The Monkey (2025) Movie Review

Director Zach Cregger, follows his (overrated) "IT" horror, Barbarian, with a film that is better in near every way than its messy predecessor. Though good rather than great and far more cohesive film-making, its still guilty of throwing ideas up in the air without delving any deeper.

This old school sports movie - a near remake of the classic Robert Redford baseball movie, The Natural - is built entirely out of cliches and hokum, and I kinda love it. Brad is ace, they don't rely on a wall of CGI and everything radiates good looking, exciting fun. They don't make em like this (much) anymore.

I felt bad for the last film in this venerable (near 30 year!) franchise. It not only got Barbenheimered at the box office but it was also the first real step backwards in quality. Sadly I would say that's the case once again, as pretty much everything was better even in Dead Reckoning. It's still ultra high quality in most film making areas but the story, people and screenplay are lesser. 

The esteemed Mr William Bevin's latest isn't quite his ambient side nor his beat-heavy side, though it does feel like listening to a club way in the distance. Classy stuff but I would've liked a bit more.

Following on from the outstanding debut album, Madres, a lesser EP from the Berlin based Peruvian DJ. Two fantastic tracks but also a bit of filler.

After an interminable half year of being spammed by this over-promoted battle between, directors Zack Snyder, of the previous DC comic book movies and his replacement, James Gunn, the movie itself is not actually any good. Just as goofy as the pre-release shots proclaimed it to be and too lightweight in all directions to build a universe off of. The irony is Snyder gave us Superman but no Clark Kent, whereas Gunn has given us Clark Kent and no Superman.

This timely second live album from Radiohead, is of their most overtly political album, at a time when the band's impenetrable force-field has been broken by politics over Israel. Many tracks outstrip their studio counterparts in a pretty thrilling document of the band in their best live era.

Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland, return to their iconic zombie franchise. While it probably wont satiate fans of the first two films in the same way, it does have its own unexpected successes. It looks pretty amazing for a movie filmed on iPhones and has a far deeper soul than relentless zombie kills.

Arguably the MVP of solo rap these last ten years, and particularly for his single producer albums with Madlib and (this album's returning) The Alchemist. It's a fine album but in the context of those other albums, not a stand out. The immaculate luxurious lounge-soul back drop, can get repetitive and overly low-key, but it does give one of rap's technical masters space to do whatever he wants.

I'm not entirely sure where the rebirth happens in the 7th movie of the financially indestructible franchise, given it's basically a remake of Jurassic Park 3. But it is viciously hamstrung by terrible dialogue and acting, more befitting a low budget horror movie. Instantly the worst of the lot and I've never seen Scarlett Johansson so bored in a movie.