A one-line spoiler-free review of everything I watched in the cinema in August 2025

I’ve ditched the old blurb about “not being a movies person, but anyway…” because since I started going to the cinema regularly in 2022 I’ve turned into the kind of guy who downloads the London Film Festival brochure and meticulously plans what to see. You can find all my one-line spoiler-free reviews here.

The Legend of Ochi (2025), Isaiah Saxon – Well, this was certainly a collection of words and pictures that I watched with one of my kids during the summer holidays. It chiefly made me puzzled how Emily Watson and Willem Dafoe had got attached to the project.

[y tho?]

The Naked Gun (2025), Akiva Schaffer – It wasn’t exactly belly-laugh-a-minute but there were a couple of classic Police Squad-style set pieces in it that had me in stitches. Big shoes to follow but Liam Neeson deadpanned his way through it with aplomb. Would watch the next one, although like the idea that they might rotate through improbable lead casting. Daniel Craig? Sean Bean? Christopher Eccleston?

Drømmer (Oslo Stories Trilogy: Dreams) (2024), Dag Johan Haugerud – I really enjoyed this despite it sometimes feeling like being on the receiving end of a two-hour lecture and meta-commentary on love stories. But at the heart of it was the poignant telling of a love story, all the more remarkable as it is mostly done via the voiceover of Ella Øverbye accompanying sparse actual on-screen dialogue.

[Ella Øverbye in Drømmer]

The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968), Jack Cardiff – I imagine the pitch meeting went something like “Yeah, the screenplay is 75% Marianne Faithfull looking hot AF in motorbike leathers while saying nonsense dialogue very sexily” and people couldn’t wait to throw money at it. Very silly, but incredibly watchable …

[Marianne Faithfull. Blimey]

Performance (1970), Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg – … unlike this, which has the kernel of a tense gangster movie in there somewhere, but includes long sequences where it feels like you are just watching some people off their tits on drugs mumbling their way through some half-remembered dialogue as part of a role-play exercise. At least I know where the dialgoue in E=MC² comes from now.

Witchfinder General (1968), Michael Reeves – Token Homo’s Bar Trash screenings are usually a camp joyful riot with ridiculously OTT movies and this was … not that at all. Great film. Really fucking grim.

[Vincent Price in Witchfinder General]

Le Royaume (The Kingdom) (2024), Julien Colonna – I found this tense and absolutely absorbing, and as with Ella Øverbye in Drømmer, a lot of the weight of the film is carried in the frequently silent almost ever-present performance of newcomer Ghjuvanna Benedetti.

[Ghjuvanna Benedett in Le Royaume (The Kingdom)]

Weapons (2025), Zach Cregger – A friend of mine described this as a “stinker” on Facebook, and about two-thirds of the way through I was wondering what they had been smoking because I really was enjoying the Rashomon-lite storytelling device and had warmed to Julia Garner’s fragile and damaged character. And then it had probably the worst last five minutes of any film I’ve seen for years. Like, genuinely laugh out loud in the cinema “what am I actually watching here?” bad.

[Julia Garner in Weapons, at a bit before it absolutely went to laughable shit]

This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Rob Reiner – Still goes up to 11.

[The cover of Spinal Tap’s Smell The Glove]

Battleship Potemkin (with Pet Shop Boys score) (1925), Sergei Eisenstein – I saw Pet Shop Boys play the soundtrack to it live at the Trafalgar Square presentation back in *gulp* 2004. Jesus. Anyway, I’ve not listened to it since even though it was released, so it was nice to be reacquainted with it 21 years later with this remastered/restored/reissued screening.

Sorry, Baby (2025), Eva Victor – As was Julie Zwijgt (Julie Keeps Quiet), which I saw back in May, I thought this was an absorbing study of how becoming the victim of a sexual assault fills your life with paperwork and the expectation from others of how you will react and behave. A recommended watch.

[Naomi Ackie and Eva Victor in Sorry, Baby]

Jaws (1975), Steven Spielberg – Fifty years later and this is still a great movie, despite at least an hour of it essentially being three men bickering on a boat. Took my kid and it was delightful to witness that it can still give a 12-year-old jump scares, despite the terrible haircuts making everybody in the film – including the teenagers – look like they are in their forties. And that poor shark was just hungry lads.

Read more of my one-line spoiler-free reviews of everything I’ve watched in the cinema.