Wuthering Heights review: Promising Stung Woman

Jeremy BeckReviews
Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie in Wuthering Heights

In the opening scene of Emily, Charlotte Brontë disparages Wuthering Heights as “an ugly book, base and ugly.” Emerald Fennell must have missed that memo. To be sure, this umpteenth screen adaptation of Emily Brontë’s novel is suffused with crude, primal emotions: lust, hatred, anguish, cruelty, more lust. But because Fennell fancies herself one of modern cinema’s most flamboyant stylists, her version clothes this vulgarity in beauty and extravagance. This is not your literature professor’s Wuthering Heights; this is more of the music-video edition.

Does that make it sacrilegious or sensible? Maybe a bit of both. I am not sure we needed another update of Brontë’s classic, much less one so high-strung and turgid. At the same time, if you are going to reimagine an article of the literary canon, you may as well do so with some flair. Fennell’s first two movies, Promising Young Woman and Saltburn, were original conceits, (arguably) teeming with provocative ideas and piercing insights into contemporary class and gender. Now pivoting from the freedoms of invention to the constraints of adaptation, she has redirected her inflammatory instincts away from theme and toward feverish form. The results may not be great, but at least they’re distinctive. Read More

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Send Help review: Triangle of Madness

Jeremy BeckReviews
Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien in Send Help

Rachel McAdams is a babe. It’s been over two decades since she broke out with the one-two summer punch of Mean Girls (where she played a scholastic queen bee) and The Notebook (where she portrayed the object of Ryan Gosling’s eternal devotion), and her wholesome sex appeal hasn’t waned a bit. Even when she tamps down her natural vivacity—as a dogged spy in A Most Wanted Man, as a subjugated housewife in Disobedience—her spark of glamour remains irrepressible. So it’s both a stretch and a joke that Send Help finds McAdams playing Linda Liddle, a socially maladroit office drone with stringy hair, a prominent pimple on her chin, and an even larger mole on her cheek. As her onomatopoetic surname suggests, Linda is meek, weak, and mousy. If Regina George didn’t terrorize her in high school, it’s only because Linda was too small to be noticed.

Less total loser than thankless nobody, Linda works in the accounting strategy and planning department of a generic firm, where her rigorous calculations get co-opted by her dismissive male superiors. (The screenplay, by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, intentionally keeps her job’s details vague.) She may know numbers, but her personality is radioactive; when she tries to invite herself to a planned karaoke outing, her coworkers stare at her like she’s speaking an alien language. Linda’s fumbling is especially unfortunate given that she’s desperate to impress her new boss, a preening hotshot named Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) with custom loafers, a private putting machine, and a lifelong membership in the boys’ club. He seems approachable enough (“Open door policy!”), but he’s an oily prick who wants nothing to do with her; when she traps him by her cubicle, his face goes through several stages of agony as he gradually resolves to wipe a smudge of tuna fish off her lip. There’s no possible scenario where Bradley would truly value Linda. Is there? Read More

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Ranking Every TV Show of 2025: The Complete List

Jeremy BeckTV Rankings
Gary Oldman in Slow Horses; Hannah Einbinder in Hacks; Jennifer Aniston in The Morning Show; Jeremy Allen White in The Bear; Noah Wyle in The Pitt

Look, I’m not naïve, I get how the internet works. After all, I just spent a week ranking 97 different TV shows. Sure, maybe you’re interested in where a particular series landed on my exhaustive list, but do you really want to read the 13,000 words I spent analyzing the year in television? I didn’t think so. But you’re in luck: This page contains our complete 2025 TV rankings, with no pesky writing to bother you. Scroll and skim away! (If you are in fact interested in the analysis, you can click on the header link above each group to access the original post.) Read More

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The Best TV Shows of 2025

Jeremy BeckTop 10 Lists, TV Rankings
Stephen Graham in Adolescence; Lisa Edelstein in Long Story Short; Genevieve O'Reilly in Andor; Britt Lower in Severance; Mark Ruffalo in Task

Maybe TV isn’t so mediocre after all. When I embarked on this annual exercise at the beginning of the week, I lamented how much modern television falls under the uninspiring umbrella of “content.” In terms of percentages, I still think that’s true, but the most recent subsets of these rankings reminded me just how many TV shows I genuinely enjoy watching, even if they’re far from perfect. Maybe the medium is in existential peril, but if it’s flaming out, at least it’s providing some quality entertainment while it burns.

Here are MovieManifesto’s top 10 TV shows of 2025:

10. Poker Face (Peacock, Season 2; 2023 rank: 6 of 94). The most significant discussion I heard surrounding this season of Poker Face occurred after it ended, when Rian Johnson revealed that Natasha Lyonne wouldn’t be returning and that he was contemplating replacing her with none other than Peter Dinklage. That could be amazing, but let’s be sure to celebrate what Johnson and Lyonne have already given us. Season 2 may lack the “Wow!” freshness of the inaugural outing, but it remains supremely enjoyable, embroidering its irresistible premise with punchy writing, sturdy execution, and a bevy of talented character actors. Despite a cute reveal in the finale, I don’t really care about the series’ long-form story, but Johnson doesn’t seem to worry about it either; he’s more focused on delivering tidy, absorbing episodes that leverage the show’s central conceit in canny and versatile ways. So maybe that planned Dinklage gambit will somehow pay off. To paraphrase a pop-culture hero from a different Johnson-related universe, never tell this show the odds. Read More

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Ranking Every TV Show of 2025: #s 20-11

Jeremy BeckTV Rankings
Jurnee Smollett in Smoke; Carrie Coon in The White Lotus; Emma Corrin in Black Mirror; Sydney Chandler in Alien: Earth; Ethan Hawke in The Lowdown

Nearly there now. Throughout the week, we’ve been counting down every TV show we watched in 2025. Today we unveil the honorable mentions which, depending on your perspective, either all should have been in the top 10 or are all ranked 50 spots too high. If you missed prior installments, check out the following links:

#s 97-86
#s 85-71
#s 70-56
#s 55-41
#s 40-31
#s 30-21

20. Black Rabbit (Netflix, Season 1). In the abstract, the mere existence of Black Rabbit feels flawed: great, another overextended miniseries about two whiny white dudes, starring actors who should be headlining movies instead. But sometimes, the Netflix slot machine pays out, because this series about a family-owned restaurant is a barn-burner. It’s become clichéd to compare new works of art to Uncut Gems, but Black Rabbit evokes that kind of sweaty intensity, yanking you down with its characters as their lives spiral helplessly out of control. Jude Law is ideally cast as the hero—fast-talking and quick-witted, but afflicted with helpless ambition and a tragic dose of fraternal loyalty—while Jason Bateman gives possibly the best performance of his career as an impulsive older brother whose indomitable pride compels him to make one disastrous decision after the next. The binge model has rarely been better served: This show keeps feeding you heaps of sharply flavored anxiety, and the only way out is to keep ordering more. Read More

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