Flipping the script, making heroes of villains from two sci-fi series
The latest entry in the “Predator” series isn’t a game changer so much as a change-up, building a better bridge with the “Alien” film series than the comic book-inspired “Alien vs. Predator” did so slackly in 2004, showing a wry humor and, as you might not suspect, making the predator of the tile – replete with that freaky maw – the de facto protagonist.
All that said, the plot’s not that surprising: An undersized predator or Yautja named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, emoting effectively under all the makeup and special effects) is to be offed by his brother to cull the clan of its weakest (sounds like an IBM or Amazon layoff – nothing personal, right?). His brother stands up for him and lets Dek jet off to Genna, aka the Death Planet, to hunt down a Kalisk, secure the creature’s skull as a trophy and ascend into the clan of predator warriors.
The latest from Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water,” “Nightmare Alley”) is a he-said, they-said kind of a tale that’s fairly faithful to its Mary Shelley roots. In scope and success it’s akin to Kenneth Branagh’s 1994 effort with Robert De Niro as the Creature but won’t make anyone forget Boris Karloff and the 1931 James Whale classic. Del Toro gets his creepy-crawly shivers in early with a smattering of reanimation scenes as Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) plugs half corpses into a battery and gets them to sputter to life for a board of London scientists who are both wowed and appalled – “Only god can create life,” one shouts, and that was Shelley’s point: Don’t mess with Mother Nature. If you do, the consequences can be boss-level bad. And, in this case, existential and unrelenting. At nearly two and a half hours, the film is told in two chapters, one from Victors’ “he” perspective and one from the Creature’s “they” view – yes, pronouns back then mattered too, but in this case the “they” is a humanization of the Creature versus the “it” used by Victor and others. The Creature is played with empathetic loneliness and rage by Jacob Elordi (“Saltburn,” “Priscilla”). The most touching scenes are with a blind man in the woods (David Bradley, excellently channeling his inner Anthony Hopkins) and with scream-queen “it girl” Mia Goth (“X,” “Infinity Pool”) as Elizabeth, the fiancée of Victor’s brother Willam (Felix Kammerer, “All Quiet on the Western Front”) whom both the Creature and Victor have strong sexual tensions with. Goth also plays Claire Frankenstein, the lads’ mum who dies in birthing William – from bearer of life to love interest, a piquant ponder, right? The rendering of the Creature takes its cues from classic Karloff mashed up with the tall, porcelain-white alien beings in “Prometheus” (2012), who, as that movie had it, created us; it’s here we shall note that the subtitle of Shelley’s tale is “The Modern Prometheus.” Christopher Waltz is in the cast as Harlander, Elizabeth’s uncle and the financier of Victor’s reanimation lab, the tower atop a Scottish seaside cliff designed to pull down that massive bolt of lightning to bring the Creature to life. There’s a lot stitched into de Toro’s vision of Shelley, some a smooth, seamless period horror, other times moving in gangly, awkward leaps in which the timing of events is too overly convenient and implausible. Another round of editing and tightening may have helped, but del Toro’s “Frankenstein” is a wonderment that’s at its best when quiet and internal, or as Elordi rises up and roils in beast mode.
‘Aileen: Queen of the Serial Killers’ (2025)
Emily Turner’s documentary revisits the life and crimes of Aileen Wuornos, America’s first crowned female serial killer. The film doesn’t add much to the 2003 biopic “Monster,” which won Charlize Theron an Oscar for her portrayal of Wuornos, or Nick Broomfield’s docs “Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer” (1992) and “Aileen: The Life and Death of a Serial Killer” (2003). If anything, it casts a softer light on Wuornos’ adoptive mother, Arlene Pralle, a horse breeder and born-again Christian; her hippie attorney, Steve Glazer; and childhood friend Dawn Botkins, who in Broomfield’s films were opportunists trying to make a buck off their proximity to Aileen. Aileen herself comes off as warm and engaging in her day-before-execution interview with Australian pen pal Jasmine Hirst – a stark contrast to Broomfield’s 2003 final interview. It’s telling too when Wuornos whispers into Hirst’s ear and tells her she’s “going to make millions.” The most interesting spins are the outtakes from “Dateline” investigator Michele Gillen’s interview footage, the testimony of the female judge removed from the case before trial and the brimming political aspirations of god-fearing prosecutor John Tanner. The rewind of a related cop scandal – investigators cut Hollywood deals while the investigation was ongoing – intrigues, as do the late reveals of Aileen’s confessional truth before execution. Both were well covered in Broomfield’s takes, and the latter to different conclusions. It’s not new, but Aileen still rivets, and this will likely send viewers to the archives for Broomfield’s bits and Gillen’s deep delve.
‘Ballad of a Small Player’ (2025)
Edward Berger’s casino drama dazzles in every scene framed by Academy Award-winning cinematographer James Friend (“All Quiet on the Western Front”) – though as a tale, it lacks sense and soul. The true star of the film is Macau, an island causeway south of Hong Kong that has become an international hub of casinos. Amid the bright lights we embed with gambler Lord Doyle (Colin Farrell), a dignified Brit with Bond-esque reserve who lives large but can’t pay for it. His tab at the posh hotel he has holed up in is $350,000, and it’s long past due. The next big hand keeps coming up bust, and soon Doyle’s only drip of credit is from a compassionate senior casino employee named Dao Ming (Fala Chen) who may not be as kind as her eyes present, and may, in fact, be a willful enabler. More mystery wafts in with Tilda Swinton as an investigator of white collar crimes, like Faye Dunaway in “The Thomas Crown Affair” (the 1968 Boston shot version). There are also some questions as to the verisimilitude of Doyle’s lineage. Farrell, recently in “The Banshees of Inisherin” (2022) and “The Penguin” series, keeps proving he’s become an actor willing to go all in for his character, but he’s not given enough here from Rowan Joffe’s adaptation of a Lawrence Osborne novel. Given Joffe’s and Berger’s CVs (“The American” and “Conclave” among them, respectively) it’s a disappointing sojourn of sideways movements that never finds a peak. “Ballad of a Small Player” marks the third successive Netflix project by a major filmmaker – along with “A House of Dynamite” and “Frankenstein” – to get a short theatrical run and mixed critical reactions before being moved to the streaming giant’s platform of plenty.
The lates from Lanthimos imagines a CEO as a threat to humanity, but what’s the the weird part?
If you like your Yorgos Lanthimos films outré and boundary-pushing like “Poor Things” (2023) as opposed to something more rooted in the simmering edginess of the day-to-day – say, “The Killing of a Sacred Deer” (2017) or last year’s underappreciated “Kinds of Kindness” – “Bugonia” is your cup of crazy chai.
Lanthimos’ muse for his past four features, Emma Stone (she won gold for her portrait of a female Frankenstein’s monster discovering the power and pleasure of sex in “Poor Things”) stars as Michelle, the chief executive of Auxolith, a boffo biotech company outside Atlanta. We first meet Michelle making corporate messaging videos about diversity and workers’ rights. After one fumbled miscue and a retake, it’s abundantly clear that Michelle’s not a woke woman trying to raise others up, but doing a performative ass-covering for lawsuit prevention – “you can go home at 5:30 if you want,” she tells one employee, and then another, “but if you still have work to do …”
Keanu is the chain-smoking angel who flies away with this class comedy
Aziz Ansari, the shaggy-dog comedian (“Master of None”) known for his casual demeanor and biting social barbs, makes his directorial debut with this comedy about fate, happiness and how much the rich – and AI – are eating those further down the social ladder. “Good Fortune” is a devilish mix of light and dark that takes a good long time to reveal just how dark things can get, despite focusing on people sleeping in their cars because they can’t put a roof over their heads no matter how many jobs they work.
Even with the billing of Ansari and fellow comedy mainstay Seth Rogen, it’s Keanu Reeves who marches off with the film. It’s mostly the actor’s innate warmth and humanity that do the trick, but there’s also that dash of goofball vacancy that made the “Bill & Ted” movies so indelible and endearing that gives the film agency and air – a project that, in hindsight, might have otherwise floundered.
The first film from indie stalwart Hal Hartley in more than 10 years – a Kickstarter campaign got it off the ground before a Covid pandemic delay – is a loose, autobiographical reflection on the director’s life and body of work like Almodóvar’s deeply personal “Pain and Glory” (2019). At the center is Joseph Fulton (Bill Sage), a lion in winter edging toward 60 and one-time maker of successful romantic comedies who’s taking a break from the director chair to get his last will and testament together. He also has a desire to put his hands in mother earth, and applies for a job as a cemetery groundskeeper. Through a comedy of miscommunication, Joe’s girlfriend, Muriel (Kim Taff), an actor in Season 14 of her “Wonder Woman”-esque TV series, and his niece and assistant, Veronica (Katelyn Sparks) discover an unopened, confidential letter from a hospital and think it all adds up to Joe dying. Adding fuel to the fire is the subplot about a wannabe screenwriter (Jeremy Hendrik) claiming to be Joe’s son. It’s a stoic, reflective affair with some strong writing. The best moment is when a film studies professor (Aida Johannes) challenges Joe with SAT word salad and Rorschach test reasoning about the meaning of his films. It’s blazingly brilliant, but begs the question as to why Joe’s rom-coms are being intellectualized as if they’re “One Battle After Another.” No offense to rom-coms, but it’s apples and oranges – and Joe, a likable sort, doesn’t really emanate the auteur je ne sais quoi that many in the film seem to heap on him. As to the title, the film begins and ends with a Shackleton-esque-esque ship amid rough seas – a clear metaphor for hitting a patch of turbulence late in life and what to do. It works, even if weakly employed. As with most Hartley (or Mamet, for that matter) films, it’s less about the oblique references and more about matters of the heart and struggling soul.
Luca Guadagnino’s films have always included edgy, provocative sexual situations. Take “Call Me By Your Name” (2017), “Challengers” (2024) or “Queer” (2024). Even his ventures into the strange – “Suspiria” (2018) or “Bones and All” (2022) – are driven by primal lusts filmed in a way that can border on erotica. Guadagnino’s latest, “After the Hunt,” deals with the politics of sex and ethical morality in higher education.
The film opens with a holiday party at the cozy apartment of a tenured Yale English professor (Julia Roberts). The camera meanders from the warmth of the fireplace and into the stately den where faculty and grad students engage in boozy intellectual debate. Robert’s Alma is the clear queen of the ball (it’s her house). Her suck-ups include fellow lit prof Hank (Andrew Garfield, “The Social Network”) and doctoral candidate Maggie (Dorchester’s Ayo Edebiri, “The Bear”). Hank’s waiting to hear if he’s been awarded tenure; Maggie comes from an uber rich family that has given generously to the school. It’s all a raucous who’s-smarter-than-who fun time until Hank walks Maggie home and accusations of sexual misconduct are leveled.
A deeply engrossing, if uneven, sojourn into the realm of reckoning and redemption. The ace in the hole here would be Daniel Day-Lewis, who came out of retirement (in 2017, with the release of “Phantom Thread,” he implied it would be his last film before the camera) to make this deeply emotionally portrait with his writer-director son Ronan in his filmmaking debut. The senior Day-Lewis co-wrote the script, but from the overall scrumptious look and intensity, Ronan is an up-and-comer to watch. The title refers to the delicate and sensitive flower that closes up when touched and is evocative of Day-Lewis’ Ray, who has dropped out of society and is living off the grid in the woods of Northern England. For nearly 20 years, his brother Jem (Sean Bean) has been rearing Ray’s son Brian (Samuel Bottomley, “How to Have Sex”) after marrying Ray’s former lover, Nessa (Samantha Morton). In short, Jem stepped in when Ray stepped out on the pregnant Nessa; Jem ventures out to find Ray now because Brian is struggling. To say why Ray has gone into isolation wouldn’t be a spoiler, but it’s besides the point – involving Ireland’s violent Troubles, with the present-day of “Anemone” set in the early to mid-1990s. Much of the early segments of the film are long, speechless moments between Jem and Ray in the lush, deep forest that offers access to a remote beach and nearby stream. The intensity that defined Day-Lewis and earned him three Best Actor Oscars (the only male lead to do so; Katherine Hepburn notched four) is on full display in the red flicker of his cottage’s fireplace as he delivers two big soliloquies that give us Ray’s “why.” Cutbacks to Nessa and Brian in a distant working-class borough fill out the picture, and Bean and his character know the landscape and their place in it. The film, shot by Ben Fordesman (“Love Lies Bleeding,” “Out of Darkness”) and scored by Bobby Krlic, is a stunning fusion of sound and image – intimate yet expansive with deep eerie chords that conjure wonderment and a haunting sense of foreboding. Not all of it melds, yet it rivets in nearly every frame.
Brothers who direct together don’t always stay together. We know this from the Coens, who after 30-something films went off to do solo projects, and it seems to be the same for the Safdie brothers (“Good Time,” “Uncut Gems”), with Benny breaking out for this biopic about MMA fighting pioneer Mark Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) when the sport was mostly in Europe and Japan. Much of the action takes place there, and it’s an odd sojourn. You can see Safdie, so good at channeling the freneticism of fringe personalities in “Gems” and “Good Time,” constrained here by facts versus fiction and straining to find a character motivation or that challenging event that drives the protagonist. Kerr’s challenges with painkiller addiction and recovery come early in the film, and there are domestic struggles at his Arizona hacienda with significant other Dawn (Emily Blunt), but otherwise no real arc. It’s more a meandering love letter to Kerr and an era, and in some ways has a docudrama feel. Johnson, jacked up to seam-bursting size, acts his pants off. It’s an impressive immersion and a major turn in his career, fusing his WWE roots and aspirations to be taken as more of a serious actor than straight-up action star or Schwarzenegger-ish comedian. Blunt, close in tenor to Amy Adams as the girlfriend in “The Fighter,” is good too but never gets enough breathing space to make Dawn fully formed, and the role comes dangerously close to lapsing into rote hysteria. The one seam Safdie finds is the camaraderie and bonding among the athletes, namely between Kerr and friend-coach-rival Mark Coleman (MMA fighter Ryan Bader, who nearly wrestles the film from Johnson and Blunt). It’s a soulful meander in search of a reason to go to the mat.
Tommy Rodriguez retires next month from ownership of the Montrose Spa in Cambridge’s Neighborhood 9.
A 51-year era draws to an end as Tommy Rodriguez retires from ownership of the Montrose Spa, a bodega that’s become an integral part of its community since coming under his stewardship.
The spa and Rodriguez have seen a lot of change at 1646 Massachusetts Ave., between Harvard and Porter squares.
“When we first opened,” Rodriguez said, “all we sold was newspapers, magazines and cigarettes.” The area was served by several food marts in 1974 – Evergood, A&P and the Avenue Market – as well as other bodegas, and they were happy at the Montrose selling 500 copies of The Boston Globe and a similar number of The New York Times on a Sunday. Today, he says, he may sell 20 Sunday papers altogether.
As apt as it feels to see a movie now about gestapolike forces patrolling the border, chasing down immigrants and dragging them to detention centers, “One Battle After Another,” the new Paul Thomas Anderson project, is based on the 1990 novel “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon.
Anderson, best known for witty cynicisms poking at the grandiloquence of America – see “Magnolia” (1999) and “There will be Blood” (2007) – has wrapped his hands around the hard-to-grasp Pynchon before with “Inherent Vice” (2014). Here he proves to have a stronger grip, much of that coming in the reflection of current immigration policies and the political and racial divides that confront the country.
The deftly architected script begins in the 1980s with the French 75, a radical social justice terrorist group akin to the Weather Underground or Black Panthers who act under an “any means possible” mantra to spring detainees from detention camps by employing crafty military tactics – being well armed and brazen doesn’t hurt either. In our inaugural incursion led by Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor, “Straw”), the 75 sweep into a border encampment, free the detainees and flip the playbook on the guards by putting them in pens, including Sean Penn’s commanding officer character, colonel Lockjaw.
For What it's Worth 