Monday new releases: 16 June 2025

In Celine Song’s new film Materialists, Pedro Pascal plays Harry – a six-feet-tall bil­lion­aire private equity fin­an­ci­er who is described by suc­cess­ful Manhattan match­maker Lucy (Dakota Johnson) as a “uni­corn”. That’s a word that might have been used to describe Song’s pre­vi­ous film, Past Lives. That was a mod­est little drama centred on two emo­tion­ally repressed but deep-feeling char­ac­ters that broke free from the fest­iv­al cir­cuit and went on to have a big impact on audi­ences and be nom­in­ated for two Oscars.

It was a call­ing card for act­ors and three of the biggest names in Hollywood were encour­aged to sign on for the follow-up – Johnson, Pascal and former-Captain America Chris Evans play­ing against type as a strug­gling off-Broadway act­or, part-time cater­ing assist­ant and Lucy’s ex-boyfriend.

Matchmaking in New York is evid­ently big busi­ness and the film would have us believe that wealthy single women are queuing up to be intro­duced to eli­gible bach­el­ors like Harry by ded­ic­ated agents like Lucy – people who can sum up what makes people con­nect romantic­ally simply by look­ing at their resumés and their bank balances.

To Lucy, everything about mar­riage is trans­ac­tion­al – the word dowry even gets used in one con­ver­sa­tion with Harry – and human beings are all about the value they bring. It’s clear that Lucy is going to have those assump­tions chal­lenged in some way and what makes Materialists its own kind of uni­corn is how sens­it­ively and intel­li­gently Song’s script and dir­ec­tion goes about it.

There’s a part of me that wants Materialists to be the second film in a kind of them­at­ic tri­logy by Song, about the mys­ter­ies of love and how unlikely it is that humans ever over­come the obstacles in the way of mak­ing last­ing, real human con­nec­tions. In Past Lives and Materialists, she sees it as some­thing of a mir­acle and any­one who has man­aged to pull it off suc­cess­fully would prob­ably agree.

A final thought. The mar­ket­ing for Materialists has por­trayed the film as as a star-studded romantic com­edy set among the New York élite – an inher­it­or, if you like, of the 90s Nora Ephron era of rom-coms – but that is pretty mis­lead­ing. There isn’t much com­edy in it (although the mont­age intro­du­cing us to Lucy’s cli­en­tele has a satir­ic­al edge) and the romance is heart­felt. So I won­der wheth­er the mar­ket­ing is a delib­er­ate bait-and-switch – a con­tri­bu­tion to how we appre­ci­ate the story – or some­thing more mis­guided. I’m char­it­ably inclined towards the former, mainly because I don’t see A24 or Killer Films bow­ing to that kind of pres­sure to mislead.

One final final thought, if I was hand­ing out star rat­ings I would be giv­ing Materialists and extra star for the delight­ful scene that plays out behind the clos­ing cred­its and I implore you to stick this one out until the clean­ers are pick­ing up pop­corn from around your ankles. The editor-in-chief and I were the only ones who stayed and we are both very glad we did.

I’ve heard ‘live action’ remakes like Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon described as ‘the death of cinema’ by some com­ment­at­ors but they could do with ask­ing an actu­al cinema how they feel about it. Based on the huge crowd at a How to Train Your Dragon IMAX ses­sion yes­ter­day after­noon, these films are actu­ally the saviour of cinema.

The con­tent below was ori­gin­ally paywalled.

Dragon is some­thing of a uni­corn as it has been made by Dean DeBlois, the co-director of the ori­gin­al 2010 anim­ated ver­sion, and he’s admit­ted that sev­er­al of the scenes are shot-for-shot recre­ations of his earli­er film. But hav­ing one of the ori­gin­al cre­at­ors involved – also a co-director of the ori­gin­al Lilo & Stitch coin­cid­ent­ally – feels like there’s some oth­er kind of cre­at­ive con­nect­ive tis­sue there than just box office dollars.

But if Dreamworks are going to car­bon copy the first film I’m going to repeat my first review:

Handily for a reviewer’s segue, male par­ent­ing issues are also to the fore in the anim­ated children’s romp How to Train Your Dragon. Nerdy engin­eer Hiccup (Jay Baruchel, now Mason Thames) is a ter­rible dis­ap­point­ment to his fath­er Stoick, lead­er of the Vikings pro­tect­ing their unprom­ising island home from maraud­ing dragons. After com­men­cing a “Keep Gerard Butler Off Our Screens” cam­paign three weeks ago I have to say I’m feel­ing a little sore that he’s back yet again as the voice of Stoick, this time using his nat­ur­al Scottish accent. At least I don’t have to look at him. (Editor’s note: Reader, I now do have to look at him …)

Designed as a kind of cross between Asterix and Avatar, How to Train Your Dragon works best when it is up in the air and soar­ing with the dragons and is less suc­cess­ful down on the ground. Kids will like it though, and it doesn’t require the 3D if you don’t want to pay the glasses tax.

A couple of years ago, I was com­mis­sioned by the BBC web­site to write an appre­ci­ation of Australian out­back hor­ror films. That art­icle needs an update now, as Aussie hor­ror seems to have aban­doned the dusty and deser­ted interi­or for the beach. Last week it was Nicolas Cage tor­men­ted by Western Australian boof­head bul­lies in The Surfer and this week it’s American TV act­or Hassie Harrison (Yellowstone) being tor­men­ted by psy­cho­path­ic Surfer’s Paradise tour­ism oper­at­or Jai Courtney in Dangerous Animals.

Courtney is Tucker (first name Bruce, point­ing at the all-Australianness of the film’s theme) and his seri­al killer meth­od­o­logy is to entice back­pack­ers on to his boat for a shark cage adven­ture, and then feed them to the wild sharks while for­cing the rest to watch.

He meets his match with Zephyr (Harrison) whose exper­i­ence in the hard-scrabble world of mul­tiple care homes gives her a sur­viv­al instinct to rival the greatest ‘final girls’. She’s great but it’s Courtney who steals the film. He and writer-director Sean Byrne (The Loved Ones) have cre­ated a stronger char­ac­ter than most vil­lains because he’s actu­ally so much weaker.

I was intend­ing to also review the new Prime Video action com­edy Deep Cover – star­ring noted screen comedi­an Orlando Bloom – this week but I gave it five minutes and simply had to walk away. It’s incred­ible to think that the MGM name goes on this crap and that this is the stu­dio that’s going to be respons­ible for the next iter­a­tion of James Bond.

My friend and col­league Glenn Kenny reviewed it for the NY Times and did see it to through to the end. His – I’m guess­ing – char­it­able review is here.