Tag: movie

Frankenstein

2025   Netflix

Rated:  R

Length:  2 hr  29min

Epic ~ Gothic Drama ~ Fantasy ~ Gothic Horror ~ Sci-Fi

Directed by:  Guillermo del Toro

Starring:  Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, David Bradley, Lars Mikkelsen, Christian Convery, Charles Dance, and Christoph Waltz.

Life sparked. Death unleashed.

Only Monsters Play God.

In 1857, the Arctic ice traps a Danish expedition vessel whose crew discovers Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) badly wounded on the frozen wasteland. Victor warns them of a powerful Creature (Jacob Elordi) hunting him relentlessly. Inside the warmth of the Captain’s cabin, Victor begins to tell his harrowing story, a tale of ambition and loss that led to this desperate moment.

Victor grew up under the stern hand of his father, Baron Frankenstein (Charles Dance), and the death of his beloved mother (Mia Goth) left deep scars. Encouraged by grief and driven by an obsessive desire to conquer death, Victor pursues radical medical experiments. With funding from an arms dealer, Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), Victor creates a gruesome but brilliant new life form, hoping it will change humanity forever.

Victor’s creation, part man, part monster, is awakened amid a storm and darkness, but the being’s emergence unleashes consequences Victor had never imagined. The Creature struggles to understand its own existence while Victor wrestles with guilt and fear. Around them, loyalties and betrayals form, as Elizabeth (Mia Goth), Victor’s love interest, and William (Felix Kammerer), his brother, navigate the tangled web Victor’s ambition has spun.

As Victor’s world spirals into chaos, the bond between creator and creation becomes more complicated and threatening. The story explores themes of family pain, societal rejection, and the dangerous thirst for power, all set amid the haunting grandeur of Victorian-era landscapes. This is not just a monster story, it is a deeply emotional and dark journey of both man and what he dares to create. Del Toro’s Frankenstein stands as a towering epic in monster cinema, a visually stunning and emotionally resonant reimagining of Mary Shelley’s classic tale. Del Toro’s signature style shines through in every frame, blending dark gothic horror with profound humanity and complex character dynamics.

Oscar Isaac delivers a commanding and layered performance as Victor Frankenstein, capturing the scientist’s obsessive brilliance and profound torment. Jacob Elordi’s Creature is both terrifying and tragically sympathetic, bringing depth to the monstrous figure beyond mere horror iconography. Mia Goth impressively anchors dual roles with nuance and intensity, embodying pivotal influences on Frankenstein’s psyche. Christoph Waltz’s portrayal of the calculating Henrich Harlander adds a sinister sophistication to the narrative. Overall, the ensemble cast elevates Del Toro’s monstrous creation, making this Frankenstein an unforgettable cinematic journey that balances spectacle with deeply felt performances.

Turn off the lights and devices,

Make some popcorn,

Grab a beverage,

and Stream This Movie

on Netflix!

The Alto Knights Coming To Amazon Prime Friday November 7, 2025

From Warner Bros. Pictures, “The Alto Knights” stars Academy Award winner Robert De Niro in a dual role, directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Barry Levinson.

The film follows two of New York’s most notorious organized crime bosses, Frank Costello (De Niro) and Vito Genovese (De Niro), as they vie for control of the city’s streets. Once the best of friends, petty jealousies and a series of betrayals place them on a deadly collision course that will reshape the Mafia (and America) forever.

“The Alto Knights” was written by Oscar nominee Nicholas Pileggi (“Goodfellas”) and produced by Oscar winner Irwin Winkler (“Rocky,” “Goodfellas”), Levinson, Jason Sosnoff, Charles Winkler and David Winkler, with Mike Drake executive producing.

De Niro stars alongside Debra Messing (“Will & Grace”), Cosmo Jarvis (“Shōgun”), Kathrine Narducci (“The Irishman”), Michael Rispoli (“Billions”), Michael Adler (“Peppermint”), Ed Amatrudo (“Till,” “Nashville”), Joe Bacino (“Kick-Ass”), Anthony J. Gallo (“The Irishman”), Wallace Langham (“Ford v Ferrari”), Louis Mustillo (“Cooper’s Bar,” “Mike & Molly”), Frank Piccirillo, Matt Servitto (“Billions”) and Robert Uricola (“Raging Bull”).

Joining Levinson (“Rainman,” “Dopesick”) behind the camera are Oscar-nominated director of photography Dante Spinotti (“The Insider,” “L.A. Confidential”), production designer Neil Spisak (the “Spider-Man” films, “Dopesick”), Oscar-nominated editor Douglas Crise (“Babel,” “Dopesick”), Oscar-nominated costume designer Jeffrey Kurland (“Bullets Over Broadway,” “Tenet”), award-winning casting director Ellen Chenoweth (“Past Lives”) and composer David Fleming (“Hillbilly Elegy,” “Mr. & Mrs. Smith”).

The Alto Knights streams on Amazon Prime Friday November 7, 2025.

New Movie Frankenstein Debuts On Netflix Friday November 7, 2025

Netflix Debuts Frankenstein Friday November 7, 2025.

FROM NETFLIX TUDUM:

In Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein — inspired by Mary Shelley’s seminal 1818 novel of the same name — tortured genius Victor Frankenstein (Golden Globe-winner Oscar Isaac) views his creation (played by BAFTA-nominee Jacob Elordi) as a monstrous experiment. But, for the movie’s director and writer, Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro, the Creature, as Frankenstein’s monster is known, is something much more holy — he’s his “patron saint.” Del Toro has been entranced by the Creature since his childhood in Mexico.

“I’ve lived with Mary Shelley’s creation all my life,” Del Toro tells Tudum. “For me, it’s the Bible. But I wanted to make it my own, to sing it back in a different key with a different emotion.”

Now, his vision has been realized. Ahead of its Nov. 7 premiere on Netflix, Frankenstein debuted at the Venice Film Festival on Aug. 30. The date also happens to be Shelley’s birthday, which is fittingly called “Frankenstein Day.” To honor the momentous occasion, del Toro is ready to give a peek inside his definitive retelling of Shelley’s classic, his follow-up to Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film.

“Mary Shelley’s masterpiece is rife with questions that burn brightly in my soul: existential, tender, savage, doomed questions that only burn in a young mind and only adults and institutions believe they can answer,” Del Toro explains. “For me, only monsters hold the secrets I long for.”

But, Frankenstein asks, who is the real monster?? The sprawling epic follows Victor, a brilliant, ego-driven scientist, as he embarks on a quest to bring new life into this world. The Creature is the result; his very existence provokes questions about what it means to be a human,  a creator, a creature — a father and a son — to crave love and seek understanding. Both Victor and the Creature aim to answer those mysteries and search for meaning in a world that can seem quite mad.

However, the frenzy of humanity isn’t the only feeling Del Toro found in Shelley’s work. “The book has a lot of anxiety — the anxiety that you get when you’re an adolescent, and you don’t understand why everybody lies about the world,” Del Toro says. He aimed to capture that anxiety by translating “the rhythms of Mary Shelley” for the screen. “When English is your second language, you are trained very acutely to the melody and the rhythms of a language,” he continues. “It has a particular rhythm, the dialogue in the book. I tried to make the dialogue be like that without sounding archaic.”

In fact, Del Toro was passionate about maintaining the modernism of Frankenstein in all aspects of the movie, which is set in 19th-century Europe. “When [Shelley] wrote Frankenstein, it was not a period piece. It was a modern book, so I didn’t want you to see a pastel-colored period piece,” he explains. Instead, the director favored swaggering fashions for Victor and styles that are “luscious and full of color.”

Del Toro hopes his Frankenstein stays with viewers as long as the Creature has resided in his own heart. “May monsters inhabit your dreams and give you as much solace as they have given me, for we are all creatures lost and found,” he says.

See Guillermo del Toro’s complete fantasy come to life when Frankenstein arrives on Netflix Nov. 7.

New Movie Ballad Of A Small Player Debuts On Netflix Wednesday October 29, 2025

Ballad of a Small Player is a 2025 British psychological thriller film directed by Edward Berger and written by Rowan Joffé, based on the 2014 novel The Ballad of a Small Player by Lawrence Osborne.

Colin Farrell stars as Lord Doyle, a man laying low in Macao, spending his days and nights on the casino floors, drinking heavily and gambling what little money he has left. Struggling to keep up with his fast-rising debts, he is offered a lifeline by the mysterious Dao Ming (Fala Chen), a casino employee with secrets of her own. However, in hot pursuit is Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton), a private investigator ready to confront Doyle with what he is running from. As Doyle tries to climb to salvation, the confines of reality start to close in.

 

The Woman In Cabin 10

2025   Netflix

Rated:  R

Length:  1 hr  32min

Drama ~ Mystery ~ Thriller

Directed by:  Simon Stone

Starring:  Keira Knightley, Guy Pearce, David Ajala, Art Malik, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Kaya Scodelario, David Morrissey, Daniel Ings, and Hannah Waddingham.

They Don’t Want You To Believe What She Saw

The Book:

The Woman in Cabin 10 is a New York Times Best-Selling Novel by Ruth Ware  published April 11, 2017. CBS initially acquired the film rights in 2017 and began developing a film, but in May 2024 it was announced that Netflix had bought the rights and Simon Stone was slated to direct with Kiera Knightley playing the lead role of Laura Blacklock.

Reminiscent of a classic whodunit, this “pulse-quickening” instant New York Times and USA TODAY bestseller follows a journalist searching for a missing woman on a cruise ship, a woman that everyone else insists doesn’t exist.

Travel magazine writer Lo Blacklock has just been given the assignment of a lifetime: one week on a luxury cruise with only a handful of cabins. The sky is clear, the waters calm, and the elite guests jovial as the exclusive cruise ship, the Aurora, begins her voyage in the picturesque North Sea.

At first, Lo’s voyage is perfect, with a plush cabin, elegant dinner parties, and plenty of relaxation. But as the week wears on, frigid winds whip the deck, gray skies fall, and Lo witnesses what she can only describe as a dark and terrifying nightmare: a woman being thrown overboard. The problem? All passengers remain accounted for, and so, the ship sails on as if nothing has happened, despite Lo’s desperate attempts to convey that something has gone terribly, terribly wrong…

With surprising twists, spine-tingling turns, and a setting that proves as uncomfortably claustrophobic as it is eerily beautiful, Ruth Ware offers up a taut and intense read in The Woman in Cabin 10, proving, once again, her place as “the Agatha Christie of her generation”.

The Movie:

Journalist Laura “Lo” Blacklock (Keira Knightley) is looking for a career boost when she’s offered the chance to cover a luxury cruise on a billionaire’s yacht, the Aurora Borealis. The trip, arranged by wealthy philanthropist Anne Bullmer (Lisa Loven Kongsli) and her husband Richard (Guy Pearce), is a lavish journey to Norway under the pretense of Anne’s final charitable act. Guests on board include not only the couple’s high-society friends, like the shrewd socialite Heidi (Hannah Waddingham) and glamorous influencer Grace (Kaya Scodelario), but also Lo’s old flame, photographer Ben (David Ajala). The yacht’s gleaming hallways and endless drinks disguise underlying tensions, while Lo, though grateful for the invitation, remains unsettled by lingering anxiety and a run-in with a mysterious woman next door.​

On her first night, Lo is startled to meet a frightened woman (Gitte Witt) in the supposedly empty adjacent Cabin 10, who begs her for help before vanishing into the bathroom. Later, after a night of heavy drinking, Lo hears a violent commotion from Cabin 10, followed by the unmistakable splash of something or someone falling overboard. Racing to her balcony, Lo sees a body in the water and a bloody mark next door, but when she raises the alarm, the yacht’s crew and passengers insist that nobody ever checked into Cabin 10. Shocked and isolated, Lo finds herself the only person convinced a crime has taken place.​

Her efforts to investigate put her at odds with Richard Bullmer (Guy Pearce), whose slick demeanor and evasiveness turn increasingly sinister, as well as with the rest of the guests, who seem eager to believe Lo is imagining things. Undeterred, Lo pursues clues with the help of Ben (David Ajala) and challenges the eerie silence of the luxury cruise, discovering suspicious details, disappearing belongings, threatening notes, and evidence that someone is tampering with her cabin. As pressure mounts and her paranoia spirals, Lo begins to question not just the loyalties of those around her, but her own grasp on reality, all while someone clearly wants her to drop her search for the “woman in Cabin 10” at any cost.​

With danger closing in and the yacht cut off from the outside world, Lo fights to piece together the truth behind the woman’s disappearance. Her only allies seem to be her stubborn sense of right and the slim trail of clues the mystery woman left behind. As secrets are exposed through the stormy, claustrophobic voyage, Lo’s investigation turns into a desperate game of survival—proving that even surrounded by luxury, no one is safe from the darkness lurking just out of sight.

The Review:

This was a good movie, a classic whodunit on board a luxury yacht. Keira Knightley was easy to like and made her character, Laura “Lo” Blacklock, feel real and relatable right away. The story kept me on the edge of my seat with its twists and surprises, and the fancy, cramped yacht setting made everything feel even more tense. It’s the kind of mystery that’s exciting but also easy to follow, and I enjoyed watching it from start to finish. If you are a fan of the whodunit’s or a good mystery thriller, you’re going to like this one!

Following the watching of Netflix’s thriller “The Woman in Cabin 10,” starring Keira Knightley as journalist Lo Blacklock, it felt ripe for a sequel. Ruth Ware, the original novel’s author, released the follow-up book “The Woman in Suite 11” in July 2025, continuing Lo’s story as she navigates a perilous investigation at a luxury Swiss hotel. While Netflix has yet to officially announce a film adaptation of the sequel, industry buzz and positive reception of the first movie make it a natural next step. Ware expressed enthusiasm for seeing Lo’s story continue on screen, though she has also mentioned an interest in adapting other novels first. If Netflix moves ahead, we can likely expect Knightley to reprise her role as Lo, diving back into a world of secrets, power, and danger beyond Cabin 10’s yacht.