DownStream – The Pre-Blitz Catch-Up

Every year, no matter how many films I see, there will always be a few that slip through the cracks during their theatrical runs, and inevitably some of them will be nominated for Oscars, including in high-profile categories like Best Picture. I’ve never had feature completion before nominations come out, though I’ve gotten close a few times, like within four or five titles. With 2025 being incredibly challenging from a financial standpoint, I knew I had missed some genuine contenders.

As such, once the shortlists came out (and I had some extra cash at long last), I got to work trying to pare down the list of hopefuls as much as possible. This includes three major releases, all of which got degrees of critical acclaim, and all of which were eventually nominated, two of them in multiple categories. If you’re like me and were unable to check these out sooner, they’re all available on various streamers, and can also be rent/bought through VOD services. Because they’re nominated, I consider them worth your time, especially if you’re a completist as well. Does that mean they’re actually worthy of their accolades? Not necessarily, though there is some quality to be had.

Weapons – HBO Max

I wanted to see this from the moment it was announced. I even named it as the “Redemption Reel” in the August edition of “TFINYW.” There were two primary influences on that excitement. The first is that writer-director Zach Cregger had proven his bona fides with his debut, Barbarian. While that film certainly had flaws, it more than showed that he had potential as a horror filmmaker, infusing a well-worn premise with surprising degrees of humor, gore, and empathy, similar to his comedy-to-terror contemporary, Jordan Peele. That movie was better than it had any right to be, and I was beyond eager to see what he came up with next. The second is that I had already missed out on the initial run of another modern horror classic to come out in late summer just the year before, in the form of The Substance, which instantly became my favorite film of 2024 when I finally got to sit down and watch it.

I didn’t want to make that same mistake again, but sadly, I did. I knew I would love this flick when I finally got around to it, and I was right. In his sophomore effort, Cregger has already realized his potential, crafting a creepy but earnest effort that blends the supernatural with realistic sources of fear. And then just for good measure, we got an instant pantheon-level genre baddie that could get honored with Academy laurels.

Told in chapters taken from the point of view of its key players, the story revolves around the very strange disappearance of an entire classroom of grade-school children, with the exception of young Alex (Cary Christopher). Everyone else randomly just got up in the wee hours one night, walked out their front doors, and scarpered off into the darkness. The parents of this small suburban town are distraught and searching for anyone to blame, led by Archer Graff (Josh Brolin). The target for their ire is the class’s teacher, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner). Justine herself is an alcoholic and has had complaints about getting “too close” to the kids over the years, though nothing more serious than giving a crying student a hug. However, in as tense an environment as this, where there are no ready answers, any excuse to scapegoat through confirmation bias will not be missed.

Increasingly self-destructive in this crucible of public opinion, Justine tries to confide in her ex, Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), a police officer who has moved on (he’s married to the chief’s daughter, played by June Diane Raphael) and gotten into recovery. He wants to be emotional support for Justine, but is wary of relapsing thanks to her toxic behavior. He later encounters James (Austin Abrams), a junkie who stumbles upon information about the missing kids, hoping to cash in on a hefty reward to fuel his habit. Through all of this, Justine’s boss Marcus (Benedict Wong), the school principal, does everything he can to keep Justine safe and out of trouble until the situation either gets resolved or blows over. At the heart of all these interconnected stories, there’s Alex acting strangely around everyone, being intentionally evasive when asked what he knows, and with the appearance of his eccentric aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), things become increasingly dangerous.

Now, there are things to nitpick here and there, like the fact that a ton of red flags spring up around Alex, and yet the police do little to no active investigation. There’s a lackadaisical attitude toward this case from the authorities that’s so pervasive, you almost wonder if the film should have been set in Derry, ME instead of a fictitious town in Pennsylvania. Also, while it’s clear Justine cares deeply about Alex and all her students, it’s hard to believe she would have kept her job for any length of time once the issues in her personal life became apparent. As the situation escalates, and she violates direct orders from Marcus not to interfere with Alex, it’s a wonder she never ends up in jail.

But for my part, I was never bothered, because while there are always absurdisms and lack of logic in horror films, here they’re not glaring because Cregger is keeping the focus where it matters, on the emotion of the situation. Archer and the other parents are horrible to Justine, but we’ve seen such attacks happen in real life, and despite the cruelty, it stems from the very honest fear that every parent has when it comes to their children’s safety. There’s a fairly clear metaphor here about the trauma of school shootings and other acts of violence that devastate young people. Those left behind have a massive survivor’s guilt, and the parents are equal parts heartbroken and incensed, because there just isn’t an explanation for how this happened. The correlation isn’t exact, but it’s hard not to see it.

For me, that’s always the best type of horror, the stuff that could actually happen. Obviously, when we meet Gladys and see the more mystical side of her menace, the veneer of reality breaks down a bit, but Cregger and his cast have properly prepared us for the moment. We see the desperation in the eyes of every parent. We feel Archer’s regret as he tries with all his might to come up with any leads on his own, and even though his son Matthew (Luke Speakman) is a bully to Alex and others, Archer still loves him with all his heart, because no child is beyond redemption. We feel Justine’s sense of hopelessness and anguish. We even empathize with Marcus’s attempts to keep the proverbial wolves at bay until it’s too late. There are slow burns in a lot of horror films, but this is one of the better cases. By the time the first body falls, Cregger has more than earned it.

This is only aided by the stellar ensemble cast. Amy Madigan is the highlight as Gladys, already being lauded as an all-time horror villain, and more than earning her nomination for Supporting Actress, which she just might win (it’s a two-horse race between her and Teyana Taylor at the moment). She’d be memorable for her design alone, with her track suits and over-the-top makeup and wigs, but it’s Madigan’s performance that takes Gladys from oddity to off-putting. She’s teased in dream sequences and jump scares (the rare justified use because you don’t see them coming), but once she makes her official grand entrance, it’s constant escalation, capped off by one of the most hilarious – yet cathartic – climaxes in modern horror history. I dare not spoil a single detail, only saying that Madigan 100% deserves her nod. She’s been one of the great character actresses for decades, and this may be her brightest moment in the sun, long overdue. In a thematically ironic meta twist, you can see the rest of the cast feed off her energy, with everyone’s performances being kicked up a notch once she enters the picture. Mind you, the various turns were already fairly strong, particularly Garner and Brolin, but Madigan’s presence instantly elevates them.

I’m upset that I didn’t force myself to see this back in August, because it was an instant hit with both critics and audiences, making it one of only two movies NOT based on a pre-existing IP to crack the top 20 in the year-end box office (the other being Sinners). That’s some damn fine company to be in, and now I’m even more stoked to see what Cregger has up his sleeve next.

Grade: A

Bugonia – Peacock

I am an unapologetic fanboy when it comes to Yorgos Lanthimos. I haven’t seen all of his films (Dogtooth and The Killing of a Sacred Deer are still on my list), but every one of his works that I’ve taken in I’ve loved, particularly because of the absurdist satire, intentionally stilted dialogue, and fantastic performances. He’s genuinely weird and delightful in a way few filmmakers are, so I knew I’d see Bugonia eventually, especially since it seems he’s found twin muses in the likes of Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons, both of whom are always up for whatever deranged nonsense he’s got in mind (“furious jumping” is still my favorite euphemism).

That said, Bugonia is the first picture I’ve seen from him that’s just “okay.” It’s not badly made by any means, but it honestly doesn’t feel like a Yorgos Lanthimos film. A lot of his trademark touches are missing, the plot hinges on one of the more troublesome tropes in recent cinema history, and given that this is an English-language remake of a South Korean film that’s not that old (2003’s Save the Green Planet!), this kind of feels beneath him. It’s good, but given his output over the last decade, “good” almost feels like a failure.

Stone stars as Michelle Fuller, the CEO of a major pharmaceutical company. She’s depicted as assertive, brilliant, and take-no-prisoners in her corporate approach, which has led to massive profits. It’s clear that while she does have a different ethos to your typical modern-day captain of industry, she still engages in various forms of chicanery and takes comfort in the isolation her wealth and privilege allow.

On the opposite end is Teddy Gatz, an apiarist and conspiracy theorist, whose mother (Alicia Silverstone) was rendered comatose due to an experimental drug made by Michelle’s company, for which he also works as a shipping clerk. With the aid of his neurodivergent cousin Don (Aidan Delbis, making his film debut from a rare open casting call), Teddy hatches a scheme to kidnap Michelle and hold her in his basement until she confesses. Oh, I don’t mean about whatever her company did to Teddy’s mother, but to being an alien from the Andromeda galaxy.

The original film was directed by Jang Joon-hwan, and he was originally attached to helm the remake, and you can see more of his creative influence on all that follows than from Lanthimos. It was largely his decision to swap the gender of the CEO, for example. More importantly, the interrogations, back-and-forth arguments of the leads, and the eventual violence against Fuller feel more in line with a hard-nosed Korean thriller than a Lanthimos adventure into the insane. Gone is the staccato of typical line deliveries in favor of more histrionic readings. The biggest clue that these scenes are crafted by Lanthimos (who took over after Jang dropped out due to illness in 2020, temporarily shelving the project for four years) is in the set and camera designs, as well as his penchant for shifting power dynamics as the plot rolls on.

Stone and Plemons give their usual fine performances, and newcomer Delbis definitely has his moments, but it doesn’t fully coalesce for me, for two main reasons. The first is that Teddy is yet another conspiracy theorist protagonist, a trend that REALLY needs to stop. I mentioned this when I reviewed Zootopia 2, but it’s really becoming problematic. Look at the world around us. Look at the horrors unfolding in our streets and around the globe. So much of it comes down to bullshit conspiracy theories that persist because a) there are too many for the sane to debunk them all, and b) media consumption is so algorithmically tailored these days that those who view them are either too stupid or too far inside their own echo chambers to give them even the slightest degree of critical thought. Remember, Donald Trump got elected the first time because these societal cancers convinced enough people that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex trafficking ring out of a fucking pizza parlor. Now we have a 21st century Gestapo murdering people in broad daylight. And it’s only getting worse. It infuriates me that Hollywood is willing to treat these people as heroes, and it’s even more egregious when you consider that to make them the good guys, their batshit, incoherent ramblings have to be right, even though reality says that 99.999999999999999994% of them are dead flat wrong. To me, this is just as bad as the AI fight in media, where films like The Creator have the unmitigated gall to posit a conflict between humans and machines, and try to make us root for the machines. As great an actor as Plemons is, and he definitely plays crazy with the best of them, I can’t for one second get behind Teddy’s plight because of what he represents.

The second is that Stone, for the most part, plays this straight. There are a few moments after Michelle first wakes up in Teddy’s basement, covered in lotion with a shaved head, where she comments on the insanity and inanity of what’s going on around her. But after those few minutes pass, she engages Teddy throughout as if this is in any way serious, and it’s just not. Emma Stone has incredible range, and usually Yorgos Lanthimos is there to encourage her to just go nuts with what is clearly a lunatic proposition. But here, she surrenders her agency to operate on Teddy’s terms. Yes, she’s tied up and he has a gun, so she has to give a little for her own safety, but that doesn’t mean that one would, as Gandalf would say, abandon reason for madness. Any rational person, even under duress, would at least demand some proof from Teddy to back up his claims, some evidence that he’s anything but a psychopath, if nothing else than to buy time and give Don a reason for his eventual wavering. But no, she takes it basically at face value, presumably so that Lanthimos himself doesn’t have to show his hand until the dumbfounding finale.

I’m harping a lot on this, but I swear this is somehow still a good film. Sometimes the ridiculous premise pays dividends, especially once things start coming to their respective heads. Plemons’s finest acting is in how he uses his charisma to manipulate Don into self-mutilation, or to carry on casual conversations with co-workers who have no idea what he’s doing. There is one bit of climactic dark humor that genuinely made me guffaw because of how random it is. Lanthimos’s cinematic eye has not faltered, with Robbie Ryan providing expert camera work as always. Similarly, Jerskin Fendrix picks right back up from where he left off from Poor Things and Kinds of Kindness with another stellar score. All the elements are there. Even the screenplay works, although I don’t care for its themes.

This is a fine film. It’s just that, we all know Lanthimos is capable of so much more. He’s done more than enough to earn a mulligan. I just wish he’d take it on a movie that’s ambitiously bad, rather than one that’s decent but can’t quite get out of its own way, leaning more into shock value rather than legitimate commentary on conspiracies in general.

Grade: B-

F1 – AppleTV

Every year since the Best Picture field expanded in 2009, there’s been at least one movie that has absolutely no business being considered. This year, that movie is F1. I hesitate to even call it a movie at times. Really it’s a dick-measuring contest disguised as a feature-length advertisement, disguised as a movie. There are superlative production elements from a technical perspective, which saves this from the septic tank of 2025, but in the vast majority of cases, when I see a film, I care about character and plot above all else. If you can’t tell a good story, I don’t care how well you tell a bad one, and this is a VERY bad one.

This mid-life crisis committed to celluloid stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, who couldn’t be more Cole Trickle if he was wearing a skin suit of Tom Cruise. He’s a mercenary race driver, seen in the opening running as part of a three-man team at the 24 Hours of Daytona auto marathon. He used to be a Formula 1 driver, but his career never materialized. He’s clearly still skilled, but he has no interest in joining a team on a permanent basis. After he leads his crew to victory, he won’t even take the podium in celebration. He just takes his paycheck and moves on.

In a random laundromat, he’s approached by his old friend and former teammate, Rubén, played by Javier Bardem. Rubén is now the owner of a struggling F1 team that has a really good young driver named Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris), but they can’t get any results. After three years owning the team, if they can’t get at least one win in the final nine races of the current season, the corporate board will sell them and split up the assets. Rubén wants Sonny to join as their second driver in hopes of getting that elusive victory, and after the obligatory scene where Sonny adamantly says he won’t do it, he ends up joining, because as you’ll see, there are hardly any clichés this flick won’t turn into a crutch.

Sonny meets the team, including Joshua, who’s extremely cocky and more focused on the celebrity status that comes with being an F1 driver than with actually winning. He spends much of the early part of the story with Cashman (Samson Kayo), his cousin and manager, who cares only about social media engagement and stirring up interest for other teams to recruit Joshua once the APXGP (“Apex GP”) group is dissolved. There’s also Kate McKenna, who you can’t convince me wasn’t originally named Kate McKinnon and then forced to change, the chief engineer of the team. She’s played by Kerry Condon, and your heart will break as we watch her dignity and agency get slowly stripped away by the misogynistic script (officially written by Ehren Kruger, who gave us such illustrious works as the live action Ghost in the Shell and three Transformers sequels, but there were contributions from other noted scribes, including Aaron Sorkin, presumably for all the man-splaining scenes).

When Sonny arrives, he does what any swinging dick would do, and tells the whole team that everything they’re doing is wrong, that he’s smarter than the lot of them, and that their years of scientific knowledge and training are nothing compared to his instincts. Somehow, against all reason, it’s up to this otherwise woefully unqualified man in his 50s to whip the group into shape and outsmart the competition to get that all-important win, and maybe, just maybe, along the way he’ll realize why he races in the first place.

This is not a film. This is an unholy mashup of Days of Thunder and Cars 3, right down to the protagonist having a name that’s basically a weather pun (“Are you sunny or hazy?” asks Joshua in an INCREDIBLY painful scene midway through). They get through each grand prix not by any kind of technology or sound strategy, but by Sonny exploiting rules loopholes that don’t exist (if they did, why would no one else have tried them before now), intentionally wrecking other drivers at the risk of their lives and his own, and by literally re-engineering the cars that Kate has spent years fine-tuning. That she eventually sleeps with him is one of the more insulting elements in a story lousy with them. The best you can say is that these moments are ripoffs of Bull Durham, but that film is almost 40 years old, and in 2025 you have to do better.

Almost everything that Sonny does would get himself or others killed, but because he’s the lead, he has to be right, a slap in the face to the dedicated experts and professionals who dedicate their lives to the science of motorsports. It’s so disheartening that the only tired sports movie cliché this flick doesn’t employ is the death of the older mentor figure, because if they actually killed Sonny off, one of the other characters might actually experience some form of development. But there’s no universe where a living commercial like this ever has the balls to off Brad Pitt. It’s far more profitable to have a scene set in a Las Vegas resort hotel and have Pitt walk to the window so we can all see just who sponsored this segment, and to make sure that our black rookie can eventually come around by realizing his savior was white… er, right, all along.

This is a terrible story from beginning to end. The only saving graces are the racing segments, and even those are lacking at times. We get multiple exposition dumps about the rules being broken so that the various stops on the globe-trotting tour will have stakes. The side-by-side racing is exciting, but apart from the briefest of graphics, we have no idea of the geography of the track or the status of the grand prix itself, so the action is meaningless. There are some amazing practical effects when it comes to the filming and editing of the race maneuvers and crashes, with director Joseph Kosinski employing similar mounted cameras to the ones he used in Top Gun: Maverick to give us an immersive look inside the vehicles as they operate (only this time they’re scaled down to be iPhone compatible, because Apple), but once the race is over we cut back to interminable amounts of melodrama and entry-level dialogue. In a movie about a sport where speed is king, there’s no excuse for this to be two and a half hours long.

You may wonder why I’m hating on a film that has an 82% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Surely there’s actual quality here, right? Well, yes, there is. I just mentioned it. It’s the practical effects, cinematography, and editing of the races that make up approximately 15% of the runtime. Even then, the most impressive feat the movie accomplishes is arguably getting two f-bombs through while maintaining a PG-13 rating (three if you count the middle finger emoji Sonny texts someone before the final race on his iPhone, because Apple again). The rest is absolute garbage. If you don’t believe me, look at the reviews. Oh I don’t mean from the four-out-of-five critics who endorsed this, but from people actually in the know about the sport. Critiques from racing insiders – journalists, drivers, engineers, and even racing executives – range from calling the film entertaining nonsense to complete bunk. The fact that elite drivers like Max Verstappen made cameos in the film (Lewis Hamilton has a Producer credit) but refused to endorse it tells you all you need to know.

This is the very definition of polishing a turd. The entire exercise was crass capitalism meant to cash in on the sport’s current popularity, and a 150-minute advert was produced. An estimated $300 million was spent on the picture, and it made double that back, so who cares if it’s all bullshit, right? Well I care. There have been a ton of great racing movies over the years. This is not one of them. There have even been successful product-placement movies that have been genuinely fun, like The Lego Movie. This is not one of them. There have been literally hundreds of flicks that legitimately deserved Academy attention and consideration as the best of their year. This is not one of them. Then there are just movies that don’t make me want to drive into a wall at 200 MPH. This is not one of them.

Grade: D

Join the conversation in the comments below! Which of these films did you like best? Are any of them worthy of an Oscar? Where does Aunt Gladys rank among modern horror villains? Let me know! And remember, you can follow me on Twitter (fuck “X”) as well as Bluesky, subscribe to my YouTube channel for even more content, and check out the entire BTRP Media Network at btrpmedia.com!