Popcorn Perspectives with Danny Minton
Week of October 27, 2025
A House of Dynamite
Rated R for language
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 78%
Streaming on Netflix
This fall, Netflix will be releasing many high-profile films in their attempt to take home some trophies, and the first is this intellectual thriller directed by Oscar-winner Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker). The story begins as a military installation notices a ballistic missile is headed toward Chicago and the steps are put into place to try to stop it. When that fails, the players involved struggle with what to do next. The movie basically plays over and over again, with a viewpoint of the different parts of government as they react to the situation. So you are seeing the same scenario play out in repetition until the third act, where we witness the actions of the most important individual in this drama: the President. It’s a thoughtful film filled with deep and disturbing questions about what to do, how to do it and what does failure mean. The film has a stellar cast of actors, including Idris Elba, Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts, Anthony Ramos and others, all of whom play small but important roles in an impressive collaboration. What I didn’t care for was the story structure, which leaves much to the imagination and is a little bit of let down at the end. I much preferred when the same scenario played out in episode eight on the streaming show Paradise earlier this year on Amazon Prime. While some might say that the questions laid before us in this movie were more important than the answers, I prefer the resolution of Paradise’s story, even if the acting and production aren’t nearly as impressive. B
Nuremberg
Rated PG-13 for the Holocaust, some language, violent content, smoking, brief drug content, strong disturbing images, and suicide
Roten Tomatoes Score: 67%
In Theaters
Shortly after WWII, the Nazis in charge made attempts to escape Germany to get to safety. Many of them were captured, most notably Hermann Göring (Russell Crowe) who was put on trial for his crimes against humanity. This film follows the capture, imprisonment and psychological analysis that occurred, leading up to one of the most famous trials of the last century. Rami Malek plays the psychologist Douglas Kelley who tried to get into the prisoners’ heads to get enough information to convict. The cast also features Michael Shannon, Richard Grant, John Slattery and Colin Hanks as soldiers desperate to seek justice against some of the worst evil this world has ever seen. As for the story, I was glad to see it and appreciated putting an image to what was formerly just something I briefly studied in college. You really can’t beat this cast with two Oscar winners and two more Oscar nominees. Unfortunately, James Vanderbilt couldn’t pull off a win here. I have no doubt he wanted to serve the story, but his vision for the project was unimpressive at best. The same screenplay directed by Stephen Spielberg or Frank Darabont would have been spectacular, and perhaps even award-winning. But here we get a movie that will be in and out of theaters in a week and maybe end up watched only by classrooms and history aficionados form here on. B-