Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 44 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Breeder

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Alex Goyette

Starring:  Daniel Doheny, Dot-Marie Jones, Maddie Phillips, Tanaya Beatty

A struggling M.I.T. student is lured into the home of a woman under the pretense of helping her breed dogs.  In reality, she traps him in her home and forces him to breed with her daughters.  The simple idea of "the way we treat animals is heartless and cruel if we treat humans the same way" is hardly a new concept, and Breeder has an interesting spin on it deep down its rabbit hole.  One can see the idea its playing with and the vision of the way it presents itself.  The issue is that the script is thinly written with little means of tension building, just abrasively pushing discomfort unpleasantness in our faces in hopes that the formula crafts unease by accident.  The best aspects of this movie made me want to like it, but while it can be smart, it's never slick.  There is little care in how it progresses its story, and at times it feels like pieces are missing and the movie fails to genuinely explore the idea it presents or just ignoring gaping holes in its logic.  The movie never grabbed me because it was too busy frustrating me, concentrating on just being overbearing with its mood and never concerned with actually crafting something that was worth watching.  There are things that this movie does very well, but telling the story that it chose to tell is not one of them.

Christmas at the Kringles

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Action, Horror

Director:  Kevin Lewis

Starring:  Ron Livingston, Rachel Bilson, Rob Riggle, Thomas Linnon, Arden Myrin, Donald Faison, Beverly D'Angelo

My general arbitrary rule is that if a Christmas movie opens in October, that usually means it's not very good.  I think I need to come up with a new one for Christmas movies that open in October but don't take place on Christmas, because this one sets itself on Valentine's Day.  I don't even know what we're doing here anymore.

This black comedy features a family that moves in next to neighbors who celebrate Christmas year round.  That jolly family actually belongs to a cult that tries to assimilate you into their joyful family or they will murder you.  It's like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, only if the cannibal rednecks were replaced with the Flanders family from The Simpsons and were equally bloodthirsty.  Admirable anti-holiday cheer has charm, but the screenplay lacks any sort of propulsion to its madness.  The only selling point to any of it is how perfectly cast it is.  That cast is given a lot of mayhem and one-liners to deliver, but I wish that the film had some sort of idea beyond holiday themed maniacal cackling because it doesn't really do anything else.  Some of the jokes are okay, some of the violence is fun, but the movie is pretty half-baked.  When movies like Violent Night and Terrifier 3 exist and already offer the counter-Christmas programing experience of holiday bloodshed while also feeling like they have a complete screenplay, a movie like Christmas at the Kringles just isn't going to cut it.

Everest:  The Other Side

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Documentary

Director:  Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, Jimmy Chin

Starring:  Jim Morrison, Hilaree Nelson

The directors of the Oscar winning documentary Free Solo are back with another documentary about every MSTie's favorite pastime, rock climbing!  And snow climbing, too!  And a little bit of skiing.

Jim Morrison (NOT THAT ONE) and his wife Hilaree Nelson are mountain climbers who specialize in climbing to peaks and skiing down the snowy tops.  They devise their big bucket list project to be, what else, Mount Everest.  Not only that, they insist upon climbing up the northern side, which is the more rarely traversed because it's the more dangerous path.  The effort takes more than five years to come to fruition, but the final climb happened in 2025, resulting in a four hour ski down the side of the great mountain.  The venture can spurt around as the mountaineers encounter setbacks, false starts, peril, and tragedy.  Those who follow these two likely already know of some of the film's more heartwrenching moments, which are caught on camera and are rightfully shocking.  Sadly, documentaries are beholden to the narrative that plays out on camera, and as things go wrong and the climb gets pushed back, the movie can slump.  However, the tenacity of the subjects is infectious, ensuring that the finale is one that is worth bearing witness to.

Fjord

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Cristian Mungiu

Starring:  Sebastian Stan, Renate Reinsve

Sebastian Stan continues to push himself into roles where he proves himself to be a chameleon in this drama, where he plays a Christian Romanian man married to arthouse darling (and previous A Different Man co-star) Renate Reinsve and the couple moves their family to Norway.  Freshly relocated, the couple's strict conservative values come under scrutiny when child protective services are called when second-hand accounts of them spanking their children is reported as child abuse.

Look.  It's complicated.

Fjord is a movie that examines a lot of conservative and progressive ideals and it's the rare film that treats them both with fairness and respect.  Whether or not Stan and Reinsve are abusive is a matter of perspective, but it should be noted that a lot of what they're accused of is not actually witnessed.  There are accounts from their children, but it also feels as if they are not allowed to speak for themselves, and when they do, their words are interpreted rather than understood.  There is a fine line between discipline and abuse, which brings up the question of where it is drawn and how do we define it.  A lot of this has to do with idealistic scrutiny, with there being a gap between family values and seeing the differences as a harshness that demands to be answered for.  Judging a family for using a spanking as a form of punishment is one thing, but bringing up evidence that the family doesn't allow their children to use cell phones or play video games is an irrelevance that is used to portray them in a negative light.  That's not abuse.  That's an upbringing and lifestyle choice.  In my eyes, the most abusive act that I interpreted happens late in the movie and wasn't physical at all, being an act of forcing emotional repression rather than anything hands-on.

It's brilliantly nuanced stuff, and the movie is more compelling than most movies that try to portray a similar type of story, because most movies like this are faith productions that feed into a Christian persecution complex.  But compared to what type of movie would have been made by a Christian group, this is a far more realistic portrayal and actually genuinely could generate sympathy from a non-Christian audience.  It's a portrayal of a sensibility gap leading to a misunderstanding, judgment by people who bore limited witness, and the frustrating coldness of legal impartiality leading to a feeling of cruelty than a full persecution, which makes it more interesting than the more tired "atheists hate us because we exist" argument.  The movie is frustrating because the simple solution is more efficient communication and understanding, but there are also no easy answers and it has none to offer.  But it's also asking the right questions.

The Only Living Pickpocket in New York

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  Noah Segan

Starring:  John Turturro, Giancarlo Esposito, Will Price, Tatiana Maslany, Steve Buscemi,  Jamie Lee Curtis

John Turturro plays an aged pickpocket who unknowingly lifts a USB card off of some dangerous people, who threaten to kill his catatonic wife if he doesn't return it, promising they'll only kill him if he does.  While that premise sounds like it's setting up excitement, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York uses it to set up life contemplation.  Tutrurro's character doesn't really fight his promised fate, opting to use the time he is given to retrieve the card as one would spend his final hours, looking back at the life they were given, and thinking about the mistakes made and also a few things about old dogs in a new age.  Sometimes the film struggles to really hit a beat, as our main character seems to waive off urgency and dawdle when he can, but the movie tells its story reasonably well.  It isn't terribly profound, as it covers ground a lot of dramas have covered before and will again, but Turturro gives a strong, quiet performance that leads with his eyes.  He gives the movie the heart it needs and it uses him to its advantage.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Clayface ⭐️⭐️1/2

Forgotten Island ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Heart of the Beast ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Other Mommy ⭐️1/2

Resident Evil ⭐️⭐️

Sense and Sensibility ⭐️⭐️1/2

Spider-Man:  Brand New Day ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Street Fighter ⭐️⭐️

Verity ⭐️

Whalefall ⭐️⭐️1/2

Wicker ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Wildwood ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

You Can See Everything ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

The Dog Stars ⭐️⭐️

Forgotten Island ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Shaun the Sheep:  The Beast of Mossy Bottom ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Stunt Driver ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Verity ⭐️

New To Physical

Frankenstein ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Skincare ⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

RE03

The fine folks at RiffTrax have kindly asked those of us who are watching this through the Best Friends service to not spoil the movie being used in this episode for those who won't see it until next week.  I'm doing my best to honor that, but this puts me into a conundrum  because I can't properly review this episode without talking about the movie.  Consider this paragraph a SPOILER WARNING buffer to throw off those who are just passing by at a glance.

Please enjoy this photo of Clara from Doctor Who in various poses to pad out this upper section.

You're welcome.

Need more buffer?  Here are the opening credits to the 1999 syndicated television series Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World.

AND NOW, OUR FEATURE PRESENTATION.

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

NO, REALLY, THE REVIEW STARTS RIGHT NOW.

Film Year:  2000

Genre:  Fantasy, Horror, Adventure, Comedy

Director:  Alvaro Pesseri

Starring:  Adam O'Neil, Holly Laningham, Cyrus Elias, Helen Preest, Peter Boom

MST Season:  The RiffTrax Experiments

The Movie

Leave it to RiffTrax to gain control of Mystery Science Theater 3000 for a handful of episodes and just throw in the most RiffTrax movie to ever be featured on the show.  This also happens to be the first movie from the decade of the 2000's featured on MST3K, stealing that title from the proposed Season 14 movie Ballistica, though that movie's release date came with an asterisk (that movie's dates of release range from 2009 to 2011 in different countries), so it's good to have one that is solidly in that decade.  Even if it is something that is almost indescribable in every way.  It's movies like this that make a Mystery Science Theater blog a chore.

::Richard Attenborough voice:: Welcome to the Mummy Theme Park!

The story of this bizarre Italian video production is that a descendant of Cleopatra prays to the god Osiris to unearth an ancient tomb that will return the hayday of ancient Egypt to power.  A Middle Eastern tycoon then finds the tomb and turns it into a theme park attraction, complete with mummies that he has scientists augmenting with robotics and gizmos to make it look alive (I want my family to do the same thing with my corpse after I'm dead).  Through various acts of sabotage and malfunction, the mummies wreak havoc on the park and all two of its guests.  The premise is very Westworld.  They even throw in a reference to that other malfunctioning park Michael Crichton property, Jurassic Park.  I can only imagine all of this is on purpose, because if this movie happened by accident, then that makes it even more astounding than it already is.

I don't know if I can adequately sum this movie up.  This movie feels like a Cinemax softcore porno that suddenly lost the budget for the sex scenes and decided to pad itself out to try and trick people into thinking it's a real movie.  But that also feels like an insult to softcore porn, because porn at least has a tangible background.  Most of this movie has this weird rear-projection effect, where actors are standing in front of a screen and the backdrop is just added in.  This is how a lot of expensive movies are made nowadays, but back then, it was a sign your movie had no money so you had to pretend you had a set.  The weird thing is that Mummy Theme Park is very inconsistent about this.  There are a couple of elaborate gore sequences that seem to either be lifted from an entirely different movie or were filmed first and drained all the cash from the budget.  There are also some production design when the movie does actually have a set, but the settings all appear to be cheaply made and shoddy, and these are all sandwiched in between the projected set nonsense that litters most of the movie.

Ignoring the production itself, it's hard to pinpoint what this movie actually thinks it is.  I think it's trying to be trashy fun in a Roger Corman spirit, but this group of MST episodes did it no favors in sandwiching it in between two actual Corman productions.  Corman movies are made fast, cheaply, and are mostly nonsense, but they are made by people who know how to make a movie.  I wouldn't even compare this to an Asylum film, because the difference between this and Atlantic Rim is that Atlantic Rim at least pretended to have a story.  And if we're comparing movies made with no money, Demon Squad had script ambition and production problem-solving cleverness.  Mummy Theme Park has none of these virtues.  It feels made by people who don't know what they're doing and they made a movie that has limited energy to actually do anything.

It might be trying to be a parody of those patented Crichton theme-park-gone-amok stories, but it's not really that funny.  You can tell there are jokes.  The main characters are so aimless and dimwitted that it has to be intentional.  There are also a trio of harem girls who like to smack each other around in scanty clothing, like a Penthouse production of The Three Stooges.  There are also some jokes that are very similar to gags that were featured on The Simpsons.  One of the mummies' rampages is based on camera flashes, which has echoes of The Simpsons' own Westworld parody in Itchy & Scratchy Land.  There is also a very odd scene where a mummy becomes sexually aroused by our lady lead's breasts, which is almost an exact duplicate of a joke from the fake Simpsons movie trailer "Soccer Mummy."  I first thought that this had to be a Simpsons reference because it's literally the exact same joke, but I double checked the dates and the Simpsons episode actually aired two years after this.  I highly doubt the Simpsons writers saw this movie, so we'll chalk it down to parallel thought.

If I were to project any sort of purpose onto this flick, one thing I noticed is that the film could possibly be viewed as a commentary of the commercialization of culture and heritage and being a harsh portrayal of cultural appropriation via tourism.  I don't think this movie did that on purpose.  Maybe it did.  Maybe this is what the filmmakers wanted to get across the whole time and they just didn't have the resources to properly communicate it.  But what chews away at that is how meandering the film is, not going anywhere half the time and dawdling on weird racial portrayals and nudity (which is censored out of the MST version).  The movie didn't even think to give itself a title card.  And I checked the uncut version on Tubi.  It doesn't have one.  We can't blame the episode this time.  If basic film courtesies like this are being tossed to the side then I don't think this movie is doing much by design and is just playing it by ear.

The Episode

The Mummy Theme Park was the big mystery title of the season and I'm not sure what I expected, but I wasn't expecting this.  This movie is a level of Z-grade bad that the MST3K rarely delves into.  It's beneath Incredibly Strange Creatures and probably even tops Manos and Monster A-Go Go levels of "Why does this exist?"  That said, this batch of MST3K is called "The RiffTrax Experiments," and RiffTrax has a knack for finding absolute bottom-of-your-shoe garbage, prying it off, and feeding it to us.  If this is a genuine crossover between the two entities, then perhaps we needed a movie like this.  Mummy Theme Park is actually from the director of Flight to Hell, which was featured on RiffTrax last year.  It's curious that they used this for an MST3K episode when it has a level of establishment already housed on RiffTrax, but let's not get pedantic about this.  They clearly saw something interesting in this movie's inconsistent madness and decided to put it on a pedestal.  I can't say I blame them.  The only issue is that I'm not sure the movie lives up to the mystery hype that is surrounding it.  One would almost expect it to be something special.  If one is familiar with RiffTrax's catalog, you'd know that there is nothing special about this movie.  They have arguably done much worse and more amusingly stupid.

The riffing rebounded for me in this episode.  I was not smitten with the choices they had made in Deathsport, but there is a lot of freshness here.  It's probably because the movie is more refreshingly weird than we've been seeing, which inspires more variety.  Oddly, the riffers don't spend much time commenting on the movie's shoddy effects work.  They almost seem more amused by just how weird the movie is.  Because the riffers seem to think this movie is funny, the approach to this movie can feel a little soft.  There are good reactionary riffs at several points, as the film can take them by surprise as to where it's going to go at any given moment because there is goofy monster mayhem one minute and in the next the movie has moved on to broad racial depictions that are poorly dubbed and almost less offensive because they've been rendered incoherent.  One of my favorite riffs in this episode mocks how Mummy Theme Park looks like a Saudi palace, prompting Servo to sing 🎶"Prince Ali, fabulous he, whoops we're in Egypt!"🎶  That was probably the hardest I've laughed at any of these RiffTrax episodes so far.  I also quite enjoyed the mockery of the mummy arousal scene, as the mummy gazes lustfully after the object of his desire, and Crow asks "Are you Rachel Weisz?"

Speaking as someone who grew up with a crush on Rachel Weisz...no.  No, she is not.

The host segments are the best of the batch so far.  I quite enjoyed Servo excavating the Sarcophagus of his own grandfather, which begs the question of whether this grandfather is the one married to his grandmother in Touch of Satan.  Crow and Bobo get into a Wiki flame war, which is aggressive hilarity, and Pearl takes a cue from the movie and tries to summon Osiris to heed her call.  I don't think there was a wasted minute outside of the theater.  However, inside of the theater, I do have one hiccup.

Probably the big thing that makes me feel like there is a roadblock in the comedy of this episode is that this movie is too slow.  It meanders for about fifty minutes before finally offering up some violence.  I'm assuming the uncut version had some nudity to soften the blow of this, but this episode censors it and makes it feel more drawn out.  The movie's weirdness can only push the needle so much.  We had gotten halfway through the episode and I felt like I hadn't watched anything.  Because of that, I'm feeling more muted about this one than I want to be.  It's certainly a silly time, but I think the high point of these special episodes is still Sting of Death.  Mummy Theme Park is a big swing for the fences, though.  I respect the play, but it's a triple and not a homer.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Good

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 43 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Clayface

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror, Thriller, Superhero

Director:  James Watkins

Starring:  Tom Rhys Harries, Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Max Minghella, Eddie Marsan

Doing a Clayface movie is certainly...a choice.  I don't know if I would have done it, but I have fond memories of Batman:  The Animated Series episodes featuring the gooey villain, so I'll go in with an open mind.  This is third Batman villain they've spun off into their own solo movie, following Catwoman and Joker.  I don't know if that brings any confidence, but that first Joker movie is better than any of the Spider-Man villain movies that Sony tried to push in the last decade.  And Catwoman was also worse, so it balances out.  And Joker 2 wasn't very good either.  I'm rambling.  Sorry.  Anyway, solo villain movies.  More bad than good.

Based on the not-too-well-known villain character, Clayface is the story of Matt Hagen, a famous actor who crosses paths with a mob boss who disfigured his face.  Desperate to regain what he lost, Hagen turns to an experimental procedure to reconstruct his face back to the handsome lad he was.  Some side effects may occur, including, face melting, shape-shifting, and impotence probably (I think it's safe to say).  The whole thing is an excuse for his face to melt and put on the guise of other people in a simple revenge plot.  It's like an unofficial remake of Darkman, but a little more mid.

The movie advertises itself as being gross-out body horror, which it both is and isn't.  There are body horror elements, but less than you would think.  Most of the gooey stuff is pretty plainly CGI, which lessens the impact of a lot of it, while most of the shape-shift scenes happen in an instant, slightly obscured in a frame cut.  Some of them are cleverly edited but so fast that it doesn't really sink in half the time.  The editing is really the only aspect of this movie that left me queasy, as it's the most stylized aspect of the movie.  The body horror element would benefit from a less static filming style.  A lot of movie is just a straight shot of a CGI face melt.  It's entertaining, mostly because the revenge thriller aspect makes up for the body horror failures, but it's also not something I'd recommend people rush out to see because it's not successful at the main things it wants to do.

My final thoughts leaving this movie are mostly unrelated to the movie itself.  Honestly, the thing that kept nagging at me was that if James Gunn needs to reconsider one thing about his approach to the DC Universe, I'd suggest that he keep in mind that the key to superhero properties thriving is appeal to youngsters.  Thusfar, the majority of his projects at DC Studios have targeted adults, with TV shows Creature Commandos, Peacemaker, and Lanterns all securing an TV-MA rating and the third film in his universe being a body horror movie that garnered an R.  The only projects parents can share with their children have been Superman and Supergirl, and, frankly, the latter was probably too dour for an actual family sit-down.  He's targeting nerds in their 40's, which is my demographic, but if they really want a DC franchise to build itself, this is not going to do it.  That's one of the reasons Zack Snyder failed.  The other reason was that his movies were bad.  I have hopes of seeing him succeed, but projects like Clayface aren't reassuring.

Klara and the Sun

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Science Fiction

Director:  Taika Watiti

Starring:  Jenna Ortega, Amy Adams, Mia Tharia, Aran Murphy, Steve Buscemi, Natasha Lyonne

In this house we only acknowledge one "Clara" played by a woman named Jenna.

Klara and the Sun is based on the novel by Kazou Ishiguro, which I have yet to read.  I had it loaded on my Audible account but I just ran out of time.  But the most negative reviews of the film adaptation seemed to come from people who read the book, so I'll confess to being a little relieved that I'm coming into this movie with fresh eyes and zero baggage.  The film adaptation is handed to Taika Watiti, who I can run hot and cold on.  I love Jojo Rabbit.  I don't particularly care for Thor:  Ragnarok.  Ya'know, basic personal taste stuff.  I tend to like his movies when his style enhances the story instead of undercutting it.  Klara and the Sun does both, and its frustrating.

In the film, Klara is a robot companion who is purchased by a sick girl as a live-in friend, of which Klara learns about life, love, and loss.  Jenna Ortega plays this role flawlessly.  If there is one thing about this movie that earns endless praise, it's her.  When it focuses on Ortega clumsily walking around, taking in the world around her, the film is a whimsical treat.  Klara has her own worldview based on the simple things she has learned, and has even created her own mythology.  She has her own version of god and her own version of the devil.  And she sticks to her few personality traits, which are curiosity and empathy.  It's pointed out that her model was discontinued because they were programed with too much empathy, to which she responds "Oh.  I'm sorry."  Perfect.

The movie could coast on being a simple tale of friendship and it would be a cute family movie.  When it tries for something more existential, it feels like its ambition is exceeding its grasp.  It feels like a switch is flipped halfway through the movie and what was making the movie charming stops being fun.  The ideas that its playing with are interesting, but they also feel sudden and underdeveloped.  I don't know if this is a fault to Watiti's approach to the material, but there are times where you notice little moments that give you a lingering thought of "Oh, that shouldn't have been a joke" or "Oh, that robbed the movie of the moment it was aiming for."  Klara and the Sun aims to be a wonderful feel-good movie.  It has heart.  It just didn't keep it beating.

A Talent for Murder

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Thriller

Director:  Anton Corbjin

Starring:  Helen Mirren, Alden Ehrenreich, Olivia Cooke, Juliet Stevenson

A Talent for Murder is based on the stage play "Switzerland," which portrayed a fictionalized version of author Patricia Highsmith, whose most famous thriller works include Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley.  In the film, Alden Ehrenreich plays a publishing representative who tries to talk Highsmith, played by Helen Mirren, into signing a new deal.  Together, the duo outline a sixth book featuring her most famous creation, Tom Ripley, concocting a plot to marry a trust fund heiress and murder his in-laws.

Mirren mostly acts as a combative narrator, someone relating the story through a foul temper while everyone around her acts out her little story.  The movie can strangely be interpreted as a power fantasy in this way, as characters gain new, more assured attributes through her brash tale.  Most of the main cast play dual roles, with Ehrenreich getting the jucier parts.  He gets to contrast his anxious main character with a more devious fantasy of Tom Ripley, and he is quite captivating in the switch.  Olivia Cooke plays the role of the sexual desire of both characters, though her role isn't starkly different in either version, which feels like a little bit of a waste.  A Talent for Murder is a fun and slightly demented reality-bending tale, though.  Worth watching if you want a dark story with performers who are giving it everything.

Wicker

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Fantasy, Romance

Director:  Alex Huston Fischer, Eleonor Wilson

Starring:  Olivia Colman, Alexander Skarsgård, Peter Dinklage, Elizabeth Debicki, Marli Siu, Nabhaan Rizwan, Richard E. Grant, Ben Ashenden

Olivia Colman plays a lonely fisherwoman who lives in a cottage by herself.  She tasks wicker craftsman Peter Dinklage to "make a husband" for her, which he proceeds to go above and beyond by creating a living wicker man, Alexander Skarsgård, for all of her needs, both in daily life and in nights of sexual gratification.  Personally, I'd be concerned with the friction of making it with a wicker person.  All that lubeless rubbing is going to set one's loins on fire and not in a good way.  But, we just take it at face value that wicker husband is an amazing lover.  I have a thousand questions of how that works and the movie answers none of them.  It doesn't even answer how Dinklage gave him life.  The movie doesn't care about that, it just cares that he exists and he knows his way down there.

The movie is like beginner level idiosyncrasy for those who are trying to ease their way into lopsided cinema without going full Yorgos Lanthimos.  The movie is weird and quirky, but also more heartfelt than you'd expect.  The film has a lot to express about love, both in its purest form and its most superficial.  Skarsgård's wicker husband is a being who only exists to love Colman, which Colman is both enchanted by and distrustful of, based on experiences with more complicated human folk.  Meanwhile, their relationship grows eyes of the envious, as Skarsgård brings Colman joy in a way few married couples achieve.  It's idealism and reality going to war in an off-beat and funny little package.

Wildwood

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Fantasy, Adventure

Director:  Travis Knight

Starring:  Carey Mulligan, Peyton Elizabeth Lee, Jacob Tremblay, Richard E. Grant, Awkwafina, Amandla Stenberg, Tom Waits, Charlie Day, Blythe Danner, Arthur Knight, Angela Bassett, Mahershala Ali

If I were a betting man, I would probably put good money on this year being Laika's time to finally take home the Best Animated Feature Film trophy at the Oscars, which feels overdue for the beloved studio (every film they have made has been nominated and lost to Disney/Pixar).  Wildwood is head-and-shoulders above any other animated film I've seen this year, and most of the ones I have seen this decade.  Based on the fantasy novel series, Wildwood tells the story of a young girl whose brother is whisked away by a murder of crows into a magical forest, and she ventures forth to retrieve him.  She comes into conflict with the governess of the woods, who plans to sacrifice her brother to find her dead son, whose body was lost in the wilderness.

Wildwood is a dark fairy tale that echos Guillermo del Toro and Hayao Miyazaki, with hints of classic Walt Disney, specifically projects like Pinocchio and Alice in Wonderland, and C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.  As a work of "stranger in a strange land" fantasy, Wildwood is practically flawless.  Adventurous, whimsical, hectic, vicious, and heartfelt, the movie is always in motion and providing something new for the eyes to feast upon, aided by some of the most smooth and expressive stop-motion ever attempted.  The movie is a breathtaking masterwork, utilizing a stunning realization of its setting and littered with three-dimensional characters.  Even our villain, who has a horrific goal, has a story of sorrow that is difficult to not feel sympathy for.  Meanwhile, our young heroes are youthful and plucky, bringing levity when the film needs to be fun, but are also courageous when the film needs to be harrowing.  The movie is pretty much summed up in one line:

"I don't know if this is terrifying or adorable."

The movie is also very violent, so parents may want to heed the PG-13 rating before bringing very young children.  Wildwood is not above bloodshed, peril, and sudden death of main characters, and there were several parents at my screening walking out with their young children, likely surprised at how graphic and unrelenting the film is.  It's the whimsical spirit of Andrew Adamson's Narnia films intemingled with the serious reverence for its world of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy.  It's a fantasy film for fantasy lovers, and while it's animated, it's not a children's film.

Netflix & Chill

The Cycle

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Streaming On:  Shudder

Genre:  Horror, Mystery

Director:  Jordan Downey

Starring:  Deborah Ann Woll, Jeffery Donovan, Gretchen Corbett, Phillip Andre Botello, Will Hochman

MSTie queen Deborah Ann Woll stars in this new thriller on Shudder, where she plays a forensics investigator whose estranged father's mummified corpse is found at a murder scene.  She joins the investigation, hoping to find answers to why he left years earlier, only to find some scary shit at the end of the trail.  It's probably best to go in blind, but I'd also say it's easy to figure out what's going on after about a half-hour.  That doesn't really hurt it, because the investigation itself maintains moody intrigue.  Woll is pretty good, as she usually is, and her personal connection to the questions that she's trying to find answers to keep the the film alive.  The third act doesn't quite live up to the set-up, now with the twist in full force.  Some of this has to do with stiff effects work and obscured quick-cutting around limitations.  I like that they took a swing though, even if it isn't as bone-chilling as it wants it to be.  The Cycle is an engaging little chiller, even if it dwindles as it goes.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Digger ⭐️

Forgotten Island ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Heart of the Beast ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Other Mommy ⭐️1/2

Resident Evil ⭐️⭐️

Sense and Sensibility ⭐️⭐️1/2

Spider-Man:  Brand New Day ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Street Fighter ⭐️⭐️

Verity ⭐️

Whalefall ⭐️⭐️1/2

You Can See Everything ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

By Any Means ⭐️⭐️

Hope ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Weight ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

The Brink of War ⭐️⭐️

I Want Your Sex ⭐️⭐️1/2

Masters of the Universe ⭐️⭐️1/2

One Night Only ⭐️⭐️

Over Your Dead Body ⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

.

RE02-Deathsport

Film Year:  1978

Genre:  Science Fiction, Action

Director:  Allan Arkush, Nicholas Niciphor

Starring:  David Carradine, Claudia Jennings, Richard Lynch

MST Season:  The RiffTrax Experiments

Featured Short:  "Personal Hygiene for Boys"

The Short

Let's face it, if you're a teenager and you're male, then you smell like a rotting pile of gym socks (and let's not talk about what you use those socks for in the privacy of your own bedroom).  The same can't be said for women.  Women always smell like flowers and perfume.  It's just you shameful boys.  This short is all about getting rid of that high school stank that you're dragging around, as we watch all these young men get all oily and greasy and then lather up and hit the showers.

This is the all-male alternative to Brian De Palma's opening to Carrie.  I feel like I'm going to be put on some sort of sex offender registry.

Maybe it seems pointless to have a video showing teenagers how to bathe, but then I thought back to when I hit that post-pubescent point where certain things started to chafe smell, and I recall everything going to hell.  Maybe we should have instructions on how to work all of this new plumbing.  The short itself seems kinda vague about it, as some of its advice is just "Use shampoo" and the like.  Gee, thanks.  My parents could have told me that.

Then it randomly becomes an anti-drug PSA and I don't even know what that has to do with washing my naughty bits.  That brief message is "Just...just don't."

The Movie

*I'VE SURVIVED WATCHING THIS MOVIE UNRIFFED*

Roger Corman produced Death Race 2000 in 1975, which went on to become a hit for his studio and a cult classic.  For some reason he opted not to do a direct sequel (not for another forty years, anyway) and instead crafted a spiritual successor called Deathsport three years later, also headlined by David Carradine.  Recycling the whole murder sport entertainment aspect of Death Race, Deathsport is a little less direct and more meandering.  Coming off as Planet of the Apes meets The Running Man, Carradine is a hapless grunt kidnapped by one of those mean post-apocalyptic governments to participate in Deathsport, a competition for convicts to survive disintegrating guns attached to motorcycles in exchange for their freedom.  Carradine survives this about halfway through and escapes, then the rest is a manhunt throughout the dessert with a group of companions.

Let me tell you, I know Death Race 2000, and Deathsport is no Death Race 2000.  Death Race is trashy, but it's a frantic Looney Tunes ride from start to finish.  Deathsport just does not have the same manic energy, killing its momentum out of the gate.  For B-movie watchers, I'd hesitate to call it one to avoid.  While it's certainly not its predecessor, there are still some elements to play with and have a few lulz at.

Deathsport has some playfully goofy aesthetic choices, looking almost like Escape 2000 had a baby with Deathstalker.  The props are all crazy looking, from tubelike death rays that turn someone red then make them vanish in a sudden cut to silly transparent plastic swords that look like they came directly from a toy store.  The latter especially tickled me, because when they're unsheathed for the film's swordfight finale, the movie becomes a softcore version of Highlander.  There's also some extensive nudity in the film (edited out of the MST version) for those who enjoyed that aspect of Death Race.  Not nearly as much as that preceding film, and it's mostly just Claudia Jennings stripping down and putting on her bikini again, but the exploitation is properly exploited.

Another spiritual successor was planned after Deathsport, called Deathworld.  After Deathsport bombed at the box office and Carradine practically disowned the film, Deathworld was cancelled and this weird little franchise laid dormant until Paul W.S. Anderson reworked it into his remake of Death Race, which is actually just a grunge version of Super Mario Kart starring Jason Statham.  It's such a weird little franchise to overview, though.  And Deathsport is this odd little diversion in it that marks its low point.  But being a low point in a Roger Corman produced franchise is an exceptional level of bad.

The Episode

Deathsport was initially announced for the proposed Season 14 from the failed fundraiser a few years back.  Sadly, that project never materialized.  Deathsport is a pretty good selection for the show and I'm happy to see that we found our way back to it.

Now comes the hard part.  I really didn't care for this one.

The movie holds up its side of the bargain.  There are so many weird and interesting things in this movie to make comedy out of.  I kept getting irritated that it wasn't really taking advantage of them.  A lot of the jokes in this episode feel like a verbal equivalent of a pratfall, just taking a bunt on an easy joke instead of crafting something exceptional about it.  For example, David Carradine unsheathes his sword for the first time, revealing that it's a chunky hunk of transparent plastic, but instead of commenting upon that, Servo decides to make the observation that the unsheathing sound is like a slidewhistle.

Yeah.  I guess.  That seems like the least of what's going on in that scene, but whatever.

Then there is the constant napalm that is haunting this production.  Literally every motorbike seems to explode for little to no reason in this movie.  It's very much like action gags they'd do on The Simpsons.  Upon one just driving into a tunnel, only to just burst into a ball of flame.  Mike's response to this is "Tunnels!  They explode!"

Sigh.

Look, I get it.  There's not really much you can add to a scene like that, and sometimes less is more when you're building comedy on top of something, but I just feel like this is a variation on a type of gag that RiffTrax does a lot and this is a situation that called for something with more of a punch and less of something that is the equivalent of "Well, THAT just happened."  It's that type of comedy that really settles in over the course of the entire movie.  And, to be frank, I felt like this was a pretty sparse riff.  It felt like there were openings that were easy lay-ups that they didn't go for, and some of the openings they did take just felt like placeholder lines.  There is this vibe of being uninspired that haunts this episode.

Probably the moment that really dug its heels into me and confirmed that I was not feeling this episode was when someone is vaporized by one of the ray guns and Servo says "And that's why yelling 'Danger!! Death Ray!' actually does help!"  I appreciate the fan service, but this is a nothing name drop.  It's throwing the title to the crowd with little reverence to what the title is and hoping it provokes a reaction.  That's just lazy.  I think MSTie fandom is getting to that point where the performers are starting to relate to that joke from Side Hackers where that one dude yells "NUMBER EIGHT!" and expects everyone to laugh.

Deathsport is at its most amusing when Deathsport is actually happening.  The little death game is the height of the movie's action and it also breathes some life into the commentary.  My favorite quips of the episode were condensed into this segment, with my all-star being Crow stating "Somewhere, MrBeast is wondering how he can trick poor people into doing this."  I also quite liked the prompt upon seeing many bike explosions, claiming "If Michael Bay directed Rad."  This is good stuff, but it only takes up maybe five minutes of the episode.

The short isn't much better.  I'm happy to see shorts return into the episode's presentation, but the selection lets down.  It's goofy but I don't really feel it's all that interesting a piece to be commenting upon.  Hygiene shorts have been done before on the show, usually with more memorable results.  Personal Hygiene for Boys covers a lot of the same ground and I'm not convinced it was worth going back to the well.  Some of the funnier moments are just the short trying (and failing) to amuse its teen audience, with the most memorable moment being the melodramatic shock faces over the repeated narration of "BODY ODOR!"  But the biggest laugh that's actually a riff happens when the narrator says that you should change your clothing daily if you can, which results in Mike flinching and shouting back "IF YOU CAN?!?!?"  But also this short can feel just as limp as the feature, with paltry observations such as pondering if one of the featured teens looks like Donkey Lips from Salute Your Shorts.  That line is one of those jokes that was obviously written by a Millennial writer and I'm not convinced the performers even know what it means.

The host segments didn't inspire much in me either.  Servo's little song about wearing a loincloth is pretty fun.  Apparently, the new SOL had some escape pods, like the previous models.  If you're trapped in space, always check those Hamdinger boxes.  Mike accidentally launches them without passengers because of course he did, but at least Servo and Crow didn't drag race this crop.  Also, Australian Rules Deathsport is a bit goes absolutely nowhere.  On the Mads side, Bobo gets hit by lawn darts and Observer starts spewing message board style Roger Corman defenses.  Also, Observer makes an Emoji Movie joke.

Pre-covid comedy called.  It wants its punching bag back.

I'm teetering on the edge of my bottom rating for this one.  The fact of the matter is that I usually reserve that for episodes that I do not enjoy watching and would likely not pop in for casual viewing.  Deathsport arguably doesn't meet that criteria on the basis that the experience wasn't disagreeable, it was just empty.  The movie is a great selection, but the episode they created out of it just doesn't approach the episode they could have made out of it.  That's not me bemoaning the Season 14 episode we lost because we easily could have gotten a great riff out of this movie with the RiffTrax crew.  This just felt through-the-motions and half-hearted.

Fuck it.  I feel bitter about this one, and I've never felt bitter at this show.  Maybe I'll feel differently on a future watch, but for now this is the most disappointed I've been with this show in a while.  My verdict is going to reflect that.

⭐️

Not Recommended

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 42 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Crawlers

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Angel Gómez Hernández

Starring:  Matilda Lutz, Gregg Sulkin, William Miller, Melina Matthews

If one is looking for a killer spider movie, Crawlers is at least a better watch than last month's Don't Move.  This time, the creepy crawlies take over an apartment building, preying on the people inside.  There's not much more to it than that, as the characters have very limited roles and the cause of sudden spider population is left unexplored.  With such an empty script, Crawlers can come off as a themed demo reel for its filmmakers.  It's a good-looking movie that seems written only to enhance visual ideas.  One could argue that Sam Raimi did that with Evil Dead, though Evil Dead was at least something that was successfully unhinged and unnerving.  Crawlers is a more chaotic experience.  It will try to strike a nerve and stop abruptly, sometimes feeling like pieces are missing in the narrative.  Meanwhile, the spiders are plentiful, if inconsistent, acting differently based on what the scene wants them to do.  They'll attack slowly if the film wants suspense, they'll attack quickly if the movie just wants to move on, sometimes they'll ignore people for no reason, and sometimes they cluster up and create tidal waves of their bodies, like an arachnid World War Z.  The film has no interest in characterization, which will either be a detraction or a virtue, depending on how you like your monster movies.  Humans are either cowardly screaming victims or our lead heroine, who gets to spend the climax in S&M latex for protection.  This is either something the director thought looked cool or is a thinly disguised fetish.  I'm not sure which.  If Crawlers were a more interesting movie, I'd probably have a bolder take on that.

Sense and Sensibility

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama, Romance

Director:  Georgia Oakley

Starring:  Daisy Edgar-Jones, Esmé Creed-Miles, Caitríona Balfe, Frank Dillane, Herbert Nordrum, George Mackay, Fiona Shaw

Hot off of last year's surprising anti-Jane Austen tirade with Jane Austen Wrecked My Life and Jane Austen's Period Drama (briefly interrupted by a Pride & Prejudice re-release) comes a brand new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility.  Sense and Sensibility has had some loose adaptations over the years but the last time it was given a straight adaptation for theaters was in an Oscar winning film made by Ang Lee and Emma Thompson in 1995.  While it has been a while, that also means the bar is pretty high for this one.

This story centers on a group of sisters forced out of their home and relocated to a cottage, where the elder sisters have traditional Jane Austen romantic complications of liking boys but getting mixed signals as to whether they are liked back, sometimes resulting public humiliation and/or a good cry.  This version of Sense and Sensibility is an Austen adaptation made for the Downton Abbey audience.  It doesn't do much more than a base, romantic historical piece.  It's relaxing in how it doesn't try to overthink what a Jane Austen audience wants from a Jane Austen movie.  That also means the movie has little zest to it, not wanting to get too fancy but accidentally skirting the edge of getting too vanilla.  I wish the movie had just a little more ambition.  It feels like it's trying the echo historical dramas like Hamnet with its very earthy color palette, but there feels like there is a disconnect between the source material and the film's vibe.  The movie's best aspect is that it keeps its lady leads lively and witty.  It helps the movie from straying into being a melodramatic self-parody.  The movie's big dialogue scenes can come off as overwhelming, but tall talk about love and engagement is what the audience is here for.  It's what they get.

Street Fighter

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Action, Comedy

Director:  Kitao Sakurai

Starring:  Noah Centineo, Andrew Koji, Callina Liang, Joe "Roman Reigns" Anoa'i, David Dastmalchian, Cody Rhodes, Eric André, Andrew Schulz, Vidyut Jammwal, Orville Peck, Don Lee, Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson, Jason Momoa

This is the third attempt at a live-action Street Fighter movie, so forgive me when I say "Round Three...FIGHT!" because I can't resist.  This isn't including the Japanese anime movie from 1994, which I have not seen in its entirety but heard is the best of the lot by quite a long shot.  The best known one is the Jean Claude Van Damme camp classic that I quite enjoy because that flick is always a good laugh.  There is also The Legend of Chun-Li, starring Smallville's Kristen Kreuk as the title character, which is a genuine contender for worst video game adaptation ever made.  That is not an easy achievement because there are so many challengers.  Whatever failures any potential film franchise might have, Street Fighter II is one of my favorite video games of all time.  I spent hours upon hours playing that game as a child, not knowing if there was ever a Street Fighter 1 or if there would ever be a Street Fighter III and when there was a Street Fighter III, I just kept playing Street Fighter II.  That assures that I will always be in attendance when a new Street Fighter movie comes out.  I also played a lot of Street Fighter 6 leading up to this movie's release (my Lily will destroy you) just to make sure I was very much in a Street Fighter mood for this movie.  Sadly, I have many lukewarm things to say about it.  This is a movie that feels like it was given to a director who understood the assignment but also to writers who weren't told what the assignment was.

Everyone knows the story of Street Fighter.  That's because Street Fighter has no story.  The film lives up to this by not having a story either.  There is a lot of crap in this movie.  It's an assembly of a hundred plotlines strung together and bursting the seams, spilling out onto the floor in a hundred different directions.  I don't think I've seen a movie have so much plot that it accidentally has no plot.  There is a "World Warrior" tournament that everyone wants to partake in, but it actually doesn't matter because it's barely in the movie.  Everyone is actually doing street fighting outside the tournament while almost no tournament fighting is shown at all.  Ryu and Ken have a fued.  M. Bison wants to steal Ryu's "Hadouken" powers so he can also have powers.  Akuma is a shadow man that pops up and just wants to fight whoever wins World Warrior tournaments.  Chun-Li is on a secret mission to kill M. Bison that is adjacent all of the other bullshit that is happening.  Guile, Dhalsim, Dan, E. Honda, Zangeif, and Balrog are here but don't have any bearing on anything.  Blanka, Cammy, and Vega do help push the movie forward in non-significant ways, but the movie is too crowded for them and they just have to make room.  I long for this movie to be simpler.  If they had just done a Bloodsport type movie about colorful characters in a tournament, they probably could have had something here, because a lot of the film's chosen aesthetic is on the right track.  They just went way too big.

While I acknowledge that the film is a mess, I admire the hyperreality that it's trying to create.  The film is a satirical parody of a Saturday morning cartoon mixed with loving homage to cinema's rich and pungent history of martial arts movies, both the best and the worst.  And when I say worst, I mean bottom-of-the-barrel trash.  The end result is the kitschiest, most absurd movie of the year, for better and for worse.  The action scenes are very kinetic and energized.  The problem is that a lot of them don't mean anything.  They're just two characters in the same vicinity punching each other, and not even for a paltry reason like tournament clout.  It's just action breaking up bizarre cartoon character monologues about backstories and motivation.  The movie also opens with an anime prologue, which is pretty fun.  It gets the movie off on the right foot before it blows out its tires and continues to floor it.  I like this movie's spirit, and if it had a screenplay that supported the vibes it's throwing down, this movie could have been spectacular.  Instead, it's hurtles itself off a cliff just to see if it can survive the fall.  This is a fun movie to watch, it's just not a fun movie to follow.

Trust Me, I'm a Doctor

⭐️

Genre:  Comedy

Director:  Thane Economou

Starring:  Kal Penn, Linda Hamilton, David Julian Hirsch, Abbie Cornish

To be frank, even when I was a horny teenager, I wasn't nearly as interested in Anna Nicole Smith as everyone else was.  That whole airy, wistful "I'm just a girl" Barbie doll thing wears me down, no matter how shapely the body is.  When she was a sex symbol, I thought nothing of her, yet she was everywhere.  When she died, I felt bad for her and her family, but I still had to hear about it for years because nobody would let it be.  Paparazzi was determined to wring as much coverage and scandal out of her as possible.  Trust Me, I'm a Doctor reopens that wound, dramatizing the memoir of Sandeep Kapoor, who was briefly her doctor and used as a scapegoat after her death.

This movie has a lot of committed actors trying to elevate an uninteresting screenplay written with clumsy wit that's undercutting the dour story it's telling.  I wish I had watched the movie the cast thought they were making because this movie is very off-putting.  I don't understand why this movie is a comedy.  It's a true life story of a woman who died from an overdose and the people who might be culpable deflecting blame, and the movie wants me to think this is funny.  I think the movie's tone is trying to match the circus that surrounded Anna Nicole's media coverage and subsequent trial over her death, but the entire movie acts like a circus, even when it wants to be taken seriously.  Maybe if the movie was a fictional black comedy satire it could get away with this.  The key word there being "fictional," which this isn't.  In some fairness, the movie never plays any of the tragedy it surrounds as a source of mockery, but the whole "Oopsiedoodle" tone of Kapoor's life turn in its aftermath leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.  This is just the wrong story told in the wrong way, and it's hard to make anything out of that.

Whalefall

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Thriller

Director:  Brian Duffield

Starring:  Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Shue, John Ortiz, Jane Levy, Emily Rudd

For the last month, online personalities have been telling me that I should be celebrating Austin Abrams, and I'm not quite at that level.  I liked him in Weapons despite being highlighted during the most boring portions of the movie, his role in Resident Evil was stunningly ill-concieved (which wasn't his fault), and I don't watch Euphoria because nobody can adequately explain what the fuck it is to me.  I'm not going to tear him down but I also haven't seen anything from him that left an impression on me.  In Whalefall, he grunts a lot and mumbles to himself, so I still won't find myself thinking about him more than I need to.  The film features him scuba diving, searching for the body of his deceased father, and accidentally being swallowed by a Sperm Whale because of bad luck.

It's an interesting premise brought to us by a promising filmmaker in Brian Duffield, whose last film brought a pantomime story to life though visual cues.  Surely, he could do the same for a man trapped by himself in an enclosed area, right?  Duffield wielded simplicity to an artform in No One Will Save You.  It feels like that instinct is being trusted inconsistently in Whalefall, as it can show a visual story, but it will also not trust the audience enough to understand the movie without explaining inner dialogue to them out loud.  Austin Abrams performance isn't bad, it's just awkward.  Almost nobody could pull off a role where they blow exposition through a breathing tube and not look like an idiot.  The film also tends to lean into melodrama in flashback as scenes with Josh Brolin slowly morphs into him being a vocal representative of the whale, and it just becomes a bit much.  But it's an interesting little thriller, even though the cinematography keeps the film from being as harrowing as it wants to be.  It's understandably murky because of its environment, but it's littered with nonstop zooms and flashcuts, making it even harder to comprehend what we're supposed to be looking at.  It is successfully claustrophobic, which makes up for that, but all these tiny flaws stack up to make a watchable, if mild, experience.

You Can See Everything

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Documentary

Director:  Nathan Fielder, Lance Oppenheim

Starring:  Elizabeth Holmes, Nathan Fielder, Billy Evans

I saw dong in this movie.  When they said "you can see everything," I didn't expect us to actually see everything.

This documentary is probably more interesting than you'd expect at first glance, because it meanders for a while with tiny aspects that are slightly off-putting that you can't put your finger on.  When the movie finally acknowledges that something is indeed not right, that is when what the documentary is actually doing finally clicks into place.  The film opens on the pretense of being about disgraced entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes as she lives with her family in her final month before her prison sentence for defrauding investors.  This is very uneventful, and one wouldn't be blamed for sitting through an hour-and-a-half of this movie to ask oneself "Why am I here?"  Not only that, there is something very plastic about it, as Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans, profess her innocence while Holmes discusses her business affairs in vague and distant ways.  I don't know much about Holmes's story.  I remember her being in the news and people being big mad.  I don't know what her invention was or why it didn't work.  It was all rich people dealing with rich people problems.  This movie didn't answer any of my questions about it as it went and I was getting frustrated with it.  Add in that Holmes's body language in this movie is very performative.  She always has a look in her eyes that never matches her facial expression (they basically used this as the poster).  I couldn't figure out why that was.  One theory could have been that she was "fake smiling" her way through a hard point in her life, knowing she'd have to go to jail very soon, and the look in her eyes was actually fear.  Another was that this was a business woman's fake public persona and she was trying to put on a show of innocence for the public to convince them that she was "one of them."  This portion of the movie seems to want us to believe that she doesn't communicate like other people and she both talks and acts this way because that's how her brain and personality function.  And considering how sociopathic some billionaires' personalities are, I was almost willing to believe it.  That being said, Holmes can sometimes come off so childlike that one wonders that if this were her genuine personality, how would she have achieved the pedestal that she received.

But as the film moves past Holmes going to jail, the movie starts to explore itself three-dimensionally.  Not only does this examine the questionable ways that Holmes and Evans presented themselves, it begins to reveal certain aspects of the production that weren't caught on film and how the project came together that might surprise you or shock you.  The film also calls in some surprise guests to help them sort through this and try and figure out what portrait the documentary was making.  It's fascinating stuff and it made me want to watch the first ninety minutes again through a different lens.

The one nagging thought I had is that, throughout the film, I felt like I was being heavily manipulated.  At first I thought it was by Holmes and Evans, and I have no doubt that I was being manipulated by them, but I also have questions about the documentary as a project.  A lot of the close-ups, camera angles, and music choices seem to be pushing me into feeling I'm watching something unhinged and uncomfortable.  I'm not convinced it was, and I do admit that I suspect that dramatic license was used for a performative piece on the filmmakers part, as well.  And considering the film does cross into a scripted territory toward the end, I can't help but ask questions about the reality being portrayed.  The documentary is well worth watching just to see what your takeaway is, though you might leave with more questions than answers.

Netflix & Chill

Hallowarrior

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Streaming On:  Shudder

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Ben Sottak

Starring:  Milly Shapiro, Shannyn Sossamon

Hereditary's Milly Shapiro is back and this time she gets to keep her head.  Shapiro plays "Pumpkin," a girl who survived the apocalypse and lives all alone in her deceased family's farmhouse.  The situation turns from I Am Legend to The Purge to Home Alone as she soon finds her lonely life invaded by malicious strangers and she tries to defend her home with nothing but a couple of weapons and some candy.  Deliciously simple, Hallowarrior is a kick of home invasion chills and post-apocalyptic thrills with some fun action and gory kills.  Stylized as a grindhouse splatter treat, the film doesn't wear out its welcome at seventy minutes.  Those seeking something quick and fun for the Halloween season might want to check out this child vs. the harsh world fantasy, as those with a Shudder account are likely already in tune with the vibe it presents and will find it to be a good time.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Digger ⭐️

Forgotten Island ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Heart of the Beast ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Odyssey ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Other Mommy ⭐️1/2

Practical Magic 2 ⭐️⭐️

Primetime ⭐️⭐️1/2

Resident Evil ⭐️⭐️

The Social Reckoning ⭐️⭐️1/2

Spider-Man:  Brand New Day ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Verity ⭐️

New To Digital

Buddy ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Fix ⭐️

Practical Magic 2 ⭐️⭐️

Runner ⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!