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ALEXXANDAR MOVIE REVIEWS: ‘Rock’ energizes ‘Black Adam’

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ALEXXANDAR MOVIE REVIEWS: ‘Rock’ energizes ‘Black Adam’

























ALEXXANDAR MOVIE REVIEWS: ‘Rock’ energizes ‘Black Adam’ | Information | valdostadailytimes.com

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Movie Reviews

O'Dessa (2025) – Movie Review

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O'Dessa (2025) – Movie Review

O’Dessa, 2025.

Written and Directed by Geremy Jasper.
Starring Sadie Sink, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Murray Bartlett, Regina Hall, Pokey LaFarge, Mark Boone Junior, Bree Elrod, Dora Dimić Rakar, Ivona Tomiek, Marinko Prga, Judy Malka, and Rithvik Andugula.

SYNOPSIS:

A farm girl is on an epic quest to recover a cherished family heirloom. Her journey leads her to a strange and dangerous city where she meets her one true love – but in order to save his soul, she must put the power of destiny and song to the ultimate test.

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Part rock opera and part film, O’Dessa begins with so much expository text setting up this world and the hero’s journey that one wonders if it’s also part novel. That’s also not a knock; writer/director Geremy Jasper (also contributing to the music and lyrics alongside Jason Binnick) has crafted an intriguing alternate reality set in a world diseased with a poison that has all but reduced civilization to slums, with one person’s music as society’s last hope. The point is that it turns around and does nothing with much of this, becoming a different type of story while leaving behind a plethora of missed opportunities.

Benefiting from this catastrophe is the villainous Plutonovich (Murray Bartlett), who emerges as a popular game show host in Satalytte City (one of the last bastions of humanity). He also doubles as a cruel dystopian leader tormenting others who speak out against him. The games are meant to distract from the current reality and keep society clinging to a shred of hope.

Change is prophesied to come from Sadie Sink’s eponymous O’Dessa, the seventh son of a seventh son wandering and rambling (not verbally, musically) with a guitar handmade from a burning willow tree. For this review, O’Dessa’s gender will be left unaddressed other than that the film perceives the character as androgynous, comfortable playing around with identity within the central romantic relationship (most notably during wedding and with who wears what).

It brings to mind the plot of the Jack Black-led video game Brutal Legend. O’Dessa’s music is meant to inspire a revolution and stir emotions back in individuals. Not to directly compare two mediums where each narrative has different aspirations, but O’Dessa is far less interesting than that game. At times, it feels like Geremy Jasper wasn’t sure what to do after all that setup or how to make the film exciting, settling for a generic, dull film inspired by Greek mythology. There is little chemistry and no sizzle, with the only memorable aspect of the romance being the uncertainty surrounding each character’s gender.

It’s confounding that upon O’Dessa setting off on their journey (following her mother’s death at the end of that prologue), Geremy Jasper puts the character, who is admittedly naïve and convincingly so, in a position to lose that family heirloom. Granted, O’Dessa is resourceful and quickly crafts a temporary guitar from scrapyard junk, but the opening text has already set this story up as an adventure stemming from the power of that generational guitar. It also means that we spend roughly 20 minutes watching the character walk around these neon-drenched slums without the film actually doing any world-building or character-building beyond introducing a right-hand woman for Pltonovich, Regina Hall’s Neon Dion, a menacing individual using electrified brass knuckles as a weapon. Not to spoil anything, but her exit from the film is unintentionally hilarious and yet another off-key note here.

Eventually, O’Dessa stumbles into a music show where Kelvin Harrison Jr.’s Euri Dervish puts on a pop star show. Later that night, their paths cross, with Euri kindly offering shelter and what must be O’Dessa’s first shower in who knows how long. O’Dessa’s singing soothes Euri, opening the window for connection. The issue is that there is practically no characterization, and the romance is bland. It is soaked in neon colors, synthetic retro-style music, and an extended sluggish vibe that drains energy and intrigue from the compelling setup. Note, this isn’t the complaint that the film transitions into a romance, but that the hopeless romanticism here is surface-level and boring. 

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Even the glimpses of Pltonovich’s villainy, which involves soul-sucking by way of facial surgery, doesn’t necessarily instill horror or cause unsettling anxiety for what’s to come when one of our protagonists inevitably ends up in his lair (which comes with a ridiculous autotune theme song). Sadie Sink is a terrific vocalist, and some of the early songs here get one half-invested in the possibilities that could come from this journey. Still, whenever it veers into romanticism, it never quite hits the emotional high note the narrative strives for.

O’Dessa is ambitious with seemingly endless potential, but in the end, it’s one of those distractions characters in the film routinely talk about, except the only revolution it will inspire is someone looking for something else to stream.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association, Critics Choice Association, and Online Film Critics Society. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews and follow my BlueSky or Letterboxd 

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Perusu Movie Review: Mourning wood provides comedy that won’t go down in history

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Perusu Movie Review: Mourning wood provides comedy that won’t go down in history
Perusu Movie Synopsis: Two brothers discover their deceased father with a persistent erection and scramble to conduct his funeral while hiding this embarrassing condition from their gossipy small town.

Perusu Movie Review:
When Biggus Dickus is less a character name and more a posthumous condition, you get Perusu, a comedy that proves not everything stays down when you kick the bucket. Director Ilango Ram’s Tamil remake of his own hit Tentigo turns funeral preparations into a farcical circus when two brothers discover their recently deceased father sporting an enthusiastic farewell salute that simply won’t quit. Cue the panic as Durai (a perfectly buzzed Vaibhav) and Swammy (Sunil) desperately try to keep dad’s final stand from becoming the talk of their nosy small town.

The film barrels forward like a runaway hearse, rarely pausing between its rapid-fire dialogue and increasingly absurd attempts at concealment. Each new person drawn into the conspiracy — wives, mother, the loyal but exasperated Ameen (Bala Saravanan), and one very confused auto driver — adds another layer to the comedy of errors until the situation becomes as stiff as… well, you know. What makes this mechanism work is that the joke itself becomes secondary to the characters’ increasingly desperate machinations, allowing the film to tap into universal anxieties about family reputation and small-town gossip without resorting to heavy-handed social commentary.

Eventually, even the most enthusiastic anatomical jokes wear thin (there are only so many euphemisms one can deploy), and the pacing occasionally sags under the weight of too many characters juggling the same secret.

Vaibhav handles his sloshed character with credible restraint, while Sunil holds his own as the more composed brother. The seasoned supporting cast, including Bala Saravanan, Redin Kingsley, Dhanalaskhmi, Niharika, Chandini, and Munishkanth act as good set pieces.

Perusu never pretends to reach beyond its raunchy premise or offer profound insights into the human condition. It’s a two-hour exercise in committed absurdity that delivers what it promises — a consistent stream of chuckles punctuated by a few genuine laughs. Comedy’s rigor mortis hasn’t quite set in, but neither has true comic immortality.

Written By:
Abhinav Subramanian

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Netflix’s The Electric State belongs in the scrap heap

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Netflix’s The Electric State belongs in the scrap heap

It is hard to describe how utterly joyless and devoid of imaginative ideas The Electric State is. Netflix’s latest feature codirected by Joe and Anthony Russo takes many visual cues from Simon Stålenhag’s much-lauded 2018 illustrated novel, but the film’s leaden performances and meandering story make it feel like a project borne out by a streamer that sees its subscribers as easily impressed dolts who hunger for slop.

While you can kind of see where some of the money went, it’s exceedingly hard to understand why Netflix reportedly spent upward of $300 million to produce what often reads like an idealized, feature-length version of the AI-generated “movies” littering social media. With a budget that large and a cast so stacked, you would think that The Electric State might, at the very least, be able to deliver a handful of inspired set pieces and characters capable of leaving an impression. But all this clunker of a movie really has to offer is nostalgic vibes and groan-inducing product placement.

Set in an alternate history where Walt Disney’s invention of simple automatons eventually leads to a devastating war, The Electric State centers Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown), a rebellious teen orphan desperate to escape her abusive home. Like most kids around her age, Michelle’s world was turned upside down during the brutal human / robot conflict that began with thinking machines demanding equal rights as sentient beings. But whereas most of her peers lost loved ones specifically because of the war, an ordinary car crash is what tears Michelle’s family apart and leads to her being adopted by loutish layabout Ted (Jason Alexander).

With her parents and brilliant younger brother Christopher (Woody Norman) seemingly dead, Michelle doesn’t feel like there’s all that much to live for. Much like her chaotic adoptive home life, school feels like a prison to Michelle because of the way children are expected to learn everything using Neurocasters, bulky headsets that transport wearers into virtual realities. Though many people like Ted gleefully strap their Neurocasters on, the technology disgusts Michelle, in part because of how they were first created as tools to give humans an edge in the machine war.

Given how people still live in fear of being attacked by the few surviving robots sequestered in the Exclusion Zone, Michelle can’t fathom why other people are so game to tune the real world out. Michelle herself is constantly looking over her shoulder in case a bloodthirsty machine finds its way into her room. But when one of them actually does, she’s charmed by the fact that it looks like one of her favorite cartoon characters. And she’s shocked when it tells her (through canned catchphrases from the cartoon) that Christopher is actually alive.

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Though Michelle’s new robot friend looks very much like one of Stålenhag’s illustrations, its vocal impairment makes it read as a cutesy spin on the live-action Transformers’ take on Bumblebee. As it urges Michelle to follow it on a mission to find Christopher, you can almost hear the Russos and screenwriters Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely patting themselves on the back for creating a character who encapsulates everything about The Electric State’s war-torn world. It’s a damaged thing that just wants to be seen as a person and given the chance to live its life in peace. Those details could have made for an interesting narrative if there were any more depth to them or if Brown could muster up even an ounce of chemistry with her CGI companion. But The Electric State is much more concerned with simply showing you as many of its broken machines as it possibly can.

Outside of a multitude of cultural references meant to remind you that it’s set in the ’90s, and shots of Neurocaster users lying passed out on the street like junkies, The Electric State never feels very interested in doing the kind of worldbuilding necessary to make movies like it work. Instead, it simply spells out that the inventor of the Neurocaster, Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci), is a villain who wants Colonel Marshall Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito) to capture Michelle’s robot. And Bradbury’s chasing after the pair gives the film a way to show how littered The Electric State’s world is with the rusted frames of machines destroyed during the war.

The movie becomes that much more of a slog once Michelle crosses paths with boring smuggler Keats (a profoundly charmless Chris Pratt) and his wisecracking robo-friend Herman (Anthony Mackie), who make a living selling things they scavenge from the Exclusion Zone. Unlike Brown’s Michelle, Pratt and Mackie actually do manage to come across as people who have lived through a sort of apocalypse and become much weirder due to their general isolation from the outside world. Their knowledge of the Exclusion Zone and access to vehicles makes them perfect to get Michelle and her robot to their destination. But the sheer number of jokes about Twinkies and Big Mouth Billy Bass (again, this is the ’90s) that The Electric State has Keats spit out is enough to make you root for Bradbury.

Image: Netflix

Part of the problem is that The Electric State is never all that funny, though the movie certainly thinks it is as it starts to introduce some of its more unusual robot characters like mail-bot Penny Pal (Jenny Slate), spider-like fortune telling machine Perplexo (Hank Azaria), and their leader, Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson). You can almost imagine The Electric State working if it were more focused on the lives of the pariah machines — all of whom are somewhat evocative of Sid’s horrific creations in Toy Story.

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But rather than tapping into those characters’ potential, the movie spends its last third rushing headlong into tiresome action sequences that fall far short of what you would expect from such an expensive project. Ultimately, The Electric State leaves you with the distinct sense that Netflix greenlit it assuming that the Russo bros. + IP + a bunch of well-known actors would = a movie people would reflexively want to watch. But that math simply doesn’t add up, and this feels like an instance where you’d be much better off just reading the book.

The Electric State also stars Colman Domingo, Ke Huy Quan, Martin Klebba, Alan Tudyk, Susan Leslie, and Rob Gronkowski. The movie is now streaming on Netflix.

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