Welcome to Monday Miniatures, where I tell you about some of the stuff I’ve been watching in the past week that I wouldn’t otherwise get to share.
The week of Oct. 6-12, 2025:
The Smashing Machine, directed by Benny Safdie
How I watched it: In theaters (Glendora AMC)
If asked to provide my snarky one-line review of this film, I would say: This is a movie about a man who has been punched in the head thousands of times, apparently written for an audience of people who also have been punched in the head thousands of times. That’s ungenerous, but I’m not feeling particularly generous to a movie that clearly meant so much to so many people and required such time, effort, and money and yet amounts to so little.
If you’ve long been curious whether Dwayne Johnson could act, the answer is yes, and I would suggest you haven’t been paying attention over the years because he proved it long before this. That’s about the movie’s only virtue. I may be in the minority on this, but I’m even a little worn out on the great makeup designer Kazu Hiro’s neat trick of transforming one famous person into another. Here, it just doesn’t add much and I found it a bit distracting.
But, that’s a minor quibble. The film’s two biggest issues are the Emily Blunt character and the final tournament, which takes up the last 40 minutes of the movie. Blunt plays Johnson’s girlfriend, Dawn Staples. It’s a terribly written part, and Blunt’s not very good in it. The actress may have learned an unfortunate lesson from her Oscar-nominated turn as the stereotypically drunk wife in Oppenheimer and decided to double down.
In the leadup to the film’s release, Safdie and Mark Kerr, the real UFC fighter Johnson is portraying here, made a big fuss about how honest the story would be. Warts and all, they said. Kerr wanted it all out there. Turns out that mostly meant portraying how much of an abusive villain Dawn Staples was. The character screams in a fit of rage that Kerr knows nothing about her, which is ironic because the audience knows nothing about her either and the filmmakers don’t seem to care.
Speaking of characters saying the things they’re feeling out loud, we have the final tournament, which features an announcer character who seems to exist solely to tell us what Johnson/Kerr is feeling at any given moment. It’s overbearing, intrusive, and constant, as though Safdie doesn’t trust his audience to understand everything that’s happened in the preceding hour and a half. The movie has all the subtlety of a knee to the face, and by the end, you feel like you’re the one who’s been punished.
Roofman, directed by Derek Cianfrance
How I watched it: In theaters (Glendora AMC)
It can be fun to see a director take on a new mode. As the filmmaker behind Blue Valentine, The Place Beyond the Pines, and The Light Between Oceans, a breezy crime comedy was not exactly what anyone might have expected from Cianfrance. The movie is not entirely successful, and it probably won’t end up being very satisfying for audiences, but it has enough going for it to recommend it.
Primarily, it has Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst, who both give high-wattage star performances as two people with hard-scrabble lives doing the best they can the best way they know how. For the Dunst character, that means putting her nose to the grindstone and pounding out a life for her family. For Tatum’s character, based on real-life armed robber Jeffrey Manchester, that means crime.
Tatum is charming, adorable, and funny in ways we have seen him before, but he also brings a nervous mania to the character that is new to the Tatum persona and keeps the audience perfectly on edge at all times. The thing about Manchester – the person and the character – is that he makes the exact wrong decision every time. Tatum and the screenplay, by Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn, however, work hard to help the audience understand how he arrived at those wrong decisions. We don’t agree, but we get it, and isn’t that one of the joys of watching a movie?
Tron: Ares, directed by
How I watched it: In theaters (Glendora AMC - IMAX)
The consensus on this film largely seems to be: beautiful images, baffling story. I agree with the baffling story part. As for the images, I think they look like trash. The effects may be well rendered, but in service of what? Why is the digital world for the bad guys red and for the good guys blue? By the movie’s own logic, it would require someone to code it that way, suggesting the warring billionaires had a conference call at one point and decided on neat team colors, like paintball or, more appropriately, laser tag.
The movie begs a million little logic questions like that and answers none of them. It’s coasting on the idea that you might be so dazzled by the pretty pictures that you forget to ask. Well, I wasn’t dazzled, so here are my favorite questions:
Why are the oranges edible but the human beings break down into little bits of a particulate when brought out of the digital realm? The whole point of the movie is to find the “permanence code,” a magical string of computer code that can bring to life anything created in the digital world. Until now, those people and objects have had a shelf life of 29 minutes. When the good guys find the code, they test it on an orange tree. It works and they make juice, suggesting that whatever they bring out of the digital world is real in every sense. But when the supersoldiers disintegrate after 29 minutes, they don’t collapse in a pool of blood. Rather, they look like LEGOs falling apart.
Why does the supersoldier breathe so heavily in the digital world? If the oranges are real in the real world, so are the super soldiers, and therefore, they have lungs. That’s me trying to play by the movie’s own rules. But, why would the little digital avatars have lungs in the digital world? They’re bits of code. They don’t need to breathe. Or, at the very least, no one needs to code them to breathe. That would be pointless.
Why are the supersoldiers different people? I don’t begrudge Jodie Turner-Smith or Cameron Monaghan the work, but if your goal is to build perfect AI supersoldiers, shouldn’t they all be exactly the same? Surely, it must be easier to cut and paste the same code over and over rather than design bespoke code for each of your expendable AI bots.
What fuel do the light cycles run on in the real world? If they run on regular gasoline, wouldn’t that be the bigger breakthrough? The ability to manufacture viable fuel out of nothing would absolutely be the most important thing that ever happened in human history. Anyway, this movie has no answers and no interest in answers and might even resent you for asking questions.
Ballerina, directed by Len Wiseman
How I watched it: Starz
Wiseman went to the same high school I did a decade and a half before I attended, and I’ve always had a minor rooting interest in his career because of that fact. I remember someone did an interview with him for the school paper. He was probably promoting his first movie, Underworld. He talked about sneaking onto the set of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which filmed a key sequence in my hometown. So, I always hope for him to do good work. It mostly hasn’t worked out that way, though I do think Underworld still has its early-2000s charm.
Ballerina is probably his second-best movie, but it’s hard to know how much credit to give Wiseman. There are disputes about how much of the film was reshot and exactly who oversaw those reshoots. Some reports say John Wick mastermind Chad Stahelski reshot most of the movie with Wiseman not on set, while Stahelski and Wiseman say reshoots were limited to a couple weeks and Stahelski simply provided guidance to Wiseman.
In the end, it probably doesn’t matter too much who gets credit on the pass-fail exam that is a John Wick franchise movie. Does it have cool action sequences? Pass. No? Fail. Ballerina has just enough clever action to pass. Keanu Reeves seems a little tired of playing the Wick character, and who could blame him? Meanwhile, Ana de Armas could absolutely be an action star in the correct vehicle. Unfortunately, her 15-minutes sequence in No Time to Die has more wit, charm, and energy than anything in this movie. Ballerina does the bare minimum. It passes, but it’s not looking to overachieve.
Topper, directed by Norman Z. McLeod
How I watched it: DVD rental from Vidiots
Spoilers ahead for a nearly 90-year-old movie, but I had absolutely no idea this movie was about ghosts. It starts off with the Kerbys, a kooky rich couple in the Thin Man vein played by Cary Grant and Constance Bennett, as they good-naturedly frustrate their buttoned-up bank president friend played by Ronald Young as the titular Cosmo Topper. Even that was a little bit of a surprise as I would naturally have assumed Grant was the title character, but his star was maybe not quite as bright in 1937 as it eventually would be.
Regardless, the basic plot became pretty clear pretty quickly: This stuffy businessman was going to learn to appreciate life and fun through his silly friends. Then, 30 minutes into the movie, the Kerbys get into a shockingly violent (for the time) car crash and just die. Grant and Bennett come back as ghosts because they were neither good enough in life to go straight to heaven nor bad enough for, ya know, the other option. They decide their good deed for getting into heaven will be – remarkably – helping their stuffy businessman friend learn to appreciate life and fun.
This is to say the plot plays out exactly as you’d imagine from the first half-hour, except that our beloved Kerbys are dead and materialize and dematerialize mostly at will and usually for the sake of a gag. Honestly, the gags are good, the effects are impressive, and I had a great time. I just couldn’t believe that what had happened had happened.
On a related note, this was the last movie on the American Film Institute’s list of top 100 American comedies (100 Years … 100 Laughs) that I had not seen. It’s a fun list and you won’t regret going through it, but it was released 25 years ago, and even for a list created in the year 2000, it skews old. Though the ’80s are the most represented decade, the list also features 24 films from before 1940 and just five from the ’90s. It would be interesting to see what an updated version of this list would like with essentially two entirely new generations of people to poll.
Heart Eyes, directed by Josh Ruben
How I watched it: Netflix
I wrote about Ruben’s debut feature Scare Me last month and did not realize that this was his film until after watching it. However, taken along with his 2021 effort Werewolves Within, it is clear Ruben has a strong sense of the tropes of the horror genre and an instinct for subverting them in largely clever ways. Heart Eyes asks: What if someone spilled horror movie all over your rom-com? It would look a lot like this.
It took me longer than I would have liked to get on the film’s wavelength, which I think is a matter of some tonal issues in the early going. But, overall, the idea of a killer who just hates love stalking a different big city every Valentine’s Day is pretty funny. Takes some well placed shots at the Instagram-ification of love and the corporatization of romance.
Some of the kills are pretty good, and of course the Valentine’s Day Killer – excuse me, Heart Eyes Killer – would use a (cross)bow and arrow. Do you think the killer makes all those arrows with little hearts on them by himself, or is there a shop that sells deadly ammunition but is also kinda quirky? In the universe of this film, neither would surprise me.
Wolf Creek, directed by
How I watched it: Amazon Prime
Playing incredibly fast and loose with the “based on a true story” concept, this is considered one of the great Australian horror films. I appreciate the ferocious filmmaking style and the way the story never releases the tension of being stalked by an implaccable killer. There are things to like in this movie, but I could not get over perhaps the most egregious example I have ever seen of one of the most annoying horror tropes that exists.
Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Our protagonists are beset by a villain who intends to do great harm up to and including murder. They suffer to some degree, some more than others – here, the suffering is easily at a 10 by this point. Then, when all hope seems lost, they get the drop on the killer and knock him/her/it out, allowing them to make their escape. All the while, every horror fan in the world is screaming at the screen: Finish him! They never do.
At this point, it’s important to ask certain questions about our heroes and villains. Are our heroes capable of killing another human being? In extraordinary circumstances, could they be pushed far enough to do so? Has the villain demonstrated the extent of his villainy – in other words, what is the threat level? How easy would it be to deliver the coup de grace vs. how imperative is it that you escape right now?
In Wolf Creek, the heroes have absolutely suffered beyond their breaking point, the villain is absolutely a mortal threat, and one of the characters is literally holding a loaded gun 2 feet from the villain’s head as he lies unconscious on the ground. There is no excuse for not finishing the job right then and there. Coming at the halfway point of the movie, it makes the second half quite frustrating, knowing that none of it needed to happen.
V/H/S/HALLOWEEN, directed by various
How I watched it: Shudder
The V/H/S franchise has settled into a nice groove since finding a home on Shudder and becoming an annual tradition. There are, however, pluses and minuses to a franchise settling into a groove. The lows are not nearly as low as they once were, but neither are the highs quite as high. Nothing in the past three editions, all of which I have liked, stands toe to toe with how revolutionary the first two films felt. But, there is nothing that feels as lost as the post-V/H/S/2 doldrums of the franchise.
Assigning a theme beyond a year seems to have helped as I found last year’s Beyond and this year’s Halloween to be the two best in the franchise outside of the original two. Halloween feels like a natural place for the franchise to go, and if I’m being honest, I wouldn’t be upset at a Christmas-themed edition next year, Christmas horror obviously having a deep, rich history.
The wraparound segment, “Diet Phantasma,” directed by Bryan M. Ferguson, has its roots in ’80s consumerism horror like The Stuff and Halloween III: Season of the Witch. We see footage of a team of scientists testing out a new diet soft drink on a group of volunteers. Without going into specifics, things get bloody very quickly.
“Coochie Coochie Coo,” directed by Anna Zlokovic, and “Fun Size,” directed by Casper Kelly, both deal with the consequences of being a little too old to enjoy what is essentially a children’s holiday. Zlokovic’s short concerns two teenage girls who set about ruining the nights of a bunch of trick-or-treaters before they get trapped by a maternal demon who punishes them and others like them for their transgressions. Meanwhile, Kelly shows the worst possible thing that could happen if you get greedy when the sign clearly states, “Take just one.” “Coochie Coochi Coo” is a more traditional haunted house creepfest, while “Fun Size” is slapstick horror comedy with a pair of villains whose look deserves to join the horror lexicon forevermore. Both films are immensely entertaining.
“Ut Supra Sic Infra,” directed by Paco Plaza, is a Spanish entry about an investigation into a Halloween party mass murder that seems to defy logic. I like the idea that this film takes place in the aftermath of an event that could be its own horror short and, thus, keeps us on edge for what else could possibly happen. There is an effect in the final moments of this sequence that is absolutely stunning and will leave you wondering how the heck it was accomplished given the constraints of the format.
The best two shorts in this compilation are the last two, Alex Ross Perry’s “Kidprint” and Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman’s “Home Haunt.” Perry, who is almost certainly the most acclaimed filmmaker to participate in this franchise, brings his prestige bona fides to the only non-supernatural tale on offer here. In being grounded in reality, “Kidprint” is that much more disturbing and terrifying. “Home Haunt” is a more traditional V/H/S entry, as the attractions at a homemade haunted house come to gruesome life. Both are excellent entries in the franchise canon.
Updated franchise rankings:
1. V/H/S (2012)
2. V/H/S/2 (2013)
3. V/H/S/Beyond (2024)
4. V/H/S/HALLOWEEN (2025)
5. V/H/S/85 (2023)
6. V/H/S/94 (2021) … Hail, Raatma
7. V/H/S/99 (2022)
8. V/H/S/Viral (2014
Witchfinder General, directed by Michael Reeves
How I watched it: DVD rental from Vidiots
If you grew up watching Turner Classic Movies in the ’90s or early 2000s, you’re probably at least passingly familiar with the Roger Corman-produced, Vincent Price-starring Edgar Allen Poe adaptations of the 1960s. Adaptation is probably a generous word, since many of them bear only a passing resemblance to the Poe stories that lend them their titles. Anyway, I was a fan. I found Price’s archness riveting, and the whole gothic horror tone was quite appealing to a young me.
When Corman bought the U.S. distribution rights to Witchfinder General, he tried to coast off the success of those Poe adaptations by changing the name of the film to The Conqueror Worm, a lesser known Poe poem. He even added Poe’s name to the title in some places, calling it Edgar Allen Poe’s The Conqueror Worm. Of course, the film has absolutely nothing to do with Poe and is, in fact, based on the then-quite recent novel Witchfinder General by Ronald Bassett.
Taking this film on its own terms, I quite enjoyed it, and I don’t begrudge Corman trying to make a buck by slotting it into his Poe canon, since the film fits nicely into that oeuvre in theme, tone, and style. As an American, it’s easy to think of witch hunts as a distinctly New World phenomenon (1600s, sure, but New World no less). This makes the English countryside setting particularly interesting as we watch Price travel around, stoking fear and torturing, burning, drowning, and hanging “witches.”
I appreciate that the film never once suggests that witches or witchcraft are real. The only evil is Price’s witchfinder, who will hang anyone for a price. The film is honest about his cruelty, and this juxtaposes well with the self-righteousness with which Price plays the character. He senses no irony as he rides away with his sacks of coins, leaving death and fear in his wake, and that is the scariest thing of all.
Blood Fest, directed by Owen Egerton
How I watched it: Amazon Prime
Starts from what I think is actually a cool premise and proceeds to make the worst decisions at every turn. What if a horror movie festival turned deadly? Fun! What if none of the characters are smart, likable, or interesting? Less fun. What if the absurd reveals keep piling on top of each other until the film collapses under the weight of its own nonsense? Blood Fest. I had wanted to see this when it was in theaters, though I heard it wasn’t good, because I like to give new horror films a shot. It took me seven years to catch up with it, and I could have gone another seven without it.
Love and Death, directed by Woody Allen
How I watched it: DVD I own
I watched this the day I found out Diane Keaton had died. One of my favorite underrated comedy gems, and Keaton is absolute magic in it, as she was in so much. Check out my full appreciation of Keaton here.
