Thoughts on Scarlet

    Scarlet (2025) was a gender-bent fantasy version of Hamlet, where the princess Scarlet, in late 16th century Denmark, tries to avenge the death of her father (the king killed by his brother to usurp the throne), only to be killed by her uncle and end up in the Land of the Dead, where people roam deserts and can still be killed in the afterlife, being turned into dust and nothingness. She still wants to avenge her father's death and kill her uncle, who is now in the afterlife along with his men and all the people of her kingdom, as centuries has passed, and she is joined by a contemporary paramedic who is in denial that he died, and she only has revenge on her mind and killing minions while he wants to heal people and not kill anyone.

    I really liked the animation, as there were some stunning shots, though the switch between 2D and 3D animation was a little jarring, it reminded me of watching Titan A.E. and the rocky switch with 2000s-era CGI mixed with 2D animation, and this movie came out last year.
I wasn't into the forced love interest with the guy, as I found him pretty dull, and she had been dead for centuries and still obsessed with killing her uncle, which made the afterlife seem more miserable if people could still die a second time there or be forced to just roam aimlessly.

    At one point, the guy plays a lute and is like, "Here's a song from the far future," and I started giggling in the theater, because I half-expected it to turn into a "anyway, here's 'Wonderwall'" meme or for him to play "Baby Got Back."

    The story was mostly about how she was letting vengeance consume her and that she had wasted her life plotting to kill her uncle with her fight training, only to die and still be obsessed with wanting revenge, and her having to learn how to let go.

    This was directed by Mamoru Hosoda, who also directed Belle in 2021, an anime film I had really liked that is more contemporary, where the main character is a teen girl who has a popular Internet avatar as an alter ego.

    I liked the movie, I don't hate it like the other reviews on Letterboxd do, but I just think it was really pretty and gorgeous to look at with an interesting fantasy version of Hamlet, but could have had better story and character development.

Thoughts on Peter Hujar's Day

   On Criterion, I watched a 2025 biographical drama titled Peter Hujar's Day, written and directed by Ira Sachs, based on the 2021 book of the same name by Linda Rosenkrantz. It's likely because of my own close ties to NYC, though I grew up in Long Island. But I'm 42, lived in NYC for twenty years, and now live in Jersey City but commute to Manhattan for work. So it's still always been very close to me.

    The film was taken from the transcript of a lost-to-time audio recording that writer Linda Rosenkrantz (Rebecca Hall) made while interviewing her friend, photographer Peter Hujar (Ben Whishaw) on a December day in his downtown NYC apartment in 1974, asking him about all of his activities from the day before. Peter is a successful photographer whose work had been in The New York Times and The Village Voice, but is often broke and just getting by, chasing down people to get paid for his work, sleeping on a mattress on the floor, and chain-smoking cigarettes in his apartment. He sits with Linda as he smokes and talks about tracking down Allen Ginsburg to photograph him for the Times, finding contrast between his chanting and Eastern religion vibes and then being crude about William S. Burroughs' proclivities for prep school boys in neckties; acting as the go-between for Susan Sontag and another artist friend; and making his way through the loose artsy bohemian world of friends and friends of friends. Linda just listens and doesn't judge and is very understanding and not surprised by anything.

    I really enjoyed this film a lot. I liked how Hall and Whishaw, two British actors, nailed this 1960s-1970s liberal intellectual NYC accent that I can't describe how it sounds, but is the kind of voice heard in 1970s Woody Allen movies. The language is dated in a 1960s book kind of way, like saying "we were making it on the couch" for sex. The film has this quiet cozy vibe to me, that I felt relaxed just watching two excellent actors play the kind of New Yorkers of a bygone era, that now really exists with the kind of elderly New Yorkers who have lived in their rent-controlled apartments for over 50 years and have tons of books in tall bookcases and a lot of old-school charm to them.

Thoughts on Hidden in the Fog

    On Criterion I watched Hidden in the Fog, a 1953 Swedish mystery noir film directed by Lars-Eric Kjellgren and co-written by Kjellgren, Vic Sunesson, and Barbro Alving, based on Sunesson's 1951 novel of the same name. The film starred Eva Henning as Lora, a woman who is on the run after shooting her abusive and unfaithful husband Walter (Georg Rydeberg), and she thinks she killed him by shooting him, and is wandering around the streets of Stockholm in a daze. She gets caught by the police, and learns that he had died by poisoning prior, and he was already dead when she shot him. The detective Kjell Myrman (Sven Linberg) is trying to figure out the murder mystery, with Lora as the prime suspect, and there is a lot of speculation among her friends and family on how her husband could have been poisoned.

    I liked this film, for the beautiful black and white cinematography by Gunnar Fischer (who also shot Ingmar Bergman films like Port of Call and The Devil's Eye), the allusions to Otto Preminger's 1944 film Laura (where one of the characters directly references it and compares her to the title heroine), and the intriguing murder mystery and flashbacks on piecing the story together. I really liked Dagmar Ebbesen as Lora's maid Vilma, who has more to do with the plot than one expects, and had funny asides as a character actor, as if she would be played by Thelma Ritter in the 1950s American equivalent of this film.

    This was included as part of the Criterion Channel's Nordic Noir selection, and this was really interesting to check out.

    

Thoughts on 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple

    In January, I went to see 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a 2026 post-apocalyptic horror film directed by Nia DaCosta and written by Alex Garland. The film is a sequel to 2025's 28 Years Later, as part of the 28 Days Later film series, originally directed by Danny Boyle and written by Alex Garland. The films were produced back-to-back in 2025.

    I have only seen 28 Days Later, and have not seen 28 Weeks Later or 28 Years Later, so I don't feel like my review can be fully accurate of the series. But I knew the basic plot of 28 Years Later, which focuses on a family trying to survive in the post-apocalypse of the Rage Virus, an infectious virus which makes people act like rabid zombies. The Rage Virus had been successfully driven away from continental Europe, but was still active in the British Isles, leaving the countries in quarantine with few survivors. The story centered on the parents Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Isla (Jodie Comer), and their 12-year old son, Spike (Alfie Williams). Jamie and Spike hunt the Infected, and through the story, they meet Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), a survivor who has created the Bone Temple, an ossuary he has constructed out of clean bones of both fallen survivors and the Infected, paying tribute to them in a respectful temple for them. Spike loses his mother to cancer and is separated from his father, and is picked up by a cult led by Jimmy Crystal (Jack O'Connell), who are all dressed in blonde wigs and tracksuits to emulate Jimmy Saville, the late British TV host, whose sex offender crimes were discovered after his death in 2011.

    In 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Spike is forced to kill one of the cult members, who all go by the name Jimmy, in a death match as part of an initiation. Jimmy Crystal is charming but manipulative, and has no problem turning his followers against each other to prove their "loyalty," and is a Satanist, referring to Satan as "Old Nick." Spike, now renamed Jimmy, is horrified by being pushed to kill, but feels trapped and has no choice but to stay with the group for survival.

    Dr. Ian Kelson continues to build the Bone Temple, as a meditative ritual, paying tribute to humanity, and listens to Duran Duran records in his home, playing songs like "Girls on Film" and "Ordinary World," with pictures from his past life on the wall pre-apocalypse. One of the Infected, Samson (Chi Lewis-Parry), who Dr. Kelson had sedated in the previous film with a morphine cocktail via blow dart, comes to visit him, becoming addicted to the morphine and finding calm and peace while sedated and sitting with Dr. Kelson. Over time, Dr. Kelson realizes that Samson is understanding that he is not a threat, and is coming of his own free will for the drugs to have peace, and that he may be finding his own humanity again. Samson grunts and makes sounds, but doesn't speak, but shows understanding, seeing Dr. Kelson as a trusted friend. But Dr. Kelson knows that his morphine supply will be running out in two weeks, and is testing to see whether he should euthanize Samson for his own well-being or if he can be cured of the Rage Virus.

    The film progresses with a lot of gore, as Jimmy Crystal leads his cult to murder people with knives, and Spike continually throws up at being sickened by the mayhem, with Jimmy Ink (Erin Kellyman), befriending him and trying to protect him while being honest about who they are. 

    It's a really interesting horror film that has a lot of violence, but makes room for character development, and I not only enjoyed the sympathetic performance of Fiennes and the sadistic performance of O'Connell, but I especially liked the performance by Lewis-Parry, a stuntman and martial artist who delivered a largely wordless performance with his physical acting as Samson, a giant of a man who, through being medicated by morphine, is learning to find himself as a person again after being consumed by the virus for years. He is also nude in several scenes in the film, and him wearing clothes again is part of him becoming a person and not a bloodthirsty creature.

    The climatic finale features a song that has been largely associated with Satan, but is used to expose the lies of Jimmy Crystal, as well as to protect the children who have been controlled by his evil influence. Dr. Kelson himself is an atheist, but still has faith in community, and is against the use of religion as a weapon by others. I give credit to my friend John Arminio, who covered these topics more deeply in his Letterboxd review of the film.

    I've been a fan of Nia DaCosta since her film Little Woods, and have enjoyed seeing how her success as a director, and as a Black female filmmaker, has risen over the years, with her work on the Candyman remake, The Marvels, Hedda, and this film. Her and Alex Garland brought a lot of care to this film, and combined the horror gore with empathetic looks at the human experience.

Thoughts on The Secret Agent

    On Monday, I went to the Village East Cinema to see The Secret Agent, a 2025 Brazilian political thriller written and directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho. The film stars Wagner Moura as a former professor and widower named Armando Solimões living in Brazil in 1977 under a fascist state, who moves back to his hometown of Recife under the assumed name of Marcelo Alves, working in an identification card office and reconnecting with his son Fernando (Enzo Nunes), who is being raised by Armando's in-laws. He befriends other political dissidents while staying in an apartment building run by anarcho-communist Dona Sebastiana (Tânia Maria), like Claudia (Hermila Guedes) and Angolan Civil War refugees Thereza Vitória (Isabel Zuaa) and Antonio (Licínio Januário). There is a two-faced cat, a Janus cat, who could be seen as representing Armando's duality between being himself and being Marcelo, or the cat's resilience in living in a tough environment. 

    The film opens with a darkly humorous sequence where Armando stops at a gas station, and sees a dead man's body with cardboard covering his face, about 20 feet away in the parking lot from the gas station. The gas station owner explains that he got shot and killed in an attempted robbery during the night, and that he called the police, but they're busy with Carnaval, so the body is just lying there. Stray dogs try to come at it, and the gas station owner shoos them away. Then cops show up, but aren't there for the body, but are investigating Armando's car, searching it for drugs or any kind of contraband. When they don't find anything, one asks Armando to make a donation to the police, like trying to extort money from him or as a bribe, and instead Armando says he spent his last dollars at the gas station, and gives them his cigarettes instead. It's the kind of world where the police can operate with corruption under a fascist system, and Armando is trying to survive in this crazy world, and knows that if not money, then cigarettes will buy them off for awhile.

    The film is broken up into chapters, and follows many side stories, like when the corrupt police chief Euclides (Robério Diógenes) and his sons Sergio (Igor de Araújo) and Arlindo (Italo Martins) are called to investigate a severed human leg that has been found inside of a tiger shark. The leg makes news, and becomes the subject of absurdist stories meant to cover up actual crimes by the police state, like claiming the "hairy leg" kicked gay men who were out cruising at a public park at night, when in reality they were most likely being harassed and beaten by the police for being gay.

    Violence touches everyone's lives or is in the backdrop, like how a wrapped-up body in a car trunk is tossed over a bridge, and is supposedly a young woman who was murdered by her fiancé for being accepted into a scholarship program in Germany. Or when Chief Euclides, who has taken a liking to Armando, brings him along to see Hans (Udo Kier), a Jewish tailor who Euclides thinks was a Nazi, making him show his scars despite that everyone is visibly uncomfortable with Euclides' behavior, and Armando is annoyed by his stupidity and boorishness. Hans, in one of Udo Kier's final roles, yells at Euclides in German, knowing he can't understand the language, and has a menorah right by him, which Euclides doesn't notice out of his own ignorance.

    The film uses a cinema and popular 1970s films as a backdrop, where the Cinema São Luiz, where Armando's father-in-law Sr. Alexandre (Carlos Francisco) works as a projectionist. Jaws and The Omen play at the cinema, and both were blockbusters of the day, and Fernando is fascinated by Jaws and wants to see it, but Armando feels he's too young, knowing he gets scared just from the poster. And The Omen causes people to feel like they're possessed, having exaggerated reactions to watching a film about the devil in a predominantly Catholic society. The cinema is also where the journalist and political resistance activist Elza (Maria Fernanda Cândido) meets with Armando to tape her interview with him about why he's working as a political dissident and his past as a former professor.

    This film was really fascinating to watch, as a 1970s-set political thriller, and is timely with the current fascist state of the United States at this time, and seeing past uses of the resistance network with using notes and telegrams and pay phones (to avoid tapped phone lines) to share messages and meet in confidence. The film occasionally cuts to the present-day, where two history students are transcribing the digitized audiotapes of Elza's resistance network and researching newspaper archives, and it's an interesting way of connecting the past and present, including a scene where Elza is interviewing Armando and the theater audience downstairs is screaming at The Omen and the ones conducting the interview hear it, then cutting to one of the present-day history students, Flavia (Laura Lufési), hearing the screams but not understanding the context. As an archivist myself, I enjoyed watching it for the scenes of the present-day researchers doing their transcription work and piecing things together, as well as the period scenes with the analog way of working as resistance fighters.

    Wagner Moura is fantastic in this film, and deserves the accolades that he has received. I had only known him for his role as Pablo Escobar in the series Narcos ten years ago, so it's been fun to see him in a different role and outside of the Pablo look he had in portraying the notorious Colombian drug lord. I really enjoyed Tânia Maria as the 77-year old Dona Sebastiana, the funny and charming den mother of political dissidents, who hints at her past as an anarcho-communist in 1930s-1940s Italy, but won't tell further details of her life then, and helps activists live under assumed names and secure fake passports and find safety as a makeshift family. She was an excellent scene-stealer, and has only acted in a few films.

    There's a lot of fascinating details in this film, like how Armando is working at the identification card office in part to find the ID card of his late mother, because he wants physical proof that she existed as a person. Or how two men that are hired to kill Armando are so lazy that they outsource their hit job to a poor man, who takes obvious offense at being referred to as "like an animal." There are many musical needle drops, like Chicago's "If You Leave Me Now" or Donna Summer's "Love to Love You Baby," as well as Brazilian music, including an anachronistic song from 1986 in a scene.

    The film has a foot chase sequence in the finale that was absolutely fantastic and gripping to watch, and that I highly recommend seeing along with the rest of this great film.

Thoughts on The Ugly Stepsister

     On Hulu, I watched The Ugly Stepsister, a 2025 Norwegian black comedy/body horror film written and directed by Emilie Blichfeldt. The film is a take on the Cinderella fairy tale, told from the perspective of Cinderella's stepsister Elvira (Lea Myren), an average looking girl who is pitted against Cinderella's beauty, and is forced to undergo painful and archaic methods of plastic surgery to be seen as beautiful enough to win the Prince or any other rich man. Agnes' (later named Cinderella derisively) father Otto (Ralph Carlsson) marries Elvira's mother, Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp), but dies quickly afterwards, and each family thought the other had money, but they are broke, and Rebekka is spending money on finishing school for Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Naess) and Elvira, where the teacher favors the pretty girls, including Agnes, to be at the front of the class and sends Elvira to the back row with the "ugly" girls.

    Elvira is very romantic, and reads love tales supposedly written by Prince Julian, and dreams of being swept up by the Prince, and being made "beautiful" after her braces are taken off and that her nose has healed post-nose job, for which she wears a strap on her face as a bandage for the majority of the film. The nose job is just the doctor breaking her nose with a chisel, causing immeasurable pain to her. She has false eyelashes sewn onto her in a particularly gruesome sequence, and is advised to swallow tapeworm eggs to become thinner, which leaves her with a grumbling stomach sound periodically throughout the film, as a foreboding warning sound inside of her. 

    Elvira is routinely told by her mother and the headmistress that she isn't beautiful and needs to marry a rich man, and Elvira grows envious towards Agnes, whose natural beauty gives her more ease in the world, as well as more suitors, like a stable boy named Isak (Malte Myrenberg Gardinger) who she has a secret romance with. Agnes starts out a little haughty towards her stepfamily, but is otherwise a nice girl, and is forced into servitude by Rebekka, seeing her as competition for the Prince's affections. Agnes is also angry that Rebekka keeps spending money on material goods, and refuses to have a funeral or a burial for her late husband, so his body is rotting in a forgotten room in the home, with flies around him, and Agnes will visit him with flowers, only to be horrified by the sight of her father's decaying corpse.

    Elvira's younger sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) witnesses all of this pain and abuse that Elvira goes through, is horrified that Elvira ingested a tapeworm and is mutilating herself, and is hiding that she got her period and started bleeding, afraid that her mother too will put her through the same torture cycle to be a "woman" and pimped out to a man.

    The film takes the pain and bloodiness of the original fairy tale, like the lengths to which the stepsister will go to to fit the shoe after the Prince's ball, and is a commentary on the restrictive beauty standards of then and today, punishing girls for not fitting the beauty standards and shaming them for going through the painful efforts, and still not getting it as easy as those who are "naturally" beautiful. 

    I really loved how twisted this film was, taking the darker origins of the fairy tale, and creating a sympathetic character in the "ugly" stepsister, while not turning Agnes/Cinderella into the villain and showing how she was victimized too. The ending is at both bittersweet and heroic, as Elvira suffers for her quest for beauty and love, but finds safety with Alma to escape their mother's cruelness at the same time. It's a really fantastic film, and I heard of it through the YouTuber Yhara Zayd on her list of her favorite films of 2025.

Favorite Movies/Performances of 2025

I didn’t think about writing a “Favorite Movies of 2025” list because I didn’t really have much favorites. I watch movies a lot, but didn’t feel like I saw a lot of new stuff that I really loved or adored, so it’s a small list of liking movies or certain performances:

David Jonsson has been a rising talent and standout actor in movies like Rye Lane and Alien: Romulus, and I liked him a lot in The Long Walk. The movie is depressing to watch, but he holds the screen with a lot of ease and star power, and he and Cooper Hoffman had good friend chemistry together.

Rose Byrne was fantastic in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, in an incredibly tense and uncomfortable drama, and I’m happy she won a Golden Globe for her performance.

Sinners was an excellent film that combined a blues musical with vampires, and was an experience to watch in theaters.

She Rides Shotgun was a fantastic thriller featuring Taron Egerton and the young Ana Sophia Heger, and I was gripped into this film in the theater.

Sentimental Value was a stunning family drama centered on a Norwegian filmmaker (Stellan Skarsgard) and his estranged relationship with his daughters (Renate Reinsve, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas), and I liked how layered and interesting it was.

While I was mixed on the storyline for The Testament of Ann Lee, I loved the dance choreography by Celia Rowlson-Hall, and the soprano singing by Amanda Seyfried. Those two elements made the film more memorable and stunning to me.

Jessie Buckley’s guttural screaming and moaning in childbirth and in grief in Hamnet was raw and palpable to my ears.

Austin Abrams’ performance in Weapons made a junkie homeless dirtbag character into an unexpected sympathetic hero, and being better at finding missing kids than the cops were. And Amy Madigan as Aunt Gladys the witch looked like 1970s Bette Davis and was captivating to watch as this weird character.

Sally Hawkins in Bring Her Back was incredible, in taking a character who was obviously disturbed and gaslighting people, speaking in a pleasant voice while being driven insane by grief to hurt others.

I liked how The Mastermind felt like a quiet take on a heist film with a 1970s-set story, with Josh O’Connor as a protagonist who ignores the social news of the day with protests and the Vietnam War, coasting through life, and his lack of awareness catching up with him.

Black Bag was a really tight spy film in 90 minutes with an excellent cast led by Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett, and just felt fascinating to me.

Mickey 17 went on for too long, but I did like watching Robert Pattinson play clones and put on affected weird voices and look like he was having fun with the roles.

Final Destination: Bloodlines was stupidly fun to watch, and had a touching and heartfelt sendoff for the late Tony Todd in one of his final roles, in a speech about enjoying life and accepting death.

Sister Midnight (technically from 2024, but in theaters last year) was a really fun, weird dark comedy centering on Radhika Apte's performance as a young Indian woman miserable in her arranged marriage and spiraling into a feral force.