in 1996, vastly over-qualified actors in near-cameos, and, of course, absolutely bananas but very exciting action scenes, one under water, one in the air. In other words, like Ethan Hunt himself, they understood the assignment.

You don’t need to remember much or even have seen part one because (a) they tell you what happened and (b) it doesn’t matter because all you need to know is that they need to get The Thing (and the things you need to disarm The Thing) or it will be very bad for the everyone on the planet.

The MacGuffin is an AI that is getting ready to destroy all of humanity, close to gaining control of every nuclear weapon in the world. This is of great concern to the US President (Angela Bassett) and to those who think they can take control of it and therefore of everything. The primary villain in this category is Gabriel (Esai Morales), but like The Ring in the LoTR films, the AI known as The Entity is so powerful that even honorable people can be seduced away from destroying it and into wanting it for themselves. It is a “truth-eating parasite processing our deepest personal secrets” that “knows precisely how to undermine our every strength and exploit our every weakness.” Time for only the purest of heart and the fastest of running men to save the day.

Like Harry Potter and the horcruxes or a character in a video game, stopping the Entity requires going to many places to obtain different items and perform various tasks. These mini-MacGuffins include the source code for the AI, which is in a sunken Russian submarine and the “pill” to shut it down, created by Ethan’s teammate Luther (Ving Rhames) and stolen by Gabriel, a variation on “Independence Day’s” virus uploaded to an alien operating system.

Thankfully, a lot of the communication between Ethan and his team is meaningful looks. The dialogue can get heavy-handed. There is not much of it, though, because everyone knows why we’re here, and it is not witty remarks. (One funny line relates to The Entity’s appeal to viral conspiracy types.)

There’s a big build-up to how dangerous and difficult the dive to the Russian submarine is and the high probability that it won’t work and Ethan will die, but hey, the name of the series isn’t “Mission Possible.” As with the last episode’s train scene, still to my mind the best action scene in the series, the submarine scene makes very good use of shifting weight and huge, heavy things that have to be ducked. After making it very clear that the only thing keeping Ethan alive at that depth and temperature is the super-high-tech diving suit, he has to shed it, so we see him swim around in his boxers.

The showstopper is an arial battle between two colorful biplanes, one red, one yellow. At this point, the film is cutting back and forth between four or five desperately high-pressure situations, but it is the planes that will forever show up in film school and highlight reels.

If you remember anything about the first film, it is most likely the hanging from the ceiling heist at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. There was a humorous button on that scene of a confused CIA employee entering the room just as Ethan was exiting, leaving his knife behind. That employee was immediately transferred to the most remote location under the CIA’s jurisdiction as a consequence of the theft. He is computer genius William Donloe (Rolf Saxon), married to an Inuit woman named Tapessa (Lucy Tulugarjuk), and they are the two best new characters in this installment. “Severance’s” Tramell Tillman is a delight as a US submarine captain, but Hannah Waddingham, Janet McTeer, Carey Elwes, Nick Offerman, and Mark Gatiss are not given much to do (though Waddingham’s American accent is quite good, perhaps from listening to her co-stars in four years of “Ted Lasso”). Henry Czerny returns and is just right as the frustrated head of the CIA who thinks he knows better than Ethan. I think we know who’s right on that.

I usually say that in action films, everything depends on the villain. In “Mission Impossible” movies, everything depends on the stunts, the “Fast and Furious”-style found family of the team, and the unquenchable charisma of Tom Cruise. Fortunately, all are here. Happy summer and happy summer movies!

Parents should know that this film is non-stop action-style peril and violence with guns, chases, fights, and explosions. Characters are injured and killed. There is some strong language.

Family discussion: Movie villains often reflect contemporary controversies. What does this movie tell us about the possible outcome of our current decisions? Why did the President change her mind? What are Ethan’s regrets? People trust Ethan for different reasons. How many did we see?

If you like this, try: the other “Mission Impossible” movies

Thunderbolts*

Posted on May 1, 2025 at 2:06 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for strong violence, language, thematic elements, and some suggestive and drug references
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drug references
Violence/ Scariness:	Non-stop action-style peril and violence, child is killed, automatic weapons, military weapons, chases, explosions, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters, mental illness sympathetically portrayed
Date Released to Theaters:	May 2, 2025

I liked “Thunderbolts* (note the asterisk) a lot, but it will be divisive. Some people don’t want to delve into the mental health struggles of anyone, including a superhero or supervillain. They’re just there for the punches, powers, explosions, and special effects. But as I watched the film, I thought about how many superheroes experienced devastating trauma before gaining their powers and/or dedication to saving the world. Bruce Wayne saw his parents killed by a mugger when he was a child. Superman lost his family and his whole planet. Spidey was living with his aunt and uncle, so had already lost his parents before Uncle Ben was killed. Tony Stark had dad issues. Black Widow was trained to be a child assassin.

“Thunderbolts*” is a “Suicide Squad”/”Guardians of the Galaxy”-style superhero story about a group of damaged, distrustful loners with superpowers who have to do more than just band together for all the punching and explosions. They have to begin to heal themselves. And I am completely here for it, plus for finding out the meaning of the asterisk, which I enjoyed very much. And yes, you do need to stay all the way through the credits for a final scene that teases what’s coming next.

Before I get to the superheroes, I want to talk about the villain(s). I always say that it is the villains more than the heroes that matter most in a comic book movie (and in some other places as well, as Milton showed us in Paradise Lost). Julia Louis-Dreyfus is one of the all-time great villains as Valentina, the ultra-wealthy corporate CEO turned Director of the CIA (though with current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s streak of silver hair, just a coincidence, I’m sure). Some villains have great evil smiles. Louis-Dreyfus has a great social smile exuding the supreme confidence and power of the .001% while all-but-hiding the voracious all-consuming drive for power and utter disregard of the rights or value of anyone in her way.

We first see Yelena (Florence Pugh), still in mourning for her sister, Natasha (The Black Widow) and almost by rote working as an operative for Valentina. She is numb and lonely and lacks purpose. She tells Valentina she wants out, but agrees to one last job, in a remote lab where Valentina’s company once performed experiments, trying to find a formula to give superpowers to her subjects.

She ends up fighting Captain America (Wyatt Russell as John Walker), Ava Starr/Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen), and another super-character who doesn’t last long, before they figure out that they are all there for the same reason, to die, because they have become problems for Valentina. At this point, a guy who seems to be the opposite of super in any way wanders in wearing pajamas, with no memory of pretty much anything except his name. He is Bob (Lewis Pullman, in his second “just Bob” role after “Top Gun: Maverick”).

Yelena, John, and Ava do not trust each other, but the only way to stay alive is to work together. The escape works well in moving the plot and character development forward as well as being fun to watch. And that’s pretty much the vibe for the rest of the film.

Valentina thought her program to turn humans into supers failed, meaning they all died. But somehow Bob survived and that changes her plan. And the people she describes as “defective losers, anti-social tragedy in human form” may not have the cool powers and (mostly) good manners of the Avengers, but they are all struggling toward being something better. That means dealing with sad and scary feelings like loss and trauma, with the characters catapulted into immersive re-creations of their most painful moments. Will they finally find a way to become, a, what’s the word, team? The good news is that by the end of the film, we hope so.

NOTE: Stay through the credits for a mid-credit scene and a teaser at the end for what’s coming next.

Parents should know that this is a superhero movie with non-stop peril and action-style violence including automatic weapons and fantasy powers. Characters are injured and killed, including a child. Mental health and trauma are themes of the film. Characters use some strong language and there are drug references and alcohol.

Family discussion: What is the best way to discover your purpose? How did the childhood experiences of Yelena and Bob affect the way they saw themselves? How is Valentina different from other villains in superhero movies?

If you like this, try: “Guardians of the Galaxy” and the Avengers movies

The Amateur

Posted on April 8, 2025 at 1:50 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for some strong violence, and language
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Some alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended peril and violence, fights, guns, explosions, car chase and car crash, some disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	April 11, 2025

Two powerful, enduring fantasies combine in “The Amateur,” the story of a nerdy computer guy who becomes an assassin to kill the four people responsible for murdering his wife. We all like to think that our Clark Kent selves, underestimated by pretty much everyone are just the secret identity of a powerful superhero. Indeed, being underestimated is its own kind of superpower. And we all wish we were capable of bringing justice, even rough justice, to those who cause harm. It is a remake of a 1982 film starring John Savage and Marthe Keller, based on the novel by Robert Littell.

Rami Malek stars as Charlie Heller, a computer guy (“decription and analysis” and apparently also some programming) who literally works in the five-stories-below-ground basement of the CIA, spending all day looking at screens. We see him at home with his beautiful, devoted wife Sarah, played by Rachel Brosnahan, perfectly fulfilling her responsibility to make enough of an impression for us to share Charlie’s sense of devastating loss. (Side note, as someone who well remembers the Aldrich Ames spy scandal, that a computer guy at the CIA who lives in what is clearly a multi-million dollar house in the country, on a huge piece of land with a barn big enough to hold a plane would be a big red flag as a likely double agent no matter how successful his wife is. )

Sarah is leaving on a five-day business trip to London. She asks him to come with her, knowing that he will not travel because he is set in his ways and also because he says he is untangling a puzzle at work. They exchange affectionate goodbyes, and then just to show us what a shy loner Charlie is, we see him going into the CIA office in Langley, Virginia, where he is greeted by someone there to be the opposite: Jon Bernthal as “The Bear,” a field agent (spy) who is confident, personable, and good at wheedling some IT support out of Charlie.

We also see Charlie receiving information from an anonymous contact in an undisclosed location. And then, a couple of days later, we see Charlie informed by his boss that Sarah has been killed in a terrorist attack. The CIA is not going to go after them because they are mercenaries and they want to go after the people who hired them. (At least that’s what they tell Charlie.)

And that is when our humble guy decides to leave the basement and his reluctance to travel behind so he can personally kill the four men who were involved. His boss (burly Holt McCallany as Director Moore) agrees to provide him with field agent training and sends him off to learn from sensei Colonel Henderson (Laurence Fishburne), not because he supports what Charlie wants to do but to get him away from home and the office so they can find out where he has hidden the documentation of the rogue black ops he has threatened to release if they do not give him what he wants.

Apparently all the training a spy gets takes place in a couple of days, so after we and the Colonel see what Charlie is good at (making IEDs) and not good at (shooting or killing), Charlie is off to track down the four mercenary bad guys. Charlie takes a backpack of fake passports and starts jet-setting around Europe (we obligingly are given not just the names of the cities where these various encounters take place but also their longitude and latitude). At this point it’s just counting down the culprits with a series of cleverly designed traps. If you guess that the anonymous person Charlie knew online, the apparently amiable spy, and the Colonel will show up again, plus the obligatory graffiti-covered bathroom in a nightclub scene for any spy movie that doesn’t have a swanky black tie gala scene, you are correct.

If you’ve seen the trailer, you’re probably there for the pool scene, and it is a lulu, especially in IMAX. Nice to have Charlie say “It’s all about integrity” with a double meaning. There are a few good twists, plus the always-welcome Julianne Nicholson as the newly-appointed head of the CIA who has her own concerns about what Moore is up to, and the always-superb Michael Stuhlbarg, who elevates everything he is in and here make a near-ridiculous scene almost make sense. “The Amateur” may not be memorable or make sense, but it benefits from a strong cast, it looks glossy (outstanding work on the settings), the action scenes move along well and that pool scene really is pretty special.

Parents should know that this film includes a brutal capture and murder of a beloved wife followed by the murder of the people involved. Characters are injured and killed. Characters drink alcohol and use some strong language.

Family discussion: How did Charlie make the most of what he was good at? What did we learn from the lunch scene with O’Brien and Moore? (And how likely is it that they would be discussing CIA business in a restaurant?)

If you like this, try: “Three Days of the Condor” and the Bourne movies

A Minecraft Movie

Posted on April 2, 2025 at 4:11 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	4th - 6th Grade
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for violence/action, language, suggestive/rude humor and some scary images
Profanity:	Some schoolyard language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Fantasy peril and violence, some scary creatures
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	April 4, 2025

“A Minecraft Movie” is a lot of fun. Fans of the game will enjoy a lot of touchstones and to its dedication to giving players “where anything you imagine you can create.” Those who don’t know anything about the game will appreciate its good spirits, off-beat humor, and appealing characters.

“Napoleon Dynamite” directors Jared Hess and Jerusha Elizabeth Hess (working together under his name) brings their love for off-beat small-town America and the “Velvet Mischief” signature scent. They reunite with his “Nacho Libre” star Jack Black. There’s also an appearance by their “Gentlemen Broncos” star Jemaine Clement and tater tots, reminiscent of the “tots” in “Napoleon Dynamite.”

Black plays Steve, whose dream as a child was to be a miner. When he grew up, he left his humdrum job selling doorknobs and was transported vis “this thingy and that cool thingy” into the world of the game, where he met his beloved wolf, Dennis. The chance to create and explore with his devoted companion was everything he ever wanted until he entered the Nether and was captured by its witchy evil queen Malgosha (Rachel House) and put in prison by her pig-soldiers.

Back in the real world, more specifically the small town of Chaglass, Idaho, the Potato Chip Capital, we meet some characters who are struggling. One-time world video game champion Garrett Garrison (Jason Momoa, also a producer and clearly having a blast) is having a hard time accepting that he is no longer successful. His business, Game Over World, is failing and no one is impressed by the high scores he had in the 90s that inspired his GAMR 89 license plates. Natalie (Emma Myers) and her younger brother Henry (Sebastian Hansen) have just moved to Idaho after the death of their mother. Their warm-hearted realtor, Dawn (Danielle Brooks) welcomes them, but explains that she has had to take on several other jobs, including a traveling zoo. Natalie takes a job doing social media for the local potato chip company while Henry is bullied on the first day at his new school.

Then they find themselves transported into Minecraft where they meet up with Steve. Like Dorothy in Oz and Alice in Wonderland, Garrett, Natalie, Henry, and Dawn spend the rest of the story trying to get back home but learning some lessons and developing some friendships along the way.

There are a lot of adventures along the way, too, as the group travels throughout the world of Minecraft to get to the MacGuffin, which in this case is the glowing thingy and the cool thingy that will allow the humans to return to their world. By the way, in this square-ified voxel-built world, a glowing cube thingy is referred to as an orb.

It’s a looser, lower-key, goofier version of “Jumanji,” with Momoa substituting for Dwayne Johnson, with Iron Golems, a chicken jockey, some great eyebrow action, zombie skeletons riding giant spiders and shooting flaming arrows, a talent show, a tot launcher, and surprise! instead of an English accent, the villain has a New Zealand accent! Plus Jennifer Coolidge as the school principal who has her own adventure with a Minecraft creature, briefly but hilariously voiced by Matt Berry.

It’s called “A Minecraft Movie” instead of “The Minecraft Movie” to pay tribute to the game’s possibilities, with every player creating a unique experience. The movie does not have that luxury; it is the same for every viewer. But its appreciation for the endless potential of imagination should be more likely to inspire viewers to try to play the game or even create their own.

NOTE: Stay all the way through the credits for a mid-credit scene AND a post-credit scene.

Parents should know that there are some scary monster and characters are in extended peril, but there are no serious injuries, mostly slapstick including a crotch hit and a scene of two men tightly strapped together. Characters use some schoolyard language.

Family discussion: How does Garrett change and why? If you play Minecraft, what makes it different from other games? What’s your favorite place in the Minecraft world and your favorite way to play?

If you like this, try the “Jumanji” movies, also with Jack Black