Category Archives: Reviews

The Last House (2026)

04 Wednesday Nov 2026

Posted by in Movies, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

The doors are locked without a lock,
The windows barred without a bar.
No stepping out to take a walk,
No Sunday cruise around the block,
No driveway upkeep on the car,
No short but friendly neighbor talk,
No evening wishes on a star,
No welcoming a guest to knock…
I guess it’s just how things now are.
_____________________

MPA rating: PG-13

It shouldn’t really be a surprise that the Netflix movie machine churns out disappointing fare, but I had hoped The Last House would be better than it is. I like the ideas behind films that posit how life would fundamentally change given some hypothetical cataclysm, and other films have turned out really well playing with the notion of not being able to go outside, such as Right at Your Door (trapped by toxic fallout) or The Last Days (trapped by lethal agoraphobia). But The Last House is one seriously janky example of this peculiar apocalyptic subgenre.

Wagner Moura and Greta Lee play married couple Jason and Ann, who live in happy suburban bliss in Seattle with their two kids Ruth and Graham. When a strange rain storm hits, they find that their house is completely sealed by a barrier of water, trapping them and everyone else inside their homes. And while some people are likewise trapped outside, they soon regret it as invisible hostile creatures use the rain for cover. As years pass, the family is forced to use their wits to survive and find a way free.

Simply put, the setup of The Last House is hard to take seriously. When the reason for the sealing of buildings is revealed, it opens a lot of questions about why the creatures behind it would take such an indirect manner of wiping out humanity, and the threadbare themes of mercy by the end really don’t make sense in the larger context. While the survival elements are sometimes interesting, they also strain credulity, as when Jason manages to defy gravity and fashion a small game trap through the chimney. And I’m rather annoyed by the family dynamic where one partner accuses the other of not taking things seriously because they’re holding onto hope and not folding to utter despair (see The End of Oak Street for the same thing).

Moura and Lee do their best to make The Last House at least watchable, but it’s the plot that falls apart by the end. Besides, I would think most of us still remember what it was like being trapped in our houses during the COVID era. We don’t need a worse version of that.

Rank: Dishonorable Mention

© 2026 S.G. Liput
799 Followers and Counting

Hokum (2026)

02 Monday Nov 2026

Posted by in Movies, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

‘Tis dark tonight
And darker still
The heart of one
With time to fill
With thoughts in thrall
And alcohol
And none to slow
Their slide downhill.

‘Tis dark tonight,
And darkness grows
Where monsters sleep
And shadows doze.
With one mistake,
The spell could break
And fell a fool
Like dominoes.

‘Tis dark tonight,
And dark it stays
As long as men
Walk wicked ways.
We’re terrified
The more we hide
Until the morning’s
Warming rays.
___________________

MPA rating: R (for brief violence, corpses, intense scares)

As many others do, I dove into the horror genre this October, more so than in past years, intending to deliver some reviews before Halloween, which obviously didn’t pan out. But even if spooky season is over, the racing hearts need not stop, and, despite a title that many would only know as a folksy dig from Sheldon Cooper on The Big Bang Theory, Hokum is one of the best chillers of the year.

Adam Scott plays depressed author Ohm Bauman, who travels to a remote Irish hotel to spread his parents’ ashes in the scenic place where they had once honeymooned. He’s a thoroughly unpleasant guy, prone to writing misanthropic endings and insulting people to their face, and he certainly doesn’t pay heed to the rumors of a haunted suite where a witch is supposedly imprisoned. Through a series of twists and turns, he finds himself trapped in said suite and is forced to come face to face with both malevolent forces and his own guilt.

A lot of horror films often feel tied to a gimmick or mixed with humor to ease the impact of the scares, which I often tend to like, so I was impressed with how straight Hokum plays its haunted hotel scarefest. It may be par for the course with many horror fiends, but for me, this film scared the crap out of me. It fosters a genuinely creepy atmosphere, starting out with just an uneasy gloom and eventually filling you with dread every time the lights go out or line of sight is broken. And even if it telegraphs some of its jump scares rather obviously, they’re still effective more often than not.

Beyond the shocks, I also enjoyed the non-supernatural story at play, with a human villain getting their comeuppance in parallel with Ohm coming to terms with his own grief and misanthropy, reflected artfully in the depiction of his novel’s ending, which bookends the film. I understand that the Irish director Damian McCarthy has become a bit of a star in horror circles, and I can see why. It’s the kind of non-gory horror I prefer, so I’ll have to check out his other films, but maybe during the day… huddled under a blanket.

Rank: List Runner-Up

© 2026 S.G. Liput
799 Followers and Counting

Wildwood (2026)

01 Sunday Nov 2026

Posted by in Movies, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , ,

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
An obstacle of ageless sleep
To those with promises to keep
And fragile lives so brief.

The woods are life and death in turn
From ivy vine to fir and fern.
To sky they grow, to ash they burn,
And seeds are free of grief.

What business have you in the wood
Where trees care not for bad and good?
They’ve seen far more than humans could,
And they shall watch you too.

Good luck whatever road you take,
Whatever bones or hearts shall break,
Whatever sleeping dogs you wake…
You can’t escape their view.
______________________

MPA rating:  PG-13 (for violence and a suicide)

Well, so much for my plans to review some scary movies ahead of Halloween. I’ve still had some issues with writing motivation, so in lieu of National Novel Writing Month, I’ll try to post a review per day in November. No promises, of course, but I’m hoping this will get my creative juices flowing again. And I’m kicking things off with a new release that was one of my most anticipated films of the year.

The trailers alone for Wildwood have given me chills, so I was eagerly awaiting the newest film from stop-motion studio Laika. I have rarely fully connected with Laika’s previous films like Coraline and Missing Link, though I do love Kubo and the Two Strings. Often stop-motion films are technically impressive, but the stories somehow don’t resonate with me, as if they weren’t worth the amount of effort put into them. Yet I could tell Wildwood had a lot of potential, to the point that I read the 2011 novel on which it’s based, written by Colin Meloy of the band The Decemberists, which only heightened my expectations. And after seeing it twice now in the theaters, I am so glad that Wildwood is the masterpiece I wanted it to be.

Set in Meloy’s hometown of Portland, Oregon, the story follows tweens Prue (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) and Curtis (Jacob Tremblay) as they enter a magical world in the nearby woods after Prue’s baby brother Mac is kidnapped by a murder of crows. The two are soon caught in the middle as tensions rise between neighboring nations of the wood, and the deposed Dowager Governess Alexandra (Carey Mulligan) has raised an army and plots destruction on all who stand in her way.

For starters, the animation is absolutely wondrous, a technical achievement that has been universally praised by critics and audiences alike. I consider it the apotheosis of stop-motion animation. The sheer number of locations, characters, costumes, and set pieces that were fashioned by hand are staggering, and stop-motion’s sometimes jerky look that lends itself to the creepy or grotesque is remarkably smooth here, to the point that it’s easy to forget the pain-staking process that went into every second of what is now the longest stop-motion film ever made. The lush forest environments are gorgeous, and the warm colors and cinematography make the miniature world come alive. There’s a huge battle toward the end that has drawn fitting comparison to The Lord of the Rings, and the scale of it is truly a new high in Laika’s chosen art form.

As for the story, that seems to be where at least some viewers are more mixed, finding it perhaps less than original or too stuffed with plot for the characters to stand out. Such observations are not unwarranted, but, having read the book, I think it’s a really masterful adaptation. A lot happens over 500+ pages, and Chris Butler’s screenplay manages to capture most of the story while speeding up the pace, a little gender-swapping, adding some more exciting scenes, recreating others straight from the page, and retaining a remarkable amount of heart at the core of Prue and Alexandra’s conflicting journeys. The film even manages to fix a couple plot points that annoyed me in the original book.

So though Wildwood isn’t immune from some plot weakness and fast pacing, it’s nonetheless a truly special film, one worthy of the amount of time and craft that Laika invested in it. As its deserved PG-13 rating suggests, it’s also much more mature than the typical animated fare, with much death, a suicide, and intense battle scenes (though not overly graphic), which only increased my appreciation for how seriously the filmmakers approached this story that touches on grief and desperation. At this point, I am actively rooting for Wildwood to get a Best Picture nomination at the next Oscars, while also bemoaning its criminally low box office numbers. Something about this film just makes me so glad that it exists, and I suspect that its reputation will only grow in the future.

Rank: Top 100-Worthy

© 2026 S.G. Liput
799 Followers and Counting

Hope (2026)

20 Sunday Sep 2026

Posted by in Movies, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , ,

I hope we won’t be spotted.
I hope it’s safe to stay.
With every hour
More we cower,
The more I feel like prey.

I hear the sounds approaching.
I fear their origin,
The smell of death
Upon its breath
As hope is wearing thin.
__________________

MPA rating: R (for violence and language)

I’m torn on whether I should catch up on a pretty deep backlog of films or focus on new releases, so I might as well alternate. One of several Korean imports in recent months, Hope is the latest film from acclaimed director Na Hong-jin, an apocalyptic alien invasion thriller that boasts the highest budget yet for a Korean film. Set in the (surprisingly heavily armed) rural village of Hope Harbor near the DMZ, police chief Ko Bum-seok (Hwang Jung-min) goes from investigating a mysterious dead cow to fighting for survival against a giant creature wreaking havoc on the town, with bigger implications as the scope of the danger spreads.

Despite an overlong runtime of over 2½ hours, Hope’s pace rarely falters, with the extended sequences of alien carnage being the main attraction. Whether it’s navigating narrow village streets or battling in beautiful green forests, the action is consistently thrilling and shot fluidly to capture the right balance of tension and movement, with echoes of Attack on Titan and Predator. Once seen, the monsters themselves suffer a bit from imperfect CGI, but they have a unique biology and thick hide that make them a particularly dangerous adversary for mere humans. Special mention is deserved by Jung Ho-yeon as a rookie cop with a truly badass introduction and Zo In-sung as a hunter with especially impressive plot armor.

The main drawback for Hope is that it is very obviously incomplete; it might as well be called Hope: Part One for all the closure it gives to… anything. After an exciting chase scene that gets a bit repetitive, something big and catastrophic happens for reasons unknown, and it just ends. There’s a sort of twist in the final moments that indicates the alien perspective will become more important, which could be really interesting in a sequel, which is supposedly already written but yet to be greenlit. But as the film stands now, it offers little beyond the action (admittedly very skillful, intense action) and a suggestion of a larger story that we may never see. One can only hope that a worthy Part Two will come eventually.

Rank:  List Runner-Up

© 2026 S.G. Liput
790 Followers and Counting

Superman (2025)

07 Monday Sep 2026

Posted by in Movies, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Do you believe that a man can fly?
Or do they all fall to the cynical eye?
The worst is more likely, so doubt in the best.
That S on the chest
Is a pie in the sky.

Do you believe we are too far gone,
That the king and the queen have forgotten the pawn?
But someone is fighting, if need be alone,
And every stone thrown
Makes trying feel wrong.

Do you believe we are doomed from the start?
Or can hope be found in the ol’ bleeding heart?
It’s risky, of course, pinning hopes anywhere,
But such is the prayer
Of playing one’s part.
___________________

MPA rating: PG-13

Considering how deep my year-plus backlog of movies is, I wasn’t sure where to start with my return to blogging, but it made sense to begin with my official favorite movie of 2025. I don’t think I’m alone, but I have long been a proponent of Marvel’s cinematic universe over DC’s more scattershot attempts. Except for Wonder Woman and Shazam, I never really connected with most of the Snyderverse, so I had no qualms over James Gunn taking over the DC franchise and giving it a fresh coat of paint. And considering his first film in that rebooted world, I’m fully on board.

Stepping confidently into Christopher Reeve’s shoes and eschewing the more broody Henry Cavill take, David Corenswet plays the new Man of Steel, already an established hero dating Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan) and defending Metropolis alongside an incipient “Justice Gang” made up of a Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), and Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi). Superman ends up a punching bag more often than one might expect, both literally and figuratively, thanks to the machinations of born hater Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), who is intent on taking his nemesis down physically and in the public eye.

It was smart of Gunn to not belabor yet another origin story for an already well-known character, and he wastes no time in dropping us into the new DC universe, complete with Krypto the Superdog, prison pocket dimensions, Fortress of Solitude robots, and existing character dynamics. There’s a lot of comic book geekery on display, yet it manages to serve the story without alienating newcomers. It doesn’t hurt that Gunn borrows some of his own trademarks from Guardians of the Galaxy, like an extended one-shot battle scene set to music that makes Mr. Terrific the unexpected stand-out side character.

No hate to the prior Superman actors, but Corenswet is a natural, boasting excellent chemistry with Brosnahan and a likeable boy-scout earnestness opposite the more cynical heroes. A climactic monologue to Luthor doesn’t quite land as well as intended, but a quieter moment with Lois in his childhood bedroom reinforces how his optimism and goodness are their own form of resistance. I liked how his adoptive parents Ma and Pa Kent are played by lesser-known actors (Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell), as well as his arc of ultimately embracing his earth heritage over his Kryptonian one.

After the comparative drudgery of the Snyderverse, the latest Superman is a breath of fresh air. Action-packed, sincere, perhaps slightly overstuffed, but above all fun, this is how to start a cinematic universe.

Best line: (Lois) “My point is I question everything and everyone. You trust everyone and think everyone you’ve ever met is, like… beautiful.”   (Clark) “Maybe that’s the real punk rock.”

Rank: List-Worthy

© 2026 S.G. Liput
790 Followers and Counting

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)

03 Saturday May 2025

Posted by in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

(I’m catching up after the fact, but for Day 15 of NaPoWriMo, the prompt was for a six-line poem characterized by simple language and enthusiasm, so I focused on the film itself this time.)

I played the games when I was young.
I guess I’ll go watch the movie. Looks fun.
It’s not as if I’ve been waiting for this,
But all my friends saw it. I don’t want to miss
The tragic backstory, Jim Carrey’s full glory, ooh, that scene was peak!
Shut up, I’m no geek….
______________________

MPA rating: PG

It honestly feels like a minor miracle that the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has translated to the big screen as well as it has. It seemed as if it would be a bomb on arrival after the poorly received initial design for the title character, but three live-action movies and a streaming show later, it’s proven to be remarkably fun. In this third outing (did I never review the sequel? Guess not.), a powerful black and red hedgehog called Shadow (Keanu Reeves) is freed from decades-long imprisonment and embarks on a spree of vengeance, leading Sonic (Ben Schwartz), Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey), and Knuckles (Idris Elba) to team with the non-shockingly not dead Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) to bring him down.

While the Knuckles series got rather dumb as it dragged out, the movies have found the right secret sauce for Team Sonic, with Sonic’s quippy super-speed antics bouncing well off of Tails’ earnest tech support and Knuckles’ headstrong aggression. Add in a self-serious straight man in the form of Shadow, a villain very much in the mold of Mewtwo from Pokémon, and the film is able to find a surprising balance between silly action and emotional stakes. It also helps that James Marsden and Tika Sumpter as Sonic’s adoptive parents are given more to do this time, while Jim Carrey pulls eccentric double duty as both the returning mad scientist Ivo Robotnik and his even madder grandfather Gerald.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 gives every indication that this franchise has the potential to keep getting better, with yet another character from the games teased at the end for a sequel. One dance scene between the Robotniks will no doubt go down as one of Carrey’s finest and most hilarious moments and well worth his return from retirement. And though there’s nothing revolutionary about the plot or themes, the overall entertainment value makes this a film to please nostalgic nerds and present kids alike.

Best line: (Shadow) “The light shines, even though the star is gone.”

Rank: List Runner-Up

© 2025 S.G. Liput
809 Followers and Counting

It Happened One Night (1934)

01 Thursday May 2025

Posted by in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

(For Day 30 of NaPoWriMo, the prompt was for a poem about hearing a band or song throughout one’s lifetime. Based on a scene from this film, I went with the classic “The Man on the Flying Trapeze,” so the poem can be sung to that tune.
This might be the end of the month, but I’ve missed I think three days so I’ll be catching up before calling it quits.)

Remember that song we sang on the bus
When life was just you and me and not us?
My voice was drowned out by the crowd (‘twas a plus),
But yours, like a bell, had me reeling.

I hear it, years later, but clearly
To the sound of cans dragging behind.
The bouquet had been thrown, and we weren’t on our own,
And we sang with our voices combined.

Oh, we warble it still on the road all the time,
And though my voice borders on audial crime,
You still sound as sweet as you did in your prime.
So one more time, honey, with feeling!
_________________________

MPA rating: Approved (G-level)

Another Oscar-season showing from TCM, It Happened One Night is still fondly regarded today as a Frank Capra classic, so I was curious if the Best Picture winner of 1934 would hold up and, for the most part, it does. Claudette Colbert plays spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews, who elopes against her father’s wishes and then goes on the lam as he puts up a reward for her return. She is found by beleaguered newspaper reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable), who helps her in exchange for covering her story, and the two gradually grow closer along their travel misadventures. Both actors also won Oscars, as did the screenplay and Capra as director.

Any film this old is going to be somewhat dated, but the banter between Peter and Ellie feels more natural than a lot of other repartee from the era, like the flowery dialogue of Double Indemnity or the pretentious quips of The Philadelphia Story. It’s fun to watch the beauty Colbert humbled by the travails of being on the road, while Gable bears the bulk of the film’s charm on his back, proving it was second nature for him to play an appealing rogue even five years before Gone with the Wind. From the running joke of “the walls of Jericho” to Colbert’s famous hitchhiking scene, the film stays amusing without going silly with its screwball comedy, and I was surprised by a scene toward the end that was blatantly borrowed by Spaceballs, a testament to its influence. While I didn’t think It Happened One Night rose to the level of greatness I’ve seen critics ascribe to it, it’s an excellent early rom com that further proves the talents of Gable and Capra.

Best line: (Ellie’s father Alexander, to Peter) “Do you love her?”
(Peter) “A normal human being couldn’t live under the same roof with her without going nutty! She’s my idea of nothing!”
(Alexander) “I asked you a simple question! Do you love her?”
(Peter) “Yes! But don’t hold that against me, I’m a little screwy myself!”

Rank: List Runner-Up

© 2025 S.G. Liput
807 Followers and Counting

Spellbound (2024)

29 Tuesday Apr 2025

Posted by in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

(For Day 28 of NaPoWriMo, the prompt was for a poem about “music at a ceremony or event of some kind,” like for instance a birthday.)

“Happy Birthday!” everyone sang.
The sound of unity in my ears rang.
Everyone loved me, at least for a song
That needed more verses to feel at all long,
And oh, how I wished, as the candles were blown,
That mom would stop yelling and put down her phone
And dad would stop cursing and pointing his finger,
That both would just stay as a smiling singer
And love me enough to not hate one another.
Not too much to ask for a father and mother.
I knew what would happen but blew all the same.
Then maybe the candles would carry the blame.
_____________________

MPA rating: PG

Sometimes a film so clearly wants to be like its predecessors that you have to at least admire the effort that went into its earnest attempt. Mary and the Witch’s Flower comes to mind in trying to live up to Studio Ghibli’s legacy, while Skydance Animation’s Spellbound aspires to be like the Disney princess musicals of yore. It certainly has a pedigree with producer John Lassiter, director Vicky Jenson of Shrek, and songs by the great Alan Menken. In it, Princess Ellian (Rachel Zegler) of the fantasy kingdom of Lumbria desperately tries to keep secret from the citizens that her royal parents (Javier Bardem, Nicole Kidman) have been transformed into animal-like monsters running amok in the palace. Seeking the help of two magical Oracles (Nathan Lane and Titus Burgess as an unspoken gay couple), Ellian takes her parents on a dangerous journey to transform them back to humans.

Spellbound has a lot of great ideas to its credit, particularly in the world-building, from a waterfall used as a massive gate to a desert that turns to quicksand under cloud shadows or a tunnel where sounds become projectiles. The songs are quite good too, though still don’t hold a candle to Menken’s best work, and the voice cast is on point, especially Zegler’s original spunky princess role and John Lithgow as her long-suffering adviser/sidekick. 

But it’s hard to escape the feeling that Spellbound is a pale imitation that needed more fleshing out to avoid its own plot holes, like how the monster king and queen escape the palace when their cages are left open yet had been free to wander the palace for months before that. And then there’s the message that makes itself known rather late in the runtime, clarifying the monster situation as a metaphor for divorce and saying many of the right things for a resolution while not diving deep enough to make it land emotionally. Spellbound is a valiant effort, often funny, cute, and imaginative, but its muddled tone and oversimplified lesson keep it from rising to the level of its forerunners.

Best line: (Queen Ellsmere, to her daughter) “The best thing about us is you. And it always has been.”

Rank: Honorable Mention

© 2025 S.G. Liput
807 Followers and Counting

The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim (2024)

27 Sunday Apr 2025

Posted by in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

(For Day 27 of NaPoWriMo, the prompt was for a poem focusing on a detail of a painting, but I think I’ll go off-prompt today and cover a movie I’ve been meaning to review for a while.)

The legends that matter endure through time.
The others are lost with a final breath,
Were not so luck’ly preserved in rhyme,
And died an unremembered death.

What could have saved the tales so lost?
A copied scroll or a memorized line?
What bade a once-loved myth be tossed
Ere passing history’s finish line?

What wonders, horrors, joys, and fears
Have gone extinct with fossils none?
The stories mute for want of ears…
I wish I could read oblivion.
___________________

If you imagine a Venn diagram with anime fandom and Lord of the Rings fandom as the two circles, I would be squarely in the middle of the shared area. Therefore, an anime spin-off film set a couple hundred years before The Fellowship of the Ring was right up my alley from the start. Focusing on one of the legendary tales of the horse-riding nation of Rohan, the story follows Princess Héra (Gaia Wise), daughter of King Helm Hammerhand (Brian Cox), as she defends her nation from the invasion of Wulf (Luke Pasqualino), a former friend bent on vengeance.

The most common criticism I heard about War of the Rohirrim was about the choppy animation, and yes, character movement is a bit stilted at times, particularly at the beginning. Even using a 3D rotoscope-like technology, Sola Entertainment as a studio can’t match the butter-smooth animation of MAPPA or Science Saru, so we can only imagine how different the style might have been in the hands of a different studio. But the animation is still good throughout and even excels in the big action moments, and best of all, the style compliments Peter Jackson’s version of Middle-earth with some outstanding backgrounds and scenery. (Besides, the previous standard for LotR animation was Rankin/Bass or Ralph Bakshi, and this is still a cut above those.)

Beyond the animation, I’ve heard all the complaints, from the plot being too long, the characters one-note, the story being basically female-forward fan fiction since Héra isn’t even named in the Tolkien appendices from which the plot was drawn (and the film doesn’t explain why she was supposedly left out of the official history). And yet, I really liked this movie, my inherent love of the franchise winning out over all else. None of those grievances detracted from the experience of being able to visit Middle-earth again, with Howard Shore’s Rohan theme setting the epic mood and some hype-worthy set pieces bringing the action. A friend who saw it with me thought it went too anime at times, with clearly human characters pulling off superhuman feats as if they were elves, but I saw such moments perhaps as embellishments, considering the story is told as a legend of Rohan by the narrating voice of Eowyn (Miranda Otto). I also thought Héra was a good example of a “strong female character,” by simply rising to the challenge set before her rather than harping about gender differences or whatnot, similar to Miyazaki’s Nausicaä, who was cited as an influence by Wise.

All in all, The War of the Rohirrim is an epic story that continues the tradition of Peter Jackson’s world. Even if it was simply an expendable side project so New Line could hold onto the Tolkien rights, that just makes the care and quality that was put into it that much more impressive. It broke my heart then that, whether due to disinterest or poor marketing, the film flopped last December, failing to even earn back its budget. I don’t deny that it had room to be better with smoother animation or more interesting dialogue, but it met my high expectations for a Middle-earth movie and, in my opinion, deserved better.

Rank: List-Worthy

© 2025 S.G. Liput
807 Followers and Counting

Dead Man Walking (1995)

26 Saturday Apr 2025

Posted by in Movies, NaPoWriMo, Poetry, Reviews, Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

(For Day 26 of NaPoWriMo, the prompt was simply for a sonnet, in my case, a Shakespearean. I enjoy this form, since it lets me delve into heavier themes and my sonnet for Time of Eve is one of my personal favorite NaPoWriMo posts, so here goes another.)

Is death deserved and who decides the guilt?
The question haunts the conscience of mankind.
“Thou shalt not kill,” foundation for us built,
But punishment frets our reluctant mind.
The fear the felling blow perhaps may land
On innocence mistaken for the crime
Delays the price that bloody sins demand
And stretches out their pending ending time.
And what finality to halt a heart,
Declaring second chances null and void!
Not “vengeance is the Lord’s,” but ours, in part,
More death where life’s already been destroyed.
An “eye for eye” or “life for life” is fair
But leaves so very much beyond repair.
__________________________

MPA rating: R (for language and intensity)

It’s rare to find a film that manages to cover every angle of a controversial issue as deftly as Dead Man Walking while also remaining an engaging story. Based on the non-fiction book by Sister Helen Prejean, the film follows the plain-clothes Catholic nun (played by Susan Sarandon) as she becomes the spiritual advisor to Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn), a convicted rapist and murderer on Louisiana’s death row. All the arguments for and against capital punishment get their say, and while Sister Prejean’s faith puts her on the pro-life/anti-death side, her conversations with the families of the murder victims make the grief of the opposing side completely understandable. She is criticized for even considering offering comfort to Poncelet as he awaits his execution, and at times, he acts like the unsympathetic monster everyone believes him to be. Yet, just like the old “no atheists in foxholes” saying, Poncelet’s need for forgiveness and human compassion becomes more and more apparent as the end draws nearer.

I get that Braveheart was the epic juggernaut for the 1995 Oscars season, but the sheer emotional power behind Dead Man Walking makes the fact that it wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture a travesty. And the same goes for Nicolas Cage winning Best Actor over both Penn and Richard Dreyfuss in Mr. Holland’s Opus! At least Susan Sarandon won an absolutely deserved Oscar for her nuanced performance, often just sitting and listening to others but mirroring every emotion of the audience with her expressive eyes. Penn proves his acting prowess at every turn (it’s gratifying that he at least went on to win two Oscars to make up for this loss), and his final scene is a harrowing and devastating gut punch, similar to the end of Dancer in the Dark. Director and writer Tim Robbins made a poignant masterpiece with Dead Man Walking, one worth opening up uncomfortable discussions around capital punishment and justice, themes that remain timely even thirty years later.

Best line: (Sister Helen) “Mr. Percy, I’m just trying to follow the example of Jesus, who said that a person is not as bad as his worst deed.”

Rank: List-Worthy

© 2025 S.G. Liput
807 Followers and Counting