"Wuthering Heights" - Review: A Love Story Come Undone

 

When writer/director Emerald Fennell (“Promising Young Woman,” “Saltburn”) moved from working in front of the camera to behind it, it certainly signaled a shift in her work. Instead of period dramas, she made mood psycho-sexual thrillers, while also finding the time to appear in bit part roles of blockbusters (Hello Pregnant Midge from “Barbie (2023)”). But “Wuthering Heights” is her biggest film by far, both in terms of budget and source material. Tackling one of the pre-imminent High School English class classics with a new aesthetic and themes, it is certainly her version of this tale without a doubt. But is it any good is an entirely other matter.

The film follows Cathy Earnshaw, played by Margot Robbie (“Barbie (2023),” “I, Tonya”), growing up with her father Mr. Earnshaw, played by Martin Clunes (“Doc Martin,” “Kipper”), and best friend and companion Nelly, played by Hong Chau (“The Whale,” “Watchmen (2019)”) in their home of Wuthering Heights. After her father returns from the city with a young boy he’s rescued from poverty, Cathy names him Heathcliff, played by Jacob Elordi (“euphoria,” “Frankenstein (2025)”), and determines that they will be inseparable. As the pair grow up together, their bond becomes closer and borderline romantic, which is complicated by Heathcliff’s feelings for Cath and his aloofness after her marriage to Edgar Linton, played by Shazad Latif (“Penny Dreadful,” “Star Trek: Discovery”), to keep her home from falling into further disrepair.

Emerald’s strengths have always been in playing various characters against each other, which results in the best moments of “Wuthering” being the most confrontational. Cathy and Nelly arguing back and forth, Cathy and Heathcliff arguing, Cathy and Edgar arguing; they all feel like the lifeblood of the film. Emotions are charged and it's also when the film feels the most alive due to Robbie’s performance. While the cast is generally fine, she is the clear standout, turning Cathy into a complicated, twisted, yearnful, childish, grown-up. Elordi is good, but his brooding ends up feeling one note by the film’s end, although it doesn’t appear to be an issue with his performance. Chau gets a surprising amount of mileage out of Nelly’s two-dimensionality, and Latif seems bored as a boiled down disregarded rich boy husband. A standout, for better or worse, is Alison Oliver (“Task,” “Saltburn”) as Isabella, Edgar’s sister, who forms a romantic relationship with Heathcliff. She’s certainly one of the more memorable elements of the film, although whether you find her genuinely memorable or just memorably cringe-inducing is another matter entirely.

Fennell’s vision of this adaptation, separate from any changes made to the source material, is the source for many of the film’s inherent issues. The script is certainly full of yearning and sexually charged encounters. However, when the film isn’t showcasing its yearning or sex or arguments, its resoundingly boring. Much of Cathy’s arc involves her sitting around being bored, which ends up making a mostly boring film. This also means the pacing slows to a glacial speed, and the third act in particular feels as long as the first two put together. This doesn’t help the handful of silly and borderline parodic moments that crop up within the surrounding melodrama. Moments like a pop-up book of phallic plants and someone passed out drunk amongst piles of what must be almost a thousand bottles look like Terry Gilliam style bits shoved into a film not designed for them. Even sillier is the film’s approach to sex which, despite the marketing, feels watered down to the point of being silly. Both of Fennell’s previous films have pushed beyond these boundaries, which makes the decision to hold so much back feel odd. It isn’t even an issue with the marketing, as the entire film feels designed to be full of nude R-rated material, but at the last second, they just decided to not include it. This means that what does make it in just feels silly by comparison; Heathcliff massaging broken egg yolks is certainly a choice, but it appears laughable in the surrounding context.

The visual style of the world, regardless of what it is displaying, is certainly gorgeous. Linus Sandgren’s (“La La Land,” “Babylon”) cinematography sweeps around the foggy moorlands and rocky cliffsides like a spirit observing its former home. The washed-out colors of the production design actually work quite well within the context of the tale and its location, and even if they feel out of place, the fantastical elements still look exceptionally gorgeous. Anthony Willis’s (“Promising Young Woman,” “M3GAN”) score is perfectly melancholic as well, meshing with the original songs by Charli XCX to craft a unique soundscape for the film and arguably its best element.

“Wuthering Heights” has been stylized with quotation marks since its first poster, as if to imply that this is simply an interpretation of the material and in no way close to being the definitive version. That’s a good thing then, as Fennell’s version manages to look and sound too gorgeous to hate, with a handful of interesting performances, but has nothing going on under the surface. An interview with Vogue quotes Fennell as saying that her goal with this film was to “recreate the feeling of a teenage girl reading this book for the first time.” If that means she was only interested in the salacious parts and was bored with the rest, then she nailed it. 2.5/5

Good Luck Have Fun Don't Die - Review: A.I. (Anarchistic Intelligence)

 

Whoever said the technology apocalypse can’t be fun apparently never told director Gore Verbinski (“Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl,” “Rango”). His first film in over a decade, “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” wants to take on the whole AI apocalypse subgenre with reckless abandon. Paired with writer Matthew Robinson (“The Invention of Lying,” “Love & Monsters”) and a stacked cast, he’s inviting audiences to put down their phones and embrace the madness.

The film stars Sam Rockwell (“Jojo Rabbit,” “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”) as an unnamed man from the future seeking volunteers in a late-night diner to help him fight the impending AI apocalypse. He finds those volunteers in Mark, played by Michael Peña (“Ant-Man,” “Crash”), Janet, played by Zazie Beetz (“Atlanta,” “Deadpool 2”), Susan, played by Juno Temple (“Ted Lasso,” “The Offer”), Scott, played by Asim Chaudhry (“People Just Do Nothing,” “The Sandman”), and Ingrid, played by Haley Lu Richardson (“After Yang,” “Support the Girls”).

Rockwell leads his ragtag bunch with a performance jam packed with manic genius. It’s as if he stepped right out of a cartoon, imbuing this fearless man from the future with a gung-ho attitude and sense of willie Bugs Bunny charm. He carries the entire film and makes each wink and jab a little better than it already is. The supporting cast are all great as well. Peña and Beetz have good chemistry as a teacher couple, Temple is a surprisingly layered delight, and Chaudhry is an amusing presence in the madness. However, Richardson steals the show. There’s so much depth to Ingrid that she becomes the film’s co-lead, juxtaposing Rockwell’s can-do attitude with a more grounded approach. The pair are simple fantastic together.

Verbinski takes full advantage of this scrappy film’s lower budget, setting much of the adventure in dingy alleyways and abandoned houses. As they trip along this tale, it gives things a handmade quality that makes it feel more purposeful. Often times people describe a film with a bunch of actors joking and having fun as seeming like it was shot over a week. While this certainly has that quality, it's because things feel so shoestring. Each moment of action feels big because of the characters and stakes established, not a multi-100-million-dollar budget.

For as gleeful and hopeful as Rockwell’s character is, the film is chock full of some delirious dark subject matter. It takes it all in stride and with a smile, allowing this satirical edge to be pushed to its absolute limits. It’s not hard to see at times why a major studio might have passed on this material, but it imbues itself with a wink and smile and runs away with mischievous glee. It isn’t just that the film is having fun with the ideas, it's that the ideas that Verbinski and Robinson are positing aren’t too hard to see possibly coming true one day… unfortunately.

But at the core of the film is a massive beating heart. Regardless of the impending AI doom, scrappy filmmaking, or deep dark humor, the central core of the film becomes remarkably hopeful and pure as things progress. It works because it feels genuine; not polished or saccharine but coming from an honest place. It recontextualizes most of the film by the end, even down to the central idea of Rockwell’s time looping future man and leaves things on a far more hopeful note than one might expect from a tale as heightened and timely as this one.

“Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” is the sort of movie people will look back on in a decade as a Bonafide cult hit. It’s got all the wackiness and inventive dark comedy one would need to tackle this kind of subject with a hearty dose of genuine human emotion and inventiveness. This is the sort of film, carried by its cast, that wants to look oblivion right in the face and give it bunny ears, laughing all the way home. If you can stomach the dark comedy, you’ll be more than happy to go along for the ride. 4.5/5

GOAT - Review: Small Goats Can't Jump

 

In their years post “Spider-Verse,” Sony Pictures Animation has continued to prove that they are the mainstream Hollywood animation studio to watch. With Disney and Pixar maintaining their status quo, Warner Bros. Animation on life support, Paramount non-existent outside of Nickelodeon spin-offs, and Universal and Illumination off in Minion land, Sony seems to be the only one doing experimental things. Their latest film definitely trades in sports film cliches, but it’s still got quite a bit of spunk left in its step.

“GOAT” follows Will Harris, played by Caleb McLaughlin (“Stranger Things,” “Concrete Cowboy”), a young goat who dreams of one day playing professional “Roarball” (a stand in for basketball), despite the sport only consisting of traditionally “big” animals, like jaguars, giraffes, horses, and rhinos. After a chance encounter at his local court, Will finds himself recruited to the failing Vineland Thorns by their manager Flo, played by Jenifer Lewis (“Poetic Justice,” “Think Like a Man”). Lead by their proboscis monkey coach Dennis, played by Patton Oswalt (“Ratatouille,” “The King of Queens”), the team, consisting of superstar jaguar Jett, played by Gabrielle Union (“Being Mary Jane,” “Bring It On”), shy ostrich Olivia, played by Nicola Coughlan (“Derry Girls,” “Bridgerton”), single father rhino Archie, played by David Harbour (“Stranger Things,” “Black Widow”), musician giraffe Lenny, played by Stephen Curry, and oddball Komodo dragon Modo, played by Nick Kroll (“Big Mouth,” “Kroll Show”), attempt to use Will’s skills and small stature to win the season against their rival team the Lava Coast Magma, led by Andalusian horse named Mane, played by Aaron Pierre (“Mufasa: The Lion King,” “Krypton”).

If nothing else “GOAT” continues Sony Pictures Animation’s tradition of delivering unique and medium bending animation on even the smallest of details. Fur and cloth blend and smooth together as basketballs fly across the screen. The sense of scale in comparing the largest of animals to the tiniest is impressive, and the colors of everything pop in a fabulous way. While not as abstract as “Spider-Verse” or hand crafted as “The Mitchells vs. The Machines,” this is an aesthetic that proves engaging and gorgeous, lifting up the more generic elements of the film as a result.

The animation is slick, but the pacing is quick, arguably too quick. Director Tyree Dillihay (“Bob’s Burgers,” “Good Times (2024)”) and writers Aaron Buchsbaum (“Fairfax”), Teddy Riley (“Fairfax”), Nicolas Curcio, and Peter Chiarelli (“Cray Rich Asians,” “The Proposal”) inject the film with a fair number of sports and underdog movie cliches. If you’ve seen any sort of sports film in the last four decades, you’ll likely see exactly where the plot is going, but it gets there fast, with nary a moment for a break. That is to the film’s detriment when it gets to the third act, as emotional moments and arcs pass by and resolve in the blink of an eye. It sometimes even feels as though scenes are missing, not for plot holes or context, but simply because the pace is so blistering. Kris Bowers’ (“Secret Invasion,” “The Wild Robot”) electric score helps match the quick pace and high energy to a much better result, with a musical identity that merges the animalistic nature of the world and the sport. Even for how jam packed it is, the heart at its center is so big and beating that it arguably would dwarf even the largest animals in the cast. It’s messy but genuine, one of the best ways to be messy.

That vocal cast does a lot to smooth that over, both lifting the cliches up and smoothing the pacing out. McLaughlin is an energetic and believably adorable protagonist, and his banter with Union is great. Union herself turns in a remarkably good performance, nailing the handful of nuances that Jett has to make her more than just a spoiled all-star. Pierre is a deliciously evil antagonist, making him easy to hate and wonderfully entertaining anytime he’s trading blows and balls with McLaughlin. The rest of the cast leans heavily into the bombastical and cartoony nature of their characters to great effect. Lewis gets a lot of mileage out of playing into the slimy team owner archetype, Oswalt shows why he’s a fantastic character voice actor, Harbour keeps stretching outside of his “Stranger Things” grizzled type cast, and Kroll keeps doing whatever weird voices pop into his head. Curry is the only one who stands out, as his normal speaking voice is noticeable amongst all the other traditional actors.

If you’re looking for a family friendly sports film, “GOAT” will deliver exactly that. It tracks in the same cliches that every other film of the genre does, delivering a story that’s enlivened by its setting rather than transformed by it. The talented vocal cast and animation style will certainly do a lot of heavy lifting, and the pace is definitely quick enough for the younger viewers of nowadays. It isn’t a slam dunk, but the heart is big enough to make it seem like one, and it’s still another in the win column for Sony and arguably the most stylish Hollywood animation studio working today. 3.5/5 

Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie - Review: The Greatest Time Travel Movie Ever Ripped Off

 

Somehow in our endless age of reboots, remakes, sequels, prequels, and legacy sequels, there’s still a bit of creativity floating around Hollywood. Well, not necessarily Hollywood… but somewhere slightly more northern. After years of skirting the fair-use legal loopholes, writer/director Matt Johnson (“Operation Avalanche,” “Blackberry”) has returned to the webseries/television show that made him and his longtime friend and co-writer Jay McCarroll Canadian household names. This is “Nirvanna The Band The Show The Movie.”

The film follows Johnson and McCarroll playing fictionalized versions of themselves, living in Toronto and attempting to fulfill their lifelong dream: playing a show at the Rivoli bar in downtown Toronto, despite never having written a song or even rehearsed ever before. This plan comes to a head when Matt decides to turn their RV into a time machine to trick the Rivoli into believing that they are from the future with a message to allow them to perform a show to prevent the end of the world. However, things take a turn after he accidentally creates a working time machine, sending the pair back to the ancient times of 2008.

If fictional Johnson and McCarroll are always in search of a way to perform, then real Johnson and McCarroll are always in search of a way to entertain. From the very first moment, “NTBTSTM” is constantly throwing bizarre bits and humor the viewers way in an attempt to make them laugh by any means. It’s a delirious sense of humor that will exhaust some, but it never stops feeling earnest the entire time. There’s even an ingenious blending of the original webseries version’s old footage that makes it seem as though this film was planned out over fifteen years prior to make it all work.

Even better though is the film’s use of real life situations. Like “Borat” and other real life films of that ilk, much of the movie is spent watching this story play out in the midst of locations and real people Johnson and McCarroll didn’t get permission from. It means the bizarre nature of their antics not only gets an added dash of realism from these reactions, but it serves as a meta layer of humor on top of everything else. What was faked? What was real? Did McCarroll really end up getting chased by the cops? Who knows? This pair made a movie based on their TV show about a band that doesn’t make music that doesn’t require you to watch the TV show. It’s as if the concept of the movie existing is a joke as well.

The 2008 time period also allows Johnson to flex some truly impressive behind the scenes fair-use muscle. For those unaware, fair-use is a legal doctrine that allows a filmmaker to utilize a piece of copyrighted work, such as film clips, music, images, etc., so long as it is required to tell the story they want to tell. So when movie Johnson rewatches “Back to the Future” on loop to prepare the RV, it’s allowed because it’s required to tell the story. This means that some of the film’s most outrageous reveals and moments feel both like tributes to our deeply pop-culture obsessed society and joyful rib-tickling bits at the expense of said society. For example, the way in which movie Johnson definitively realizes they are in 2008 is not only a genius utilization of fair-use, but one of the funniest movie moments of the year.

Oddly enough, beyond the odd real life prank humor and pop-culture shenanigans, what surprises the most is the heart beneath these antics. While it might be told with the sly smirk of a trickster, “NTBTSTM” is a film about friendship and what it means to be someone’s best friend. Johnson and McCarroll have been real life best friends for decades, and their banter and bickering comes across entirely authentic here. Even in the film's cheesiest lines and most saccharine moments, it feels deeply rooted in this pair’s real friendship. You’d almost be convinced Johnson wanted to make this movie just to keep hanging out with his best friend.

For those who are completely out of the loop on the antics of Johnson and McCarroll’s fictional selves, and there will be many, most of this likely sounds like the ramblings of a late night Adult Swim special rather than a feature length film. But Johnson and McCarroll are experts in their field of low-budget antics and manage to dance around even the tightest of restraints to turn this adventure into something special. They are Nirvanna The Band and this is one of the funniest movies of the year. 4.5/5

The Reel Life's Year in Film: Best of 2025

Join me in celebrating this year in film as I count down my top 10 films of 2025, as well as highlighting my most surprising, best actor, and best actress, and other individual awards.