Winter/Spring 2025 Movie Roundup

Summer is almost upon us, which means it’s now time for my Winter/Spring 2025 Movie Roundup!

As usually, the movies and streaming shows are listed in order from my least favorite to my most favorite. The grades are based upon my own thoughts and opinions and are therefore wholly subjective.

With all that said, let’s get to the movies!

MACGRUBER (2010)

This might objectively be the worst movie I have ever seen. The Saturday Night Live “MacGruber” sketches are a parody of the old MACGYVER show from the 80s, and so the movie is an extensive of the sketch stretched out to make a parody of an 80s action movie.

It is aggressively dumb and crude. Its only redeeming feature is that the movie that knows it is stupid, and so leans into the stupidity hard.

I will say this in its favor – MACGRUBER has no pretensions that it is a good movie and does not take itself seriously, and then runs away hard with that fact. It gets a “plus” for that.

Overall grade: F+

DOWN PERISCOPE (1996)

The fundamental question of any movie is the one Russell Crowe shouted at the audience in GLADIATOR: “Are you not entertained?”

Sadly, I was not entertained with DOWN PERISCOPE.

This wanted to be a parody of Cold War era submarine thrillers like THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER.

I say “wanted” because it really didn’t succeed. Kelsey Grammer plays Lieutenant Commander Thomas Dodge, an unorthodox US Navy officer who wants command of his own nuclear sub, but he’s alienated a few admirals, which is not a path to career advancement. Dodge gets his chance in a Navy wargame where he has to command a diesel sub against nuclear subs.

Sometimes parodies are so good that they become a good example of the thing they are parodying – HOT FUZZ and STAR TREK: LOWER DECKS are excellent examples of this phenomenon.

The trouble is that that the movie takes itself too seriously, and just isn’t all that funny. A few funny bits, true, but not enough of them. In the end, this was Dumb Funny, but it just didn’t resonate with me the way other Dumb Funny movies like DODGEBALL and TROPIC THUNDER did.

Overall grade: D

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (2024)

Unlike DOWN PERISCOPE, I was entertained, though both movies reside on the Dumb Funny spectrum.

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE is basically one long meta in-joke for the last thirty years of superhero movies. If you’ve seen enough of those movies, you’ll find it funny if somewhat tasteless. If you haven’t seen enough of the movies, DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE will just be incomprehensible.

The plot is that Wade Wilson AKA Deadpool gets pulled into some Marvel-style multiverse nonsense. To save his universe from destruction, he needs to recruit a Wolverine since his universe’s Wolverine died heroically. In the process, Deadpool stumbles across the worst Wolverine in the multiverse. Together they have to overcome their mutual dislike and attempt to save Deadpool’s universe from destruction at the hands of a rogue branch of the Time Variance Authority. This means the movie can bring in a ton of cameos from past Marvel movies.

Hugh Jackman’s performance really carries the movie on its back.

Like I said, this movie is essentially one very long Marvel in-joke. I thought it was funny, but I definitely think it can’t stand on its own without having seen a sufficient number of the other movies.

Overall grade: C

THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE (2024)

This is very loosely (emphasis on “very”) based on Operation Postmaster during World War II, when British special forces seized some Italian ships that had been supplying parts for German U-Boats.

It was entertaining to watch, but it couldn’t quite make up its mind tonally if it was a war thriller or a heist movie about Western desperadoes recruited into a crew. It kind of tried to do both at the same time, which killed the momentum. Like, the first parts of the movie where the protagonists take out a Nazi patrol boat and then free a prisoner from a base were good thriller stuff, but then the plot fused with the heist stuff and really slowed down through the middle forty percent of the movie or so.

It was also oddly stylized, with a lot of spaghetti western-style music that seemed out of place, and some stuff just didn’t make sense. Like, at the end, after pulling off the mission, the protagonists are all arrested. That just seems bizarre, since if anything Winston Churchill and a lot of the British wartime leadership were enthusiastic about special operations and had probably too much confidence in the efficacy of covert operations.

So, I did enjoy watching this, but I can see why it didn’t make a lot of money at the box office.

Overall grade: C

THE GORGE (2025)

A peculiar mix of science fiction, romance, and horror. For the romance part, perhaps shooting zombies together is a good idea for a first date!

First off, a brief rant. In one scene, a character is using a chainsaw with no protective gear whatsoever! And she’s not fighting zombies or anything in a situation where she has to pick up a chainsaw without preparing first, she’s trimming branches. If you’re using a chainsaw, at a minimum you want protective eyewear and headphones. Ideally, you’d want chainsaw pants as well to reduce the chance of serious injury if you slip and swing the saw into your leg.

Since I became a homeowner, I’ve used a chainsaw a number of times, and believe you me, you DEFINITELY want good eye and ear protection.

That has been your public safety announcement for this movie review.

Anyway, loner former sniper Levi is approached by a high-ranking intelligence officer giving him a mysterious job. He needs to guard a tower overlooking a mysterious, mist-filled gorge for one year. On the other side of the gorge is another tower, guarded by an elite Lithuanian sniper named Drasa. Like Levi, Drasa has a fair bit of emotional damage, and they’re official forbidden to communicate. However, they’re both lonely, and they soon start communicating over the gorge using telescopes and whiteboard messages. Eventually Levi gets emotionally close enough to Drasa that he rigs a zipline to cross the gorge and speak with her in person.

Unfortunately, it turns out the gorge is full of twisted creatures that storm out and attack, and the job of the two snipers is to keep them contained. If Levi and Drasa want to save their lives, they’ll need to unravel the dark secret within the gorge.

This was interesting, but it falls apart if you think about it too much. Like the chainsaw thing I ranted about above? The entire movie kind of runs on that sort of logic. That said, I appreciate how the filmmakers were trying something new instead of something like DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE. Additionally, this was an Apple+ movie, and it’s interesting how Apple’s approach to streaming is to just make a whole bunch of random stuff that’s totally distinct, from TED LASSO to MYTHIC QUEST to THE GORGE.

It’s like “we have more money than most countries, so we’re gonna make TED LASSO because we feel like it.”

Then again, Apple+ is apparently losing a billion dollars every year, so maybe they’ll eventually change their minds about that approach.

Overall grade: B-

CLICK (2006)

Cross IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE with A CHRISTMAS CAROL and the comedic style of Adam Sandler, and you end up with CLICK.

Basically, Sandler plays Michael Newman, a workaholic architect with a demanding boss and an increasingly strained relationship with his wife and children due to his workload. In a fit of exasperation with his workload, he goes to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, where he encounters an eccentric employee named Morty, played by Christopher Walken. Morty gives him a remote control that lets him fast forward through time, which Michael then uses to skip the boring and tedious parts of his life. But he overuses the remote and goes too far into the future, and sees the disastrous results of his current life choices.

Definitely a story used in A CHRISTMAS CAROL and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, but effectively told, and I was entertained.

Overall grade: B-

MR. DEEDS (2002)

This was actually one of Adam Sandler’s better movies in my opinion.

It was a remake of the 30s movie MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN. In this new version, Sandler players Longfellow Deeds, a popular pizzeria owner in a small New Hampshire town. Unbeknownst to Deeds, his uncle is the owner of a major media megacorporation, and when he dies, Deeds is his legal heir. When the company’s CEO and chief lawyer arrive at the pizzeria to inform him of that fact, Deeds goes to New York and soon finds himself involved in the CEO’s sinister machinations. Yet he happens to rescue an attractive woman from a mugger, but there is more to her than meets the eye…

It was funny, and not quite as crude as some of Sandler’s other stuff. Good story structure, and several great lines – “he was weak and cowardly, and wore far too much cologne.”

Sandler’s movies in a strange way are often very medieval. Like various medieval fables had a savvy peasant outwitting pompous lords, greedy merchants, and corrupt clergymen. The best Adam Sandler protagonist tends to be a good-natured everyman who defeats the modern equivalent of medieval authority figures – evil CEOs, arrogant star athletes, sinister bureaucrats, and so forth.

Overall grade: B

HOUSE OF DAVID (2025)

Basically the story of King David from the Bible told in the format of an epic fantasy TV series. Like, if someone wanted to do a epic fantasy TV series about Conan the Barbarian, it could follow the same format as this show. And, of course, Conan and David followed a similar path from adventurer to king.

Anyway, if one were to pick a part of the Bible from which to make a movie or a TV series, the story of David would be an excellent choice because David’s life was so dramatic that it would hardly require any embellishments in the adaptation.

The story is in the books of 1 & 2 Samuel. King Saul is ruling over the Israelites around 1000 BC or so, but has grown arrogant. Consequently God instructs the prophet Samuel to inform Saul that the kingdom will be taken away from him and given to another. God dispatches Samuel to anoint David as the new King of Israel. David is a humble shepherd, but then enters Saul’s service and undertakes feats of daring, starting with defeating the giant Goliath and leading Saul’s troops in battle to victory against Israel’s numerous enemies. (The Iron Age Middle East was even less peaceful than it is now.) Eventually Saul’s paranoia and madness gets the best of him and he turns on David, who flees into exile. After Saul and his sons are killed in battle against the Philistines, David returns and becomes the acknowledged King after a short civil war with Saul’s surviving son and followers.

If Saul’s fatal flaw was his arrogance and pride, David’s seems to have been women – while the story of David and Bathsheba is well known, David nonetheless had eight wives (most of them at the same time) and an unknown but undoubtedly large number of concubines. Naturally David’s children from his various wives and concubines did not get along, and David was almost deposed due to the conflicts between his children. Unlike Saul and later David’s son Solomon, David was willing to repent when a prophet of God informed him of wrongdoing. (And to be fair to David, monogamy was generally not practiced among early Iron Age Middle Eastern monarchs, and dynastic struggles between brothers from different mothers to seize their father’s kingdom were quite common.)

But enough historical digression, back to the show, which covers David’s life up to the death of Goliath. I thought it was quite well done. Good performances, good cinematography, excellent battles, good set design and costuming, a strong soundtrack. All the actors were good, but I really think the standout performances were Stephen Lang as Samuel, Ali Sulaman as King Saul, Ayelet Zurer as Saul’s wife Queen Ahinoam, and Davood Ghadami as David’s jerkish (but exasperated and well-intentioned) eldest brother Eliab. And Martyn Ford just looks extremely formidable as Goliath. Like, you definitely believe no one would want to fight this guy!

Making fiction of any kind based on sacred religious texts is often tricky because no matter what you do, someone’s going to get ticked at you. (The show has an extensive disclaimer at the beginning saying that it is fiction inspired by the Bible.) That said, HOUSE OF DAVID doesn’t really alter or deviate from the Biblical account, though it expands upon some things for the sake of storytelling – Queen Ahinoam is only mentioned once in the Bible as the “wife of Saul”, but she has an expanded role in the show and is shown as the one who essentially introduces Saul to the Witch of Endor. Goliath also gets backstory as as one of the “Anakim”, a race of giants that lived in Canaan in ancient times, something only mentioned in passing in the Old Testament.

I enjoyed the show, and hope it gets a second season.

What’s interesting is to see how the wheel of history keeps turning. In the 1950s and the 1960s, Biblical epics were a major film genre – THE TEN COMMANDMENTS and BEN-HUR are probably the ones best remembered today. Eventually the genre just sort of ran out of gas, much the way superhero movies were in vogue for about twenty years and began running out of steam around 2023 or so. Like, I liked THUNDERBOLTS (see below) but it’s not gonna make a billion dollars the way Marvel stuff often did in the 2010s. But the wheel just keeps turning, and perhaps it has come back around to Biblical epics once more.

Overall grade: A

CHEF (2014)

I actually saw this back in 2021, but I watched it again recently, and here were my thoughts.

THUNDERBOLTS (2025)

This was pretty good, both very dark and yet with quite a lot of humor to balance the darkness.

Former assassin Yelena Belova has been working as a mercenary for the sinister director of the CIA, Valentina de Fontaine (there’s a villain name if there ever was one). But Yelena has grown disillusioned with her life, and suffering increasing depression since she never really dealt with the death of her sister. Valentina promises her one last job, only for Yelena to realize that Valentina decided to dispose of all her contractors at once, which includes US Agent and Ghost, previously seen in THE FALCON & THE WINTER SOLDIER and ANT-MAN & THE WASP. In the process of escaping Valentia’s trap, Yelena stumbles across a man who identifies himself as Bob, who has no memory of how he got there, but shows increasingly unusual abilities.

Yelena wants to deal with Valentina’s betrayal, but it turns out one of Valentina’s science projects has gotten out of control and is threatening the world.

The movie was well-constructed enough that it didn’t rely too heavily on previous Marvel continuity. Like, it was there, but you wouldn’t be lost without it. It almost feels like Marvel looked at the stuff they did the last couple of years and said “okay,  a lot of this didn’t work, but it makes great raw material for new things.”

It helped that the central conflict was in the end very human and about the characters, and not stopping a generic villain from getting a generic doomsday device.

Overall grade: A

THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1988)

This is a movie-length episode of THE RETURN OF SHERLOCK HOLMES television series, which had Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes and Edward Hardwicke as Dr. Watson.

The plot deals with Sir Henry Baskerville, the American heir to an English manor set in the windswept moors of Dartmoor. Apparently there is an ancestral curse laid over the Baskerville estate that manifests in the form of a spectral hound. Local rumors holds that the previous holder of the manor, Sir Charles Baskerville, was killed by the ghostly hound, and many the local people fear it. The local physician, Dr. Mortimer, is so worried about the hound that he comes to Sherlock Holmes for help. Holmes, of course, is skeptical of any supernatural explanation, and soon becomes worried that an extremely subtle and sinister murderer is stalking Sir Henry.

Jeremy Brett’s version of Holmes is in my opinion the best portrayal of the character, and Edward Hardwicke’s version of Watson is a calm, reliable man of action who sensibly takes a very large revolver with him when going into danger.

Definitely worth watching.

Overall grade: A

SONIC THE HEDEGHOG 3 (2024)

The 2020s have been a downer of a decade in many ways, but on the plus side, between SUPER MARIO BROTHERS and SONIC THE HEDGEHOG, people have finally figured out how to make good video game movies!

Sonic 3 was an excellent kids’ movie, as were the first two in the trilogy. In this one, Sonic is living with Knuckles and Tails under the care of their human friends Tom and Maddy. But then a dark secret emerges – the government has been keeping a super-powered hedgehog named Shadow in stasis, and Shadow has broken out. It’s up to Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails to save the day. Meanwhile, Dr. Robotnik is in a funk after his defeat at Sonic’s hands in the last movie, but then his long-lost grandfather Gerald Robotnik returns, seeking the younger Dr. Robotnik’s help in his own sinister plans.

Keanu Reeves was great as Shadow – think John Wick if he was a superpowered Space Hedgehog in a kids’ movie. Jim Carrey famously said he would retire from acting unless a “golden script” came along, and apparently that golden script was playing Dr. Ivo Robotnik and his evil grandfather Gerald. To be fair, the Robotniks were hilarious.

It is amusing that Sonic only exists because in the 1990s Sega wanted a flagship video game character that wouldn’t get them sued by either Nintendo and Disney.

It is also amusing that the overall message of the Sonic movies seems to be not to trust the government. 🙂

Overall grade: A

PADDINGTON IN PERU (2024)

An excellent kids’ movie. In this installment, Paddington has settled into London with the Brown family and officially become a UK citizen. However, he receives a letter from Peru that his Aunt Lucy has mysteriously disappeared into the jungle. Distraught, Paddington and the Browns set off for Peru at once. Adventures ensue involving a mysterious lost treasure, a crazy boat captain, and an order of singing nuns who might not quite be what they appeared.

Anyway, a good kids’ movie. I think PADDINGTON 2 was only slightly better because Hugh Grant as the chief villain, crazy actor Phoenix Buchanan, was one of those lightning-in-the-bottle things like Heath Ledger as the Joker in THE DARK KNIGHT.

Overall grade: A

And now the two best things I saw in Winter/Spring 2025:

ANDOR SEASON 2 (2025)

STAR WARS kind of has an age range the way Marvel stuff does now. What do I mean by that? Like, in the Marvel comics and some of the TV series like JESSICA JONES, they get into some really dark and heavy stuff. Very mature themes. The MCU movies can have some darkness to them, but not as much, since they’re aiming at sort of escapist adventures for the general audience. Then there are kids’ shows like SPIDEY & FRIENDS that a relative of mine just loved when he was three. You wouldn’t at all feel comfortable showing a three-year-old DOCTOR STRANGE AND THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS, but SPIDEY & FRIENDS is just fine.

STAR WARS now kind of has that age range, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Sometimes you want to see a dark meditation upon human nature, sometimes you need something kid-friendly to occupy the kids you’re babysitting, and sometimes you just want to watch Mando and Baby Yoda mow down some space pirates or something.

All that said, ANDOR SEASON 2 is both some of the darkest and the best stuff STAR WARS has ever done.

It successfully shifts genres from escapist Pulp Space Fantasy to a gritty Political/Espionage Thriller. We in the audience know that the Emperor is a Sith Lord who can basically use Evil Space Magic and wants to make himself immortal, but that fact is totally irrelevant to the characters. Even though some of the characters are high-ranking in their respective organizations, this is essentially a “ground’s eye” view of the Rebellion and life under the Empire. In some ways this is like STAR WARS’ version of WOLF HALL (see below), in that we know how it ends already, but the dramatic tension comes from the harrowing emotional journey the characters undertake on the way to their inevitable destinations.

Cassian Andor is now working for the nascent Rebellion under the direction of the ruthless spymaster Luthen Rael. Mon Mothma is in the Imperial Senate, covertly funneling money to the Rebellion and realizing just how much the Rebellion will require of her before the end. Syril Karn, the ineffective corporate cop from Season 1, has fallen in love with the ruthless secret police supervisor Dedra Meero, but he’s unaware that Director Krennic has ordered Meero to manufacture a false flag incident on the planet Ghorman so the planet can be strip-mined for resources to build the Death Star, and Dedra has decided to use Syril to help accomplish it.

All the actors do amazing jobs with their roles. Seriously, this series and its actors better get a least one Emmy.

Speaking of Director Krennic, Ben Mendelson returns as Orson Krennic, who is one of my favorite least favorite characters, if you get my drift. Krennic is the oily, treacherous middle manager we’ve all had to deal with or work for at some point in our lives, and Mendelson plays him excellently. He’s a great villain, the sort who is ruthless to his underlings and thinks he can manipulate his superiors right up until Darth Vader starts telekinetically choking him. By contrast, the villain Major Partagaz (played by Anton Lesser) is the middle manager we all wish we had – stern but entirely fair, reasonable, and prizes efficiency and good work while despising office drama. Unfortunately, he works for the Empire’s secret police, so all those good qualities are in the service of evil and therefore come to naught.

Finally, episode 8 is one of the most astonishing episodes of TV I’ve ever seen. It successfully captures the horror of an episode of mass violence, and simultaneously has several character arcs reach their tumultuous climax. It manages to be shockingly graphic without showing a lot of blood.

ANDOR was originally supposed to be five seasons, but then Peak Streaming collapsed, and so the remaining four seasons were compressed down to one. I think that was actually to the show’s benefit, because it generates some amazing tension and there’s not a wasted moment.

Overall grade: A+

WOLF HALL: THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT (2024)

A dramatization of Hilary Mantel’s WOLF HALL novels about the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, who was Henry VIII’s chief lieutenant during the key years of the English Reformation.

The first series came out in 2015, but the nine-year gap between this and the first series actually works quite well, since Thomas Cromwell looks like he ages nine years in a single year. Which is probably what actually happened given how stressful working for someone like Henry VIII must have been.

Anyway, in THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT, Cromwell has successfully arranged the downfall and execution of Anne Boleyn, Henry’s previous queen, though Cromwell is haunted by his actions. Henry still needs a queen to give him a male heir, so he marries Jane Seymour. Cromwell must navigate the deadly politics of the Tudor court while trying to push his Protestant views of religion, serve his capricious master Henry, fend off rivals for the King’s favor, and keep his own head in the process. Since Cromwell’s mental state is deteriorating due to guilt over Anne’s death and the downfall of his former master Cardinal Wolsey, and Henry is a fickle and dangerous master at the best of times, this is an enterprise that is doomed to fail. Of course if you’re at all familiar with the history of Henry’s reign and the English Reformation, you know that Cromwell’s story does not have a happy ending. Rather, WOLF HALL is a tragedy about a talented man who didn’t walk away from his power until it was too late and he was trapped.

Anyway, THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT was just excellent. All the performances were superb. Mark Rylance is great as Cromwell, and has some excellent “WTF / I’m so screwed” expressions as Cromwell’s situation grows worse and worse. Bernard Hill played the Duke of Norfolk in the first series, but sadly died before series two, so Timothy Spall steps in, and he does an excellent job of channeling Hill’s portrayal of the Duke as an ambitious, crude-humored thug.

Damian Lewis is amazing as Henry VIII, and his performance captures Henry’s mixture of charisma, extreme vindictiveness, and astonishing self-absorption. The real Henry was known for being extremely charming, even to the end of his life, but the charm was mixed with a volcanic temper that got worse as Henry aged (and may have been exacerbated by a severe head injury). Lewis’s performance can shift from that charm to the deadly fury in a heartbeat. The show rather cleverly portrays Henry’s growing obesity and deteriorating health by having Lewis wear a lot of big puffy coats and limp with an impressively regal walking stick.

Overall, I would say this and ANDOR were the best thing I saw in Winter/Spring 2025. I wouldn’t say THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT is an accurate historical representation – in real life Cromwell was rather thuggish and grasping (though far more competent than his rivals and his master), and of necessity the plot simplifies historical events – but it’s just a superb historical drama.

Overall grade: A+

CONCLUSION

As a final note, I should say that of all the 2024 and 2025 shows and movies I mentioned here, the only one that I actually saw in the theater was THUNDERBOLTS. And I hadn’t planned to see it in theaters, but a family member unexpectedly bought tickets for it, so I went along.

Which I suppose is the movie industry’s biggest problem right now – the home viewing experience is often vastly superior to going to the theater. Like, the theater has the big screen and snacks, but at home you can have a pretty nice set up, and you can pause whenever you want, go to the bathroom, and get snacks for much more cheaply. That’s just much more comfortable than the movie theater.

Additionally, going to the theater has the same serious problem as booking a flight, in that you’re in an enclosed space with complete strangers for several hours, which means you’re in a potential trust fall with idiots. Like, all it takes is one person behaving badly or trying to bring their fake service dog to ruin or even cancel a flight, and the theater experience has the same problem, especially since standards for acceptable public behavior have dropped so much from a combination of widespread smartphone adoption and COVID.

The difference is between the movie industry and the airline industry is that if you absolutely have to get from New York to Los Angeles in a single day, you have no choice but to book a flight and hope for the best. But if you want to see a movie and are willing to exercise some patience, you just have to wait a few months for it to turn up on streaming.

I’m not sure how the movie industry can battle that.

-JM