Wicked for Good: A satisfying finale

Wicked for Good (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG, for dramatic intensity and fantasy violence

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.23.25

This one is better than last year’s first half … and not merely because it’s 30 minutes shorter.

 

As in the stage play, this second act cleverly interlaces its action with key events from the 1939 film: offering a Rashomon-style version of what we didn’t see back then, taking place behind the scenes after Dorothy, Toto and her house were dumped by the tornado.

 

Enraged by the "convenient" arrival of a massive tornado that has dumped a Kansas
house into the middle of Munchkinland, Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) vows to discover who's
actually responsible for this calamity.

That said, the primary attractions once again are the powerhouse performances from Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, as (respectively) Elphaba and Glinda. They aren’t merely phenomenal singers; they’re also strong actors and commanding screen presences. As gorgeously mounted as this film is, it would be very little without them.

Events pick up where they left off, as the newly empowered Elphaba banishes herself from Emerald City. The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum) and his malevolent abettor, Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh), immediately mount a disinformation campaign that paints Elphaba as a vicious figure of evil who must be caught and killed.

 

Superficially, she seems to deserve this label; the story begins as she disrupts completion of the glistening yellow brick roads that will lead to Oz. In truth, she does so in order to free the enslaved animals being abused in the process … but that distinction is lost on the Ozian workers.

 

Back in Emerald City, Madame Morrible’s scheme expands to “sell” Glinda as a begowned savior, now christened Glinda the Good. To offset her complete lack of magical powers, she’s given an ingenious “transport bubble” — along with a visually striking but wholly fake wand — that will convey an illusion of her powers.

 

The delicacy of Grande’s acting chops make this sequence a hoot, as Glinda repeatedly tests this device, like a little girl with a new toy.

 

To further enhance this elevation to public exaltation, Madame Morrible announces Glinda’s engagement to Fiyero (Jonathan Bailey), captain of the Ozian guard, which comes as a surprise to both of them: deliriously happy for her, clearly uncertain for him.

 

Meanwhile, back in Munchkinland, assuming the governor’s chair has transformed Nessarose (Marissa Bode). Her simmering disappointment and petulance, galvanized by this intoxicating access to power and control, have blossomed into full-blown evil. This is tearfully acknowledged in song, when she admits to having become the Wicked Witch of the East (and we all know what eventually happens to her). 

 

Nessarose takes this out on the kind and devoted Boq (Ethan Slater), who is horrified by what she has become. 

 

As are we. How could these five previously closely knit friends — Elphaba, Glinda, Fiyero, Nessarose and Boq — have fractured so catastrophically?

In Your Dreams: A lovely little fantasy

In Your Dreams (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, for fantasy peril and mild rude humor

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

File this one under the old warning: Be careful what you wish for … you might get it.

 

Directors Erik Benson and Alexander Woo have delivered an animated charmer — feeling a bit like Pixar Lite — which also serves as a gentle life lesson about sibling rivalry and messy family dynamics. Indeed, the moral here is the importance of recognizing that sometimes “messy” is the best one can expect.

 

Having figured out some of the means by which the "dream realm" operates, Stevie, her
younger brother Elliot, and his beloved stuffed giraffe, Baloney Tony — brought to
chatterbox life — find a highly unusual means of transportation.

The story — written by Benson, Woo and Stanley Moore — opens on an idyllic tableau, finding 4-year-old Stevie enjoying one of her favorite activities: making breakfast pancakes with her parents. All three are mutually devoted; Dad (Simu Liu) and Mom (Cristin Milioti) share a career as musical partners.

But as a slightly older Stevie (voiced by Jolie Hoang-Rappaport) laments, in voice-over, this is merely a fondly remembered dream. “This is a disaster movie,” Stevie insists. The actual disaster? The fourth addition to the family, her younger brother Elliot (Elias Janssen), with whom Stevie is forced to share a bedroom.

 

Elliot is a relentless pest, forever in Stevie’s face, whether trying to impress her with silly magic tricks, or simply being annoying. He clearly just wants to be an important part of his big sister’s life, but she isn’t interested. She’s much more concerned about the growing rift between her parents; Mom is interviewing for a job that would take her elsewhere, while her husband — still hankering for songwriting fame — refuses to leave. To Stevie’s additional annoyance, Elliot is oblivious to this potential crisis.

 

For Stevie, dreams are a way of fixing things in the real world. A storybook depiction of a magical dream being known as the Sandman fascinates both children; after reciting a mystical incantation, they discover that they can remain conscious while dreaming, thereby altering what they experience. 

 

“Find me,” the distant Sandman intones, “and your dreams will come true.”

 

The resulting “dream realm” is a chaotic whirlwind of imaginative pocket lands populated by colorfully exaggerated creatures concocted from real-world experiences. Elliot’s beloved stuffed giraffe, Baloney Tony (Craig Robinson), bursts into wisecracking life, serving as a snarky, often frightened Greek chorus to subsequent events. Frolicking breakfast foods hearken back to Stevie’s cherished memories of making pancakes with her parents.

The Running Man: A giddy, violent sprint

The Running Man (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for extreme violence, gore and profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.16.25

This Stephen King dystopian nightmare is an evergreen: It can be re-imagined anew for each generation, thanks to changes in technology, geo-political shifts ... and an increased level of hyper-violence.

 

Ben (Glen Powell, left) has serious doubts when Elton (Michael Cera) invites gun-toting
thugs into his home, believing that his many jury-rigged defense systems will save the day.

The 1982 novel — the fourth and final book initially published under King’s “Richard Bachman” pseudonym — initially hit the big screen five years later, with Arnold Schwarzenegger playing protagonist Ben Richards. It’s an acceptable adaptation, although this new version hews more closely to King’s book.

This film also is directed by Richard Wright, whose snarky blend of thrills ’n’ chills has been evident since 2004’s Shaun of the Dead, followed by equally clever (and sometimes mildly deranged) hits such as Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver and Last Night in Soho.

 

Point being, Wright’s sensibilities are spot-on for this angry high-tech parable. Given the current slide into fascism in the United States, and elsewhere in the world, many of the plot points in this adaptation — co-scripted by Wright and Michael Bacall — feel disturbingly conceivable.

 

The time is the near future, the setting a United States where the gap between the Haves and Have-nots has become a yawning chasm. It’s effectively a police state designed to ensure that the lower classes remain that way. Chances for advancement are restricted to participation in demeaning and barbaric televised “reality game shows.”

 

The worst challenge — and therefore the most popular — is The Running Man, where “contestants” try to stay alive for 30 days, while being hunted by professional gun-toting pursuers. Contestants also must be wary of their fellow citizens, who earn rewards for identifying or even killing them. The longer a contestant survives, the more s/he earns in “new dollars” (with, as a droll inside joke, Schwarzenegger’s photo in the center of each bill).

 

Ben Richards (Glen Powell) lives with his family in a poverty-level district dubbed Slumside. As the story beings, he simply wants work. His infant daughter is quite ill, and his wife Sheila (Jayme Lawson) is exhausted, working multiple shifts as a “hostess” in an upscale club. Ben has lost numerous jobs: branded as chronically insubordinate for his tendency to selflessly assist fellow employees who need help (apparently a no-no in this society).

 

Production designer Marcus Rowland, cinematographer Chung-hoon Chung and a massive sfx crew bring this oppressive futuristic society to persuasively chilling life. (Shades of Blade Runner!)

Frankenstein: Less than the sum of its parts

Frankenstein (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for bloody violence, gore and grisly images

Available via: Movie theaters and Netflix

By Derrick Bang

If this film doesn’t win an Academy Award for Tamara Deverell’s stunning production design, there is no justice.

 

Although initially delighted that he has brought life to a creation (Jacob Elordi, center) 
stitched together from scores of corpses, Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) just as
quickly worries that he may have made a colossal mistakes.

And if the Oscars included a category for atmospheric dread, director/scripter Guillermo del Toro also would have that one locked up. He has been unsettling viewers since 1997’s Mimic and particularly 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth. And only del Toro could have jump-started the goofy 1950s Creature from the Black Lagoon franchise, and transformed it into 2017’s brilliantly disorienting The Shape of Water, winning Oscars for Best Picture and Director in the process.

All this said, I wish del Toro had matched his new film’s visual dazzle with a similarly exhilarating script. His take has about as much in common with Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 Gothic masterpiece, as director James Whale’s 1931 adaptation. 

 

Which is to say, del Toro has taken serious liberties with the original plot and character roster. A few high points remain faithful to Shelley’s novel — along with occasional references to Prometheus, as befit the subtitle of Shelley’s novel (“The Modern Prometheus”) — but for the most part del Toro merely borrows the concept of Frankenstein and his monster.

 

That would be fine, if the results were more consistently engaging. At times — and I can’t believe I’m saying this about a del Toro film — the narrative is protracted and boring. As often has been the case with other filmmakers, one must be cautious about embarking upon a pet project which — in del Toro’s own words — has been a “quest” ever since he saw Whale’s film for the first time, at age 7.

 

Del Toro has moved the timeline half a century forward, to allow the key players a greater understanding of advances in electricity. The saga therefore begins in 1857, with a prelude aboard the Royal Danish Navy ship Horisont, trapped in arctic ice while hoping to reach the North Pole. While attempting to free the ship, crew members spot a badly injured man, and bring him aboard.

 

He barely has time to introduce himself as Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), before the ship is attacked by a powerful, towering creature that demands Victor be surrendered to him. Ship’s Captain Andersen (Lars Mikkelsen) refuses, and six of his men are killed in the subsequent violent melee; the creature withstands all manner of gunshots and other damage.

 

The calmly resolute Andersen wins the moment only after using his blunderbuss to shatter the ice beneath the monster’s feet. It sinks into the icy waters.

 

“It’ll be back,” Frankenstein warns. “It can’t be killed.”

 

Sorry, Baby: An acting, scripting tour-de-force

Sorry, Baby (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual content and constant profanity

Available via: HBO MAX

By Derrick Bang

“Dying is easy, comedy is hard” — a quote most often attributed to character actor Edmund Gwenn, as he lay dying in bed — has been oft-repeated film and theatrical wisdom ever since.

 

At her lowest ebb, Agnes (Eva Victor) is treated with unexpected gentleness by Pete
(John Carroll Lynch), a deceptively gentle guy who believes that a good sandwich can
go a long way toward healing one's soul.

I’ll go it one better: Persuasively depicting the aftershock of deep trauma is even more difficult ... but Eva Victor truly nails it, starring in this intimate drama that she also wrote and directed. Her performance is quietly, deeply powerful.

Her film is divided into subtitled chapters. The first — “The Year with the Baby” — takes place in an unspecified time: could be present day, perhaps a bit earlier. Agnes (Victor) is a literature professor at Fairpoint, a liberal arts college in rural New England. She’s smart, sensitive and witty, and lives alone in a big house in a quiet, forested area; her only companion is a gray cat named Olga (likely after one of Chekhov’s Three Sisters).

 

The film actually opens with cinematographer Mia Cioffi Henry’s lengthy framing shot of this house, during early evening: a disorienting touch that’ll be repeated in a subsequent chapter, with a different house, and a far different implication. 

 

Henry also favors distant framing shots of Agnes, which emphasize her isolation.

 

But she’s delighted, on this particular day, by the arrival of long-time bestie Lydie (Naomi Ackie). Their bond is palpable, their rapport delightfully uninhibited and bluntly profane; they’re both truly themselves with each other. Victor and Ackie are marvelous together; the latter is a joyful, irrepressible free spirit.

 

(We all should be blessed a friendship this intense.)

 

But something is off. Even at her happiest moments — as when both lie down, warmly jacketed, in an open field — Agnes’ giddy smiles aren’t entirely matched by the flicker of wariness in her gaze. A bit later, she comes closest to true joy when Lydie announces her pregnancy; Agnes playfully chats with the baby, lips pressed close to her friend’s stomach.

 

The two also spend an evening visiting Natasha (Kelly McCormack), Logan (Jordan Mendoza) and Devin (Cody Reiss), all of them former Fairpoint graduate students. Agnes’ presence is reluctant, and no surprise; the grouchy Natasha clearly has a long-simmering antipathy toward her.

 

McCormack overplays this card, sullenly looking more like a character in a horror movie, than somebody who simply has a stick up her fundament.

 

Alas, all visits must conclude, when Lydie returns to her life and responsibilities. Agnes’ disappointment is palpable; it feels more like grief.

A House of Dynamite: A chilling nail-biter

A House of Dynamite (2025) • View trailer

Five stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity and dramatic intensity

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 11.02.25

This is our generation’s Dr. Strangelove ... but it’s deadly serious.

 

Director Kathryn Bigelow is right at home with intense, white-knuckle geo-political thrillers, having kept us glued to seats with 2008’s The Hurt Locker and 2012’s Zero  Dark Thirty. Even so, I suspect most viewers won’t be prepared for the deeply unsettling events of this disturbingly probable scenario.

 

Even as matters grow increasingly dire, and the atmosphere in the White House Situation
Room becomes more tense, Capt. Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) calmly
orchestrates and oversees all the necessary procedures.

As some of the film’s posters warn, “Not if ... when.”

Noah Oppenheim’s clever script is divided into three chapters, each of which concludes at a screaming point ... whereupon the clock rolls back, and we witness the same events through the eyes of different key players: folks at the other end of telephones, in situation rooms elsewhere, scrambling to replace somebody missing at a meeting. In each case, the second and third go-rounds expand upon details, amplify the tension, and minimize reasonable options.

 

The time is a reasonable extrapolation of our near future. Despite inroads made back in 1969, thanks to the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks and subsequent Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, nuclear proliferation once again has ramped up (as it already is, in our real world).

 

Part One, titled “Inclination Is Flattening,” focuses primarily on two sets of characters: the personnel at the White House Situation Room, supervised on this particular morning by Capt. Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson); and the 49th Missile Defense Battalion at Fort Greely, Alaska, under the command of Maj. Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos).

 

Walker is informed of potentially troublesome recent events, notably an uptick in chatter between Iran and its proxies, and uncharacteristic silence from the DRPK (North Korea), following a ballistic missile test.

 

Then, suddenly, an sea-based early warning X-band radar station detects an unidentified intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch: not at point of origin — as should have been the case, thanks to orbiting Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites — but in mid-flight over the northwest Pacific Ocean. The initial assumption is that it’s simply another of the many DRPK test flights that’ll terminate in the Sea of Japan...

 

...but then the ICBM’s trajectory enters low orbit, with an updated strike target of Chicago.

 

In 19 minutes.

 

Hastily assembled phone and videoconferencing is established between the Situation Room, the Pentagon, various armed forces commands, and the President. Secretary of Defense Reid Baker (Jared Harris) initiates the continuity of governance protocol, which alerts armed soldiers to scoop up numerous “designated evacuees,” — willing or not — including Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) official Cathy Rogers (Moses Ingram).

 

Forced calm prevails, thanks to Walker’s steady hand at the tiller; we’re prepared for this sort of thing. Gonzalez and his team launch a pair of ground-based interceptors (GBIs), specifically designed to knock ICBMs out of the sky.

 

The countdown advances ... and advances...

The Baltimorons: Quirky and adorable

The Baltimorons (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated R, for profaity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other VOD options

By Derrick Bang

Director Jay Duplass’ offbeat little charmer isn’t merely a rom-com focused on two lonely people who deserve better out of life; it’s also a love letter to Baltimore ... specifically, Baltimore on Christmas Eve.

 

Having navigated a string of minor crises, if not always gracefully — with more to come —
Cliff (Michael Strassner) and Didi (Liz Larsen) take a few minutes to stroll along a
gaily decorated neighborhood street.

No surprise, since Duplass co-wrote the script with Michael Strassner, who regards the city as his home turf.

As one-half of Duplass Brothers Productions, Jay and sibling Mark have delivered a string of off-beat indie films and television series, wearing multiple hats as directors, producers, writers and even actors. This is the first film Jay has directed in more than a decade.

 

He certainly hasn’t lost his touch.

 

The Baltimorons has echoes of Martin Scorsese’s darkly comic 1985 farce, After Hours, but with several key distinctions. Duplass’ touch here is much kinder and gentler, and the two primary characters are warm and relatable.

 

If not necessarily right away.

 

The saga opens with a fleeting prologue shocker, as an obviously inebriated Cliff (Michael Strassner) clumsily attempts to take his life. 

 

Flash-forward half a year, to early Christmas Eve, as a now-sober Cliff makes plans to spend the day with the family of his fiancée, Brittany (Olivia Luccardi). She obviously has the patience of a saint, having nurtured and stood by him after the earlier crisis; that said, she’s also the worst sort of helicopter companion, monitoring his every choice and move, ensuring that he never again gets near any alcohol.

 

She even tracks his phone, and immediately calls if he’s not where she thinks he should be.

 

Luccardi plays her as compassionate and well-meaning, but also much too pushy. We understand her concern, but at the same time wince at her smothering attentiveness.

 

Poor Cliff, still guilty over what he put her through, accepts this hovering because he feels it’s the right thing to do ... but he’s clearly miserable. As introduced, Strassner makes him a large, forlorn teddy bear: shoulders slumped, morose expressions, forced smiles and wisecracks rather than serious conversations.

 

He comes by the latter naturally, since his longtime love is improv comedy. But Brittany has made him give that up, since it went hand-in-hand with his alcoholism; by way of catering to the demand that he find something else to do, Cliff is studying to be a mortgage broker. (Like that’ll ever happen.)

 

The point is, she’s forcing him to become something he finds alien ... and that isn’t a recipe for lifetime happiness.