In-Review: June 2025
A Disney Live-Action movie worth watching?
Earlier in the year, I ran my Summer Box Office predictions, and before I get into reviewing Lilo & Stitch, I wanted to take a second to gloat. I knew that Lilo & Stitch was going to be big for several reasons— the character translates easily to live-action, there’s still a big fanbase of Stitch, and there isn’t any controversy surrounding it like Snow White had. Since the movie has come out, there have been a lot of writers discussing why the movie worked, including this article from Vulture.
I believe Lilo & Stitch is a special case for Disney and not some proof that the live-action trend still has juice at the box office. Outside a live-action Frozen movie, I think the wheel has run dry. Outside of its marketability as a family movie, is this latest Lilo & Stitch adaptation worth a trip to the cinema?
I never saw the animated Lilo & Stitch when I was younger. I was in High School, and going to see the latest Disney movie just wasn’t on my radar. Looking back now, it was probably the last great Disney movie before a period of absolutely dismal animated films until The Princess and the Frog.
Lilo & Stitch follows Experiment 626, a blue creature with claws and also indestructible, who has escaped extermination and found itself on Earth. When a Hawaiian girl named Lilo finds him in a rescue shelter, she names him Stitch and takes him home to her family.
That family consists of Lilo and her older sister Nani, who is struggling to keep her head above water. Lilo is always getting into trouble, likely due to the unresolved grief of losing her parents. Life was already difficult, but adding Stitch into the picture is about to make things a whole lot worse.
The original animated feature had a lot of charm with its watercolor backgrounds and extensive usage of Elvis Presley hits. While the live-action film loses those vibrant colors, the heart of the story is accurately translated to the new film. I found myself enjoying the characters, especially Sydney Elizebeth Agudong as Nani, whose plight I could appreciate, trying desperately to hold her family together. The character is given a deeper backstory than the original animated film, showing the dreams she’s cast aside while becoming Lilo’s parent.
There have been a lot of these Disney adaptations in recent years, and I can’t exactly put my finger on why this worked for me, but it did. Maybe it adds just enough to the story to give it some weight, while retaining a lot of what was strong in the original. Perhaps the strongest praise I can say for Lilo & Stitch is that I wouldn’t mind Disney attempting a live-action sequel with this cast. [C+]
Here are the movies I caught up with in May:
As always, if you’d like to follow along on Letterboxd, my account can be found here.
Podcast
🎙️My co-host Evan Crean and I have recorded a new It’s the Pictures podcast episode. Episode 195 features a conversation about the John Wick franchise ahead of the new spin-off movie, Ballerina.
Miscellaneous
One of the other films I recently watched, Pee-wee as Himself, was a documentary on the late actor Paul Reubens. I learned a lot about the actor that I never knew, including the genius of the Pee-wee Herman character. Sometimes, the making of a documentary can be as interesting as the topic. Vulture posted a lengthy article written by the documentary director Matt Wolf, and it provides extra details into how private Ruebens was and how fearful he was of documenting his life.
Last weekend, Netflix had a streaming event where they showed off some new trailers for returning shows like Stranger Things and Wednesday, while also showing some of the first footage for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein and Rian Johnson’s Knives Out sequel, Wake Up Dead Man.
I haven’t watched it yet, but the director of Succession had a new project premiere on HBO over the weekend. It’s called Mountainhead, and it stars Steve Carell, Ramy Youssef, Cory Michael Smith, and Jason Schwartzman.
While I’m on the topic of Jason Schwartzman, Criterion announced a new box set collecting 10 Wes Anderson films in 4K for the first time. It’s going to be an expensive investment, but fans of Anderson will want to get their hands on this.
The A.V. Club posted their picks for the home video releases of June 2025. While there are a few in there I’m interested in seeing, including Sorcerer and Dark City, I’m supposed to get my hands on the Sean Connery 6-Film Collection. This collection has the 6 Eon James Bond films presented in 4K for the first time.