Everyone was right: Eva Victor’s wondrously delicate and wry Sorry Baby is definitely the film of Sundance (and later, SIFF). As producers, Barry Jenkins and Adele Romanski basically never miss. It’s now back in Seattle.
Jurassic World: Rebirth is Exasperatingly Underwhelming
Taking place in the “Jurassic” universe, a secret scientific lab set up on a remote island not only cloned, but spawned super-beasts both grotesque and lethal. Jump ahead thirteen years to Mercenary Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansen) being offered unimaginable wealth by an overly eager big pharma rep, to lead a team that will extract dino DNA from live specimen near the now defunct lab. Bennett, her ragtag crew, the pharma rep and reluctant, recently unemployed, paleontologist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey) seek out three specific species to snatch some blood then gtfo before you can say “Hold onto your butts”.
Roundtable: Our Favorite Movies of 2025 (So Far)
We’re just past the halfway point of 2025; so to commemorate the occasion a few of your friendly neighborhood SunBreakers took stock of the films we’ve seen so far.
With F1 ® The Movie Apple Studios Starts their Engines
Joseph Kosinski continues to establish himself as the cinematic poet laureate of aging men and fast metal. Like Maverick before it, F1 The Movie sees a past-his-prime speed demon called back into service for one last shot to live out his dreams and save a massive enterprise. Both might be better interpreted as death reveries, but damn if it isn’t incredibly fun to coast alongside their heroes in the perpetual golden hour of wish fulfillment.
M3GAN 2.0 trades scares for silliness, to (mostly) good effect
Kudos to recent horror franchises for changing stuff up. 28 Years Later expanded its siege-horror foundation by steering it into the realm of post-apocalyptic dark fairy tale. M3gan 2.0, by contrast, doesn’t so much radically depart from its predecessor as significantly shift the emphasis of the genres it combines.
Fifth Avenue Theatre’s Bye Bye Birdie is a hit
On opening night, last Friday, everyone I spoke to before the show told me about how much fun they expected or how excited they were for the Fifth Avenue Theatre’s new production of Bye Bye Birdie. That included the gentleman who scanned my ticket, a bartender, and the elderly couple seated next to me. It was the first “fun” play to hit the stage this year, they all told me. They were all correct, it was a blast.
Korea’s Hi-Five is a super-natural feel good comedy
Five strangers find them selves tangled up in each others lives after each receives organ donations from a mysterious donor. The young Wan Seo (Lee Je In) a Taekwondo champion with a failing heart and over-protective father, Gi Dong (Yoo Ah In) lost his site as a child, Ji Song (Ahn Jae Hong) got a new set of lungs, Seon Nyeo (Ra Mi Ran) was fitted for kidneys after attempting to take her life, and the overly kind and intensely devout Yak Seon (Kim Hee Won) gained a new liver. Very quickly after their operations, they were up and about, but even more surprising was their newly manifested super powers and a strange tattoo that appeared along with them.
28 Years Later ups the scale and the heart–and it’s scary, too
Spoiler alert (not): 28 Years Later, the second sequel to director Danny Boyle’s influential 2002 shocker 28 Days Later, could hardly be better. And unlike 28 Weeks Later, the rather meh second film of the franchise, this new entry serves up something deeply emotional, stunningly ambitious, seriously creepy, decidedly distinctive from its predecessor(s), and exhilaratingly suspenseful.
The Life of Chuck reaches for multitudes
Told in three acts in reverse, Mike Flanagan has made a lovely little Stephen King adaptation about how Tom Hiddleston came to be an exceptional dancer who contains multitudes.
Celine Song’s Materialists checks a lot of boxes, but is that enough?
Fresh off the enormous success of Past Lives, Celine Song returns to the world of divided affections in Manhattan. Her first semi-autobiographical film concerned yearning across decades and missed connections across continents. It was among my favorite movies of 2023 , an Oscar nominee, and Seattle Film Critics Society’s Best Picture of the Year. Materialists, which finds her returning as both writer and director, is also loosely inspired by her own past life, bringing a more cynical eye to the complexity of beautiful people seeking soulmates from the comfortable side of the precipitous economic divide.