Last week I saw two 2025 releases and thought this would be a good place to discuss them. If you need an explanation of my rating scale, please refer to the beginning of My 2024 Oscars Preview.  The two I saw last week were The Gorge and Mickey 17, let’s get into it!

First, let’s go over The Gorge. I’m a huge fan of Anya Taylor Joy and I’m a huge fan of Miles Teller. Apple TV produced the best movie ever released directly to streaming with CODA, so I was excited for this. However, streaming movies are so hit or miss, I ended up with low expectations.  And I really liked it! The plot was essentially a generational American and Russian joint operation to guard a gorge from the creatures that live within it. Without spoiling, they spend the next two hours falling in love and killing monsters. There was great chemistry, high value production quality, and an exciting story. I will recommend this to everyone who enjoys action movies. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more buzz on this but that’s the nature of “prestige” streaming services. There’s always going to be more people watching a Big Bang Theory re-run on TBS than people watching anything on HBO/Showtime/Apple. My score here is 8.0/10.

The second movie I saw last week was Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17. Six years after Parasite was released, we finally get Bong’s next project. I LOVED Parasite. I LOVED Memories of Murder. I REALLY LIKED Snowpiercer. Mickey 17 was not bad, but it was a let down when compared to the rest of his work. The cinematography was top notch, you could tell Bong had a huge budget and made full use of it. Robert Pattinson was great as usual, and the rest of the cast filled in the gaps nicely. The story was unique, I always give credit to sci-fi creators who avoid the “fighting aliens” thing that seems to make up a majority of the genre. Can we talk about Mark Ruffalo? Clearly a great actor who has excelled in everything he’s been in over the last thirty years. His character here was a rip off of from what he did last year in Poor Things, and it was so over-the-top that it took me out of the story. I don’t care about his politics, but he’s very vocal about them and seems to now be playing caricatures of the ideas he hates. That’s lame, take some chances man! All in all, this was a solid sci-fi flick. I guess I just had higher hopes for this one. My score is 7.6/10.

It was nice to get to the theater again this week, even if it’s for a movie that I wouldn’t necessarily say you “had” to see on the big screen. Next week I’m planning on seeing Novocain and am hoping to get a blog up to review after that. Thanks for reading!