Pasckie Pascua's Nerdy Squirrel Reviews: Movies.

“Tow” (2025, Amazon Prime) drama. A homeless Seattle woman fights her way out of "tow-company hell" to reclaim the car that had held her life together after receiving a tow bill for $21,634.          The film is based on the real-life 2017–2018 ordeal of Amanda Ogle. Living in her 1991 Toyota Camry in Seattle, Ogle had her car stolen and later recovered, but the impound and towing company refused to release it without charging massive, compounding storage fees.         As Amanda, Rose Byrne's engaging performance is the life of this movie. All her. But she keeps it interesting and entertaining, without plunging us in a puddle of sudsy melodrama. 🎥💻📽 “Alice, Darling” (2022, Tubi) psychological thriller drama . A young woman tries to break free from an emotionally and psychologically abusive relationship.         I really don't know how to “rate” this movie. It sort...

“Unabomber” (2026, Netflix) crime drama, based on the domestic terrorist, Ted Kaczynski . This version focuses on Mr Kaczynski's Harvard years and his interaction with a professor in the 1950s-1960s, flipsided with the manhunt in the 1990s.        This movie about a story that has been navigated and explored so many times in cinema could be the most pretentious or contrived. Too talky and inert and lacking of real dramatic tension, irrelevant of the satisfactory acting of Russell Crowe, Shailene Woodley, and Jacob Tremblay as the young Ted.        All that I can say in the end is: Enough with these unabomber movies, please! 🎥💻📽 “No Ordinary Heist” (2026, Amazon Prime) thriller based around the Northern Bank robbery in Belfast in 2004.         Background: On 20 December 2004, £26.5 million in cash was stolen from the headquarters of Northern Bank on Donegall Square West ...

“The Marked Woman” (2026, Netflix) Spanish crime thriller. A young, tortured, and amnesiac woman is found bound and gagged inside a shipping container at the Port of Barcelona. While she is recovering in the hospital, someone tries to assassinate her.        The dark tone. Candela Pena's Det. Anna Ripoll's gloomy backstory. These seemed hard not to bite, at least in the first half of the movie. But from there the pacing drags and Anna's drama gets soapy. Her not-so-cool vibe with fellow cop Quique (Pol Lopez) gets bland and the dramatic ministrations of the victim/witness (“the marked woman”) gets into the realm of predictability.        And then the film slides to genre stereotypes and human trafficking tropes. Minutes before the ending, we already how'd the movie end. 🎥💻📽 “Hounds” (2023, Tubi) Moroccan/French crime drama . Taking place over one night in Casablanca , it follows Hassan and Issam, an impoverished fa...

“The Dutchman” (2025, Paramount+) psychological thriller , based on Amiri Baraka's 1964 stage play. A successful black businessman unravels during a tense, surreal night in New York after encountering a seductive and sinister white woman named Lula.         Andre Holland and Kate Mara delivered strong presence. I haven’t read the source material but this reworking of the stage play is an incoherent sermon of cliches. I get what the movie is trying to say but it is either too contrived and pretentious or simply a soul-less lecture of the same lecture. You know what I mean? 🎥💻📽 “The Card Counter” (2021, Peacock) crime drama , directed by Paul Schrader . A U.S. veteran and former gambler takes a young friend on the World Series of Poker tour.         It is difficult to ignore Paul Schrader. The genius who wrote the screenplay of “Taxi Driver" (1976) and co-wrote “ Raging Bull ” (1980). He directed “ Americ...

“Mayday” (2026, Apple TV+) action comedy . An American pilot stranded behind enemy lines during the Cold War must team up with an eccentric former KGB agent. Stars Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh.         Kenneth Branagh has the clever one-liners (in Russian accent), while Ryan Reynolds has the Deadpool-styled humor. This is a Cold War genre cliche but never mind. The warhead ride was stylish, or the easy albeit supposedly high-wire action is cool enough. And it's funny, too. 🎥💻📽 “Greedy People” (2024, Hulu) crime comedy . The misadventures of several lives in a small coastal town that end up entangled by a web of lies, which creates a domino effect of retaliatory murders all around greed.          On initial attention, this movie felt like comedy. Then things got weird. People died, one at a time. A dog was also “accidentally” murdered. Suspense drama? Crime thriller? All throughout, Joseph Gordon-Le...