December 2025 [22-28]
Superbad, The Talented Mr. Ripley, Anaconda, Zodiac, Gomorrah, Eddington
- Superbad [2007] - 61
Superbad, as its title might suggest, is super… Fine. Alright, so that isn’t what it suggests, but you came here on your own, so you have to deal with me now.
This 2007 high-school, coming of age comedy is one of those movies that lives deep within the zeitgeist of our culture at this point, and it’s something I wish I saw when it was new… Though I’m not entirely sure it would have hit me much different in the face of something like Napoleon Dynamite [2004], which both was and is more my style. Most of Superbad’s bits are pretty solid, with only a few bordering on not funny, but its overall story is severely hampered by both an exorbitant runtime and a major character who does nothing but detract from what the movie is actually about. I love the coming of age/ breaking of the sacred circle story, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with framing that tragedy through the lens of comedy, but I do think that Superbad gets so caught up in said comedy that it very quickly loses the thread of what could have been a more powerful [and equally funny] picture. While I absolutely understand the money and popularity that Fogel [McLovin] brought to the production, by cutting that character from the plot entirely and using [half] his screentime to further develop the relationship between our other two leads, Superbad goes from a raunchy gag-fest that’s vaguely about co-dependent buddies being split up by the march of time, to a hilarious journey through a pair of best friends’ final adventure together. This could have moved me like Richard Ayoade’s Submarine, made me laugh like the above-mentioned Napoleon Dynamite, or [for a very weird comparison] left me in a kind of strange silence like 1999’s The Virgin Suicides but, instead chose to shoot bit after bit at the screen, rather than focus on anything that actually matters once the credits roll.
Something something, more like Superfine… Wait, I already said that… 🖕
- The Talented Mr. Ripley [1999] - 72
Coming across my desk because of how much I liked 2023’s Saltburn, I’m not sure I entirely agree about the constant comparisons between these two movies. Yes, they’re both vaguely about the same thing — a spooky outsider infiltrating an aloof/ disconnected rich family — but I think their journeys are unique enough for each to be their own beast. Featuring performances from many names which have since become household — Jude Law, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Gwyneth Paltrow, Philip Seymour Hoffman — The Talented Mr. Ripley is… Good enough, but not terribly engaging. It’s a movie that kind of demands you consider how frightening its premise would be in the real world, but doesn’t do a ton to make you feel that on its own. Truly, were this a documentary, it’s a horrifying concept but, as a film, the gulf between reality and fiction demands a little more energy to cross than Anthony Minghella and crew put forward during this film’s very long runtime. The movie certainly isn’t bad, and I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone not to watch it, but I would absolutely recommend the above Saltburn, 2000’s American Psycho, or Fincher’s brilliantly adapted Gone Girl long before I suggested to commit 2-hours and 20-minutes to this experience.
- Anaconda [2025] - 63
And here to make everyone say “Cacciatoreviews doesn’t know anything about movies” is 2025’s entirely-out-of-left-field comedy-that-nobody-asked-for, Anaconda. With a fun cast and a zany “every 30-seconds is a new plot” plot, Tom Gormican [The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent] has dropped his latest film just in time for the holidays. I don’t know that this movie works without a healthy dollop of nostalgia for the original film and/or the actors in this one but, as someone who generally avoids comedies, I found this to be funny enough for the price of admission. This film mostly struggles because it exists in a world with Tropic Thunder, and the Venn diagram between the films’ similarities is practically a circle, but Tropic Thunder offers a lot more solid context, justification, and conclusion to its jokes than Anaconda does; something mostly important only if you like to sit and think about things after they happen which… For a movie like this doesn’t really matter that much. While it doesn’t always have the umpf or follow through that it needs, taken moment-to-moment, Anaconda is a fine little movie about buddies following their dreams, and was certainly funny enough to have made a worthwhile start to my Christmas day.
- Zodiac [2007] - 85
Another David Fincher on my list this year [following Seven and Gone Girl], Zodiac is just as artistically driven, tightly shot, and darkly honed as anything else he touches. Fincher is one of those directors that, even if you don’t particularly jive with whatever story he’s telling [The Killer, in my case], his style and flow is so wholly unique that you’re sure to walk away appreciative of the artistry he’s shown you. I always struggle with biopics like this, because I’m always left wondering “what really happened”, but the tale spun and the magnificence of the thread used to spin it here in Zodiac leaves me feeling largely satisfied… Even if that usual nag of mine is still there by the end. A long movie [2-hours and 37-minutes] that spans over a decade of real-world time, Zodiac requires a big of patience from its audience, but rewards that patience with excellent performances, thoughtful prose on the reality of situations like this, and an intense thriller that’s sure to leave your doors locked and shades drawn.
- Gomorrah [2008] - 74
One of those entries in my “to be watched” list whose origins are an utter mystery to me, Gomorrah is a movie about corruption, gang violence, and the fears communities surrounded by these things have to live with every day. A multi-plot film, Gomorrah tells five semi-intertwined tales about people either dealing with, or part of the Italian syndicate, Camorra. My afore[and oft]mentioned issue with dramas about real things aside, the most distracting and difficult thing about watching Gomorrah is that it offers almost no context to anything happening on screen. You fall into the flow of it all and figure out what’s happening just fine, but not offering any sort of primer for time-period, context for conflicting groups, or even a vague framework for political ideologies really makes this a sort of annoying film to jump into. All that said, its stories are important and frighteningly universal to the way these kinds of groups operate, and it’s overall interesting enough to make its 97-minutes onscreen feel very full.
- Eddington [2025] - 88
Oh Ari Aster, you satirical and horrifically insightful bitch, you’ve done it again. I’d like to write a full review on this one… But we know how that goes. To sum up my thoughts quickly, however, I think that Eddington is both Aster’s most intelligent and most flawed screenplay yet. It has a few too many pieces, but I love the way it creates a wonderfully strange, fisheyed look back at things we all experienced in 2020 — malforming them just enough for the sake of biting satire — while also creating a very uncomfortable parallax that really allows the viewer to create, reinforce, and argue for whatever their views on the situation are/ were using any given scene/ moment from the film as evidence. Aster has created a weirdly stanceless narrative regarding everything this film is about while simultaneously biting deep into the commentary apple and illuminating some truths that are frighteningly prescient for a film made throughout 2024, and likely written significantly before then. While I understand the universal 6’s Eddington is receiving from around the web, I actually think that’s an accolade to the very gray storytelling Aster has put together, and proves his point in a darkly exacting way.
