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We had a warm spell in Chicago this week, so I'm wearing a pair of Film Critic shorts to review four new movies in this week's capsule (short) movie reviews for Friday, February 21, 2025.
1) LAST BREATH
Last Breath is a well-meaning but ultimately unnecessary film. It's a remake of the 2019 documentary of the same name that director Alex Parkinson co-directed. And that documentary? It was fantastic.
It told the real-life story of a deep-sea diver's terrifying brush with death in an informative, suspenseful, and beautifully crafted way. It had extraordinary footage, authentic recordings, and a gripping structure, making it a tense, engaging watch.
On the other hand, this movie strips away the authenticity, flattens out the nuances, and turns a gripping true story into a two-dimensional, made-for-TV drama.
The story follows Chris Lemons (Finn Cole), who, along with fellow divers Duncan Allcock (Woody Harrelson) and David Yuasa (Simu Liu), is repairing an underwater structure in the North Sea when it catastrophically fails.
Their vessel's dynamic positioning system malfunctions, sending the divers adrift and eventually severing Lemons' umbilical tether. Suddenly, he's stranded 100 meters below the surface with only five minutes of air left.
Against all odds, he survives for 30 minutes before a desperate rescue attempt succeeds in bringing him back to the diving bell. It's a harrowing true story of survival, teamwork, and human resilience.
Yet, in this dramatic reimagining, it all feels oddly uninspired. The biggest problem is that the film takes real people—who were compelling in the documentary—and turns them into stock characters.
Woody Harrelson plays "The Old Guy," the seasoned veteran who's just days away from retirement. Simu Liu is "The Stoic Tough Guy" who keeps his emotions locked up tight. Finn Cole's Chris Lemons is reduced to "The Young Idealist," the fresh-faced diver with a loving fiancée (Bobby Rainsbury) waiting at home. Cliff Curtis plays "The Captain Who Must Make Tough Decisions." These individuals—who should feel real, layered, and compelling—are flattened into clichés.
To be fair, Last Breath isn't an incompetent film. The underwater sequences are well-shot, the tension in the diving scenes is effective, and the music swells at all the right moments. It looks great. It's just that there's no need for it.
The 2019 documentary told this story better and authentically. Bafflingly, this movie even borrows real footage from the documentary in its opening scene—almost as if to remind you that there's a better version of this story out there that you should probably watch instead.
I can't shake the feeling that this movie was made purely for commercial reasons. Woody Harrelson is a big name, Simu Liu has international appeal, and remaking a documentary as a dramatic feature is often a way to reach a wider audience.
But if this film does anything, I hope it drives people to seek out the original documentary instead. That version is gripping, intense, and emotionally powerful. This version? It's fine. It's professionally made. But it's also completely unnecessary.
So, I recommend skipping this movie and watching the 2019 documentary Last Breath instead. You'll get the real story, told in a way that's actually compelling, without all the Hollywood dramatization and clichéd character arcs. This remake is a polished but empty exercise in redundancy. - ⭐️⭐️
Plenty of movies use the whole "dead best friend who only the protagonist can see" gimmick. It's been done in different ways over the years—sometimes in comedies, sometimes in dramas, and sometimes as a mix of both. Hell, last year's My Old Ass played around with a similar idea.
And yet, My Dead Friend Zoe manages to turn that concept into something genuinely affecting, largely because of its powerhouse performances and thoughtful, deeply personal look at the struggles of military veterans.
Directed by Kyle Hausmann-Stokes, who based much of the story on his own experiences as a vet, this film is about more than just grief, ghosts, or the burden of the past.
It's about PTSD, the broken VA system, the struggle that so many vets go through after coming home, and the way personal trauma can impact families across generations. That's a lot to take on, but the movie mostly handles it well, even if the whole only-I-can-see-my-dead-friend thing wears a little thin after a while.
The story follows Merit (Sonequa Martin-Green), a U.S. Army veteran who's trying to piece her life together after Afghanistan. She's isolated, struggling with her past, and haunted—literally—by Zoe (Natalie Morales), her best friend who died in service.
Zoe pops up at all the wrong times, inserting herself into Merit's life, cracking jokes, and generally refusing to let Merit move on.
It's one of those stories where the protagonist is caught between their pain and those around them who are trying (but often failing) to help. There's the tough-love mother (Gloria Reuben), a VA group counselor (Morgan Freeman, in the kind of wise mentor role he can play in his sleep), and even a potential love interest.
But it's really Merit's estranged grandfather, Dale (Ed Harris), who forces her to reckon with everything she's been avoiding. Dale is a cranky, set-in-his-ways old man who's holed up at the family lake house, refusing help even as he starts to decline. The two are at odds, both scarred by life in different ways and that fractured family dynamic becomes the film's heart.
Now, let's talk about what works. First off, Martin-Green is phenomenal. She gives a deeply emotional, layered performance that makes you care about Merit even when she's pushing everyone away.
And Ed Harris—well, what else can you say about Ed Harris? The guy is just one of our great, no-bullshit actors. He plays Dale as tough and stubborn but also quietly wounded, and when the two of them are on screen together, the movie really sings. Their relationship is what grounds everything, and when the film leans into that rather than the overused imaginary dead friend cracking jokes thing, it's at its best.
That's not to say the Zoe character doesn't work. Natalie Morales is great, and her chemistry with Martin-Green is believable.
But the movie relies on the gimmick a little too much. If the filmmakers had dialed it back—used Zoe more sparingly, maybe as a voice rather than a constant presence—it might have had even more impact. Still, even with that issue, the film is emotionally effective.
Visually, Hausmann-Stokes keeps things simple, letting the performances do the heavy lifting. The humor—because yes, there's a good amount of it—is well-placed, balancing out the heavier moments without undercutting them. And unlike a lot of "issue movies" about veterans, this one doesn't feel like a PSA. It's personal. You can tell it comes from someone who gets it, and that makes all the difference.
So yeah, My Dead Friend Zoe might not be the most original film in terms of its structure, but it's a damn good one. It has a strong emotional core, great performances across the board, and a message that matters.
It's funny, touching, and occasionally frustrating when it leans too hard on its central gimmick, but in the end, it's a film worth seeing, especially for Martin-Green and Harris, who are just so good here. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️
3) RIFF RAFF
There's nothing more frustrating than a movie with all the right ingredients—an outstanding cast, a decent premise, and moments of inspired dark humor—only to squander them on a frustratingly familiar script and ultimately underwhelming.
That's Riff Raff, a crime comedy that desperately wants to be a mix of Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, and The White Lotus. Instead, it feels like a stitched-together pastiche of better films that loses steam by the time it shifts into what is essentially a one-room play in its final act.
Directed by Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints), Riff Raff stars Ed Harris as Vincent, a former criminal who's just trying to enjoy a quiet winter getaway with his wife Sandy (Gabrielle Union) before their son heads off to college.
That plan is upended when Vincent's estranged son Rocco (Lewis Pullman), his ex-wife Ruth (Jennifer Coolidge), and Rocco's very pregnant girlfriend Marina (Emanuela Postacchini) crash the vacation. And, of course, they're not just there to play nice—there's a deeper, darker reason for the reunion that slowly unfurls.
The movie starts as a quirky, dysfunctional family dramedy but then shifts gears into something more sinister when crime boss Leftie (Bill Murray) and his henchman Lonnie (Pete Davidson) arrive, turning it into a hostage thriller.
The problem? The tonal shift never really clicks. What starts off with potential—some funny moments, some darkly intriguing character dynamics—eventually becomes a stale, talky, unsuspenseful standoff that feels like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf meets Reservoir Dogs, but with none of the intensity, style, or wit of either.
Montiel's direction is stiff and uninspired. The first half of the movie is at least visually engaging, but once all the characters are stuck in a single location, it becomes frustratingly static.
A good "bottle episode" style story can work if the writing is sharp. The characters are dynamic enough to carry it—think Glengarry Glen Ross, Carnage, or even Succession when it bottles up its characters for an hour of vicious dialogue. But Riff Raff doesn't have that. Instead, it meanders.
The tension never builds, the stakes don't feel real, and the characters—while played by fantastic actors—are more caricatures than fully fleshed-out people.
And let's talk about that cast. This should have been a slam dunk. You've got Jennifer Coolidge, who is always delightfully weird and interesting, but the script doesn't give her much to do. Bill Murray seems like he's phoning it in, playing a crime boss who should be menacing but mostly just comes off as vaguely irritated.
Pete Davidson gets some moments of levity, but they feel forced. And Ed Harris—one of our greatest living actors—is wasted here when he could be doing something much better (like My Dead Friend Zoe, which came out this week and is a far superior showcase for his talent).
That's what makes Riff Raff so disappointing. There are moments that work, especially early on, when the film leans more into its dark comedy elements. But as it drags into its final act, where the characters are mostly just sitting in a room talking to each other while waiting for something to happen, the energy drains from the film entirely.
If you've seen any Tarantino, The Coen Brothers, or things like Inside Man, Knives Out, The White Lotus, or any number of dysfunctional family thrillers where old grudges bubble up in an enclosed space, you've seen Riff Raff—and you've seen it done better.
So, while the cast may have drawn you in, the movie itself doesn't give them enough material to make this worth recommending. A frustrating waste of talent and potential. - ⭐️⭐️
Superboys of Malegaon is a wonderful and inspiring film from India that celebrates the power of cinema, friendship, and the transformative magic of storytelling.
It's a film about dreamers, artists who create despite their circumstances, and how filmmaking can be both a unifying force and a challenging endeavor. Director Reema Kagti, making her first feature in quite a while, has crafted a heartfelt and compelling movie that is equal parts moving, funny, and deeply insightful.
The film follows Nasir Shaikh, an amateur filmmaker from the small town of Malegaon, where people turn to Bollywood films as an escape from the struggles of daily life.
Nasir, deeply inspired by the movies he grew up watching, decides to make a film for the people of Malegaon, by the people of Malegaon. He bands together a ragtag group of friends and fellow dreamers who share his passion and set out to bring his vision to life.
What unfolds is a touching and uplifting journey into the trials and triumphs of grassroots filmmaking and the inevitable conflicts and camaraderie that accompany it.
The film is based on the 2008 documentary Supermen of Malegaon, and while it carries over much of the real-life heart and humor from that story, it stands as a beautifully crafted narrative in its own right (unlike the other narrative film released this week that is also based on a documentary, the unnecessary and disappointing Last Breath).
One of the film's biggest strengths is its capture of the sheer dedication required to make a movie with limited means. Unlike today, where anyone with a smartphone can shoot a film, Superboys of Malegaon takes place in 1997 in rural Western India, a time and place where every step of the filmmaking process was an uphill battle.
The film shines in portraying this struggle—whether scraping together money for equipment, battling unpredictable weather, or simply convincing skeptical community members that their endeavor is worthwhile.
But more than just a film about filmmaking, Superboys of Malegaon is a story of resilience and passion. It explores themes of artistic integrity, the commercialization of art, and the sacrifices one must make to bring a vision to life.
Kagti and her team do a terrific job of balancing the joyful, comedic elements with a deeper examination of India's cultural and political landscape at that time.
The film doesn't shy away from the social issues that shape the characters' lives—issues of class, communal tensions, and the ever-present weight of expectations in a small-town setting.
Beyond its thematic depth, the film also serves as a tribute to guerrilla filmmaking and the power of collaborative art. Anyone who has ever tried to create something with a group of people—be it a band, a theater production, or an independent film—knows that artistic collaboration can be both exhilarating and deeply frustrating.
Superboys of Malegaon perfectly captures that dynamic, showing how tensions rise when artistic visions clash and how friendships can be strengthened and tested in the process.
On a technical level, the film is beautifully shot and well-acted. The cast brings warmth and authenticity to their roles, making the characters feel real and relatable. The cinematography effectively captures both the vibrancy and the struggles of Malegaon, immersing the audience in the world of these ambitious young filmmakers. The script is sharp, filled with humor, heart, and a genuine love for cinema.
In the end, Superboys of Malegaon is a film that radiates passion and creativity. It's a story about people who love movies so much that they are willing to go to any lengths to make one of their own. It's about how art can inspire, unite, and challenge.
Ultimately, it celebrates the magic that happens when people come together to create something bigger than themselves.
If you love movies, stories about underdogs chasing their dreams, or want to watch something that will leave you with a smile on your face, Superboys of Malegaon is absolutely worth your time. - ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
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