Tag: Greta Lee

TRON: ARES – Review

Did you think there’s no room at the multiplex for SF/fantasy tent poles during the “ultra-serious” end of the year awards season? Well, the “mouse house” thinks moviegoers still have a taste for at least a couple of big franchise flicks. We’re only two months away from a third trek to Pandora in AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH, but they’re releasing another follow-up, which now cements another trilogy, though this series started long before James Cameron’s blockbusters. Can it possibly be 43 years since that initial entry (which was a modest hit during that great “geek” movie Summer of 1982)? And it’s now been fifteen years since the middle flick (or the first “sequel”). Disney thinks it’s time to boot up the ole’ “mainframe” and take another plunge into the digital dimension with TRON: ARES.


The opening moments transport us into the original with an “archival” video interview with Kevin Flynn (Jeff Bridges), the founder of the tech “dominator” ENCOM. From there, we plunge through “cyber-history” as various TV news people get us “up to speed”. Sam took over from his pop, Kevin, and the company changed hands again as the Kim sisters took ENCOM into the modern age. But the upstart Dillinger Systems is “nipping at their heels” as Ed Dillinger’s grandson Julian (Evan Peters) ruthlessly “steers the ship”. The “talking heads” then segue to a glowing data-filled metropolis where a digital knight in black and red armor named Ares (Jared Leto) destroys all the warriors that challenge him. Soon, he’s joined by his “second-in-command” Athena (Jodie Turner-Smith) as they gather their squad. Cut to the “real world” as Julian makes a big presentation to a group of potential “buyers” at his company’s HQ. Two massive mobile cannons become large-scale digital printers as they build a solid living Ares and his “battle vehicles”. After a demonstration of Ares’ abilities, Julian touts him as the perfect soldier. As the ‘clients” leave, his mother Elisabeth (Gillian Anderson) reminds him that these “products” will only function outside the mainframe for 29 minutes before they disintegrate into dust. Julian insists he’ll find a way to fix that. Meanwhile, Eve Kim (Greta Lee) has already found it. In a remote “off the grid” mountain in Alaska, she has located her late sister Tess’ “tent/research lab”. After countless hours combing through the outdated software and notebooks, Eve retrieves Kevin Flynn’s “Permanence Code,” which will give all digital creations stability indefinitely. But through Ares and his troops, Julian hacks into the ENCOM database and learns of Eve’s discovery. When she returns to the West Coast, he sends Ares and Athena after her. But as the duo dissolves, Eve is zapped into their cyber-home world. Can Eve, with the aid of a more enlightened Ares, keep the code away from Julian? And can she somehow return to this dimension?


Leto commands the often hyperbolic storyline as a modern cyber-punk Pinocchio with a dash of the friendlier Terminator and a splash of Star Trek’s Data. Yes, he’s a fearsome fighter, but a “glitch” in his system causes him to question his creator. So, is he sentient or has he acquired a touch of humanity, even empathy? In our world, Leto’s Ares is a wide-eyed newcomer who relishes every rush of discovery, while in the mainframe, he’s the ultimate digital bodyguard. And who wouldn’t want to protect the ethereal Lee as Eve? She radiates an intelligence muted with a consuming grief as she still misses her “lil’ sis” while fiercely clinging to Flynn’s legacy. And yes, we get to see Bridges as the “master” of his cyber-kingdom. Bridges plays him as an ultra-cool guru exuding gravitas just like classic movie “wizard” like Gandalf and Obi-Wan Kenobi. He brings some much needed warmth to the often cold tech. And bringing the villainy is Peters as the snarling tech bro Julian (if he had a ‘stash he’d be twirling it). Sure, he’s over the top, but the sense of fun Peters is having is most infectious. Ditto for the ferocious and very intimidating (and somewhat sultry) Turner-Smith, whose Athena is almost a spurned lover to Ares as he embraces that outer world. She defies you to look away during her intense pursuit. It’s always a pleasure to see Anderson in a SF project, though she’s relegated to wringing her hands over Julian’s antics as she tries to be the “good angel” on his shoulder (which he ignores). And there’s some sporadic comic relief by Hasan Minhaj as head of ENCOM PR (and cheerleader) and Arturo Castro as Eve’s over-excited and needy aide, Seth.


Well, there’s no questioning the beauty and dazzling visuals that bring this update to neon-soaked life. Director Joachim Ronning keeps the camera moving in a million or so different directions to immerse us in this fantasy light show (that makes great use of the music from Nine Inch Nails). It’s a shame that a bit more time couldn’t have been used to bring greater depth to the plot and the principals. It’s a given that Ares will turn on his creator (it’s hammered home by home video footage of teenage Eve holding Shelly’s Frankenstein novel). And Ronning makes excellent use of the IMAX format (the ads tout it as being shot in it), but the big finale showdown on the city streets feels like a rehash of giant monster/robot battles (though seeing a police car sheared in two by the “light cycles” and their “razor trail” is pretty cool). Lots of creativity went into all the nifty gadgets, but the human element and connection feel like an afterthought. Ah, but those fans of the 1982 and 2010 flicks will get their arcade-style thrills, but casual viewers may wonder why another dive into the concept after seeing TRON: ARES.


2 Out of 4

TRON: ARES is now playing in theaters everywhere

Watch The Trailer For A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE, From Academy Award Winner Kathryn Bigelow – Stars Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson

A House of Dynamite. (Featured) Gabriel Basso as Jake Baerington in A House of Dynamite. Cr. Eros Hoagland/Netflix © 2025.

From Academy Award winning director Kathryn Bigelow comes A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE. Starring Idris Elba and Rebecca Ferguson, the movie is a minute-by-minute account of what the highest levels of government would do in the face of a nuclear attack on America.

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE had it’s world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, premiered in competition and received an almost 13-minute ovation. In their review, Time Out says the “nuclear thriller will take your stress levels to DEFCON 1” while Indiewire writes its, “a movie that will ruin your day. You’re welcome.” The Hollywood Reporter says of the film’s music: “The tightly wound tension is maintained also by Volker Bertelmann’s propulsive score, which starts with ominous juddering groans and keeps shapeshifting throughout.”

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE opens in select theaters Oct. 3 in the UK, globally Oct. 10, and on Netflix Oct. 24. 

Watch on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81744537

This trailer is pure perfection and and the narration from the great astronomer Carl Sagan was a brilliant touch.

Bigelow says about the film (Tudum):

“I grew up in an era when hiding under your school desk was considered the go-to protocol for surviving an atomic bomb. It seems absurd now — and it was — but at the time, the threat felt so immediate that such measures were taken seriously.

Today, the danger has only escalated. Multiple nations possess enough nuclear weapons to end civilization within minutes. And yet, there’s a kind of collective numbness — a quiet normalization of the unthinkable.

How can we call this “defense” when the inevitable outcome is total destruction?

I wanted to make a film that confronts this paradox — to explore the madness of a world that lives under the constant shadow of annihilation, yet rarely speaks of it.”

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE also stars Gabriel Basso, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos, Jonah Hauer-King, Moses Ingram, Greta Lee, Jason Clarke, Malachi Beasley, Brian Tee, Brittany O’Grady, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Willa Fitzgerald, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Kyle Allen, and Kaitlyn Dever.

A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE – (Featured) Kyle Allen as Captain Jon Zimmer. Photo by Eros Hoagland. © 2025 Netflix, Inc.

A House of Dynamite. Cr. Eros Hoagland/Netflix © 2025.

A House of Dynamite. Rebecca Ferguson as Captain Olivia Walker in A House of Dynamite. Cr. Eros Hoagland/Netflix © 2025.

PROBLEMISTA – Review

In 2024, could there be sure a thing as a “hip film studio” that would attract both filmmakers and adventurous filmgoers despite the subject matter or “creatives” (actors, directors, etc.)? From the intense internet “buzz” the answer is a big yes. A century ago it was those Warner Brothers with their urban crime thrillers (before expanding into swashbucklers and tearjerkers). And there are those studios that specialize in a genre as Blumhouse does with horror and the Marvel Studios with their comics properties. Perhaps the last time a studio inspired nearly blind loyalty may have been in the early 90s with Miramax, which introduced us to, among many, Kevin Smith and Quentin Tarantino before one of the founders started the spark that became “Me Too”. Today it is A24, which grabbed the top six Oscars a year ago. Last week saw the release of LOVE LIES BLEEDING. From that quirky crime noir/love story we get this weekend’s equally quirky comic nightmare/fantasy, PROBLEMISTA.

This story, as told by narrator Isabella Rossellini, begins in the wild paradise of El Salvador where an artist named Dolores (Catalina Saavedra) builds elaborate art installations in the jungle inspired by her six-year-old son Alejandro. Over a decade and a half later, he (Julio Torres) moves to NYC to pursue his dream of designing and creating toys for the Hasbro Company (a big rival to Barbie’s Mattel). He rents a room in a run-down apartment with some other artists as he collects a mound of rejection letters from the company. Luckily Mother Dolores encourages him over the phone, but he’s got to keep and hold a steady job or he’ll be deported. Alejandro lands a gig at a cryogenics facility, making sure that the icy chambers are never unplugged. Of course, he knocks the cord out for a few seconds, which alerts his boss who promptly fires him. Luckily he then encounters Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), the angry wife of the affected client, a “fringe” painter named Bobby (RZA) , who hires him as a personal assistant/gallery scout (to set up a venue to sell these odd portraits of eggs). Alejandro endures her manic mood swings and verbal abuse to get her to write and sign a proof of employment to satisfy the local immigration services office. And he needs the money, which is very slow in arriving. He then turns to many desperate “side hustles” (subletting his room, forcing himself to sleep on the couch in the living room/art studio), eventually answering the “siren call” of “Craigslist”, all in order to make the proper contact who will open up the golden door to toy biz superstardom.

As Alejandro, Torres has almost perfected a flat deadpan delivery that helps to amplify the often absurd situations that almost squash his creative spirit. And yet there’s a bit of the con artist inside him as he tries to bluff his way into the “fancy-schmancy” art circles of the Big Apple. We also get a bit of his tender naive spirit, especially in those hasty (running out of minutes) calls to his “Madre”. Torres is often the “straight man” to the film’s real “scene stealer” Swinton as the loopy “force of nature”, the scatter-brained (her hubby dubbed her the “Hydra”) Elizabeth. She’s almost a second mother figure to Alejandro, though she’s almost impossible to read or predict. But Swinton is also “fierce” as Elizabeth protects the legacy of her beloved Bobby while having an obsessive devotion to the prickly software of “File Maker Pro”. This is another inspired eccentric in Swinton’s ever-expanding resume of roles. In the flashbacks, RZA is the coolest of all creators as the “egg-cellent” Bobby. Saavedra is a warm and supportive mama while Larry Owens is the slithering and seductive embodiment of the opportunity beacon of Craigslist. And there’s a terrific cameo by an A24 actress who was superb in last year’s PAST LIVES, the gifted Greta Lee.

I didn’t mention that Torres is also the writer and director (his first feature) of the film. His tenure on Saturday Night Live and other “sketch shows” comes through in several very clever sequences, from the demonstrations of his weird toy prototypes to a sword & sorcery riff when the “hydra” encounters a bank officer slavishly defending an outrageous overdraft policy (look for an update on it at the end of the credits list). Plus Torres has an eye for excellent locations that showcase some striking visuals, particularly as a transport car that hovers over the skyscrapers. And there are some clever slapstick antics as Alejandro evokes the classic silent clowns (he just needed Buster’s flat hat) as he lugs Bobby’s big paintings all over the town and up countless flights of stairs. Alas, the film doesn’t quite equal the “sum of its parts” as the constant “panic vibe” becomes exhausting as the tale suddenly takes a few very dark and dangerous turns (a stint as a “private housecleaner” is much too creepy). Luckily a charming and witty “flash forward’ ends it all on somewhat of a “high note”, but we’re still left with the feeling that the film might have worked better as a series of SNL sketches or even a streaming one-hour comedy showcase. Still, it will be interesting to see where the career of Torres progresses from the uneven PROBLEMISTA.

2.5 Out of 4

PROBLEMISTA is now playing in select theatres

PAST LIVES – Review

(L-R) Teo Yoo as Hae Sung and Greta Lee as Nora, in PAST LIVES. Photo Credit: Jon Pack. Courtesy of A24

In South Korea, two close childhood friends, a boy and a girl, both nearly 12, are separated when the girl’s family moves to the United States. Twelve years later, they reconnect, although he’s still in South Korea and she’s in New York, in Celine Song’s impressive drama PAST LIVES.

PAST LIVES is a romance of sorts but not like you imagine. What it is, however, is a moving drama with a brilliant script, brilliantly acted and filmed, and masterfully directed by Celine Song, who also wrote the script. Spanning decades and half the globe, PAST LIVES explores how once-close people both reconnect and diverge over time and distance.

One could describe PAST LIVES as an intelligent person’s romance. Making a romantic drama where the audience truly is on the edge of their seat is no mean feat, yet PAST LIVES does just that. In part it is because it avoids some of the tropes of romance but where some familiar elements are unavoidable, it breaks the rules by having the characters talk about them and dissect them, giving the feel of both realism, conveying the characters’ intelligence, and adding a sly humor.

As bright children and close friends in South Korea, she is the ambitious one, the girl who always gets the top grade, with her friend a close second, but who cries when that doesn’t happen. He is patient and supportive with the crying girl, as she calls herself, and he is comfortable in her shadow in second place.

She confesses to her sister that she has a crush on her friend.

He is distressed when she tells him the family is emigrating. She says it is because they want to give her, their gifted daughter, more opportunities to succeed. It is a bit more complicated than that, but at that time, South Korea is in economic doldrums.

Before the family leaves, the girls pick “American names” for themselves and she picks Nora. So Nora has a good last memory of her crush, the mothers arrange for Nora and Hae Sung to have a “date” in a playground, with the moms nearby.

Each pursue their education and career goals, Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) as an engineer in South Korea and Nora (Greta Lee) as a playwright in New York. After 12 years, Hae Sung finds Nora online, and we realize that he shared her childhood crush.

PAST LIVES delivers a moving, bittersweet but refreshingly real drama that plays out over time, as the two both connect and don’t, while the time passes and cultural experiences diverge.

This is writer/director Celine Song’s debt feature film but you would never guess that, as she has long experience in theater. The story was inspired by a moment of personal experience, as she sat in a bar with her husband and her Korean childhood sweetheart, translating between them and realizing they would never have met but for her.

As Nora, Greta Lee impresses constantly, with her ability to portray Nora at various points in her life and to convey complex, nuanced emotions with startling clarity. Handsome Teo Yoo’s character is less expressive and open than Lee’s Nora, and the character’s opaqueness adds a layer of tension throughout the drama. While the film has a romantic thread, it also has a sustained tension. As these two progress in their lives and reconnect periodically, the drama also explores the immigrant experience over time, something rarely done.

It is hard to overstate how finely crafted, emotionally effective and dramatically efficient this drama is. On top of the script’s moving story and beautifully built structure, it is visually impressive, with spare use of striking shots at just the right moment. One of those comes late in the film, as the childhood friends talk with the Statue of Liberty in the background and another in the film’s final shot, one that goes back to the childhood.

PAST LIVES is an impressive drama, that combines a fresh and real take on romance with different tale of immigration, further elevated by excellent performances, strong and spare story-telling and skillful direction from Celine Song.

PAST LIVES opens Friday, June 23, in theaters.

RATING: 4 out of 4 stars