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

The Karate Kid: Legends

Posted on May 29, 2025 at 9:57 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
Profanity:	Mild language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Martial arts fighting in and out of the ring, some injuries, character murdered with a knife
Date Released to Theaters:	May 30, 2025

More tha four decades ago a teenager named Danny LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) learned to wax on, wax off and balance on one leg, taught by an Okinawan-American handyman, and went on to win a championship. Now, after two sequels, a spin-off starring future Oscar winner Hillary Swank, an animated series, a remake starring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith, and the very popular “Cobra Kai” series on Netflix, we have the remix, with both Jackie Chan from the remake and the original title character and co-star of “Cobra Kai,” Ralph Maccio, who also co-produced, and it has just the right mix of touchstones for the deep cut fans and combination of classic underdog, a touch of romance, and some great fight scenes powered by awesome skill and emotional heft to bring in the next generation.

This episode starts in Beijing, where Li Fong (Ben Wang of “American Born Chinese” and the upcoming next chapter in the “Hunger Games” series) is studying Kung Fu (note: not karate) with his shifu (teacher) Mr. Han (Chan). His mother, Dr. Fong (Ming-Na Wen) does not want him to fight, and we will learn later about the tragic loss that makes her so determined to keep Li away from Kung Fu that she accepts a job on the other side of the world, in New York City.

Li stars school and meets a classmate who works in her father’s pizza place. (Amusingly, his first attempt to order in their restaurant gives him the nickname ”Stuffed Crust.”) Mia (Sadie Stanley) and Li have an instant rapport and quickly become friends. But Mia’s former boyfriend, Conor (Aramis Knight) is a bully and jealous. He hits Li in the eye and later beat him in a schoolyard fight.

Mia’s single dad, Victor (Joshua Jackson) is a former boxer. When he cannot pay a loan shark, the enforcer goons come after him in the alley outside the restaurant. This time, Li is there and in a nicely staged fight scene he defeats the loan shark’s guys. Ben Wang is a great fighter, fast, smart, powerful with hands and feet, and an astonishing ability to appear almost weightless when he jumps. As someone said about a character in another movie, he has the hang time of a helium balloon.

This leads to a fresh twist on the Karate Kid’s focus on the shifu/sensei mentorship of a young person, as Victor asks Li to train him for a comeback fight, so he can win the money he needs to pay back the loan shark.

But pretty soon we’re back in more familiar but not unwelcome territory as it turns out there is a New York City-wide competition called The Five Boroughs with a $50,000 prize and the only way for Victor to pay back the loan shark is for Li to win it. Again, not a surprise that not only will Mr. Han show up to train him, but sensei (teacher) Daniel LaRusso will arrive from California to give him a week’s worth of karate lessons. Kung fu and karate, it turns out, are two branches of the same tree. Both require spiritual as well as physical training, and both are bolstered by some unusual exercises, because “everything is kung fu.” Every action, every breath, every move, every thought can be a part of a mindset of discipline, courage, and integrity. And this comes in handy when there is no gym to train in. Instead of wax on, wax off, which had young Daniel doing the handyman’s chores, it’s jacket on, jacket off, with Li doing upside-down sit-ups with the jacket on/off at the top.

And, once again, we have our young hero going into the ring against an opponent who does not follow the same rules of honor and fairness. His sensei has taught him that “we don’t fight for points; we fight to kill.”

No surprises here, but sometimes that’s just fine.

NOTE: Stay after the credits begin for an extra scene.

Parents should know that this film includes some fight scenes. Characters are wounded and one is murdered, leaving another character feeling responsible for failing to save him.

Family discussion: Why did Mia date Conor? What should she have said to him? How can someone fight an opponent who does not follow the rules? What other ideas are “two branches, one tree?”

If you like this, try: the other Karate Kid movies and the Cobra Kai series.

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.”

Bad Shabbos

Posted on May 23, 2025 at 5:32 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	High School
MPAA Rating:	Not rated
Profanity:	Strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, medication
Violence/ Scariness:	Accidental death, some disturbing images
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	June 6, 2025

The title makes it clear. Like “Bad Teacher,” “Bad Santa,” and “Bad Day at Black Rock,” this is a very dark comedy about an evening that does not go well. And then it goes extremely not well.

There’s a lot of pressure on this Friday night shabbos (Sabbath) family dinner at the home of religiously observant Jewish parents Richard (David Paymer) and Ellen (Kyra Sedgewick). Joining them are their three adult children, David (Jon Bass), Abby (Milana Vayntrub), and Adam (Theo Taplitz). Just about everyone is hiding something or worried about something or lying about something or all of the above.

Abby brings her boyfriend, Benjamin (Ashley Zukerman). She does not want her parents to know that they drove, which is forbidden on the Sabbath. David brings his fiancee, Meg (Meghan Leathers). Richard and Ellen are not happy that Meg is not Jewish, though somewhat mollified because she is studying Judaism with plans to convert. This dinner will be the first time Meg’s Catholic parents from Wisconsin meet David’s family and everyone is concerned about how that is going to go, especially since Meg has not told her parents that she is going to convert. Contributing to the pressure on David and Meg, it seems everyone in town knows about the expectations for this meal. They stop at the legendary Barney Greengrass deli to pick up challah (the braided bread traditionally eaten at Shabbos dinner), where they are waited on by real-life Gary Greengrass, who learned about the meeting of the two sets of parents from Richard. At the apartment building, the affable doorman, Jordan (Wu-Tang’s Method Man, in an irresistibly charming performance) says that “Richie” has told him all about it, and that David’s family is his favorite. Method Man just about steals the film as the ultimate ride or die friend of the family.

The family’s youngest son is fragile, highly sensitive Adam, who does not have a job and still lives with his parents. Richard and Ellen are constantly trying to reassure him that he is doing fine and loved by everyone, but he is only too aware that his family is worried and perhaps a little disappointed. He takes the anti-anxiety psychotropic drug Klonopin, and apparently some other medications as well. It is clear that at least some members of the family are concerned that his behavior might be disturbing for Meg’s parents. He is probably imagining a scene like the one in “Annie Hall,” where Woody Allen’s New York Jewish character meets Diane Keaton’s very Christian midwestern family, and imagines they see him as an Orthodox Hassid.

So, a lot of pressure. And then, as noted, things get very, very bad. As Meg’s parents, John (John Bedford Lloyd) and Beth (Catherine Curtain) are on their way, one of the people in the apartment is accidentally killed, implicating Adam. And then, along the lines of the recent “The Trouble with Jessica,” the group decides not to call an ambulance or the police but somehow cover it up, and the rest of the film is farce.

In “The Trouble with Jessica,” the people at a dinner party decide to cover up a death for selfish reasons. What gives “Bad Shabbos,” a lighter tone is the way the family immediately decides that their priority is protecting a vulnerable person and, of course, not making Meg’s parents think that they are the kind of people who have dead bodies in their apartment. Their logic — and their morality — may be wobbly, but it is hard not to sympathize with them. There is an extremely sweet moment when Meg delivers the d’var torah (a brief discussion of the meaning of a passage from the first five books of the Bible) to demonstrate what she is learning in her class. And it is very funny that the family keeps trying to persuade John and Beth that every unusual action is part of their tradition, expecting that anything Jewish is so unfamiliar to them they will just try to be polite and go along with it.

What makes the film especially engaging is the way it gets the details of a New York Jewish shabbos meal right. The tone of the film may be heightened, exaggerated for comic purposes, but unlike too many other portrayals this film never makes the characters into caricatures and the details are precise and affectionate. It’s very dark, but it is also very funny.

Parents should know that this is a comedy about a dead body and the lies and cover-ups in response to an accident. Characters use some strong language. They drink wine and misuse medication. There is an accident and brief disturbing images. A character struggles with mental illness.

Family discussion: Why did the family agree to lie? Were they right?

If you like this, try: “Round and Round”

Air Force Elite: Thunderbirds

Posted on May 22, 2025 at 8:11 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Not rated
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Brief alcohol
Violence/ Scariness:	Real-life danger and references to sad deaths
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	May 23, 2025

The Thunderbirds of the Air Force are the elite display team pilots who give demonstrations around the country to inspire Americans with a show of extraordinary courage and skill. This documentary, with producers that include Barack and Michelle Obama, is like Glenn Powell’s “The Blue Angels,” about the Navy’s elite flying group. It takes us inside the training that leads up to the annual tour of 62 shows across the country, with “flying acrobatics” and are “meant to look nearly impossible.” The signs on the doors they walk through to the airstrip say “Fly Like Champions” and “Blind Trust,” the first a goal, the second the foundational principle of the team, because they fly in such tight formation that the slightest error from one of them puts all of them at risk. As we see in the film, there have been a number of crashes and many Thunderbirds pilots have died.

The pilots serve for two years, and each year half are new. So we begin with the arrival of three pilots joining the team. They are there because of their outstanding skills, but they have to unlearn as well as learn. The experience of the Tom Cruise in “Top Gun” types trained for combat or those “Right Stuff” types trained for testing new equipment are not exactly transferable and some are completely opposite. Combat pilots have two goals, to hit the target and stay alive. Thunderbirds literally are told to “divorce yourself from your usual survival instincts” because the maneuvers they perform are designed to keep them “micro-seconds from a life-threatening situation.” We see the impact of G-force acrobatics that make a 200-pound pilot into a 2000-pounder, making it impossible for oxygen to reach the head, so they pass out.

And we see that these pilots find all of that “frickin’ awesome.” One points to the number 5 painted on the side of the plane. It is upside down, because that way it will appear right-side up during the demonstration.

We spend much of the time with the boss, number one, called Astro (like the Blue Angels and the Top Guns, they have call signs — my favorite was the flight surgeon, who goes by Angry). His dream from his earliest childhood was to be an astronaut, and his parents proudly show us his grade school drawings. But when the Thunderbirds were in need, after a 2018 crash, they needed someone to make some changes, and his unique skills as a graduate of both combat and test flight training made him the ideal candidate. His wife says that she checked the mortality numbers for the Thunderbirds; ten percent. But the commitment to “service over self” meant they both understood that was where he needed to be.

We see one pilot struggle with his position and the way the others support him. And we see that the unquestioned dedication to “service over self” is as important to them as their constant training and striving for perfection.

We also see the support they get from the maintenance crews, every bit as devoted to excellence as the pilots. Their first demonstration at the Daytona races, is not perfect. They are supposed to appear on “brave,” the last word of the National Anthem. They’re off by seconds, but to them it feels like months. Astro’s reaction: “We have something to work on.”

The better we understand what goes into the maneuvers, the more we appreciate the skills that make it possible for them to fly in such tight formations, wings almost touching, each relying on the others to stay stable.

The cinematography is stunning, with special thanks to Arial Coordinator (and stunt pilot) Kevin LaRossa II, also the genius behind the air footage of “Top Gun: Maverick,” “The Blue Angels,” “The Avengers,” any many more. The air maneuvers are dazzling. But it is the hearts, integrity, and courage of the Thunderbirds that are unforgettable.

Parents should know that this film includes references to airplane fatalities.

Family discussion: What made Astro decide to withdraw from the astronaut program? Do you agree with his decision? Go to one of the air shows and stay after to talk to the pilots.

If you like this, try: “The Blue Angels” and the “Top Gun” movies