OMG, ‘Bugonia’ and ‘Regretting You’ Are Both Coming Out at the End of October, What Are We Going to Do?!

October 23, 2025

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We’ll never Regret Bugonia (Credit: Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features; Paramount Pictures)

Bugonia

Starring: Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Aidan Delbis, Stavros Helkios, Alicia Silverstone

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Running Time: 118 Minutes

Rating: R for Disturbing Content That’s Often Funny But Also Occasionally Trauma-Inducing

Release Date: October 24, 2025 (Theaters)

Regretting You

Starring: Allison Williams, McKenna Grace, Dave Franco, Mason Thames, Willa Fitzgerald, Scott Eastwood, Clancy Brown, Sam Morelos, Ethan Costanilla

Director: Josh Boone

Running Time: 116 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Mild But Frank Sexuality and Drug Use

Release Date: October 24, 2025 (Theaters)

When you see as many movies as I do, whether out of critical obligation or personal fulfillment or both, you tend to experience a lot of tonal whiplash. And it doesn’t get much more whiplash-inducing than the one-two punch of the semi-lighthearted satirical conspiracy thriller Bugonia and Regretting You, a tragedy-tinged romance based on a Colleen Hoover novel. Both are arriving in theaters on October 24 (Regretting You in wide release, while Bugonia will begin limited and then expand on the 31st). One of them is perfect for Spooky Season in an oddball sort of way, while the other would seem more at home around Valentine’s Day. With all that in mind, I’ll structure this two-for-one review around the question of whether or not they could possibly make for a successful date night double feature.

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‘Kinds of Kindness’ is Kind of Out There

June 20, 2024

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What a racket! (CREDIT: Searchlight Pictures)

Starring: Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chau, Joe Alwyn, Mamoudou Athie, Hunter Schafer, Yorgos Stefanakos, Merah Benoit

Director: Yorgos Lanthimos

Running Time: 165 Minutes

Rating: R for Sexual Nudity, Ritual Nudity, Limb Removal, Petty Animal Cruelty, Etc.

Release Date: June 21, 2024 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: A man tries to break free from the grasp of the controlling boss who micromanages his entire life. Another man who looks just like that man suspects that the woman claiming to be his wife returning from a disappearance isn’t who she claims to be. Members of a cultish group are on a quest to find someone with the power of resurrection. It’s an anthology! And it’s called Kinds of Kindness, but I sure didn’t detect a whole lot of kindness in these vignettes. Maybe writer/director Yorgos Lanthimos and his co-writer Efthimis Filippou have a different conception of what that word means. Anyway, this movie is a real head-scratcher, in the sense that it produces the same sensation as sticking your finger up your nose and poking around in your brain tissue.

What Made an Impression?: O R.M.F., Where Art Thou?: Most of the main Kinds of Kindness cast members have a role in each of the three segments. Their respective roles have vaguely similar personalities, though it’s not clear if that’s how they were directed or if it just happens to be that way because they’re played by the same actors. If you squint, you can probably pick up on some Cloud Atlas vibes in the sense of the same souls existing within different beings. But since each Kinds of Kindness segment appears to take place in the present day, it comes across more as just alternative realities or hypothetical do-overs. The one constant is a guy known only by the initials “R.M.F.,” who serves as the namesake for each chapter despite not doing much of anything. Although, in the last part, entitled “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” he does indeed eat a sandwich, so at least one promise is kept.
In the Mood for Vexation: Good movies often teach you how to watch them, but Kinds of Kindness seems intent on doing just the opposite. That doesn’t make it a bad movie per se, but if you don’t want to get frustrated, then you’ll have to adjust your calibrations and accept that you will almost certainly get frustrated. After releasing the most accessible film of his career last year in the form of Poor Things, Lanthimos has returned to the more impenetrable territory of The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer. (I haven’t seen his earlier Greek-language flicks, but they have a similar reputation.) I wasn’t expecting a satisfying ending, and I did not get a satisfying ending. I wasn’t expecting a legible message, and I did not get a legible message. There were moments here and there that brought a smile to my face (particularly a world run by dogs set to the tune of Dio’s heavy metal banger “Rainbow in the Dark”), but otherwise, this was a, shall we say, vacation into a land that claims to be speak the languages of English and cinema, and yet it’s not any form of communication that I recognize.

Kinds of Kindness is Recommended If You Like: Constantly opening one of those fake cans of nuts that’s actually a prank snake even though you know it’s going to be the snake every time

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Changelings

‘Civil War,’ or How to Be a Photojournalist

April 11, 2024

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Civil War, what is it good for? (CREDIT: Murray Close/A24)

Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Nick Offerman, Jesse Plemons

Director: Alex Garland

Running Time: 109 Minutes

Rating: R for Gunfire, Grenades, and Piles of Dead Bodies

Release Date: April 12, 2024 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: The president of the United States refuses to relinquish power in the face of incoming secessionary forces. Meanwhile, a group of journalists sniffs out an opportunity, as they’re going to barge right into the White House for an interview. Nobody outside of the commander-in-chief’s inner circle has talked to him in who knows how long. But they’re warned that it’s essentially a suicide mission. The administration considers the press an enemy of the people, and the area in and around Washington, D.C. is the deadliest part of the country, or what’s left of it. Nevertheless, they feel compelled to make the trip, out of a sense of duty, or ambition, or steely commitment to the truth, or some combination of the above.

What Made an Impression?: Thought Number One: The fact that Civil War takes place in a near-future United States is kind of beside the point. The landscape matters in a logistical sense, but the underlying principles would remain the same no matter what the setting or how much it is or isn’t based in reality. Fundamentally, this movie is a dramatized how-to guide for how to be a wartime photojournalist. As veteran photog Lee (Kirsten Dunst), her colleague Joel (Wagner Moura), ambitious youngster Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), and Lee and Joel’s mentor Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) embed themselves in combat zones, they’re just as vulnerable to bullets and bombs as any soldier or civilian. The big block “PRESS” letters on their vests and van are supposed to relay a message of objective neutrality, one that most (but not all) of the combatants respect.
Thought Number Two: Any viewer expecting Civil War to be a specific warning about the current state of affairs in the United States will likely end up disappointed. This country may be more polarized than it’s been in decades, but the exact nature of that polarization is not exactly reflected in writer/director Alex Garland’s vision. This is simply an alternate possibility of what that division could look like, one that Garland thoroughly declines to offer any explanation for. Even the president (Nick Offerman) remains nameless! Once I accepted that Civil War was going to be light on backstory, I could appreciate its cinéma vérité qualities. Still, I was frustrated by the impenetrable characterization of the people that we do get to know. Although, that was perhaps by design, as Lee and Joel have been hardened by the lesson that they must subsume themselves within their jobs. Weirdly enough, that loss of personality is enough to remind me of how urgent it is to avoid any actual civil war.

Civil War is Recommended If You Like: Primary (1960), Abandoned highway cinematography, Ominous road trips

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Alliances

Killers of the Flower Moon,’ AKA The Dusty, Bloody, Roaring ’20s

October 18, 2023

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Mmm, this one’s a killa (CREDIT: Apple/Paramount Pictures)

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, Jason Isbell, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi, Scott Shepherd

Director: Martin Scorsese

Running Time: 206 Minutes

Rating: R for Disturbingly Widespread and Remorseless Murder

Release Date: October 20, 2023 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Here’s an important piece of information that is emphasized right from the get-go in Killers of the Flower Moon: at a certain point in the early 20th century, the Osage were the richest people per capita in the entire world. But where oil flows, bloodshed soon follows. And so it was during the Osage murders that plagued Oklahoma in the 1920s, as detailed in David Grann’s 2017 book Killers of the Flower Moon and now the Martin Scorsese-directed adaptation of the same name. All of the action revolves around William King Hale (Robert De Niro), a white man who’s managed to keep all of Osage County in his iron grip. In the course of the long wealth accumulation game that he’s ruthlessly playing, he directs his nephew Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) to ingratiate himself with the native people. This takes the form of Ernest marrying and starting a family with a local woman named Mollie (Lily Gladstone). This could all be perfectly wholesome, if only Ernest weren’t involved with his uncle’s schemes to kill pretty much every member of Mollie’s family.

What Made an Impression?: Keeping Your Heart Afloat?: I had one major persistent question throughout Killers of the Flower Moon: could Ernest and Mollie actually be in love with each other? Of course, you don’t have to be in love to get married or to have kids together. But they do seem quite smitten with each other, despite being aware of the treachery afoot. Mollie knows that white men are just romancing the Osage to get their oil money. And Ernest surely knows that she knows. But she nevertheless still considers him as a pretty decent romantic prospect. Partly that’s because she and her sisters don’t really see many other options available for them. When Ernest eventually becomes fully culpable in William’s most murderous machinations, he’s already committed himself to his wife. And it never seems like an act. DiCaprio plays him like someone who never reckons with the moral implications of his behavior. This isn’t remorseless psychopathy. It’s more like family killing family, or friends killing friends, but with so much twisted rationalizing that it’s impossible to remain sane and/or sympathetic.
Shout, Shout, Let It All Out: Once the FBI takes an interest in all the Osage murders, we’re eventually led into a (somewhat) cathartic final act in which William is actually forced to answer for all his deeds in a court of law. Two towering performances in this section are bound to wake you up if you happen to be nodding off at this point. John Lithgow tries to keep things dignified for the prosecution, while Brendan Fraser casts up some fire and brimstone as Hale’s attorney W.S. Hamilton. I can’t help but chuckle at Lithgow whenever he’s in a courtroom, partly because it reminds me of the delightful short-lived NBC sitcom Trial & Error, and partly because his commanding voice is somehow simultaneously both so silly and so reasonable. Fraser meanwhile threatens to knock the entire proceedings off their axis. He’s just as over-the-top as he was in The Whale, but this time it affects me deeper to my core because everyone else is so modulated. These moments feel like being rumbled from a stupor, as all the crimes up to this point have been presented so matter-of-factly.
A Note on the Length: A different version of Killers of the Flower Moon could’ve been 2 hours or so, and it could’ve also been successful, but in a different way than it is now. At 3 hours and 26 minutes, you feel the full weight that goes along with reckoning with this dark chapter in American history. So if you’re planning on seeing it, get a good night’s sleep the day before and pop in some caffeine if you think it will help (but not too much!). And if you’re downing liquid while you’re watching and you don’t want to have to take a bathroom break, then pair it with something like popcorn or pretzel bites so that it won’t go straight through you.

Killers of the Flower Moon is Recommended If You Like: Dad books and Dad movies

Grade: 4 out of 5 Handsome Devils

‘The Power of the Dog’ is Not for the Dogs

January 11, 2022

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The Power of the Dog (CREDIT: Kirsty Griffin/Netflix)

Starring: Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jesse Plemons, Thomasin McKenzie

Director: Jane Campion

Running Time: 126 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: November 17, 2021 (Theaters)/December 1, 2021 (Netflix)

I’m pretty sure there weren’t any dogs in The Power of the Dog. Actually, now that I think about it, there may have been a few mutts running around the ranch. But none of them had any speaking parts! (Or barking parts, for that matter.) Yes, I know the title is a metaphor from the Bible, so I wasn’t genuinely expecting any unforgettable canine thespian turns. But still! At least Kirsten Dunst is also around, though she spends most of her time drunk and in bed. What up with that?! Anyway, I didn’t think Benedict Cumberbatch’s character was too bad. Certainly not the friendliest, but I could deal with him.

Grade: I Do Not Want to Live in 1925 Montana

‘Last Night in Soho’ and ‘Antlers’ Double Review: What Tricks and Treats Await Under the Surface?

October 28, 2021

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CREDIT: Kimberley French/20th Century Studios; Parisa Taghizadeh/Focus Features

Last Night in Soho

Starring: Thomasin McKenzie, Anya Taylor-Joy, Matt Smith, Terence Stamp, Michael Ajao, Diana Rigg, Rita Tushingham, Synnøve Karlsen

Director: Edgar Wright

Running Time: 116 Minutes

Rating: R for Some Bloody Knife Violence and a Few Moments of Sex and Drugs

Release Date: October 29, 2021 (Theaters)

Antlers

Starring: Keri Russell, Jesse Plemons, Jeremy T. Thomas, Graham Greene, Scott Haze, Rory Cochrane, Amy Madigan, Sawyer Jones

Director: Scott Cooper

Running Time: 99 Minutes

Rating: R for Unflinching, Bloody Gruesomeness

Release Date: October 29, 2021 (Theaters)

Last Night in Soho and Antlers are both arriving in theaters on Halloween 2021 Weekend, and I happened to see both on the same day, so I figured I might as well go ahead and review them together. Neither one is your traditional franchise fright flick, though they do share a well-considered approach to presenting their scares, so they’re worth giving a spin at the old multiplex if you happen to be in the right mood.

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One Weird Thing About ‘Jungle Cruise’

September 10, 2021

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Jungle Cruise (CREDIT: Walt Disney Studios/Screenshot)

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Emily Blunt, Jack Whitehall, Édgar Ramírez, Jesse Plemons, Paul Giamatti

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Running Time: 127 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: July 30, 2021 (Theaters and Disney+)

About midway through watching Jungle Cruise, I was trying to remember what trailer I had recently seen with Édgar Ramírez in it. I knew it was very recent, but I also knew that it wasn’t any of the trailers that I saw with Jungle Cruise (Addams Family 2, Sing 2, Dune, Encanto, and Shang-Chi, for the record). I was certain the trailer in question must have been from the past week. I considered the possibility that it was for a TV show, but that couldn’t have been right. Édgar Ramírez wasn’t showing up on any TV show anytime soon as far as I knew, and I’m pretty sure that’s the sort of thing I would know about. So what could it be?

Then perhaps a half hour later, Ramírez showed up as some immortal explorer, and I realized that what I half-remembered as a trailer was actually the prologue of the movie that I was currently watching. I was actually kind of impressed that his reappearance could come across as such an unexpected surprise. Anyway, that’s all I wanted to say about Jungle Cruise.

Grade: 3 Jaumes out of 5 Collet-Serras

I’m Thinking of Writing Things (‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things’ Review)

September 8, 2020

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I’m Thinking of Ending Things (CREDIT: Mary Cybulski/Netflix)

Starring: Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette, David Thewlis

Director: Charlie Kaufman

Running Time: 134 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: September 4, 2020

I’m Thinking of Ending Things features a couple of things that I REALLY love in a pair of crucial scenes: a furry doggie and a trip to the ice cream shop! But there appear to be sinister elements lurking beneath the surfaces, as Jimmy the fluffy border collie seems to be stuck in a time loop of shaking himself dry, and Jake (Jesse Plemons) and the young woman (Jessie Buckley) buy their frozen treats in the middle of a snowstorm. Ice cream might taste great year-round, but if you’re going to eat it in the winter, you’d probably want to do it while snuggled up at home! (Also, that girl at the ice cream shop hints at … something nefarious.)

Really, the entirety of I’m Thinking of Ending Things is about events that I love but that have something terrifying bubbling (barely) beneath the surface. Meeting your s.o.’s parents for dinner?! Great, but the time-space continuum seems to be coming undone. Having a conversation in the car about whatever the hell pops into your head?! I love it, but often this scene is so dark that I can’t see anything at all. Dancing in a school hallway?! Hurray! … but is the janitor okay?

You’re thinking of ending things? I’m thinking of making them last forever!

Grade: 45 Dog Shakes out of 60 Ice Cream Cones

This Is a Movie Review: Dick Cheney is Ten Chess Moves Ahead of Everyone in Adam McKay’s Typically Ambitious ‘Vice’

December 17, 2018

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CREDIT: Matt Kennedy/Annapurna Pictures

This review was originally published on News Cult in December 2018.

Starring: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, Jesse Plemons, Alison Pill, Lily Rabe, Justin Kirk, Tyler Perry, LisaGay Hamilton, Eddie Marsan

Director: Adam McKay

Running Time: 132 Minutes

Rating: R for Profanity in the Halls of Power and Images of War and Torture

Release Date: December 25, 2018

If I’m understanding Vice correctly, then Adam McKay believes that Dick Cheney (here embodied by Christian Bale) is directly or indirectly responsible for everything that is wrong with the current state of American politics. That actually is not as much of a stretch as it sounds. During his eight years as vice president, Cheney wielded a degree of influence that was profoundly unprecedented for the position. The conventional wisdom is that his views on executive power and surveillance now represent the status quo for whoever is occupying the White House. Thus, McKay is not so far off the reservation to imply all that he is implying. But he may have bitten off a little more than he can chew with the expansiveness of his argument. He was similarly ambitious with The Big Short, but that earlier effort is more durable to scrutiny because there he laid the responsibility on forces that were perpetrated both actively and passively by many people. It may very well turn out to be true that Cheney’s influence is as wide-ranging as McKay claims – it’s just tricky to say so about a person who is still living.

Interestingly enough, that tenuousness is baked right into the script. If not for a few key decisions, the life of Dick Cheney, and ergo America, could have played out very differently. Without the presence of his wife Lynne (Amy Adams conjuring Lady Macbeth), he could have ended up a drunk nobody. And if not for his propensity to see life like a chess match in which he is ten moves ahead of everyone else, there might be no Patriot Act, ISIS, or extreme income inequality.

The thesis of Vice is that it was all so close to going differently. Through fourth-wall breaking and formal experimentation (like playing the end credits halfway through), the message is that all that we have been living through was not foreordained. Some may find that frightening, as it indicates that we are always on the precipice of disaster. And McKay’s propensity to cut to random footage of pop culture ephemera may come off as a lamentation that we are too distracted to do anything about it. But I actually see encouragement. You don’t have to like Cheney for him to be an inspiration. If you have a problem with the way things are in the country right now, maybe you can see an opportunity where everyone else sees the masses placated by “Wassup!” commercials. I’m not sure how well Vice works as a movie, but I choose to see it as an exhortation to make things right.

Vice is Recommended If You Like: The Big Short, Oliver Stone’s political thrillers, The Daily Show, Fourth-wall breaking

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Unitary Executive Theories

This Is a Movie Review: Christian Bale Gives It His Grimmest in the Dour, Distressing ‘Hostiles’

December 19, 2017

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CREDIT: Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc.

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

Starring: Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi, Rory Cochrane, Jesse Plemons, Adam Beach, Q’orianka Kilcher, Ben Foster, Bill Camp, Stephen Lang

Director: Scott Cooper

Running Time: 127 Minutes

Rating: R for Western Hostility

Release Date: December 22, 2017 (Limited)

Christian Bale excels at playing men who are forced into carrying the weight of a profoundly demanding mission, whether by their own volition or due to leverage someone else holds over them. The Dark Knight’s “the hero Gotham deserves, but not the one it needs right now” is basically that status as personal credo. In the 1892-set Western Hostiles (Bale’s second collab with his Out of the Furnace director Scott Cooper), he plays a much more reluctant protagonist, an Army captain forced to deliver a Cheyenne chief and his family back to tribal lands, under threat of losing his pension if he refuses. He looks like he hasn’t bathed in years; that stink and his impressive mustache tangibly represent the brunt he is under.

Ergo, Captain Bale (Captain Joseph Blocker is his character name) is filled with a lot of hostility, and he is surrounded by a lot of low-grade or full-blown hostility, whether it be from his fellow soldiers, the suicidal widow (Rosamund Pike) whose family was recently slaughtered, his Cheyenne transports, or the natives that ambush them. We might have our winner for Most Accurate Title of the Year right here.

While nobody in this film is particularly heroic, I do worry that its portrayal of Native Americans hearkens back to a more racist tradition of Westerns. The opening scene presents a group of Comanches at their most savage. For no clear reason, they burn down a family’s home, skinning the father’s scalp and mercilessly killing him and his two young daughters. I am sure that some natives were actually this brutal in late-19th century frontier America, and I do not mean to say that I think that Hostiles is implying that all of them (or all of this particular tribe) were this awful. But the fact that this worst version is all we see of them and that this portrayal is presented so bluntly is concerning.

At least we can appreciate at the aesthetic pleasures (or anti-pleasures, really) with fewer moral qualms. If you ever wanted to see Ben Foster tied up in the cold, muddy rain at night, Hostiles is the film for you. Cooper’s designs for how icky and uninviting nature gets without modern amenities is thoroughly harsh. Lovingly so, even (at least the crafty attention to detail is loving). You’ll probably want to shower afterwards, in a cathartic sort of way, or if you’re a 19th century fetishist, you’ll run right out and find the closest available barren lands.

Hostiles is Recommended If You Like: John Wayne and Clint Eastwood at their most rugged

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Hostiles

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