March Films Update 2

Ten more films from my 2025 watching

**** 

1. Dog Man (2025)

Petey, a supervillain cat, terrorises Ohkay City. Police Officer Knight and his dog Greg pursue him. After one of Petey’s bombs destroys Greg’s body and Knight’s head surgeons operate and combine them to make Dog Man. Dog Man keeps arresting Petey who keeps escaping. Dog Man is sad as Officer Knight’s girlfriend left them and sold their house, so he lives in a dog house outside the city (it’s actually large and quite cool).

Petey fires his servant, and decides to clone himself. He gets a kitten Li’l Petey who he tries to get rid of. Dog Man finds the abandoned Li’l Petey and takes him in. Petey has a ridiculous plan to resurrect a telekinetic fish and hold the city to ransom/kill Dog Man etc but finds the book L’il Petey made depicting the two of them together and feels guilty, sending a robot to retrieve him. Finding Li’l Petey gone Dog Man and the news reporter go looking for him.

Petey opens up about his terrible upbringing so Li'l Petey sends the robot to collect Petey’s father. But he’s just as bad as ever and sends Petey spiralling into every more villainous plans.

This is a cartoon for kids, deliberately wacky and silly. Sometimes the whiplash between real emotion and a plan of five nonsensical things chained together is a bit too large for me. But then again I’m not a kid.

Watch This: Ridiculous and fun superhero film with a bit of heart (for kids)
Don’t Watch This: Very silly and very much for kids

2. The Substance (2024)

Elizabeth Sparkle (Demi Moore) is fired from her aerobics show when she turns 50. Driving home she crashes, distracted by a billboard of her being taken down. In the hospital the nurse gives her a flash drive which is an advert for “The Substance,” which promises her a younger, more beautiful, more perfect self.

She orders it (she never sees anyone about it, just talks on the phone). Following the mysterious instructions she injects herself and a new, younger version of herself (Margaret Qualley) emerges. The instruction are that she has to swap back and forth every seven days. The new body needs daily doses of stabiliser fluid from the old body. The new body applies for Elizabeth’s old job and gets it under the name Sue, with a new, slightly higher energy aerobics routine. The boss is so keen to have her he happily accepts the bizarre every other week schedule.

Despite the instructions telling her that there is no other; they are one, the two develop different personalities and desires. Sue keeps needing an extra day, and when she draws more stabiliser fluid it ages Elizabeth. The two come to resent each other, Sue having casual sex and enjoying a celebrity lifestyle, Elizabeth becoming a shut-in who binge eats and leaves food remnants in the apartment. Eventually they fight and Sue stays as Sue, continuing to draw stabiliser fluid. However this runs out near the time of New Year when she’s booked to host the TV’s show, and she has to return. Elizabeth has aged a lot and she decides to end the treatment, at the last minute having doubts leading to a grotesque and farcical ending.

This is, obviously, about beauty standards and aging. About the horror of a body that once was powerful and attractive, and now isn’t, and is rejected. A fable or fairy tale or legend about youth and age. And also about a weird substance and anonymous instructions and how weird and horrific bodies are, even before they are pushed to absurd limits.

Watch This: Clever and occasionally disgusting horror film with a lot of style and something to say
Don’t Watch This: Older woman spawns a younger woman who takes her life

3. Cutthroat Island

In the 17^th century Caribbean notorious pirate Morgan Adams (Geena Davis) learns her father Black Harry has been kidnapped by her uncle Dawg Brown (Frank Langella). There are three pieces of a map to legendary Cutthroat island and a hidden treasure there; Harry refuses to tell Dawg where his piece is (Dawg has already killed one brother to get a piece). Harry escapes with Morgan’s help but he’s fatally injured. He tells Morgan where his map is (tattooed on his scalp, so she scalps him (off screen)) and where to find the third piece, with her uncle Mordechai.

Morgan takes over the Morning Star, her father’s ship, and discovering the map is in Latin heads to Port Royal for a translator. Rogue William Shaw (Mathew Modine), having been caught thieving, is being sold on the block; as he can read Latin she buys him. However she’s recognised and the British troops gives chase. Meanwhile the governor has intercepted John Reed, a writer who chronicles pirate stories from aboard the Morning Star, and coerces him into informing.

Morgan heads for Spittlefield where she finds Mordechai; Dawg attacks. Morgan is wounded, Shaw finds the other part of the map. Back on board the Morning Star Shaw tends to her wound, then he and Morgan figure out half the co-ordinates. They head for the line that implies, only to be chased by the Reaper, Dawg's ship.

Some rather complicated stuff happens; Morgan’s crew mutinies, they find their way to Cuthroat Island, only for both Dawg and the British to arrive. They find the treasure and then have to fight, run, trick etc for a while.

This is all fine as a pirate adventure film, some good action setpieces. They haven’t got the 21^st century banter though, they’re trying some old-fashioned English, very clearly setting up their jokes and light-hearted threats. That bit somehow feels very old-fashioned. It makes the whole thing seem weightless, which in turn turns Dawg from a violent and scary villain into someone who overacts, and Morgan into a reckless and flighty woman out of her depth. Shaw kind of pulls it off, but he’s also very annoying.

Watch This: Amusing Pirate Adventure
Don’t Watch This: From the dead period between old classic pirate films and the (sigh) Pirates Of The Caribbean which mostly do better

4. The Cassandra Crossing

In Geneva, three people invade the US Mission to the World Health Organisation, seeking to blow it up. Two are shot but one manages to escape, starting a manhunt. It turns out that the mission has a pneumonic plague strain, and they wanted to destroy it. However the authorities US Military Colonel Mackenzie (Burt Lancaster) and European civilian Dr Stradner (Ingrid Thulin) fear that the escapee has been infected. (Mackenzie claims that the plague was due to be destroyed after being studied; Stradner, like the invaders, believe it was being kept as a biological weapon).

The escapee has indeed escaped, and boards a train from Geneva to Stockholm. Who’s on the train? Why famous medical researcher Dr Chamberlain (Richard Harris); his rich writer ex-wife Jennifer (Sophia Loren); elderly Herman Kaplan (Lee Strasberg); wife of an arms dealer Nicole Dressler (Ava Gardner); her lover and heroin smuggler Robbie Navarro (Martin Sheen); and undercover Interpol agent Haley (O J Simpson) on the trail of Navarro. Plus some young lovers, a family, the conductor, the barman, the cook etc. A regular passenger complement in other words.

Discovering the infected man is on board the authorities divert the train, intending to send the passengers into quarantine at an old concentration camp in Poland, where the train can drive straight in. Kaplan was a prisoner there during the war; quite apart from the bad taste in sending him back there the track across the border has been closed due to a dangerous bridge, the so-called “Cassandra Crossing.” They claim to the passengers that the train will not be stopping due to anarchists setting bombs in stations.

Realising they have a doctor on board they eventually tell them what’s going on, though not before the infected man has hidden next to a dog in the guard’s van, been through the kitchen car (he’s very thirsty, a symptom) and used the toilet, potentially infecting everyone. There’s a long middle period as things slowly escalate, bringing a helicopter alongside to take off the dog to test without stopping the train etc. Realising that if the bridge collapses that will solve the problem in a cold-blooded manner, the people on the train try to prevent it.

It's a 1970s disaster movie, with a big cast! Plagues on a train I guess. I’m afraid it drags a bit in the middle following which it ramps up the violence enormously which changes the entire tone of the film. Neither a great success nor an enormous failure.

Watch This: Cast of unusual characters find themselves on a doomed plague train
Don’t Watch This: Long dull train journey with a disastrous conclusion

5. Battle Beyond The Sun

After the great atomic war, in the far future of 1997, the Earth has been divided into two nations, the north hemisphere North Hemis and the south hemisphere South Hemis. The South Hemis are planning a voyage to Mars, with a ship called Mercury, and conditions seem right. A North Hemis ship asks to dock at the South Hemis space station to make some repairs; while at dinner they let slip the news of the Mars mission. Captain Torrance of the North Hemis ship Typhoon decides to take off early and try and beat them to Mars; his blast injures an astronaut.

The repairs don’t hold and Typhoon is damaged in a meteor storm. Mercury diverts to rescue the astronauts. Now short of fuel the combined crew lands on an asteroid orbiting Mars. The South Hemis send an unmanned fuel rocket, but it goes wrong, so they send the astronaut who was injured. He makes it there, but is attacked by monsters on his way and dies just after telling the others where to find the fuel. They refuel and return to cheering crowd and possibly a new spirit of co-operation in space.

This was a Soviet science fiction film re-dubbed in English. The monster is apparently an addition; in the original the (Soviet) astronaut who pilots the fuel ship dies of radiation poisoning. It’s rather stilted. The space station is externally pretty good, and the return scenes, using Soviet stock footage of crowds greeting something arriving at a harbour works well. The rest is a fairly standard early space film.

Watch This: Curious space adventure mash-up
Don’t Watch This: A poorly adapted version of a relatively uninspiring film

6. The Ghost Of Greville Lodge

Orphan James Greville has been brought up in foster care, but now his Great Uncle (George Cole) has learned where he is and invited him for Christmas at his big country house, Greville Lodge. Arriving there he finds he lives with his housekeeper Sarah (Prunella Scales). James meets a gardener in the ground but it turns out he’s not the gardener; the Lodge is haunted!

James’s dreams flash back to 1939, when his Great Uncle was a young man. He befriends two orphaned servant children, Ben and Sarah. He has to keep this a secret from his class-conscious and controlling father. As events move forward towards Christmas in 1939 and 2000, James realises that there was a fire on Christmas Eve and a tragedy is going to re-occur.

This is spooky, but it’s gentle too, as it’s a story about coming to terms rather than one of vengeance and violence. A little down beat and, perhaps unfortunately, it doesn’t look like December in either 1999 or 1939.

Watch This: Quiet little ghost story of English class and regrets
Don’t Watch This: Quiet, slow, doesn’t really take off

7. Ick (2024)

High school American Football star Hank Wallace (Brandon Routh) breaks his leg when he’s tripped by the Ick, a mystery invasive growth everyone ignores because it does nothing. His football career over his girlfriend Staci leaves him for Ted Kim. In a montage several years go by, he gets a leg brace, his bar-owning dad dies, he trains to become a high school science teacher, he buys back the bar, the Ick slowly grows everywhere, all over the country (world?), Staci and Ted become successful real estate agents, and he suspects Grace Kim, Staci and Ted’s daughter and one of his students, may be his biological daughter.

Then he’s attacked by the Ick, but is able to defeat it thanks to a UV lamp. His experiments conclude that the Ick grows and moves in the dark, but stops in UV light (including daylight). He’s then attacked in the bar by a man who has been taken control of by the Ick.

No one seems to believe him, and he knows that the local kids, including Grace, are going to a house party. He goes there, to the surprise and unhappiness of his students. Then the Ick attacks in a bloody, weird and occasionally disconcerting setpiece. The town is attacked, but fortunately the military arrive to subdue it. Rescuing the townsfolk, they tell them they have to go to the next town to protect the dam, and suggest they stay inside until more help can come. However the next night is prom night and they townspeople refuse to give up on it as that would let the Ick win.

This is a comedy horror, and often very funny, while managing to make the actual horror – people controlled by a weird plant, growth coming up fast, people trapped as it reaches for them etc – fairly strong with it. Wallace’s earnestness in the face of absurdity is good. When he explains to the military leader about UV she’s very sarcastic about it, of course they know that, that’s why they’re telling them to stay inside in the big store with fluorescent lights.

Watch This: Fun, funny, hideous growth horror film
Don’t Watch This: Grotesque and ridiculous

8. Companion (2025)

Iris (Sophie Thatcher) travels with her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) to visit his friend Kat (Megan Suri) at her boyfriend Sergey’s (Rupert Friend) remote lakehouse. Also there is Kat and Josh’s old friend Eli (Harvey Guillén) and his boyfriend Patrick (Lukas Gage). Iris is worried that Kat doesn’t like her but Josh overrides her concerns. She tells the story of how they met, and how there was a moment when she just knew that Josh was the one to devote her life to. Things are a little odd and tense, and Josh treats Iris somewhat dismissively. The next day Sergey tries to sexually assault Iris by the lake and she kills him. Returning to the house panicking and covered in blood, Josh tells Iris to go to sleep and she does.

She’s an android companion and (as is later revealed) Josh and Kat have jailbroken her software to make her capable of violence. When she wakes up she realises that if she’s caught she will be destroyed and so no longer be able to love Josh so she escapes, steals his phone, and gets into the settings, boosting her intelligence to 100%. This begins a complex and violent sequence of events as every attempt by one or other characters to resolve the situation goes catastrophically wrong in classic black comedy thriller style.

Where this film is strong is in using filmic conventions to it’s advantage. It opens with Iris voiceovering how she knows when it’s love, from the meet-cute with Josh, which is an over-the-top accident in a supermarket. Because we’ve been cued by the voiceover and this being a film we accept this heightened reality. Yes, we tell ourselves, this is where Iris met Josh and fell in love with him. It is revealed to be an origin story from a library of them that is introduced when the android companion imprints on the owner (or in fact lessor). This is then iterated on when we see another android character’s introduction more than once, with variations.

Where I don’t think it quite manages it is that Josh is Jack Quaid, who claims to be a loser who can only afford a small apartment, can’t get a girlfriend and can’t even buy a companion, instead having to lease Iris. Jack Quaid isn’t the current style of leading man in Hollywood, but he’s tall, good looking (perhaps not quite by Hollywood standards) and has wit and charm even whilst being the arsehole the script insists on. This guy’s a loser? Damn, things must be tough out there. It’s like everyone’s getting squeezed and having to work harder just to keep up.

I don’t think that’s deliberate commentary, the film has enough other stuff going on about violence, relationships, technology and avarice.

Watch This: Strong entry into the growing android thriller sub-genre, the black farce of a crime gone wrong
Don’t Watch This: Appalling things happen to humans and robots

9. The Woman In The Yard (2025)

Ramona has been disabled in a car accident, the power has been cut off to the house and she hasn’t been able to call them before her phone died. Her son Taylor is frustrated by her lack of action. Her younger daughter Annie is puzzled but happy to eat up the ice cream from the freezer. Then a veiled woman appears in the yard sitting on a chair. Ramona goes out to question her but she speaks ominously, predicting today’s the day and refuses to leave. Ramona returns to the house and tells the children to leave her alone, losing her temper at Taylor when he keeps questioning.

The woman mysteriously moves closer, still seated. The dog vanishes. The children become afraid. The other car won’t start. Confronting the woman again it becomes clear that Ramona had convinced her children, and perhaps herself, that her husband was driving when they had the accident and he was killed. However it was Ramona, who has felt the guilt ever since.

This is a psychological horror film, the titular woman linked to Ramona’s guilt, her lies, her depression and so on. The initial creepy appearance and mysterious conversation with the woman is good, but the film slowly turns to fairly standard horror nonsense. They threaten the dog at one point, though it’s just that, a threat.

Watch This: Creepy horror of facing up to unbearable guilt
Don’t Watch This: Just some people stuck in a house getting scared

10. Conan The Barbarian (2011)

Back in pre-history the barbarian tribes defeated the ancient sorcery of the empire of Acheron, and broke up the mask that held their power, each tribe taking a piece. Sometime later Khalar Zym’s wife was killed for her evil sorcery. Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang) and his witch-daughter are searching for the bits of the mask when they arrive at a village in Cimmeria where a precocious Conan fights them before his father (Ron Perlman) sacrifices himself so Conan can live.

Sometime later a grown Conan (Jason Momoa) is a pirate, though one also seeking revenge against Zym. He runs into a thief named Ela-Shan who is being pursued by one of Zym’s soldiers he recognises from the village. He allows himself to be captured, in turn capturing the soldier at the prison camp. Under torture the soldier tells him that having found the mask bits Zym is seeking a pure-blooded descendant of Acheron.

He finds her in a monastery but she, Tamara (Rachel Nichols) gets away, running into Conan as he comes looking for Khalar Zym. Conan fights off her pursuers, then uses her to confront Zym, reminding him of the first part of the film when he destroyed the village and attempts to take revenge. This doesn’t go well but Conan and Tamara escape to the ship.

Conan comes up with a plan to kill Zym, but not before he has sex with Tamara. While she is taking the walk of shame back to the ship she’s kidnapped by Zym’s men. Conan finds Ela-Shan and calls in his debt to break into Zym’s castle for the final confrontation.

On reflection this is a perfectly fine swords and sorcery film, Momoa having real presence and the skills for the action sequences. What it can’t quite do is put it all together. Evil witch plus attempt to resurrect plus princess in peril plus revenge quest plus generally being a pirate equals… what? It moves from setpiece to setpiece amiably enough but they don’t quite work, the legendary origin story, the swashbuckling fun, the grim revenge. That can work in series perhaps, or with more verve but I didn’t feel it.

Watch This: Entertaining sword-swinging adventure
Don’t Watch This: For any attempt to consider what this stuff means