Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 52 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Anaconda

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Horror

Director:  Tom Gormican

Starring:  Jack Black, Paul Rudd, Thandiwee Newton, Steve Zahn, Daniela Melchoir, Selton Mello

Personally, I'm one who is going to give a movie a lot of slack to be what it wants to be.  But there are also times where I just have to smile and nod and back away slowly.  Anaconda is one of those times.  I guess, if you're going to do a meta parody movie about a specific monster movie that's officially a part of that same series, Anaconda is probably the best series to do it with.  The title has has enough recognizable brand recognition to stand out but is not exactly sacred ground.  Even that movie's biggest fans probably don't care that a sequel/reboot like this exists.  And Anaconda as a series went straight to video/television pretty damn fast, even crossing over with the similarly fated Lake Placid series.  Regardless of whether or not you understand why this movie exists, almost anything is a step in the right direction by comparison.

So Jack Black and Paul Rudd enter the equation, seeking to do a comedy version of Wes Craven's New Nightmare, a meta sequel that takes place in "the real world" where the previous films are just movies, only to have the thing in the movies happen in real life.  Honestly, Will Ferrell tried this meta approach with the Bewitched movie back in 2005 and it didn't work, but sure, let's do it again, I guess.  In this film, Rudd is an out of work actor who gets his out-of-work-director best friend Jack Black on board with the idea of rebooting the Anaconda franchise as an indie project.  They gather a group of inept friends and head to Brazil to film it on location, only to find there are actual giant Anacondas living in the rainforest.  Also, gold heists, love story (kind of), mocking the filmmaking process, and a lot of filler stuff that steers focus away from the whole Anaconda thing.  You would think that a comedy sequel to Anaconda would be a monster movie parody, which this new Anaconda isn't really.  It's a parody of low budget filmmaking that has a snake that eats people as an annoyance.  It's strange how incidental the snake is in this movie.  There are like five stories wrapping around each other here and the snake isn't part of any of them.  It just pops up and scares everyone every once in a while.  It almost feels like the movie was written as something else and had to staple an IP on it when it went through greenlight approval.  The result is a comedic Anaconda reboot that seemingly has little interest in being about an Anaconda.

Is the movie funny?  It's not unfunny.  Parts of it are amusing, but most of the movie is spent waiting for a sudden burst of inspiration to make it worthwhile.  Inspiration never comes, and it's never clear why this particular movie was made out of all the directions they could have taken.  They could have leaned into a monster movie parody or a filmmaking comedy.  They try to meet in the middle and when the movie favors one, it winds up detracting from the other.  The best thing that can be said for that is that they didn't drag a better franchise through the mud in doing this.  The first Anaconda is an okay movie.  I don't have many strong words to say in its favor or against it, but it made for a fun RiffTrax Live show (which we'll likely never see again, thank you, Sony).  I know I've seen the second one, which I barely remember, and the third, which I remember slightly more and hate myself for it.  There's an argument that can be made that this is the best Anaconda movie, which wasn't hard to do.  Unfortunately, it's in a package where it seems the only reason for the movie's existence is based on the idea that they could use a certain lyric from "Baby Got Back" in its trailer and hoping people will see it based on that alone.  I kinda wish they made a fun movie to go with it.

Marty Supreme

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama, Sports

Director:  Josh Safdie

Starring:  Timothée Chalamet, Odessa A'zion, Gwyneth Paltrow, Kevin O'Leary, Tyler Okonma, Abel Farrera, Fran Drescher

Ping Pong is such a weird thing to be a narcissistic knob about.  Nevertheless, that's what Timothée Chalamet chooses to do in Marty Supreme, a competitive Table Tennis player who feels as if he is destined for greatness, willing to lie, cheat, and steal to make his dreams come true.  Just writing that sentence makes me laugh, though the movie has a very serious face on.  Somehow, that's even funnier.  The movie is mostly a street drama about something that sounds absurd, though its underlining theme is about that inner idea that you are meant to be one of the greatest people who ever lived and trying to live it down when it doesn't happen.  Marty is a scumbag.  He lies constantly and is always trying to put one over on everyone around him, trying to bend reality to his will.  The majority of the movie sees him manipulating others so he can have a half-assed attempt to become on top of the world (in his head).  The movie does struggle with forms of monotony at times when it's just a constant stream of chattering chaos centered on Chalamet, though it does arrive at a satisfactory destination. It makes me forgive that the movie sometimes feels like it's running on a hamster wheel.

Song Sung Blue

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama, Musical

Director:  Craig Brewer

Starring:  Hugh Jackman, Kate Hudson, Michael Imperiolli, Ella Anderson, Mustafa Shakir, Fisher Stevens, Jim Belushi

It's bad enough that musical biopics dominate the award season scene the way they do, now we have to put up with tribute band biopics too.  Song Sung Blue is the love story between tribute singers Mike and Clair Sardina, who put together a Neil Diamond "experience" nostalgia act called Lightning and Thunder.  Mike even has a little lightning bolt on his tooth, making me kinda wish he would shine it off and yell "kaCHOW!" every time he smiles.  I'm sure the movie has well meaning intentions of being about small people dreaming of glamor but it's a faulty hook when a film's idea of artistic integrity is taking someone else's music and making it your own.  It's just not a very inspiring idea for an inspirational drama.  That might be one of the reasons why it leans into a hard curveball halfway through, where the movie reminds us that these aren't celebrities but rather normal people dealing with reality.  The movie is more melancholy than it lets on in the trailers but that also becomes its most interesting aspect.  It becomes troublesome when it compounds melodramatics with a bunch of bullshit that soaks the movie's true story with nonsense, making it harder to embrace.  The film's third act tries to give more dramatic oomph to Mike Sardina's fate with a big setpiece and just flounders it by overplaying their hand by manipulating the audience.  Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson are both good in the movie.  The movie is more Hudson's than Jackman's, as she actually has a dramatic arc in the movie while Jackman mostly dresses in sparkly clothing and sings, which are the two things he does best other than pretending to be an angry Canadian with claws.  The duo do help make the movie sparkle when it's a bit murky.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Ella McCay ⭐️⭐️

The Housemaid ⭐️⭐️1/2

Five Nights at Freddy's 2 ⭐️

The SpongeBob Movie:  Search for SquarePants ⭐️⭐️1/2

Wicked:  For Good ⭐️⭐️1/2

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

100 Nights of Hero ⭐️⭐️

Fackham Hall ⭐️⭐️1/2

Five Nights at Freddy's 2 ⭐️

Long Shadows ⭐️

Nuremberg ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sentimental Value ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Springsteen:  Deliver Me from Nowhere ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Thing with Feathers ⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey ⭐️⭐️

Black Phone 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bugonia ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 51 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Avatar:  Fire and Ash

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Science Fiction, Adventure, Fantasy

Director:  James Cameron's

Starring:  Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldaña, Sigourney Weaver, Stephen Lang, Oona Chaplin, Kate Winslet, Cliff Curtis, Joel David Moore, CCH Pounder, Giovanni Ribisi, David Thewlis, Britain Dalton, Jack Champion, Trinity Jo-Li Bliss

Hey, look!  It's Avatar!  And chances are you already know if you're into it or not, so anything I say can only reinforce what opinion you already have.  My experience with Avatar has always leaned positive, so the Negative Nancies will just scoff and mutter the same things they've been muttering for sixteen years.  I've never heard a fully convincing case against the franchise, personally, but you go where your heart tells you.  I think the movies are fine.  Fire and Ash is another one, and Avatar fans will eat it up while the non-fans will henpeck at it continuously even though it never seems to phase it.  Success always brings resentment from those who look in from the outside.  We saw the same thing with James Cameron's previous phenomenon, Titanic.  Franchises like Star Wars, the MCU, Lord of the Rings, and others also aren't free from it.  Hell, I have some foul words to say about The Hunger Games and Pirates of the Caribbean, so who am I to judge?

The latest in James Cameron's CGI blue cat people saga continues where the previous film left off, which sees Jake Sully, Neytiri, and their children living with the aqua Na'vi clans.  The resurrected and newly Avatar'd Miles Quaritch still hunts Jake down and seeks to reunite with his son Spider, forming an alliance with a hostile clan of fire Na'vi.  The status quo becomes challenged when Spider adapts to Pandora's air, making him valuable to the human colonizers of Earth.  Avatar's visual stimulus does what it has always reliably done.  If you thought the story was running thin by the end of the first movie, the third won't change your mind.  In fact, the movie probably has the least story of the three, as it seemingly mistakes setpiece events for character journey.  The movie has very little character-driven ideas, it's just three-and-a-half hours of stuff happening.  This makes the movie the one that is the least likely to sweep a viewer into it, as it doesn't really engage heart and emotion as strongly as the previous films, focusing more on spectacle than ever before.  I think this is partially the film suffering from being "part two" in a two-part narrative, as The Way of Water did most of the character work so Fire and Ash could house most of the action.  Movies like The Matrix Revolutions, Pirates of the Caribbean:  At World's End, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 have similar problems.  The movie is a long road for so little of a journey.  It's the longest Avatar movies, and as much excitement as is on display, it sure feels it.

All of this being taken into account, Fire and Ash is a reliable next step for those who are fully invested in the Avatar ride.  The first Avatar is the best overall experience.  The second had the best visuals.  What's left for the third movie?  The best villain is what I'd hand it.  Oona Chaplin is phenomenal as Varang, the sizzling fire Na'vi femme fatale who is basically just Nega-Neytiri.  The movie just doesn't have enough of her and it doesn't really conclude her role in the story in a fully meaningful way.  Maybe they want to do more with her in a future movie, but they'd also be fools not to.  Otherwise, the film's final action scene is mostly a stunner.  I say mostly because it has a few melodramatic hiccups and a couple of loose ends that one assumes are going to come back in the next movie.  That kind of sums up the Fire and Ash experience:  It sells what we expect it to in a worn-out package.  Does Avatar still have life in it?  Maybe.  I'll be willing to say that I haven't disliked any of them so far, so I'd watch another.  I'd be more excited about it if it were a little shorter, though.

The Housemaid

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Thriller

Director:  Paul Feig

Starring:  Sidney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, Brandon Sklenar, Michele Morrone, Elizabeth Perkins

I read the Freida McFadden novel of The Housemaid a while back, before I even knew that a movie was in production.  It was on sale and I had time to kill, and it seemed like "who cares" pulp reading, so I breezed through it.  It was trashy, smutty, and dumb but, I'll admit, I had a doofus good time with it.  Then I found out they turned it into a Sidney Sweeney movie and thought "Yeah, that sounds about right."  If you're going to turn a trashy, smutty, and dumb but crowdpleasing book into a trashy, smutty, and dumb but crowdpleasing movie, Sweeney is probably the perfect star for crappy, but joyous, mediocrity.  Fans of the book will probably really enjoy this, as it's pretty much a beat-for-beat adaptation, with minor additions and omissions to make the story more visual.  That story being that of a recently hired housemaid for a wealthy family who grows more uncomfortable with the lady of the house, who shows signs of schizophrenia.  Faults of the film production mostly come straight from the book, which is a little daft in its presentation and its central twist is always plainly obvious, with the only question being how its resolved.  The movie certainly leans into the melodrama, but if anyone is making it work, it's Amanda Seyfried, who is relishing the opportunity to go full ham.  For Sweeney, it's more of a showcase for her breasts than herself, as she's constantly in outfits that squeeze her chest and the movie never misses an opportunity to show her caress herself in the nude.  But for that built-in female audience that likes to support heightened but soft thrillers with nothing particularly challenging about them (and all have boyfriends who just want to see Sydney Sweeney's boobs), the film is a easy recommend and an entertaining watch.

The SpongeBob Movie:  Search for SquarePants

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Adventure, Fantasy

Director:  Derek Drymon

Starring:  Tom Kenny, Mark Hamill, Clancy Brown, Rodger Bumpass, Bill Fagerbacke, Regina Hall

SpongeBob SquarePants debuted when I was growing out of Nickelodeon, but it definitely seemed like the type of show I would have watched back in the day.  I only saw a handful of episodes from the first season, other than odds and ends that I have watched while babysitting.  I just missed my ride on this hype train and now I'm sitting down to watch the...we'll, I don't really know how many SpongeBob movies there are and I don't care enough to find out.  This is just the first one I've ever watched.

So, SpongeBob.  He lives in a pineapple under the sea (SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS).  Absorbent and yellow and porous is he (SPONGBOB SQUAREPANTS).  SpongeBob wakes up one morning wanting to feel like a big brave boy or something, so he goes off on an adventure to win his manhood.  He is taken in by the mythical ghost ship the Flying Dutchman, and the head pirate plans to use SpongeBob's naivete to free him of his ghostly prison.  That's the basics.  The movie is more jokes than story, so prepare for a barrage of funny business hurled at you, with the ratio of hit/miss being more even than I think the creators realize.  Luckily the quota of humor for comedy is so far surpassed that there might just be enough here for constant chuckles.  But when the movie dries out, it gets tedious.  Granted, I haven't seen the other SpongeBob movies, though I wonder just how many feature length stories the character is capable of.  After all, he and his friends are specifically designed for ten minute segments.  The conclusion I came to was that the film I was watching was basically a modern day version of the type of films the Three Stooges movies made in the 60's:  a plot that is only existent to set up extended schtick, and whether or not the bits wear out their welcome depends on your fondness for the characters on screen.  I enjoy those Stooges movies because I enjoy the Stooges.  SpongeBob is a little trickier because I have exposure to the characters but not the exposure that most past my generation have.  I find SpongeBob amusing, though I think I'm going to need a heartier journey for him to go on for me to fully be on board for ninety minutes.  To that end, I'm going to let SpongeBob do his thing.  SpongeBob fans are here for it, and that's a good thing.

Netflix & Chill

Demon Squad:  Tooth and Claw

⭐️⭐️1/2

Streaming On:  NOWHERE!  Watched it on blu-ray, baby!

Genre:  Horror, Mystery, Fantasy, Comedy

Director:  Thomas Smith

Starring:  Khristian Fulmer, Erin Lilley, Victoria Antonelli

I achieved a Bucket List Goal this week:  I've been credited in an actual movie!  Not, like, a studio movie or anything.  Or as far as indie productions go, this is probably on the lower tier.  But I assume most reading this are MSTies, so it probably means something that I was one of the people who pitched in to help make Demon Squad 2 a reality!  My response to the reader is either "You're welcome" or "Sorry, not sorry."  Pick one.

Of course, the elephant in the room is that Tooth and Claw wasn't their first choice for a sequel, as their first idea was a campaign for a haunted house movie called Deadwatch.  That campaign didn't reach its goal as the project was too expensive, so they came back with a more cost-effective story for Tooth and Claw, which could be made for the money they knew they could get based on the failed fundraiser.  The story sees P.I. (read:  Paranormal Investegstor) Nick Moon and his sidekick Daisy looking into maulings that have been happening across the city, which they theorize might be the activity of a werewolf.  Along the way they deal with dirty politicians who are hiding the paranormal underworld and a faux psychic who tries to expose it.  The noir parallels that were infused into the previous film have been numbed, sadly.  Tooth and Claw is more like a procedural episode of a P.I. TV series, which itself has its own perks.  I liked the vibes of the first movie a little more, because it really had that element of shooting for the moon with almost no money.  I also can't get out my head that first impression of the original, when I saw the puppets and masks, only to see Lilah walk into the scene with her little Carmen Sandiego Halloween costume and thinking "This is the most adorable movie I've ever seen."  Tooth and Claw still has that low-fi charm to it.  The werewolf costume itself is deliciously cheesy, looking both detailed and lifeless (and all sequence of it trotting down a hallway is just asking to be played against the Benny Hill theme).  The world itself is still looks like it's filmed at personal homes and what few locations it can hide from passers-by.  Peeks into the outside world has limited believability, as characters outside of Nick Moon's circle feel like they exist in a vacuum, which is especially true of the news team on television, which has the vibe of a High School AV club.

All of this is what makes Demon Squad so huggable, though.  This is a production that has less money that Sam Raimi's Evil Dead or Kevin Smith's Clerks, around the same ballpark as the original Paranormal Activity.  Hell, both Demon Squad movies put together cost less that it takes to make an episode of MST3K (both then and now).  Yet, it hits the streets and tries to make something out of scraps.  I love that so much.  Tooth and Claw still has that scrappy underdog aura to it, underlined by a snappy snark that what they're doing is probably stupid but they love doing it.  I imagine this film's particular brand of humor was given a bit of zest by veteran MST3K writer Devon Coleman, who aided with the screenplay.  Some of the humor hits higher than what we saw in the first movie, including a line that made me chuckle heartily where an obviously J.D. Vance inspired Deputy Mayor refutes the idea of demons and monsters because "It's un-Christian."  Other than that, the movie is still a scaled back presentation of gonzo ideas, my favorite new addition being the "Boo-Bombs" which explode and a monster pops out.  It's a concept that feels like it's inspired by the Pokéballs from the Pokémon franchise but the movie never addresses any inspiration.  They should keep it that way.  It's best not to get sued.  They just call them "hamster balls with egg timers glued on them," which I'm assuming is a meta line that references how the little props were made.

Returning castmembers include Khristian Fulmer and Erin Lilley as our headliners Nick and Daisy, and also Amir Zandi as the "in on it" detective Bert.  Bert's role is beefed up from the last film, now a love interest for Daisy, and gets to give her inspirational speeches and all that jazz.  The main newcomer is Victoria Antonelli as fake psychic Chari Divine, and she steals every scene she's in, with her absurdly thick New Jersey accent when she's in full grifter mode or just the playful third wheel to Nick and Daisy.  She even christens the dynamic duo with the name "The Demon Squad," canonizing what was a last minute title change to the first movie (produced under "Full Moon Inc." and briefly switched to "Night Hunters") in universe.  Divine is fabulous and she needs her own spin-off movie, as the Demon Squad Cinematic Universe comes into focus.

Not to get too petty, but to compare where my Kickstarter money went to versus where the Kickstarter money Chris Stuckman used to make Shelby Oaks went to, I'm more than pleased and can happily say I made the right investment.  I'm sure Stuckmann used his money where necessary and made the movie he wanted to make, but if I had pumped money into that, all I would have said while leaving the theater would have been "oof."  Demon Squad:  Tooth and Claw is a movie that is what it is and is something that I genuinely enjoy, and not a movie that I'm making excuses to myself about to justify forking over money for its creation.  I had a good idea of what it was going to look like and I wanted it to exist.  Demon Squad 2 is destined to be exactly like Demon Squad 1, hidden away on Tubi and stumbled upon by people who have no clue what it is and probably won't address it on its own level, will watch five minutes and just get angry that they watched that much of it.  Those are just the breaks.  But it's meant to mean something to the people who made it and the few people who pick up on its frequency and say "I get it."  That, to me, feels even more personal.  That's the type of movie I'm proud to have my name on.

Also, if Thomas Smith is reading this, I want to know when I can expect royalty checks from this.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Dust Bunny ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Ella McCay ⭐️⭐️

Eternity ⭐️⭐️1/2

Five Nights at Freddy's 2 ⭐️

Now You See Me:  Now You Don't ⭐️⭐️1/2

Predator:  Badlands ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Silent Night, Deadly Night ⭐️⭐️1/2

Wicked:  For Good ⭐️⭐️1/2

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

King Ivory ⭐️1/2

Now You See Me:  Now You Don't ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Running Man ⭐️⭐️1/2

Sisu:  Road to Revenge ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Black Phone 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 50 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Dust Bunny

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Fantasy, Action, Thriller, Comedy

Director:  Brad Fuller

Starring:  Mads Mikkelsen, Sophie Sloan, Sigourney Weaver, Sheila Atim, David Dastmalchian

An R-rated children's fantasy at first sounds like something that's made for no one.  Then one remembers how Guillermo del Toro made everyone shut their goddamn mouths with Pan's Labyrinth, so let's just roll with the punches.  In this whimsical fairy, a little girl is afraid of the monster under her bed, which escalates when the monster eats her parents, so that's how you know things have gotten serious.  To kill a monster, one must hire someone who kills monsters.  Luckily her next door neighbor does just such a thing.  Only he's a hitman who kills human "monsters," and he humors her story in believing that the monster under her bed is actually an assassin out to find him.  Wildly inventive and endearingly funny, Dust Bunny is an absolutely unforgettable collision of action movie thrills and the darkest depths of a child's imagination.  It stands proudly in the wake of dark fantasy tales that defined early Tim Burton's filmography that has gotten more mundane over the years.  Dust Bunny rediscovers that mojo and devours it whole, like the next logical evolution in fantasy movie chaos from 80's flicks like Beetlejuice and Gremlins.  The movie has spunk and a relentless pace, only to lag in interest when it plays the "Oh no, there's actually a real monster here" card a few too many times, especially in the third act.  One longs for characters to get wise and have a more substantial climax with the creature than they actually do, but it's not enough to fully hamper the fun.  Dust Bunny is destined to start out as a movie barely anyone knows about, only to grow its audience slowly like an infection.  One day it will accumulate enough love to be a cult classic but hopefully it moves past that to become a genuine classic.

Ella McCay

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Drama

Director:  James L. Brooks

Starring:  Emma Mackey, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Lowden, Kumail Nanjiani, Spike Fearn, Woody Harrelson, Albert Brooks, Julie Kavner, Rebecca Hall, Ayo Edebiri

Most kids of my generation are likely to associate James L. Brooks with being one of the names you see in the producer credits on The Simpsons.  Brooks never really had much creative input on the show, he was just very instrumental in getting it on the air.  Brooks has his own shit to do, which includes his own film directing career that dates back to Best Picture Oscar winner Terms of Endearment, and other award season darlings like Broadcast News and As Good as It Gets.  He hasn't directed a movie in a while but one hopes that when he does, it's going to be something special.  Ella McCay isn't, though those who miss quaint comedies like it probably won't have a bad time watching it.  Those who want this type of movie to be more enchanting might have a harder time swallowing it.

The film features Emma Mackey as Ella McCay, a Lieutenant Governer who suddenly finds herself promoted to the big job when Governer Albert Brooks gets a Cabinet position in Washington D.C.  In the aftermath, she juggles both scandal and personal family problems, and sometimes the two are intertwined.  It's an okay concept that is probably too mundane in delivery to truly hit.  Unfortunately, hyperbole has crashed into this movie from many of the critical reactions and is blowing its flaws out of preportion.  Calling Ella McCay one of the worst movies of the year is either woefully naive or blissfully ignorant (a statement made by people who obviously didn't suffer through Juliet & Romeo).  It's certainly not a great movie, but its flaws usually default to slow comedic timing and the plastic, hallow reality it seems to be dwelling in.  However, if I were to dwell in the positive kiddie side of the swimming pool with little floaties around my arms, while the movie's punchlines are often misdelivered, a lot of them are genuinely amusing.  The movie's heart is aimless and clueless, but it also clearly has a heart in general, which isn't true for several movies I can name this year (I'm looking at you, How to Train Your Dragon).  The movie has an interesting moral message about knowing your value, the hurt of being wronged, and the acceptance of apologies, not because the other person needs it, but because you need it.  These are all strong ideas.  They're shuffled into a light mess of a dramedy, but they're present and hit to varying degrees.  I wouldn't say this is a bad script, it's just written with stilted theatricality and filmed and performed as if it's quirky and off-the-cuff, which feels like an oxymoron.  With some tweaks, Ella McCay would probably make a better overacted play or fluff novel than a movie.  Do I recommend Ella McCay as is?  Probably not.  It's also not a good career capper for Brooks, if that was what he was hoping to gain from this.  But who knows.  Maybe he has another one in the tank.

Not Without Hope

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  Joe Carnahan

Starring:  Zachary Levi, Quentin Plair, Terrence Terrell, Marshall Cook, JoBeth Williams, Floriana Lima, Josh Duhamel

Somewhere in the last year or two, Zachary Levi decided he's not a comedian anymore and is trying to reinvent himself as an inspirational leading man.  It was probably the one-two punch of Shazam 2 and that Harold and the Purple Crayon movie both tanking at the box office and defining him as being somewhat box office poison, and maybe Levi sees his career sinking and is throwing himself into the faith market and pitching himself as their next rising star.  It worked for Kevin Sorbo, I guess.  Kind of.  God help anyone who stars in the movies Kevin Sorbo stars in these days.  I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy, who might actually have a lot in common with Sorbo, now that I think of it.  Zachary Levi might be best off with a career shift as a bartender if he's on that trajectory.

Based on a true story, Levi and a group of friends find themselves on a capsized boat far off the coast with crashing waves carrying them further out to sea.  The group struggles to stay alive while the Coast Guard relentlessly searches for them.  Of all of Levi's half-assed inspirational dramas this year, Not Without Hope is the least cringe, as he doesn't magically cure depression with his imaginary friend nor is he a white savior in a minority's story.  Even clearing that low bar, it's actually pretty okay.  The movie is somewhat excitingly filmed by Joe Carnahan, who has some experience with the survival genre following The Grey.  The drama and dialogue scenes are less memorable and more lifeless than you would hope from a movie like this, but they also don't induce scoffing or mockery, which is a minor win for the movie seeing how that could be an easy trap for it.  The movie is ultimately watchable but unimpressive and forgettable.  Not Without Hope does absolutely nothing that similar movies haven't already done better, but it's targeting an audience that wants more of these, and it adequately provides them with more.  Its only damning flaw is that it's hard to genuinely feel passionate about it, no matter how passionate it feels about itself.

Silent Night, Deadly Night

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror, Comedy

Director:  Mike P. Nelson (NO, NOT THAT MIKE NELSON)

Starring:  Rohan Campbell, Ruby Modine, David Lawrence Brown, David Tomlinson, Mark Acheson

The seventh film in the Silent Night, Deadly Night slasher film series is also the second reboot of it, following the sixth film, 2012's Silent Night.  That film was more a loose reimagining rather than a full remake, however.  Those wanting something that actually updates the original film are better served here.  This film stars Halloween Ends star Rohan Campbell, who finds himself in yet another situation where the will to be a mass murderer spreads to him like some sort of weird contagion.  After witnessing his parents slaughtered at a young age, Campbell grows up to be a killer himself every December, when he murders one "naughty" person every night leading up until Christmas, like a macabre Advent Callender.  The idea behind Silent Night, Deadly Night is actually a really fun spin on the slasher genre and probably deserved more popularity with horror fans than it got, embracing the anti-hero masked killer idea more warmly than other franchises, which always treated ins popular personalities as full antagonists to be overcame.  The good news about this movie is that its fully embraced being a rock opera of mayhem that we root for, providing a likable protagonist with warm personal relationships that make us want him to come home safe to.  That being said, it can be sloppy in its presentation.  It weilds it's carnage as a metaphor for traumatic rage but it's also not really effectively raging against anything.  The movie is playful, but careless.  Our anti-hero slasher is kind of incompetent and he's just lucky the world that he wants to see bleed is more incompetent than he is.  I think this movie has convinced itself this is just flinging carnage in all directions and didn't notice.  Silent Night, Deadly Night is a fun option for horror fans who want to skip the heartwarming family films of the holidays and put on a Christmas themes macabre offering.  Convincing them that they should watch this instead of Terrifier 3 every year, on the other hand, that might take some work.

Netflix & Chill

Influencers

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Streaming On:  Shudder

Genre:  Thriller

Director:  Kurtis David Harder

Starring:  Cassandra Naud, Emily Tennant, Georgina Campbell, Jonathan Whitesell, Lisa Delamar

Cassandra Naud is back as social media stalker C.W. in this sequel to one of the best movies on Shudder.  Having escaped the island she was trapped on at the end of the first film, C.W. is now living happily in France with her girlfriend, who knows nothing of her bloody past.  But Madison, the sole survivor of the previous movie, hunts C.W. down to prove that her story is true.  Probably one of my most hotly anticipated streaming films of the year, up there with Frankenstein and Wake Up Dead Man, I wasn't sure where a sequel to a movie as contained as Influencer was going to go but I was eager to find out.  Catching up with Naud's psychotic socialite was a treat, even if the transition between the two films feels lightly uneven.  The movie never bothers to explain how she escaped the island, though it does address that it's seemingly absurd that she did so before changing the subject entirely, framing it as unimportant.  I respect the effort it took to not answer this question so blatantly, so I'll give it a pass.  The mind games on display aren't as savage and engrossing as the previous film, but that's mostly because we're already savvy to what's going on in Naud's head this time around.  There are a few twists and turns, some are too extravagant for the film's own good, but Naud still owns the production like a queen.  Her castmates always find their own screen presence murdered by her "it factor."  This is especially true of her male target throughout most of the movie, whose toxic dudebro persona gets very tiresome very fast.  This is part of the film's overall plot because we're not supposed to sympathize with him and feel he deserves some sort of comeuppance, but it's just a lot of time spent with someone who needs to be punched.  I can't recommend the film over the original but it's a fun continuation for those who want to see what happens next.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

100 Nights of Hero ⭐️⭐️

Eternity ⭐️⭐️1/2

Fackham Hall ⭐️⭐️1/2

Five Nights at Freddy's 2 ⭐️

Hamnet ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Now You See Me:  Now You Don't ⭐️⭐️1/2

Nuremberg ⭐️⭐️⭐️

One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2

Predator:  Badlands ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Running Man ⭐️⭐️1/2

Sarah's Oil ⭐️⭐️

Wicked:  For Good ⭐️⭐️1/2

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

The Carpenter's Son ⭐️⭐️1/2

Christy ⭐️⭐️1/2

Die My Love ⭐️⭐️

Dogma ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Keeper ⭐️⭐️

New To Physicsl

Dead of Winter ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Soul on Fire ⭐️

I'm Still Here ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Strangers:  Chapter 2 ⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 49 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

100 Nights of Hero

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Drama, Fantasy

Director:  Julia Jackman

Starring:  Emma Corrin, Nicholas Galitzine, Maika Monroe, Amir El-Masry, Charlie XCX, Richard E. Grant, Felicity Jones

Strange little artsy metaphor movie about girl power takes place in some sort of fantasy world with three moons, where Maika Monroe is in hot water with her patriarchal in-laws for not producing an heir for her husband, who refuses to have sex with her.  Why doesn't he have sex with her?  The movie can't be bothered to answer that.  I was under the idea that it might be repressed homosexuality but the movie never even addresses it.  He just doesn't.  That's kinda of a weird plot point to jump off of but we just have to run with it.  Maybe he just watched It Follows and doesn't want Monroe's monster cooties.  Yeah, let's go with that.  Anyway, she is given a hundred days to get pregnant and, instead of doing it and/or her himself, her husband just up and leaves her with his handsome friend.  Does he want the friend to get her pregnant for him?  Doesn't seem like it.  In fact, the husband holds no interest in getting her pregnant at all and they both make a bet that she won't sleep with the friend after a hundred days and if she does, they'll have her executed.

What even is this story?

It turns out the actual story the movie wants to tell has very little to do with the main storyline.  The movie is thematically about oppressed women who want their voices to be heard, mostly taking the form of Emma Corrin's servant girl character, who tells stories of the women who wish to also tell stories and are punished for it.  What does any of this have to do with the pregnancy plotline?  Nothing, really.  It's an overcomplicated and underdeveloped metaphor about a group of men keeping Monroe subservient to them.  And that's what makes this movie so frustrating to watch, because it functions as an ode to the power of the storyteller but betrays its own message because its own story is barren and incomplete.  That feels very unforgivable, which is a shame, because the movie otherwise feels like it was made with vision.  The movie is a quirky little slice of idiosyncrasy.  It's like if Edgar Wright and Wes Anderson collaborated to make a Yorgos Lanthamos homage.  It's narrative is just jerky and rapid fire to the point that it feels like aimless jabbering rather than anything meaningful.  It does have a good message at its center, though.  Those who resonate with it could very well be more forgiving of this movie's flaws.  It's a well-intended mess.

Fackham Hall

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Mystery

Director:  Jim O'Hanlon

Starring:  Katherine Waterston, Thomasin McKenzie, Tom Felton, Emma Laird, Tom Goodman-Hill, Anna Maxwell Martin, Sue Johnston, Damian Lewis

Hot off the heels of the Naked Gun reboot is a brand new spoof film, this time taking aim at historical British aristocracy dramas and murder mysteries.  Thomasin McKenzie plays a rich entitled girl who is lined up to marry a cousin, like the rest of her family, but falls in love with newly hired servant Ben Radcliffe.  When father Damian Lewis is murdered, all of Fackham Hall is under investigation, potentially exposing their affair.  The primary joke of the movie is the prim properness contrasting with the lowbrow humor that is rising around them.  If Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker and the Farrelly Brothers collaborated on a reboot of Downton Abbey, it would be Fackham Hall.  The movie is a tender homage to those types of films with hints of other comedic stylings, including Blake Edwards' Pink Panther films, Abbott and Costello, and a dash of Monty Python.  The movie is probably too hammy with some of its gags to hit the highs of its many influences, but this is also a movie that could have easily have been a disaster.  The film's excellent cast of talents fully committing to the bit makes it a charming and amusing, even when it misses the mark on its ambition of hilarity.  Katherine Waterston is my personal MVP for this movie, because she's an actress who absolutely would star in the type of drama this movie is mocking, but has the comedic chops the pull off everything the film desires of its cast.  It's that sort of confidence that the rest of the movie needs, though it works well enough as is.

Five Nights at Freddy's 2

⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Emma Tammi

Starring:  Josh Hutchinson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Freddy Carter, Wayne Knight, Mckenna Grace, Skeet Ulrich, Matthew Lillard

Calling the first Five Nights at Freddy's mediocre was generous.  Calling the sequel boring is an understatement.  The latest video game adaptation sees a vengeful spirit haunting a marionette puppet at a completely different Freddy's restaurant.  Through the power of contrivance, she winds up in the lives of the same family as the first movie and...does things.  It's a bunch of crap that the first film already did and did better, and when I can say the original Five Nights at Freddy's did things better, that's when you know you're in for a bad time.  Ultimately, Five Nights at Freddy's 2 might have some minor junk value if we weren't just stuck with these boring protagonists that these movies feel invested in, for some reason, trying to add more layers to their trauma that link straight to the stupid restaurant.  The problem with doubling down on the character arcs from the first film is that those arcs were dull and inane.  Taking them to the next level just turns the franchise's awful character-driven focus into mundanity pretending to be a freak show.  The main villain is at least somewhat creepy looking and worth a couple of jump scares, and its habit of possessing characters gives some actors a little bit of spice to their roles.  This is the only reason I can think of as to why Mckenna Grace is in this movie, who gets a sequence where she's allowed to be a possessed villain and she's actually quite good at it, even if it's only for a couple of minutes.  Other than that, she's just here to be here and is tossed aside when the movie is done with her.  I'm sure she got paid well, so I won't say she completely wasted her time.  I wish I could say the same for myself.

Hamnet

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Chloé Zhao

Starring:  Jessie Buckley, Paul Mescal, Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn

This year's festival darling has entered the award season chat, becoming what most assume to be the third "lock" for a Best Picture Oscar nomination, following Sinners (which I'm rooting for) and One Battle After Another (which is this year's pattented "movie I can't stand that is probably going to win" entry).  This film adaptation of the Maggie O'Ferrell novel, Hamnet tells a dramatization of the love story and family of Willaim Shakespeare and Anne "Agnes" Hathaway.  Details about Shakespeare's life, especially as it related to his family, are sketchy at best, so the best we can hope for is an interpretation based on the few facts that we know about the time, period, and people.  Jessie Buckley plays Agnes, an outsider with a knack for medicine (which has most accusing her of witchcraft) who finds herself being wooed by a Latin tutor (guess who) played by Paul Mescal.  The two eventually marry and raise three children, including a twin boy named Hamnet, who's ill fate inspires his father to write a little play called First Action Hero AKA Hamlet.

Not a lot is known about the real life Hamnet Shakespeare, including how he died or what influence his father might have actually had taken from him in writing the play.  It's pretty much a forgone certainty that the Hamlet play was titled after him.  Hamnet as a story is a speculation of what might have been the purpose of this play and what deeper meaning it might have had to Shakespeare.  The Hamnet novel is a very interesting book because it's almost one of those dramatic interpretations of historic stories that Shakespeare would write himself, filling in the gaps of unknown details with internal monologues and plot beats written through poetry rather than realism.  It's like "The Tragedy of William Shakespeare" as told by William Shakespeare.  There are, of course, a couple of more modern flourishes that Shakespeare wouldn't have done, such as its nonlinear presentation and the fact that the book deliberately avoids saying the name "William Shakespeare" out loud to not distract from the tale of Agnes and Hamnet, but it feels like it's a work Shakespeare would have understood if he had a chance to read it.  Or he would have objected to the anacronisms and inaccuracies.  But if he were to to do that, we should ask him to hand his Julius Caesar play to the actual Caesar and see if his reaction is anything but "What the fuck?"  It's a great book, probably one of the best I've read in recent years.  If the movie were half as good, I'd be a very happy camper.

The adaptation is brought to us by Nomadland director Chloé Zhao, with a screenplay by Zhao and O'Ferrell, and is a pretty faithful work, if simplified.  There are aspects of the movie that feel dumbed down, with Agnes's outsider stature being much weightier in the novel and Hamnet having a more present role.  The presentation is also streamlined, opting for a chronological narrative, which is probably not something I would have done.  The film's ditching of the novel's nonlinear structure makes the plotting feel jumpy, though not without redemption.  Passionate performances by Buckley and Mescal underlined by Zhao's fierce direction counter it back to dramatic magnificence.  The movie is very pretty, very emotionally charged, and very sad, which is what the story demands of it.  Buckley has to carry most of the film on her own shoulders, empathically trying to translate her emotions into the audience.  She's just good enough an actress to actually enchant such a spell.  Probably the biggest hurdle that Zhao faces as the director is that sometimes her take on the story is too on-the-nose.  There's a scene where Mescal is standing on a ledge over a steep cape whispering the "To be or not to be" speech which is probably the most obvious thing she could have done in this movie.  Mescal makes the trite scene workable, but it might be a hair too much.  The movie isn't as powerful as the book because of things like this, but it's a very strong work of its own.  Like its source, the film is a story of the influence of love, using it to inspire creativity, and using that creativity as therapy for a broken heart.  It's a beautiful movie, which is what a beautiful story asks for.

But it still can't top the greatest Shakespeare production of all time...

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Eternity ⭐️⭐️1/2

Now You See Me:  Now You Don't ⭐️⭐️1/2

Predator:  Badlands ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Rental Family ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Running Man ⭐️⭐️1/2

Wicked:  For Good ⭐️⭐️1/2

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Sarah's Oil ⭐️⭐️

Trap House ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Tron:  Ares ⭐️⭐️

Truth & Treason ⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 48 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Eternity

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Fantasy

Director:  David Freyne

Starring:  Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, Callum Turner, John Early, Olga Merediz, Da'Vine Joy Randolph

Congratulations!  You're dead!  Now you have to make the all important decision of what the rest of eternity is going to be like for your released consciousness.  Get it done in one week or you'll be dropped into eternal nothingness.  Good luck!  This is the situation Miles Teller finds himself in when he chokes on a pretzel and dies suddenly, jumping into an afterlife of a  crowded terminal nightmare.  Eventually, his wife, Elizabeth Olsen passes away and meets him there so they can plan the rest of their eternity together.  However, the situation complicates itself when her first love, deceased soldier Callum Turner, reveals that he has been waiting for her at this junction between both worlds for over sixty years.  Now Olsen needs to choose between the rest of eternity with the man she built a life with or the man she never had the chance to.  Why she needs to choose is uncertain.  There's always the possibility that they could all somehow choose the same eternity and just figure it out from there.  That's the main issue with this movie, it's that it really has to contrive its idea in loops to make its conflict work.  Everyone in this afterlife seems so taken aback that this situation even happened.  I call bullshit on that.  A widow who remarried doesn't seem like it should be that unique a circumstance.  This absolutely happened before.  And the premise of the afterlife is too basic and underdeveloped for it to really hit it off.  The premise of this movie hinges on the idea that the afterlife is "just one thing forever" and you have to decide what it is with travel agents at a crowded airport.  Are we sure this isn't just Hell?  Because this sounds an awful lot like purgatory.  It's a played up premise that's wants to enhance the themes of "what was" vs. "what could have been," but it can't take off because it feels strained.  The movie's safe space is in performance, especially with Elizabeth Olsen, who is so into her persona of a retro housewife that you could have sworn she got trapped in WandaVision again.  It's through these touching human moments that Eternity shines.  It's brand of farce just never justifies itself.

The Thing with Feathers

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Horror

Director:  Dylan Southern

Starring:  Benedict Cumberbatch, David Thewlis

If you ever wanted to see Big Bird kick the crap out of Benedict Cumberbatch, boy do I have a movie for you.  Based on a short story, Cumberbatch plays a widower who is grieving the loss of his wife, who eventually finds that he has an unexpected guest living in his home, a giant crow ("He's a wisecracker!") with the voice of David Thewlis.  It's a metaphor!  ::hammy grin::  The crow ("That's one 'o!'") is grief and he's living with it!  In all seriousness, this movie probably could have worked but its reach exceeds its grasp.  It wants to be so insightful and empathetic but while it's craftsmanship shows promise, the pieces can't always be taken seriously enough.  The movie's primary problem lies with how it has chosen to bring the crow ("I'm different!") character to life, which is wildly inconsistent.  The character is played by a man in a suit, which I fully support, and the suit is actually quite nice.  Unfortunately, it was obviously constructed to be effective in the shadows and when it needs to take a more prominent role in the story, it doesn't resonate and it becomes unintentionally hilarious.  There are points in this movie where the crow ("Oh brother!") is framed beautifully for unsettling effect.  They make the portions where it's not filmed effectively loom even funnier.  What's worse is that the crow (If you don't get what I'm doing here, you're in the wrong place) has dialogue and the costume isn't versatile enough for that kind of puppetry.  He instead talks without moving his mouth, like an old Garfield cartoon.  It's a movie that's trying to be powerful that becomes hard to take seriously.  But it tried, so I'll give it a pat on the head.

Wake Up Dead Man

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Mystery

Director:  Rian Johnson

Starring:  Daniel Craig, Josh O'Connor, Josh Brolin, Glenn Close, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeny, Daryl McCormack, Thomas Hayden Church

By spending an absurd amount of money on the sequel to the 2019 mystery movie Knives Out, Netflix's quest to prove streaming is the place for the hottest movies might have accidentally proved to me that the theatrical experience is irreplaceable.  Last month, Netflix's limited theatrical engagement of Frankenstein allowed the viewer to soak in the film's luscious visuals, while my theatrical experience with both Knives Out sequels was a reminder of the thrill of audience engagement, being in a packed house full of people who are fully hooked and going on the same ride that you are.  You can watch all of these movies at home, but you only get one first impression, and having that impression while doing laundry or playing on your phone isn't the same.  That's probably why Netflix is content with producing as much forgettable garbage as it does, because they're perfect experiences if you're not paying attention to them.  Some movies aren't meant to be tossed aside so you can ignore the next movie on the autoplay option.  Every once in a while there is something special on there.  Probably the best Netflix original movie is Nimona, which I lament not being able to own on blu-ray, while my 4K copy of Knives Out looks lonesome without its siblings.

Wake Up Dead Man is the third movie in this series, which sees Josh Brolin play an angry priest who has been murdered in a seemingly impossible manner.  Daniel Craig's famed detective Benoit Blanc is hired to deduce the way the murder had been conducted, or was he killed by an act of God or Satan?  Wake Up Dead Man is darker and more measured than the other Benoit Blanc films, to the point where it's probably the least fun to watch.  But it also has the wildest and least predictable third act, which makes up a lot of ground.  Previous Blanc movies tried to subvert expectations by doing an unconventional presentation of its murder mystery, with both Knives Out and Glass Onion masking what their mysteries actually were until the third act.  Wake Up Dead Man is a more conventional mystery by comparison, it just stacks more mysteries on top of each other until the grand finale, where I thoroughly didn't know what the fuck was going on and was happy to hear an explanation.  There is a majesty to the way Johnson unfolds his mystery films, though Wake Up Dead Man might be more cumbersome.  The film has a lot of characters and it doesn't always know how to incorporate them into the story in a meaningful way, with certain actors only present to be suspects but not actually have a real role in it.  Knives Out and Glass Onion were both better at character balance in this regard, but Wake Up Dead Man is certainly a worthy ride to go on for anyone who loved both of those films.  With it, Benoit Blanc is establishing himself among the greats of detective fiction, up there with Holmes and Poirot.  Though he still has a way to go before he reaches the hights of Shelby Woo.

Zootopia 2

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Fantasy, Action

Director:  Jared Bush, Byron Howard

Starring:  Gennifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Ke Huy Kwan, Fortune Feimster, Andy Samberg, David Stratharn, Shakira, Idris Elba, Patrick Warburton

I should probably not get my hopes up when Disney's animation studio decides to do a sequel to one of their movies.  The best one was The Rescuers Down Under and it's all been downhill from there.  I remember being warm to Fantasia 2000 and Ralph Breaks the Internet was fine, I guess, but Frozen II and Moana 2 were both punches to the gut.  Zootopia is one of my favorite Disney animated movies, as the studio/lifestyle brand did their own take on the buddy cop flick with their own style of anthropomorphic animal characters and made a movie that was both very funny and very heartfelt.  Both Zootopia and Moana were among my favorite movies of 2016 and Disney's last two animated movies were sequels to both of these.  With Moana 2 being an absolute nothing of a movie, should I have any hope for a Zootopia 2?  Maybe I had a sliver of one.  Moana 2 had an unfortunate production upend that resulted in the film they made, whereas Zootopia 2 was a more straightforward process, so there was a possibility of something better.  Besides, the buddy cop genre is sequel saturation at its finest and doing more Zootopia actually kinda makes sense as a genre piece.  If the world can have four Lethal Weapon movies, then Zootopia needs at least as many.  In buddy cop movie terms, Zootopia 2 one of those sequels that retells a lot of the original's most memorable jokes, only louder, while telling an entertaining, if less dynamic-servicing, story that will please fans of the original.  I guess that makes this the Rush Hour 2 of Disney movies.  I was kinda hoping for the Bad Boys II of Disney movies, but I'll take it.

The movie takes place a week after the first one.  Enthusiastic police bunny Judy Hopps is desperate to keep her momentum from saving the city by doing big time busts, while her sly fox partner Nick Wilde is more concerned about his own skin than actually solving crime.  Their latest case leads to a timid snake who might harbor a secret to Zootopia's origins and change the town's perception of itself forever.  To be honest, this is a little too lore heavy for me.  Zootopia's least interesting aspect is Zootopia itself.  I don't much care why animals evolved into a peaceful city.  Cartoons have done "animals as stand-ins for people" since their inception and they don't suddenly need an internal logic to this.  The story does provide some decent scenery change for the movie, though I'm not totally invested in where it's going, nor does it really feed into the character conflict between Judy and Nick.  The duo just kind of trots around on the quest and bicker, sometimes with endearment.  I do confess to be a little lost on what their relationship is supposed to be.  The screenplay to this movie reads like it's fangirling over shipping Judy and Nick together, which raises a thousand questions about interspecies sexual relations and procreation that I doubt a Disney movie is equipped to answer.  But Zootopia has always been an allegory for interracial relations, so I guess I shouldn't care.  The final movie holds itself back on defining it as anything beyond platonic, though it always seems excited about potentially opening that door.  Maybe Zootopia 3 will explore the meaning of the term "going at it like jackrabbits."

Also, Zootopia already has another evil mayor.  After a week.  I get that we shouldn't trust politicians but, my god, Zootopia's political system is fucked.

Anyway, I digress.  Those are all the things that make Zootopia 2 a little weird, but it's actually a fun little movie.  Not as good as the first, but the character dynamics are continually charming.  Judy and Nick are still an excellent pairing and the movie is still very funny.  Like the first, it's a buddy cop movie for kids and the tropes loan themselves well to the world the film creates.  The movie also gets surprisingly dark and heavy during its third act, which is it's strongest portion.  I was fully invested in how it was going to play out, even if the ride didn't compare to how charming the original was.  For what it's worth, Zootopia 2 is probably the best Disney sequel since Fantasia 2000, and the best Disney animation since Encanto.  It's not great, but it's a strong option for family movie night, which is exactly what it wants to be.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Now You See Me:  Now You Don't ⭐️⭐️1/2

Nuremberg ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Predator:  Badlands ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Rental Family ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Running Man ⭐️⭐️1/2

Sisu:  Road to Revenge ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Tron:  Ares ⭐️⭐️

Wicked:  For Good ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Blue Moon ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bugonia ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Good Fortune ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Regretting You ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

Anemone ⭐️⭐️1/2

Bone Lake ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Conjuring:  Last Rites ⭐️⭐️

Coyotes ⭐️⭐️

Eleanor the Great ⭐️⭐️1/2

Gabby's Dollhouse:  The Movie ⭐️⭐️1/2

Primitive War ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Roses ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!