The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025) – Review
Quick Thoughts:
- 1. It’s a four-star MCU film
- 2. Vanessa Kirby, Pedro Pascal, Joseph Quinn and Ebon Moss-Bachrach have excellent chemistry and can easily anchor future MCU films.
- 3. Paul Walter Hauser steals the show
- 4. The cinematography, production design and costume design are A+. It’s one of the best-looking MCU films.
- 5. It’s nice watching a group of people who like each other.
Directed by Matt Shakman (WandaVision, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Game of Thrones, You’re the Worst), The Fantastic Four: First Steps is an amiable superhero movie that avoids the group-dynamic drama that plagues The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy and Thunderbolts. By leaving out Norse Gods, brilliant jerks, daughters of purple maniacs, former villains and deadly spies who suffer from crippling depression, The Fantastic Four: First Steps eschews drama and instead focuses on a group of likable people as they attempt to save the world. It’s a bit predictable, but what’s surprising is the team never has to be assembled or reassembled; instead they work well together and genuinely like each other.
The film opens with a scene that shows how Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) and Ben Grimm Ebon Moss-Bachrach) got their powers (cosmic nonsense), and then quickly moves onto a montage that showcases their first battles with Giganto and The Mole Man (played beautifully by Paul Walter Hauser). It then jumps four years into the future, where they’re beloved by the public and have defeated most of the major supervillains in the world.
Since several Fantastic Four films have been made, Shakman decided that he could skip an origin story movie and instead tell a story about a well-oiled superhero team who are forced to battle an ancient planet eater. The most interesting choice by Shakman and writers Josh Friedman, Eric Pearson, Jeff Kaplan and Ian Springer was to make The Fantastic Four: First Steps as straightforward as possible. The plot revolves around a character named the Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) traveling to Earth to warn humanity of its impending demise. The Surfer works as a herald for Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson), a cosmic being who crunches planets to fulfill a never-ending hunger. The news isn’t fantastic, and it forces the Fantastic Four to do everything in their power to prevent a large alien from smelling Earth’s dirt (in a great scene) and eating their home. This includes confronting Galactus in space, and making decisions that are felt worldwide.
I don’t want to spoil anything else, just know that the rest of the movie features a stretchy guy, a human fireball, a large rock, and an invisible powerhouse battling a large cosmic being, who really wants a baby. There are several fun action set pieces and it’s nice watching Vanessa Kirby proving that she looks awesome while putting her hands in the air and hoping that the VFX crew don’t make her look silly. While researching the role Kirby talked to Shakman about Sue’s powers, and the two talked about “refracting light through prisms, and what altering the light of molecules does when you look at it.” This practical knowledge allowed Kirby to look like she knew what she was doing while pretending to use her magical powers. It’s little things like this that make The Fantastic Four: First Steps a top-tier MCU film, and a lot of credit needs to go to Shakman for putting together a cast who have fantastic chemistry.
Special mentions need to be given to the production design, costume design and musical score by Michael Giacchino. One of my favorite things about the film is that it takes place on “Earth 828,.” and can look however it wants to look. Production Designer Kasra Farahani (Loki – which also looks great) excels at creating worlds where advanced technology and retro design blend to create unique locations and visually interesting sets. The costume design by six-time Oscar nominee Alexandra Byrne is fantastic, and each actor looks perfect in their bespoke tailored clothes. The highlights of Byrne’s costuming work are sweaters and cardigans that Ben Grimm (a walking rock) wears as he cooks dinner or buys his favorite cookies from a local spot. It makes me happy that the person who won an Oscar for Elizabeth: The Golden Age (2008) designed clothes for a rock man.
The biggest issue with the film is related to the biggest character in the Marvel Universe. Galactus has always been one of my favorite characters; he’s a cosmic force who destroys planets and tasks cool-looking heralds (Morg!) to find him edible planets. He’s such a gigantic character that it’s hard to do much with him because he’s a Kaiju-sized blob of VFX. It’s nice that he’s not a giant cloud in this iteration, but when Galactus is introduced, it means only one thing – that a planet will potentially be eaten. He’s a credible threat (and Ralph Ineson is great), after so many world-destroying threats in the MCU, it would’ve been nice to give the Fantastic Four a smaller villain who only wants to eat 13% of “Earth 828.”
Final Thoughts – If you’re looking for an MCU film about capable people being capable, you’ll love The Fantastic Four: First Steps.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 637: Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Borg, and Holodecks
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome.
Mark and Niall discuss the 1996 sci-fi sequel Star Trek: First Contact. Directed by Jonathan Frakes, and starring Patrick Stewart, Alfre Woodard, James Cromwell, and a bunch of Borg, the successful sequel is the highpoint for the Next Generation crew. In this episode, they also talk about even-numbered Star Trek films, holodecks, and Swedish Borg. Enjoy!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome.
The 2025 Mid-Year Random Awards! Mark and Megan hand out awards to their favorite 2025 movies, performances, moments and scenes. In this episode, you’ll hear them talk about Companion, Presence, Black Bag, The Ballad of Wallis Island, One of Them Days, Sinners, Eephus, Warfare, The Surfer, Dangerous Animals, 28 Years Later, Ghost Killer, Jane Austen Wrecked My Life and many more cool movies. Enjoy!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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Sorry, Baby (2025) – Review
Quick Thoughts:
- Director, writer, and star Eva Victor has crafted a fantastic film that expertly blends humor, trauma, warmth, suspense, isolation, and compassion
- I hope it’s remembered come awards time
- Naomi Ackie, Lucas Hedges, and John Carroll Lynch are wonderful
- Betty-Anne from Letterkenny is in it! Kelly McCormack is great.
- Lamb of God lol
There’s a moment in Sorry, Baby when the central character Agnes, (Eva Victor) is having a panic attack and can’t catch her breath. She pulls her car into a restaurant parking lot, and the owner (John Carroll Lynch) comes out to tell Agnes that she can’t loiter in his lot. When he sees she’s having trouble breathing, he helps calm her breathing and then makes her a sandwich. What’s great about the scene is that the guy is gruff as hell (and hates his trash collector neighbors), but he listens and shows genuine empathy towards a person who needs it (even though he doesn’t like her name). It’s a great moment that blends sadness with humor and is just one of the fantastic character interactions in the Eva Victor- directed movie.
Sorry, Baby focuses on what happens when a “bad thing” happens to a promising grad student named Agnes. The tragicomedy unfolds over several years that take place in five nonlinear chapters with different titles like “The Year of the Questions” and “The Year of the Bad Thing,”. What’s interesting is that while the movie is occasionally harrowing, Agnes’s journey is loaded with humor and will make you want to grill some hot dogs (or open a sandwich shop). The supporting work from Naomi Ackie, John Carroll Lynch, Kelly McCormack, and Lucas Hedges (who, between Lady Bird, Mid90s, Boy Erased, Waves, Honey Boy, and Sorry, Baby, is an A24 allstar), is pitch-perfect and proves that Victor is a director to watch.
While Sorry, Baby is centered around Agnes and her life before-and-after the “bad thing,” the heart of the film is the friendship between Agnes and her best friend Lydie (Naomi Ackie – on a great run with Blink Twice and Mickey 17). The other 2025 A24 film about friendship (conveniently titled Friendship) goes to some soap-eating places, but this friendship is healthy and filled with love. Ackie and Eva Victor have excellent chemistry, and the friendship between their characters feels lived in and organic.It makes sense that first-time director Victor scheduled the first week of shooting to establish the pair’s friendship, because their chemistry made Victor’s life easier, and they are very funny together.
The nice thing about the humor in Sorry, Baby is that it feels organic, because it comes from a person who uses humor when dealing with good or bad situations. At times, it’s used as a deflection technique (there’s a great joke about being “tall”) during stressful situations with doctors, college employees, lawyers and coworkers. At other times, her jokes (“Is it my baby?”) come during moments of happiness and surprise. The jokes balance out the serious themes because they are an obvious coping technique for Agnes.
Much of the movie takes place inside an isolated cabin that becomes its own character throughout the five chapters. One thing I noticed is that Agnes’ isolated home feels both safe and nightmarish. Whenever Lydie is around, the place feels like a cozy cabin surrounded by cozy woods. However, when Agnes is alone, every creak, crack, and crunch makes you think the movie has become a horror film. Victor deliberately made the place seem both “cozy and terrifying,” and I don’t think I’ve been more stressed out this year while looking at a door. Cinematographer Mia Cioffi Henry (check out the Mitski music videos she shot) does a fine job of shooting the front door from other rooms, which gives it an alienated and dangerous feeling.
To write the film, Victor traveled to Maine and sequestered themself in a cabin for a two-month writing session. The isolation paid off as the screenplay juggles a plethora of emotions while never feeling overly written. Victor can make an elevator ride wildly stressful, so it’s not surprising that the nonlinear screenplay successfully walks a tightrope and never lets the comedy or trauma make the movie plummet to the ground. It’s fun knowing that Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk) talked Victor into directing the film, and that Eva shadowed Jane Schoenbrun while they were making I Saw the TV Glow. All the hard work paid off, as after the award-winning Sundance screening, A24 bought the film for $8 million and put their weight behind it.
Final Thoughts – Sorry, Baby is an inspiring piece of cinema created by a person who put a lot of work into making something original and unique. Watch it!
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Ghost Killer (2024) – Review
Quick Thoughts:
1. Director Kensuke Sonomura has crafted a fun showcase for his exciting fight choreography.
2. There’s a great gag involving salt.
3. Watch the Baby Assassin franchise.
4. Masanori Mimoto, Akari Takaishi and Mario Kuroba are wonderful
5. The world needs more movies like Ghost Killer. I love it when silly ideas are taken seriously.
Directed by Kensuke Sonomura, the action director of the Baby Assassins franchise (and many more films), and written by Yugo Sakamoto (who directed the three Baby Assassin films), Ghost Killer is a wonderful supernatural action comedy that features cursed bullet cartridges, apartment destruction, and a college student teaming up with the ghost of a hitman to battle an anti-social organization. The world needs more movies like Ghost Killer because it takes a high-concept idea and treats it with respect.
The film kicks off with a fast-paced action scene between a hitman named Hideo Kudo (Masanori Mimoto – The badass Frog from Yakuza Apocalypse) and a gang of knife-wielding opponents who fall prey to Kudo’s fast hands (and multiple stab wounds). To celebrate the victory, Kudo lets down his guard to smoke a post-murder cigarette and is shot by an unknown assailant. While he lay bleeding out, his grudge-holding blood covers the expelled bullet cartridge on the ground next to his body. This attaches his soul to the bullet cartridge and bonds them together. After being kicked around Tokyo, the cartridge is picked up by Fumika Matsuoka (Akari Takaishi), a college student who justifiably freaks out when she learns that the grudge-bearing soul of a hitman is attached to her. After discovering she can’t escape (and salt exorcisms don’t work) the “genuine ghost” because he reappears in front of her whenever there’s a 15 meter distance between them, Fumika decides to work with Kudo by letting him possess her body so he can kill the person who killed him – which will set his soul free.
The most interesting part of Ghost Killer is that a world-class hitman uses an unathletic college kid as his vendetta machine. When it comes to trained fighters, they know how it feels to absorb strikes, and they’ve trained their bodies to deliver punishment. However, the mild-mannered Fumika has never been close to a fight, and the first punch she lands makes her say, “That really hurts.” After each fight, Fumika is left bruised and battered, but she also really wants to get rid of the hitman ghost attached to her, so she endures broken ribs, bruised knuckles, and bloody noses. Her battles put her in the crosshairs of an “anti-social organization” that justifiably wants to kill her because she’s teamed up with the vengeful ghost of a deadly hitman.
During Hideo and Fumika’s supernatural adventures, they come across Riku Kagehara (Mario Kuroba), a hitman frenemy associate of Hideo who helps them murder people and clean up their bodies. The film builds to a warehouse brawl where the ragtag crew battles an endless barrage of gangsters led by famed stuntman and action choreographer Naohiro Kawamoto, who has a beautiful, rapid-fire brawl with Mimoto.
In the Baby Assassin’s franchise, Takaishi’s character Chisato is an absolute maniac, so it’s fun watching her play a normal (non-murder-y) college kid in Ghost Killer. Also, in Baby Assassins, Saori Izawa does most of the heavy-lifting during the fight scenes, but in Ghost Killer, Takaishi battles abusive boyfriends, jerk influencers, and a plethora of gangsters. It’s fun watching her take center stage, it’s enough to satisfy my Baby Assassins cravings as I wait for Baby Assassins 3.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 635: The Bikeriders (2023), Jeff Nichols and Denim
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome.
Mark and Andy discuss the 2023 crime drama The Bikeriders. Directed by Jeff Nichols, and starring Jodie Comer, Tom Hardy, Austin Butler and a lot of denim, the movie focuses on what happens when a guy watches The Wild One (1953) and decides to start a motorcycle gang. In this episode, they also talk about excellent accents, motorcycle movies, and the excellence of Jeff Nichols. Enjoy!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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Hot Spring Shark Attack (2024) – Review
Quick Thoughts:
1. It’s the kind of film that features characters eating submarine sandwiches whilst inside a submarine.
2. It’s about ancient sharks that can squish themselves through pipes so they can eat tourists.
3. It features the best shark punching since Lara Croft: Tomb Raider – The Cradle of Life.
4. It’s very silly.
5. If you’re looking for a random double feature, check out Evil Does Not Exist and Hot Spring Shark Attack. Both of the wildly different films feature important water, tourism, and corporate greed.
6. Writer-director Morihito Inoue has crafted a knowingly silly film that wants to entertain
7. Check out the website for screening information
The nice thing about the 80-minute Hot Spring Shark Attack is that it embraces chaos and wears its silly concept on its sleeve. It’s far from focused, but you can sense that director Morihito Inoue was laser-focused on making sure his crowdfunded film brought the goods. Inoue is a big fan of shark cinema, and his low-budget action comedy delivers an admirable amount of shark action and features the most shark punching you’ll ever witness in a single movie. It also features a helicopter explosion caused by a methane-spewing shark who comes across a tactical unit dubbed the “Anti-Hot Spring Unit,” who don’t realize their bullets will cause a massive explosion (it’s wild).
Taking place in the Japanese coastal city of Atsumi (The Monaco of the East), the film starts as a Jaws ripoff (in a loving way) by focusing on ancient sharks squishing their cartilage skeletons through pipes to eat spa goers who are enjoying the famous Atsumi hot springs. It then evolves into something akin to Sharknado as the hot water-loving sharks start attacking the denizens of Atsumi. It all culminates with an underwater battle between a buff guy nicknamed “Macho” and a large crown-wearing king shark.
Drawing inspiration from Jaws and Sharknado, Hot Spring Shark Attack is a lo-fi shark film that is loaded with an incredible amount of energy. On top of everything already mentioned, the movie features Influencer murder, anti-shark submarines, submarine sandwiches, weight-lifting montages, and sharks that require the smallest amount of hot spring water to pop up anywhere (seriously, anywhere). In a standout scene, an industrious shark sets a trap for tourists at the bottom of a playground slide and swallows them whole as they come down it (and it’s great).
Hot Spring Shark Attack pinballs around at a breakneck pace and feels like a collection of scenes slapped together. With a title like Hot Spring Shark Attack, it’s unfair to expect a focused experience. However, the looseness of the storytelling gives the movie a chaotic vibe, which doesn’t help the overall flow. The result is a loving homage to shark cinema that features knowingly cheeky performances from Daniel Aguilar (Shin Godzilla), Shôichirô Akaboshi, and Takuya Fujimura (One Cut of the Dead).
Final thoughts – I’ve now seen a movie featuring talking sharks squishing themselves through hot spring pipes to eat influencers – and I am very happy.
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The Movies, Films and Flix Podcast – Episode 634: Speak No Evil (2024), James McAvoy and Pointless Remakes
You can download or stream the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker (or wherever you listen to podcasts…..we’re almost everywhere).
If you get a chance please make sure to review, rate and share. You are awesome.
Mark and Lisa discuss the 2024 remake Speak No Evil. Directed by James Watkins, and starring James McAvoy, Mackenzie Davis, Scoot McNairy, and a stuffed bunny, the movie focuses on what happens when a family has a terrible vacation. In this episode, they also talk about toothless remakes, Blumhouse Productions, and plaid shirts. Enjoy!
If you are a fan of the podcast, make sure to send in some random listener questions (we love random questions). We thank you for listening, and hope you enjoy the episode!
You can download the pod on Apple Podcasts, Tune In, Podbean, or Spreaker.
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John’s Horror Corner: Beezel (2024), a quasi-found footage, documentsry-style, monstrous witch movie.
MY CALL: This is much less a witch movie, and much more a monstrous, ogre-like hag movie. Your satisfaction will be much more visual than cerebral, as the writing could use some work to complement the solid monstrous and witchy imagery. MORE MOVIES LIKE Beezel: Well, for higher budgeted ogre-witches, consider Barbarian (2022) and Blair Witch (2016).
A quirky but very polite man, Harold (Bob Gallagher) hires documentarian Apollo (LeJon Woods; The Hangman, The North Witch, Ouija Witch) tell help him tell his story. Years ago Harold’s first wife and child were killed, found partially eaten and dismembered and covered in bite marks, and he has been scandalously presumed to be their unconvicted murderer. When Harold shares some disturbing footage of his deceased wife never seen by the police, Apollo realizes he is in over his head. But it’s already too late. Harold is a zealot in service to a generations-old monstrous witch which feeds slowly on the flesh of the living. He wasn’t the first to serve this flesh-eating hag, and he won’t be the last.
The gore is decent! Better than I expected. Some wince-worthy eyeball scenes, a head torn from its shoulders, some rough oral sex mutilation, a disturbing scene with a newborn baby… not bad.
Our monstrous crone looks pretty cool, smacking of Mag Mucklebones from Legend (1985) or the she-ogre from Barbarian (2022), and moving with a rigor-mortis-like rigidity in the legs and spine. Some of the witchy imagery is also great. We enjoy top-notch gross drooling, weird slow eye-rolling, and corpse-like staggered movement. There are some fun jumpscares as well.
This film’s better qualities are somewhat outweighed by its shortcomings in pacing, resolution, storytelling. Watching this, you repeatedly see something cool or gross or scary, get psyched and very hopeful, and never find any proper greater payoff. Things just don’t build as the filmmakers intended. This movie has some very good visuals, fewer good overall scenes, and never really finds any synthesis to make the film work. However, it’s concepts and satisfying visuals give me hope for director and co-writer Aaron Fradkin (Bloody Bites, Val) and his future work.
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MY CALL: I’m not sure if this is a “so bad it’s good” movie or more a movie that was once awesome but just didn’t age well. In either case, this is the Sci-Horror oddity equivalent of a long forgotten exhibit gathering dust in the basement of a museum—it surely deserves to be seen, but is too overshadowed by its more shiny, polished contemporary successors. MORE MOVIES LIKE Saturn 3: For more robots behaving badly, consider the delightful Sci-Horror like of Demonseed (1977), Moontrap (1989), and Virus (1999).
This movie makes its style clear right away. Geeks will enjoy visual spacescape delights, and gorehounds enjoy a man getting diced through wires while being jettisoned through an air shaft into space. One part Sci-Fi grace, one part chunky gore.
A pair of lovers and researchers Alex (Farrah Fawcett; Charlie’s Angels) and Adam (Kirk Douglas; 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Spartacus) on Saturn 3 are visited by a rigid, by-the-book official Benson (Harvey Keitel; Two Evil Eyes) to review their progress. Benson is somewhat secretive in his objectives; he makes his carnal, hedonsitic interest in Alex immediately clear; and he has brought a “demigod” robot to assist him. What could possibly go wrong?
Running on tubes of colored liquids and a core of pure brain matter, this giant robot (called Hector) is pretty snazzy for a 1980 film. Hector plays chess, performs first aid… and a gorily brutalizes Alex’s dog. More troubling, Hector actively learns from a direct brain-link to Benson, and thus Hector also is now infatuated with Alex! Yes, you read that right. The robot, which lacks genitals or an endocrine system to produce hormones, desires Alex. Oh, classic Sci-Fi, you rascal!
Trapped in their research compound with Hector, the humans must escape the station. The Star Wars-inspired special effects are solid on spaceship shots; cheap but enjoyable for planetary terrains harken closer to Doctor Who; and set design and visuals of on-ship tech is satisfyingly elaborate. Very good visuals for Sci-Fi fans abound.
Shockingly, this hidden gem was directed by Stanley Donen, who also directed your grandparents’ and great grandparents’ favorites Singin’ in the Rain (1952) and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954). Donen only ever did one genre film, and this one is a banger worth your time!
We end up with one really cool gore scene that likely inspired the likes of Moontrap (1989) and Virus (1999). Frankly, for a nearly 50-year-old Sci-Fi movie, this held up pretty well for me! I enjoyed it a lot.
Movies, Films & Flix 