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Eddington (2025)
Joaquin Phoenix and Pedro Pascal in Eddington (2025)
Eddington
(In Theaters July 18)
Once in a blue moon a studio makes an incoherent movie-trailer. After viewing Eddington’s trailer several times, it remains a confusing jumble. Written by admired director-screenwriter Ari Aster, Eddington overflows with observations regarding the ideological divisions in our nation. Notably, Aster never takes a stand beyond blaming Covid-19 and the lockdown as a major source of our problems. Against this backdrop, his 2020 setting pits two men against one another in Eddington, New Mexico’s mayoral race. Pedro Pascal plays Ted, Eddington’s mask and social distancing mayor, challenged by Joaquin Phoenix’s skeptical county sheriff Joe Cross. While the aftermath of the George Floyd riots is affecting the nation, a local murder prompts the resident Native American tribe to claim jurisdiction in investigating the homicide. The difficulties Cross confronts include his fragile, traumatized wife (Emma Stone), and overbearing mother-in-law (Deirdre O’Connell). A microcosm for the country as a whole, the script obsesses over what Aster believes are pivotal events leading to our current circumstances. (Lisa Miller)
Fallout: Season One
(Warner Bros./Amazon 4k Blu-ray/DVD)
Videogames have been the source material of film and television for decades. The latest adaptation, “Fallout,” constructs a linear story around the game’s violent, postapocalyptic setting.
Episode One opens during the Cold War—‘50s cars, clothes, black-and-white TV. No one lets the vague apprehension of nuclear war spoil a kid’s birthday party … until the mushroom clouds rise. The racial integration of its suburban setting is anachronistic—more for PC points than historical accuracy—but the rush to the fallout shelters (complete with a fistfight) mirrors what probably would have happened had the Bomb been dropped.
Cut to 219 YEARS LATER: The wealthier class had somehow reestablished themselves in elaborate underground complexes complete with a cinematically simulated sun and sky. Fifties pop (“Some Enchanted Evening”) survives as classical music in this Norman Rockwell (sort of) recreation of midcentury America. Elaborate procedures have been established to secure the survival of these fortunate Americans who hope one day to “colonize” the Earth’s radiation devastated surface. But on her wedding night, Lucy (Ella Purnell) discovers that the unknown inhabitants of the surface are crashing the party.
Fallout: Season One includes all eight episodes from the 2024 season, plus a set of collector cards. (David Luhrssen)
I Know What You Did Last Summer
(In Theaters July 18)
In this reboot, a familiar set-up returns. Five young friends in a fishing village, accidentally kill a pedestrian while driving recklessly on a remote coastal highway. The friends (played by Jonah Hauer-King, Tyriq Withers, Sarah Pidgeon, Madelyn Cline and Chase Sui Wonders), make a pact to keep their misdeed a secret in order to avoid the consequences. A year later, the friends are stalked by a vengeful, hook-wielding fisherman. Unable to turn to the police, the group seeks help from Julie James and Ray Bronson (Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddie Prinze Jr.), both survivors of a eerily similar killing spree from 1997. The reboot ignores off-screen reports that both the Julie and Roy died, imagining their present day lives as they grapple with the trauma of their actions and deaths of their friends. Tapping into existing franchises is nothing new, although doing so, following a 28-year hiatus, is less common. Directed by Jennifer Kaytin Robinson from a knowing screenplay by Sam Lansky, the biggest changes were made to secure Hewitt and Prinze’s return because the actors insisted upon playing large, meaningful roles. (Lisa Miller)
