November 2025 Movie Reviews: A House of Dynamite, Eden, The Long Walk
What happens when everything goes very, very wrong? In this month’s movie reviews, we’ll take a look at three films that takes a look at this very question, each in a different time period and under a unique set of circumstances.
A House of Dynamite (2025)
Netflix, 112 minutes
A House of Dynamite is one of those fast-paced political thrillers where you have a bunch of politicians/military people talking with one another on multiple phone calls while a crisis unfolds before their eyes. In this instance, a nuclear missile has been fired at the heart of the United States by an unknown assailant.
These sorts of movies with characters just debating with one another on what to do next can be hard to get right. If anyone can pull this sort of story off though, it would be the film’s director, Kathryn Bigelow, who’s helmed hits like Zero Dark Thirty and The Hurt Locker.
Unfortunately, while the film is definitely well put together, there is a major issue with A House of Dynamite that prevents it from being a success. The movie is basically an exciting first act of a story told three times from different perspectives. You get a great build up with rising tension and really solid acting. Then, when everything is about to come to a head, the movie takes you back to the beginning and re-shows the day’s events from another point of view.
This sort of storytelling structure ends up being extremely anticlimactic. By lacking a middle or end to the story, the primary mission of the filmmakers is clearly to inspire conversation/thought. That’s fine and all, but you still need to have what feels like a rewarding movie-going experience for viewers.
Sadly, A House of Dynamite’s structure and the decision to only show the early events of the crisis (with no resolution) is a decision that’s likely to frustrate most filmgoers. If you’re looking for a movie like this one that’s actually fulfilling, I’d recommend 2015’s Eye in the Sky instead.
Grade: 5.5/10
Eden (2025)
Vertical, 129 minutes
Filmmaker Ron Howard is pretty widely regarded as a quality filmmaker, so it’s surprising to find that he directed Eden, a movie that’s simply not very good. This is a movie with a pretty stacked cast too, with popular actors including Jude Law, Ana de Armas, and Syndey Sweeney, and it was made for a budget of $55 million. Somehow though, it ends up feeling more like a made-for-TV-movie than a blockbuster.
Eden was inspired by actual events. It centers on three different groups of people who abandon the comforts of the modern world in the early 1920s to start life anew on Floreana Island (which is in the Galapagos Islands). It’s an interesting enough premise, and we sort of get a Lord of the Flies-type vibe when the various groups start to turn on one another.
The movie lacks anything that makes it special though and feels very blah. It’s like everyone involved is going through the motions of making a watchable enough film and collecting a paycheck.
At first, I found the bad German accents a lot of the cast are putting on distracting, but I ended up getting used to it. It’s just not a movie that anyone truly needs to watch. I suppose it’s fine if you want something on in the background. Eden is not awful, but at the same time I can see why it bombed and only made $2.5 million at the box office.
Grade: 5/10
The Long Walk (2025)
Vertigo Entertainment, 108 minutes
The Long Walk is one of those movies where the elevator pitch really does tell the whole story: In a dystopian version of the United States, 50 boys compete in a contest where they need to keep walking. If they stop moving, or walk below a certain speed, they will be shot, and they will continue going until only one boy remains. It’s basic, brutal, and potentially interesting.
The movie, however, is mostly a dud. This story might work in novel form, but on the screen, watching 50 young men walk for almost two hours is a slog. While they stroll along (with the periodic brutal execution), the boys have conversations about life that I think are supposed to be profound, but none of it succeeds in being at all powerful or landing.
The Long Walk is a film where characters are brutally killed in dramatic fashion, but I found myself not caring at all about any of them. The only real question while watching the film becomes trying to figure out what order the boys will be killed off. It’s sort of depressing and mostly boring.
Grade: 4/10