December 2025 [15-21]
Together, The Taste of Things, Bob Trevino Likes It, To All the Boys I've Loved Before, How the Grinch Stole Christmas
- Together [2025] - 42
2025’s Together is one of those movies that you really wish had just been… different. It builds a great world, has excellent special effects, and showcases fun ideas all throughout… But the story the film tells is just [to use ellipses for the third time in as many sentences]… Incredibly stupid and shallow for some reason. A plot about a pool of water that causes lifeforms who drink from it to physically fuse together like some wacko version of The Thing discovered by a cult who mysteriously disappear is cause for an excellent movie. However, writer/ director, Michal Shanks, has somehow turned what is one of the more interesting horror foundations of 2025 into almost entirely meaningless drivel. We never get to explore said world, we never get to see larger implications of said fusing, and we never get to care about anything or anyone along the way because, the film is so myopic in scope and so insistent on holding our hands over every stone in the path that we’re never allowed to truly discover any part of the universe in which this story exists. Had the script pulled back at some point and revealed anything larger than the 21-square-foot area the immediate plot takes place in, this might have been something with a bit of merit. Instead, we’re left with what is, essentially, a 3.5-location film that matters very little within its own property lines, and somehow not at all outside of them.
- The Taste of Things [2023] - 69
Adapted from Marcel Rouff’s 1923 novel, La vie et la passion de Dodin-Bouffant, The Taste of Things is a movie about passion, love, intricacy, and dedication to both those around you and the craft you practice. It’s a truly stunning film from moment to moment that features incredibly tender and intimate performances from each and every cast member, but the story itself just kind of rolls over and dies [awkward] the longer it goes on… And with a runtime of 135-minutes, boy does it just go on. What saves this gourmand love-letter from being total slop is not only the moving performances mentioned above, but the impossibly evocative and intuitive cinematography from Jonathan Ricquebourg. Long, pseudo-oners weave effortlessly between busy hands that deftly wield all kinds of strange utensils during kitchen sequences that feel exactly like falling in love, while sharp lights and bold earthy tones set the stage for the production’s more quiet and solitary moments. This movie really nails its aesthetic and energy in a very 10/10 way, it just couldn’t quite find the right ingredients to bring it’s slowly simmering story to a frothy, impactful boil.
- Bob Trevino Likes It [2025] - 86
A movie I knew nothing about in a genre [“comedy”, according to the internet] that I generally want to know nothing about, Bob Trevino Likes It is a movie I jumped into simply because I had the time to watch it, and didn’t have the time to look for something else. As you can see my score already, I quite liked it. While a story about a girl in search of a father figure, and a man dealing with a rift in his marriage and a rut in his life sounds like the kind of thing that might get someone a stern talking to by Chris Hansen, this film does a great job of making you a little uncomfortable with the goings-on, but never crosses the line into “oh no, ew” territory. It’s cringe, it’s sad, and it’s odd, but everything in this story has both a pace and a place that’s well honed and accounted for. Though a little neat and tidy by the end, Tracie Laymon’s Bob Trevino Likes It taps into some very difficult subjects with tact, humor, and love, leaving you with both a sense of loss and permanent growth by the end.
- To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before [2018] - 60
Now, I can’t say any of the above things about 2018’s teenie-bop romance, To All the Boys I've Loved Before. Though this movie features a lot of my favorite editing common to this style of film, that’s basically all that it does particularly well. It’s formulaic, inconsequential, and [as long as you can get past all the actors who are clearly the wrong age so I don’t have to add a fourth comma] it doesn’t explore it’s own plot in most any way. The concept here [spoilers] is that our main character, Lara Jean, has written a series of love-letters to all the boys she’s had crushes on — not so different from keeping a diary. Plot happens, her sister finds and mails them all out, then the film [supposedly] deals with the social fallout of being in high-school and everyone you’ve ever had eyes for suddenly knowing your deepest feelings. The issue is that the story never actually deals with any of this and there’s never really any consequences… Things just kind of… work out. It’s adapted from a YA novel to exemplify YA novels so, this isn’t terribly strange, and there’s nothing exceptionally broken about the film… It’s just kind of… Fine?
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas [2000] - -
It’s funny that we basically all know this movie as “Jim Carrey’s: The Grinch” — or some variation thereof — when it was directed by Ron Howard [A Beautiful Mind], and written by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman [Who Framed Roger Rabbit]. Now, there’s a reason for this… And that reason is that, without Jim Carrey as the titular character, no-body and no-thing else in this film really matters [Cindy Lou Who has a kickass rockband now, and the production design by Michael Corenblith is truly exceptional… But let me lie for the sake of the bit]. Carrey’s performance is raucously funny, endlessly quoteable… And fairly problematic in ways that the story neither suggests, nor cares to deal with… Which makes them very funny [Why does the Grinch wear clothes as a kid and fuss over what to wear when nominated as the Holiday Cheermeister… Then sports nothing but green fur when Cindy Lou Who breaks into his cave…]. This was the first time I’d watched this as a discerning adult, and I’m genuinely confused by the universally low reviews across the net. There’s nothing wrong with this movie and it’s good for many-several laughs. I could say it’s a touch long, but it’s no more stupid or frivolous than any other comedy, and it’s twice as fun as many. If you haven’t watched this one in a while, the holiday season is still upon us and I definitely recommend it.
