Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 22 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Bring Her Back

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Danny Philippou, Michael Philippou

Starring:  Billy Barratt, Sora Wong, Sally Hawkins

The Philippous are back in their follow-up to one of the most impressive horror films of the century, and it's just as visceral and uncomfortable as you would hope it to be.  Bring Her Back plays with similar themes to Talk to Me, that of grief and trauma, albeit in a messier, less satisfying package.  Bring Her Back centers on a pair of siblings who are fostered after the death of their father, put in the care of Sally Hawkins, who is secretly creating a rift between the two for her own benefit, which involves spooky kids and flesh-eating.  The film is a slow-burn, offering context clues throughout the film as to what Sally Hawkins is elbow deep into without spelling it out for the audience.  This isn't exactly a problem, though its choice to end ambiguously without some clarity on this seemingly complicated process Hawkins is going through can make the film frustrating.  Compare this to Talk to Me, which swiftly establishes the rules it's playing with through naturally delivered exposition, leaves unimportant aspects to the imagination, then uses them to create an emotionally draining rollercoaster.  There feels like there is a lot that is not being said in Bring Her Back, which is likely inviting closer analysis of what's boiling underneath it.  It can make it a more interesting movie for some viewers based on that, who will likely return for repeat viewings to study and theorize, and while being a raw and uncaged movie for those who come to be disturbed.  It even delves into a level of body horror that makes Cronenberg look like he makes My Little Pony movies.  Bring Her Back delivers the goods, though it only feels like a fraction of the movie is actually onscreen.

Karate Kid:  Legends

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Sports

Director:  Jonathan Entwistle

Starring:  Jackie Chan, Ralph Macchio, Ben Wang, Joshua Jackson, Sadie Stanley, Ming-Na Wen

I've probably seen enough of The Karate Kid to know that I like The Karate Kid, which is to say that I've watched the original and the Jackie Chan remake (which has been retconned into the same universe) and didn't watch the bad ones.  I also haven't seen Cobra Kai, because I never felt like my connection to the franchise was strong enough to merit the investment in a TV series.  Maybe if I'm bored one day and looking for a new binge, I'll give it a shot.  But it's hard not to have some reverence to the franchise if you were born in the 80's, since it was basically just Rocky for ten-year-olds (Rocky and Karate Kid even shared the same director).  Now, Karate Kid is back in theaters, and its big selling point is the franchise crossover between previous franchise leads (even though this is Hillary Swank erasure and they should be ashamed of themselves).  I think Karate Kid:  Legends wants to Karate Kid what Creed was to Rocky, but I think they undervalue just what exactly Creed brought to the table.

This time a former student of Jackie Chan's Mr. Han character has moved to New York, where he is roughed up by the karate-using hoodlums of the neighborhood, who are also linked to loan sharks who are gunning for the father of this kid's new love interest.  They go through a whole spell where new Karate Kid teaches the father character how to punch so he can win a boxing match, which is an interesting flip on the concept that never really pays off.  It is kinda funny that the adult student is played by Joshua Jackson, star of another nostalgic underdog franchise, The Mighty Ducks.  Anyway, Joshua Jackson gets beaten up, which results in Jackie Chan coming to New York...for reasons.  He also brings original Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio, along with him...for reasons.  They spruce up new Karate Kid's martial arts so he can win the local karate tournament...for retribution...or something.  I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure what the point of this movie's third act is other than to squeeze in a karate tournament.  I'm guessing it has something to do with overcoming fear, but this plot theme is underdeveloped and only broken out when it's convenient to the climax.  Very little about the film is cohesive, which is why it's surprising that it's a hard movie to dislike.  Its story is janky and dumb, but it has a little bit of spark to it that makes it feel like the production crew had spirit and heart.  It's not enough to turn it into anything in particular, but it helps it go down easy.

I imagine the movie is going to coast hard on nostalgia, and most of my audience seemed to just be there to see familiar faces (including a cameo at the end that people clapped at).  I liked seeing Chan and Macchio.  I wish they were given something more expansive to do except bicker and flare a martial arts move every now and again, but that's just me.  But at the same time, there are few things more frustrating than watching Jackie Chan get old.  He's one of those symbols of youthful exuberance that we all wish achieved a semblance of frozen-in-time immortality.  Macchio is probably a different case, because while we always associate him as being the Karate Kid (when we're not associating him with My Cousin Vinny), we also haven't seen all that much of him over the years, so while seeing him aged is startling, it's just nice to see him at all.  Legends would have benefitted from utilizing them as much as the original films would have used Pat Morita as the beloved Mr. Miyagi, who was an actual character and not just a face.  Chan and Macchio are just faces here for appearances.  If the actual Karate Kid story were better, this might not matter, but it isn't and the whole movie rings hollow.  That being said, Legends might be the best of the not-very-good Karate Kid sequels, so it should probably take that as a win.

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Romance

Director:  Laura Piani

Starring:  Camille Rutherford, Pablo Pauly, Charlie Anson, Annabelle Lengronne, Liz Crowther, Alan Fairbuirn, Lola Peploe

It's funny to see this movie playing mere weeks after the 2005 Jane Austen adaptation of Pride & Predjudice completed its 20th anniversary run.  I doubt this is a slight against it and more of a silly coincidence, but at any rate, here we are with a charming French romcom that takes influence from Jane Austen romanticism and goofs on it a little bit.

Jane Austen Wrecked My Life centers on a bookshop worker and hopeful writer who struggles with imposter syndrome, while also finds he love life dissappointingly uneventful.  After her best friend and co-worker sends several of her chapters to Jane Austen's estate, she is accepted into a writer's retreat, while unexpectedly being thrust into a love triangle as she confronts her feelings toward her BFF and her attraction to Jane Austen's great-great-great grand nephew.  The film is mostly a pleasant romcom, but it's bristled with ideas of exploring both romantic idealism against modern day sexuality, as well as battling one's own creative frustration.  The film's answer to both of these is "Figure out your own shit," which seems brazen at first, but what makes it work is that the message isn't "Finding happiness in a good man," but rather "Find contentment in yourself, and maybe positive things will follow."  The themes are smart and relatable, though sometimes the narrative dips in favor of bending itself backwards to create its next plot complication instead of flowing straight to it.  It's enough to hold the film down as a fun evening watch as opposed to something more resonating, but there is an admirable spirit in its heart.

Tornado

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Action, Thriller

Director:  John Maclean

Starring:  Kôki, Tim Roth, Jack Lowden, Takehiro Hira, Joanne Whalley

I do love me a good samurai movie.  Tornado has the makings of one, but is probably too meandering and shallow to achieve what it aims for.  The film feels like it borrows a handful of elements from 70's exploitation flicks about victims coming back to extract revenge on their aggressors, like I Spit on Your Grave or Last House on the Left.  It's not quite as extreme as those examples, but it does try to put weight behind what violence it does offer.  Each death or aggression is carried out with meaning, wanting to stir up feelings in the audience, which not a lot of films like this do.  The story is simple enough, as a young Japanese girl named Tornado is a part of a traveling puppet show, which she uses as a distraction to steal gold from local bandits.  The bandits catch wind and kill her mentor, causing her to go on the run until she gains the confidence to weild a samurai sword and take them all out.  There's not much to it, and it can get choppy in a light non-linear narrative, but there are decent thrills to be had.  The film, at times, tries to be a psychological piece, which it's not very successful at.  There just isn't enough here to gain a foothold in analyzing mankind's violent nature.  It makes the film a little slower and it builds to a soft anti-climax when it should be full adrenaline.  But Tornado is a solid watch for those who like these sort of lone-wolf-against-the-world movies.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Accountant² ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Final Destination:  Bloodlines ⭐️1/2

Friendship ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Last Rodeo ⭐️⭐️

Lilo & Stitch ⭐️⭐️

Mission:  Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two ⭐️⭐️1/2

Sinners ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Thunderbolts ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Homestead ⭐️

Juliet & Romeo ⭐️

On Swift Horses ⭐️⭐️1/2

Shadow Force ⭐️1/2

Until Dawn ⭐️1/2

New To Physical

The Alto Knights ⭐️⭐️

Bottoms ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Day the Earth Blew Up ⭐️⭐️1/2

Queer ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Woman in the Yard ⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2025: Week 21 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Friendship

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Thriller

Director:  Andrew DeYoung

Starring:  Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd, Kate Mara, Jack Dylan Grazer

Prepare to feel startlingly uncomfortable because this new black comedy is kind of a crossbreed between Uncut Gems and The Cable Guy, so take that as a warning for what it feels like to watch this thing.  Tim Robinson plays a socially awkward middle-aged man who strikes an unlikely bromance with charismatic neighbor Paul Rudd.  After Robinson makes things awkward during one of their hang-outs, Rudd attempts to cut ties with him, which makes Robinson even more frustrated and desperate for social acceptance.  The film pulls no punches in depicting the awkwardness of each scenario, almost turning social anxiety into an artform.   It tries to turn its cringe comedy into psychological tension, and sometimes vice versa.  The scary part is that it's actually successful at it.  Robinson is quite exemplary at the role he is asked to play, working a very thankless character that creates discomfort in every scenario while simultaneously making things worse because he is unable to identify the unhealthiness of his obsession with being liked by a single man.  Robinson plays it in a way that is both relatable innocent and disturbingly unhinged, trying to be more like Rudd even when those attributes don't suit him, and loses himself in the effort to be someone he is not while he loses everything he does have in a quest to feel like he belongs.  The one downside is that the movie leans so heavily into discomfort that it sometimes physically hurts to watch.  That's a sign that it's doing what it's doing well, but it's hard to describe the reaction of "But I don't want to watch this" as a positive attribute.

The Last Rodeo

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Sports

Director:  Jon Avnet

Starring:  Neil McDonough, Mykelti Williamson, Sarah Jones, Dayton Swearingen, Christopher McDonald

If there are two things in this world that I have little tolerance for, they are rodeos and Angel Studios.  To my surprise, I didn't hate this Angel Studios produced rodeo drama.  At least, not nearly as much as I thought I was going to.  Neil McDonough plays an aged bull-rider who finds out that his grandson has a brain tumor, and they don't have the money to pay for the surgery.  Instead of starting a GoFundMe, like a normal person, McDonough decides he's too macho for that and returns to bull-riding for big bucks, at great risk to his injured body.  It's pretty basic stuff, because many a film play with the template of "We need money fast, because affordable health care doesn't exist in America."  There is a bit of a contradictory idea at play in The Last Rodeo, because when McDonough's grandson first shows signs of sickness, McDonough's first instinct is to tell him to walk it off.  Meanwhile, the main conflict hinges on the possibility of his grandson getting better while putting McDonough's health at risk.  That latter idea is forgivable, because it's probably the conundrum that the movie is aiming for.  It's slightly deflated by McDonough's attitude of dismissing serious injury, while never actually facing repercussions for his activity, all in favor of a feel-good ending.  That's also without mentioning the fact that McDonough doesn't actually need to win in order to gain the money he needs.  It's stated early on that he could gain the funds he needs with a runner-up position.  His being dead-set on getting first is merely for pride.  I'd prefer the bills being paid as the more important conflict.

I'm almost tempted to say this movie is lightly above average, but some of the supporting acting is too rough to dismiss.  I'm working under the assumption that some of the fellow bull-riders were played by real-life bull-riders because they sure as hell weren't actors.  It gets kind of painful.  But in all fairness to The Last Rodeo, those who are looking for something unambitious and trite will find that The Last Rodeo wears it about as well as it can without being charming enough to entertain casual audiences.  Part of that is Angel Studios wallowing in its own mediocrity, though the film does have the self confidence to know exactly what it is and be content in that.  If you were raised on a diet of 7th Heaven and Little House on the Prairie, I couldn't recommend this film highly enough.  The target audience doesn't quite extend beyond that.  But if I'm not feeling cynical, I guess it doesn't have to.

Lilo & Stitch

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Science Fiction

Director:  Dean Fleischer Camp

Starring:  Maia Kealoha, Chris Sanders, Sydney Elizabeth Agudong, Billy Magnussen, Zach Galifianakis, Courtney B. Vance, Kaipo Dudoit, Hannah Waddingham, Tia Carrere, Amy Hill, Jason Scott Lee

For what it's worth, I'm the wrong person to ask for an opinion on a Lilo & Stitch remake, because I didn't even like the original when I was in the target demographic.  The new Lilo & Stitch is slightly lesser than the original.  That statement will mean something different to most people, but to me, that just means it's even more mediocre than an already mediocre movie.  The story of Lilo & Stitch centers on an alien who crashes on Earth, befriending a small child and being accepted into the family.  Basically, it's just E.T., only instead of being a deformed, fleshy creature, the alien is designed by committee to be as cute, cuddly, humorous, and safely merchandizable as possible.  That's probably my cynical outlook at a movie that means a lot to the people who grew up with it, but that was my impression when I first saw that movie way-back-when, that's my impression every time I rewatch it to see if maybe this time it will click with me, and that's my impression when watching this remake.  I've never particularly liked Stitch as a character, and find the alien lore around him haphazard.  Like the original, the Lilo portion is more investing to me than the Stitch shenanigans, because it has heart to its story while the outer space nonsense is just nonstop, obnoxious noise.  Even that has its limits though, because this version of the film isn't particularly good at conveying that aspect of the story because it comes off as overly manufactured.  Lilo & Stitch is too slavish to the original in its attempts to recreate the tone, adapting a lot of things that work just fine in animation but are awkward in live-action.  The movie's comedy is so overtly broad that very few actors come off as genuine, and it feels so scripted that very little of it is actually funny.  The film's "family" message is a whiff because the unit just doesn't mesh.  Kids in the audience still liked Stitch, though.  I'd dare say family movie night is still on, despite my dismissal of the film in question.

Mission:  Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Action, Adventure, Spy

Director:  Christopher McQuarrie

Starring:  Tom Cruise, Haley Atwell, Simon Pegg, Ving Rhames, Esai Morales, Pompeii Klementiff, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Henry Czerny, Angela Bassett

Ethan Hunt continues on his quest to destroy ChatGPT in the second half of the Dead Reckoning duology (we don't acknowledge the cowardly title change for douchebags in this house), which sees him trotting across the globe on several more MacGuffin chases before finally reaching the submarine that holds the secret to destroying the rogue A.I. known as "The Entity," while the Entity's failed collaborator Gabriel finds a new path in trying to control it for his own gain.  Things come to a head, and old aspects of missions past unexpectedly come into play as star Tom Cruise and writer/director Christopher McQuarrie seek to give the consistently exhilarating franchise its own "Avengers:  Endgame."  The movie tries so blistering hard that it impresses as equally as it frustrates, telling a story across two movies and nearly six hours that a more efficient production could have done more in-depth in half of that time.  Despite the high stakes at play, it's kind of amazing how little actually happens across the span of two movies, as both films wave off the intrigue of most spy thrillers and just send Tom Cruise running from one location to another to find one of several little objects that will help him save the day and stop the shadowy being that is threatening the world.  I recall way back when they announced that Mission:  Impossible 7 & 8 were going to be a two-part production that I jokingly referred to them as "Ethan Hunt and the Deathly Hallows."  Funnily enough, that's kind of what the movies wound up being.

Bizarrely, despite there being less happening in it, and only a single MacGuffin to chase, the first film is actually the better paced movie.  Part Two stops and goes at many points, often to introduce the new play and deliver a lot of exposition before the I.M.F. team carries it out.  This isn't even going into a few puzzling character beats, which sees a status quo change for Ving Rhames' fan favorite character of Luther that the previous film never even hinted at and is introduced out of nowhere.  Meanwhile, previous baddie Gabriel becomes more of a cackling madman, while his past with Ethan, which the previous film aggressively teased, is never embellished upon, leaving the audience to wonder what was the point of even bringing it up.  The movie is beefy and disjointed, to say the least.

I'm probably dogging this movie too hard, but that's mostly because we've come to expect better from this franchise, and if Mission:  Impossible II weren't as clumsy as it was, this movie would likely be the the most unsatisfactory moment for what is probably the best movie franchise that is currently running.  The things that we come for in a Mission:  Impossible movie still happen.  Tom Cruise tries to kill himself for our entertainment by doing stuntwork that most films regulate to CGI for safety and budget concerns, there is spellbinding action, globe-trotting adventure, and a couple of the ridiculous facemasks that we all love.  The movie steadily gets heavier as it goes, leading to two showstopping setpieces.  The first is Ethan finally unlocking what he needs from the submarine, which is a much slower, more haunting, and more claustrophobic action sequence than we're used to.  The finale is more of the areal stunts that have come to define the franchise, and it's pretty spectacular.  In between all of this, many of the callbacks to previous films that come into play are actually smartly reasoned and well-integrated.  The only one I'm a little iffy on being one of our characters tying into to another character from the first movie, which felt a bit muddy to me.

It's probably clear that there was more difficulty getting Dead Reckoning into cinemas than previous Mission:  Impossible movies, following production delays, Covid complications, ballooning budgets, and not-so-great release dates that counter them to movies that are set to tear them apart.  I'm not entirely sure how much of this particular film's less clean aspects can be blamed on those hurdles, save the stupid title change.  Despite the high stakes, there is very little that seems "final" about the movie, save from a character fate or so.  The movie doesn't even seem to be aware that it was supposed to bring closure to Tom Cruise playing around with this TV series from the 60's.  The only argument that it puts forth that it should stop at all is because this one didn't pan out perfectly.  If Mission:  Impossible could still fly as high as it did a decade ago, there is little reason to stop here, even if its record is less pristine than it was a year ago.  I'd still choose to accept this mission.

Netflix & Chill

Fear Street:  Prom Queen

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Streaming On:  Netflix

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Matt Palmer

Starring:  India Fowler, Suzanna Son, Finna Strazza, David Iacono, Ella Rubin, Ariana Greenblatt, Lily Taylor, Katherine Waterston, Chris Klein

It's been four years since Netflix weekly dropped a trilogy of Fear Street movies, inspired by R.L. Stein's more mature alternative to Goosebumps young adult pulp novel series.  The three movies were fun, if overly ambitious, providing an evolving homage to different eras and types of horror filmmaking, while not actually being based on anything from the actual book series.  Their first follow-up production, by contrast, adapts a specific novel from the series, "The Prom Queen," which takes place on Prom Night of the spooky town of Shadyside, where Prom Queen nominees are brutally murdered leading up to the big crowning.  Where it goes from there is largely predictable and nonsensical, though those who have watched many-an-80's-slasher and are always hungry for more will likely heed little notice to that.  The movie's strongest assett is its presentation, which is far more era-influenced than the previous Fear Street films.  The film's vibes are impeccable, effortlessly recreating the tone of unserious 80's gore chillers, while also replicating the feel of being a 90's kid that was locked in your room, under the covers, reading a Stein book by flashlight, while listening to a bangin' mix-tape.  Those who don't appreciate the work put in to make a very specific feel to this movie will likely undervalue just exactly what this movie does, but it plays itself hard into a niche, and part of being in a niche is the risk of being watched incorrectly.  The film isn't nearly the gargantuan crowd-pleaser as the trilogy it follows, but Prom Queen is arguably the more impressive and successful artistic achievement.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Accountant² ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Final Destination:  Bloodlines ⭐️1/2

Hurry Up Tomorrow ⭐️

A Minecraft Movie ⭐️⭐️

Sinners ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Thunderbolts ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Warfare ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Rosario ⭐️⭐️

Until Dawn ⭐️1/2

New To Physical

Presence ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

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!