Cinema Plauground Journal 2025: Week 20 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Final Destination:  Bloodlines

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror, Thriller

Director:  Zachary Lipovsky, Adam Stein

Starring:  Tony Todd, Kaitlyn Santa Juana, Teo Briones, Richard Harmon, Owen Patrick Joyner, Anna Lore, Brec Bassinger

For context, Final Destination isn't my bag, so consider the source on this lackluster take on the best-reviewed film in the franchise.  I've never found the Final Destination franchise very interesting or exciting, while some are more entertaining than others.  I like how campy the third one is, and I remember the fifth one being okay but, for the life of me, I don't remember why.  Then there is the second one, which is just bland extravagance, and the fourth, which is straight up garbage.  To say it's a mixed-bag is an insult to mixed-bags because it has never been particularly good, and they always end on a note that make the entire movie pointless.  Final Destination:  Bloodlines has the most in common with Final Destination 2, which, from what I hear, is the fan favorite.  I have absolutely no love for that movie, so Bloodlines didn't particularly leave an impression on me, either.

The new film has the death-defying premonition happening decades earlier than normal, after a woman goes into hiding so death doesn't kill her and begin stalking her entire family.  Ignore the fact that this premise actually defies the rules established in previous movies, where death will skip people in the sequence if its attempts fail and just jump to the next person.  But Final Destination has never been about lore, but gore, which Bloodlines has in spades.  Viewers who like seeing people go splat will be at home here.  Those who like death variety in their body count movies will probably prefer earlier entries, because Bloodlines has a tendency of doing the same effect of people turning into red goop over and over.  It's amusing at first, but when the movie struggles to figure out something new to do, it will always default to it and it gets less fun as it goes.

The idea of a family that should have never been being the center of one of these movies is an interesting one, though.  I wish there was something this movie could do with it that doesn't make it feel exactly the same as the movies that preceeded it, but if there was a way, the movie isn't smart enough to figure it out.  Bloodlines adds a few new flouishes to the formula, but they drown in an ocean of things this franchise has done ad nauseum.  Those who love Final Destination will get the most out of it, but those of us who find the series tiresome will find it boring.  As for me, I had the same experience I've always had with these movies, where I just let it play in front of me, then I go about my day without giving it a second thought.  Apparently this is supposed to be the best one.  I'm going to have to take your word for that.  My counterpoint is that the third one has Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and that makes that one the best one.  My logic makes sense to me.  But, to be frank, this whole series peaked when that girl got hit by a bus in the first one, and it has struggled to find a reason for continuing ever since.

Hurry Up Tomorrow

⭐️

Genre:  Thriller

Director:  Trey Edward Shults

Starring:  Abel Tesfaye, Jenna Ortega, Barry Keoghan

Forgive me when I say that I don't know who The Weeknd is.  I could say it's one of those "old man isn't hip with the times" things but I follow music so sparsely that even if The Weeknd was the hot thing when I was a teenager, I still probably wouldn't know who he is.  Hell, the only reason I've heard of Taylor Swift is because Republicans like to whine about how much she makes them upset.  So, I have little context for this guy, and the only reason I may of heard of him is because I heard a bunch of people making fun of his TV show with Lily Rose-Depp a few years back.  Well, now we can all make fun of his movie, too.  Hurry Up Tomorrow is a production The Weeknd made in collaboration with his new album of the same name.  I haven't listened to the album because I don't care.  Moving on.

This movie sees Abel "The Weeknd" Tesfaye playing himself, who is cheating on his wife but upset because the world is against him and that means he can't sing for some reason.  Depression, I guess.  He meets Jenna Ortega, who he has an affair with and she traps him in the bedroom so he can't go on tour.  So, basically it's just Stephen King's Misery, except it thinks it's an expressionistic metaphor.  Expressionistic metaphors work a lot better if you aren't constantly talking about your themes in dialogue.  That about sums up Hurry Up Tomorrow, which is one of those movies that demands your attention so it can brag about how meaningful it is while its theme primarily seems to be The Weekend wanting to explain his music to the audience because he doesn't think enough people understand it.  I'm not joking, the climax literally is Jenna Ortega bouncing around a room to his music and telling him the details of his lyrics while he is strapped to a bed.  To be fair, if there is one actress who can sell a scene this stupid, it's Jenna Ortega, who plays her unhinged character with colorful intensity.  If she can do this well with such an awful script, it just reinforces that it's only a matter of time before Ortega is nominated for an Oscar.  She just needs to pick projects that are better than this.

Ortega is a slight bright spot, and the film is interesting visually, directed with flair by It Comes At Night's Trey Edward Shults.  Barry Keoghan is here, also.  The Weeknd surely knows how to surround himself with the best talent, but Hurry Up Tomorrow is a masterclass lesson in that no matter how good your talent is, if the script is rubbish, then the foundation of your film is faulty.  It results in a movie so insufferable that it achieves a unique burning sensation on those who watch it, so if you leave the theater with a rash, please consult a medical professional.

The Ruse

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Thriller, Mystery

Director:  Stevan Mena

Starring:  Veronica Cartwright, Madelyn Dundon, Ralph Ayala

This modern day "haunted house" mystery has the flavor of 1930's spook flicks that inspired it, right down to the Scooby-Doo explanation that concludes it.  It's old-fashioned to a fault, however, and doesn't work up the energy to sell itself.  Veronica Cartwright plays an elderly patient with dementia who needs around-the-clock care.  A new nurse is sent in to replace the previous one, who went missing, and she begins to notice bizarre occurrences happening around the house, which may be related to the fate of the previous nurse.  Ghost, maybe?  Well, the movie is called "The Ruse," so take a wild stab at guessing whether the event is supernatural or not.  To be honest, the movie is at its most fun when it's putting on the charade of being a ghost movie.  It's not great, but there are a few okay suspense moments.  When it gets to characters throwing random theories at the audience of what is actually going on, that's when it feels like it's cornered and screaming for help.  And the ending is going a hundred miles per hour, trying layer twists on top of each other to keep the audience guessing.  The one it finally lands on is probably the best possible explanation, but a gentle unraveling over the course of the movie would have been preferable to the info dump and conclusion-jumping the movie leaves us with.  It turns a movie that has its moments into a chore, and even the film's better aspects don't seem to matter anymore.

Things Like This

⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Romance

Director:  Max Talisman

Starring:  Max Talisman, Joey Pollari

This gay romcom features a pair of insecure men, both named Zack (funny?), who meet and fall in love in traditional romcom fashion, though their own anxieties get in the way of embracing their relationship.  The film is very strict to the romcom playbook of the mid-2000's, only instead of Sandra Bullock or Cameron Diaz, it's another dude.  Things Like This lacks desire to deliver anything beyond that.  A movie having almost no ambition isn't necessarily a problem.  It becomes a problem when the movie can't replace ambition with charisma.  It's not for a lack of trying, but Things Like This has no idea how to deliver the quirk it's shooting for.  The script is full of quippy dialogue, some approaching a light chuckle, but most seems to be a joke for the sake of a joke, randomly digressing from the scene to squeeze in a laugh when the movie starts to be flavoring too dramatic.  Some of it barely makes sense, like the film's opener where Max Talisman's Zack is breaking up with an attractive Black man because the other dude says men as sexy as him don't have sex with chubby little men.  The missing context for this relationship is bizarre, to say the least, because it doesn't account for why they're together in the first place if this is his attitude toward intimacy.  And I understand that the primary theme of the movie is how anxiety effects romantic relationships, but such a scene works best if it feels at the tail end of something organic and not just in a vacuum.  That kind of sums up the writing in the entire movie, where things feel introduced and unimportant.  The leads discover they were childhood sweethearts that were separated.  Does the movie lean into this?  Not really.  It's the movie's attempt at portraying "destiny," but is a very aside notion in the story.  The movie also makes a point to make sure the audience knows they're both named Zack.  Is this a run-on joke?  Nope.  It doesn't even seem to be played for laughs.  It's just some incidental thing.  The other Zack's dad is a homophobe.  What does this serve the story?  Nothing.  He's just here to be a homophobe.

I'm assuming Max Talisman wrote and directed this movie specifically to sell himself as a leading man after a career of bit roles.  He clearly thinks he wrote himself the funniest dialogue but the moment he tries to deliver it, it becomes clear why he has never been a leading man.  He delivers his lines with varying degrees of quality, often stiff and lifeless and without any emotive charm to maintain audience investment.  And even if he were a better actor, his character is written pretty obnoxiously, where he's clearly supposed to be a charismatic creative but comes off as childish and a little bit dim.  Honestly, most of the movie's faults fall on Talisman, because he's responsible for this performance, the writing, and even the flat direction that fails to emphasize punchlines properly.  The comedic chops just aren't synergizing.  Maybe with a better screenplay, this movie could have found its mojo.  Without one, it's a bit of an awkward wallflower.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Accountant² ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Clown in a Cornfield ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Fight or Flight ⭐️⭐️⭐️

A Minecraft Movie ⭐️⭐️

The Penguin Lessons ⭐️⭐️1/2

Pride & Predjudice ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Shadow Force ⭐️1/2

Sinners ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Snow White ⭐️⭐️

Thunderbolts ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Until Dawn ⭐️1/2

Warfare ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

A Minecraft Movie ⭐️⭐️

Snow White ⭐️⭐️

The Wedding Banquet ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

Better Man ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Black Bag ⭐️⭐️1/2

Captain America:  Brave New World ⭐️1/2

Mickey 17 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 19 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Clown in a Cornfield

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror, Comedy

Director:  Eli Craig

Starring:  Katie Douglas, Aaron Abrams, Carson MacCormac, Kevin Durand, Will Sasso

One of the stranger young adult novel series on the market finally gets a big screen adaptation, likely playing itself up to appeal straight to people who were raised on R.L. Stein but want just a tad more gore and risqué in their horror these days.  Or it will at least fill that void until Fear Street:  Prom Queen hits Netflix later this month.  Clown in a Cornfield follows a group of teenagers in a small Missouri town who make viral internet videos depicting their town mascot, Frendo the Clown, as a serial killer murdering unsuspecting citizens.  Their practical joke starts to turn on them when an actual serial killer dressed as Frendo starts stalking them in turn.  This either sounds stupid or generic, but that's because it is.  Clown in a Cornfield actually benefits from its simplistically silly premise because it knows exactly how to present it.  A movie called Clown in a Cornfield demands to not be taken seriously, and it's self-aware of this, knowing a movie with a story this goofy needs to have a goofy take on it.  This movie is really funny, almost surprisingly so.  This may not be that much of a shock to people familiar with the director, Eli Craig, who helmed Tucker & Dale vs. Evil, which I will admit to being one of those titles I've heard of but never saught out.  Clown in a Cornfield is good enough for me to correct that at some point, but in the meantime, I'd rather glow about how much fun I had during this movie, which brings traditional dead-of-night suspense/slasher and dive bombs it straight through a rambunctious teen comedy, where every one parties hard, lives life stupidly dangerous, and is slightly horny.  The film becomes reliant on two things:  how funny it is and how gruesome it is.  Clown in a Cornfield doesn't skimp on either, even crossing them over to make it even more delicious as its conflict ramps up.  The movie does lose some steam toward the end, where the clown loses its mask and we get to hear a villain monologue that is pretty much a load of "nobody cares."  That being said, that finale does bring about some generation gap and "kids these days" themes into the foreground, which the movie had been playing with off-and-on.  It even is the core of one of the funniest gags I've seen in a while, where a pair of teenage girls try to phone for help, but are unable to because they're boarderline gen Z/alpha and don't know how a rotary landline works, hearing the dial tone that smartphones don't have and shouting "I think the line is dead!"  I had an absolute blast with this movie, about as fun as I've had with the best of Evil Dead, Chucky, and Tremors, which are all my go-to horror/comedies of my personal admiration.  It's difficult for me to picture a horror fan who won't enjoy this movie.  The violence is chaoticly messy and its sense of humor is infectious.  The movie is horror movie hokum at its most gleefully entertaining.

Fight or Flight

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Action, Comedy

Director:  James Madigan

Starring:  Josh Hartnett, Katee Sackhoff, Charithra Chandron, Marko Zaror

Challenging Clown in a Cornfield for most tongue-in-cheek movie I saw this weekend is Fight or Flight, which sees disgraced American agent Josh Hartnett sent on a plane leaving Bangkok in search of a mysterious hacker, only for chaos to erupt when half of the passengers turn out to be bounty hunters.  The movie plays itself up for absurdity, as most of its violence is over-the-top and cartoonish, amping up a hyper-reality where everyone looks and behaves ridiculous.  The film's biggest drawback is that most of it is filmed in zoomed close-up, including the action, making it come off as choppy, likely to mask a low budget.  The movie's cheek does a lot of heavy lifting misdirection to make the movie seem ballistic.  A lot of its humor is pretty amusing, mostly centered on Hartnett, who plays the role of a man who is having a lousy day and doesn't want to be here, and will kill the people who are in his way mostly because he just doesn't want to deal with this bullshit right now.  It's fun, if flawed.  It might make a nice B-movie option in a double feature with Bullet Train, if nothing else.

Juliet & Romeo

⭐️

Genre:  Musical, Drama, Romance

Director:  Timothy Scott Bogart

Starring:  Clara Rugaard, Jamie Ward, Jason Isaacs, Dan Fogler, Rebel Wilson, Rupert Everett, Derek Jacobi

Juliet & Romeo is advertised as being based on the story that inspired Romeo & Juliet instead of a straight adaptation of the play itself...so, just ignore all the anachronisms and pop music embellishing this portrayal of Italy in the fourteenth century as we try to provide a reinterpretation the story of Romeo & Juliet while also trying to claim faithfulness to pre-Shakespeare text, yet evoking the Shakespeare play in its title because it seems afraid to distance itself too far from it.  It's hard not to be familiar with this story, mostly because it's the most iconic romance of all time, which sees two young members of fueding families who have fallen in love, defying their family allegiances.  Only now it's rewritten with modern lingo and set to the tune of a string of original power ballads that all sound exactly the same.  For the sake of artistic license and sex appeal...or something.  Maybe.  I'll be honest, I have no idea what this movie is trying to achieve.  All I know is that it's bad and I don't like it.

It's not often that a Shakespeare adaptation tosses Shakespeare's "Where for art thou, Romeo?" dialogue in the garbage can and makes up its own, which is usually reserved for reinventions like 10 Things I Hate About You or The Lion King.  Juliet & Romeo doesn't want to be seen as old-fashioned, so it opts for anachronism to appeal to tweens, while also pushing for classical color pop in an attempt to make it visually sumptuous in a traditional musical sense.  It gives the impression that it's fighting a notion that Shakespeare is something for old fuddy-duddies and aiming for youthful attention, albeit in a package that will be more dated in a few years than the Shakespeare play has gotten in centuries.  This isn't entirely without merit, because doing this exact thing to Romeo & Juliet is what gave birth to West Side Story (which is an archaic musical in of itself, but let's not get into that), but Juliet & Romeo is no West Side Story.  If anything, Juliet & Romeo shares DNA with a movie from a few years prior called Journey to Bethlehem, which was a similar pop musical adaptation of the Nativity.  I was softer of Journey to Bethlehem than I am Juliet & Romeo because, while it shared some of its more bizarre traits, I at least understood it.  Juliet & Romeo is a much more puzzling production, one that I'm spinning in circles trying to wrap my head around.  That, and the fact that faith cinema is mostly a landfill and throwing it a bone when something was moderately enjoyable wasn't going to hurt anyone.  Shakespeare adaptations are a far different landscape that is full of films that are worth checking out.  Romeo & Juliet has its own fair share, and Juliet & Romeo looks much worse standing next to them.  It's a dumpster-fire of a movie, one that was likely made with its heart on its sleeve and the purest of intentions but unable to offset the lack of a cohesive vision other than "Shakespeare, but singing."

The thing is that there is a part of me that wants to claim the movie is harmless, despite how much of a misfire it is.  This all changes by the time I get to the ending, which completely botches the assignment and does something so profoundly stupid that it could go down in history as one of the worst endings in cinema history.  An ending so terrible that it recontextualizes just how bad the movie is while you're experiencing it.  I'm going to throw spoiler caution to the wind when discussing this movie, mostly because nobody in their right mind would want to watch it, or, if they do want to see it, they likely aren't reading reviews for it and are likely assuming a Romeo & Juliet story ends the way Romeo & Juliet always ends.  Juliet & Romeo gets to the tragedy that defines the story, then shallowly reverses it, deflating the entire story in the process as the doomed lovers are given an antidote at the last moment, gasp back to life, and run off into the distance holding hands and is instantly followed by the text "To be continued...in Juliet & Romeo:  Book II."

::presses pillow into face to muffle my screaming into the void::

So, let's pretend this doesn't entirely miss the point of why Romeo & Juliet is a timeless story that has been passed down through generations, one of a love that has been smothered into lifelessness by the world around them and a conflict they want no part of.  Let's say that they did fake their deaths and ran off together.  The only reason to do this would be to give them a happily ever after away from the fued that almost killed them.  To then say "Stay tuned for The Further Adventures of Romeo & Juliet" even deflates that purpose.  From what little information I can find, the intent is supposed to be that this movie is supposed to be the first in a trilogy about the conflicts in Verona, Italy in the early 1300's, which is where the story of Romeo & Juliet stems from.  What I'm trying to figure out is why it is so important to keep the duo the main focus of the story, and why it needs to be done in such a frilly, feel-good production.  Nothing about this approach makes sense.  That's not even taking into account whether such productions ever take place, because the assumption that your audience is on-board for a hypothetical Romeo & Juliet Part II:  Romeo Returns and Part III:  Juliet's Revenge is a hugely presumptive idea, one that can only be done out of cockiness or if you already have those particular film shoots in the can.  Whether or not they already filmed these movies is something I cannot find any information on, which leads me to believe that they only have this one at the moment.  But these are indie films, so it could really go in any direction.  If they aren't set in stone, it could be one of those small potatoes franchises that is forced to change the cast with each movie because they have to let go of their bigger names in the quest for penny-pinching, and there are a few here.  Jason Isaacs, Rebel Wilson, Derek Jacobi, Rupert Everett, and even Dan Fogler, who isn't a huge name by himself, but select cinephiles do recognize him and go "Oh hey, it's that guy!"  I wouldn't even get attached to the unknowns in the title roles, because actors seek stability and prospects like these are unstable.

Juliet & Romeo is probably a contender for the worst movie of the year, could very well be one of the worst of the decade, and it's one I don't recommend actively seeking out.  In spite of that, it's really something that needs to be seen to be believed, and those with morbid curiosity might just feel a burning desire to need to have proof that someone actually made this movie.  I had seen the trailer for this movie a few weeks ago at a fucking movie about talking shoes, and was frozen in my seat with my head cocked to the side in an expression of "But why, though?"  I think I went to this screening looking for an answer, but I'm even more confused than before.

Shadow Force

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Action

Director:  Joe Carnahan

Starring:  Kerry Washington, Omar Sy, Mark Strong, Da'Vine Joy Randolph, Method Man

Yet another piece of violence this weekend sees notable action director Joe Carnahan releasing a movie into theaters with little-to-no fanfare.  You could almost say this Shadow Force movie was shadow dropped.  Shadow Force sees Kerry Washington and Omar Sy play estranged lovers from a secret military unit that disappeared and went into hiding, with Sy having taken their child.  When he accidentally blows his cover, the couple reunite to protect their dysfunctional family from the rest of their crew.  Shadow Force is a weird movie because it feels like it should be a Mr. & Mrs. Smith/True Lies style spy comedy, but it never quite settles in on the tone that's at the tip of its tongue.  Humor is in the movie, mostly delivered by Da'Vine Joy Randolph and child actor Jahleel Kamara, but they're the only ones playing with the vibe that this movie probably should have.  By comparison, Washington, Sy, and lead bad guy Mark Strong are all very stoic in this movie, and they commit to that end of the spectrum that is the exact opposite of what Randolph and Kamara are doing.  The dedication is admirable, even if it's ripping the movie in two.  One can't say that the cast and crew didn't put in the work to try and make Shadow Force cohesive, as action is serviceable and Washington and Sy try to give it heart.  The problem is that on a conceptual level the movie is fluff supplementing adrenaline.  The movie is never dramatically engaging nor exciting, though occasionally it is a little funny.  It's unfortunate that they didn't lean into the one thing it had going for it.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Accountant² ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Amateur ⭐️⭐️1/2

A Minecraft Movie ⭐️⭐️

Pride & Predjudice ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sinners ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Snow White ⭐️⭐️

The Surfer ⭐️⭐️1/2

Thunderbolts ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Until Dawn ⭐️1/2

Warfare ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

The Luckiest Man in America ⭐️⭐️1/2

Warfare ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

The Seed of a Sacred Fig ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 18 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Bonjour Tristesse

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Durga Chew-Bose

Starring:  Lily McInerny, Chloë Sevigny, Clays Bang, Aliocha Schneider, Naïlia Harzoune

There was actually a surprising amount of movies filling up the spare theaters this weekend, but very few of which I've actually heard of.  Usually even the little movies are ducking out of the way of Marvel anda surprise hit like Sinners, so let's find out what these movies are.  The first is an indie adaptation of the novel of the same name, a story of an eighteen-year-old spending the summer in the south of France, lamenting that her time there, and her youth, is almost at an end.  Meanwhile, she also struggles with the evolving nature of her father's love life, which she tries to manipulate back into what she wants it to be.  Bonjour Tristesse is a coming-of-age story that tackles that timely issue of fear of change, though it's inconsistent in how it goes about it.  Director Durga Chew-Bose spends a lot of time lingering on quiet shots, as if she's trying to tell a story without words, then blankets them with awkward ADR of conversations explaining the story out loud, stepping on the visual storytelling's feet.  Then she'll spend other lengthy periods just shooting the characters doing mundane things, like buttering toast or reading a newspaper, over-embelishing what should be establishing shots.  I'm pretty sure I understand the movie's lived-in-the-moment ambitions, but it also succumbs to a lack of efficiency.  And despite the film's meandering nature, some plot points still feel underdeveloped and unearned, which is quite an impressive feat in a bizarre way.  There are times where the film seemingly skips the emotional change of a character, sometimes outbursting with a sudden dynamic shift out of nowhere.  I rather like the story it's trying to tell, enough to say that it's probably worth seeking out in spite of its worst tendencies.  The movie is more frustrating than it is satisfying, though.

Raising the Bar:  The Alma Richards Story

⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Sports

Director:  T.C. Christensen

Starring:  Paul Wuthrich

Earnest, if dimwitted, biopic tells the story of Alma Richards, a farm boy from Utah who went on to win the gold medal in High Jump at the 1912 Olympics.  If only the movie that honored him had Olympic ambitions, but instead shoots for that "participant" trophy.  You get a rough idea of just how good this movie is going to be early on when it portrays Richards as a little boy and depicts him getting into a corral with a cow (that doesn't even have horns) as an act of bravery and ambition, trying to grab his sister's wicker basket.  He then proceeds to antagonize the cow until it chases him like he's a matador, even though if he really did live on a farm like the movie depicts, he would know that cows generally ignore people when they're in the same space, if not outright running from them.  He could have just hopped in and grabbed it without making an ass out of himself.  But the movie wants to be wholesome and life-affirming, not necessarily realistic, even though that seems a disservice to someone who lived in reality.  There's a certain flavor to this movie, like it's stylized itself after the type of sporty filmmaking you'd see in the 1930's, not far removed from when the film takes place.  Some of those films have aged better than others, but filmmaking styles evolve for a reason.  If the only ambition of a film is to be cheese-ball, I'd appreciate it more if it at least had a personality.  It would also benefit from having a main character who wasn't stagnant, only doing things to move the plot because someone tells him to and, in a good-ol'-boy fashion, just says "okie dokie."  Richards is basically the same character at the end of this movie that he is when it begins, learning very little except that he's good at jumping.  He has zero flaws except the people around him, who often resent his existence for no reason.  I suppose the movie is trying to portray him as the element that changes the environment around him and inspires people, but everyone in the movie is so stubborn that character change fails to happen until someone flips a switch and they suddenly decide to be better people because the script says so.

All of this is without mentioning the goofy little details of this movie that keep piling up and making the entire experience just plain weird.  Every time Richards is about to do a big jump, he's accompanied by a music cue that seems stolen from that episode of The Simpsons where Homer is playing baseball and he has a "magic bat" called "Wonderbat."  There is also a lady secretary late in the film and it is implied that she might be a love interest, but she has almost no dialogue and has no conversation with Richards himself other than exchanging dove eyes and being unable to just stop staring at each other.  The actual Olympics sequence is off-putting once you realize the background is full of a bunch of stationary blurry bodies that are obviously inserted by a computer.  Nobody moves in the slightest, until people start cheering, while most of them start clapping without actually looking in the direction of what's going on.  I'm not even sure this movie had the budget for digital mock-ups like this, which leads me to believe that these were either cheap stock CGI figures or there's a very real chance that this movie was completed with A.I.  If it's the latter, that undercuts what should be a story of human achievement and makes the entire movie even worse.  And it was already terrible to begin with.

Rosario

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Felipe Vargas

Starring:  Emeraude Toubia, David Dastmalchian, José Zúñiga, Paul Ben-Victor

The titular Rosario is a successful investment banker whose estranged grandmother has passed away.  She spends the night with the body waiting for the ambulance to take it away, only for supernatural occurrences to happen in the apartment, seemingly revolving around her grandmother's corpse.  It's a little bit Autopsy of Jane Doe but with a Latin America flavor.  The film seems to be a horror movie made by the Latinx community specifically for the Latinx community, though whether or not it will be warmly received there is something I cannot attest to.  As a horror movie, it's not without its effective moments, though the scares tend to be cheap shock edits and just an all-around ick factor.  The movie ramps up some worthwhile creep-value in its third act, but it even loses a little bit of slack for piling on one climax too many.  The movie does make up some ground with some interesting themes, such as familial bonds, the lives of the generations before you, and the sacrifices one makes for their children.  The movie is not bad, and with some fine-tuning, it probably could be something special.  It's a flat experience in its current state, though.

The Surfer

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Thriller

Director:  Lorcan Finnegan

Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Julian McMahon, Nic Cassim, Miranda Tapsell, Alexander Bertrand, Justin Rosniak

Nicolas Cage just wants to go surfing.  Why won't you let him go surfing?  Pushed off the beach by elitist locals, Cage descends into madness while everything in his life crumbles around him as he stares longingly at the ocean.  The film is a very particular type of psychological thriller, likely designed to play better with some audiences better than others.  Those who just want Cage to get unhinged and seek vengeance on his tormentors are looking at the wrong movie.  Cage gets unhinged, sure enough.  Quite a bit.  The entire focus of the film is just how unhinged he is.  It has little gaze for anything else.  The film plays with interesting themes, such as masculine identity and the fragility of modern convenience, and it's all done in the style of a 70's grindhouse indie thriller.  All of those aspects work in its favor, it just never really gives us a reason for why Cage is here.  I get that he wants to go surfing, I get the unfair circumstances that he doesn't want to cave into, but several of his more extreme problems would be solved if he just went home, at least for a couple of hours, even to just charge his goddamn phone.  But the film wants to get into the psychology of those who feel helpless at the unfair circumstances surrounding them.  To that end, it's a success.  It doesn't really aim all that high in doing so, but it's a minor victory.

Thunderbolts

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Action, Superhero

Director:  Jake Schreier

Starring:  Florence Pugh, Sebastian Stan, Wyatt Russell, David Harbour, Hannah John-Kamen, Lewis Pullman, Olga Kurelenko, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Geraldine Viswanathan

I know that it's becoming more in-trend to hate on the MCU, though I'm not sure how much of it is because the MCU has been less consistent as of late (which is true) and how much of it is because they now have poorly recieved movies under their belt and now there is blood in the water, which the social media feeding frenzy shows signs of engagement sharks looking for easy click farming.  But it is fair to note that Marvel isn't the brand that it was pre-pandemic.  You can point to Deadpool & Wolverine as a sign that it never really left, but that film was the exception to the rule, as it was more of a nostalgia power play to Deadpool lovers, Hugh Jackman fans, and people with fond memories of Fox's X-Men franchise than an actual MCU movie.  And, to be quite frank, Captain America:  Brave New World was just disheartening to watch and easily voided whatever accomplishment Deadpool & Wolverine had.  Conclusion:  The MCU does need a jolt to the cajones.  Is Thunderbolts it?  Marvel's issues right now are deeper than "Just make a good movie."  If anything, they need to lure wandering eyeballs back.  Just being a good movie might be too humble an accomplishment to do that, but it's a start.  And Thunderbolts is a really good movie.  Hopefully a few eyes will see that it's worth a look.

The comic Thunderbolts were a team of villians and anti-heros, which the film stays true to by casting a bunch of morally shady characters, some of which were antagonistic in previous appearances, but are mostly just down-on-their-luck losers.  Thunderbolts uses this to its thematic advantage to tell a tale of broken people who struggle to find a reason to get out of bed every day.  The team is brought together by a government official who thinks of them as expendable, and they journey from being thrown in the garbage to proving to themselves that maybe there is something worthy inside of them to keep fighting for.  An internal battle, not a physical battle.  That physical battle also happens.  The heroes include Yelana Belova (see:  Black Widow, Hawkeye), adopted sister of Natasha Romanoff and fellow Black Widow; Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian (see:  Black Widow), the Russian attempt to create their own Captain America; John Walker/U.S. Agent (see:  The Falcon and the Winter Soldier), America's own failed attempt to replace Captain America; and Ava Starr/Ghost (see:  Ant-Man and the Wasp), a lady who can phase her body through solid objects.  Also, MCU mainstay Bucky is here, because we all love Bucky.  They form a unit in the loosest sense of the word, because they all are bitter people stuck with other people who are just as bitter as they are, creating a humorous personality clash.  It becomes more evident that the story of the movie relies on the age-old idea of "misery loves company," as they become unexpectedly reliant on each other by film's end.  Who else is going to have your back if it's not someone who understands what you're going through?

The climax of the movie compounds its themes, and we are thrust in a situation that the main characters can't punch in the face, no matter how much they want to.  The movie takes a cerebral turn, as the characters battle a state-of-mind rather than a physical entity, and it's something that feeds on aggression and grows weaker with outside support.  It's a spectacle in its own way, and those who need top-to-bottom fisticuffs in their action adventures might be disappointed in it.  The right people will understand it.  The right people will identify with it.  A Marvel movie has been made where the solution isn't kicking really hard or blowing something up.  A Marvel movie has been made with a thematic climax of therapeutic embrace and support, promising that one might be the sum of their worst mistakes, but a real hero lives with them and moves forward.  Without spoiling anything, I love the fate of the film's antagonist, because it's such a hopeful outcome for such a dark storyline.

Gripes can only be minor.  The movie's break neck pace is a bit of a disservice to some elements, and the quips sometimes fly at awkward times and fail to land.  Also, one character in particular is done so dirty in this movie, and I am kinda peeved about it.  It doesn't off-set what is a mostly spectacular experience, which is destined to be in a rotation of superhero comfort watches.  It's the most entertaining MCU film since Multiverse of Madness, the most thematically resonate one since Wakanda Forever, and probably my favorite one since Infinity War.  It's presumptuous to say "Marvel is BACK!," but I'm always pleased to know that they can still create a good time.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Accountant² ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Amateur ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Legend of Ochi ⭐️⭐️

A Minecraft Movie ⭐️⭐️

Pride & Predjudice ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sinners ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Until Dawn ⭐️1/2

Warfare ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Day of Reckoning ⭐️⭐️1/2

Death of a Unicorn ⭐️⭐️1/2

Drop ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Anora ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Last Breath ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Paddington in Peru ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Star Trek:  Section 31 ⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!