Movies 2025 - Film reviews on germanradioshow.com

 

2025 Films/Filme reviewed by Susanne Nielsen:

Published in: 

(in German) GERMANRADIOSHOW.COM  

(selected in English) ACED Magazine /Tampa, WWW.ACEDMAGAZINE.COM (search: Susanne Nielsen)

(selected in English) https://www.spinbinmag.com

(publications by  John Delia, Sr., Film Editor/Critic , Member of  Southeastern Film Critics Association SEFCA  and Critics Association of Central Florida CACF )

NEW REVIEWS:

von/by Susanne Nielsen 

Jurrassic World Rebirth is a stand alone sequel to the Jurassic World Dominion (2022).  It has been a few years when the last Jurassic film looked back on the good old days and brought back the now mature actors like Laura Dern, Jeff Goldbloom, and Sam Neill re- connecting for the first time from the original Jurassic Park , first of now seven films. Now, in 2025, it is high time for a spunky new female lead with a feisty Scarlett Johansson as Zora Bennett, who likes a lot of money, and portrayed as used to partnering with fun loving buddy, Duncan Kinkaid - played with charm and spirit and a bit of mercenary backstory by Mahershala Ali, a well cast duo with some supporting adventure-loving, French speaking crew assistants (Philippine Velge, Belchir Sylvain). The real villain, Martin Krebs, is played by Rupert Friend, more edgy as he gets older, with the sole goal to use his corporate powers to seek control of some very rare resources, that happen to be very hard to get. Add into the mix a hungry for attention scientist Dr. Henry Loomis (Jonathan Bailey), eager to leave the lab and play out of doors. Where? 

Enter the forbidden world of Dinosaurs, now concentrated - the story has it - in a zone that is off limits to the rest of the world. So off we go, on a boat out into nature, and to go see!

To complicate things a bit, they all seem do the right thing, to save a little family with a mayday call sitting on their overturned sailboat. Their weekend with dad outing had also got them into dangerous seas and now, seemingly rescued, they will be caught in the bigger adventure of the motly bunch they unwillingly must join. From water to land, onto marvelous tropical island with high cliffs looming above lucious tropical greenery, two groups set out on two very different quests. 

It is a great new Jurrassic movie, summer fun for Dinosaur fans, a story that is well conceived and some big thrills along the way!    

Tom Cruise in another Mission Impossible installment, Mission Impossible -Final Reckoning, this one not likely to be his Last!

Missions have never been impossible for Tom Cruise, and at over sixty, he is in great form, this time adding a new vista to those expected of him high up in the air. Cruise is showing off his moves: Balancing on and around a by-plane in the dare-devil stunts he famously does without stunt doubles, in the tradition of Buster Keaton and others almost a century and a half ago. 

He has added maneuvers that are thrilling and offer vistas not seen in previous installments of the series. which makes it all very real, and believable because we know he will, no matter, do all his stunts in person. He is surrounded by his "family," the group of fellow actors like Ving Rhames, and Simon Pegg, in the story loyal to the death, against a larger than life Entity, a rogue artificial intelligence, villain Esai Morales in the mix, threatening the world - that Ethan Hunt and his IMF team have to save.

The story always adds some humourous side elements, so that action and suspense help drive the story to a perfect ending. Some of us may be missing a love interest for Hunt, but Cruise fans relish seeing their hero, now with a softer look of wavy hair, in every scene!

Enough surprises make the audience wish for yet another Mission Impossible soon!

Jane Austin Wrecked My Life, review by Susanne Nielsen

It is summer and time, high time for romance! The kind that  we remember as “the Great Romance” - love between an unlikely couple, in Notting Hill it was American Julia Roberts and British Hugh Grant. And now we have Laura Piani’s equally romantic story of Camille Rutherford as French  bookish intellectual wallflower living in her Jane Austin world as Agathe Robinson, and French-speaking, but quite at home in the English literary world, selling books in the most romantic shop in Paris, Shakespearere and Company. 

She has to find herself as she ends up with two unlikely suitors, one a longtime bestie named Felix (Pablo Pauly) and her hosts’ son at a writer’s retreat, with his unreliable car. Born into fame of sorts, he turns out to be writer Jane Austen’s Great great great great nephew (Charlie Anson as Oliver). Agathe is caught in the middle. 

The film's title makes us curious, the characters live through a mini film story in the cleverly set up low-key film trailer. 

“Jane Austen wrecked my Life” is one of those wonderful summer films  that leaves us as satisfied as any Jane Austin novel would,

 hence the clever title, promising a bit of the historic - yes, costumes will be a part of the drama, and a lot of what can go wrong before the characters should find their happy ending. 

Writer-director Piani has mixed in all the right ingredients, a bit of humor and comedy of errors, and a very likable band of flawed players. 

We know that any Austin reference as do her stories on the big screen are amusing, witty characters , especially the female protagonist, and the story is tidily wrapped up to make the perfect ending. 

Girl gets boy and a few hiccups give the story just enough twists that keep us rooting for the heroine to find the perfect match, albeit not who we think. In the costume dramas of Jane Austin tales, 

there are dashing Mr. Darcys, and of course, the family, the solid protectors of women and manners,  always a few wicked characters and a gaggle of sisters and aunts. The background gives us Jane’s view of Georgian society that she was born into and whose morals and doings she so wittily described. But it would not be Jane if she did not also make fun of this little world. After all she lived in this world and knew its many sides.  

So when we meet Agathe, the heroine, we are expecting a love story, with twists and turns  set in the modern world. And our lady protagonist is alone with a job at a book store who loves to read and recommends these old fashioned romances that Ms. Austen so famously conceived. In them - unlike in her own world, all will end well! 

In modern Agathe’s life the men seem to look at her as a sister, a teacher, a buddy. But she just needs  something  ( and someone) more! Hiding out in her world of books is not a life. 

So  her best buddy ( no lack of romance experience himself) Felix comes up with a match making twist - he has sent in her own writing inspired by her love of Jane Austin, and gets her invited to a Jane Austin retreat at one of the writer’s homes in England. When she finally arrives she is met by a group of interesting characters are fellow retreaters, and an adoring quirky elderly couple as their hosts, guardians of Jane Austin’s place of creativity. 

For Agathe, perhaps a time to dust off the cover of her own efforts, and write! 

And from the moment she arrives at the train station and meets Oliver,  the man who may very possibly end up being Mr. Right ( long story - simply watch!) we are hanging on every lovely catastrophy befalling these two.

Reminded of the very best, this perfect little summer film and like so many such love stories ,it perfectly delivers, please, we think, let there be more ! 

The Assessment 

The Brutalist: 

Porcelain War:

All We Imagine as Light:

Flow:

Count of Monte Cristo:

Betterman:

The Room Next Door:

Emilia Perez:

Gloria (2024):

The Color Purple:

GERMAN FILMS: 

Alles Fifty Fifty (2024)

Die Ironie des Lebens (2024)

Muenter und Kandinsky