“You had to make an appointment with yourself to be by the TV, so it was really special,” recalls Ryfle, an author and co-writer of the Emmy-winning documentary “Miracle on 42nd Street” (and, I’ll note, a friend since our time as young journalists).
“The Japanese films always appealed to me the most. They were intriguing because they took place in a world that was unfamiliar, a culture that was unfamiliar.”
Godzilla, he says, was especially captivating to a dinosaur-loving kid.
“Of course, when you’re younger, you’re into dinosaurs,” he says. “Godzilla seemed like the greatest dinosaur I’d ever seen, and it did all these crazy things, and I just loved it.”
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But back then, beyond a few fanzines or horror magazines, it wasn’t as easy as it is now to find information about less mainstream interests or connect with like-minded fans.
“There really wasn’t anything to read about these films in any detail. And I remember as a child asking a bookstore clerk if there were books on Godzilla, and he actually laughed at me and asked why I would ever want to read anything like that,” says Ryfle. “That stuck in my brain.”
Clearly.
Along with Ed Godziszewski, with whom he co-wrote 2017’s “Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film,” Ryfle is the co-author of the massive new book “Godzilla: The First 70 Years,” a 432-page, nearly 6-pound book filled with stories, interviews, breakout boxes, and more than 900 photos of one of cinema’s most enduring figures. The writing duo will be appearing as part of an overall Godzilla onslaught at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con.
The book, which features introductions by “Halloween” and “The Thing” directing legend John Carpenter and recurring Godzilla actress Megumi Odaka, is the culmination of an effort by the publisher and Toho Studios to mark the anniversary with the ultimate English-language book examining the narrative and visual history of the films, says Ryfle.
“Dating back to 1954, Godzilla has, of course, gone through all of these different iterations and evolutions and changes and its motivation and its personality and the way it’s depicted on screen, and even the techniques that are used to bring it to life,” says Ryfle, who points to the recent box office success and critical respect for 2023’s “Godzilla Minus One.” “I mean, who would have thought 70 years ago that a Godzilla movie made in Japan would win an Academy Award? It would have been impossible, and yet here we are.”
“It’s a real evolution from the time when these movies were sort of misunderstood and just relegated to the scrap heap of low-budget cinema they were assumed to be.”
“Obviously, there are interesting stories to tell about these movies and the people who made them,” he says. “It’s really kind of a celebration of the people and the culture that they come from. The people who made these movies were proud of the work that they did, because they were basically, by and large, handmade films.”
Unlike other schlocky midcentury genre movies, the original Godzilla films reflected Japan’s experience during and after World War II. The films were a response not only to the devastation caused by the U.S. detonating atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also to the firebombing of Tokyo in which nearly 300 U.S. planes dropped 1665 tons of napalm on the city, creating a firestorm and killing 100,000 people in what the Truman Library Institute called “the most devastating aerial bombardment in history.”
“Godzilla, at its very heart from the very beginning, is a monster rooted in trauma,” says Ryfle. “It’s also really about that collective experience of the war and the struggle and the hardships that people went through – and also the collective experience of the post-war period when the economy was in shambles and there were food shortages and political unrest and unemployment and deprivation of extreme magnitude.”
There are images in the original film that directly correspond to wartime destruction, says Ryfle.“When I’m giving talks about the first Godzilla film, I’ll show stills of Tokyo on fire,” says Ryfle, referring to actual photos taken during wartime bombing raids. “I’ll put up these two pictures side by side … it’s almost like a mirror image.”
As well as exploring the film’s inspirations – such as the original “King Kong,” which had been a huge success upon re-release just a few years before the initial Godzilla film – Ryfle and Godziszewski did interviews and scoured archives for fresh insights – and found things that surprised them despite having decades of experience writing about the films.
“Ed and I’ve been writing together for a number of years and working on a lot of different projects. We actually met 30 years ago at the very first Godzilla convention that they had in Chicago,” says Ryfle, praising his writing partner Godziszewski as “a legend” when it comes to knowing the topic and where to dig up information.
Not only did they discover the audio elements of the iconic Godzilla roar – many of the monster cries were made with different musical instruments, says Ryfle – but they also learned something surprising about the changing face of Godzilla over the years.
“From 1954 to, say, 1975, the suit looks different pretty much in almost every film, and I always thought that that was on purpose. But no, they actually made the suits, at least for about the first 15 years, from the same mold. They just came out differently every time,” says Ryfle, who credits the actor inside the suit, Haruo Nakajima, both for his artistry and his superhuman stamina. “The very first suit was almost unusable. It weighed so much and the interior of it was almost inflexible … the guy tried to walk in it and just tipped over.”
“It was impossible to be inside without suffocating if you were in it for more than a few minutes … it was almost a death sentence to do this stuff,” says Ryfle, adding that Nakajima would sweat out dozens of pounds during filming. “They would have to pour the sweat out of the suit every day, and then dry out the interior for the next day, because it was just a sauna in there.
Though the “man-in-the-suit” aspect could sometimes be viewed as comical, Ryfle says Nakajima’s work was instrumental in the creature’s evolution and popularity.
“I attribute a large part of the success of those movies to Haruo Nakajima, who played Godzilla for roughly the first 18 years of the first cycle of Godzilla films,” says Ryfle, while also praising the original film’s special effects wizard, director and cast. “He was just a wonderful man who died a couple of years ago. He loved his work, and he’s largely responsible for the personality that starts to come through.”
“He turns Godzilla from a walking nuclear bomb into a character over a period of time,” says Ryfle.
While we discussed a range of topics and there’s much more in the book, Ryfle summed up the project as we were concluding the conversation.
“Someone asked me, like, what was your goal at the start of it?” he says. “We wanted to make the best Godzilla book for the widest possible audience.
“I’ve always felt from the beginning that [the films] were unfairly maligned and misunderstood, and that maybe I could help, especially after I started meeting the creators and realizing what passion they had for their work,and starting to understand how culturally specific these films are.”
But he also understands another reason for Godzilla’s lasting power.
“On a gut level, no matter what’s going on in the film and how quote-unquote ‘serious’ it is as a movie,” says Ryfle, “people really want to see the spectacle of Godzilla destroying things.”
Along with the Comic-Con appearance, the authors will be appearing at Santa Ana’s Frida Cinema on July 28 for a book signing and screening of “Ghidorah, The Three-Headed Monster!” and at the Japan Center Los Angeles on July 30 for a free talk (registration required) with books for sale from Chevalier’s Books.
]]>It takes place in the mid-1960s, albeit a sleekly otherworldly jet age streamlining of that time. Result? Extras in fedoras share crowd scenes with a Manhattan skyline dotted with familiar landmarks like the Chrysler Building, alongside some casually wondrous “Jetsons”-esque skyscrapers and design flourishes. Typically a production designer working in the Marvel movie universe doesn’t stand a chance against the digital compositing and effects work and the general wash of green-screenery. “The Fantastic Four” is different. Production designer Kasra Farahani’s amusing visual swagger complements the film’s dueling interests: A little fun over here, the usual threats of global extinction over there.
In contrast to the current James Gunn “Superman,” worthwhile despite its neurotic mood swings and from-here-to-eternity action beats, director Matt Shakman’s handling of “The Fantastic Four” takes it easier on the audience. Having returned from their space mission with “cosmically compromised DNA,” Reed Richards, Sue Storm, Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm adapt to their Earthbound lives with some new bullet points for their collective resumé. Richards, big-time-stretchy-bendy, goes by Mister Fantastic, able to out-Gumby Gumby. One Storm’s alter ego is Invisible Woman, while the other Storm is the flying Human Torch. Grimm returns to Earth as a mobile rockpile, aka The Thing.
So what’s it all about? It’s about a really hungry tourist just looking for one last meal before he “may finally rest.” So says Galactus, devourer of worlds, for whom noshing involves planets, and whose herald is Silver Surfer. Galactus wants Sue Storm’s soon-to-be-newborn baby in exchange for not devouring Earth. How the Fantastic Four go about dealing with Galactus culminates in an evacuated Manhattan, in the vicinity of Times Square, while the New York throngs hide away in the underground lair of Harvey Elder, the infamous Moleman.
One of the buoying aspects of Shakman’s film is its avoidance of antagonist overexposure. You get just enough of Paul Walter Hauser’s witty embodiment of auxiliary more-misunderstood-than-bad Moleman, for example, to want more. And Galactus, a hulking metallic entity, is such that a little of him is plenty, actually.
The Fantastic Four run the show here. Not everyone will love the generous, relaxed amount of hangout time director Shakman’s film spends setting up and illustrating family dynamics and medium-grade banter. Others will take it as a welcome change from the 10-megaton solemnity of some of the recent Marvels, hits as well as flops.
While Pedro Pascal, aka Mister Ubiquitous, makes for a solid, sensitive ringleader as the ever-murmuring Mister Fantastic, the emotional weight tips slightly toward Vanessa Kirby’s Sue Storm, as she weathers the travails of imminent parenthood, wondering along with her husband whether the child of DNA-scrambled superheroic parents will be OK. I wish Ebon Moss-Bachrach had better material as The Thing, but he’s ingratiating company; same goes for Joseph Quinn’s Johnny Storm, a boyish horndog once he sets his sights on the metallic flip of the screen’s first female Silver Surfer (Julia Garner).
Michael Giacchino’s excellent and subtly rangy musical score is a big plus. The costumes by Alexandra Byrne are less so. This is where indefensible personal taste comes in. There’s no question that Byrne’s designs fit snugly into the overall retro-futurist frame of “The Fantastic Four.” But holy moly, the palette dominating the clothes, and picked up by numerous production design elements, is really, really, really blue. Really blue. The movie works bluer than Buddy Hackett at a ’64 midnight show in Vegas.
Few will share my aversion to the no-doubt carefully varied shades of French blue prevalent here, but what can I do? I can do this: be grateful this film’s just serious enough, tonally, for its family matters and knotty world-saving ethical dilemmas to hold together. It’s not great superhero cinema — the verdict is out on whether that’s even possible in the Marvel Phase 6 stage of our lives — but good is good enough for “The Fantastic Four.”
“The Fantastic 4: First Steps” — 3 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: PG-13 (for sequences of intense action, and some suggestive content)
Running time: 2:05
How to watch: Premieres in theaters July 24
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
]]>“Doug played the villain or straight man, the man in authority,” Waters said. “He took direction well. His character often reacted meanly or insanely, a character who was against the morals of my world — which was actually correct.”
Born Lloyd Douglas Roberts in Richmond, Kentucky, he was the son of Lloyd Roberts, an insurance salesman, and his wife, Ann, who raised show dogs. He was a Lafayette High School graduate in Lexington, Kentucky, and was a graduate of the University of Kentucky.
Mr. Roberts moved to Manhattan and appeared with George C. Scott in the Circle in the Square Theatre’s production of “Desire Under the Elms.” He was also a page and talent coordinator for the “Today” show at Rockefeller Center.
When a new dinner theater, The Barn, opened near Richmond, Virginia, he became intrigued by the concept. He tried it briefly and later moved on, in 1966, to the Oregon Ridge Dinner Theatre in Cockeysville.
Mr. Roberts proposed marriage to his future wife, Tara Russo, at the final game of the 1966 World Series between the Orioles and the Los Angeles Dodgers. She replied, “Only if we win.” The Orioles won, and the two married a year later.
When times were lean, he became a waiter at the old Charcoal Hearth and Oyster Bay restaurants in downtown Baltimore and worked in public relations at the Painters Mill Music Fair and for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. He later bought into the Bolton Hill Dinner Theatre, where he described himself as a cook, actor, director, owner, and dishwasher and bottle washer.
“There were, in Baltimore’s early days of theater and dinner theater and radio and TV and movies and ad voice-overs, a few people like Doug who were talented, willing to work hard and were very generous,” said Stanley Heuisler, the former Baltimore Magazine editor who acted in the 1970s. “And they were respected as the warm, genuine and professional people. Doug could do, and did, it all. And very well.”
Mr. Roberts found that a good living could be made doing commercials and voice-overs for local advertising agencies. His family said he was in more than 5,000 commercials — often anonymously. He sold cars, furniture and appliances over the air, uncredited. He also handled political campaign announcements.
But as Baltimore began attracting film scouts for location work, Mr. Roberts found himself in demand.
He appeared in “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “The Wire.” He also appeared in John Waters’ “Hairspray,” “Cecil B. Demented,” “Serial Mom” and “A Dirty Shame.”
At Maryland Public Television, Mr. Roberts appeared in “Book, Look, and Listen,” alongside singer Ethel Ennis; hosted the food documentary “Eatin’ Crab Cakes: The Best I Ever Had!”; performed in the “Consumer Survival Kit”; and did comic skits in “Crabs.”
An MPT colleague and director, Richard George, said: “‘Crabs’ was a live-on-the-air sketch comedy show featuring local talent that won 13 Emmys, and Doug was our comedy director. He was the smooth 350 V-8 engine under the hood of ‘Crabs’ that drove us to airtime on every show.”
His favorite film was 1997’s “G.I. Jane,” in which he had a scene with Anne Bancroft.
He also appeared on WBAL-TV and WBAL Radio as an entertainment and food reporter called the Beltway Gourmet.
A baseball and basketball fan, Mr. Roberts served on the Babe Ruth Birthplace Museum’s board. He also fished, hunted and collected penknives.
“He was outgoing and generous, almost to a fault,” his wife said. “But most of all, he was a family man and loved his grandchildren. He was proud to have been a working actor all his life.”
Survivors include his wife of 58 years, Tara Russo Roberts, a retired Baltimore County Schools teacher; two daughters, Hilary Roberts-King and Amy McLoughlin, both of Baltimore; a son, J. Brooke Roberts, of Marietta, Georgia; and eight grandchildren.
The Ruck Towson Funeral Home is handling the funeral arrangements.
Have a news tip? Contact Jacques Kelly at jacques.kelly@baltsun.com and 410-332-6570.
]]>This summer, in 2025, history can barely contain each new 24-hour blurt. It feels less like we’re in history and more like we’re choking on it. So we remember Shakespeare’s perfect three syllables to describe dark political machinations. “Out of joint,” Hamlet says of his country and his time. Like a dislocated shoulder.
Ari Aster’s “Eddington” is not Shakespeare, and isn’t trying, and half the time it can’t be said to know what it’s doing, or how to dramatize what it’s going for. But I’ve seen it twice for the good stuff, and for the riddle-solving of why whole, frustrating chunks of this two-and-a-half-hour American fable compete with the rest of it.
Aster has taken on one of the toughest challenges a writer-director can attempt: extremely recent history, out of joint and somehow present, not past. “Eddington” is set in May 2020, three months into the COVID-19 pandemic, in a part of the world where personal freedoms trump the common good — which is another way of saying there’s a lot of unmasked transmitters around town.
Joaquin Phoenix takes the role of Joe Cross, sheriff of the (fictional) New Mexico town of Eddington. Part blunt-force satire, part topical, state-of-the-nation drama, “Eddington” is also a Western, an early COVID-era Western at that, with the sheriff — a foolish mediocrity and the son-in-law of the previous sheriff, now deceased — squaring off against the town’s mayor Ted Garcia, a crafty operator played by Pedro Pascal.
Garcia, running for re-election, backs a controversial “data center” construction project, which threatens to cripple the region’s already drought-prone water supply. The First Nation tribal residents of this corner of New Mexico are fighting this development. Even without it, Sheriff Cross has unrelated and unresolvable issues with Mayor Garcia; years earlier Garcia may have had some sort of relationship with Louise (Emma Stone, underused, to say the least), now the sheriff’s wife. The sexual trauma in Louise’s past, and her present, rickety state, is something her husband does not have the emotional resources to confront.
Both Eddington and “Eddington” trade in soap opera-y secrets and subterranean conspiracies involving dirty law enforcement, incest, male sexual jealousy, good lawmen getting shafted, a small clutch Eddington’s young Black Lives Matter protesters spouting newly acquired racial reckoning verbiage they barely comprehend, and so much more. In the immediate wake of the George Floyd murder in Minneapolis, things are getting hot all over. Eddington does not know how to deal with its present historical moment.
Unhelpfully for “Eddington,” the movie, Aster responds to the question of “how to wrap this thing up?” with a wildly florid action climax. This pits the sheriff against anonymous killers, Eastwood style, but with pesky drones and shadowy corporate interests raising the stakes. The last 30 minutes of the film feel almost completely misjudged, and absurd, but not satirically effective; it’s just a dive into adolescent Tarantino ultraviolence.
But getting there, “Eddington” is none of those things. It’s particularly astute in Aster’s little details and flurries of early COVID. Sheriff Cross isn’t really having the whole masking thing, and Phoenix wisely keeps the character’s bullheadedness realistic, not exaggerated. When the story begins, COVID has yet to officially arrive in Eddington. The pandemic is like the Black Lives Matter protests and the national violence so often flashed on TV screens and laptops; it’s “not a ‘here’ problem,” Cross says, partly to reassuring his own crumbling confidence.
The filmmaker gave us the punishing family nightmare “Hereditary,” the “Wicker Man” riff “Midsommar” and the half-wondrous, half-exasperating dreamlike odyssey “Beau is Afraid.” With “Eddington,” Aster has made a distinct period piece, nailing many woeful details about where we were five years ago. And where we are now. Too few American movies, ever, have caught current history successfully. And as London-based critic Damon Wise wrote about “Eddington” in its Cannes Film Festival premiere earlier this year: “How do you make a satirical movie about modern America when the news that comes out of there every day is quite literally beyond a joke?”
This is the peculiar thing about “Eddington”: At Cannes, it apparently played like sledgehammer satire of both idiot conservatives and ridiculous, self-loathing liberals, and it still does, I suppose. Yet it’s hitting differently now. When Aster lays off the easy comic despair in favor of more ambiguous and dimensional feelings, interactions and moments, “Eddington” becomes the movie he wanted. His script has a million problems with clarity, coincidence and the nagging drag of a protagonist set up for a long, grisly comeuppance, yet “Eddington” is probably Aster’s strongest film visually, with cinematographer Darius Khondji creating the light and shadow for some sweeping, gently ironic evocations of Old West and Old Hollywood myth-making.
The myths this time are not reassuring. “Eddington” will probably age rather well — even, and perhaps especially, if Aster’s explicit anticipation of martial law as America’s next great experiment proves accurate.
“Eddington” — 3 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for strong violence, some grisly images, language, and graphic nudity)
Running time: 2:25
How to watch: Premieres in theaters July 18
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
]]>
People still approach Cain to this day and say, “Hey, Superman!” For Cain — who played football for Princeton University, where he earned his undergraduate degree in history — that never gets old.
“I’ll always embrace that. It was the beginning of my career. It’s the thing I’m certainly most known for. I don’t have a problem with that whatsoever,” said Cain, 58, of Malibu. “There’s a lot worse things I’ve been called, and I’m sure I’ll be called them again. If someone’s calling me Superman, I’ll accept it.” He added, tongue-in-cheek: “As long as they don’t expect me to fly; they have to understand that I’m an actor.”
‘Superman’ review: James Gunn gets DCU off to rocky, overstuffed start
Cain played Superman — the creation of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, who debuted in 1938’s “Action Comics” No. 1, published by DC Comics — and his alter-ego Clark Kent in 1993-97’s “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman,” alongside Teri Hatcher (“Desperate Housewives”) as fellow reporter/love interest Lois Lane.
In “Lois & Clark,” the titular characters eventually get married in a story coinciding with them getting married in the comic book. The series ended on a cliffhanger, where they find a baby boy in Clark’s old bassinet, along with a note stating he belonged to them. Before this storyline could be explored, the series was canceled. Executive producer Brad Buckner stated in interviews that the baby was Kryptonian royalty placed in Superman’s care for his own protection. Cain wouldn’t mind revisiting this storyline centering around the baby but told fans not to get their hopes up.
“I don’t have any plans to reprise the character. I’d love to see Lois and Clark — our Lois and Clark, that is Teri’s Lois and my Superman — what they’re really doing nearly 30 years after people have last seen us. I’d like to do it the way ‘Cobra Kai’ has done it. Boy, I’ve really enjoyed ‘Cobra Kai.’ That’s the same feel I want for ‘Lois & Clark.’ They’re parents now and there’s all kinds of different things that will happen with their characters. I’ve loved that idea forever. I’ve actually started writing it, but I’ve been pulled away from it all a million times. I just think it’s such a great idea,” he explained.
To Cain, Hatcher was the best actress to play Lois.
“I still think she’s the best Lois Lane of all time,” he said. “She carried the show.”
Although Cain has no plans to revisit “Lois & Clark,” he later appeared on “Smallville,” which starred Okemos High School alumnus Tom Welling as a pre-Superman Clark Kent, as well as “Supergirl.”
One of Cain’s main competitors for the role of Superman was Kevin Sorbo of “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys.”
“I thought I had it wrapped up, then they made me do an extra scene. I was like, ‘Uh-oh,’” recalled Cain. “Kevin’s a great guy, a true professional. He knows what to do, how to do it, how to get it done. We’re friends outside work and I’m not friends with too many actors outside of work. … He’s a great guy, but too blond to be Superman. He had the hair for Hercules.”
Cain and writer Jeph Loeb — who’s penned Superman’s adventures on the printed page and the small screen — gave their insights on what gives Superman his staying power after 87 years.
“The guy’s the most powerful being on Earth and raised with small-town American values in Kansas by a farm couple,” said Cain. “To me, he’s the ultimate picture of goodness and morality. I believe in truth, justice and the American way. To me, it made perfect sense. I’m honored to be associated with the character.”
Loeb, who appeared this past May at the Motor City Comic Con in Novi, listed two things that contributed to Superman’s longevity.
“First: He was the first. When you’re the first and you’re great, you have staying power. Second: I think this is the most important. Superman, for me, is always about hope,” Loeb said. “He does without preaching, which is important; he shows us what we can be. It’s odd that a man from another planet can show us how to be the best humans we can be. Yet in a weird way, it’s kinda the greatest immigration story in that a man from another land comes to us and shows us that we can be better people. That’s brilliant and hopeful. I want to read those stories all the time and I want to read them over and over again. He’s the greatest. That’s why ‘Superman: For All Seasons’ is one of my favorite things I’ve ever done. What (artist Tim Sale) captured wasn’t just the spirit of Superman, but the spirit of what it means to be a good human being. And that’s something worth thinking about, particularly in these times. Be nice. Be kind.”
If you go
The Man of Steel returns to the big screen on Friday, July 11 with “Superman,” written and directed by James Gunn (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) in one of the summer’s most anticipated movies that also restarts the DC Cinematic Universe with a clean slate. David Corenswet (“Twisters”) plays Superman and alter-ego Clark Kent; Rachel Brosnahan (“The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) plays reporter Lois Lane, Superman’s love interest; Nicholas Hoult (“Mad Max: Fury Road”) plays Lex Luthor, Superman’s archnemesis. The movie also stars Nathan Fillion (“Firefly”) as Guy Garden, an unlikeable good guy with a power ring who’s a member of the Green Lantern Corps. Check your local listings.
]]>We might ask the same thing of James Gunn.
In 2022, Warner Bros. Discovery hired the filmmaker behind the largely fantastic “Guardians of the Galaxy” movies for Disney-owned Marvel Studios as co-chairman and -CEO of DC Studios. WBD tasked him with overseeing the construction of the DC Universe — the successor to the DC Extended Universe, home to the polarizing so-called “Snyderverse” movies — and creating a more pleasing and profitable future for characters such as Batman, Wonder Woman and, of course, Superman.
Gunn wrote and directed the first big-screen DCU endeavor, “Superman,” which flies into theaters this week.
It does so breathlessly, packing in too many characters and too many plot threads, resulting in a cinematic affair that is more dizzying than delightful.
Unquestionably, the film has its superior aspects, starting with hints of John Williams’ iconic score from 1978’s “Superman” peppered throughout and the choice of the relatively little-known David Corenswet to portray the Man of Steel, a super-powered, all-but-invincible being sent to Earth from the since-destroyed Krypton. The “Twisters” actor radiates the sincere and optimistic vibe Gunn is going for with his version of the character, created in Cleveland decades ago.
And speaking of The Land, it truly shines in “Superman,” much of which was shot in and around the city a year ago. Although shooting also took place in Cincinnati and other spots, Metropolis essentially is Cleveland fused with a larger, digitally created collection of buildings, but landmarks such as the Terminal Tower are rarely out of sight for long. Other downtown locations, such as Public Square, get their moments in the sun, too. That shot of Superman and love interest Lois Lane (a smartly cast Rachel Brosnahan of “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) elevating in the Arcade that’s teased in the advanced footage? It’s entirely lovely. Plus, Progressive Field sees more action than the Cleveland Guardians have generated of late. Oh, and let’s not forget the sandy Headlands Beach State Park in Lake County, which stands in for a fictional country’s desert landscape.
Gunn has a tremendous gift for blending action, comedy and adventure, which he has done here, albeit far less successfully than in the “Guardians” flicks, which exist within the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and his R-rated DCEU film, 2021’s “The Suicide Squad.” Whatever “Superman” is, it isn’t boring.
And we understand why he eschewed the notion of making yet another superhero origin story — the world has plenty of those. That said, despite the on-screen text that greets us in the movie’s opening moments — informing us that, among other facts, metahumans (super types) have been on the planet for three centuries and that Superman introduced himself to humanity three years ago — it always feels like we’re playing catch-up.
Metropolis — where it seems so commonplace for superpowered beings to be clashing above the skyscrapers that some folks barely notice — is also home to a small band of heroes led by Guy Gardner’s Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion, “Firefly”), who wields a powerful ring and insists upon using the name Justice Gang, which ally Hawkgirl (Cleveland native Isabela Merced, “The Last of Us”) insists is very much a working title. Regardless, the group also includes Mister Terrific (Edi Gathegi, “For All Mankind”), who’s brilliant but easily irritated.
On the other side is Superman’s arch-nemesis, Lex Luthor (an appropriately bald Nicholas Hoult, “The Great”), a tech visionary and ever-scheming businessman, and the metahumans he commands, including the shapeshifting Engineer (María Gabriela de Faría, “Animal Control”) and versatile Metamorpho (Anthony Carrigan, “Barry”).
With all these moving pieces, there’s barely time for the obligatory romance between Lois and her reporter colleague Clark Kent, Superman’s alter ego. They’ve been dating for three months, and cracks are starting to show in their relationship. Until now, Clark has been getting exclusive interviews with Superman, which, as Lois points out, is ethically questionable, to say the least. He grants her one there and then, as Superman, and he is more than taken aback by her tough questions regarding the role he has assumed in world diplomacy, more or less on behalf of the United States but without governmental approval.
“PEOPLE WERE GOING TO DIE!” he exclaims.
(She also calls him out for being pouty after he reads negative social media posts about himself, which also doesn’t go well.)
Thanks to Luthor — who tends to refer to him, with disgust, as “the Kryptonian” — Supes soon has much bigger problems.
As if all of that weren’t enough, the mix also includes, as you probably know, a super dog, the mostly adorable but also unruly and downright violent Krypto.
As “Superman” burns and barks through its slightly more-than-two-hour runtime, we get geopolitics, the swift swaying of public sentiment, a prison within a “pocket universe” and an interdimensional rift that threatens to destroy more than Metropolis.
Exhale.
Some are sure to enjoy this wild ride, while others almost certainly will want off pretty early.
Even though this wasn’t our cup of superhero tea, we still largely believe in the creative Gunn and hope that he has the opportunity to flesh out the DCU. He recently has pushed back on the notion that “Superman” needs to generate a super-sized return at the box office on its reported $225 million budget to be deemed a success, but maybe he literally already is running out of time.
Gunn has made a Superman movie that celebrates and accentuates what he loves about the character, first and foremost his admiration for what it means to be human. Hey, it’s hard to knock that.
However, if Gunn gets to make another, we hope he finds a way to slow things down a bit.
‘Superman’
Where: Theaters.
When: July 11.
Rated: PG-13 for violence, action and language.
Runtime: 2 hours, 9 minutes.
Stars (of four): 2.
]]>“Sorry, Baby” is so, so much better than that. Eva Victor’s first feature as writer-director, and star, feels like a lived experience, examined, cross-examined, ruminated over, carefully shaped and considered.
Its tone is unexpected, predominantly but not cynically comic. The movie doesn’t settle for “write what you know.” Victor followed a tougher, more challenging internal directive: Write what you need to find out about what you know.
The story deals with a college sexual assault, without being “about” that, or only about that. “Sorry, Baby” concerns how Agnes, the sharp-witted protagonist played by Victor, makes sense of her present tense, several years after she was mentored, then raped, by her favorite professor, with the bad thing now in the past but hardly out of sight, or mind.
Victor arranges the telling non-chronologically, which keeps this liquid notion of past and present flowing as a complicated emotional state. When “Sorry, Baby” begins, Agnes is thriving as an English literature professor at the same tiny New England college she attended as a graduate student. She now lives near campus with her cat in a somewhat remote old house, crammed with books. Lydie, Agnes’s good friend from grad school played by the superb Naomi Ackie, has come for a visit, and the magical rightness of the interplay between Victor and Ackie gives the film a warm, energizing hum.
At one point, Lydie asks her if she leaves the house much. Agnes responds verbally, but her body language, her evasive eyes and other “tells” have their own say. Lydie’s question lingers in the air, just before we’re taken back to Agnes and Lydie’s grad school years for the film’s next chapter.
Here we see Agnes on the cusp of her future, surrounded by ideas and novels and opinions, as well as an envious fellow student (Kelly McCormack, a touch broad as written and played in the film’s one tonal misjudgment). Agnes’ writing has attracted the attention of the campus conversation topic Decker (Louis Cancelmi), a faculty member with a faulty marriage and a barely-read but undeniably published novel Agnes admires. The admiration is mutual, even if the power dynamic is not.
At the last minute, the teacher reschedules his meeting with Agnes to take place at his house near campus. We see Agnes arrive, be greeted at the door and go inside. The camera stays outside, down the steps and by the sidewalk, for an unusually long time. Finally she tumbles, more or less, back out on the porch; it’s getting dark by this time; Decker appears in the doorway, trying to apologize, sort of? Kind of? And the scene is over.
Only later do we learn some unnerving particulars of what happened to Agnes, once she is ready, finally, to talk about it with Lydie. “Sorry, Baby,” as Victor said in one post-screening discussion, began with the notion of how to film the assault — meaning, what not to show. “In real life,” the filmmaker said, “we don’t get to be behind the door. We hear what happened and we believe people. (And) we don’t need to be inside to know.”
From there, “Sorry, Baby” continues its flow back and forth, in the years in between what happened and where Agnes is now. There’s an eccentric neighbor (Lucas Hedges, unerring) who initially appears to be call-the-police material, but it doesn’t work out that way at all. Lifelines can come from anywhere, Agnes learns, and expressing oneself honestly and directly is easier said than done.
Throughout this precisely written film, we see and hear Agnes caught in weird language-built labyrinths as she squares off with the college’s HR department while attempting to file a report against the professor, or — much later — Agnes at jury duty selection for an unrelated matter, explaining the incident in her past to her questioner in weirdly funny ways. Victor’s a tightrope-walker in these scenes; “Sorry, Baby” is as much about everyone around Agnes, performing their understanding, or concern, regarding the Bad Thing in her past.
Some of the more overt bits of bleak comedy are better finessed than others, and you wouldn’t mind another five or 10 minutes of hangout time, complementing the well-paced overall structure. But even that’s a sign of success. How many standout movies have you seen this year that made you think, you know, that actually could’ve been a little longer? Clear-eyed, disarming and, yes, plainly semi-autobiographical, “Sorry, Baby” takes every right turn in making Agnes far more than a tragic yet wisecracking victim, with a smiling-through-tears ending waiting around the bend. She’s just living her full, up-and-down-and-up life, acknowledging the weight of that life without solving or dissolving the bad thing.
This is Victor’s achievement, too, of course. Already, this quietly spectacular first-time filmmaker’s promise has been fulfilled.
“Sorry, Baby” — 3.5 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for sexual content and language)
Running time: 1:44
How to watch: Premieres in theaters July 4
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
]]>Often the best movies of the second half of the year come almost preordained as the Oscars Industrial Complex revs into high gear. The first half, though, can offer more of a thrill of discovery.
The first six months of 2025 have offered plenty of that, including indie gems, comedy breakouts and sensational filmmaking debuts. Here are our 10 favorites from the year’s first half.
The Ballad of Wallis Island
“The Ballad of Wallis Island” is the kind of charming gem that’s easy to recommend to any kind of movie lover. It is goofy and friendly, has an armful of lovely folk songs, an all-timer of a rambling character, in Tim Key’s eccentric and completely lovable Charles, Tom Basden’s grumpy, too-cool straight man, and the always delightful Carey Mulligan. “Wallis Island” is a film about letting go and moving on told with humor, wit and a big heart. Also hailing from the British Isles is the equally delightful “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.” (streaming on Peacock) —Bahr
One of Them Days
The big-screen comedy has been an almost extinct creature in recent years, but Lawrence Lamont’s “One of Them Days” gives me hope. Not only was this buddy comedy a surprise box-office hit, it is probably the exhibit A in the case of Keke Palmer Should Be in Everything. She and SZA, in her film debut, play Los Angeles housemates in a madcap race to make rent. (Streaming on Netflix) —Coyle
Sorry, Baby
There’s a sequence in Eva Victor’s delicate, considered and disarmingly funny directorial debut, “Sorry, Baby” that kind of took my breath away. You know something bad is going to happen to Agnes, it’s literally the logline of the film. You sense that her charismatic thesis adviser is a bit too fixated on her. The incident itself isn’t seen, Victor places their camera outside of his home. Agnes goes inside, the day turns to evening and the evening turns to night, and Agnes comes out, changed. But we stay with her as she finds her way to her car, to her home and, most importantly to her friend, Lydie (Naomi Ackie). This is a film about what happens after the bad thing. And it’s a stunner. (In theaters) —Bahr
Black Bag
Arguably the best director-screenwriter tandem this decade has been Steven Soderbergh and David Koepp. They were behind the pandemic thriller “Kimi” and another standout of 2025, the ghost-POV “Presence.” But their spy thriller-marital drama “Black Bag,” starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as married British intelligence agents, may be their best collaboration yet. It’s certainly the one with the most delicious dialogue. How has it taken the movies this long to make a dinner scene with spies dosed with truth serum? (Streaming on Peacock) —Coyle
Materialists
Celine Song’s “Materialists ” might not be the film people wanted it to be, but it’s the film they need in this land of high-end dating apps, designer dupes and everyone pretending to live like minor socialites on Instagram. A thoughtful meditation on money, worth, love and companionship, this is a film that upends everything we’ve come to think we want from the so-called romantic comedy (the idea of prince charming, the inexplicable wealth that’s supposed to coexist with middle class mores). Lifestyle porn will always have a place in the rom-com machine, but this is a populist film, both modern and timeless, that reminds us that love should be easy. It should feel like coming home. “Materialists” is simply the most purely romantic film of the year. (In theaters) —Bahr
Sinners
Not only does the wait go on for Ryan Coogler to make a bad movie, he seems to be still realizing his considerable talents. There are six months to go, still, in 2025, but I doubt we’ll have a big scale movie that so thrillingly doubles (see what I did there) as a personal expression for its filmmaker as “Sinners.” This exhilarating vampire saga is ambitiously packed with deep questions about community, Black entertainment, Christianity and, of course, Irish dancing. (Streaming on Max) —Coyle
Pavements
In a world of woefully straightforward documentaries and biopics about musicians, Alex Ross Perry decided to creatively, and a little chaotically, upend the form with his impossible-to-categorize film about the 90s indie band Pavement. Blending fact, fiction, archive, performance, this winkingly rebellious piece is wholly original and captivating, and, not unlike Todd Haynes’s “I’m Not There,” the kind of movie to turn someone who’s maybe enjoyed a few Pavement and Stephen Malkmus songs into a fan. (In theaters, streaming on MUBI July 11) —Bahr
April
A rare and exquisite precision guides Dea Kulumbegashvili’s rigorous and despairing second feature. Beneath stormy spring skies in the European country of Georgia, a leading local obstetrician (Ia Sukhitashvili) pitilessly works to help women who are otherwise disregarded, vilified or worse. This is a movie coursing with dread, but its expression of a deep-down pain is piercing and unforgettable. (Not currently available) —Coyle
On Becoming a Guinea Fowl
A visually, and thematically arresting marvel, Rungano Nyoni’s darkly comedic, stylish and hauntingly bizarre film about unspoken generational trauma takes audiences to a place, I’m guessing, many have never been: A Zambian family funeral. And yet its truths ring universal, as the elder generation turns their heads from the awful truth that the dead man, Fred, was a predator and pedophile, while the younger wonders if things must stay as they are. (Streaming on HBO Max on July 4) —Bahr
Friendship
On TV, Tim Robinson and Nathan Fielder have been doing genius-level comedy. Fielder hasn’t yet jumped into his own films, but, then again, it’s hard to get an epic of cringe comedy and aviation safety like season two of “The Rehearsal” into a feature-length movie. But in “Friendship,” writer and director Andrew DeYoung brings Robinson, star of “I Think You Should Leave,” into well-tailored, very funny and dementedly perceptive movie scenario. He plays a man who awkwardly befriends a cool neighbor (Paul Rudd). While their differences make for most of the comedy in the movie, “Friendship” — which culminates in a telling wink — is really about their similarities. (Available for digital rental) —Coyle
]]>Without Allstate, Marty McFly might never have left 1985 or perhaps he would have traveled back in time in a Buick, forever disrupting the space-time continuum of the seminal movie trilogy.
“The cars exist because of the partnership Allstate had with DeLorean,” said Sandee Lindorfer, vice president of auto claims for Allstate.
In the words of Doc Brown, “Great Scott!”
“Back to the Future” hit movie theaters on July 3, 1985. A customized 1981 DeLorean DMC-12, which took audiences on joyrides to 1955, 1885 and 2015 over the course of three films, was already relegated to the junkyard of automotive history by the time the movie premiered.
In the mid-1970s, Allstate worked with John DeLorean, an automobile executive and engineer, who left GM to launch his own namesake vehicle. The insurance company invested a reported $500,000 in a safety car project, developing prototypes with advanced seatbelt restraints, airbags and improved bumpers.
“We sponsored three prototypes with the DeLorean-Allstate safety car agreement, and we brought one of the prototypes to Congress to show them what could be done around smaller vehicles being more safe and having better fuel economy,” Lindorfer said.
One prototype evolved into the sleek DeLorean DMC-12, which went into limited but ill-timed production at a Northern Ireland factory during a recession in 1981, generating buzz but few sales.
By 1982, the debt-ridden company was in bankruptcy and its founder in legal trouble, facing indictments on separate drug and fraud charges. John DeLorean was ultimately acquitted on both counts, but his car was seemingly no more than a flash in the pan.
Three years later, the DeLorean was reborn as Doc Brown’s time machine, and the rest is cinematic history.
Initially, the time machine was envisioned as a refrigerator-like chamber that Doc Brown carried on the back of his truck. Then director Robert Zemeckis had the inspiration that the time machine should be mobile, and specifically chose the DeLorean for its futuristic design.
“The way I see it, if you’re going to build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?” Doc Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd, explains in the movie.
In the annals of “Back to the Future” lore, a lot of similar nuggets have emerged since the film trilogy premiered.
For example, the 1989 second installment predicted the Cubs would finally end their century-long World Series drought with a 2015 win over the fictional Miami Gators. The Cubs actually broke through in 2016, beating the Cleveland Indians, but the movie was pretty close.
Also, the role of Marty McFly was initially given to Eric Stoltz, who participated in over a month of filming before he was replaced by Michael J. Fox, the more comedically gifted “Family Ties” star.
But Allstate’s role in developing the car that begot the time machine and an enduring movie star remained buried in a dusty folder in the back of a corporate cabinet for decades. In 2019, an Allstate archivist found the mysterious DeLorean file and began exploring the mostly forgotten connection.
Six years later, on the 40th anniversary of “Back to the Future,” Allstate is finally ready to take a modest bow.
On Tuesday, Allstate rented a pair of vintage DeLoreans to celebrate the movie, the car and the unlikely part the insurance company played in both. Tucked away in the back of an underground garage at Allstate’s downsized Northbrook/Glenview headquarters near Chicago, across the street from its former sprawling corporate campus, the vehicles were briefly on display for the media and a handful of executives.
The cars, which included a stock 1981 DeLorean and a tricked-out version replicating the “Back to the Future” time machine, were rented from an Orland Park company — DeLorean USA Rental — that leases the vehicles for parties and events.
“You can’t drive it because the insurer doesn’t allow it,” said Tom Sedor, who owns the cars and the rental company.
The time machine, which includes a flux capacitor and a Mr. Fusion nuclear reactor in the back — replete with banana peel as fuel — is fully drivable, and the garage and adjacent parking lot offered enough room to get it up to the 88 mph threshold required to go back to the future.
But Sedor, 57, who customized the movie mockup with a 3D printer and assorted parts from Menards and RockAuto, said the replica has yet to successfully make the time jump.
“Nothing happened, no sparks,” said Sedor. “Everything drove normally. Actually, it’s very, very impressive to drive.”
]]>If you’ve lately been feeling that the “Jurassic Park” franchise has jumped an even more ancient creature — the shark — hold off any thoughts of extinction. Judging from the latest entry, there’s still life in this old dino series.
“Jurassic World Rebirth” captures the awe and majesty of the overgrown lizards that’s been lacking for so many of the movies, which became just an endless cat-and-mouse in the dark between scared humans against T-Rexes or raptors. “Jurassic World Rebirth” lets in the daylight.
Credit goes to screenwriter David Koepp, who penned the original “Jurassic Park,” and director Gareth Edwards, who knows a thing or two about giant reptiles as director of 2014’s “Godzilla.” Together with director of photographer John Mathieson, they’ve returned the franchise to its winning roots.
“Jurassic World Rebirth” has nods to the past even as it cuts a new future with new characters. It’s a sort of heist movie with monsters that’s set on the original decaying island research facility for the original, abandoned Jurassic Park.
Scarlett Johansson and Mahershala Ali — both very unshowy and suggesting a sort of sibling chemistry — play security and extraction specialists — OK, mercenaries — hired to get what everyone wants from dinosaurs in these movies: DNA. In return, there’s $10 million.
The movie is set five years after “Jurassic World Dominion” and some three decades after dinosaurs were reanimated. They’ve lost their public fascination — a subtle nod perhaps to the films in the franchise — and have struggled with the climate, gathering at the equator.
The Big Pharma company ParkerGenix has come up with a blockbuster idea: Take DNA from three colossal Cretaceous-period creatures — the flying Quetzalcoatlus, the aquatic Mosasaurus and the land-based Titanosaurus — to cure cardiac disease. Wait, how does that work? Don’t ask us, something about hemoglobin.
The trick is this: The dinos have to be alive when the DNA is extracted. Why? Because then there’d be no movie, silly. It would be a 10-minute sequence of a guy in a white coat and a syringe. This way, we celebrate three kinds of dinosaurs in three separate chapters.
It may seem a little far-fetched, but may we remind you about the last movie, which involved a biogenetic granddaughter, a global pharma conspiracy, the cast members from both trilogies, a Giganotosaurus, giant locusts on fire and had the ludicrous decision to have Chris Pratt make a promise to bring home a baby dino — to its mother.
The three-part quest at the heart of “Jurassic World Rebirth” is interrupted by a family — a dad, his two daughters and a sketchy boyfriend — in a 45-foot sailboat that is capsized and need rescuing. They bring a dose of not-always-working humor and humanity to the extraction team, which also includes a too-easily-telegraphing baddie played by Rupert Friend — “I’m too smart to die” — and a museum-based paleontologist played by Jonathan Bailey.
The filmmakers include clever nods to other blockbusters — “Indiana Jones,” “Star Wars,” “Jaws” and “ET” — and thrillingly create a dinos-hunting-in-a-convenience-store sequence like a tribute to the original film’s dinos-hunting-in-a-kitchen sequence. The shots overall are beautifully composed, from silhouettes on a boat in twilight to almost feeling the burn of the ropes as actors rappel down a 500-foot cliff face.
The creatures here are made glorious — from a dozing T-Rex along a river bed to the ones twisting in the sea, pure muscle and heft. A highlight is a pair of long-tailed Titanosaurus entwining their necks as John Williams’ familiar score plays, two lovers with thick, knotted skin utterly oblivious to the pesky humans who want some DNA.
For some reason, candy is a touchstone throughout the movie, from the opening sequence in which a stray Snickers wrapper causes incalculable harm, to licorice fed to a baby dino and one character’s fondness for crunching Altoids.
Edwards’ pacing is perfect, allowing dread to build with just the rustling of trees, and letting characters deepen between breathless, excellently filmed action sequences. The gorgeous landscape — Thailand’s waterfalls, grassy plains, shoreline caves and mangrove swamps — should be used for a tourist campaign, well, as long as they remove the rapacious dinos.
As if all this wasn’t enough, there’s a bonus bit at the end. The research facility that was abandoned years ago was cross-breeding dino species and making “genetically altered freaks” that still roam around. Some look like a turkey-bat-raptor hybrid — gross and scary — and one is a 20,000-pound T-Rex with a misshapen head and a horrible roar. It’s like getting a free monster movie.
In many ways, the folks behind “Jurassic World Rebirth” are trying to do the same thing as their mercenaries: Going back to the source code to recapture the magic of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 blockbuster original. They’ve thrillingly succeeded.
“Jurassic World Rebirth,” a Universal Pictures release that opens in theaters Wednesday, is rated PG-13 for “intense sequences of violence/action, bloody images, some suggestive references, language and a drug reference.” Running time: 133 minutes. Three and half stars out of four.
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