My Week In Film: November 3, 2025
A romantic monster, a funny angel and a handsome robot. Who needs dating apps?
This week’s round-up includes highly anticipated blockbusters and smaller fare that is already dead on arrival at the box office, but does that mean they’re worthy of their reputations? Here are the films I have most recently reviewed.
Frankenstein
Guillermo del Toro, 2025
Rating: BB.5
Cast: Oscar Isaac, Christian Convery, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen, Christoph Waltz, David Bradley, Charles Dance, Lauren Collins, Sofia Galasso, Ralph Ineson, Burn Gorman
It was only a matter of time before del Toro, an unabashedly vocal fan of gothic literature and Hammer horror films and everything in between, would attempt the ultimate, definitive adaptation of Mary Shelley’s novel. The original story doesn’t have bolts in the neck or sewn-together body parts, and most feature film versions don’t include Shelley’s philosophical introspections from the point of view of the creature, as he considers the eternal loneliness of his undead state. Del Toro manages to have both, and delivers a film that is satisfying, beautifully designed and indulgent while at the same wholly respectable; the problem is that he also delivers something so anxious to be good that it forgets to be exciting or innovative, looking exactly like a handful of his other films and providing very few thrills. The tale begins with a Danish ship stuck in the frozen seas of the North Pole before its crew rescues a dying man and is attacked by a giant monster chasing him. The man turns out to be Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), who tells the ship’s captain about his attempt to play god and conquer death by using his experiments with electricity to reanimate dead human flesh. His work has resulted in a creature (played by Jacob Elordi) that he tries to control but, thanks to his cruel treatment, eventually finds his way out to the greater world where he plots vengeance upon his maker. The second half of the story has the creature himself telling the captain the story from his own perspective, describing the torture and abuse he suffered in Frankenstein’s castle before wandering the earth and learning that the human heart is far more monstrous than he is, mitigated only by the occasional show of kindness and his discovery of great art. Elordi’s soulful performance allows us to fall in love with the sensitive creature much in the way Ana Torrent’s character did in Victor Erice’s masterful Franco-era allegory Spirit of the Beehive, commanding a deep feeling without knocking the film’s desire for graphic horror off balance. Elordi’s work is the only visceral element in a film made by a great director who is perfectly suited to the material, at the point of his career where very little could stand in the way of his budgetary needs to fulfill his imagination. Its being so underwhelming proves that a definitive adaptation will likely never be possible, and given what a work of art it began with, we probably don’t need one anyway.
Good Fortune
Aziz Ansari, 2025
Rating: BBBB
Cast: Seth Rogen, Aziz Ansari, Keke Palmer, Sandra Oh, Keanu Reeves, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Penny Johnson Jerald, Sherry Cola
Struggling on his own but determined to make it in Los Angeles, Arj (Aziz Ansari, who also writes and directs) is putting together a living from various desperate sources, telling his concerned father that all is well when he calls him but hardly able to keep up with bills and debts. Things start looking up when he lands a lucrative gig as the assistant to young entrepreneur billionaire Jeff (Seth Rogen) and starts dating co-worker Elena (Keke Palmer), but that vanishes in one quick plot turn and makes him worse off than he was before. Thankfully, his daily humiliations are being witnessed by a guardian angel named Gabriel (Keanu Reeves), a low-level celestial being whose job is to stop people from texting and driving but who longs for more responsibility from his critical boss (Sandra Oh). Despite its being above his paygrade, Gabriel steps out of line and decides to mess with Arj’s life, creating an alternate reality where he and Jeff switch places in order to show him that having all his material problems removed won’t make him any happier. The problem, thanks to Ansari’s as always razor-sharp humour, is that Arj proves him wrong, he actually does feel happier in Jeff’s life and doesn’t want to switch back. Jeff is living in this new version of his life as Arj’s assistant until Gabriel decides to restore his memory in an effort to further prove his moral lesson, but that backfires as well, and soon Gabriel finds himself fired as an angel and working as a mortal short order cook, while Jeff struggles to make a living delivering food. The film’s message about the evils of the soul-crushing realities of the gig economy having been sold to Americans as the ultimate independence is hardly groundbreaking, but Ansari’s witty script is brought to vivid life by a terrific cast, including a never-more-endearing Reeves stealing the show right from under his highly charismatic co-stars. Ansari is fantastic in the lead and Rogen, who is usually overindulged in his sense of his own (overrated) cleverness, gives an intelligent portrayal of ignorant entitlement without overdoing the Capraesque nature of his third act realizations. It’s a film that works both as a fun concept comedy while also having a satisfying sense of atmospheric vibes, a brisk tonic of economic moralizing that has a generous but never foolish feeling of hope at its core.
TRON: Ares
Joachim Rønning, 2025
Rating: BBB.5
Cast: Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Miru Kim, Evan Peters, Jodie Turner-Smith, Hasan Minhaj, Arturo Castro, Gillian Anderson, Jeff Bridges, Cameron Monaghan, Sarah Desjardins, Selene Yun, Catherine Haena Kim, Narsha Kim, Aaron Paul Stewart, Roger Cross, Roark Critchlow, Katharine Isabelle, Gary Vaynerchuk, Kwesi Ameyaw
Disney throws money at a franchise with only niche popularity for the third time in a forty year-span, responding to the cult followings that developed after the box office disappointments of the first two films with another that is just as likely to avoid mass appeal. A world that confuses realities actual and virtual makes more sense in 2025 than it did in 1984, so it’s no surprise that the plot now has two major tech companies, both descending from characters from the original film, at war with each other over the unveiling of a new technology. Determined to win at any cost, Dillinger Systems’ CEO Julian Dillinger (Evan Peters) presents a program to his investors that can bring computer software into the real world as tools and weapons, but neglects to point out that they can only stay corporeal for a maximum of twenty-nine minutes. Rival ENCOM CEO Eve Kim (Greta Lee) has found the “permanence code” that could solve this problem, but must outwit Dillinger’s master warrior Ares (Jared Leto) in order to do it, a computer program made human that begins to question the value of following his leader blindly against human beings he begins to admire. The action sequences that this simple plot inspires would be enough to make for thoroughly captivating, visually dazzling entertainment but, for whatever reason, the script also insists on giving Ares the Bicentennial Man plot of a machine that longs to be human, an underdeveloped theme that feels like a way for Leto to make more of the part than just looking good in tight leather jackets (we don’t need more from him than that). As always, the dialogue is unintelligible jargon and, what is most important, the look of the film is its selling point, a series of excuses for gorgeous, neon-lit, electronic worlds that dazzle the eye from beginning to end.
The Smashing Machine
Benny Safdie, 2025
Rating: BBB
Cast: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Ryan Bader, Bas Rutten, Oleksandr Usyk, Olga Dzyurak, Lyndsey Gavin, Satoshi Ishii, James Moontasri, Yoko Hamamura, Stephen Quadros, Paul Cheng, Cyborg Abreu, Andre Tricoteux, Marcus Aurélio, Whitney Moore, Paul Lazenby, Nick Toren, Jonathan Corbblah
Mark Kerr’s waning wrestling career has led to his taken part in a sport known as “freestyle wrestling”, combat entertainment that would eventually morph into very lucrative and popular UFC championships. In its earliest days, mixed martial arts are looked down upon as indulgently violent, but that doesn’t stop Kerr (Dwayne Johnson) from attending fights in Tokyo where he hopes to win cash prizes that will keep him and his snazzy, insecure girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt) in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. The problem is that Kerr also uses no end of opioid drugs to soothe his pain and has become addicted to them, something that results in a crisis that takes him to rehab, followed by the usual redemption narrative that is, in this case, accompanied by a constant back and forth in his relationship with Dawn. It’s hard to know what Safdie wants to show us with this umpteenth entry in the Rocky-style triumph over adversity genre, there is more than one central conflict (one inside the ring and one outside of it) and the script never decides to either prioritize one or give equal focus to both. Johnson is pursuing the respectability of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler by leaving behind his trademark goofy humour, but he doesn’t provide anything particularly compelling or deep (scenes of him breaking down in tears feel prepped and lack spontaneity). He is well outshone by Blunt’s deliciously confident portrayal of a woman who doesn’t want to be a problem but can’t stop herself from demanding validation just about every time she’s in the same room with her boyfriend. The presentation of a relationship you want to root for but is weighed down by no end of toxic qualities (on the part of both parties) is the film’s greatest achievement, but that doesn’t help the fact that it is, for the most part, not very interesting or original.
Megadoc
Mike Figgis, 2025
Rating: BBB
Francis Ford Coppola dreamed up Megalopolis in the late seventies and could never get it off the ground despite numerous attempts to do so. In 2024, he finally released the finished product after financing the entire budget himself (mainly from the sale of his wine business) and saw it become, for some, a disastrous folly and for others a misunderstood masterpiece. Almost anticipating that so personal a film made on so large a scale would be a pop culture car crash regardless of one’s opinion of the final product, Coppola enlisted Oscar-nominated director Mike Figgis to film a behind-the-scenes documentary on the entire production, bringing Figgis and his cameras onto the New York set from early rehearsals through to the film’s premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. If you saw Megalopolis during its theatrical release and were confounded by it, you might enter this documentary hoping to have the experience explained to you in some way, but what Figgis gives us, possibly due, at least in part, to the limitations placed on him by his subjects, is lengthy but never generous or clarifying, somewhere above a DVD special feature and well below Fax Bahr, George Hickenlooper and Eleanor Coppola’s Hearts of Darkness. The cast and crew interviewed by Figgis give the impression that they know they’ve signed on to a sinking ship and are doing their best to put away their doubts, production designer Beth Mickle in particular speaks like she’s been taken hostage by a cult before eventually leaving the project as budget situations and chain-of-command confusions get out of hand. Aubrey Plaza is the most forthcoming of the interviewed cast members but, thanks to her good-natured and genuinely funny candour, doesn’t reveal anything essential, while Shia LaBeouf is visibly conflicted about being both vulnerable to what this opportunity means to him at so challenging a period in his career, while at the same time using his Sean-Penn-In-The-80s tactics to hide those vulnerabilities. Adam Driver disingenuously tells Figgis he’ll participate but avoids Figgis until the end of the shoot, and Coppola himself is a mass of contradictions, constantly telling his cast and crew that they’re all there to have fun and be creative, but also getting angry every time anyone suggests he do things that contradict his goals. As a documentary it’s almost as interesting a disaster as its subject, Figgis seems to be trying not to show us why Megalopolis failed to make an impression but the film makes a good case for it all the same.
One Battle After Another
Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025
Rating: BBBBB
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, Benicio del Toro, Regina Hall, Teyana Taylor, Chase Infiniti, Wood Harris, Alana Haim, Paul Grimstad, Shayna McHayle, Tony Goldwyn, John Hoogenakker, Starletta DuPois, Eric Schweig, D. W. Moffett, Kevin Tighe, Jim Downey, James Raterman, Dijon Duenas, Dan Chariton, Jon Beavers, Jena Malone
Years after he took part in a Baader Meinhof-esque anti-establishment activist organization, a man hiding from the law under the weight of middle-aged woe and pot addiction finds his past resurfacing in the form of a U.S. army soldier hell-bent on revenge. “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio), who now goes by the name Bob Ferguson, was left to raise his infant daughter Charlene after his devoted militant partner Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor) decided that domestic life couldn’t quiet her need to fight the world’s injustices. Perfidia’s taking a bank heist one step too far gets her arrested, but the sexual obsession of one Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) gives her the chance to enter Witness Protection by giving up the names and locations of her colleagues. This sends members of the “French 75” underground, with varying degrees of success, before we fast forward to sixteen years later when Charlene, now renamed Willa (and played by Chase Infiniti) is a young woman being raised by a father who let go of his exciting past except for a residue of paranoia. Anderson returns to the work of Thomas Pynchon for the second time after Inherent Vice, this time inspired by elements of the author’s Vineland for a much less frustrating but equally complex film. Working with a flawless cast, the auteur unveils one thrilling sequence after another in an expansive epic that doesn’t seek to cure or explain the madness of America’s woes but rather expose them: the French 75 are either righteous rebels or terrorists depending on your leanings, but in this film they are as limited by their obsession with rules as the Christmas Adventurers, because all devotion to ideology is foolishness and ignores the reality of life’s chaos. Running On Empty, when updated to Trump’s America, can only play out in a manner this unhinged, but despite its muscly dazzle, the film is not just vibrant camera angles and editing, it’s also a deeply human experience who characters who are fully dimensional. It’s hard to remember when DiCaprio was this effectively vulnerable, and Taylor further proves her mesmerizing presence on film with a performance that resonates throughout the story despite not having the lion’s share of screen time.
Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere
Scott Cooper, 2025
Rating: BB.5
Cast: Jeremy Allen White, Matthew Anthony Pellicano, Jeremy Strong, Paul Walter Hauser, Stephen Graham, Odessa Young, Gaby Hoffmann, Marc Maron, David Krumholtz, Harrison Gilbertson, Grace Gummer, Chris Jaymes, Johnny Cannizzaro, Brian Chase, Jimmy Iovine, Jay Buchanan, Jake Kiszka, Sam Kiszka
A successful tour promoting his 1980 album The River officially transforms Bruce Springsteen into a rock star, his musical inspiration combining the lyrical poetry of Bob Dylan, the doo-wop pop hits of his childhood and the harder rock sounds of the seventies having earned him love from fans and critics alike. He is starting to show signs of being genuinely depressed, the sudden influx of money and attention doing little to solve the unease with which he greets the world, prompting him to follow the intensity of the tour with a getaway in a rented house where he pursues the words and music that are forming in his head. Sessions in the recording booth are producing songs that the record company believes will make for a hit record, but Springsteen (played here by a quietly grounded Jeremy Allen White in distracting brown contact lenses) can’t focus on them, more obsessed with the personal, minimal tunes he is recording on the primitive equipment he has set up at home. While his loyal and sensitive manager Jon Landau (Jeremy Strong) keeps the nervous record executives from interfering, Springsteen completes an album that the bosses don’t believe in (which would end up being Nebraska, inspired by the Charles Starkweather crime spree that inspired Terrence Malick’s 1973 film Badlands) while putting the other tracks (which would eventually become the runaway hit Born in The USA album) on hold. Springsteen’s romance with a single mom named Faye (Odessa Young, a fictional amalgamation) seems like a break from the pressures of his career, but his inability to acknowledge the emotional difficulties he keeps running away from doesn’t bode well for this relationship. Cooper has fashioned a musical biopic that seeks to reveal an ironic truth about success, that it can be as difficult to navigate as failure and that, while emotional turmoil can contribute to an artist’s output if they are good at tapping into it, material wealth cannot offset its negative effect on personal problems. Touching performances and a sturdy soundtrack focusing on music from that particular era of the singer’s life are upsides, but this is a remarkably unremarkable film in an overloaded genre, hampered slightly by White’s unconvincing lip-synching but even more so by an overwhelming sense of familiarity. The result is something that will only really matter to the subject’s most devoted fans.
