'The Toxic Avenger' (2023) Movie Review

So often when filmmakers attempt to remake a beloved niche genre film or a cult classic, you wind up with a product that may, on the surface, resemble the earlier version, but that misses the point completely. Or one that doesn’t seem to grasp what people love about the original. Writer/director Macon Blair’s (Green Room) new incarnation of Troma Entertainment favorite The Toxic Avenger is not one of those movies. 

'Under Fire' (2025) Movie Review

On the heels of last fall’s Aftermath, the better of the two armored-car-robbery-on-a-bridge movies that came out within a week of one another (the less said about Sylvester Stallone’s abysmal Armor, the better), Mason Gooding (Scream) and Dylan “Not Jughead” Sprouse are back for another team up. This time they team up for Under Fire, a throwback action comedy that is itself a follow up to director Steven C. Miller’s 2024 Werewolves, which if you haven’t seen, is a fine time.

'Red Sonja' (2025) Movie Review

There’s been talk of a new Red Sonja movie for what feels like forever. Multiple stars and high-profile filmmakers have been attached in one form or another, until it seemed like it was destined to languish just out of reach in development hell. But here we are, in the year of our lord 2025, and M.J. Bassett, the director behind Solomon Kane and Rogue, among others, has finally delivered the goods. 

'The Occupant' (2025) Movie Review

Wilderness survival tales, sagas of human endurance in the face of overwhelming, unrelenting odds, are common fodder for movies. But like other oft-visited genres, they can be the staging grounds for moving, powerful stories. (It feels like I’ve written a lot about this lately when it comes to post-apocalyptic films doing fresh, interesting things.) There’s plenty of room for thrills and edge of your seat tension, and they’re perfect showcases for human resilience, the triumph of man over nature, and that sort of thing. It also helps that they tend to have relatively small casts. And into this fray comes Hugo Keijzer’s directorial debut, The Occupant.

'Holy Night: Demon Hunters' (2025) Movie Review

I say this every time I review one of his movies, but watching Ma Dong-seok (aka Don Lee) clobber dudes is one of modern action cinema’s purest pleasures. What director Lim Dae-hee’s new film, Holy Night: Demon Hunters, proposes is, what if, instead of dudes, there were demons, and Ma punched them in the face, too? That sounds like a match made in heaven. Or hell, as the case may be.

Fantasia 2025: 'Blazing Fists' Movie Review

Blazing Fists is a much more manageable title for prolific Japanese director Takashi Miike’s new film, which is also known as Blue Fight: The Breaking Down of Young Blue Warriors. That’s a mouthful. Whatever you call it, this is a fairly straightforward action drama about young men using sports, mixed martial arts in this case, to rise above meager circumstances. But don’t worry, this is still Miike, so it also has biker gangs, violence, oddball flourishes, and a sardonic crime boss bored with the world in a casual, terrifying way.

Fantasia 2025: 'Redux Redux' Movie Review

A woman stands in a desert in the darkening twilight, looming over a man, tied to a chair, burning to death at her feet. This is Irene Kelly (Michaela McManus). She’s travelling dimension to dimension, methodically killing every version of Neville (Jeremy Holm), the serial killer who murdered her daughter. It’s a hell of a first image to kick off Kevin and Matthew McManus’s (The Block Island Sound) indie sci-fi thriller Redux Redux.

'The A-Frame' (2024) Movie Review

If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. So goes the well-worn saying, so goes the story of Donna (Dana Namerode). A talented pianist, the diagnosis of an aggressive, highly localized cancer means the only way to save her life is to amputate her arm. As her days become a series of indifferent doctors and callous support groups, the prospect of losing everything she’s devoted her life to leads her to accept an offer from Sam (Johnny Whitworth, Empire Records), a mysterious (sketchy) scientist who claims he can cure her. What initially looks like an immediate, miraculous cure turns into something much more sinister. And occasionally quite gooey.

'Osiris' (2025) Movie Review

Coming off back-to-back bangers Shrapnel and The Channel, William Kaufman is back with more of that sweet DTV tactical action that’s so popular amongst a certain segment of moviegoers. This time, however, he’s splashing around in the genre pool with Osiris. It’s not his first foray into genre, Daylight’s End has vampires, after all, but this one involves aliens and spaceships and all the associated sci-fi accoutrements.

Fantasia 2025: 'The Serpent's Skin' Movie Review

When Anna (Alexandra McVicker), a young trans woman, leaves her shitty home town to start fresh, she learns you can run from your past, but you can’t get away from yourself, and finds plenty of new messes in the big city. Like vampires. 21-year-old filmmaker Alice Maio Mackay’s sixth feature, The Serpent’s Skin, uses this familiar premise as a jumping off point to do something a bit different.

Fantasia 2025: 'The Well' Movie Review

Working within specific, well-worn genre or subgenre frameworks can make it difficult to do something wholly new. How many rehashed slashers have we all sat through? But that doesn’t mean there aren’t worthwhile stories to tell. We still occasionally see exciting, fresh zombie tales, for instance. Post-apocalyptic movies are another example, illustrated nicely by The Well. Documentarian Hubert Davis (Black Ice), in his first narrative feature, uses these familiar trappings to tell a tense, brooding, slow-burn tale of life past the end of the world.

'Ghost Killer' (2024) Movie Review

Fumika (Akari Takaishi, Baby Assassins) is your average college student. She has a crappy job, constantly fends off creepy men pestering her, and she’s very clumsy. Seriously, she falls down. A lot. Things change a wee bit, however, when she meets the ghost of a vicious hitman, Kudo (Masanori Mimoto, First Love), who occasionally possesses her and takes control of her body. It’s like Upgrade or even Venom at times as the two consciousnesses occupy the same space. (Or All of Me with fisticuffs?) After some coaxing, she agrees to help him exact revenge against the people who killed him. So goes the plot of Kensuke Sonomura’s new action-oriented ghost story Ghost Killer. 

Fantasia 2025: 'Terrestrial' Movie Review

Three friends, Vic (Edy Modica), Maddie (Pauline Chalamet), and her fiancé Ryan (James Morosini), visit their college pal, Allen (Jermaine Fowler), now a hot up-and-coming science fiction writer. As Allen welcomes his old buddies to his epic new Los Angeles mansion, this reunion, while all smiles and hugs on the surface, hides a seething cauldron of sordid interpersonal histories, long-simmering rivalries, distrust, jealousy, and much more. Maybe Maddie is in love with Allen, why does Ryan pick apart every word Allen says, maybe Allen hasn’t even written a single word of his high-priced novel. And then things get out of hand.

Fantasia 2025: 10 Movies To See

It’s time once again for one of our favorite events of the year, Fantasia Fest, also known as the world’s largest genre film festival. Running from Wednesday, July 16 through Sunday, August 3, the schedule is, as always, bursting at the seams with all manner of horror, action, sci-fi, and other assorted cinematic goodness.

'Daniela Forever' (2024) Movie Review

Not everything that looks perfect truly is. That’s the underlying conceit of Daniela Forever, the latest genre-bender from Nacho Vigalondo (Colossal, Timecrimes). Quirky and off-kilter, which is particularly on-brand for the Spanish writer/director, this romance smudges the lines between drama and sci-fi, blending earnest yearning and self-delusion into a careful-what-you-wish-for smoothie of memory, flawed recollections and conceptions of people, and the chaotic nature of dream logic.

'K.O.' (2025) Movie Review

It makes too much sense to cast Ciryl Gane in an action movie. On one hand, he’s a professional MMA fighter, a heavyweight no less. At six-foot-five, he’s a 250 pound wall of muscly giant, with a unique blend of physicality and martial arts acumen to more than sell an on-screen fight. On the other hand, however, he also has an adorable baby face, complete with a goofy smile that often makes it difficult to take him seriously as a badass. It's hard to say this massive, scary dude is cute, but…he kind of is. Fortunately French director Antoine Blossier knows how to make good use of both of these facets in his new movie, K.O.

'American Trash' (2024) Movie Review

You may not immediately know the name Robert LaSardo, but you know Robert LaSardo. (Though if you’re a regular reader, odds are you’re very familiar with the man and his work.) He’s the guy you call when your movie needs a heavily tattooed, badass-looking motherfucker. In his 170-plus credits, with more than 50(!) on the way according to IMDb, he’s played vampires, gangsters, and heavies of all stripes. In addition to being an Adler Studio-trained actor, he’s also a veteran. So it only makes sense his first outing as a director, American Trash, focuses on a former soldier struggling with PTSD as a result of his experiences. 

'Diablo' (2025) Movie Review

A team up between star Marko Zaror and director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza already has my attention. The duo is responsible for Redeemer, Fist of the Condor, Mandrill, and more face-kicking excellence, and Zaror is, for my money, the most unsung martial arts movie badass working today. One way to up the ante is to add Scott Adkins into the mix, like they do in their latest, Diablo, and hot damn. This was on my most-anticipated list for good reason, and it delivers the goods.

SIFF 2025: 'Know Her Name' Movie Review

All-too-often people seem to believe there were no, or at least vanishingly few female filmmakers throughout the history of the medium. If Zainab Muse’s Know Her Name has anything to do with it, that won’t last much longer. Her documentary dives into the deep, rich, and integral, not to mention frequently overlooked and undervalued role women have and continue to play in film history. 

SIFF 2025: 'She's The He' Capsule Review

To get close to a crush, seniors Alex (Nico Carney) and Ethan (Misha Osherovich) pretend to be trans, a dicey proposition for sure. Here’s the twist, for one of them, she’s never felt so comfortable, so herself. Realizing she is in fact trans, the movie follows the fallout from that revelation. 

SIFF 2025: 'Sanatorium Under The Sign Of The Hourglass' Capsule Review

The Brothers Quay return with their first feature in 20 years, Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. The haunting stop-motion offering, based on the book of the same name by Polish writer Bruno Schulz, adapts the surreal, fantastic journey of a young man, who, having recently lost his father, travels by train to a mysterious sanatorium.

SIFF 2025: '40 Acres' Capsule Review

Music video and TV veteran R.T. Thorne directs his feature debut, 40 Acres. In the apocalyptic wake of a fungal pandemic, new civil war, and sweeping famine, a family, led by no-nonsense former soldier Hailey (Danielle Deadwyler), must protect their fortified farm from threats within and without. Including potential cannibal invasion. 

SIFF 2025: 'Chain Reactions' Capsule Review

Documentarian Alexandre O. Philippe has delved into Alien, the shower scene in Psycho, David Lynch, and more. In Chain Reactions, he focuses on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, this time via extended interviews with Patton Oswalt, Takashi Miike, Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, Stephen King, and Karyn Kusama. Each shares their interpretations and experiences with the iconic film, honing in on legacy and influence.

'Fight Or Flight' (2025) Movie Review

Fight or Flight, the feature debut from veteran second unit director James Madigan, falls into a category of action comedies populated by recent titles like Bullet Train, Love Hurts, Day Shift, Killer’s Game, and others, that juxtapose brutal violence with quips, winking jokes, and silliness of all stripes. Think the carnage of John Wick with goofy, almost campy comedy beats. It's messy, it’s all over the place, it’s a tonal mishmash, and there’s a chainsaw on an airplane for literally no reason other than it’s awesome (and it is), but it’s also a good amount of fun.

'Striking Rescue' (2024) Movie Review

Tony Jaa. Muay Thai. Revenge. Bone-breaking action. Any one of those terms is likely enough to entice most of us to watch a movie. If we’re being honest, we’ve all watched movies for less. Combine all those elements, however, and you’re onto something. Which is exactly what Striking Rescue does. The latest from director Cheng Si-Yu (the woefully underseen Tai Chi Master, which you should also seek out if you haven’t), is 100% the movie it looks like, and though you’ve seen this many times before and won’t find any surprises lurking around the corner, it’s 100% the movie it looks like in the best possible way. 

'Demon City' (2025) Movie Review

Have you seen Seiji Tanaka’s Demon City, or a close approximation of it before? Yes, many times. Among other comparable titles, it’s almost beat-for-beat Hard to Kill. Does it have much in the way of nuance, depth, or character development? No. It’s extremely sparse on those fronts. What it does have, however, are plenty of bonkers, bloody fight scenes and awesome action choreography.

'Cleaner' (2025) Movie Review

If you used to be in the military but are now trying to adjust to civilian life—you know, a normal, hum drum job, taking care of family members, the usual—you are going to wind up in a bit of a Die Hard situation when you least expect it. That’s the expectation movies have set up for us, and that is precisely what Martin Campbell’s new action thriller Cleaner delivers. It scratches a familiar itch but doesn’t stand out in any way.

'Jade' (2025) Movie Review

Shaina West should become the next badass DTV action star. She has charisma, style, and screen presence for days, and most importantly the—largely self-taught after a motorcycle accident—martial arts chops to handle the job. With small parts in The Woman King, Black Widow, and The Killer’s Game, let’s hope that the next starring vehicle she finds is a better movie than Jade. It’s further proof of something we’ve known for decades, just because you’ve seen a lot of Tarantino movies does not mean you can make your own Kill Bill.

'Back In Action' (2025) Movie Review

When people say “Netflix movie” in a derogatory sense, Back in Action is what they mean. Big, slick, expensive, and with a couple of name stars in the lead role, all of which amounts to absolutely nothing. 

'The Prosecutor' (2025) Movie Review

Hear me out, Donnie Yen stars as a lawyer. But don’t worry, he may wear a silly robe and wig combo in the courtroom, but he still has ample opportunity to punch, kick, and otherwise pummel his way through throngs of faceless goons on the streets. Thus, we have The Prosecutor, directed by none other than Donnie Yen himself. And dammit if he doesn’t want an Oscar, or equivalent accolades. This movie leans hard into the “I have something to say!” of it all.

The 50 Most-Anticipated Movies Of 2025

Movies are great. 2024 was a great year for movies. And you know what? 2025 is shaping up to be yet another amazing year for film. Let’s be honest, they always are. I already talked about my favorite movies of last year, but since the calendar just turned over, it’s high time to look ahead to what’s coming. Following that logic, here are my 50 (ish) most-anticipated movies of 2025.