Capsule Movie Reviews Vol.2025.11

Read the explanation of method, madness, and spoilers.[1]

1. Big Mouth S08 (2025) — 8/10
2. The Outside Man (“Brutale Schatten”) (1973) — 7/10
3. Toy Story 4 (“Alles hört auf kein Kommando”) (2019) — 7/10
4. Pirates of the Carribean − Fremde Gezeiten (“On Stranger Tides”) (2011) — 6/10
5. Love, Death, and Robots S04 (2025) — 7/10
6. Chief of War S01 (2025) — 8/10
7. Fack ju Göhte (2013) — 5/10
8. La dégustation (2022) — 6/10
9. Warlord (2025) — 4/10
10. Two Tickets to Paradise (2022) — 6/10

Big Mouth S08 (2025) — 8/10

This is the final season—it seemed pretty final, as they all walked into “The Great Unknown” at the end—and it was pretty good. Even Nick finally hits puberty and he does not handle it well.

It has a pretty strong ending, all things considered. Sometimes the season is a bit too gross but I am not the target audience. It’s not as needlessly gross as other seasons, which were weaker. I like the voice-acting and the characters. Lola Skumpy is my absolute favorite. Don’t judge me. I also love Depression Kitty.

This part from E08 still cracks me up:

“Nick: Why’s my mom’s scarf in here?
Rick: That’s a pashmina, bro.”

The context is that Rick is an absolutely shattered shadow of a hormone monster. He’s missing an eye. His horny horns are broken and slumped. He walks with a cane. He’s often incoherent. He speaks in garbled tones, though is often insightful in a roundabout way. He knows little about anything because he’s so old that his memories are all from times many generations before. He is on his last legs, quite literally.

Nick is the star of the show and he’s somehow gotten Andrew’s box o’ wank.

The main joke is that Andrew has obviously been wanking to Nick’s Mom, which is not surprising because Andrew could wank to the green M&M, to say nothing of his best friend’s mom, who is not only a redhead—exotic for teenagers—but also sexy enough that her husband literally cannot stop talking about how much he enjoys pleasuring her with cunnilingus. So, yeah, Andrew is obviously gonna bang the drum slowly to that.

The joke that cracked me (and my partner) up is that Rick actually knew what a pashmina was and corrected Nick, as if that mattered. “That’s a pashmina, bro.” Cracks me up every time. Don’t judge me.

The Outside Man (“Brutale Schatten”) (1973) — 7/10

This film opens with a four-minute, silent helicopter view of Los Angeles, showing a wasteland of concrete, asphalt, and dirt, punctuated by a few lonesome trees and specks of green. The camera swoops down to show the world’s coolest taxi cab traveling into the city from the airport. Here’s a screen-grab of that bad-ass thing turning in to the hotel.

The Outside Man − Coolest Taxi Cab ever

Do they even make taxi cabs this cool anymore? What happened to us?

Anyway, Lucien Bellon (Jean-Louis Trintignant) steps out of this whip and enters the hotel, where he gets a room and his own car. He’s a hitman, waiting for a call.

I need to interrupt here to explain just how cool the music is. If you’ve ever played the video game Interstate 76, then you’ll know what I’m talking about.

He’s at a house now, where he meets Jackie Kovacs (Angie Dickinson), who’s in a ridiculously short tennis skirt—and is looking ridiculously fit. He’s there for a hit, which he executes with alacrity and efficiency. No muss, no fuss. No screaming, no fighting. Just a gunshot and then he’s double-timing it across the grounds to get out the automatic gate before it closes.

He gets back to the hotel to discover that his room has been cleaned out by his “secretary”. Someone is on his tail, slashing his tires, shooting at him, and driving menacingly around as he hides in a parking garage. It’s Lenny (Roy Scheider), firing out of his car window. But Lucien gets away, on foot now in Los Angeles, looking very much a fish out of water.

A little old lady sees him with his gun drawn—and reports him to the police. They are very normal-looking police, in polyester uniforms, without full armor. They seem genuinely interested in hearing what she has to say. This was over 50 years ago, so things have changed quite a bit.

Lucien kidnaps a young lady—Mrs. Barnes (Georgia Engel)—to get her car, forcing her to take him to her apartment. He eats with them, and then watches some Star Trek with them. He has to make a long-distance call to Paris. That’s probably the worst part of his occupation of their apartment; 50 years ago, it cost a fortune to call internationally. The lady’s son picks up the other line in the kitchen, listening in as Lucien learns that he may be stuck in the U.S. for a long time—or even forever. He cracks the kid across the jaw a few times, then leaves. He meets Lenny in the elevator, who’s unable to shoot him because two hot young ladies get in with them.

He asks a local motorcycle gang for help in getting into the Innenstadt (he’s French, so there are some translation wrinkles that show up just as well in German). The gang leads him astray but he picks up a Jesus-loving hitchhiker (Ed Greenberg) who tells him to turn around. Lucien flips a bitch so hard that it’s a miracle he didn’t hit anyone. No-one honks; they all just get out of his way without complaint or crash.

Lenny finds him again, shooting once into the vehicle with a long-gun. He caps the hitchhiker instead. They’re out on a highway, with Lenny shooting away but Lucien shooting back and distracting him enough to slip down the exit to Wilshire Blvd., shaking Lenny, who skids out on the highway. Now we hear some car-horns.

Now stay with me here because the next scene is not a common one. Lucien gets change for a dollar outside of the world’s largest bus-station bathroom, then goes in to rent an electric razor so that he can shave a face that barely has any sign of a shadow. I guess that this is filling out his character for us. It’s pretty goddamned cool that this kind of thing used to exist, though. It’s unimaginable today. There aren’t even public toilets, FFS.

It gets better because next he sits down in a chair in a row of plastic chairs, each of which has a coin-operated black-and-white TV attached to it. He learns that his victim was named Kovacs and that police are searching for him. I mean, obviously. He killed the guy in broad daylight and he literally talked to Jackie one minute before he killed her husband.

Now he’s approached by an extremely blond prostitute who helps him with information but insists on telling him that she’d rather have fucked him because she thinks he’s cute. She walks her hot-pantsed self away. Lucien manages to contact Nancy Robson (Ann-Margret), who meets him in a naked bar—the bartenders are naked women and there are women dancing who are covered only in paint. Nancy’s white-haired wig is like a giant pile of cotton candy and her décolleté is impressive.

Lucien asks her to help him get a new passport so that he can return to Paris. She needs his help dealing with Kovac’s son Alexander. She takes him to Karl (Carlo De Mejo), who’s supposed to be able to make a passport for him. He grabs his clothes and is on his way, in his underwear, just right out into the street.

Lucien stays there, watching TV. The next morning, we’re back with Mr.s Barnes, whose car has been found in a drive-in movie-theater parking lot. The police question her in an incredibly friendly and respectful manner, then she gives an interview on TV. Her son is now being accompanied by an extremely tall and friendly police officer as they get on a school bus together. Lenny visits Mrs. Barnes at home. Now Lenny’s at Nancy’s house, threatening her and asking her “Wo ist der Franzose?” Ann Margret is truly stunning.

Lenny’s lost Nancy but he’s back on Lucien’s ass, firing away. There are a lot of rubberneckers and the police show up as well. Lucien drops to the sand beneath the docks, where he somehow meets back up with Nancy. Lenny shoots a cop in the hand and escapes into the ruins on the beach, circling back to steal a cop car.

Karl meets Lucien and Nancy at a roller-derby rink to hand off the passport. Nancy takes him to the airport while Lenny meets Karl back at his apartment, where he kills him. Lucien learns of this and decides not to fly home; instead, he turns around and gets back into Nancy’s pink car. This will ruin Jackie Kovac’s plan, which was to have people meet him in Paris when he got off the plane.

He and Nancy set up a trap for Lenny—and he walks right into it. Lucien can finally confront him about who he’s working for. Lucien tells him that Alexander Kovacs had hired both of them—Lucien to kill his father, and Lenny to cover up the hit. They’re teamed up now and have left Nancy locked away in her motel room while they go hunt Alexander and Jackie..

At Alexander’s house, Lenny goes to the gate, then turns around and tries to shoot Lucien, who gets the drop on him and kills Lenny, dropping him at the foot of Alexander’s gate. No words. No speeches. Just gunshots. A grimace of pain from Lenny. A grimace of chagrin from Lucien—who seems to be disappointed to have been proven right about Lenny’s character.

The cops end up interviewing Jackie and Alexander, trying to find out what they were up to. They have an alibi and he can’t pin anything on them—but he knows they were behind the whole caper, even though it got way more out of hand than they’d intended. Angie Dickinson is not displaying her vaunted acting skills here.

Lucien and Nancy discuss how he’s going to get out of his predicament—even in Paris, he has gambling debts that he won’t be able to escape. They fly in some of Lucien’s or Nancy’s friends from Paris—and then get in the line of cars for Victor Kovac’s funeral. They get there first and enter the viewing room where Kovacs has been arranged in a Godfather-like pose, seated with cigar in hand.

During the ceremony, Lucien and his colleagues get the drop on the group, killing Alexander and getting away in hearses just as the police arrive. The cops manage to take Paul down from about 200 yards with a shotgun, which is possibly the least-believable part of the movie. Lucien is covered with blood, but it’s all from the wound on his hand.

Jackie is arrested. Nancy is at the airport, waiting in vain. Lucien is in what appears to be the concrete basin of the Los Angeles river, reacting in horror at what has happened over the last few days as the movie fades to credits.

I watched it in German.

Toy Story 4 (“Alles hört auf kein Kommando”) (2019) — 8/10

This movie introduces Forky (Tony Hale). Forky is delightful. Bo Peep kicks all kinds of ass. Woody is, well, he’s Woody, right up to the end. The whole gang is back for this one—I mean, why wouldn’t they be? Toys don’t age—and it’s quite a bit of fun. The animation is top-notch and the story’s interesting. This was quite a welcome return to form for Pixar.

I watched it in German.

Pirates of the Carribean − Fremde Gezeiten (“On Stranger Tides”) (2011) — 6/10

This movie starts with a sailor washed up on a boat, nearly dead and muttering about Ponce de Leon, who would have died 200 years ago. Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) springs Gibbs (Kevin McNally) from prison—or thinks he did. Instead, his driver betrays them both and turns them in to meet with King George (Richard Griffiths)—he’s absolutely disgusting—and they’re trying to get him to find the fountain of youth. They team him up with captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush).

Sparrow escapes with more than a bit of derring-do and some somewhat-inspired Buster Keaton-like antics—hiding behind the pennant, dancing atop the phaetons, stepping onto a board being carried across two mens’ shoulders—before being saved from the final shoulder by the very fortuitous and coincidental appearance of his father Captain Teague (Keith Richards), who tells him to take the mission to find the Fountain of Youth and then disappears into thin air.

He gets into an interminable sword-fight with a Doppelgänger who turns out to be Angelica (Penélope Cruz). After escaping more soldiers together, they reunite with Barbosa and Gibbs and end up on a ship commanded by Blackbeard (Ian McShane). Whereas Sparrow and Gibbs are prisoners, Angelica ends up as the first officer, commanding a crew of zombies.

Barbosa is on a boat with the British, and the Spanish are also underway with a fleet—all searching for the Fountain of Youth. Jack organizes a mutiny, taking over the ship from Angelica and Blackbeard, who finally makes an appearance when Jack declares victory. A touch too soon, it would seem, as Blackbeard uses his magic to have the ship’s ropes capture all of the mutineers, including Jack.

The mutineers are pushed out in a rowboat as bait for mermaids, with several finally showing up. They are, of course, all sirens, looking to lure the men under water, baring their vampire teeth once the hook is set. The men fight back but the sirens shred their boat to bits, dragging the sailors far beneath the waves. It looks like a feeding frenzy. The pirates drop in depth charges, with Blackbeard using magic again to drive his boat over the mermaids, splashing a flamethrower over them. It doesn’t work at all, though. The sirens return with projectile weapons and vastly increased numbers. This scene goes on for an eternity.

They finally capture a mermaid Syrena (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey), whom they transport in a water-filled coffin as they make their way to the fount. They apparently need her, and the priest Philip (Sam Claflin) is falling in love with her. Lucky for all of them, she speaks English and grows legs when she needs to walk.

They get to an area where it is obvious that many mermaids have already been sacrificed. They set up Syrena to extract a tear from her. They simulate Philip’s death—or fail to kill him?—but she doesn’t react with tears. However, when he returns to her, she finally cries for joy—and the pirates leap out of bushes to collect a tear. Blackbeard is ruthless.

Barbossa, Gibbs, and Sparrow are teamed up and trying to infiltrate the Spanish camp. They are, of course, captured. They do, of course, engage in a bit of exposition to fill in the blanks of the plot.

OK. They have the mermaid’s tear, they have the goblets, they are at the fountain of youth—or so they think, although Jack is probably lying about having led them to the right place—and Barbosa, Blackbear, Angelica, and Jack are all together. This plot isn’t better than Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull but it looks much better and more professionally made, so it gets a better rating. Also, Ian McShane and Geoffrey Rush are fun and Johnny Depp is just so naturally Jack Sparrow at this point that it’s more entertaining to watch than Harrison Ford phoning in another performance..

Still, it’s hard not to think of another Indiana Jones movie, The Last Crusade. There is a goblet; there is a dangerous place; there are wounded people who desperately need to be saved by the healing power of the waters and the goblets, there are dueling groups—British navy vs. pirates vs. Spanish troops rather than Nazis versus archeologists—it’s not the same, but it’s rhyming pretty hard.

Blackbeard and Angelica are both poisoned and Jack can only save one of them. To no-one’s surprise, he tricks Blackbeard into thinking that he’s stealing the one drop of mermaid’s tears from his daughter … honestly, why bother even describing this in such detail? Blackbeard dies; Angelica lives. Blackbeard showed himself to be a faithless, unprincipled scallywag.

Barbosa thinks he’s going to get the Black Pearl back. Jack abandons Angelica on an island to starve to death. Jack has a Black Pearl in a bottle that he’s going to use to get the Pearl back. He and Gibbs walk into a lovely sunset. Angelica finds Jack’s voodoo doll washed up on the shore of her little island. The end.

I watched it in German.

Chief of War (2025) — 8/10

Ka’iana (Jason Momoa) has left his post as chief of war for the Mau’i tribe. He and a few close friends have left their home island for Kuai’i. We only watched the first two episodes, though. It’s visually lush, and not just because almost no-one wears any clothes. It’s just that it’s not too captivating, at least for me. I moved on to other stuff.

We watched a couple of episodes in Hawai’ian, with English subtitles.

Love, Death, and Robots S04 (2025) — 7/10

This season was a bit less interesting than prior ones. None of the episodes really stood out. Maybe the one (“The Screaming of the Tyrannosaur”) with the slaves fighting the Tyrannosaur as entertainment at the marriage ceremony of an extraordinarily wealthy couple sticks out a bit. That one looked nice anyway. Or the one (“How Zeke Got Religion”) with WWII bomber pilots fighting an eldritch horror. That one had unique, less-polished animation.

Fack ju Göhte (2013) — 7/10

This is a boilerplate comedy that follows an ex-convict who lands a position at a school that sits over the spot where money from one of his earlier robberies was stashed. He has no teaching experience. It’s not even clear that he’s graduated anything. He is crude. He is also very handsome, so one of the mousy (though very pretty) teachers immediately falls for him. The students are horrible, horrible, horrible but they start to grudgingly respect the new teacher and treat him a bit better than they treat everyone else, which is, to be clear, absolutely terrible.

There is nothing at all surprising in this movie but it was nonetheless surprisingly entertaining.

We watched it in the original German.

La dégustation (2022) — 6/10

Hortense Le Bris (Isabelle Carré) walks into Jacques Dennemont’s (Bernard Campan) wine store. He is an inveterate alcoholic whose doctor has just told him that he must stop drinking if he wants to live. How will he run his tastings if he can’t drink? How will he run his wine store if he’s not to be around wine? Somehow, he makes it work. Hortense helps. Also, Steve (Mounir Amamra) helps. Steve is a young man who starts working in Jacques’s store and whose view on life helps Jacques get out of his rut.

There is nothing surprising in this movie but it was cute.

I honestly can no longer remember whether I watched it in the original French or in German.

Warlord (2025) — 4/10

This is a direct-to-VOD movie and it shows. It’s even worse when you have to watch it with motion interpolation enabled, which makes all of the actors look like LARPing cosplayers. Their complexions are absolutely awful but so they should be, I suppose, for the medieval setting. Many are covered in filth but somehow it looks ridiculous, where Hard to be a God looked authentic. Perhaps it doesn’t help that most of the film is just people discussing parts of the plot, as if you were listening to an audiobook read by people in cloaks. This may all be forgiven, except that the book is not very good. I wonder how much of this was written by AI at this point.

The movie is mostly about how bad tax collectors are. I almost can’t believe I’m writing that. It really doubles down on authoritarianism, with scene after scene of brutality that is hinted at but not shown (because the video has to keep to a certain rating).

I didn’t finish watching this.

Two Tickets to Paradise (2022) — 6/10

This is an incredibly and utterly predictable Hallmark channel movie, and it’s not as terrible as I expected it to be. It was on in the background while we relaxed in the living room. As with Warlord above, the motion interpolation makes an actual movie look like it was filmed with a soap-opera camera.

Still, despite its utterly predictable construction and plotting, it was in the shape of a movie that told a story. The people were utterly unrelatable to me but I can’t ding the movie too much for that. It wasn’t made for me but it could have been a lot worse. It’s pretty wholesome.

The elephant in the room is the unspoken premise: that these are regular people but they can all afford to vacation in Hawai’i, one of the most expensive places on Earth, with not a care in the world for all of the activities that they’re doing or for how long they’ll be there doing them.

The paramour Josh (Ryan Paevey) says that he wrote the organizing app that Hannah (Ashley Williams) uses for everything in her life but it turns out that he just wrote the business plan. I kept thinking that this was going to turn into a Black Mirror episode but it stayed earnest and committed to its 100% telegraphed happy ending.