Cinema Romantico 2025 Movie Preview: THRILLERS ONLY

The consensus seems to view January as the worst month. I’ve always considered August the worst month, the dog days of summer dragging on, but then, I prefer winter to summer. And truth is, January has much to hold against it. No matter how many people try to frame it as a new beginning, the older you get, the more you realize our calendar is just a Gregorian construct and time is a flat circle. No wonder that the first month of the year, like the eighth, is a movie dumping ground for so many middling thrillers, like “Back in Action” (Jan. 17 on Netflix), which was supposed to be Cameron Diaz’s own triumphant new beginning but reports paint as a false start. On the other hand, how would one want to ease into the dreadful new year with anything other than some middling thrillers? I still have a lot of 2024 movies to catch up with, but what excites me is not “The Brutalist” nor “Nosferatu” but [makes sign of Lauren Bacall’s beret in “The Big Sleep”] “Flight Risk” (Jan. 24 in theaters). No matter who directed it, no matter who it stars, I confess, every time that trailer has appeared during a college football bowl game, it has made me feel warm and fuzzy and given me something to anticipate. Here are some others to look forward to, or not, as we once again preview the upcoming year in movies through the lens of thrillers only.

(Releases are, of course, ranked on the Runaway Jury Scale, measuring each new thriller’s potential for glorious middlingness, 1 being the lowest and 5 the highest.) 

Cinema Romantico 2025 Movie Preview: THRILLERS ONLY

Carry-On. This Netflix action-thriller mash-up was officially released in December, but it’s probable you have yet to see it. I have seen it, and I’ll write a review at some point, and though, full disclaimer, I watched during a bout with Christmas Covid (fun!), meaning while my head was impossibly congested and I was hopped up on cold medicine and soused on ginger tea, I might have enjoyed it more than “Conclave.” We give it...5 Runaway Juries

Flight Risk. See Above. We give it...5 Runaway Juries

Fight or Flight. Another one on a plane with the added benefit of starring Josh Hartnett who continues his unlikely transformation into a quadragenarian middling thriller star. Could his next one co-star Clea DuVall? We give it...3 Runaway Juries

Hurry Up Tomorrow. This is apparently a thriller based on the upcoming album of the same name by The Weeknd. So, is it like if Bob Dylan’s “Renaldo and Clara” had been a spy thriller? And would that have made “Renaldo and Clara” better or worse? We give it...1 Runaway Jury

Inheritance. Rather than the hereditary succession to some sort of substantial financial portfolio, like “Inheritance” (2020), or “The Inheritance” (2024), the inheritance here is spy craft. That’s how we do! We give it...3 Runaway Juries

The Amateur. Instead of just having a particular set of skills, a la Liam Neeson, Rami Malek must train to acquire those particular skills...and only get that training upon blackmail. Innovative! We give it...3 Runaway Juries

Cold Storage. Speaking of Liam Neeson, here he seems to be starring in some kind of lightly veiled COVID-19 conspiracy thriller...except it’s based on a novel published in 2019. A novel by David Koepp, the accomplished screenwriter who is member of the Middling Thriller Hall of Fame. Splits the difference. We give it...3 Runaway Juries

Bring Them Down. An Irish thriller in which a shepherd gets into a whozeewhatzit over some dead sheep sounds like it should star Liam Neeson but stars Barry Keoghan instead and also sounds like the trashier version of “Rams (2016),” not “Rams (2020),” which I mean as a compliment, mostly. We give it...3 Runaway Juries

Beneath the Storm. This just sounds like “Sharknado” with Djimon Hounsou. If they’re going to let Djimon Hounsou finally cut loose and embrace his inner-comedian, I give it...3 Runaway Juries; if they’re just going to try and make a solemn “Sharknado,” I give it...Zero Runaway Juries.

From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. The old Continental Basketball Association should have branded itself this way – From the World of the NBA: the CBA. We give it...3 Quad City Thunder

Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning. “Dead Reckoning Part One” didn’t seem to make as big a splash as it should have, maybe because at some people point just become bored by excellence, like with the Kansas City Chiefs. Even so, I’m no less excited for this one than I was for the previous one, or “Fallout” before it, even as I hope this really is the final reckoning, at least for the Christopher McQuarrie versions. Like Tom Cruise sitting atop the Burj Khalifa, why not go out on top? We give it...5 Runaway Juries

If you judge a movie by its cover, we have a possible Best Picture winner on our hands.

Black Bag. Is a Steven Soderbergh riff on a middling thriller Store Brand Soderbergh or a middle-shelf wine that tastes top-shelf? Either one, honestly, this is 5 Runaway Juries.

Working Man. “Levon Cade left his profession behind to live a simple life of working construction and spending time with his daughter. However, when his boss's daughter vanishes, he's called upon to use the skills that made him a legendary figure in the shadowy world of black ops.” That synopsis seems ripe for every working critic’s standby This Could Have Been Written By A.I. joke but nope, it was just co-written by Sylvester Stallone. We give it...2 1/2 Runaway Juries

Alarum. This one wasn’t written by Sylvester Stallone, but it stars Sylvester Stallone because one way or another he’s gonna let you know this old guy’s still got it. We give it...2 Runaway Juries

Now You See Me 3. We’re still making these? We give it...Zero Runaway Juries

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera. Will “Den of Thieves 3” be “Den of Thieves 3: Slayer?” [Crickets.] We give it...Zero Runaway Juries

The Running Man. It has Glen Powell, I get it, as they say, and yet, a remake of an 80s dystopian thriller during the second reign of His Imbecility makes it feel like Jack Donaghy should be involved. We give it...1 Runaway Jury

Not In the Grey, but it could be.

In the Grey. Guy Ritchie’s latest thriller has been postponed from its original January release, so maybe it won’t even see the light of day in 2025, but it’s still worth mentioning for starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill as a pair of extraction specialists and how I like to imagine this instead as a 1955 Martin and Lewis joint.  

Cleaner. This sounds like if “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” were a mainstream thriller rather than action-packed agitprop meaning I feel like it’s destined to make people looking for a mere middling thriller angry and people looking for “How to Blow Up a Pipeline 2” even angrier. We give it...1 Runaway Jury

Untitled Paul Thomas Anderson Event Movie. This IMDb phrasing makes PTA’s next joint sound like a disaster movie released in June, which would be incredible, honestly, all the PTA players in some variation of “The Towering Inferno,” though word on Hollywood Blvd is that it might be a thriller, or at least, thriller-adjacent, which would be incredible in its own right. I don’t necessarily believe it, but still, it’s fun to imagine the guy who engineered the best movie car chase of 2021 in “Licorice Pizza” with only one car (and no gas!) making a true blue thriller. In the event that it is, we give it...5 TK-421 hi-fi stereo systems