Pedro Pascal Archives | Deep Focus Review

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

Brian Eggert — Thu, 24 Jul 2025 18:24:40 +0000

Listen to the audio version of this review. The Fantastic Four: First Steps comes as close to greatness as MCU movies get. Accented by a dazzling retro-futurist style and strong characters played by a pitch-perfect cast, it adheres to the save-the-world formula found in many superhero movies: Planet Earth faces an impossible threat from outer space, and only the titular heroes can save us. However, instead of the flat digital environments and lack of distinct visual flair found in most movies of this ilk, there’s a wonderful alternate reality for audiences to explore, set in a version of the 1960s replete with spaceships, robots, and flying cars. The movie instills an instant desire to investigate this familiar yet unique world, something most MCU movies cannot claim. Rather than feeling like The Fantastic Four is more of the same, it feels alive and new—an inspired variation on a theme that, admittedly, has already been tackled onscreen but to subpar effect. With a terrific cast who embody their iconic characters and a visual energy that presents a refreshing alternative to the Marvel house style, The Fantastic Four is not only immediately engaging but also one of the MCU’s most satisfying offerings yet. […]

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Eddington

Brian Eggert — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 00:53:21 +0000

Listen to the audio version of this review. Ari Aster dissects the culture war with Eddington, a portrait of how COVID-19 irrevocably tore America apart at its already frayed seams. The pandemic intensified partisan rancor, social fragmentation, and reactionary behavior—conditions that enabled opportunists to seize power amid the chaos and, ultimately, profit from it. Set in late May 2020, the film looks back five years at the titular New Mexico town, seemingly in an attempt to understand what led to the erosion of democracy in Trump’s America today. Described as a Western in the promotional materials, it’s also a period piece, though the time hardly feels that long ago, much to the film’s detriment. Still, Aster captures the uncertainty, paranoia, and desperate search for answers that drove people to rely on the worst possible source: social media. Rather than offering clarity, it only deepened the divide between the right and left, as both sides leaned into their worst impulses and most extreme reactions. Fortunately, Eddington boasts an excellent cast, led by another tour-de-force performance by Joaquin Phoenix under Aster’s direction. It’s unquestionably well-crafted and brimming with the director’s anxiety-ridden style. But the question remains: Is now the right time for […]

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Materialists

Brian Eggert — Thu, 12 Jun 2025 22:32:22 +0000

A treatise on the perils and metrics of modern dating, Materialists explores how apps and matchmaking services reduce people to an objectifying checklist of preferred and non-negotiable characteristics. It is the second film by Celine Song, whose masterful debut Past Lives (2023) contained a layered look at a love triangle—not quite equilateral but more scalene in shape. Her sophomore effort features another love triangle, this one more of the isosceles variety. The theme seems to be an obsession shared by Song and her husband, Justin Kuritzkes, whose original screenplay for last year’s Challengers also dealt with an unconventional and competitive trio. Returning to the idea, Song has gone the commercial route and cast three heartthrobs in her film, placing star Dakota Johnson between Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal on the poster. Many won’t be able to resist. But rather than the lighthearted rom-com that distributor A24 has advertised, the film has much on its mind: the risks of dating, the reciprocal aspects of marriage, the superficiality of customizing your next date like Dr. Frankenstein, and the impact of finances on a relationship. Oh, and let’s not forget love. Song’s screenplay nods to Jane Austen’s Emma and Persuasion and, most obviously, […]

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Freaky Tales

Brian Eggert — Mon, 31 Mar 2025 12:59:16 +0000

“Oakland in ‘87 was hella wild.” After their MCU experience with Captain Marvel (2019), filmmaker duo Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck explore a punkish ode to Oakland in Freaky Tales, an anthology set in 1987 that doubles as an homage to the green-glowing alien energy of Repo Man (1984). Adopting a nonlinear structure of overlapping stories, clearly derived from Pulp Fiction (1994), this out-there affair has a delightfully rebellious energy and haphazard style that could hardly be called consistent. However, the slipshod result offers plenty of throwback fun, whether exploring music battles or the cinematic joy of seeing neo-Nazis receive their comeuppance, even if the filmmakers’ influences prove too obvious to feel original, inspired, or even particularly innovative. The four tales offer thematic throughlines and recurring characters, such as Ben Mendelsohn’s creepy racist cop; Sleepy Floyd (Jay Ellis), the NBA player and spokesperson for Psytopics, a school for mastering cosmic energy; and several references to “that actor from Oakland,” Tom Hanks, who makes a brief cameo. Otherwise, Oakland remains the main connective tissue. In the first story, a community of anti-fascist punk rockers defend their club from a gang of skinhead neo-Nazis (think Green Room, 2016), using force that might […]

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The Wild Robot

Brian Eggert — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 23:33:29 +0000

DreamWorks Animation adapts Peter Brown’s 2016 children’s book The Wild Robot into a colorful adventure that has much in common with earlier animated robot fare. Many viewers will recognize similarities to its antecedents, such as Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky (1986) and Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant (1999), but Andrew Stanton’s WALL·E (2008) above all. In that, writer-director Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch, 2002) demonstrates the critical differences between an animated film by DreamWorks versus one by, say, Pixar. Whereas the latter company often accesses genuine and complex emotions, using relatable but imaginative stories, the former operates in clichés and trite manipulation. Pixar’s long writing process and story refinement usually irons out banal dialogue and predictable scenarios, while DreamWorks follows formulas and spoon-feeds audiences what they expect. Pixar’s animation pushes boundaries and sets new standards; DreamWorks’ looks cartoonish and feels designed to sell toys. These are broad generalizations, of course, but The Wild Robot reinforces them. Set sometime in the future, the story finds a service robot—ROZZUM Unit 7134, nicknamed Roz and voiced by Lupita Nyong’o—stranded on a heavily forested island with a cross-section of animals. Programmed to help, Roz uses a universal translator to hear animal languages in […]

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Gladiator II

Brian Eggert — Tue, 12 Nov 2024 02:01:24 +0000

In Gladiator II, Paul Mescal plays a strong, silent type—a warrior poet, a brooding hero. No matter how you describe him, Mescal, star of Aftersun (2022) and All of Us Strangers (2023), inhabits a breed of arena-bound gladiator different from Russell Crowe’s Maximus in Ridley Scott’s 2000 original. Maximus was a career soldier: “The general who became a slave; the slave who became a gladiator; the gladiator who defied an emperor.” Mescal plays Lucius, the grown-up son of Maximus and Connie Nielsen’s Lucilla, who, typical for a legacy sequel, goes through much of the same journey as his illegitimate father. Lucius begins as a soldier, finds himself enslaved and forced into combat to entertain the masses, and ultimately uses his role as a gladiator to usurp the corrupt and decadent figurehead of the Roman Empire. This is a your standard Hollywood sequel, after all, so everything’s predictably copied from its predecessor and amplified to appear more expensive-looking and thematically weightier. This time, our hero has two emperors, twins no less, to unseat. The Colosseum spectacle is bigger and flashier. The performances are broader. Everything moviegoers might want from a sword and sandals epic has been superbly directed by Scott. But, […]

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Drive-Away Dolls

Brian Eggert — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 18:07:17 +0000

With brothers Joel and Ethan Coen exploring solo projects in recent years, it raises speculation about what each sibling brings to their collaborations in terms of narrative, philosophy, and aesthetics. Joel’s first directorial effort alone, the stark adaptation The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021), shot in black-and-white photography and using minimalist sets, deploys a lean but expressive approach to Shakespeare. Ethan Coen’s new film, Drive-Away Dolls, is a lesbian crime romp bursting with Almodóvarian color and bawdy humor. This follows his first documentary feature, 2022’s Jerry Lee Lewis: Trouble in Mind. From these examples, are we to assume that Joel is the serious brother and Ethan is the fun-loving brother? Is the former more responsible for Barton Fink (1991) and The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001), while the latter contributed more to Raising Arizona (1987) and The Big Lebowski (1998)? Doubtlessly, any such attribution is reductive and doesn’t consider the myriad complexities of each individual or the Coens’ distinct process, which is famously mysterious given their reluctance to talk to journalists about their partnership with any meaningful specificity. Moreover, Drive-Away Dolls isn’t merely Ethan Coen’s first solo directorial effort of a narrative feature; it’s also his first film alongside Tricia Cooke, […]

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The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

Brian Eggert — Fri, 29 Apr 2022 22:45:50 +0000

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is about the memeification of Nicolas Cage. The star appears in a self-referential satire about his life and career, playing “Nick Cage,” a fictionalized version of himself. Although struggling for cash, self-centered, and lamenting that his best days lay behind him, Cage’s onscreen persona still has that buttery Californian accent and flamboyant bursts of expressivity. But his personal life goes from four ex-wives to one, and his hair and beard appear dyed to an oddly uniform reddish-brown. Director Tom Gormican and his co-writer Kevin Etten create a portrait of Cage through references—primarily to his shoot-em-ups from the 1990s and a few of his more mainstream roles, including his Oscar-winning bow in Leaving Las Vegas (1995). In addition, the filmmakers remind audiences of Cage’s obscure moments, including his memed “Not the bees!” scene from 2006’s The Wicker Man remake or his bizarre appearance on the talk show “Wogan” to promote Wild at Heart (1990). Yet, the movie has nothing to say about Cage; it feels engineered by fans, for fans, rather than a story that confronts Cage beyond his ironic value. For some viewers, I suppose, watching Cage riff on his celebrity and memeable behavior […]

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Wonder Woman 1984

Brian Eggert — Sun, 27 Dec 2020 17:32:18 +0000

Since the arrival of Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel in 2013, Warner Bros. has struggled to maintain, or even establish, a Marvel-style extended universe out of DC Comics heroes. Each new entry in the expanding franchise creates another problem of continuity. Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) laid the groundwork for Joss Whedon’s take on Justice League in 2017, which will receive an extensive recutting from Snyder next year. The failure of David Ayer’s catastrophic Suicide Squad in 2016 led to next year’s remake by James Gunn. Confusing timelines, divergent interpretations of the same character, and varying directorial choices have left some of the most iconic superheroes feeling disjointed, and fans grasping at individual entries more than an overarching progression. Patty Jenkins attempts to circumvent the DCEU’s disjointedness by devoting the sequel to her 2017 breakthrough Wonder Woman to the character’s backstory. There’s a lot to admire about this follow-up—from its commanding star Gal Godot to the brightly colored production design, from its inspired villains to its themes against instant gratification and toxic masculinity—that will resonate with today’s viewers. But Jenkins and her co-writers Geoff Johns and Dave Callaham set their sights too high, and the overly ambitious story […]

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Prospect

Brian Eggert — Mon, 18 Mar 2019 13:36:04 +0000

Prospect is about a father and daughter who journey together into the unknown to unearth a coveted treasure. Damon (Jay Duplass) and his daughter Cee (Sophie Thatcher) have scraped by, scavenging for riches in the wild, hoping for a payday that will permanently fix their situation. Of course, when prospecting for a valuable natural resource, there are always a familiar set of dangers: bandits coming along to rob your hard-earned booty; natives who barter, sometimes in human flesh; and greed getting the best of your partners, reducing them to their worst selves, even transforming them into killers. These are lessons taught by John Huston in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), or more recently, There Will Be Blood (2007). And to be sure, as Damon and Cee scout the frontier for their livelihood, they experience similar peril. If this setup sounds like the makings of a superb Western, you would be right. Except, the writer-director team of Zeek Earl and Christopher Caldwell set their low-fi debut film on a lush, green, life-inhabiting moon, transitioning these Western tropes into a modest if compellingly realized science-fictioner. Westerns have inspired countless science-fiction tales, from the wagon-training adventures of Star Trek to the […]

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