Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 25 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

The Death of Robin Hood

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Michael Sarnoski

Starring:  Hugh Jackman, Jodie Comer, Bill Skarsgård, Murray Bartlett, Noah Jupe

Hugh Jackman went and made Logan again.  Only this time with a bow and arrow.  The Death of Robin Hood does exactly what the title suggests, while also offering an examination of the reality beneath a legend.  Like Unforgiven, but with more Game of Thrones.  The idea of using such a myth as an examination of what type of right bastard might have inspired it is intriguing.  I kinda wish they devoted a whole movie to his actual actions and the interpretations that spread through word of mouth.  They made this movie instead, where Robin Hood is a dangerous old fart who is a contrast to the righteous figure that his legends portray him as.  That's okay for initial shock value, but the movie just kinda drones on in his own misery without really exploring how he inspires such a myth.  One of the reasons Unforgiven works is because of Clint Eastwood's lifetime of making westerns that it acts as an epilogue to.  Logan also works because of Jackman's history of making X-Men movies.  The Death of Robin Hood struggles because while there is an entire history of Robin Hood lore, this is a version of the character we only barely know and we hardly know anything about his relationship to the lore itself.  I like the movie's swagger, but I need more details.

Oh well.  There is an episode of Firefly that kinda already did that, where Jayne accidentally drops a payload on top of an impoverished town and accidentally becomes a folk hero.  The Death of Robin Hood only succeeded in making me reflect on that episode and also an episode of Doctor Who where Clara wants to meet Robin Hood and the Doctor insists he didn't exist, only to go back and find that he not only existed but he was the exact jolly swashbuckler he has always been stereotyped as.  I am just now imagining how it would have went down if the Doctor and Clara met this Robin Hood instead.  Never meet your heroes, I guess.

Girls Like Girls

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Romance

Director:  Hayley Kiyoko

Starring:  Maya de Costa, Myra Molloy, Levon Hawke, Zach Braff

This queer coming-of-age heartbreaker is almost part of a mini-franchise, as director Hayley Kiyoko has used the title "Girls Like Girls" as the title of a song and followed it with a novel that fleshes out the narrative of her music.  Now she's here with a film adaptation of that novel, which tells the story of a teenage girl who befriends another girl and finds out they both have a mutual physical attraction to each other.  Will they?  Won't they?  Should they keep it as a secret?  And if they do, will the pressure that comes with that drive them both crazy?  It's very basic, and that's not always a bad thing.  What's frustrating about this movie is that something emotionally resonate always feels on the tip of its tongue but it always finds a way to stunt it's delivery of it, through shallow writing or wooden acting or both at the same time.  The movie feels like it wants to be a film that sizzles with moments between two people that are unsaid and it can hit quite strongly when it is that.  It loses that steam when those moments are interrupted with actual speech because very little of the dialogue is engaging.  I feel bad for this movie because there is a very tender story about an outsider who is struggling to solidify her personal identity, the movie just did not make me feel anything.  An undemanding viewer who just wants a queer love story might find enough here to give this a watch, but there are also better options out there.

Leviticus

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror, Romance

Director:  Adrian Chiarella

Starring:  Joe Bird, Stacy Clausen, Mia Wasikowska

More queer cinema this week, from girls learning to not be afraid of kissing other girls to boys learning that they should be afraid of kissing other boys.  Gay teens are taken to a "healer" in one of those "pray the gay away" type of things.  However, this particular ritual attaches a demon to each of the boys, who takes the form of the person they lust after most and follows them wherever they go.  Kinda like It Follows or Smile, only with LGBTQ flavored spice, just the way we like it.  Leviticus is more allegorical than it is frightening.  It actually makes you wait a really long time for a horror sequence.  Not in a slow burn sense because it's always in momentum.  It's just soaking in its thematic bath oils.  The movie plays with worldbound homophobia from every angle resulting in a self-loathing homosexual trying to navagate when the view of everyone else looks upon them with discomfort.  It's all very on-the-nose, and sometimes it wobbles from being powerful and just being too simplistic, not wanting to explain itself and hoping people just get it.  The themes and the premise are both sturdy and effective despite its genre thrills never feeling fully developed, but there is a full movie here that is well worth watching.

Toy Story 5

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Fantasy, Adventure

Director:  Andrew Stanton

Starring:  Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Conan O'Brien, Scarlett Spears, Greta Lee, Shelby Rabara, Mykal-Michelle Harris, Craig Robinson

Welcome back, Toy Story.  You always got a friend in me, even when your big Buzz Lightyear franchise doesn't pan out.  Pixar's inaugural IP has always been very consistent, usually only brought back when they have an idea that works.  That doesn't stop online film nerds from being cynical about it.  Every Toy Story movie has been deemed "pointless and unnecessary" sight unseen since the second one.  Meanwhile, Pixar is cooking in the background, laughing to themselves "lol we gonna make you ugly cry, bitch."  I will admit that a Pixar movie hasn't hit that special note that I had gotten used to seeing from them in a while, since maybe Coco.  Toy Story 4 was a part of that wave (which I still enjoyed but never felt compelled to revisit), so maybe my expectations for a fifth were room temperature.  Maybe that's why I liked it quite a bit more than the fourth and am thinking it's probably the best movie Pixar has made so far this decade.

Toy Story 5 focuses more on Jessie than previous installments, which were mostly Woody focused.  Jessie is the new head honcho of Bonnie's toy group, though as the youngster gets older, she starts becoming more shy around other kids.  Jessie starts scheming to get Bonnie to interact with other children, only to find Bonnie's attention starts to be stolen by her new piece of tech, Lilypad.  Bonnie's attention soon becomes more drawn to her screen instead of her toys, and it also makes making friends even more challenging for her.  It's a very on-the-nose commentary on screen addiction and how it's generating generations of withdrawn people.  There's also an allusion to social anxiety, though Bonnie's particular case doesn't seem to stem from screen addiction.  She was shy before she got her Lilypad, and she used it as a conduit to actually make friends.  But that aspect becomes more about peer groups because she's around other kids who don't really seem to like her at all.

What I liked about this story is that it's not about the toys going on a new adventure in a different environment that has its own toy culture.  Each previous Toy Story sequel did that and it started to feel formulaic.  There is a bit of a back-to-basics element to Toy Story 5 that I felt really works in this movie's favor.  It's the most simple storyline since the original and it mostly keeps things in the toybox without overthinking it.  Everything in the movie is about the bond between a child and their toy, and the imagination that stems from it (or lack of one where Lilypad is concerned).  The most expansive part of the movie has to do with a detour back to the house where Jessie's first owner, Emily, which pays off both in the main premise while also bringing closure to that little bit of trauma that Jessie has been harboring since the second movie.

Also, there are about fifty Buzz Lightyears now because of course there are.

The movie is fun and touching, which is exactly what we want from a Toy Story movie.  Personally, I liked it better than both the fourth film and the Lightyear movie.  There are even parts of this movie I'd say hit harder than Toy Story 3, but Toy Story 3 is probably the better movie.  Anyone with an affection for this series, or with wee ones who also love it, will find it delivers the goods.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Backrooms ⭐️⭐️

The Breadwinner ⭐️⭐️

Disclosure Day ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Furious ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Mandalorian and Grogu ⭐️⭐️

Masters of the Universe ⭐️⭐️1/2

Obsession ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Pressure ⭐️⭐️1/2

Scary Movie ⭐️

The Sheep Detectives ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Stop!  That!  Train! ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Tuner ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Deep Water ⭐️⭐️1/2

Pressure ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Wizard of the Kremlin ⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Ready or Not 2:  Here I Come ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Scream 7 ⭐️⭐️

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 24 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Disclosure Day

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Science Fiction

Director:  Steven Spielberg

Starring:  Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo, Wyatt Russell

Aliens have landed yet again in Steven Spielberg's backyard, having created two genre-defining classics in Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial, while doing his own take on H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds several decades later.  Also, aliens were in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  People don't talk about that one.  This time, he does yet another "first contact" story, basically reimagining Close Encounters as a chase thriller, filled with less wonder and more paranoia.  Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor play two people who have nothing to do with each other but each finding that they have some sort of way of communicating with extraterrestrial life.  They both find themselves neck deep in conspiracy, being chased down by government agents who will kill them to keep the secret to themselves.  Like Close Encounters, it's a film about communication and understanding with something strange and unusual.  Disclosure Day, however, is also interlaced with untrustworthy humanity mucking it up.  In Close Encounters and E.T. (and Crystal Skull), harm usually happens out of ignorance as opposed to maliciousness.  War of the Worlds was an alien race who was an invading "other," only here because we were fun to squish.  Disclosure Day does a toned down version of hostile relations but flips the sides, portraying a capitalist nation harming out of greed and power, while the aliens at play are just want them to fucking stop.  War of the Worlds was very influenced by post-9/11 xenophobic politics, while Disclosure Day is just about political xenophobia.

It's an interesting movie, but it does tend to struggle at maintaining attention for a full two-and-a-half hours.  This is probably on the mid tier of Spielberg's mostly stellar career, and probably the weakest movie he has made in the last decade or so (since The BFG, at least).  The script is both bloated and somehow lightly written at the same time.  There is a lot of running and chasing, and to where is not always clear.  Often the way out is just a magic stick that can do anything.  If Spielberg had balls, he would have made it Doctor Who's sonic screwdriver, but no.  Just a vague tube that we have a hundred of for some reason.  Characterization is also often underdetailed, as most people in this movie exist to give speeches and glower at each other.  This ensures that Emily Blunt steals the show.  She has the most interesting character, the best dialogue, great comedic beats, and throws herself entirely into the movie (WEATHER SHIMI!).  It's only natural that the movie becomes less fun when she's not on camera, but even when it focuses on lesser characters, it never loses too much of its blood flow.  Disclosure Day is solid sci-fi from someone who knows his way around it.  It's worth a look if you're into it.

The Furious

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Action

Director:  Kenji Tanigaki

Starring:  Xie Miao, Joe Taslim, Yang Enyou, Jeeja Yanin, Brian Le, Joey Iwanaga, Yayan Ruhian

No, this is not yet another Fast and the Furious movie, though I'm still waiting to see how Dom survived that dam blowing up, now that you mention it.  If Taken was directed by Chad Stahelski with fight choreography by Jet Li you would probably find something as bonkers as The Furious, a movie that's not so much a story than it is a series of amazingly filmed martial arts scenarios strung together by revenge fantasy.  Mute martial artist Xie Miao chases down the child trafficking ring that kidnapped his daughter.  He teams up with journalist Joe Taslim and the pair join forces to basically beat the living snot out of everyone in their way.  There isn't really a lot of meat here, and sometimes you need to ignore the logic that the film willfully glosses over to keep its plot in momentum, which is surprising for a movie this simple.  It's all about the film's lengthy setpieces, though.  If you come to see martial arts mayhem, The Furious is not a movie that shortchanges it's viewer.  It's practically all it has up its sleeve, as once the set-up has been established, the movie sees no reason to slow itself down.  It's all about who needs their ass kicked next and/or how many of them.  The movie can feel like a video game mission, progressing from boss to boss until you reach the goal, and the movie's ending is an endless escalating beat down that probably lasts maybe twenty minutes.  The movie will either exhaust you with its relentlessness or frustrate you with how it never stops to give the viewer anything else.  But it's also the type of movie that action junkies will grin stupidly at and nod their head with until the end credits roll.

Stop!  That!  Train!

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Disaster

Director:  Adam Shankman

Starring:  RuPaul Charles, Ginger Minj, Jujubee, Brooke Lynn Hytes, Latrice Royale, Marty Lauter, Symone, Rachel Bloom, Sarah Michelle Gellar

Pardon me if the idea of another spoof movie so soon after the Scary Movie reboot was something I wasn't too excited about.  I felt like the genre was very thoroughly killed again after the rock solid Naked Gun reboot briefly resurrected it.  But my advice to anyone who is equally trepidicious about giving Stop!  That!  Train! a chance is to just loosen up and enjoy the chaos.  The movie plays to the strengths of a spoof movie a lot better than Scary Movie did last week, and while it can sometimes be a bumpy ride, it's a lot of fun and is always fabulous.  Like a certain influence from 1980, Stop!  That!  Train! is a spoof of disaster movie tropes as a bullet train goes haywire into a deadly storm.  It's drag performers to the rescue, as all of the stewardesses are played by them as they are called upon to save the day.  It's like if Airplane! was hijacked by the cast of To Wong Foo.  And of course, the queen of drag, RuPaul, is here also, playing the President of the United States who desperately needs the train to be stopped in order to save her dropping approval rating.  One can argue that maybe the movie is a bit more hammy than the best spoof movies tend to be, which is also a knock I've repeatedly given the Scary Movie franchise.  If I criticize it for them, I have to criticize it here.  The difference for me is that Stop!  That!  Train! has some base ideas of parody at its core, taking tropes and actually playing around with them instead of copying scenes directly and using them as an excuse to mug for the camera.  But I guess Scary Movie knows its audience, seeing how it's going to be the far more successful movie.  Stop!  That!  Train! knows its audience too.  It's a smaller audience, but they're likely to have a fun time with such a small movie.

MST note:  Some fans might note a cameo from soap opera star Lisa Rinna in this movie, but us MSTies will remember her from her supporting role in Robot Wars.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Backrooms ⭐️⭐️

The Breadwinner ⭐️⭐️

The Mandalorian and Grogu ⭐️⭐️

Masters of the Universe ⭐️⭐️1/2

Obsession ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Pressure ⭐️⭐️1/2

Scary Movie ⭐️

The Sheep Detectives ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Tuner ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Michael ⭐️⭐️

Mortal Kombat II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

"Doing Things for Ourselves in School" & A Tribute to I Accuse My Parents (MST3K Special)

The Short

Pearl is in a very Mean Girls mood when she introduces today's short, probably because it's school related and she's channeling her inner high school bully and resisting the urge to shove Joel in a locker.  Speaking of our hapless host, this is very likely the last bit of riffing we'll ever hear Joel do on the show, so Doing Things for Ourselves in School will probably earn a place in Mystery Science Theater history that was formerly taken by Mitchell.

The short itself is a very basic learning film for children.  The idea is basically showing examples of self-reliance so they will stop bugging their teacher every time they need their pencil sharpened.  They say the Millennial generation was the lazy one, but if Boomers need a short like this to show them how to get off their asses and do productive actions, I'm wondering how true that actually is.  I didn't need a training video to show me how to put things in the trash.

"He thought of asking for help."

"But that's would show weakness."

As mentioned above, the final short of Season 13 belongs to Joel.  And instead of being accompanied by Conor and Kelsey like he has normally been all season, he is joined by Jonah's sidekicks Baron and Hampton.  Taking into account the charity shorts he did with J. Elvis and Bill, this means he has performed a riffing combination with every Servo and Crow performer on the show.  Hell, taking The Christmas Dragon into account, the only main riffing performer he has never riffed alongside in the MST theater is Mike (Joel did perform next to him during the RiffTrax Live:  MST3K Reunion show, however).  Additionally, like Joel's previous short this season, Sleep for Health, the riff script for this short was written by fans.  Sleep for Health was written by backers of the 2015 Kickstarter, and Doing Things for Ourselves in School was written by the 2021 Kickstarter backers.  I had my expectations in the toilet after learning this would be the case, but I didn't need to.  Doing Things for Ourselves in School is much funnier than Sleep for Health.

"And then he knew."

"He couldn't read."

There are a lot of openings in this short, because we're basically making fun of children who lack knowledge of doing basic tasks.  As mean as that sounds, the same basic principle of mocking ineptitude stands.  We have a cast of ignorant characters and we shall mock their ignorance, such as a couple of boys who can't open a jar, only for their girl classmate to find a way to help them, cuing the line "Their masculinity in tatters."  This also sets up an oxymoron in the short itself, which presents itself as being about independence but also offers examples of when children need to ask for help.  Knowing when you need to ask for help is an important lesson, but Servo also has to point out "Doing things for ourselves involves a lot of people."  The short is quite a bit of fun and the riffers have fun with it.  They also take the correct message from the short:  "It was about me!  I'm the hero!"

Thumbs Up

👍

The Livestream

And we're at the end of the road with the final main Gizmoplex livestream.  The entire Gixmoplex experience was both powerful and exhausting.  By the time I got to this point I was working overtime and still trying to make room for all the new MST3K content that was being thrown at me.  So, forgive me if things just kinda got swept under the rug for a while afterward.  I spent several years sleeping.

The next episode to honor is the one, the only (and we prefer it that way) I Accuse My Parents (review here).  One could not ask for a more upbeat, good vibes episode to end our Tribute streams with, and the enthusiasm for this episode is through the roof.  Matt McGinnis loves it, Emily Marsh loves it, Tim Ryder loves it, I love it, and I'm assuming Yvonne Freese loves it too, but she's relatively quiet during this livestream.  Series creator Joel Hodgson also loves it, and while he isn't here tonight, he sends a letter about the episode that Matt reads aloud, encouraged by everyone around him to say it in a Joel impression (that sounds like Kermit the Frog).  Fellow participant Kelsey Ann Brady has not seen it, which is great news because she gets to watch it for the first time.  What's her final verdict on the episode?

"I have no idea what happened."

For those keeping track at home, this is another watch-a-long event, like Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.  Unlike that stream, everyone seems much better prepared for this particular event.  Everyone is chatty and interactive with the episode itself, discussing the fine details of it to just guffawing at the things they love (they especially get the giggles every time one of the riffers quacks at the sight of the duck painting).  Emily is enamored with the movie in general, bringing up her upbringing of watching older movies like Bringing Up Baby (an excellent screwball comedy starring Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn), and she especially loves the mother in this movie.  There is a lot of discussion about 1940's hairstyling because the ladies don't know how Kitty gets her hair to look like that.  Kelsey kindly explains "The longer the bangs, the bigger the loaf!"  There is proper discussion on how old everyone is supposed to be in this movie and just how Jimmy is able to do everything he does in this movie at just seventeen.  They do discuss how they dislike being "helped" in shoe stores like they did back then, preferring not to have strangers touching their feet.  Kelsey does get one of the best zingers during this discussion when she points out "You can't show this kind of feet content today."  They also have a lot of love for the sketches, as everyone howls at the Invention Exchange, and Tom Servo's "nude" scene gets a lot of feedback.

"My nude is different from his nude."

"Everybody's nude is different.  That's what make us special."

There are also personal stories abound.  Everyone has experience with swing dancing and they all compare notes.  Emily tells a story about being in court and winning.  Tim compares a scene in the film to the video game Powerwash Simulator, which Kelsey thinks is a joke premise until both he and Emily take a deal of time explaining that it's an actual game.  Emily says she's getting into Star Trek with Strange New Worlds (which featured Patton Oswalt in its third season!), which Tim piggybacks off of by saying his friend Tawny Newsome headlines Lower Decks, which he misidentifies as "Below Decks," proving he's a poser (Baron Vaughn has a guest role in that show's third season, as well!).  Tim also offers us some insight into his relationship with one of the show's sponsors, claiming the Bendy games are too scary for him.

Of course, the Q&A portion of the stream can only start one way...ACCUSATIONS!  What do they all accuse their parents of?  Tim says his parents are too supportive, but Emily goes into a very detailed story of an argument between her and her dad over an interview between Leonard Maltin and George Lucas where both of them disagreed on which one Lucas was.  The argument got so heated that little Emily was sent to time-out, only to find out she was correct afterward.  They then ask that who of the cast they would accuse should they find themselves in court.  Emily claims Yvonne is easy to accuse because she would probably accept that maybe she did do it.  Kelsey asks if the accusation is about farting because the easy accusation is Conor, who is not here to defend himself (but is watching the stream at home and in the chat).  Yvonne accuses Joel, which makes sense because, without him, none of us would be here.  Tim says you can probably pin anything on Hampton, and I would honestly agree with that.

Other questions involve where the best hamburger sammich and french fried potatoes come from.  Tim hates In-n-Out, which Matt must defend the honor of, while Emily is a Five Guys girl.  I like burgers at dine-in restaurants that are so thick that they are served with a steak knife stabbed in the top, personally.  However, the question is stolen by Matt, who tells a story of finding a brewery that served a burger in between two Krispy Kreme donuts, which he ordered because he just had to know.  He says it was delicious, but Emily wants to know how his poops were afterward.  No comment.  They also discuss what kind of movies they'd watch with their own parents.  Emily says she and her mother love Talladega Nights, Tim says he and his dad would watch Hoosiers, and Yvonne says dad loves Lord of the Rings and mom loves Lifetime movies.  Kelsey's answer is It's a Wonderful Life, which spawns Tim's own story of a disagreement with his father, where Tim claimed the night life in Pottersville looked fun, which offended his father greatly.  I think both sides are right.  Personally, my dad mostly just rewatched John Wayne movies, which weren't really my thing, so I don't think we ever had like a go-to comfort movie, but we did normally watch the sitcom Titus together.  On my mother's side, I remember the first time she took me to the movies to see a non-kids movie that she wanted to see was City Slickers II:  The Legend of Curly's Gold.  Because of that, I kinda attribute the City Slickers movies as movies I'd watch with her.

We close the stream with essays!  What would be our chosen essay topics?  This brings a lot of strange answers that are all over the map, starting with Tim declaring surprisingly quickly that his essay would be about how Ross:  Dress for Less "should be either 'Ress:  Dress for Less' or 'Ross:  Dross for Loss.'"  I think this idea lives rent free inside his head.  Emily has a strange pitch for an essay about being a fake Italian-American, while Kelsey just throws out the title "Laundry!  Not Just For Clothes!"  I don't think Yvonne really knew what to do with this question, so she just goes on a stream-of-consciousness ramble of "If you need something transported, I'm a tall white blonde and probably won't get arrested," which Matt rightfully points out sounds more like a classified ad.

And I just throw out the essay pitch that I always threaten to write, which is about how Sliders is the greatest show ever made that is also the worst show ever made all rolled into one.

This was a very fun stream.  Good short, amazing episode, and wild comradery reminding us of what made the Gizmoplex special.  It's a shame that it's the end of the road for these streams, but they ended on a high.  There is nobody to accuse here.  Everyone should be commended.

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 23 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Masters of the Universe

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Fantasy, Adventure, Action

Director:  Travis Knight

Starring:  Nicholas Galitzine, Jared Leto, Camila Mendes, Idris Elba, Alison Brie, James Purefoy, Morena Baccarin, Jóhannes Haucur Jóhannesson, Kristen Wiig

I was born in the 80's, and while that particular event came after the initial craze of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, I still had enough exposure to it to be fond of it.  This isn't the first He-Man movie, the original being a Canon Films production starring Dolph Lundgren and Frank Langella in 1987.  I think kids were hoping to see something more lavish than what was seen in that film, which transported He-Man and friends to California where they ran around with Valley Girl Courtney Cox.  Fans of big, bold fantasy would prefer leaning into big, bold fantasy.  And while 2026's new He-Man movie isn't perfect, it certainly does that.

Still, it does repeat the 1987 film's biggest mistake by transporting He-Man to the regular world.  Luckily, that's only about twenty minutes of the movie and it's used as a plot device to make He-Man's alter ego of Adam a "lost prince."  Adam is whisked away from his home world of Eternia by the mighty Sorceress protector of the kingdom when the evil warlord Skeletor attacks Castle Greyskull.  Fifteen years later, he is retrieved by childhood friend Teela, who returns him to Eternia where he must embrace his destiny as his world's ultimate hero, He-Man.

Fifteen years ago, this exact movie would have probably made a killing.  Nostalgia for 80's kids was at a peak, resulting in feature films of Transformers and G.I. Joe.  That has died down a lot in the years since and I don't think the demand is really the same.  Not even Transformers movies are pulling in the same numbers that they used to, but most of those movies were bad and people were just conditioned to avoid them, I guess.  It's possible that a good He-Man movie would find an audience.  This particular He-Man movie feels like it's destined to find cult appreciation on home media rather than do gangbusters at the box office.  To be frank, they made a movie that looks and feels like that John Carter movie that Disney made, which was a movie that nobody saw but eventually found an underground appreciation.

Speaking as someone with an appreciation for the franchise, I can be both a witness for the prosecution and the defense of this movie.  This movie is pretty flawed, but it's also pretty fun.  These ideas contrast but they are not mutually exclusive.  The movie knows that it's difficult to take He-Man lore seriously so it never tries.  It never finds the Dungeons & Dragons:  Honor Among Thieves magic sauce in its own cheekiness, but it does hit full throttle in being Saturday Morning Cartoon power fantasy.  I kinda love that for this movie, because it's nothing if it doesn't take full delight in seeing He-Man do his He-Man thing.  He's a character who is a mixture of Conan the Barbarian and Superman and the movie is constantly finding excuses for him to flex as both.  In action spectacle, the movie is wild.

Characterization becomes tricky because the movie also wants to wink at the audience and acknowledge that all of this is dumb, and they do so at the cost of making some of our heroes more inept than they should be.  Some of the comedy only works if Adam is an absolute idiot, so his personality tends to shift whether the movie wants him to be serious or to be funny.  And if we were to take his character journey in the movie seriously, the truth is that he doesn't really have one.  The movie presents itself as being one of those stories of a boy who doesn't know how to fight becoming the most powerful warrior of all time but the thing is that he isn't some masterful warrior, he just becomes too powerful to lose to anybody, even if he doesn't know how to fight.  It becomes a basic self-insert fantasy of "me vs. the world and I'm winning" story that isn't really about anything.

But it's fun.  And the movie is colorful enough that kids might have a good time with it should parents choose to give them their first He-Man exposure.  Just be warned that the movie doesn't resist the urge to make innuendo jokes at the expense of the character "Fisto."  Hell, they even manage to squeeze one out for RamHead that took me completely by surprise.  It's a movie that doesn't seem to know if kids will like it more than adults, so they're covering their bases.

Power Ballad

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Comedy

Director:  John Carney

Starring:  Paul Rudd, Nick Jonas, Peter McDonald, Marcella Plunkett, Havana Rose Liu, Jack Reynor

Paul Rudd plays a wedding singer who spends an evening bonding with former boy band member Nick Jonas only to find months later that Jonas has turned a song that Rudd wrote into a hit.  Rudd then goes on a tear to try and get the recognition he feels he deserves despite the fact that he has no proof of it.  Pop culture hits are often attributed to a singular voice.  Power Ballad is an energetic ode to the unsung contributors who help create, inspire, and are often thrown out in the trash because they aren't the marketing face.  Paul Rudd does pretty well as the man whose passions don't exactly pan out, while Nick Jonas is solid as the more successful counterpart who starts out relatable enough but becomes more of a douche with the more success that comes.  I do feel that latter aspect sometimes gets lost in the narrative, because the movie sometimes seems laser focused on Rudd's POV that it feels like it's ignoring Jonas's.  Aspects of Jonas's life that change over the course of the film sometimes get skimmed over and the movie might have been stronger if it did have more focus on shifts in his personality.  The movie isn't even very long, clocking in at an hour-and-a-half, so this isn't a time issue.  The movie just elects to drop it.

Another issue I was feeling was that of deja vu.  Something about this movie seemed very familiar as I was watching it.  Then it hit me that the movie is arguably just ten percent of the movie Coco ballooned out to a ninety minute dramedy, right down to the fact that the song changes its entire meaning when heard in the original context.  That story is more powerful than the one seen here, but Power Ballad is a fun alternative that has less meat on its bones.

Scary Movie

⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Horror

Director:  Michael Tiddes

Starring:  Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Anna Ferris, Regina Hall

Scary Movie is a franchise that probably could have been great if it were done well.  The unfortunate fact is that it was never done all that well.  I remember being very disappointed in the original movie when it was released, but in retrospect, it's probably because doing a parody of a movie like Scream was a bad idea because you're doing a parody of a parody, and as an audience member I just didn't see a point.  But I also wonder about being fifteen when it came out, still too young for the R-rating but somehow I felt like I was watching something I was too old to find funny.  That's some weird backwards effect the movie had on me.  Still, they kept making them.  I kept watching them.  Couldn't tell you why, but I remember being fine with 2 and 3, which might have been from low expectations, and thinking 4 was boring.  Never saw the fifth one, and by all accounts, I didn't miss anything.  I also didn't see the Haunted House movies, which was Marlon Wayans doing a found footage parody in Scary Movie style and was also directed by Michael Tiddes, who helmed this sixth film in the Scary Movie franchise.  During the hype for this movie, there was a talk of how the Wayans were basically locked out of the franchise after the second movie by Harvey Weinstein, and this film is their big reclamation of it.  It's always shitty to hear stories like that and it's good that there is a semi-happy outcome for them.  The outcome would have been preferable if the movie they made to reclaim it wasn't far worse than the movies made after they left.*

*Still haven't seen the fifth one and I'm not going to fact check myself, so I'm going to just assume I'm right.

The film brings back all of the parody characters introduced in thr first film, led by Anna Ferris as Cindy Cambpell, who has been given a Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween 2018 makeover.  Regina Hall is also back as bestie Brenda Meeks, while Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Cheri Oteri, Dave Sheridan, and Lochlyn Munro reprise their roles from the original after two decades.  Together, they navigate another nonsense plot of parody milkshake, primarily following the story of Scream 2022, while adding in elements of Get Out, Sinners, Terrifier, Longlegs, Smile, The Substance, and more.  The movie's story is baffling to follow, which is par for the course on this franchise, which often feels like they're making parodies on the fly based on what movie they watched the night before.  This has always been a vice for Scary Movie because they seem to think their movie doesn't need to have a plot to be funny.  It's true, I guess, but I always look to Airplane! or The Naked Gun and find that, despite their outrageousness, they do tell a story that you can follow.  They're simple stories, and nobody really comes for them, but I personally think it makes a difference.  But the comedic stylings are also differing, too.  I've always said that the difference between Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker spoof movies and the types of spoofs that launched with Scary Movie is that the classic ZAZ movies were performed in deadpan, and the actors existed in utterly ridiculous surroundings that they took completely seriously, while Scary Movie is a series of comedians playing the comedy up and going full ham.  That tradition continues with this one, which is even hammier than usual.

But the movie is a comedy, so let's talk about the laughs.  The movie feels like it's going for "equal opportunity offender" status, but the problem is that it doesn't seem to know what audience sees movies like that.  It will mock the propaganda of right wing media outlets one minute and then do the exact same tired "anti-woke" jabs that such outlets do that it was making fun of earlier.  It's not exactly centrist mocking in all directions, it's just showing a bunch of weak "offensive" gags at the wall and seeing  if someone hates something enough to laugh at a really stupid joke about it.  I think what they think they're doing is playing up to Gen Xers who lament the fact that certain words from their teenage lingo are now considered slurs, but all this does is make the movie feel like it was made by a bunch of old people who are mad about the fact that they're considered old now and decide to take it out on the generation gap.  It feels more sad than funny.  It's pretty embarrassing to watch.

I'll give the movie props for some minor points of amusement.  I was usually mellow with the movie whenever Marlon Wayans was onscreen.  While his material isn't great, his stoner character is still kind of a likeable doofus.  And there's a pretty fun animated sequence where he gets trapped in KPop Demon Hunters and makes it with all three of them.  That was probably my favorite part of the movie, other than a mid-credit sequence where he plays Orlock in a parody of Nosferatu.  Teyana Taylor has a pretty decent cameo at the beginning of the movie in a parody of Scream VI, but it also sets the movie up for one of its bigger fails later on after Ghostface mocks her for losing the Oscar this year.  I'm assuming that this scene was filmed after the majority of the movie, because this line appears later on:

"Quit trying to win an Oscar.  It's a horror movie.  It'll never happen.  Ask Demi Moore."

To this I say ask Amy Madigan.  I mean, fuck, she was the one Teyana Taylor lost the Oscar to, and you made a joke about her losing the Oscar in this fucking movie.

It's this type of inconsistency that makes Scary Movie more frustrating to watch than it should be.  Horror is easy to make fun of, which is one of the reasons it's so fun to watch, so the fact that Scary Movie misses the target as often as it does makes it look like it's batting zero at T-ball.  I wish there was a really good Scary Movie that I could love.  It sucks that they insist on making movies like this instead.  The first note I wrote about this movie was a singular word and I honestly almost just scrapped any type of review and just used that to express my feelings on this movie.  "Garbage."

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Backrooms ⭐️⭐️

The Breadwinner ⭐️⭐️

The Mandalorian and Grogu ⭐️⭐️

Michael ⭐️⭐️

Obsession ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Pressure ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Sheep Detectives ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Hokum ⭐️⭐️⭐️

In the Grey ⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Hoppers ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Protector ⭐️

Coming Soon!

"Better Breakfasts, U.S.A." & A Tribute to Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (MST3K Special)

The Short

We've received quite a few tips and tidbits on food with this season's shorts, even more on that than bicycle safety!  But hey, at least they didn't crowd the series with shorts on reproduction.  I think we've had one too many on that.

Better Breakfasts, U.S.A. specifically singles out the most important meal of the day, breakfast! ("Lunch and dinner can pound sand!  Brunch, you're on thin ice!")  It leads a group of children through a TV station, which is doing a show on...breakfast cereal.  Sure to be a smash hit.  Watch out M*A*S*H, here come the T*R*I*X!  Here, the children learn of the various sorts of grains and wheats that create cereal and how it gets from the field into the milk and down to our stomachs!  We also learn about the rigorous testing that was put forth in showing just how important breakfast is to everyday function which doesn't come off as staged at all and is certainly not a propaganda piece to help boost cereal sales.

Kids are definitely the target of this one, hoping to implant the idea that they need to keep buying cereal or consequences shall incur.  Do you want to become a lifeless drone throughout your day?  Do you want to put thousands of people out of work?  Better buy those Fruit Loops and save not just yourself, but an entire industry!  Get invested in your breakfast!  A BETTER breakfast, in this U.S.A!

I like this one a bit.  This short definitely vibes with the most loveable of industrial shorts we've seen from classic MST.  And Emily's crew do a superb job with it, which would be their last short of the season.  Emily, in particular, has some witty barbs in the chamber for this one, as the short discusses the wide area in which wheat is grown, to which she responds "Eat too much wheat and you'll have a wide area!"  And I love her little grumble for a lady production worker:  "I was supposed to be a poet."

This one of my favorite shorts this season, and I think it's Emily's highlight for her lengthy run with the shorts over the period.  This is a breakfast of champions!

Thumbs Up

👍

The Livestream

Things get switched up with this live event, where two alternative versions were streamed.  The first was the basic tribute event, which played the basic version of Overdrawn at the Memory Bank (review here) and followed with a Q&A session featuring Matt McGinnis, Jonah Ray, Baron Vaughn, Hampton Yaunt, and Rebecca Hansen.  The second was a special watch-a-long presentation, which featured the episode playing along with additional commentary from Jonah, Baron, Hampton, and Rebecca.  This was a format we hadn't seen since the Mindless Summer Festival on YouTube and I'm happy to see it back, though this wasn't one of their more fun attempts at one.

There are several things that gnawed at me during this particular special.  It feels like the live hosts aren't sure what to do when there are new bumper segments and ads.  There are long portions where they sit around and stay silent, waiting for the bit to finish, though occasionally there will be a tidbit that they throw in about filming a particular segment that is pretty fun.  There also seems to be some confusion as to whether or not they're supposed to sit in during the intermission, as Rebecca repeatedly asks what they're supposed to do when it starts.

Another little hurdle to it is that the episode seems to be new to most of our live-watchers.  Jonah and Baron say that this is their first time watching it, while Rebecca says she's seen it but not for a good long while.  It is fun watching the episode with fresh eyes, especially with Baron, who is laughing up a storm during the episode.  The main issue with the watch-a-long format is that they settle in and watch the episode for a decent amount of time.  It gets to a point where those who went to the basic stream probably didn't miss much.  It's still a hoot watching the show with these people.  As mentioned above, Baron is having a blast.  He especially loves the Public Pearl host segments, bending over with laughter at hearing the programmer "Are You Being Served?"  And he has some colorful reactions to some of the episodes most memorable lines, including disbelief at hearing the words "Is it...sexy?"  When it comes to discussing the episode afterwards, most of the talk is in praise of Mary Jo Pehl, who they all agree stole the episode.

The questions also get into the nitty gritty of the movie when it comes to subject of doppling, with light confusion as to how it's portrayed in the movie.  This comes at the expense of a question wondering what movie the cast would want to be injected into, but Jonah believes the way it works is that you go into the last movie you watched, so the question as asked was answered only with some off-kilter, unexplained answers, such as Meteor Man and Meet the Parents.  The question then gets turned into what they all watched most recently, as Baron turns some heads by saying The Menu (which is a great movie, but a very bad one to be inserted into), Jonah says The Road to Wellville (which is a movie that I've never heard of that has a stacked cast), and Rebecca gets the most pity because she says Munchie, while Hampton's internet goes out and he doesn't answer the question.  They also get into the subject of doppling into their animals of choice, and Hampton wins the night by saying "A CROW!"  Jonah like penguins, Rebecca wants to be a koala, and Baron is torn between a boa constrictor and a marmont, which are two very specific animals on the opposite side of the spectrum.  He also wants Matt McGinnis to become Rat McGinnis, while Rebecca prefers Wombat McGinnis.

Other questions ask what the best movie featured on the show is.  Baron gets universal rejection for his joke answer of Munchie.  Rebecca likes The Mask (agreed), Hampton has fondness for Santo, and Matt says he legitimately enjoys The Beast of Hollow Mountain.  Probably the most surprising answer is Jonah having a long list of discussion points for The Christmas That Almost Wasn't.  For me, I'm a Universal Monster nerd, so it's easily Revenge of the Creature.  From the relaunch seasons, I'd echo The Mask, but would also profess love for Doctor Mordrid and Demon Squad.  An interesting question is brought up about recognizable locations in MST movies, which Rebecca chimes in with being familiar with a lot of the locations in The Home Economics Story.  I drive through most of the locations of Last Clear Chance on a daily basis, so I know how she feels.  They're also asked what their "catchphrase" would be, which I think was supposed to be an opening for funny one-liners like "You know you want me, baby!"  Instead, Jonah and Rebecca bring up lines that have been quoted to them by fans, like "Pretty nice!" and "Mr. Filing Cabinet."  Hampton, again, steals the show by just doing an Alex Jones impression.

This is an okay live event.  The short is pretty great, while the watch-a-long event doesn't really take off, and while the Q&A is good enough, it's not particularly memorable.  I'd probably consider the raw tribute with just the episode the superior experience, but it's also just fun to sit down with friends and watch an episode you've seen a hundred times, so the watch-a-long isn't a total bust.

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 22 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Backrooms

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Kane Parsons

Starring:  Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, Mark Duplass, Finn Bennett, Lukita Maxwell

Chiwetel Ejiofor wanders into a magic portal in the wall of his furniture store and winds up in a weird purgatory labyrinth of abstract rooms that are seemingly endless.  The concept is very much like that Twilight Zone episode where the little girl finds a portal to another dimension in her bedroom (also the Simpsons parody where Homer does the same thing and becomes a 3D model), so this movie isn't going to win many points for originality.  In fact, we've already had a movie very similar to this one in Exit 8 this year.  Exit 8 had a lot going for it that Backrooms does not have, though.  For one, it's psychology feels more intricately linked to its labyrinth concept, while with Backrooms, both the psychological aspect and its horror aspect feel separated.  Ejiofor is a man going through a mental crisis of being lost in life and finds himself lost in whatever the fuck this is, but there is not a lot about each aspect that enhances the other.  The whole Backrooms thing seems pretty incidental.  Sometimes it mirrors things from his life but there doesn't seem to be any genuine reason for it, except generic trauma baggage that is only here for decor for a giant pirate man that eats people.  Exit 8, by comparison, had a setting that seemed to be very specifically linked to an emotional and mental state, almost like a trial one needed to prove themselves in.  In Backrooms, your brain is fucked up, then fucked up shit happens.  Whatever.

The film is based on a Creepypasta internet meme, and it feels exactly like one.  On first glance, it seems psychologically haunting but the longer you stare at it, the more meaningless it becomes.  After a while, it's hard to not get bored and do something else.  The movie is not void of effective moments.  It just can't munster up the energy to turn them into anything interesting.  The primary trick of the film is to use liminal space and uncanny valley to invoke unease.  Sometimes it lingers on both too much and it just becomes silly.  After a while, wandering around in a bunch of beige rooms starts to become more irritating than creepy, especially since very few of them offer much new except a different object that's stuck in a wall.  Backrooms is a movie that I wanted to like but could not work up the energy to care about because it just wasn't anything.  It wasn't interesting, it wasn't disturbing, it was just...empty.

MST Note:  This movie features footage from Santa Claus Conquers the Martians.  It's a pretty random movie to just throw in here, but I was happy to see it.

The Breadwinner

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy

Director:  Eric Appel

Starring:  Nate Bargatze, Mandy Moore, Colin Jost, Zach Cherry, Martin Herlihy, Kumail Nanjiani, Will Forte

Comedian Nate Bargatze tries his hand at a feature comedy in this flick, which has him playing a working dad who suddenly finds himself running the day-to-day household when his wife suddenly starts a business of her own and has to leave town.  Things don't go very well because man is not equiped for motherly work or some sexist shit like that.  Harmless, if also clueless.  The movie is like a Junior High School community play remake of Mr. Mom but nobody had actually seen Mr. Mom so they just took a guess.  Honestly, I've watched the trailer to this movie many times at the theater in the past few months and I've always zoned out after the Shark Tank sketch, which was always very weird to me, where Bargatze is scolded by the "sharks" for seemingly no reason.  That's the primary joke of the movie, where Bargatze is seemingly innocuous but somehow manages to screw everything up by simply being present.  He just walks in a room and that causes everything to unravel around him.  The movie becomes that Community meme of Donald Glover walking into a room with pizza with everything in utter chaos, only repeat.  It's a movie that's hard to work up any real energy to laugh at, because it's just so sterile.  That makes it a pretty okay offering for families wanting a nice clean comedy, and the movie doesn't have any fart jokes or masked innuendo, so it's pretty inoffensive even by the standards of other family movies.  I can't promise it will be a favorite of the household, though.

Pressure

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Anthony Maras

Starring:  Brendan Fraser, Andrew Scott, Kerry Condon, Chris Messina, Damian Lewis

Isn't that just typical, when you make a historical war drama but don't know what to say, so you just discuss the weather.

Based on a true story, Brendan Fraser plays then-general, future-President Dwight Eisenhower as he is planning the invasion of D-Day during World War II.  There is only one problem, the forecast.  The film follows him listening to the advice of debating meteorologists in the uncertainty that the plan of action might go forward.  It's a movie about tactics more than event, which makes this movie a tricky sell, even with solid acting.  Fraser is good, and I like seeing Kerry Condon in things, but I wouldn't call this a powerhouse of historical performances.  The movie's first half is pretty dull, as the drama struggles to really take off in weather pattern analysis.  The movie does become more interesting as it goes, when the stakes start getting established.  There are even a few dramatic beats that the movie absolutely nails.  There aren't enough of them for me to say this movie is a must-see, but it tells it's story pretty decently.

Tuner

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  Daniel Roher

Starring:  Leo Woodall, Havana Rose Liu, Lior Raz, Tovah Feldshuh, Jean Reno, Dustin Hoffman

Leo Woodall stars as the titular piano tuner, who has a hearing sensitivity defect that also happens to make him ideal for hearing tumbler locks on safes.  That, of course, makes this one of those "Normie has one skill that happens to be very useful to baddies" movies, and he is enlisted as a safecracker by some shady folks.  Then comes the part where he makes easy money to get out of debt and tries to juggle a girlfriend while doing his bad deeds behind her back.  The movie is probably a little too straightforward to stand out among its hapless skilled guy crime movie peers.  Tuner doesn't have the rhythm of a Baby Driver, for example.  It is a solid execution of tropes with a decent heart in its production.  The movie almost seems to have more fun with its music sequences over its crime story, so if it starts to feel a little basic, it will suddenly burst with a passion that might surprise you in the corner you'd least expect.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Devil Wears Prada 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I Love Boosters ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Mandalorian and Grogu ⭐️⭐️

Michael ⭐️⭐️

Mortal Kombat II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Obsession ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Passenger ⭐️⭐️

Project Hail Mary ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Sheep Detectives ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Animal Farm ⭐️

Desert Warrior ⭐️⭐️1/2

Over Your Dead Body ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

Dracula ⭐️

Dreams ⭐️⭐️

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sentimental Value ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 21 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Corporate Retreat

⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Horror

Director:  Aaron Fisher

Starring:  Odeya Rush, Alan Ruck, Zión Moreno, Ashton Sanders, Kirby Johnson, Rosanna Arquette for some reason

A horror-comedy that is neither thrilling nor funny, this film sees a group of employees going on a, you guessed it, corporate retreat!  The trust exorcises start to become deadly when the ousted company founder highjacks the weekend and forces them into survival games to "achieve transcendence" or some dumb shit.  Insert random scenarios, none of which seem to have much thought put into them, nor does there seem to be a reason for any of the mayhem aside from pettiness.  Most of the film is goofy, but any attempt at comedy is misdelivered and not very amusing.  Most of the survival games are clumsy and boring, aside from a section late in the movie involving eyes, which was slightly unnerving despite lackluster execution.  There is not a lot in the movie that feels like it's excelling at what the movie sets out to do.  But, to be frank, I'm also not sure what this movie is trying to accomplish.  Being a dark, off-beat satire I can understand, but the movie is made with inconsistent logic based around a premise that doesn't seem to have a genuine reason to it.  It feels like the movie was devised because someone was trying to come up with a quirky setting for a survival thriller and took it as a writing challenge.  If the end goal was to make something, then they succeeded.  If it was to make something coherent, then less so.

Also, Rosanna Arquette is in this movie for about three seconds and I don't understand why.  She just kinda jumps in and ducks out.  What a weird paycheck for her.

I Love Boosters

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy

Director:  Boots Riley

Starring:  Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylor Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Don Cheadle, Demi Moore

This surrealist comedy sees a group of professional shoplifters who steal clothing and sell it second-hand concocting a revenge scheme against fashion designer Demi Moore.  It involves a bunch of weird shit, like a teleportation machine, matter deconstruction, a monster who swallows souls through the vaginal region, stopmotion skinless people, and Eiza González having shaved eyebrows, so don't be surprised how eccentric the movie will get in its silly mayhem.  Whether or not it's a movie worth recommending largely depends on a tolerance level for surrealism.  If you like your comedies grounded, then this movie is an easy pass.  But as outlandish as the movie can get, it is done with genuine thoughtfulness and with thematic value.  The hurdle becomes that it's mostly a freight train of gibberish in delivering it's themes, meaning it can become cumbersome after a while.  I have the same problem with Wes Anderson movies, where I appreciate what he's trying to do, I just feel trapped by the movie after a certain period of time.  I Love Boosters is at least constantly changing its gears as it goes, constantly bringing some new nonsense that fits in with its established vibe.  Maybe it's too much nonsense, but you've been warned.  The movie is a relentless two-hour limit test of where the edge of sensory overload is, but if you like your movies off-beat, frantic, and wacky, I Love Boosters is probably a yearly highlight.

The Mandalorian and Grogu

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure

Director:  Jon Favreau

Starring:  Pedro Pascal, Jeremy Allan White, Sigourney Weaver

Buckle up; it's Star Wars time.  And it's back in cinemas, the domain where it made a name for itself all those years ago.  Star Wars has technically never left, having been a constant presence on streaming due to all that content-pushing on Disney+, so if you don't feel like this is the big "welcome back" event since the deflating disappointment that was Rise of Skywalker that you've been wanting, you have good reason for that.  I guess Disney thought that the best way to reintroduce Star Wars to cinemas was do do a feature film version of Disney+'s most popular series, The Mandalorian, which did a solid three season run that launched a couple of spin-offs in the process.  I've seen most of The Mandalorian, and it's pretty fun.  It manages to capture that pulpy adventure feel that you'd hope to get from Star Wars while offering an update on the classic samurai story Lone Wolf and Cub, chronicling a ronin protecting an orphan child.  I haven't watched the third season, which is probably because I need to watch The Book of Boba Fett first and I don't care enough.  I usually tend to get more interested in actually watching Star Wars when I'm not irritated at Star Wars fans, which are instances that are few and far between.  I haven't even watched Andor, and probably won't for a good long while.  My loss, probably.  I wish I cared.

I'm assuming the movie picks up wherever season three left off, seeing the Mandalorian and force-sensitive child Grogu doing bounty hunting work.  They take a job for the Hutts, seeking out Rotta, the estranged son of Jabba and heir to to gangster empire.  Things go south, as deals with the Hutts normally do (just ask Han Solo, who is still picking carbonite out of his teeth), and Mando and Grogu fight to survive.  It all seems like a pretty solid foundation for a lark, but, somehow, the personality of the TV series became muted in the transition to the big screen.  The movie has a lot of effects and action, but it's never very exciting.  Most of the film feels like a placeholder until Star Wars can figure it's shit out and release a real movie, playing it safe by putting two popular characters out and have them do action things.  I'm not even sure much is accomplished by them in the movie, which is weird because a lot is going on, in a segmented manner.  The film feels episodic to the point you would swear that they just took their season four pitch and crammed it into a fragmented movie.  Of course, maybe I should be thankful that they didn't extend this into something longer and equally uninteresting.

The movie's positive qualities give it a hint of sparkle.  Ludwig Göransson's score is a rousing banger.  Action is very hectic and...actiony.  It doesn't always feel like it's moving the story forward but those who come to see people shot with lasers will get that.  And I love the puppets.  I always like seeing Grogu scuttle around, and he has even smaller puppet sidekicks that follow him and mutter barely-English gibberish that are equally fun.  My favorite section of the movie is when Mando is out for the count and we follow Grogu on a little survival adventure.  It's charming, creative, and has the heart the rest of the movie is lacking.  But, for the most part, I just didn't feel like I was on a ride or a journey.  When one goes for pulpy fun, that is what one should be aiming for.  It's better than Rise of Skywalker, but this is not the shot in the arm that Star Wars needed.

Passenger

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  André Øvredal

Starring:  Jacob Scipio, Lou Llobell, Melissa Leo, Joseph Lopez

Horror is in a renaissance right now, and it's a very good time to be invested in the dark side of cinema, to the point that this year's Oscars had to give a giant chunk of their awards (including acting accolades) to Sinners, Weapons, and Frankenstein.  They can't all be winners, though.  We still live in a world where Renny Harlin's Strangers trilogy got made, after all.  And it's a bad time to open a generic horror flick when you're in the aftermath of what is probably going to wind up being the horror movie of the year.  There's nothing wrong with a good popcorn horror, though if it doesn't get its meathooks into the audience, it's easy for it to just slump you out with disinterest.  It's hard to sit through Passenger when you know you could walk into the next theater and see Obsession again, instead.  Hell, I've already seen Obsession three times.  I've also seen Passenger but am unlikely to think of it again for the rest of the year.

Passenger was directed by horror fan favorite André Øvredal, who helmed beloved indie films Trollhunter and The Autopsy of Jane Doe, as well as more expensive cult films Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and The Last Voyage of the Demeter.  Here he spins a tale of a couple starting a new life on the road in their van.  Along the way, they pick up a demonic spirit that latches itself to them.  All of this feels like padding to the sequences the movie has thoroughly mapped out in its head, including the prologue which you've probably seen most of in the teaser trailer.  Øvredal loves using sweeping, single-take camera movements in this film, always leading up to the ghostie jumping out for a jump scare close up to the camera.  It startles a few times, but it starts to feel like the only trick in his arsenal.  The movie starts being less fun when it tries to make us empathize with the characters it's chasing, who just aren't interesting.  They have weird relationship issues that they need to sort out, but it feels like they have an artificial communication barrier that is a bit of a plot contrivance.  The drama doesn't escalate our urgency in seeing these characters survive because they never feel like real people.  But I guess it would be nice if they lived because they seem harmless enough.  Most of the movie is just paper thin characters wandering/driving around in the dark.  The movie is very good at wandering aimlessly in the dark.  Sometimes it gets creative with it.  More movies should use a projector showing Roman Holiday as a flashlight, even if I did spend those scenes watching that movie instead of this one.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Devil Wears Prada 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

In the Grey ⭐️⭐️

Obsession ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Michael ⭐️⭐️

Mortal Kombat II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Project Hail Mary ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Sheep Detectives ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Top Gun ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Mother Mary ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Mummy ⭐️⭐️1/2

Normal ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Bride! ⭐️⭐️1/2 

Coming Soon!