Movie Review: Frankenstein (2025)

Genre: Monster Drama  

Director: Guillermo del Toro  

Starring: Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Christoph Waltz, Lars Mikkelsen  

Running Time: 150 minutes  

Synopsis: It's 1857 near the Arctic Circle, and a Danish navy vessel led by Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelsen) rescues Baron Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac), who is escaping from the Creature (Jacob Elordi) he created. In flashbacks, the badly injured Victor recounts his story. As a child he experienced no love from his father (Charles Dance), and grew up to be an Edinburgh surgeon obsessed with defeating death. Shunned by the establishment, he finds a benefactor in Henrich Harlander (Christoph Waltz), whose daughter Elizabeth (Mia Goth) is engaged to Victor's brother William (Felix Kammerer). Victor establishes a lab at an isolated tower, assembles body parts from fallen soldiers, and creates the Creature, but is then frustrated by its slow mental progression.

What Works Well: Director Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley's source material into a spectacularly imaginative spectacle filled with human heart and longing. Gothic sets, bold cinematography, elaborate make-up, and intricate costumes create a monstrous nightmare emanating from narcissism, a yearning for love, the complications of incomplete father-son bonds, and the questionable value of life without death. Oscar Isaac throws himself into a dark role where brilliance is stranded by the inherited absence of empathy, and Jacob Elordi surrounds acute loneliness with immense physical presence.  

What Does Not Work As Well: While the story is rich in incident and details, the running time is still too long.

Key Quote:

The Creature: If you are not to award me love, then I will indulge in rage. And mine is infinite!

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Movie Review: 2 Hearts (2020)

Genre: Romantic Drama  

Director: Lance Hool  

Starring: Jacob Elordi, Radha Mitchell, Adan Canto, Tiera Skovbye  

Running Time: 100 minutes  

Synopsis: Two initially separate stories unfold in different time periods. In the present, Chris (Jacob Elordi) starts college and meets fellow student Sam (Tiera Skovbye). They both volunteer for a campus security program, and eventually their relationship becomes serious. In the 1950s, Jorge Bolivar (Adan Canto) is the scion for a family-run rum business. He suffers from a serious lung condition and defies the odds to live into his thirties. While helping to relocate the business from Cuba to Miami, he meets and falls in love with airline stewardess Grace (Radha Mitchell). Eventually, the stories of Chris and Jorge merge. 

What Works Well: Based on actual events, this is a heartwarming and uplifting double romance, sensitively handled by director and co-writer Lance Hool. The two stories are never groundbreaking but always engaging, and the drama glides seamlessly between the two timelines, cleverly concealing the connection until the third act. Chris and Jorge are refreshingly real, their journeys bumping against typical family issues including parental expectations and medical challenges. Both romances feel organic and credible for their eras.

What Does Not Work As Well: The writing and acting is always earnest but sometimes confined to  television levels of blandness, with both Sam and Grace presented as perfectly wholesome partners for their men. The third act is effortlessly tear-inducing, and drifts towards sustained emotional melodrama. 

Key Quote:

Chris (narrating): The truth is we're all just one connection away from something incredible.

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Movie Review: Priscilla (2023)

Genre: Biographical Drama Romance  

Director: Sofia Coppola  

Starring: Cailee Spaeny, Jacob Elordi  

Running Time: 114 minutes  

Synopsis: In Germany of 1960, 14 year-old Priscilla Beaulieu (Cailee Spaeny) is the daughter of a US army Captain. She meets an already famous 24 year-old Elvis Presley (Jacob Elordi), who is finishing his army stint at the same base. Elvis senses a connection and they date a few times before he returns to civilian life and stardom in the United States. But he does not forget about Priscilla, and more than a year later invites her to his Graceland estate in Memphis. She is exposed to his entourage, frequent absences to movie sets and affairs with co-stars, and pill use. Eventually Priscilla realizes Elvis needs her as a domestic anchor and moves in with him while still attending high school.

What Works Well: The adaptation of Priscilla Presley's book offers an inside look at a superstar riding the wave of peak popularity. As interpreted in pale pastels by writer and director Sofia Coppola, Elvis found in Priscilla stable purity as an antidote to an otherwise hectic life. On balance he treats her well and only consummates their relationship once married, but in return demands patient presence irrespective of her needs. The film stays with Priscilla inside Graceland's gates to empathize with her confinement, Elvis often reduced to a phone voice and gossip page presence.

What Does Not Work As Well: For the most part, Priscilla herself does precious little other than serve Elvis' emotional needs through mere existence. As a young woman infatuated early in life by a larger-than-life presence, she does not know enough to have adult opinions, make major decisions, or take consequential actions. The vacuum of interest at the biography's core fuels a gnawing sense that the much more interesting story is elsewhere.

Conclusion: Dreamily occupies the shadows behind the spotlight.



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Movie Review: Saltburn (2023)

Genre: Drama  

Director: Emerald Fennell  

Starring: Barry Keoghan, Jacob Elordi, Rosamund Pike, Carey Mulligan, Richard E. Grant  

Running Time: 131 minutes  

Synopsis: At Oxford University in 2006, student Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan) is from a modest background and struggles to fit in. He develops an infatuation with popular fellow student Felix (Jacob Elordi), who comes from a wealthy family. They develop a friendship despite the reservations of Felix's cousin Farleigh (Archie Madekwe). Felix invites Oliver to spend the summer at his family's Saltburn estate, where Oliver meets Felix's parents Elspeth and James (Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant), sister Venetia (Alison Oliver), and Elspeth's troubled friend Pamela (Carey Mulligan). However, all is not what it seems.

What Works Well: The reimagining of The Talented Mr. Ripley protects its intentions until the context is carefully introduced. The Oxford scenes establish the poor-kid-in-a-rich-milieu tension, and the early interactions at Saltburn welcome some humour, courtesy of the acidic butler Duncan (Paul Rhys), Rosamund Pike's on-edge spikiness, the estate's stuffy grandeur, and Pamela's unstated multiple agonies.

What Does Not Work As Well: None of the characters are remotely sympathetic, and they all act according to the whims of the script and to the detriment of organic consistency. The second half suffers a steep quality descent propelled by three ridiculously disgusting scenes conceived by writer and director Emerald Fennell for pure shock value. The evil happenings at an upper class estate are beyond far-fetched and appear to generate little to no serious investigation. While Rosamund Pike almost salvages her afterthought of a role, Carey Mulligan is thoroughly wasted.

Conclusion: Superficially clever but substantively hollow.



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