Netflixable? Koreans face Doomsday — “The Great Flood”

Posted on December 22, 2025 by Roger Moore

Preppers, survivalists, Rapture fans and doomsday cultists may get a kick out of “The Great Flood,” a downbeat-to-the-point-of-bleak thriller about the End of Human Civilization.

A young Korean mother (Kim Da-Mi) carries her six year-old (Kwon Eun-sung) up several flights of their Seoul high-rise. They swim through rapidly rising waters, duck tidal waves, elbow past and around the shocked and the concerned but not panicked and the faithful re-assuring each other that the disaster around them is “God’s will.” She’s been singing along with undisciplined and on-the-spectrum-needy Ja-in as she tries to hide the terror in her eyes.

But that security guy (Park Hae-soo) from her workplace who called? The one looking for her so that she can be helicoptered off the roof? He doesn’t sentimentalize, soft-sell, sugar-coat or break-it-to-her gently.

“Humanity is doomed.”

Dogged determination in the face of hopelessness is the byword in writer-director Kim Byung-woo’s thriller, which is meant to be an action essay in the core compassion of humanity. “Abandon hope all ye who enter here” may suit the mood this film sets. But keeping calm and carrying on is a hard ethos to shake when the stakes are this high.

In cinematic short hand, “Great Flood” is a riff on Korea’s Oscar contender of a few year’s back, “Concrete Utopia,” mashed-up with the Tom Cruise-dies-again-and-again thriller “Edge of Tomorrow,” set in a present day end times of “2012.”

There are “Titanic” moments in the rising waters in confined spaces, the floating corpses and terror of those swept away, and grace notes of an elderly couple facing the end together.

But our writer-director (“The Terror Live” was his) pushes sentiment aside time and again, often to the film’s detriment. Because this disaster movie with a sci-fi subtext is about racing to make AI work as a means of humanity’s survival.

Our mother figure, Dr. Gu, has been researching, hard-wiring and programming the Emotion Engine. She doesn’t quite have it cracked, but in this “Edge of Tomorrow/Matrix” doomsday, she might break through as she tries thousands of ways to live this doomsday differently.

Will she save herself or not, save this child or others or not, help neighbors or not, fend off murderous looters rather than simply fleeing?

This cynical, unemotional, “just following orders” security guy will hinder, help, criticize and judge her efforts to cycle through every possible scenario, like the computer in “War Games” which has to try every version of tic-tac-toe to figure out if winning a nuclear war is possible. Her T-shirt changes numbers on its logo with every iteration she tries.

For all its stunning visuals — large scale disaster, vivid underwater survival scenes and grim flashbacks to a trauma from Dr. Gu and the child’s past — “The Great Flood” never crosses the threshold from watchable to relatable, a movie with characters we can identify with and an end goal that gives anybody hope.

The plot and performances are dispassionately rational to a fault. Kim might as well have made ‘We have to SAVE bit coin!” the big payoff.

That may just be a Western perspective on Eastern views of civilization, humanity and time. Or maybe I’m just not into “bleak” in humanity’s current timeline. But Kim creates an intentional emotional distance with his characters by dehumanizing them.

Odd moving moment aside, “Great Flood” is “Planet of the Apes” with a digital “Damn you all to hell” finality, “Titanic” without a Jack and Rose to root for, without Celine singing us into enduring the unendurable.

If the human heart can’t “go on,” what the hell’s the point?

Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity

Cast: Kim Da-mi, Park Hae-soo and Kwon Eun-sung

Credits: Directed by Kim Byung-woo, scripted by Kim Byung-woo with Moises Velasco. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:48

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Movie Preview: Jessica Chastain’s met the Dancer of her “Dreams”

Posted on December 21, 2025 by Roger Moore

An erotic thriller about a child of privilege, the rich director of the family foundation, becoming besotted with a charity case — an immigrant dancer from Mexico.

Oscar winner Chastain consistently makes some of the most interesting choices of any actress who got that “Oscar winner” cachet added to her resume.

Isaac Hernández plays the object of her obsession, with Rupert Friend also in the cast of this Feb. 27 release.

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Movie Review: “Avatar: Fire and Ash” and Dazzling Tedium

Posted on December 19, 2025 by Roger Moore

James Cameron was very much running out of interesting things to say and show in his “Avatar” franchise with the second movie, “Avatar: The Way of Water.”

The third film, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” confirms that fear and adds on a dose of dread for good measure. On no, the 70something sci-fi impressario has two more “Avatars” in the works?

And as often as the latest film pauses to show us this or that mode of travel — riding Pandora’s version of pterodactyls through the skies over this lush lunar ecosystem, clinging to the fins of sentient, hunted Pandora whales under the sea — will Disney be able to make rides simulating the experience that would be a draw?

The three-hour-plus spectacle of “Fire and Ash” trips over itself, start to finish. Our killable villains (Stephen Lang plays their leader) keep surviving in Avatar form, keep catching “Sully” (Sam Worthington, who hasn’t gotten better with the years) and ineplicably letting this “traitor” Marine who’s “gone native” escape.

There’s still more mineral and animal exploitation by the corporate “Sky People” from Earth who mine it, hunt its whales and are building a bubble city as a colony, since no one on Earth can breath the planetoid’s poisonous atmosphere. But the villains (Giovanni Ribisi, Edie Falco and Lang) seem kind of half-hearted about their efforts this time.

The marine biologist (Jemaine Clement, never worse) who warns of the complexity of the eco-system they’re pillaging is no more convincing this time.

Jake Sully and his tall, thin and ferocious Na’vi “woman” (Zoe Saldaña) are still mourning their lost son, half-blaming their surviving son and somewhat appalled that the orphan Sky People lad (Jack Champion) they’ve taken in, the weakest link in their family (he’s short, human and has to wear an oygen mask) is magically enabled to breathe Pandoran air.

If humans can breathe, it won’t be long before they overpopulate and pollute that air and kill off the natives.

And there’s a new Na’vi tribe lead by a warrior/conjure woman (nepo baby and grandbaby Oona Chaplin) who hunts humans and weaker Na’vi alike.

“Show me how to make THUNDER,” she demands of the Earthlings and their automatic weapons.

Yes, there are chases and firefights and battles, captures and escapes. No, there’s no allegory connecting all that to the awful state of the Earth right now save for the fuzzy environmentalism being ignored.

“World building” is the priority here. Think VR marketabilty. Think Disney World. That certainly figured into the screenplay.

The mystical Authurian mumbo jumbo about the people, the plants and the planet being “one” is hinted at time and again, mostly in the filler scenes between brawls. The eco-system fights back theme is more overt, as are calls for pacifism.

But “Avatar” wouldn’t be much of an action movie if pacifism caught on. It’s not much of one as it is.

The novelty of Signourney Weaver playing a teenage-voiced CGI version of herself as a Na’vi/human clone wears off quickly. But the CGI blends so much more smoothly in this film that Champion — as a human only seen in human form — is plainly acting and interacting with the CGI/motion captured players he shares scenes with so naturally that we don’t notice the technology.

It’s just that the performances have run out of human and digital gas. Even the over-acting is wooden, and bits intended as humorous suggest that Cameron’s been on the soundstage and mo-cap green screen stage too long to remember what funny looks and sounds like out in the real world.

The story is boring, and dragging it out for over three hours will only make it tolerable when it hits streaming.

“No dear, don’t pause it while I duck into the kitchen to whip up some Eggs Benedict. I’m sure I won’t miss anything.”

I’d suggest waiting until this streams, or becomes a theme park ride. All this world-building is pretty much coming to naught in movie form.

Cameron’s run out of interesting things to show and tell us, and Goddess Eywa knows I’ve run out of things to say about “Avatar.”

Rating: PG-13, violence, nudity, profanity

Cast: Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Stephen Lang, Cliff Curtis, Sigourney Weaver, Jemaine Clement, Jack Champion, David Thewlis, Giovanni Ribisi, Kate Winslet and Oona Chaplin.

Credits: Directed by James Cameron, scripted by James Cameron, Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver. A 20th Century release.

Running time: 3:17

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Movie Review: Seyfried’s the House Mistress, Sydney Sweeney’s “The Housemaid”

Posted on December 19, 2025 by Roger Moore

Sydney Sweeney’s fans will come to the “The Housemaid” for the nudity and the explicit sex. Or so the cleavage-crammed advertising for this thriller would suggest the studio believes.

But they’ll stay for the violence, the twists, the climax and anti-climaxes spoiled by redundant voice-over-narration for dummies?

That said, I wouldn’t be shocked if this Paul Feig thriller — he did the scheming women “Simple Favor” pictures — touched a nerve and found an audience, any more than I wasn’t shocked at the sight of co-star Amanda Seyfriend acting circles around last year and this year’s “It” girl.

Sweeney, playing an unemployed young woman living in her car and desperate enough to endure a job that features humiliation and the threat of worse from the rich, privileged pricks who hired her, brings everything but “desperate” to her performance. Her bland wariness gives away the suspense this picture needs almost as much as a better title.

Letting actors/actresses read to the very end of the script isn’t always the best idea.

The job interview with Mrs. Winchester (Seyfried) makes it seem like a done deal. Nina even confesses to job prospect Millie that the one child she’d be expected to care for, along with cooking and cleaning and errands, will soon be joined by another. She hasn’t even told her husband, she confesses with widened eyes.

But hell, she hasn’t finished interviewing job prospects either. And when husband Andrew (Brandon Sklenar of TV’s “1923”) walks in, he’s surprised about the whole “live in” housemaid thing.

Something’s a little “off” in eager-to-confide Nina and “hot mess” doesn’t begin to do it justice.

Millie? She’s got secrets, and that appointment she isn’t allowed to miss tips us off. It’s with her probation officer.

The mystery unravels as a “Who’s playing with whom” tale, with testy Nina flipping out over perceived failings and hurling blame for everything that goes wrong at Millie, who — being “desperate” — just has to take these mind games and manipulations.

He’s awfully nice to her, but Millie should also be wary of the hunky, rich husband of the manor. If he’s seducing her in her dreams, that’s fair warning.

She opens up about her predicament in the voice-over narrated diary her probation officer insists she keep. No, not one line of that narration– which runs the length of the movie — is pithy enough to be quotable.

As the script (based on a Rebecca Sonnenshine novel) gropes around for suspense it stumbles through deliberate blind alleys and assorted “surprise twists.” The whole second half of this long-film-that-plays-longer is so clumsily structured that it generally spoils the vengeful fun.

Seyfried takes up the challenge of pairing-up with Sweeney with a manic bravado that overwhelms Sweeney’s perpetual poker face. Elizabeth Perkins might have taken a few sips of battery acid between takes to dial up the cruel, imperious, judgmental mother-in-law whom nobody in the house, except for her son, can please.

Indiana Elle plays Cece, the snotty little girl of the house who channels her granny as she holds “the help” to her seven year-old standards, even when it comes to morning orange juice.

“Juice is a privilege. Not something you drink out of a dirty glass.“

There’s promise to this or that character and in the twists that almost certainly played better in the novel than Feig manages on screen. Anything promising is squandered in a pokey, obvious movie that stumbles towards stupid in the anti-climactic latter acts.

As star vehicles go, “The Housemaid” doesn’t do Sweeney any more favors than the flops “Eden,” “Christy” or “Echo Valley” did. Two years into top billed stardom, and her best work is still the TV series (“Euphoria,” “White Lotus,” “The Handmaid’s Tale”) that first made her a sex symbol, star and allegedly a name you can market your movie under.

We’ll have to wait and see if this sells tickets. But in the meantime, our workaholic star should take a minute, eyeball her bland performance(s) and hunt up some coaching. Her resume is lengthening — for now — but her range and craft aren’t growing. And sex appeal in the movies has a very short shelf life.

Rating: R, violence, explicit sex, nudity and profanity

Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Sydney Sweeney, Brandon Sklenar and Elizabeth Perkins

Credits: Directed by Paul Feig, scripted by Rebecca Sonnenshine, based on the novel by Freida McFadden. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 2:11

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It’s an “Avatar” afternoon

Posted on December 18, 2025 by Roger Moore

Let’s see if there’s anything to see or make a fuss about.

Interesting way for James Cameron to spend his filmmaking capital and his last years as a major director, in any event.

As the pre show ads are playing on a blank screen, it’s not looking good.

Oscar winner Zoe Saldana, the hardest working woman in show business, is why we keep coming back.

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Movie Preview: Remembering “Jimmy” Stewart’s Combat Service in WWII

Posted on December 18, 2025 by Roger Moore

KJ Apa does a pretty fair imitation of Hollywood legend Jimmy Stewart, who took a break from the movies to pilot a bomber in the fight against Nazis in WWII.

The recognizable supporting players — Jason Alexander, Rob Riggle, Max Casella, Neal McDonaugh and Christopher McDonald — don’t exactly scream “BIG BUDGET” any more than the digital B-24s in this teaser trailer.

Not sure who will be releasing it, but I suspect it’s Angel Studios or some other distributor’s faith-based nameplate.

This hits theaters next November.

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Movie Preview: Crikey, Hugh Jackman’s been murdered — “The Sheep Detectives” are On the Case!

Posted on December 18, 2025 by Roger Moore

Emma Thompson and Patrick Stewart co-star in this Big Time “Babe” vibes murder mystery comedy.

Julia Louis Dreyfuss, Regina Hall, Bryan Cranston and Chris O’Dowd provides voices for the sheep.

May 8.

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Classic Film Review: Lost in the Lush Longueurs of “Paris, Texas”(1984)

Posted on December 17, 2025 by Roger Moore

One has learned to temper one’s expectations when settling in to watch any Palme d’Or winner from the Cannes Film Festival over the years. One has.

A “best picture” honor selected by an ever-changing jury of filmmaking peers from all over the world, the politics and peer review that tends, often as not, to honor obscurity and/or indulgence make one leery of that “Palme d’Or Winner” label.

“Wild at Heart,” “Eternity and a Day,” “The Tree of Life,””The Birds, the Bees and the Italians” and “The Square” anyone?

The best I typically hope for from your average Palme d’Or winner is “I don’t mind the way it passes the time.”

One has to generally set a lot of time aside for any Wim Wenders film, seeing as how he tried to get a five hour cut of “Until the End of the World” into theaters (he didn’t) among other abuses of the clock. So “Paris, Texas” also has that weighing into my years of skipping past it.

But Wenders’ leisurely 1984 meditation on the American landscape, toxic relationships and the profound pull of love has been newly-restored. It’s the movie that “made” veteran bit player Harry Dean Stanton into an indie icon and is also memorable for a great supporting performance by Nastassja Kinski.

So problematic and dated gender politics aside, its famously indulgent twenty minute duel monologues climax and that Palme d’Or caveat emptor be damned. It must be seen, if only for the lonesome Sam Shephard screenplay and the striking way Curaçao native Robby Müller (“Breaking the Waves”) filmed grand Western vistas and the seedy and sandy side of Texas.

Our silent protagonist (Stanton) emerges from the wilderness in a red cap, sunburned beard, shoes worn down to sandals and a suit that was last fashionable in the ’50s and last cleaned not long after that.

He faints in a roadside/desert edge Terlingua, Texas bar, and the only ID the brusque, stogey-smoking German Mennonite doctor (Bernhard Wicki) can find on him is a business card with a California phone number.

That’s how Walt Henderson (Dean Stockwell) learns his brother Travis isn’t dead. Four years missing, four years in the wilderness when even Jesus limited himself to just 40 days, Walt is shocked. But he flies in and navigates his way to remote Terlingua in that pre-GPS stone age. Even he can’t get Travis to talk, or to stop walking off every chance he gets.

Walt eventually gets the never-flown/never-will Travis home to L.A. where the wandering brother gets requainted with Walt’s wife (Aurore Clément) and with their son. But Hunter (Hunter Carson) is actually Travis’ son.

As Travis starts talking and sounding more rational and the kid adjusts to his presence, Travis resolves to do something that might explain why he took his sojourn in the wilderness. He and Hunter will load up his old Ford Ranchero and track down the lad’s mom.

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Movie Review: You Can’t Go Home Again, “Blue Eyed Girl”

Posted on December 17, 2025 by Roger Moore

Realistic mid-life concerns and life reassessments earn a drab and generally colorless going over in “Blue Eyed Girl,” a dramedy with little real drama and even less comedy.

Actress Marissa Coughlan, taking that “Write something for you to star in” film actor’s maxim to heart, scripted this and stars as Jane, a struggling 40something actress in LA summoned home to Minneapolis by her aged father’s latest suicide attempt.

Going “home” to cope with Dad’s (Beau Bridges) depression and consult with her sisters (Elia Coupe, Bridey Elliott) means bumping into her high school flame (Sam Trammell). After sizing each other up — “You make a good grown-up!” — the once-smittens brush by the “hard” question left over from their “angsty youth.”

“So why aren’t we?”

“Aren’t we what?”

“Married to each other.”

There’s wistful promise in Dad’s mournful sadness and his bonding with his just-as-sad nurse (screen veteran LisaGay Hamilton). And the bickering/bonding sisters — Alex (Coupe) is an “I recommend marrying rich” trophy with a house on a private island on of of those “10,000 lakes” in Minnesota, the youngest Cici (Elliott) is a 30something Renaissance Faire “queen” with all the ambition (or lack of it) that entails — have possibilities. Especially when it comes to putting each other down.

About Jane’s limited acting success — she’s in a group of foley (human sound effects) artists who provide crowd noise for movie scenes — “At some point, don’t you have to just call it,” as in call the code on a “career” that’s never happening?

The dizzy Renaissance Faire flake? “She’s 35 going on 14.”

As the what-might-have-been romance is a bland non-starter, other story threads merited more screen time. Renaissance Faire folk are always good for a laugh, and the subculture of actors scraping by with voice-only gigs of every stripe has rarely been explored.

But most everything here is skimmed over, from the crisis (never treated as such) with their father to the second-guessing marriage to a failing writer (Freddy Rodriguez).

Dad may be depressed, but he’s still a sage when it comes to fathering

“Don’t trade in a faded portrait for true love.”

This Minneapolis movie has only the barest whiffs of the city about it. One doesn’t expect Minnesota cliches and “Don’chaknow” stereotypes, necessarily. But this picture could have been filmed and cast most anywhere, with the odd insert of a house on an island in a lake shot.

The entire enterprise is as bloodless as it is colorless.

As it was originally titled “Days When the Rains Came” and “Brown-Eyed Girl” was what beau Harrison used to call blue-eyed Jane back in the day, there must have been hope that they could afford the rights to Van Morrison’s over-used movie-friendly tune “Brown-Eyed Girl.”

That didn’t happen, and it’s just as well. It wouldn’t have helped.

Rating: 16+, adult themes, language

Cast: Marisa Coughlan, Elia Coupe, Sam Trammell, LisaGay Hamilton, Bridey Elliott, Freddy Rodriguez and Beau Bridges

Credits: Directed by J. Miles Goodloe, scripted by Marisa Coughlan. A Quiver release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:37

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Movie Review: Mexico’s Oscar hope — “We Shall Not be Moved (No nos moverán)”

Posted on December 16, 2025 by Roger Moore

Dostoyevsky’s obsession with the unpunished murderers walking among us weighs heavily on the politics of the present.

Criminals whose crimes against people, nations and the rule of law are committed in plain sight or proven in court roam free.

People are vanishing in what can only be called gulags in Africa, Central America, Texas and Florida. .

Unaccountable, illegal and lawless “law enforcement” rounds up people — citizens and immigrants — injuring many, killing some and “disappearing” others. Soldiers are unleashed on civilians from Ukraine to Gaza and the streets of American cities as political and racial revenge.

And the citizens of nations spiraling down totalitarian rabbit holes draw little comfort from the attempts at “Truth and Reconcilliation” commisions in South Africa, Chile, Argentina and Northern Ireland. Merely exposing crimes and attempting to move on — even with attempts at “reparations” — will never be enough for many.

For some, the chance to “exact retribution” for what they’ve suffered is all they cling to.

Mexico’s submission to the Best International Feature competition for the 98th Academy Awards speaks to this moment and that fervent desire for revenge.

“We Shall Not be Moved” is a grim, patient drama about a survivor of Mexico’s Dirty War against students and dissent. Pierre Saint-Martin’s “No nos moverán” (in Spanish, with English subtitles) is about an aged attorney seeking a sort of “Death and the Maiden” closure.

Socorro Castellanos — played byLuisa Huertas — is an old woman now, a chain-smoker living with her silent, sullen and widowed sister, dabbling in just enough pro bono work to remind her of the struggles for justice that have consumed her life.

There’s a worn photograph that Soco holds onto, a snapshot taken by grinning goons in uniform as they tortured and killed her brother, Coque, back in the ’60s. Soco muses on how they first killed Coque, “then my Dad, and then my mom” who died alone in the hospital, each of them broken and eaten up with what happened to her brother and the fact that no one was punished for this state-sanctioned crime against humaity.

“We Shall Not Be Moved” begins with what’s in a long-delayed delivery of a package from a now-dead acquaintance. Over fifty years later, Soco finally has a name to go with one of those smiling, ghoulish faces.

It’s not “justice” she seeks. There’ll be no accusation, no public trial.


“Justice in this country is for the rich and those in power,” she advises a couple trying to settle a debt with a lendor. “Retribution,” “an eye for an eye” is what she has in mind for this Juan Antonio Agundez who murdered her brother.

The narrative is about how an old woman with some connections — mostly with the elderly or retired, like her — who tries to get her revenge and just how complicated that might be.

“Revenge thrillers” are typically a glib genre, making the idea of righting a personal wrong look easy, righteous and rewarding. “We Shall Not Be Moved” upends some of those conventions.

It has its Chekhov’s Gun, which is an old and under-maintained pistol that won’t scare anyone.

There’s Soco’s ex-con building maintenance man Sidartha (José Alberto Patiño) who may be sketchy and loyal, but is nobody’s idea of a killer for hire. Maybe a more shadowy (Alberto Trujillo) from her legal past can be tracked down.

Soco’s son Jorge (Pedro Hernández) and his Argentine wife Lucia (Agustina Quinci) buy her groceries and look out for her. She won’t trouble her unemployed journalist son. But there is a little something Lucia can do to pitch in.

As others are enlisted and wheels set in motion Soco sees a white pigeon that shows up as a “sign” that Coque is watching over her efforts. But Soco also has to stare down the collateral damage she’s causing and ponder the ripple effects of revenge.

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