Mediocre Movie Club Movie Reviews

Superman

11/2/2025

B+

Directed by James Gunn

Starring David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, and Nicholas Hoult

Review by Jon Kissel

James Gunn’s Superman casts its Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) as a former punk enthusiast, a fitting interest for a burgeoning journalist speaking truth to power. There’s nothing punk about the character of Superman (David Corenswet), a farm-raised hayseed whose goofy alter-ego Clark Kent doesn’t take much acting. Contra Kill Bill, Clark Kent and Superman are the same person, except Kent doesn’t shoot lasers out of his eyes and punch kaijus in the jaw. In response to Lois’ jibes about his corniness and earnestness, Kent retorts that maybe that’s the new punk if her irony and complexity is the norm. In the wake of Zack Snyder’s grimdark imagining of the character, Gunn brings a new sensibility to DC and Warner Bros, redefining punk in opposition to Snyder and Gunn’s old employer at Marvel, who also have an allergy to earnestness. Some real-world resonances and old-fashioned spectacle complete the picture and get Gunn’s tenure as studio head at DC off to a stirring start.

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28 Years Later

11/2/2025

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C

Directed by Danny Boyle

Starring Alfie Williams, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, and Jodie Comer

Review by Jon Kissel

The world of Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, then Weeks, and now Years, is so uniquely oppressive and unpleasant that the thought of coming back to the franchise after so much time did not fill this viewer with anticipation. Few zombie movies would be fun places to live in, but the animalistic, rabid infected of Boyle’s and writer Alex Garland’s imagining provoke the most skin-crawling sensations in the genre. Their effectiveness spurs a kill-them-all response that every critic who’s ever written thoughtfully about zombie movies would define as the exact thing someone like George Romero is trying to evoke, where the ultimate purpose is to get the viewer to consider how quickly they would shoot their neighbors in the face. With Boyle’s infected, the only correct answer is immediately.

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Materialists

9/13/2025

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B+

Directed by Celine Song

Starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans, and Pedro Pascal

Review by Jon Kissel

After her directorial debut, the bittersweet romance Past Lives, Celine Song sticks with the genre with Materialists, a film with all the bitter of Past Lives and very little of the sweet. A film for the immediate present, Materialists lives in the sick dating world of 1% Manhattanites, where every relationship is about opportunity cost and happiness is only conceivable through appearances. Women over 30 are persona non grata, and no one has an honest appraisal of their own value in the dating pool. Song’s poison-pill drama conjures a world where everyone is in a hell of their own making, but they look great simmering in the lake of fire.

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Sinners

8/9/2025

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A-

Directed by Ryan Coogler

Starring Michael B. Jordan, Miles Caton, and Hailee Steinfeld

Review by Jon Kissel

It took 12 years and 5 movies, but Ryan Coogler finally steps out of the shadow of IP for an original blockbuster with Sinners. Notwithstanding based-on-a-true-story Fruitvale Station, Coogler’s talents have been applied to legacy sequels and franchise work to oft-excellent effect. With Sinners, it feels like something that was supposed to happen years ago has finally come to pass. Coogler’s Jim Crow vampire thriller, featuring a dual-lead performance from mainstay Michael B. Jordan, has stayed in theaters for months and reaped the box office benefits. A film with that kind of longevity, especially in an environment when movies are on on-demand three weeks after debut, is an increasingly rare treat. Sinners deserves to be savored to the last drop.

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The Brutalist

5/1/2025

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A-

Directed by Brady Corbet

Starring Adrien Brody, Felicity Jones, and Guy Pearce

Review by Jon Kissel

Before The Brutalist, Brady Corbet’s greatest sequence of filmmaking comes at the end of his debut, The Childhood of a Leader. By the end, the rebellious kid has grown into the titular leader, a fascist facsimile greeted by a wild crowd on his way to who knows what atrocity. The spinning, disorienting camera is part of the crowd, pushing and jostling to get a look. It’s a shocking way to end an imperfect film, and Corbet carries that same style into the beginning of The Brutalist. This time, the camera is part of a crowd in the hold of a ship headed to Ellis Island, and where it landed in an ominous place for Childhood of a Leader, here it lands on the Statue of Liberty after emerging from the literal dark of the hold and the metaphorical dark of WWII Europe. Laszlo Toth (Adrien Brody) is overjoyed to be here, and the film is too based on the way that Daniel Blumberg’s score is building, but that camera style implies something else. The Brutalist brings titanic cinematic might to bear from its first scene, self-consciously filmed in VistaVision to evoke the grand epic road shows of the Hollywood studio system heyday. It reeks of importance and achievement, and it delivers on what it promises through Corbet’s will and ambition and his collaboration with an immensely talented cast and crew.

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Superman

B+

28 Years Later

C

Materialists

B+

Sinners

A-

The Brutalist

A-

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