Highest 2 Lowest

Posted on August 14, 2025 at 5:22 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for brief drug use and language throughout
Profanity:	Constant very strong language including the n-word
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol and drug use
Violence/ Scariness:	Peril and violence including guns, characters injured
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	August 15, 2025

Denzel Washington and Spike Lee reunite for the first time since 2006’s “Inside Man” for an elegiac but vibrant story that is complicated and messy. Like life. It is an engrossing crime drama, a family story, a commentary on culture and society, bursting with ideas, masterfully acted by Washington, who just keeps getting better.

The movie begins with Washington’s character, notably called David King, on top of the world. Soaring shots of New York City’s skyline at its most glamorous and inviting are accompanied by Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning,” from “Oklahoma.” We end on a spectacular penthouse balcony, with King greeting the day. We will see his Architectural Digest-ready apartment, filled with fine art and elegant furnishings.

It may not be a beautiful day for King. His company is about to be purchased by a conglomerate with no special background or interest in music or in supporting the emerging Black artists who are so important to King. He predicts that what they want to do is dismiss all of the newer talent and monetize the archive by licensing it for commercials. His plan is to raise the money to buy back enough of a share from a board member, Patrick (Michael Potts), so he will be able to veto the deal. Putting this deal together causes him to let down his wife, Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera), who was about to make a large contribution to charity, and break a promise to his son, Trey (Aubrey Joseph), to watch him at a basketball camp led by former Boston Celtic Rick Fox. Trey is disappointed, but happy to meet up at the camp with his best friend, Kyle (Elijah Wright), King’s godson, and the son of widower, ex-con, and King’s chauffeur, Paul Christopher (played by Elijah Wright’s real-life dad).

Then, King gets a call that Trey has been kidnapped for ransom and they are demanding $17,500,000 in Swiss francs. The reason it has to be in francs, not dollars, is clever, like many of the details of the crime, but for some reason this kidnapper makes no effort to stop King from calling the police. The kidnapper also makes another mistake. He mistook Kyle for Trey. Will King continue with plans to take the money he needs to keep his company to pay ransom for someone else’s son?

The way the ransom exchange and subsequent events play out, including a subway train filled with excited Yankees fans and a Puerto Rican Day festival featuring “Do the Right Thing’s” Rosie Perez is tightly constructed. We may think we are in the middle of a gritty first-class thriller, but it turns out there is more. As often happens in Spike Lee movies, the world before us is heightened and the storyline becomes less linear. Is this the story of a crime? Is it about the moral assignment of responsibility? About money? About mistakes? About forgiveness? About risk? About art? About family? All of the above. Like life.

There are winks at the audience, references to Lee’s well-known love of basketball and the Yankees (look for a cheeky sign in the subway car), and a door labeled A24, the name of the film’s studio, to remind us what a personal statement it is. The score by Howard Drossin is arresting but unexpected, a Celtic tone that contrasts with what we might expect for a suspenseful moment.

Washington is utterly mesmerizing as King, crafty, calculating, but essentially a good man, devoted to his wife and son and to music and the people who make it. He knows that what made his company great (there are framed magazine covers with his face on them in his office and references to his many Grammy awards) was his “best ears in the business.” And he knows that the business is not as great as it once was. The supporting cast is superb, with stand-out performances by A$AP Rocky as rapper Yung Felon and Princess Nokia as a young mother. The highlights of this magnificent film, even more than the crime thriller section, are the (mostly) quiet conversations King has with both characters.

Lee and Washington know, as King tells an aspiring singer, that “the hard times will come from the money and the mayhem follows.” They know that “all money isn’t good money” and how to tell the difference. This is a literal masterpiece, based on the term’s origin as work that shows all of the mastery of an experienced creator. It is a crowning achievement by men who have put in the work, learned the lessons over decades, and bring out the best in one another.

Parents should know that this film has extended strong language including many uses of the n-word and a crude and sexist term for a body part. Characters smoke weed and drink alcohol. The story involves a violent crime. Most of the violence occurs off-screen, but there are guns and shooting and characters are injured.

Family discussion: What made King change his mind about paying the ransom? What does he mean about “trying to be practical?” When were the police helpful and when were they not helpful? What does it mean to say “attention is the biggest form of currency,” and do you agree?

If you like this, try: “Inside Man,” “Malcom X,” “Do the Right Thing,” “Chi-Raq,” and “He Got Game”

F1

Posted on June 26, 2025 at 12:00 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for strong language and action
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Intense driving sequences with some serious accidents
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	June 27, 2025

Brad Pitt poster for F1 movie — Copyright 2025 Warner Bros.

“F1” is exactly what summer blockbusters are supposed to be, exciting, romantic, funny, glamorous, and purely entertaining.

It has a classic set-up, and if it seems reminiscent of “Top Gun: Maverick,” it is because it has the same producer and director. It’s pretty close to the same movie with cares instead of airplanes plus a touch of “Ted Lasso.” Also, it’s a classic set-up, guys with exceptional skills and cocky attitudes showing off, having conflicts, taking risks, and overcoming obstacles, all looking very, very cool.

Formula One is ” the highest class of worldwide racing for open-wheel single-seater formula racing cars.” We’ve seen Formula One racing in films like “Rush” and “Ford vs. Ferrari,” based on true stories, and the documentary “Senna,” and Netflix series based on the life and death of Brazilian champion Artyn Senna.

Brad Pitt stars as Sonny Hayes, a race car driver who is “not a has-been but a never-was.” Once considered, with his long-time friend Reuben (Javier Bardem) to be the most promising up-and-coming young racers in Formula One, his career, like his car, went off the track. Now he takes any chance he can to race. He’d drive in a soapbox derby if that was all he could find.

Here’s how cool he is. He wins a low-stakes race with dash and skill, then waves off the trophy. He is “a guy who makes teams better.” He stops to do his laundry at a coin-op, when an old friend walks in. It is Reuben (Javier Bardem). Once they were young up-and-coming hot shots on the cover of a racing magazine. Now Reuben has an F1 team and a talented but undisciplined driver, and he needs Sonny’s help. At first, Sonny turns him down. But if he doesn’t agree to join Reuben’s team he’ll never know if he could have been the best of the best and we wouldn’t have a movie.

Reuben’s hot shot is Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), who is both threatened by and contemptuous of Sonny. He asks, ‘When was the last time you won a race.” “Sunday.” “I mean a F1 race.” “Same as you.” This is full of tough talk, like “Who said anything about safe?” Game on!

And do I need to even mention that the team’s head of car mechanics is a beautiful Irish woman named Kate (the terrific Kerry Condon of “The Banshees of Inisherin”)? Wait for the scene where they play Texas Hold ‘Em.

Fi is a place where people have many different ways of expressing emotion by the way they take off their headphones and they get excited over finding a way to cut their time by half a second.

The film mostly avoids making Pitt a sage elder. He’s not Crash Davis in “Bull Durham,” one final season as he passes the baton and some life lessons to a talented but undisciplined newcomer. (If the young competitors were talented AND disciplined there would not be much of a movie unless they had time to put in some huge setback or make him the Iceman in contrast to the Maverick.) Pitt, like Sonny, in every sense of the term is running his own race. Pitt is an actor of exceptional range but this role is smack dab in the middle of his sweet spot. He appears effortless, but it is the kind of effortlessness that requires superb understanding and control.

Like the plane scenes in “Top Gun: Maverick,” the race scenes in this film set a new standard, placing us inside the 200 mph action. For me, the pit stop scenes were some of the best, and I also liked seeing how many people it took, rows of people with headphones staring into screens almost like a rocket launch. The dialogue is sharp and smart, and if the plot twists are low in surprise they are high in satisfaction. So is this very entertaining film.

Parents should know that this movie includes intense racing scenes with some serious accidents. There are sexual references and a non-explicit situation and characters drink and use strong language.

Family discussion: How are Sonny and JP different and how are they similar? How does Sonny make teams better?

If you like this, try: “Rush,” “Grand Prix,” “Winning,” “Gran Turismo,” and “Ford vs. Ferrari”

The Life of Chuck

Posted on June 15, 2025 at 12:24 pm

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Apocalyptic themes, sad off-screen deaths including parents and grandparents, references to suicide
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	June 13, 2025

When a movie begins with “Act Three,” it is an invitation to open our minds to something unusual. “The Life of Chuck” is based on a story by Stephen King, and it reflects his more mystical side. While it includes dark and tragic themes, it is a story of profound humanity, ultimately spirit-expanding.

It begins at the end in more ways than one. A teacher named Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is meeting with parents who seem oddly disconnected from concerns about how their children are doing in school. The world seems to be collapsing. A major earthquake has knocked California into the ocean. The internet is shutting down. Couples who have been together are splitting up and those that have split up are getting back together. Marty’s ex, Felicia (Karen Gillan) is an exhausted nurse in a hospital where most of the arrivals are attempted suicides. And somehow, signs – billboards, skywriting, bench posters, even projected in the windows of suburban homes — are appearing everywhere thanking someone named Chuck.

In Act Two we meet Chuck as a young boy and see him grow up. His parents were killed in an automobile accident, and he lives with his grandparents (Mark Hamill as Albie and “Ferris Bueller’s” Mia Sara as Sarah) in an old house with a padlocked room in a cupola on the top floor that he is warned never to open. He is very good at math but what he loves is dancing, and a dance class leads him to what will be one of his life’s most profound and satisfying moments, in part because after moments of doubt and fear of being judged (he is in middle school, the judgiest part of life), he finds the courage to follow his heart and take a risk. Later, as an adult, and, as we are told by narrator Nick Offerman, nine months from his death due to a still-undiagnosed brain tumor, he will have another sublime moment of dance, when he passes by a busking drummer on a break from an accounting conference.

To say much more would be to say too much; this is a film that benefits from an audience without expectations or advance guidance. But for those who have seen it and would like to know what I think it means, I have some spoiler-filled comments at the end of this review. For now, I will just point out that twice in the film teachers share a selection from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself in their classrooms, the part that goes

Do I contradict myself?

Very well then I contradict myself,

(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

When Chuck’s teacher (played by Kate Sigel) explains this passage to him, she places her hands gently over his ears and asks what is between them. It is the multitudes within each of us, every emotion, every memory, every wish, every fear, every sublime moment, every crushing disappointment, every tiny quotidian interaction we are not even aware that we noticed.

This movie is a labor of love from both King and writer/director Mike Flanagan, whose wife (Seigel) and son (as the youngest version of Chuck) appear as key characters. It has a transcendent, poetic humanity that should make us better appreciate our own lives and the people we value. And take the time, at least once in a while, to dance.

Parents should know that a child’s father and pregnant mother are killed (offscreen) in a car accident and there are apocalyptic events. A central character dies and there are references to other deaths, including a suicide. Characters use strong language and there are references to pornography.

Family discussion: What multitudes are in you? Who would you want to be with if things were scary? What do we learn from Marty’s conversations with Sam and Gus? Should Chuck have listened to his grandfather’s advice?

If you like this try: “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “The Odd Life of Timothy Green,” and “Stranger Than Fiction”

Stop now if you don’t want spoilers.

CLUES: What does it mean that we see Sam and Gus in different time periods but they do not seem older or younger, while Chuck is played by four different actors as he goes from young childhood to middle age? Why is the Whitman poem so important?

MY VIEW: Every character in the movie is a part of the “multitudes” that make up one person, Chuck Krantz. The thank you signs are a part of his shutting down as he dies. When we die, our stories, our memories, our relationships, the multitudes within us stop, at least in the form of being contained in one individual consciousness. What Chuck saw in the locked room represents the recognition we all have that our lives are temporary.

Sorry, Baby

Posted on June 13, 2025 at 5:33 pm

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Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for sexual content and language
Profanity:	Very strong, explicit, and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Sexual abuse
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	June 13, 2025

Eva Victor makes an extraordinary debut as writer, director, and star of indie festival favorite “Sorry, Baby,” a story that includes profound trauma told with delicacy and even humor. Victor plays Agnes, a young college professor of literature when we first see her, a grad student in flashbacks that over the course of the film reveal an abusive encounter with her thesis advisor.

But the movie wisely begins with what will be the primary theme of the film, not the trauma but the grace that helps her go on.

Lydie (Naomi Ackie) arrives for a visit. She was Agnes’ housemate in college and they are still the closest of friends, the kind whose conversations skim along effortlessly and joyously, un-anchored by having to explain their references or hide their secrets. Their affection, devotion, and unconditional support are palpable.

Later in the film, a character played by the always-great John Carroll Lynch turns out to be an unexpected source of understanding and comfort when Agnes has a panic attack. It is a highlight of the film and one of the best moments we will see on screen this year.

The movie is told non-sequentially, with chapter headings, allowing us to get to know Agnes and get a hint of the reason for her vulnerability before we learn the details. Later we find out what happened and see the immediate aftermath, with responses adding insult to injury from a brusque doctor and from the school’s administrators. The structure is more mosaic than linear, with off-center revelations that allow us to think and feel through the aftermath.

We also get to know Agnes, who as written and portrayed by Victor is endearingly direct, even blunt at times, and yet keeping a lot inside. There comes a tipping point when we recognize the pain of dealing with the trauma is less than the pain of not dealing with it. And we see those moments reflected through Agnes’ interactions with her neighbor (the always-welcome Lucas Hedges), a stray cat, her students and supervisor, the Lynch character, and someone who appears for the first time in a stunning final scene.

Parents should know that this movie includes off-screen sexual abuse and the post-traumatic emotional struggles. There are explicit sexual references and characters use very strong language.

Family discussion: What do we learn from the scene with Agnes in the classroom? Why is Lolita the book discussed by the class? Why are there chapter titles?

If you like this, try: “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” and “The Spectacular Now”

The Phoenician Scheme

Posted on May 29, 2025 at 5:30 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	PG-13 for violent content, bloody images, some sexual material, nude images, and smoking throughout
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Graphic violence with disturbing images, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	May 30, 2025

You say you want to see a very smart, darkly comic film about the daughter of an unscrupulous businessman who before the story begins has joined a religious order but over the course of the story learns that she can do more to help people in his secular world and becomes drawn to a young professor? Then I suggest you watch the brilliant film “Major Barbara,” starring Wendy Hiller and a young Rex Harrison and with a very young Deborah Kerr, based on the classic play by George Bernard Shaw.

Or, if you would like to see a movie that skitters along the surface of some of those themes without having much to say about them but looks gorgeous, in fact so exquisite that if it starts to drag, which it does, we wish the actors would get out of the way so we could better absorb the beauty of the settings. In other words, we’re in the bento box movie world of Wes Anderson.

What bothers me third-most about Wes Anderson films is the way the characters speak the mildly arcane dialogue in constant near-robotic deadpan. What bothers me second-most is that the dialogue delivered in monotone is not just mildly arcane but pretentiously so, as though the twee-ness indicates both comic sensibility and deeper meaning. There can be humor in saying extreme things with a flat delivery, as though you’re politely asking to pass the butter, can be funny, but not always and not for a whole movie. What bothers me most is the way many people emperor’s-new-clothes the films, believing that the humor and deeper meaning they discern is somehow invisible to the less sophisticated instead of non-existent.

Benicio Del Toro plays Zsa-zsa Korda, a wealthy, powerful, and corrupt businessman, who says his two imperatives are “Who could lick who (or whom)?” (measuring success by beating the competition) and “If something gets in your way, flatten it” (the ends justify even scorched-earth means).

There are those who have similar guiding principles, or lack of principles, and therefore, as we see in the first scene, when an explosion on Korda’s airplane blows a big hole in the hull, and also in one of his aides, slicing his top half from his bottom half. Korda then goes into the cockpit and fires his pilot, in both senses of the word, dismissing him from employment and jettisoning him via ejector seat. Korda survives the crash landing with injuries. He knows more murder attempts are coming, and so he reaches out to his daughter Liesel (Mia Threapleton, daughter of Kate Winslet). She is about to take orders as a nun, and throughout the film she wears a snowy white habit, though as it goes on she also sports colorful eye shadow and bright red nail polish. Korda also has nine young sons, some adopted. His only interest in them is the thought that there are so many of them, odds are one will be brilliant.

Anderson’s two most recent films were episodic, like nested dolls. This one is slightly more linear, but still in chapters as Korda visits a series of characters in very different settings played by stars like Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston (as American brothers in college sweatshirts), Scarlett Johansson as Korda’s second cousin and possible future wife, Jeffrey Wright as a ship captain, and Benedict Cumberbatch as Korda’s rival and half-brother. There are various murder attempts (the characters refer to them as assassination attempts, but that seems grandiose for a businessman, even one who is rich and powerful and has done evil things, because the term refers to the killing of an important person for political or religious reasons). And Korda and Liesel are accompanied by a character played by Michael Cera, introduced as a tutor brought on to teach them about insects (do not try to make this tie into anything except the overall anemic randomness that translates to “and then this character appears.” He plays a more important role as the story goes on and is the closest the movie comes to having a bright spot. It’s not that it has style and no substance. It has style and anti-substance.

Other than the settings, of course, which are fabulously imagined and entrancingly detailed. (As always with Anderson, look at the titles and covers of the books the characters read.) The movie might work better with no dialogue, just the visuals and the music.

Parents should know that this movie has a lot of peril and violence with some graphic and disturbing images. The movie includes guns, knives, bombs, fire, plane crashes, and quicksand. Characters are injured and killed, including references to a murdered parent. Characters are corrupt and murderous. they behave badly in business and with family, and they drink and smoke. Characters’ religious beliefs are not meaningful or sincere.

Family discussion: Why does Liesel stay with her father? What does she hope to achieve and how does that change? What do we learn from the names of Korda’s projects? From his mottos?

If you like this, try other Wes Anderson Films, especially “The Fantastic Mr. Fox.”