In 2025, Superman Once Again Takes to the Skies and Grapple with His Human Dilemmas

July 10, 2025

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He doesn’t look like a bird or a plane from this angle (CREDIT: DC/Screenshot)

Starring: David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult, Edi Gathegi, Anthony Carrigan, Nathan Fillion, Isabela Merced, Pruitt Taylor Vance, Neva Howell, Wendell Pierce, Skyler Gisondo, Beck Bennett, Mikaela Hoover, Christopher McDonald, Sara Sampaio, Alan Tudyk, Terence Rosemore, Frank Grillo, María Gabriela de Faría, Michael Ian Black, Pom Klementieff, Bradley Cooper, Angela Sarafyan

Director: James Gunn

Running Time: 129 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Some Bloody Blows and Foul-Mouthed Critics

Release Date: July 11, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: The Big Blue Boy Scout, aka Superman (David Corenswet), aka Supes, aka Clark Kent, aka the Man of Steel, believes deeply that he’s been sent to Earth to protect the human race. That idealism is a big part of why his Daily Planet colleague/girlfriend Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and so many of his fans have fallen for him. But not everyone is so sure that an alien from Krypton should be their guardian. Especially not Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), who’s waging a disinformation campaign to erode the public’s trust and orchestrate a war-profiteering scheme. His evil plan also includes imprisoning Supes in a pocket universe, a risky move that threatens to tear the entire fabric of Earth apart. Fortunately there are already some other superpowered folks in this world who might just be willing to help Clark out.

What Made an Impression?: Can Clark Kent Afford Therapy?: With James Gunn behind the camera and the screenplay, it appears that the biggest threat to Superman in 2025 is … social media troll bots! And not even particularly clever trolls. The biggest difference between this Clark Kent and all other previous big screen versions is surely his fragile ego.  It’s more than a little jarring seeing him so petty and vulnerable when his predecessors have been so unfailingly upright. But it’s also kind of endearing.
Clark Wants to Be a Punk Rocker: Assuming that this Clark Kent is about the same age as the guy playing him (David Corenswet is 32), then he definitely feels like a millennial whose personality was shaped by the Gen Xers driving culture in the 90s and early 2000s. People like James Gunn, perhaps! (Or people like The State alum Michael Ian Black, who plays a just-asking-questions-style “journalist.”) Corenswet Clark is like the guy who tries to be cool by emulating the indie rock crowd from when he was a kid and doesn’t get it quite right. But Lois still loves him anyway!
Gizmos and Galaxies Galore: In addition to being the most short-circuited and vaguely punk rock version of the character, Gunn’s Superman is also easily the nerdiest big screen iteration we’ve ever seen. This movie is filled to the brim with the sorts of gadgets and phenomena that sound like they’re based on a kernel of real science but are stretched out to ridiculous comic book sensibilities. Nanites, hypno-glasses, antiproton rivers: imaginations have certainly been let loose.
A Promising Forecast: Superman 2025 features some spirited acting, a cast of colorful characters, kinetic action sequences, a clear and unapologetic sense of its own identity, and a super-duper canine. And it also features some fantastically pleasant weather. There are several moments throughout the movie of a news broadcast with a forecast on the ticker informing us that the temperatures in Metropolis range between 62 and 65 degrees (presumably Fahrenheit) for the entire week. No wonder everyone’s in a good enough mood to fulfill their heroic destinies!

Superman is Recommended If You Like: Comic Books; Or, Your Loved Ones Who Enthusiastically Tell You Everything That Happens in Their Favorite Comic Books

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Justice Gangs

‘Twisters’ Indeed Has Plenty of Twisters, But What Does It Do with Them?

July 17, 2024

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(from left) Kate (Daisy Edgar-Jones), Javi (Anthony Ramos) and Tyler (Glen Powell) in Twisters, directed by Lee Isaac Chung.

Starring: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Glen Powell, Anthony Ramos, Brandon Perea, Maura Tierney, Harry Hadden-Patton, Sasha Lane, Daryl McCormack, Kiernan Shipka, Nik Dodani, David Corenswet, Tunde Adebimpe, Katy O’Brian

Director: Lee Isaac Chung

Running Time: 122 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Windborne Injuries

Release Date: July 19, 2024 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Twisters, the legacyquel to 1996’s Twister, is the movie that dares to ask the question: what if there were MORE than one tornado? Honestly, though, wasn’t there already more than one in the first edition? Maybe I’m misremembering, but I’m pretty sure that tornadoes are generally not something that happens in total isolation. Regardless, Twisters is basically positing a once-in-a-generation confluence of as many tornadoes as have ever been observed. Hot on their tail are meteorologist Kate Cooper (Daisy Edgar-Jones), her storm chasing colleague Javi (Anthony Ramos), and peacocking YouTube storm chaser Tyler Owens (Glen Powell). Along the way, there might just be some romance, and maybe even a bit of humanitarian aid.

What Made an Impression?: You’ve Climate Changed, Man: After a bravura opening sequence that ends with the loss of a few of Kate and Javi’s fellow chasers, the fallout cuts ahead five years, with Kate working an office job in New York City and Javi tracking her down for a new and exciting opportunity. These moments have a vibe that suggest that they’re outside of harm’s way in the city, but anyone who’s lived in the mid-Atlantic U.S. in the past few years is all too aware of how tornado territory has been expanding more and more lately. Any ecological disaster movie can easily be read as a warning about climate change, but Twisters doesn’t have to take it to extremes. The storms may be deadly, but they’re too believable to feel like a roller coaster. With that in mind, this is more like a speculative documentary than a work of fiction.
Don’t Forget the People: Is Twisters ashamed of itself? Or is it just feeling a little guilty? That’s the sense I gather from scenes of the chasers offering food and water to the people who have been in harm’s way in the paths of the tornadoes. I don’t think it would have been irresponsible to leave these moments out, but Joseph Kosinski’s script apparently disagrees. Maybe it could have gone even further and transformed the entire movie into a Tornado Relief Telethon halfway through. That certainly would have been more predictable than what we got, which is competent, but also kind of quotidian.

Twisters is Recommended If You Like: Finding a soul beneath the YEEHAW!

Grade: 3 out of 5 Forecasts

Mia Goth Reveals the ‘Pearl’ Within

September 14, 2022

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Pearls Prays for Popularity (CREDIT: Christopher Moss/A24)

Starring: Mia Goth, David Corenswet, Tandi Wright, Matthew Sunderland, Emma Jenkins-Purro, Alistair Sewell

Director: Ti West

Running Time: 102 Minutes

Rating: R for Bloodlust Breaking Free and Some Peaks at Naughty “Stag Films”

Release Date: September 16, 2022 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Did you see this spring’s X and wonder what the deal was with that old lady? I know I sure did. Well, it turns out that Ti West actually made two movies at once, so now we get to discover what Pearl’s formative years were really like! It’s 1918, Mia Goth has shed the old lady makeup, and she and her family are living a semi-secluded life to avoid the horrors of World War I and the Spanish Flu pandemic. But Pearl longs for so much more than that! She wasn’t born to care for her paralyzed father (Matthew Sunderland) and simply wait for her husband’s return while her domineering mother (Tandi Wright) browbeats her into submission. She can’t help but dream of stardom, which she hopes to achieve while hanging out with a local hunky projectionist (David Corenswet) and auditioning for a dance troupe with her sister-in-law (Emma Jenkins-Purro). And if any of this doesn’t work out for her? Hoo boy, you’d better stay out of her way.

What Made an Impression?: I haven’t seen very many movies set in the 1910s, so I didn’t know quite what to expect in regards to Pearl making the most of its setting. But I was still thrown for quite a loop. When the title character starts dancing around her barn and serenading her animals, I was getting wholesome classic sitcom vibes in the vein of Green Acres and Petticoat Junction. The fanciful font used in the credits is also reminiscent of fantastical programs like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. Maybe those shows were taking some of their cues from Old Hollywood? Regardless of the exact nature of the influences, this is an unmistakable throwback to an era when all of the main character’s most melodramatic emotions are all over every single inch of the celluloid.

Let’s make absolutely no mistake about it, this is a 100% tour de force for Ms. Mia Goth. With her big saucer eyes and ethereal voice, she’s always been a distinctive screen presence, and that’s never been truer than it is here. Her sheer force of will ensures that the connection between the two movies (thus far) in this series is as deep as possible. Pearl and her other X character of Max are historical doppelgängers, bound by a shared desire to become a star at all costs. When that drive manifests itself in the form of an impromptu song-and-dance number with a scarecrow, there’s no question that I’m all in. You all should feel the same.

Pearl is Recommended If You Like: Classic Hollywood, Classic sitcoms, Classic slashers

Grade: 4 out of 5 Axes