Movie Review Highlights Bundle (2025) #1

In this collection of review highlights, we’ll explore the year 2025 where the highly renowned John Wick franchise gets its first big screen spinoff alongside other movie reviews to come...

1. From The World of John Wick: Ballerina

Rating: 8/10 

Minor Positives:

-Set Design

-Creative Visual Direction

1. A zooming out pan up shot of the protagonist driving away from an offscreen brutal action scene (revealed by corpses in the road) leads to her getting crashed into by another car in the distance pushing her right back to the scene. This is brilliantly by the cinematography as the camera tilts back down to her as she's being dragged back to the original shot by the other car in a shootout. It's honestly one of the coolest shots of the franchise. 

2. There's a cool shot of John Wick on the floor shooting at multiple enemies and the camera shifts and adjusts to follow the person that he's aiming at before he shoots them.

-Character Writing Honors Previous Movies

1. Ballerina utilizes John Wick in a manner that one would hope for by making him feel mythical in presence (by how characters react to him) and highly efficient in action. I loved the fact that even our protagonist couldn't defeat him once he was ordered to kill her and that the only way she made it out alive was because he allowed it through mercy. This was a great way to honor the character's established legendary legacy. 

-World Building

1.  The new cult faction introduced added an interesting layer to the world of John Wick by establishing that there are dangerous people who do not fall into the strict ruling system that we've seen throughout the franchise amongst the assassins. 

-Solid Enough Storytelling Elements

1. An improvement from the storytelling of the John Wick sequels as this spinoff acts as a personal revenge story inserted with a sense of adventure due to the new villain compound setting, expected thriller elements, and engaging enough plot twists surrounding the villain’s connection to the protagonist. There's also the use of John Wick that I thought worked well having him as both a mythical character of sorts as well as a brief antagonist turned ally for our new lead. 

Major Positives:

-Strong Production Values (CGI & Practical FX)

-Strong Cinematic Direction

-Highly Entertaining Action

Minor Negatives:

-Lacking In Dramatic Impact

1. Although I do strongly believe that the storytelling here is stronger than the John Wick sequels, and has all the necessary narrative ingredients for us to feel connected to Eve's goals, I didn't think the big familial twist with the villain was impactful enough. The writing is there on the page, but I believe the execution could have been stronger when it came to the big origin story revelation surrounding her and this mysterious cult. I think there should have been a stronger emotionally weighty confrontation especially for the sister reveal. The same can be said for the final confrontation between Eve and her grandfather. 

Major Negatives: 

-Terrible Performance

1. Keanu Reeves as John Wick

This one hurts to say considering that John Wick is one of my new favorite characters in cinema, and I personally love Keanu Reeves in the role. Unfortunately, I feel that his performance has taken a massive nosedive from passable enough in the first movie to downright awful in these last two movies. He feels either like an intentional caricature of himself due to the character's pop culture attention or like a lazy bit of effort in the acting as the focus lies heavily on the action stunt work. Whatever the reason may be, it's definitely not working for me and has now become a distraction that I'm scratching my head over considering how perfectly fine he was in the earlier entries.