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!

Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 47 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Rental Family

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Comedy

Director:  Hikari

Starring:  Brendan Fraser, Takehiro Hira, Mari Yamamoto, Shannon Mahina Gorman, Akira Emoto, Shino Shinozaki

Brendan Fraser takes his first major starring role since winning an Oscar in a soft schmaltzy dramedy where he plays a down-on-his-luck actor living in Japan who takes a job with a unique business where clients hire actors to perform certain roles in their personal lives.  Fraser is hired to pretend he's the long lost father of a little girl, only to wind up closely bonding with her.  I'm not entirely sure I understand the business at the center of this movie.  I understand the concept, because it's basically RPG prostitution, but it seems very niche, and the film both portrays it as being publicly successful and also underground simultaneously.  But it's an interesting idea that is therapeutic in theory.  Though, I also can't help but feel a lot of these problems are solved by therapy dogs (because PUPPY).  Taking the premise at face value, the movie is cute while also a bit potentially therapeutic in helping viewers identify potential voids in their own lives.  Fraser is constantly one of the most written-off actors of his generation but there's a huggable lug genuineness to him that I've always found charming.  That aspect of his profile is helpful here because Fraser is very tender and heartfelt in his role.  He plays a character who is dismayed at his lack of success but finds spending time with his make-believe family might actually fulfill something he didn't even know was missing.  Sometimes the movie gets so lost in the function of the business he's working for that it strays from that, but it's a worthwhile film for sentimentalists with a strong glow to it.

Sisu:  Road to Revenge

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Action

Director:  Jalmari Helander

Starring:  Jorma Tommila, Stephen Lang, Richard Brake

Sisu dun killed all the Nazis.  There are no Nazis left to kill.  He's gotta kill all the Commies now.  This sequel to the instant action classic sees the mute gold miner, who I assume is named Paul Marion Sisu and I'm not even going to look that up because that's how certain I'm right I am, returning to his Finland home post-World War II.  Unfortunately, Finland suceeded the land it was settled on to the Soviet Union, and Paul Marion Sisu pulls down his house board for board and moves it back to Finnish territory to rebuild it.  The Russians however hatch a plan to kill the "legend" who turned a host of Germans into splatter and unleash a man connected to Paul Marion Sisu's past to kill him before he leaves the country.  If you loved Sisu, Road to Revenge is even more Sisu.  Maybe a little bigger and wackier.  There are huge setpieces in this movie, and one might as well call it Sisu:  Fury Road as it's one big long road chase movie with epic death and destruction.  A lot of the stunts and action look pretty great for such a low budget movie, making the film an easy recommend for action enthusiasts.  The one thing I feel holds it back is that the movie probably goes a little heavy on its comedy.  I recall the first Sisu being fairly grim and angry, and the second one seems a little lighter in its mood, which is not entirely unwelcome.  The film can take it to a far-fetched level, turning action sequences into slapstick comedy.  There is a sequence where our protagonist sneaks through a group of sleeping Russians that is basically just Buster Keaton with gore and beheading.  But the movie is a rollicking good time, and the franchise is certainly begging for a third installment.  We made it this far, might as well ride it out.

Wicked:  For Good

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Fantasy, Musical

Director:  Jon M. Chu

Starring:  Ariana Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Michelle Yeoh, Jeff Goldblum, Jonathan Bailey, Ethan Slater, Bowen Yang

Wicked is back, I guess.  This time adapting the second act of the Broadway musical, but most of the interesting shit is over and all of this could have been an email.  This one sees Glinda stepping into the role of the Good Witch while the Wizard begins a campaign to mark Elphaba as "the Wicked Witch of the West," an existential threat to the people of Oz.  Meanwhile, a random house from Kansas falls on Elphaba's sister and you know what happens there because we all saw that movie.

To be frank, this movie is not anywhere near as fun as the first.  Most of that has to do with how little story it has left to tell and how unnecessary that story seems.  If you cut the fat from both of these films, Wicked could have been a solid three-hour movie.  Instead, they turned the meat of the musical into a good movie and made mediocrity out of whatever was left in hopes for that lucrative rabid fan cash.  What's sad is that probably worked out for them.  As a movie, Wicked Part Duex:  The Final Reckoning pads like a motherfucker, offering offering up redundancies and Easter eggs to more widely known Wizard of Oz canon.  The first half of the film feels like its repeating beats we established in the previous film.  Elphaba re-establishes herself as the odd outsider and Glinda is a peppy girl who is sad inside.  Then the movie pushes itself as the side quest happening around Dorothy and Toto and it just flunks.  Finally incorporating the classic Wizard of Oz tale into the movie is jarring, with the movie stumbling to latch its take of the characters onto the traditional story.  The implication that both of these stories are happening simultaneously feels nonsensical.  Offering up origins for the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion is interesting, but they're all rushed and a little dumb.  I'm still trying to figure out the Scarecrow storyline because its so underexplained and unnecessary.  Then there is the scene where Dorothy's house crushes Elphaba's sister, sending Dorothy on her journey down the Yellow Brick Road.  The entire sequence is just weird, as the movie seems to want to give Elphaba an emotional scene to mourn her sister, but it undercutting it a comical bitchslap fight with Glinda.  I'm not sure I know what the movie wants me to take away from this.

Looking at the positives, strengths of the production do carry over from one film to the next.  Production and costume design are still aces (though if this film wins both of these categories at the Oscars two years in a row when it's competing against Frankenstein, I'm going to riot).  Acting in all roles remains committed and quirky.  There is some juicy material here that saves the film from being a disaster, even if it just flings it into being joyously uneven.  What's interesting about this portion of the story is that Jeff Goldblum's role as the Wizard feels like it's hitting current political relevance, as the Wizard is a ham selling lies and knows people don't care that they're lies, while demonizing an "other" for the sake of misdirection from his own bullshit.  I'm still not convinced the Wicked Witch of the West is a good avatar for that.  She's one of the most generic villains you can have, so projecting onto her is easy, but she's also iconic as a cackling bitch and characterizing her as anything else feels forced.  Wicked humanizing her as an noble misunderstood outsider who has been masked with that iconography never fully worked for me.  That's probably what gets under my skin the most, because one could look at the first film as quirky fan fiction, while the second is "This is the real canon that they don't want you to know about."  It doesn't work, but they had fun trying.  Wicked fans will love it because it's more Wicked.  Maybe that's enough.

Art Attack

Sentimental Value

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Joachim Trier

Starring:  Renate Reinsve,  Stellan Skarsgård, Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas, Elle Fanning

Art Attack is back, Jack!  This section has been on hiatus for a while for a couple of reasons.  First of all, my multiplex has been mostly gauntlets this year, which has been hogging my attention away from the indie cinema.  I attribute this to blockbusters failing to bust blocks, lately.  Incidentally, a lot of movies from my arthouse theater wound up at the multiplex to fill screens for a week anyway, which is probably for that afore mentioned reason, so I wasn't missing more than a handful of movies.  The weeks where new releases have been lighter showed the little theater wasn't showing anything of interest that I hadn't already seen (and a few screenings of classics to fill showtimes), so there just wasn't anything to write about.  But now we have Sentimental Value.  This was a movie I felt I needed to jump over there to see because of the strong word-of-mouth on it.

Renate Reinsve reunites with her Worst Person in the World director Joachim Trier for a new drama taking critics by storm, where she plays...another woman who is kind of a fuck up with emotional issues.  Boy, I'm sure glad she's showing her range.  Her father is played by Stellan Skarsgård, a film director who comes home hoping to film a movie based on his mother with her in the starring role.  Based on their bitter past, she refuses, forcing him to turn to Hollywood starlet Elle Fanning to fill the void.  If I'm to be honest, Fanning is slightly miscast here.  She's basically playing a Margot Robbie type "It Girl," and, as talented as Fanning is, that feels like it's a step beyond her profile.  Fanning is fine here, but she feels a little too meek to be the focus of so much attention.  The film's theme primarily seems concentrated on the idea of life influencing art, both intentionally and accidentally.  Skarsgård is a bit of an self-indulgent artist who lets his personal relationships suffer at the hands of his filmmaking, Reinsve is a stage actress who uses her personal pain to power her performance.  It's pretty good stuff, and it has a few digs at Netflix that won me over, because Netflix can rot.  I wish I loved it more, but I appreciate it for what it did achieve.

Netflix & Chill

Deathstalker

⭐️⭐️⭐️

🏆"Hurts So Good" Must-See Bad Movie Award🏆

Streaming On:  Video on demand

Genre:  Action, Adventure, Fantasy

Director:  Steven Kostanski

Starring:  Daniel Bernhardt, Laurie Field, Patton Oswalt, Christina Orjalo, Paul Lazenby, Nina Bergman

It's not often that properties featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000 have a life after being featured on the show.  Godzilla and Gamera are the big exceptions, but that's because the former is a global icon and while the latter is less so, its films are from a country that has more reverence to Gamera than MST3K, while US reverence for both Gamera and MST3K probably run about even (and overlap more than don't).  Diabolik is another example, though that's a popular Italian comic book character and a reboot in a field of comic book movies dominating filmmaking was inevitable.  Even rarer is a sequel to a film featured on the show that gained a degree of popularity because it was on it.  Hobgoblins 2 only exists because MST3K showed Hobgoblins.  Demon Squad 2 is filmed with release pending, which is owed to being supported by MST3K fans through Kickstarter.  And, more relevantly, we have Deathstalker.  I don't think we can claim Deathstalker was rebooted because of MST3K, but Shout Studios currently owns the rights to both the Deathstalker franchise and MST3K, as well as the title role of the reboot being played by the star of one of MST3K's most popular movies with an onscreen MST3K actor in a supporting voice-over role, so it's hard to separate the Deathstalker reboot and the show.

Of course, Deathstalker is a reboot of, ya know, Deathstalker, the Roger Corman produced answer to Conan the Barbarian.  The latest film has Future War star Daniel Bernhardt take the mantle of the titular antihero, a wandering asshole who happens to be a badass warrior and accidentally gets caught up in heroics when all he wants to do is get paid and get laid.  Deathstalker winds up with a magical amulet, which has chosen Deathstalker to be the one who destroys an evil necromancer.  This is mostly an excuse for Deathstalker to wisecrack and kick ass.  The movie doesn't bother to "improve" Deathstalker.  It knows exactly what Deathstalker is and crafts a modern day love letter to the trashy subgenre that spawned Deathstalker.  The only step-up it has is more confident stunt choreography and imaginative, if intentionally camp, effects design.  The only thing in Deathstalker legacy that it doesn't indulge in is the exploitation of nudity and sexuality, but Deathstalker was a rapist in his original incarnation, so maybe it's for the best he has been toned down here.  Bernhardt's the oldest actor to tackle the role, but he's also the most charismatic.  His Deathstalker is kind of a delight and his smugness isn't off-putting, which is common for Deathstalker.  His little sidekicks are a treat as well, with Laurie Field playing the tiny wizard with Jeepers Creepers face Doodad, Patton Oswalt overdubbing Doodad's voice, and Christina Orjalo as the bratty theif Brisbayne.  The trio is a hoot.

If I were to describe this Deathstalker movie in comparison to the others, I'd say it's not a trend-chasing cashgrab and is made with wit and heart.  Imagine a movie with the limited resources of the direct-to-video Scorpion King sequels, but made by people putting in overtime to legitimately make it fun.  This and the new Toxic Avenger movie were the camp reboots I didn't know I needed.  I never thought I'd say this but I hope there's more Deathstalker movies in our future.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Black Phone 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Die My Love ⭐️⭐️

Keeper ⭐️⭐️

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

Nuremberg ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Predator:  Badlands ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Regretting You ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Running Man ⭐️⭐️1/2

Tron:  Ares ⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Anniversary ⭐️⭐️

Bone Lake ⭐️⭐️1/2

Roofman ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Shelby Oaks ⭐️1/2

Stitch Head ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

House on Eden ⭐️1/2

Splitsville ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 46 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

The Carpenter's Son

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Lotfy Nathan

Starring:  Nicolas Cage, Noah Jupe, FKA Twigs, Souheila Yacoub, Isla Johnston

Say what you will about this edgelord flick that tries to do a psychological horror take on the story of Jesus Christ, but it's interesting.  And it sure as hell isn't boring.  Nicolas Cage plays "The Carpenter," and unnamed protagonist based on Joseph, who protects "The Mother" and "The Son," AKA Mary and Jesus, from those who might harm them once learning that his "son" is actually the son of God.  Meanwhile, "The Son" resists temptation from "The Stranger," a sadistic little girl who represents you-know-who.  She spends most of the movie making "The Son" uncomfortable with her serpent's tongue.  No, that's not a metaphor, she has a literal "serpent's tongue," a snake that crawls our of her mouth.  She can do that.  As sacrilegious as the film might seem at first, I actually don't sense anything malicious about this movie toward religion in general.  It may very well be a movie made by an atheist wanting to shock with their heresy, but it actually comes off as having a more genuine heart than that.  It feels like it was made in the imagination that Jesus was a scared little boy surrounded by enemies, and it's a movie portraying his fear by inducing dread and utilizing gore.  Most movies depicting Jesus are much softer, wanting the be beautiful even if the period of time that Jesus lived in likely wasn't (The Passion of the Christ notwithstanding).  I kind of respect this movie for portraying a harsh surrounding that's usually sanitized.  This movie also could have been done better.  At it's heart, this movie is about a boy with overprotective parents keeping secrets from him who discovers he has superpowers.  This might as well be the pilot to Smallville.  But The Carpenter's Son will likely have cult appeal based on its unconventional approach to its subject matter.  Maybe some of that cult following might be in the Christian community.  The movie might surprise you.  I just hope you're comfortable with newborn babies burning to death in a blazing fire.  That happens in the first five minutes.  In close-up.  Buyer beware.

Keeper

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Osgood Perkins

Starring:  Tatiana Maslany, Rossif Sutherland

Most film directors bring about their latest project in about two to three years.  Osgood Perkins has pushed that to about six months, proving that, no matter who your favorite director is, they're a lazy son-of-a-bitch.  Perkins' second film this year, after The Monkey, was actually born from the writer and actor's strikes from 2023 while The Monkey was stalled from production.  Perkins worked some loopholes with Canadian writers and actors who were not part of the American unions and went to production on this movie.  I wish I could say it didn't look like a rush job but it kinda does.  Keeper is a horror movie that stars Tatiana Maslany, who agrees to a weekend at her boyfriend's cabin, where spooky stuff begins to happen.  It's a rather basic creepshow premise that isn't going to win much awards in originality.  In fact, the whole idea feels underdeveloped.  Perkins' distinct and exciting direction and Maslany's committed performance are both at war with a boring script, one that lacks thematic material, characterization, and just content in general.  The movie can be exceptionally creepy when it wants to be, but it suffers from slowdown and a dull performance by co-lead Rossif Sutherland doesn't help keep the film interesting.  Perkins is still one of the most distinct voices in genre work today, and even if Keeper ain't a keeper, he's still on full display and firing on all cylinders.  That's proof enough that he hasn't lost his mojo.  He just needs to find another Longlegs to put his best foot forth.

King Ivory

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  John Swab

Starring:  James Badge Dale, Ben Foster, Michael Mando, Graham Greene, Melissa Leo

Police officers hunt drug dealers and yadda yadda yadda...look, this movie sucks and I don't want to talk about it.  Chances are you've seen a dozen street movies of law vs. kingpins and drugs in the past.  This one does everything those movies do except does it slowly and dully.  Waiting for King Ivory to do something interesting is like waiting for grass to brown and die during the summer.  I got so bored during this movie that I started listening to the foley work.  It really started to weird me out, from drowning men making gurgling noises above the surface of the water to kissing noises that sound like someone aggressively tongue wrestling with a Tootsie Pop.  It's a hard-edged production done with grime and grit, but its screenplay can only interest in minor patches and doesn't seem to have the balls to really hit hard.  The movie has so little confidence in itself that it feels the need to subtitle Ben Foster, who is playing a character with a removed larynx.  His dialogue can be rough but it's really not that hard to make out, and it comes off as if the filmmakers are assuming their audience is full of idiots.

One positive note is that this is one of the last performances of the late Graham Greene, who passed away earlier this year.  MSTies will remember him best from Atlantic Rim and RiffTrax fans from the Twilight saga, but we won't hold either of those against him.  He really was a good actor.  Unfortunately, King Ivory isn't a great requiem for him.  Making a boring movie isn't a crime, but movies like King Ivory argue that maybe it should be.

Muzzle:  City of Wolves

⭐️

🏆"Hurts So Good" Must-See Bad Movie Award🏆

Genre:  Action, Thriller

Director:  John Stalberg Jr.

Starring:  Aaron Eckhart, Tanya van Graan, Karl Thaning, Nicole Fortuin, Adrian Collins, Hakeem Kae-Kazim

Muzzle:  City of Wolves is a sequel to a movie that I've never heard of.  If it's anywhere near as funny as this one, I'm going to have to check it out.  This movie has a full-blown police funeral for a dog, complete with Aaron Eckhart giving grief-stricken seething vengeance eyes.  If that doesn't perfectly sum up exactly what kind of movie this is, I don't know what does.

Eckhart plays a gruff hard-boiled cop who has a group of trained dogs by his side.  When an underground kingpin threatens to kill his family unless he willingly commits suicide, he goes on the run to shoot the bad guys and protect his wife and baby.  That premise might seem mundane but the way it's executed makes the movie a riot.  This movie has so many clichés that it might as well be a dark 'n' gritty reboot of Jack Slater from Last Action Hero.  The movie piles on so much outdated turns that weren't even good when they were popular that it feels like it should be a parody, but it's so fucking serious that it clearly sees itself as edgy.  This movie is utter crap.  It's really funny crap, based primarily on how misguidedly sincere it is, but it's still crap.  I wholeheartedly recommend this movie based on that, because its sincerity needs to be seen to be believed.

Now You See Me:  Now You Don't

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Adventure

Director:  Ruben Fleischer

Starring:  Jessie Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Isla Fisher, Justice Smith, Dominic Sessa, Ariana Greenblatt, Rosamund Pike, Morgan Freeman

I saw the first Now You See Me when it came out.  Didn't really like it.  I'm not even sure I understood what it was about, but the one thing that nagged at me that I never forgot was that the movie was focused on magicians and had an opportunity to pull off a lot of fun in-camera visual tricks and instead it was a bunch of CGI bullshit, answering the eternal question of "How'd they do that?!?!" with "They didn't."  I don't think I've ever seen a movie completely lose focus on its own appeal like that.  Anyway, I didn't watch the second one because I assumed it would be more of the same.  Now I'm here watching the third because I have nothing better to do.

This threequel sees a young group of magicians who are inspired by the legendary "Four Horsemen" to do small-scale "steal from the rich, give to the poor" jobs.  The actual Four Horsemen show up on their door, selecting them to help out with a bigger heist of a giant diamond.  It's all an excuse to showboat and do a lot of monologues about how in control of the situation everyone is.  I will admit I had more fun with this one that the last time I visited this franchise, though I share some of the same annoyances.  A convoluted plot, an over-reliance on computer graphics, a lot of running around without a visible goal, and a twist ending that mistskes "Huh?" for mind-blowing.  It's a collection of problems the Now You See Me franchise has had since movie one.  It's just in the most zippy and enjoyable package they've ever presented.  What I enjoyed about this movie is that, while it's aimless, it is very spirited.  The young blood characters have so much spunk that they bring zest to the proceedings.  That being said, there are probably too many characters in the movie.  There is a little bit of wiseness to how the film works with this because it's assuming the audience is already familiar with the Horsemen and selects to give the young stars more development time.  Ariana Greenblatt is the showstealer of the trio with a couple of parkour sequences that highlight the movie.  Meanwhile, the Horsemen are here more for bravado, talking about how great they are and chumming about because it has been a while, letting the audience know what they've been up to since they've last robbed someone.  There are a few surprises in store, some are genuinely good and others feel like post-production tinkering, but if you're a fan of Now You See Me, then I imagine this trilogy capper is mostly what you hope it would be.

The Running Man

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Action, Adventure, Science Fiction

Director:  Edgar Wright

Starring:  Glen Powell, Josh Brolin, Colman Domingo. William H. Macy, Michael Cera, Lee Pace, Emilia Jones, Daniel Ezra, Jayme Lawson, Katy O'Brian, Sean Hayes

I have a polarized history with The Running Man.  I saw the 1987 Schwarzenegger movie when I was a tween and it established itself as the greatest movie my innocent eyes had ever gazed upon.  I then read the Stephen King (AKA Richard Bachman) book in high school and...didn't like it.  For the last few decades I attributed that to my rose-colored glasses of the movie version, which was quite different to the source material.  I re-read the book recently to confirm this, and no, the book just sucks.  It's a nihilistic and cynical work, admittedly for the right reasons, but it's one that just rages out without anything productive or enlightening in its content.  And the last fifty or so pages read as if King had written himself into a corner and just gave up on the entire thing, rendering the story just a angry rant that just abruptly cuts off.  I do not recommend the book on this one.  The 1987 movie, though, that's still a top tier camp classic.  10/10, will watch again, and if the choice were between The Godfather and The Running Man, I'd pick The Running Man in a heartbeat.

Now, Edgar Wright is here to put his own stamp on The Running Man.  My initial thought was yes, I absolutely want this.  Then it occurred to me it was probably going to be based on the book and not the Schwarzenegger movie, and that made me sad.  Wright's version of the King novel might have promise, but Wright's version of the Schwarzenegger movie would have been transcendent.  But I'll give it a look.  I love Wright as a filmmaker, and if anybody can whip that book into shape, it's him.  And he does break through and turn a shitty book into something that could potentially win me over.  But he's still held back by the not-so-good source material.

The Running Man sees Glen Powell playing Ben Richards, who desperately needs quick cash to buy medicine for his sick daughter.  He applies to the game shows on "The Network," and is selected for "The Running Man," where Richards must survive as a fugitive for thirty days, but if he gets caught, he dies.  Fans of the book will be more pleased that the concept hasn't been radically altered for this film, while the screenplay mostly stays faithful to the story's structure as well.  This is for better and for worse, because the book doesn't have a great structure to begin with.  The movie takes the worst aspects of the book and tries to salvage them by "Edgar Wright-ing" them up, which pays off in that it's no longer a dull work of stoic cynicism but a fast-paced work of cynicism that's kinda funny sometimes.  You can have fun watching this, but its social commentary is still clumsy.  It's bad enough that the parody concepts like "FreeVee" and "New Dollars" didn't even read well on the page but hearing them in live dialogue makes them sound even dumber.  But probably the worst aspect of this movie is something that can be said for m "person starts an uprising against the tyranical government" media, which is that the message can be easily misunderstood.  One can easily watch this movie and think it's about one brave "Republican" and his war against "Fake News" and "Liberal Media," and the only sources you can trust are "The People's Voices" on YouTube and Elon Musk's dumpster of a social media empire.  The Running Man's social satire is pretty irresponsibly delivered because, taken at face value without analysis, it might make the radicalized even more radical.

But the movie isn't all bad.  Most of its weaknesses can be attributed to the faults of its source.  The movie actually improves on the book in a number of ways.  The book is slow and not very exciting, Edgar Wright's film is a capable ride from start to finish.  Characters from the novel who jump in and leave are given fairly beefed up roles, a lot of it with mixed results (Michael Cera's additional action sequence is put into play out of stupidity) but I appreciate the effort.  The movie is also much funnier than its grumbling counterpart, which helps lighten some of the mood.  It's definitely helps the tryout stage of the story, which I think is supposed to be funny in the novel but is done through a lot of racist slurs and sexism.  Here, it actually is funny, because Powell is so in on playing someone who is so irritated about being there that my laughter couldn't be contained.  The movie also changes the book's objectively terrible ending.  Elements of the ending are still present, but there is an added post-script that recontextualizes as being less "life sucks and then you die."  To be honest, the new ending is pretty shitty too, but it is unquestionably a less abrupt note to go out on.

The Running Man is Wright's weakest movie.  If I were to take anything away from that, it's that Wright is starting look look like he's someone incapable of delivering an unentertaining movie.  This movie can be a hoot, it's also frustrates as much as it delights.  Just be prepared for that and you'll probably like it just fine.  And we'll always have the Schwarzenegger movie, which is destined to be the most iconic version of this story, faithfulness and quality be damned.

Trap House

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Action

Director:  Michael Dowse

Starring:  Dave Bautista, Jack Champion, Sophia Lillis, Tony Dalton, Whitney Peak, Kate del Castillo, Bobby Cannavale, Inde Navarrette, Zaire Adams, Blu del Barrio

For a wrestler-turned-actor that most of the prime talent in Hollywood seems to have nothing but praise for, Dave Bautista has made a lot of schlock this year.  It feels like it's every few weeks I'm seeing him in an Afterburn or an In the Lost Lands.  This weekend he's in another low-budget action flick from another small-time distributor, though I am at the same time not surprised by what it is while also being surprised at how much fun I had watching it.  Trap House sees Bautista play a DEA agent who, for some reason, has gear readily available to his teenage son.  After a fellow agent is gunned down and the DEA fails at supporting his family, Bautista's son nabs a bunch of his father's gear and gathers a group of friends to crudely steal from the drug cartel in a series of hit-and-run robberies.  The cartel eventually notices the DEA gear and starts targeting DEA agents.  The story is a pretty solid groundwork for this movie, although it's not a particularly memorable screenplay.  The movie can be ripe with melodrama when it feels like it, but it counterweighs it with a lot of spirit.  The group comaraderie of the kids is flavorful and endearing, and watching them muck around from their clumsy first hit to being neck deep in something they can't handle is actually more investing than I expected to be.  Meanwhile, watching Bautista trying to figure out who is doing the hits has a quirky pleasure to it.  The movie is pedestrianly made, the action is nothing to write home about, and the movie's biggest twists are obvious from the get-go, but this movie is more fun than it has any right to be.  I could name a hundred ways it could be better, but I can't say I didn't enjoy the basic ride as presented.  If it ain't broke...

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Black Phone 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bugonia ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Die My Love ⭐️⭐️

Good Fortune ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Nuremberg ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Predator:  Badlands ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Regretting You ⭐️⭐️1/2

Springsteen:  Deliver Me from Nowhere ⭐️⭐️1/2

Sarah's Oil ⭐️⭐️

Tron:  Ares ⭐️⭐️

Wicked Part I ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Kiss of the Spider Woman ⭐️⭐️

One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2

Soul on Fire ⭐️

New To Physical

Caught Stealing ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Downton Abbey:  The Grand Finale ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Freakier Friday ⭐️⭐️1/2

Him ⭐️

The Naked Gun ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Spinal Tap II:  The End Continues ⭐️⭐️1/2

Together ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!