REVIEW: “Jay Kelly” (2025)

December 11, 2025 by Keith Garlington

File Noah Baumbach under ‘Filmmakers I’ll Watch No Matter What’. I have been drawn to his unique body of work since his early Wes Anderson collaborations. And I have enjoyed most of the films he has directed from high-spirited indies à la “Frances Ha”, to serious-minded dramas such as “Marriage Story”, to utterly bizarre concoctions like “White Noise”. I just love his eccentric style, off-beat perspective, and rich dialogue.

His latest is “Jay Kelly” and it’s very much a Noah Baumbach movie. Yet at the same time, it distinctly stands out in a number of interesting ways. Unlike Baumbach’s tightly focused settings, this one plays out on a noticeably grander scale. And rather than tell something more intimate, this time he broadens his story significantly. Even the filmmaking feels different, using a style that calls back to classic Old Hollywood productions.

In a nifty bit of casting, George Clooney plays the titular Jay Kelly, a celebrated actor whose existential crisis forces him to reevaluate what matters most in his life. The movie opens with Jay wrapping his latest film, “Eight Men From Now”. Jay’s hard-working and intensely loyal manager Ron (a terrific Adam Sandler) already has his famous client’s next feature lined up. But Jay throws Ron a curveball when he announces he’s pulling out of his next movie and taking a trip to Europe.

Jay’s out-of-the-blue decision puts his handlers in a panic as they scramble to make sense of his actions. Ron is forced to set aside his own family plans and join Jay and his entourage on a plane bound for Paris. There he plans on surprising his youngest daughter Daisy (Grace Edwards), who’s traveling abroad with friends. Afterwards he plans on hopping a train for Tuscany where he’s to accept a career achievement award that he had previously declined.

Ron’s main job is to coddle his star client while convincing him not to quit his next movie. But the blasé Jay is more interested in mingling with adoring fans and tracking down Daisy, who would rather be with her traveling companions. It all frustrates Jay’s handlers, especially his volatile publicist Liz (Laura Dern). But amid the chaos, we begin to see the real reason for Jay’s inward sabbatical. He begins reflecting on his life, from his career successes to his failings as a father.

In his melancholy, Jay begins weighing his past choices which forces him to reckon with their consequences, mostly involving his two daughters. While he at least has some connection with the younger Daisy, his relationship with his oldest daughter Jessica (Riley Keough) has soured. The fallout from prioritizing himself and his career has left a divide that she’s not ready to bridge. Keough only gets a couple of scenes, but she provides the story’s most heart-wrenching moments.

Baumbach also gives time to Jay’s relationship with Ron which plays a key role in the star’s journey. Clooney and Sandler have terrific chemistry and consistently find humanity and humor in the scenes they share. Clooney slides right into Jay’s skin, at times so convincingly that you could interpret it as him playing a version of himself. Meanwhile Sandler gives one of the best supporting performances of the year and one of the best performances of his career. In many ways he’s the beating heart of the story, embodying the many things Jay has lost sight of in the name of success.

Early on, Jay makes the revealing statement, “All my memories are movies.” Could it mean that he has invested so much of his life to movies that it’s hard to find a memory that’s not in front of a camera? Or does he mean he has no memories of his own; that his memories are movies – scripted, directed, and produced for others to relish? Both can be true, and both add to Jay’s overwhelming feeling of regret.

Baumbach’s soulful script (which he co-wrote with Emily Mortimer) has us accompany Jay Kelly on a painful personal journey of self-reflection. But to Baumbach and Mortimer’s credit, they don’t turn it into a clean-cut redemption story. While they do find empathy for Jay, there’s no tidy reprieve from the personal consequences or the collateral damage he has left behind. Together with its rich, nuanced performances, lush cinematography, and Baumbach’s vibrant direction, “Jay Kelly” resonates as both a contemplative character study and a meaningful cautionary tale.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

REVIEW: “A House of Dynamite” (2025)

October 24, 2025 by Keith Garlington

Kathryn Bigelow’s highly anticipated and long awaited next movie has finally arrived via Netflix. It’s “A House of Dynamite” and it’s Bigelow’s first feature film since her 2017 historical crime drama “Detroit”. This is another audacious swing from the Oscar-winning director who delivers a harrowing ‘what-if’ nail-biter that’s infused with a sobering sense of urgency. It’s one of the best films of the year.

“A House of Dynamite” is a riveting thriller that can also serve as a pressing wake-up call to the ever-present danger of living in this new nuclear age. Written for the screen by Noah Oppenheim, the story plays like a hardcore military/political procedural laced with 1990s thriller vibes. But it’s Bigelow’s striking efficiency and razor-sharp precision that makes the movie’s engine hum. She maintains such control of the story’s many moving parts while keeping her audience firmly in her grip for the duration.

Bigelow is helped by a star-studded ensemble who fill out this three-pronged story. The narrative structure follows one significant event but tells it from three distinct yet interconnected perspectives. It begins at the 49th Missile Defense Battalion at Fort Greely, Alaska. Major Daniel Gonzalez (Anthony Ramos) and his unit pickup an unidentified ballistic missile in the air. At first they believe it’s a test. But by failing to detect the launch’s point of origin, they don’t know for sure.

Fort Greely informs the White House situation room in Washington DC where Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson) and her team monitor potential threats to the country. Experts soon inform Walker that the missile is not a test and is only 19 minutes away from striking the continental United States. Multiple agencies spring into action, making efforts to intercept the missile while narrowing down its impact zone. As the clock counts down, fear and anxiety sets in.

We then hop back in time to when the missile was first detected but shift our focus to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska where General Anthony Brady (Tracy Letts) leads the US Strategic Command and Control. Brady’s team is able to determine the missile’s target to be Chicago and its 9.2 million people. With a nuclear attack seeming imminent, Brady pushes for the President to immediately consider a counter attack. But Deputy National Security Advisor Jake Baerington (Gabriel Basso) disagrees, insisting they get more information before thrusting the world into a nuclear war.

The movie transports us back once more, this time focusing on the President of the United States (played by an impressively grounded Idris Elba). We follow him as he gets word about the inbound missile and works under immense pressure to decide the best course of action. Does he follow Brady’s recommendation and counterattack before their window closes? Or does he listen to Baerington and wait, despite the dangers of doing so?

The cast is full of other supporting players who have their own roles in the story. Jason Clarke plays the senior Situation Room officer and Walker’s boss. Greta Lee plays an intelligence agent with the NSA. Moses Ingram plays a FEMA official. Jared Harris plays the Secretary of Defense. Renée Elise Goldsberry plays the First Lady. Jonah Hauer-King plays the President’s retaliatory adviser. These are just some of the characters serving as key pieces in the story, who either provide vital information that moves the plot forward or add needed humanity to the chaos.

“A House of Dynamite” wastes no time lighting its fuse and it steadily burns right up to the film’s gutsy finish. It’s a near certainty that some viewers will be upset with where Bigelow pulls the plug. But I can’t imagine a more effective ending for the kind of impression she wants to leave. The palpable fear, the unnerving uncertainty, the sobering real-world relevance – it all hits like a hammer in the film’s final shots which Bigelow lands just as intended.

With “A House of Dynamite” Bigelow reminds us of how close we are to annihilation and how helpless we would be once those dominoes started to fall. At the same time, her film maintains its human pulse, never losing sight of the personal stakes for many of the people involved. The changes in viewpoints work surprisingly well within the ticking clock formula in large part thanks to Bigelow’s laser-focused execution. The urgency is emphasized in Barry Ackroyd’s documentary-style cinematography while the tone resonates through the ominous groan of Volker Bertelmann’s score. It all creates a tension-fueled movie that offers a prescient warning for our current day. “A House of Dynamite” premieres October 24th on Netflix.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

REVIEW: “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (2025)

July 18, 2025 by Keith Garlington

Riding hot on the heels of Wes Craven’s enormous box office hit “Scream”, director Jim Gillespie’s 1997 slasher “I Know What You Did Last Summer” pretty much followed the same path to success. It was made on a small budget, it featured a collection of fresh young faces, and it raked in a lot of money leading to one immediate sequel, one later direct-to-video sequel, a now a legacy sequel that follows the events from the second movie.

Originally based on a 1973 novel by Lois Duncan, “I Know What You Did Last Summer” pulls inspiration from an old urban legend of the Hookman. In the 1997 film, a group of teenage friends from Southport, North Carolina are terrorized by a hook-wielding killer one year after they covered up a car accident where they accidentally killed a man. Murder and mayhem ensued as the friends found themselves the target of a mysterious killer.

The 2025 film (which follows that silly trend of using the same name as a previous installment) takes place 28 years after the Southport murders. Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, working from a script she co-wrote with Sam Lansky, basically follows the same blueprint as the first film, with a new group of friends and a couple of old familiar faces which fans will enjoy seeing despite them feeling shoehorned in.

Five not so interesting friends, Ava (Chase Sui Wonders), Danica (Madelyn Cline), Milo (Jonah Hauer-King), Teddy (Tyriq Withers), and Stevie (Sarah Pidgeon), drive up in the hills overlooking Southport for the best view of the town’s annual late-night Fourth of July fireworks show. As the group dumbly goofs around in the middle of the winding road, a truck is forced to swerve to miss them, plunging off the gorge to the rocks below.

Rather than help, the frightened group flee the scene. They later find out the driver was killed, but Teddy’s wealthy father (Billy Campbell) uses his influence with the cops to keep the kids from being implicated. The five friends take an oath to never mention what happened to anyone. But if you know anything about the original movie you know their secret comes back to haunt them.

One year later, Danica receives a mysterious note the reads “I know what you did last summer“. It forces the five startled friends back together where they quickly find themselves being stalked by a hook-wielding killer in a rain slicker. While the police aren’t much help, they find unexpected allies in Julie James (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Ray Bronson (Freddie Prinze Jr.) – two original survivors of the 1997 murder spree.

Robinson and Lansky try but have a tough time giving us anyone to root for. It’s no fault of the cast as everyone puts what they can into their mostly hollow characters. Even Hewitt and Prinze Jr. struggle to bring anything beyond nostalgia to their characters. The story does them no favors, predictably moving from point to point, relying on jump scares rather than real tension, and eventually falling apart with a desperate twist that is more eye-rolling than shocking.

That leaves us with the kills – something all good slashers lean on to some degree. Here they barely leave an impression and even the most die-hard slasher fan will have a tough time being impressed. It’s just another blemish on what is a mostly lifeless and painfully by-the-numbers snooze that has a difficult time justifying its own existence. We get glimpses of what the movie could have been, but sadly it’s only glimpses. “I Know What You Did Last Summer” opens in theaters today.