Getting Caught Up
My reviews of Materialists, 28 Years Later, F1, Jurassic World Rebirth, and Dead Mail.
My unannounced hiatus is finally over!
I haven’t posted in a few weeks due to the burden on my schedule from shooting Cunning Folk, my latest short film as writer, director, and producer. In the future, I may write further about my own filmmaking, instead of just reviewing everyone else’s, but suffice it to say for now that Cunning Folk was a blast, and I can’t wait to jump into post-production.
In the interest of hitting the ground running now that I’m back in the swing of writing for Dispatches from the Cinema, and since I already have a backlog of post ideas as it is, I’m going to speed-run the five new releases that I’ve watched since my last review. Without any further delay, let’s get into it:
Materialists (2025)
I’m in the minority when it comes to Past Lives. I’d say it “wasn’t my cup of tea,” but honestly, I simply don’t think it’s a particularly impressive movie. It took a flimsy premise (“What if two children stayed in love for 24 years despite never seeing each other?”) and rendered it in a way that was technically competent but not in the least special or groundbreaking.
Yet, cinema history is full of examples of second features that far surpass the achievement of their directors’ firsts.1 So I gave Celine Song another chance. Materialists pleasantly surprised me in many ways. It has a lot to say about modern romance that I haven’t seen touched on in a film before. Unfortunately, it breaks down significantly when Song pivots from deconstructing the rom-com for most of the movie, to telling a typical “Hollywood” love story in the third act. It triggered the same disappointment I felt when I first saw Rob Reiner chicken out of the original ending of When Harry Met Sally… This could’ve been a fascinating, subversive take on dating and relationships, in the vein of (500) Days of Summer, but alas, it’s just another superficial feel-good flick.
28 Years Later (2025)
Frankly, I don’t understand the hype around 28 Days Later. I watched it for the first time in preparation for this new movie, and it did nothing for me, as much as Cillian Murphy, Brendan Gleeson, and Christopher Eccleston did the best they could with the material they were given. 28 Years Later has a much stronger script than the original and offers a coherent theme where the former lacks one: This is a film about mortality and the folly of resisting death.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who features prominently in the trailer, is severely underutilized, but Alfie Williams successfully holds his own as Spike, the 12-year-old lead. Ralph Fiennes stands out amongst the cast as the badass philosopher-physician Dr. Kelson. While nothing here makes me excited for the upcoming sequels, per se, the Chekov’s gun of the mysterious “Jimmy,” which is finally fired in the movie’s last scene, makes me think that Danny Boyle and Alex Garland have a greater story in mind to tell, one that may yet transcend the usual simplicity of the zombie genre.
F1 (2025)
I wrote on Letterboxd that “Joseph Kosinski is like if Christopher Nolan had been a quarterback instead of an English major in college.” Rewatch Top Gun: Maverick and then see this movie if you don’t immediately get what I mean. Much like Nolan, Kosinski uses the cutting-edge filming technology to elevate his material. The big difference is that while Nolan is interested in literary, low-concept stories, Kosinski prefers simple premises, testosterone, and passionate inspirational speeches. (He also, I noticed during F1, really has a thing for mentor-mentee relationships, even going back to his pre-Maverick work, like Only the Brave.)
Far from dismissing Kosinski as low-brow, my point in saying that is that it’s encouraging to see a filmmaker with a proclivity for populist movies executing them at the highest technical level. He’s a breath of fresh air in a time when most four-quadrant entertainment is excessively self-deprecating, insincere brain-rot. I hope Kosinski keeps cashing his blank Maverick check and continues to be a mainstay of American blockbuster cinema.
Jurassic World Rebirth (2025)
Speaking of insincere brain-rot, Jurassic World Rebirth. There’s really nothing of value here. This is a textbook enshittified IP movie that makes me wish Dominion had been the last Jurassic film, something I prayed wouldn’t be true when that one came out. There’s really nothing redeemable left in this franchise, and Universal needs to stop making any more before the legacy of Spielberg’s 1993 masterpiece is completely destroyed (if it even still has a legacy to speak of these days).
Dead Mail (2024)
Dead Mail opens with a great premise: A mysterious unaddressed note is received by the Postal Service sometime in the 1980s, indicating that someone is being held against their will somewhere. Jasper, an unhoused “dead letters” investigator with major early Morgan Freeman vibes, gets to work trying to decipher where this letter came from and who sent it. At the end of the first act, I was hooked. The aesthetic was impeccable. The lead was charismatic. The chase was on.
Then, in minute 24, Jasper is written out of the movie, and the film abruptly does a Psycho-esque perspective switch that lasts until credits roll.
What follows this point is a paint-by-numbers kidnapping thriller that never comes close to locking me in the way the first twenty minutes did. By the end of the second act, I was moving my mouse every few minutes to check how much time was left. Dead Mail does have some strengths, such as its camera work and score, but I can’t help but feel bait-and-switched.
Memento and Shaun of the Dead come to mind; it’s not uncommon to encounter people who think that they were Christopher Nolan’s and Edgar Wright’s debut, not sophomore, pictures.