This week on The Movie Gourmet – new reviews of an overlooked film from 2025, My Dead Friend Zoe, the dark comedy My Neighbor Adolf. and Cover Up, the Netflix biodoc of journalist Seymour Hersh. ICYMI here’s my year-end coverage:
- Best Movies of 2025
- Best movie-going experiences of 2025
- 2025 Farewells: on the screen
- 2025 Farewells: behind the camera
- 2025: 14 new filmmakers to watch
CURRENT MOVIES
- Hamnet: a grieving couple finally aligned. In theaters.I
- t Was Just an Accident: trauma, justice and complications. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
- My Dead Friend Zoe: getting to resilience. Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
- Train Dreams: quietly thinking and quietly feeling. Netflix.Left-Handed Girl: a family’s path to to catharsis. Netflix.
- Marty Supreme: a portrait of chutzpah. In theaters.Sentimental Value: generational healing. In theaters.
- Jay Kelly: finding that the ship has sailed. Netflix.
- Frankenstein: who is the real monster? In theaters and on Netflix.
- A House of Dynamite: a master filmmaker reminds us of the terrifyingly plausible. Netflix.
- One Battle After Another: sometimes hilarious, sometimes thrilling, always outrageous. HBO Max (included), Amazon, AppleTV, YouTube, Fandango.
- My Neighbor Adolf. more than a match of wits. In theaters.
- Cover Up: muckraking back in the day. Netflix
ON TV
On January 13, Turner Classic Movies presents a charming little British comedy that became a huge art house hit in the US, The Full Monty. A steel mill in Sheffield has shut down, throwing its entire workforce into hopeless unemployment. One of the former steelworkers, Daz (Robert Carlyle) flits between dodgy under-the-table gigs so he can buy pints at the pub and pare down his child support arrearage. Daz enlists his mates in his latest scheme – to develop a Chippendale-style male strip act. He recruits their former foreman Gerald (Tom Wilkinson) as their choreographer; heartbreakingly, Gerald still hasn’t been able to tell his wife that he, too, is unemployed. Daz is a shameless rapscallion; his foibles are funny, as are the regular blue collar guys trying to learn sexy dance moves. As funny as it is, The Full Monty explores masculine identity and the human impact of Thatcherism. The Full Monty was nominated for three Oscars, winning for its music.
For most of the US audience, this was a first look at Tom Wilkinson, who went on to a significant career in US and British movies: Smilla’s Sense of Snow, The Patriot, Shakespeare in Love, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, John Adams, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Selma. Wilkinson was Oscar-nominated for In the Bedroom and Michael Clayton.