Bill Skarsgård Ends Up ‘Locked’ in a Car by Anthony Hopkins, and That Goes About as Well as You’d Expect

March 19, 2025

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The Locked guy before he gets Locked (CREDIT: The Avenue)

Starring: Bill Skarsgård, Anthony Hopkins

Director: David Yarovesky

Running Time: 95 Minutes

Rating: R for Road Rage in a Parked Cars

Release Date: March 21, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Eddie Barrish (Bill Skarsgård) is desperate. Desperate, I say! And I’m pretty sure you’ll be inclined to agree with me if you go see Locked. He’s been trying to get his life back on track for the sake of his young daughter, but that’s a little hard to do when he doesn’t have the cash he needs to pay for his car repairs so that he can go pick her up from school. So he turns to carjacking for a quick score, which turns out so much worse than he ever could have possibly imagined. That’s because the vehicle he targets happens to be owned by a fellow named William (Anthony Hopkins), who’s been a victim of one of too many carjackings himself. So Eddie ends up trapped in the car, with William having rigged it up so that everything is controlled remotely. A simple apology is hardly enough to end this nightmare, and thus a deadly game of very targeted vigilantism commences.

What Made an Impression?: Sociopathic Overload: William is basically the answer to the question, “What if instead of bats, Bruce Wayne was inspired by felines, specifically the way that they mercilessly toy with mice before eating them?” The police were useless to him when he needed them, so now he’s enforcing his own brand of justice. But you get the sense that he’s just been looking for an excuse to behave this way for a very long time. Whenever Eddie pleads with him about how the deck is stacked against guys like him, William just automatically shuts him down and ups the torture. Hopkins is certainly talented enough to make William’s sociopathy entertaining, but it’s more than a little overwhelming when it’s this relentless.
Efficient Mileage: About 75% of Locked takes place in one location, and its cast consists almost entirely of just two guys, one of whom primarily phones in his performance. With a movie like this, you will likely end up with one of two reactions: either “Wow, this is cheap, and it shows,” or “Wow, this is cheap, but they worked around their limitations.” In this case, it’s mostly the latter. The subject matter may be torturous, and the villain may be overcooked, but director David Yarovesky keeps everything locked in gear. All the tightly contained torture may turn a lot of viewers claustrophobic, but it’s possible to appreciate the technical chops even while you’re wincing.

Locked is Recommended If You: Wish That One of the Saw Movies Had Taken Place in a Car

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Vigilantes

‘One Life’ Review: Anthony Hopkins Plays One of the Most Notable Humanitarians of the 20th Century

March 14, 2024

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How to Live One Life (CREDIT: Bleecker Street)

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Lena Olin, Johnny Flynn, Romola Garai, Alex Sharp, Marthe Keller, Jonathan Pryce, Helena Bonham Carter

Director: James Hawes

Running Time: 110 Minutes

Rating: PG for The Looming Threat of Nazism

Release Date: March 15, 2024 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: In 1988 England, Nicholas Winton (Anthony Hopkins) spends most of his days at home while his wife Grete (Lena Olin) insists that he clean up all the clutter in his office before their family comes over to visit. But there are some important documents in there, particularly records of the time he spent in Czechoslovakia right before World War II, during which he helped German and Austrian Jewish refugees secure passports to escape the clutches of the Nazis. One Life flashes back to that time in the life of the young Winton (Johnny Flynn), which ends all too abruptly. He’s haunted by those he couldn’t save, though he did manage to get more than 600 children to safety. For decades, his story remains untold, but once he starts sharing his records, it suddenly becomes clear how much of a difference he’s made in the world.

What Made an Impression?: The National Tidiness: You don’t feel a ton of urgency in the 1930s portion of One Life, despite the clear crisis at hand. Surely that can be chalked up to the reserved national character of England. Furthermore, there’s a sense that nobody knows who is responsible for these refugees. Winton’s connection to them is tenuous, but striking. His parents were German Jewish immigrants who changed their last names and converted to Christianity, but he still feels enough of a kinship to do something. And while he’s far from emotionless, that feels like more of a logical calculation than anything. In that same vein, while the job is obviously dangerous, the audience never quite feels that danger viscerally.
Small But Effective: But that small-scale suddenness is kind of the point. Winton surely would have liked to have been in Czechoslovakia longer, but it just wasn’t in the cards. If you asked him point blank, he probably would have apologized for saving too few souls. And while those 600 or so may pale in comparison to the millions who were killed in concentration camps, they’re not nothing. When Winton’s story gets out, he’s booked on the BBC current affairs program That’s Life, which he and Grete initially dismiss as a silly little show. But when he’s reunited with some of the now-grown survivors, he realizes the deep and lasting value of the life he’s lived.
Suddenly Overwhelming: One Life culminates by recreating a moment from the real Winton’s appearance on That’s Life, and the effect is profoundly overwhelming. If you don’t know the story, I won’t describe it too specifically, but let’s just say that Winton is given a gift in the form of a tangible representation of the impact of his humanitarian work. It reminded me of the transcendent ending of Places in the Heart, which features a reunion in a church that effectively dramatizes a vision of heaven on Earth. Like the man at its center, One Life is a mostly unassuming movie, with a sublime conclusion.

One Life is Recommended If You Like: Places in the Heart, Holocaust documentaries, British chat shows

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Passports

Life is Hard When It’s ‘Armageddon Time’

October 24, 2022

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Armageddon and his friend Time (CREDIT: Anne Joyce/Focus Features)

Starring: Banks Repeta, Jeremy Strong, Anne Hathaway, Anthony Hopkins, Jaylin Webb, Ryan Sell, Tovah Feldshuh, Andrew Polk

Director: James Gray

Running Time: 115 Minutes

Rating: R for Some Language, Corporal Punishment, and Pre-Teen Delinquency

Release Date: October 28, 2022 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Middle school is an awkward, frequently terrifying time for a lot of people. That’s especially true for budding artist Paul Graff (Banks Repeta) during his time in sixth grade in 1980 Queens at P.S. 173. He’s got the most hard-ass teacher in the world (Andrew Polk), although you get the sense that that was par for the course for the time period. His parents (Jeremy Strong and Anne Hathaway) want the best for him, but they don’t understand him and all their interactions are filled with constant, occasionally violent frustration. His older brother (Ryan Sell) isn’t too bad, though he is a run-of-the-mill pain in the butt.

Paul escapes all that angst occasionally with his best friend Johnny (Jaylin Webb). But that also leads into an even more troubled world since Johnny is the class troublemaker with a troubled home life, and Paul can’t even begin to fathom the racism Johnny experiences as a young black man, even though his family does clue him in on what his Jewish ancestors have had to endure. It doesn’t get much better for Paul when he transfers to a private school where one of the main benefactors is none other than Fred Trump (John Diehl). At least he has his wise and gentle grandfather Aaron (Anthony Hopkins) to turn to in times of (never-ending) crisis.

What Made an Impression?: I had a sneaking suspicion that Armageddon Time wasn’t going to have a happy ending. It is named “ARMAGEDDON Time,” after all. There may not be a nuclear war to wipe everybody out, even though Paul’s family is devastated by the election of Ronald Reagan. But after everything that Paul goes through over the course of this movie, he can be forgiven for thinking it’s just as bad. Not much is offered in the way of catharsis, though there is just a hint of hope. I found it all incredibly compelling, though I wasn’t exactly sure why that was while watching. I certainly enjoy a good coming-of-age yarn, but this one is a lot more unpleasant than most. I suspect it works as well as it does because it’s based on writer-director James Gray’s own childhood, and it feels like an honest reckoning. Everyone has a story worth telling, and when you’re as vibrant a storyteller as Gray is, I’m happy to see that story on the big screen.

Armageddon Time is Recommended If You Like: Dickensian bildungsromans

Grade: 4 out of 5 Rapper’s Delights

The Comforting Confusion of ‘The Father’

April 15, 2021

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The Father (CREDIT: Sony Pictures Classics/YouTube Screenshot)

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Olivia Colman, Imogen Poots, Rufus Sewell, Olivia Colman, Mark Gatiss

Director: Florian Zeller

Running Time: 97 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: February 26, 2021

Whenever I think about The Father, I can’t help but pronounce it the way that Mike Myers does when he encounters Marv Albert in the “Dieter’s Dream” SNL sketch (“Fah-thuh!”, although for some reason I add a “z” i.e., “Fah-zhuh”). Weirdly enough, that’s an apt comparison, as Florian Zeller’s film is pretty much equally surreal as the avant-garde German talk show host’s trip into the subconscious. Apparently, the way to make a movie about dementia exciting instead of a total bummer is to arrange it according to the whims of the dementia-addled mind. It’s rough to see Anthony (Hopkins) losing his sense of reality, but it’s fascinating to be bent back and forth by the facial mismatches and temporal-spatial distortions he’s experiencing. In the absence of a cure, maybe embracing the absurdity is the best way to handle something as disorienting as dementia. At the very least, it worked for this movie.

Grade: 4.0 out of Dec. 31 Missing Watches

Entertainment To-Do List: Week of 2/26/21

February 26, 2021

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Tom & Jerry (CREDIT: Warner Bros/YouTube Screenshot)

Every week, I list all the upcoming (or recently released) movies, TV shows, albums, podcasts, etc. that I believe are worth checking out.

Movies
–The Father (Theaters) – Olivia Colman plays Anthony Hopkins’ father
–The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run (March 4 on Paramount+) – This is the day CBS All Access rebrands as Paramount+.
–Tom & Jerry (Theaters and HBO Max) – Colin Jost in the Wedding of the Century!
–The Vigil (Theaters and On Demand)

TV
–RuPaul’s Drag Race: Corona Can’t Keep a Good Queen Down (February 26 on VH1)
-78th Golden Globe Awards (February 28 on NBC)

Music
-Alice Cooper, Detroit Stories – Loved him on The Muppet Show; glad to see he’s still making music.

This Is a Movie Review: The God of Thunder Gets Stranded in the Louche ‘Thor: Ragnarok’

October 27, 2017

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CREDIT: Disney/Marvel

This review was originally posted on News Cult in November 2017.

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Cate Blanchett, Idris Elba, Jeff Goldblum, Tessa Thompson, Karl Urban, Mark Ruffalo, Anthony Hopkins

Director: Taika Waititi

Running Time: 130 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Colorfully Stylized Action Violence and a Glimpse of Hulk Butt

Release Date: November 3, 2017

Even in its stronger outings, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has consistently exemplified the distressing 21st century trend of “franchise film as trailer for its upcoming sequels.” But putting at the helm Taika Waititi, the New Zealand director behind vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows and coming-of-age charmer Hunt for the Wilderpeople, would perhaps signal a willingness to kick back with an idiosyncratic one-off effort. And indeed, Thor: Ragnarok is not particularly burdened by setting up the next “phase” for all the other Marvel heroes, save for the mandatory post-credits scene as well as an early rendezvous with Doctor Strange that at least has the courtesy to be completely ridiculous. But as Waititi is not creating something out of whole cloth, it is still a bear of a job to wrap his sensibility around Thor’s personal history and Asgard’s extensive mythology.

One of the biggest disappointments of most MCU films, and what made Doctor Strange so satisfying when it bucked this trend, is their lack of imagination in design and music. Their craft is far from ugly, but it is no more than workmanlike. Ragnarok has plenty of personality, but it kind of gets in the way of itself. Mark Mothersbaugh’s prog-rock synth score is entirely fitting, but it never really fully rocks out until the end credits. All the new supporting characters make a convincing case to be the breakout star, but there is only room for so much of that in a busy 2 hours. I would never willingly sacrifice Cate Blanchett’s evil diva goddess Hela, or Jeff Goldblum’s eccentric sensualist Grand Master, or Tessa Thompson’s hard-drinking and unapologetic Valkyrie, or the most hedonistic version of the Hulk we have yet seen on screen. But this is a series of solo acts, not a supergroup. They play nice together, but they only intermittently gel as a unit greater than the sum of its parts.

The plot of Ragnarok is fairly straightforward, but a little overwhelming in its climax, due to the surfeit of moving parts. The titular end of Asgardian days is threatening to come to pass with the return of Hela, the long-imprisoned goddess of death and sister of Thor. Thor and Loki broker one of their many peaces to team up and save their home realm, but they are first waylaid onto the Grand Master’s home planet, where they get caught up in some gladiatorial combat.

By the end of it all, I found myself confused about who was defeated and who was victorious, and how much so on either count. Frankly, I am perfectly willing to forgo any prosaic interpretation for the sake of embracing a more expressionistic experience. This is not hard to do, as there are plenty of blasts of pure imagination (punneriffic reference perfectly intended). Trouble is, the story does matter to the people who made this movie, and even if it did not, it is too imposing to disregard. By the end of all these affairs, Ragnarok is the type of feast that overloads you with deliciousness but leaves you crashing instead of the kind that fills you up and floods you up with endorphins. It is adequately cromulent, but not very transcendent.

Thor: Ragnarok is Recommended If You Like: Doctor Strange, ’70s Glam Rock Stars, Kiwi accents

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Nonsense Circles

This Is A Movie Review: Thor: The Dark World

March 10, 2014

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Thor-The-Dark-World-Movie-2013-Review-Official-Trailer-Release-Date-1
While I surely enjoyed Thor: The Dark World, I also felt anxious for it to end for most of its running time, although that may have had to do with all the TV I was missing and would have to catch up on later.  But it may also have to do with the fact that at this point in the superheroic cinema game, the existence of each new movie like this feels so perfunctory.  In a weird way, The Dark World was one of the most encouraging and most discouraging entries in the genre.