Movie Reviews

Labyrinth Anime Film Review

Published

2 months ago

November 6, 2025

Within the first few minutes of director Shōji Kawamori‘s Labyrinth, protagonist Shiori laments that “without smartphones, humanity would be doomed”. From the events that later transpire, I suspect Kawamori’s opinion is quite the opposite. Kawamori is, of course, best known for his lifetime of work on the Macross franchise, which features mecha battles, idol singers, and love triangles in most of its entries. If you squint a little, each of these main obsessions is also present in Labyrinth. It seems that Kawamori can’t help himself. Whether these elements mesh together to make a satisfying film is another matter entirely. Whereas his most beloved film, Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Do You Remember Love?, is a timeless classic, Labyrinth‘s reliance on modern tech and the anxieties around it almost instantly date it.

At the end of the screening, with my head in my hands, I sighed to myself, “How in hell’s name am I supposed to review this?” It’s a movie that almost defies explanation; any attempt to summarise the plot is likely to leave me gibbering incomprehensibly. I guess I’ll have to try. Suffice to say, Labyrinth is not by any means a “good” film. However, it’s certainly an entertaining one, and often (unintentionally) hilarious. Watching along with a highly engaged audience at the Scotland Loves Anime film festival was probably the best mode of experience for Labyrinth, for without my fellow cinemagoers’ stunned, disbelieving laughter, I doubt I would have survived to the end of its bloated, almost two-hour-long runtime.

Shiori is supposed to be the audience insert, an anxious high school girl who constantly apologizes for her mere existence. The daughter of a titanic judo instructor with the most impressively imposing moustache this side of Ivo Robotnik, she rejects her family’s focus on self-improvement via martial arts. Instead, she records social media videos with her female best friend Kirara. Their friendship is somewhat unequal – Kirara is far more outgoing and confident, and Shiori secretly seethes that her videos accrue far more “likes” from the faceless online masses. In fact, Shiori uses a secret, anonymous account to spew her negativity onto the internet rather than owning it as part of herself.

It’s this sublimated jealousy and insecurity that not only fractures their friendship but also Shiori’s identity. When her beloved smartphone screen cracks, it sends ruptures through her reality, as her persona splits in two – the more anxious version trapped within an almost Silent Hill-like alternative dimension, a shadowy analogue to the real world but empty of people, and a more confident “ideal” version that instantly becomes more outgoing. Ideal Shiori dons a VTuber-style two-tone wig and sets her sights on becoming a modern media superstar, the most popular Japanese high school girl, with a goal of garnering 100 million “likes.” She views her anxious alter ego as an impediment, and frequently taunts her through her apparently cloned smartphone, which seems to be able to dial its identical equivalent in the digital world, somehow without generating network errors.

We mostly view the story through Anxious Shiori’s eyes. She journeys through a dark, ominous liminal space populated by the souls of others similarly sucked into the digital underworld, where they are transformed, unsettlingly, into the smartphone stickers that best approximate their personalities. Anxious Shiori herself tended to contribute to friend group chats mainly via stickers as a way to hide her true emotions, engaging only at a surface level. The constant demand for connectivity and reciprocal communication is shown to be exhausting and all-consuming; so, when Kirara completely disconnects and ghosts Shiori, she panics that maybe Kirara has also been sucked into this world and lost her soul. The only thing preventing Shiori from losing hers is that her smartphone remains charged. Yes, in Labyrinth all that stands between humanity and devolution into mute digital emoticons is the presence of a spare battery pack. I know that I can get anxious when out and about and running low on charge, but Labyrinth takes battery anxiety to the extreme.

Human souls are bound and pressed by enormous industrial devices that pound three-dimensional bodies into flat images, with reams of red digital text spewing from between heavy plates, clearly symbolising blood. It’s cool imagery that I wish the film had leaned into a little more heavily. If anything, the aesthetic is similar to the recent Hatsune Miku movie Colorful Stage, although with significantly less music, unfortunately.

Anxious Shiori meets Komori, a sad-looking pink bunny sticker person who seems to know a lot about this world – the eventual reveal of his true identity is probably meant to be a huge shock, but I guessed it instantly. It’s not the most subtly plotted of films. Komori is quite fun, especially when he becomes so hapless and useless that Shiori has to attach a dog collar and string to drag him around behind her, floating like a balloon and bumping into things.

If it wasn’t already deranged, Labyrinth‘s central plot goes full batshit insane later on, with the evil mastermind Suguru Kagami planning to “liberate everyone’s ideal selves,” and it’s up to Anxious Shiori and Komori to try to prevent this… somehow.

Aesthetically, the film has its moments, especially in the digital underworld that acts as a dark mirror to our own. Unfortunately, all of the character animation is accomplished using 3D CG, which, while it does a reasonable job of emulating 2D animation, lacks any real-life authenticity. The characters move like dolls rather than real, living, breathing characters. There’s something about the natural exaggeration of movement, such as squashing and stretching, and other techniques often employed in traditional animation that bring life to character movement, which is all but absent. Yes, there’s some reasonably amusing slapstick here and there, and funny character expressions, but it’s a far cry from the verve and atmosphere of Kawamori’s previous works.

For much of Labyrinth, the festival audience sat in silence until some of the nuttier plot decisions were met with incredulous guffaws. Mostly, the film plays itself very straight, which is odd for a story featuring a floating pink bunny character and an evil music producer who wants to rule the world. One particular scene where Kagami takes Ideal Shiori to his bedroom and begins to suggestively unzip his tracksuit top was met with hysterical audience laughter that will become obvious if you see the film.

Multiple similar examples litter Labyrinth, and it’s hard to tell if these insane choices that trigger such hilarity are deliberate or not, and that’s why the film is so hard to rate. None of the pieces fit together properly. Anxious Shiori, for most of the film, is a fairly unengaging, dull protagonist, though her fake/ideal version is much more fun, which is probably the point. Kagami makes for a somewhat underwhelming villain, with an unclear plan that seems overly convoluted. The rules of the world seem to change upon the writer’s whim, and crazy stuff happens mostly out of nowhere. It’s like a laundry list of bonkers ideas all strung together without any coherent plan.

I found Labyrinth a struggle to endure, yet found certain aspects very entertaining. Perhaps my mistake was watching it stone cold sober. As one of my fellow festival attendees noted, it’s probably best viewed with at least a few beers on board already. I certainly can’t unreservedly recommend Labyrinth, but if you’re hankering for some good old “WTF am I even watching right now?”, then Labyrinth has you covered.

Movie Reviews

‘Greenland 2: Migration’ Review: Gerard Butler in a Post-Apocalyptic Sequel That’s Exactly What You Expect

Published

1 hour ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

‘Greenland 2: Migration’ Review: Gerard Butler in a Post-Apocalyptic Sequel That’s Exactly What You Expect

Desperate migrants are forced to leave Greenland after a malevolent force makes their island uninhabitable. No, it’s not tomorrow’s headline about Donald Trump, but rather the sequel to Ric Roman Waugh’s 2020 post-apocalyptic survival thriller. That film starring Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin had the misfortune of opening during the pandemic and going straight to VOD. Greenland 2: Migration (now there’s a catchy title) has the benefit of opening in theaters, but it truly feels like an unnecessary follow-up. After all, how many travails can one poor family take?

That family consists of John Garrity (Butler), whose structural engineering skills designated him a governmental candidate for survival in the wake of an interstellar comet dubbed “Clarke” wreaking worldwide destruction; his wife Allison (Baccarin); and their son Nathan (now played by Roman Griffin Davis). At the end of the first film, the clan had endured numerous life-threatening crises as they made their way to the underground bunker in Greenland where survivors will attempt to make a new life.

Greenland 2: Migration

The Bottom Line

It’s the end of the world as we know it…again.

Release date: Friday, January 9
Cast: Gerard Butler, Morena Baccarin, Roman Griffin Davis, Amber Rose Revah, Sophie Thompson, Trond Fausa Aurvag, William Abadie
Director: Ric Roman Waugh
Screenwriters: Mitchell LaFortune, Chris Sparling

Rated PG-13,
1 hour 38 minutes

Five years later, things aren’t going so well. Fragments of the comet continue to rain down on the planet, causing catastrophic destruction. The contaminated air prevents people from going outside, and resources are becoming increasingly scarce. But there are some plus sides, such as the bunker’s inhabitants still being able to dance to yacht rock.

When their safe haven in Greenland is destroyed, the Garritys, along with a few other survivors, are forced to flee. Their destination is France, where there are rumors of an oasis at the comet’s original crash site. And at the very least, the food is bound to be better.

It’s a perilous journey, but anyone who saw the first film knows what to expect. The Garritys, along with the bunker’s Dr. Casey (Amber Rose Revah), run into some very bad people, undergoing a series of life-threatening trials and tribulations.

Unfortunately, while the thriller mechanics are reasonably well orchestrated by director Waugh (Angel Has Fallen, Kandahar) in his fourth collaboration with Butler, Greenland 2: Migration feels as redundant as its title. While the first film featured a relatively original premise and some genuine emotional dynamics in its suspenseful situations, this one just feels rote. And while it’s made clear that the crisis has resulted in people resorting to cutthroat, deadly means to ensure their survival, the Garritys have it relatively easy. All John has to do is adopt a puppy-dog look, put a pleading tone in his voice, beg for his family’s help, and people inevitably comply.

To be fair, the film contains some genuinely arresting scenes, including one set in a practically submerged Liverpool and another in a dried-up English Channel. The latter provides the opportunity for a harrowing sequence in which the family is forced to cross a giant ravine on a treacherously fragile rope ladder.

Butler remains a sturdy screen presence, his Everyman quality lending gravitas to his character. Baccarin, whose character serves as the story’s moral conscience (early in the proceedings she spearheads a fight to open the shelter to more refugees despite the lack of resources, delivering a not-so-subtle message), more than matches his impact. William Abadie (of Emily in Paris) also makes a strong impression as a Frenchman who briefly takes the family in and begs them to take his daughter Camille (Nelia Valery de Costa) along with them.

Resembling the sort of B-movie fantasy adventure, with serviceable but unremarkable special effects, that used to populate multiplexes in the early ‘70s, Greenland 2: Migration is adequate January filler programming. The only thing it’s missing is dinosaurs.

Movie Reviews

Movie Review: A real-life ’70s hostage drama crackles in Gus Van Sant’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’

Published

13 hours ago

January 8, 2026

Press Room

Movie Review: A real-life ’70s hostage drama crackles in Gus Van Sant’s ‘Dead Man’s Wire’

It plays a little loose with facts but the righteous rage of “Dog Day Afternoon” is present enough in Gus Van Sant’s “Dead Man’s Wire,” a based-on-a-true-tale hostage thriller that’s as deeply 1970s as it is contemporary.

In February 1977, Tony Kiritsis walked into the Meridian Mortgage Company in downtown Indianapolis and took one of its executives, Dick Hall, hostage. Kiritsis held a sawed-off shotgun to the back of Hall’s head and draped a wire around his neck that connected to the gun. If he moved too much, he would die.

The subsequent standoff moved to Kiritsis’ apartment and eventually concluded in a live televised news conference. The whole ordeal received some renewed attention in a 2022 podcast dramatization starring Jon Hamm.

But in “Dead Man’s Wire,” starring Bill Skarsgård as Kiritsis, these events are vividly brought to life by Van Sant. It’s been seven years since Van Sant directed, following 2018’s “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot,” and one of the prevailing takeaways of his new film is that that’s too long of a break for a filmmaker of Van Sant’s caliber.

Working from a script by Austin Kolodney, the filmmaker of “My Own Private Idaho” and “Good Will Hunting” turns “Dead Man’s Wire” into not a period-piece time capsule but a bracingly relevant drama of outrage and inequality. Tony feels aggrieved by his mortgage company over a land deal the bank, he claims, blocked. We’re never given many specifics, but at the same time, there’s little doubt in “Dead Man’s Wire” that Tony’s cause is just. His means might be desperate and abhorrent, but the movie is very definitely on his side.

That’s owed significantly to Skarsgård, who gives one of his finest and least adorned performances. While best known for films like “It,” “The Crow” and “Nosferatu,” here Skarsgård has little more than some green polyester and a very ’70s mustache to alter his looks. The straightforward, jittery intensity of his performance propels “Dead Man’s Wire.”

Yet Van Sant’s film aspires to be a larger ensemble drama, which it only partially succeeds at. Tony’s plight is far from a solitary one, as numerous threads suggest in Kolodney’s fast-paced script. First and foremost is Colman Domingo as a local DJ named Fred Temple. (If ever there were an actor suited, with a smooth baritone, to play a ’70s radio DJ, it’s Domingo.) Tony, a fan, calls Fred to air his demands. But it’s not just a media outlet for him. Fred touts himself as “the voice of the people.”

Something similar could be said of Tony, who rapidly emerges as a kind of folk hero. As much as he tortures his hostage (a very good Dacre Montgomery), he’s kind to the police officers surrounding him. And as he and Dick spend more time together, Dick emerges as a kind of victim, himself. It’s his father’s bank, and when Tony gets M.L. Hall (Al Pacino) on the phone, he sounds painfully insensitive, sooner ready to sacrifice his son than acknowledge any wrongdoing.

Pacino’s presence in “Dead Man’s Wire” is a nod to “Dog Day Afternoon,” a movie that may be far better — but, then again, that’s true of most films in comparison to Sidney Lumet’s unsurpassed 1975 classic. Still, Van Sant’s film bears some of the same rage and disillusionment with the meatgrinder of capitalism as “Dog Day.”

There’s also a telling, if not entirely successful subplot of a local TV news reporter (Myha’la) struggling against stereotypes. Even when she gets the goods on the unspooling news story, the way her producer says to “chop it up” and put it on air makes it clear: Whatever Tony is rebelling against, it’s him, not his plight, that will be served up on a prime-time plate.

It doesn’t take recent similar cases of national fascination, such as Luigi Mangione, charged with killing a healthcare executive, to see contemporary echoes of Kiritsis’ tale. The real story is more complicated and less metaphor-ready, of course, than the movie, which detracts some from the film’s gritty sense of verisimilitude. Staying closer to the truth might have produced a more dynamic movie.

But “Dead Man’s Wire” still works. In the film, Tony’s demands are $5 million and an apology. It’s clear the latter means more to him than the money. The tragedy in “Dead Man’s Wire” is just how elusive “I’m sorry” can be.

“Dead Man’s Wire,” a Row K Entertainment release, is rated R for language throughout. Running time: 105 minutes. Three stars out of four.

Movie Reviews

Film review: IS THIS THING ON? Plus January special screenings

Published

1 day ago

January 7, 2026

Press Room

Is This Thing On?

Cinematic stories of disintegrating marriages are fairly commonplace—and often depressing emotional endurance tests, besides—so it’s interesting to see co-writer/director Bradley Cooper take this variation on the theme in a fresher direction. The unhappy couple in this place is Alex and Tess Novak (Will Arnett and Laura Dern), who decide matter-of-factly to separate. Then Alex impulsively decides to get up on stage at an open-mic comedy night, and starts turning their relationship issues into material. The premise would seem to suggest an uneven balance towards Alex’s perspective, but the script is just as interested in Tess—a former Olympic-level volleyball player who retired to focus on motherhood—searching for her own purpose. And the narrative takes a provocative twist when their individual sparks of renewed happiness lead them towards something resembling an affair with their own spouse. The screenplay faces a challenge common to movies about comedians in that Alex’s material, even once he’s supposed to be actively working on it, isn’t particularly good, and Cooper isn’t particularly restrained in his own supporting performance as the comic-relief buddy character (who is called “Balls,” if that provides any hints). Yet the two lead performances are terrific—particularly Dern, who nails complex facial expressions upon her first encounter with Alex’s act—as Cooper and company turn this narrative into an exploration of how it can seem that you’ve fallen out of love with your partner, when what you’ve really fallen out of love with is the rest of your life. Available Jan. 9 in theaters. (R)

JANUARY SPECIAL SCREENINGS

KRCL’s Music Meets Movies: Dig! XX @ Brewvies: As part of a farewell to Sundance, Brewvies/KRCL’s regular Music Meets Movies series presents the extended 20th anniversary edition of the 2004 Sundance documentary about the rivalry between the Dandy Warhols and Brian Jonestown Massacre as they chart different music-biz paths. The screening takes place at Brewvies (677 S. 200 West) on Jan. 8 @ 7:30 p.m., $10 at the door or 2-for-1 with KRCL shirt. brewvies.com

Trent Harris weekend @ SLFS: Utah’s own Trent Harris has charted a singular course as an independent filmmaker, and you can catch two of his most (in)famous works at Salt Lake Film Society. In 1991’s Rubin & Ed, two mismatched souls—one an eccentric, isolated young man (Crispin Glover), the other a middle-aged financial scammer—wind up on a comedic road trip through the Utah desert; 1995’s Plan 10 from Outer Space turns Mormon theology into a crazy science-fiction parody. Get a double dose of uncut Trent Harris weirdness on Friday, Jan. 9, with Rubin & Ed at 7 p.m. and Plan 10 from Outer Space at 9 p.m. Tickets are $13.75 for each screening. slfs.org

Rob Reiner retrospective @ Brewvies Sunday Brunch: Last month’s tragic passing of actor/director Rob Reiner reminded people of his extraordinary work, particularly his first handful of features. Brewvies’ regular “Sunday Brunch” series showcases three of these films this month with This Is Spinal Tap (Jan. 11), The Princess Bride (Jan. 18) and Stand By Me (Jan. 25). All screenings are free with no reservations, on a first-come first-served basis, at noon each day. brewvies.com

David Lynch retrospective @ SLFS: It’s been a year since the passing of groundbreaking artist David Lynch, and Salt Lake Film Society’s Broadway Centre Cinemas marks the occasion with some of his greatest filmed work. In addition to theatrical features Eraserhead (Jan. 11), Inland Empire (Jan. 11), Mulholland Dr. (Jan. 12), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (Jan. 14), Blue Velvet (Jan. 19) and Lost Highway (Jan. 19), you can experience the entirety of 2017’s Twin Peaks: The Return on the big screen in two-episode blocs Jan. 16 – 18. The programming also includes the 2016 documentary David Lynch: The Art Life. slfs.org

Death by Numbers @ Utah Film Center: Directed by Kim A. Snyder (the 2025 Sundance feature documentary The Librarians), this 2024 Oscar-nominated documentary short focuses on Sam Fuentes, survivor of a school shooting who attempts to process her experience through poetry. This special screening features a live Q&A with Terri Gilfillan and Nancy Farrar-Halden of Gun Violence Prevention Center of Utah, with Zoom participation by Sam Fuentes. The screening on Wednesday, Jan. 14 at 7 p.m. at Utah Film Center (375 W. 400 North) is free with registration at the website.