RT02-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!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 41 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Angel and the Badman

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Western

Director:  Julio Quintana

Starring:  Zachary Levi, Meg Fraser, Neil McDonough, Tommy Lee Jones

Zachary Levi plays a feared outlaw and I can't stop laughing while typing this sentence.  He takes a bullet in the gut and is nursed back to health on the farm of Meg Fraser, and he helps her out, in turn.  The film is a remake of a 1940's western, with Levi taking over for a role originally played by John Wayne.  While I'm not the world's greatest Wayne scholar (that would have been my father), I can only imagine that this of this as a significant downgrade, like replacing a Great Dane with a Poodle.  But I can easily understand the appeal of this story, which is a basic hard man who softens around kind folk tale.  The delivery is very Hallmark Channel, which is weird when you consider Hallmark already made their own remake of this movie about twenty years ago.  I haven't seen that version, but it's hard to imagine it being much more saccharine than this.  But I also know to never underestimate Hallmark schmaltz.  This movie makes the curious choice to have a clean and cutesy tone, which makes the moments where it wants to be grim and dirty feel incorrect.  The outlaw aspect is very one-dimensional, generating a form of conflict that seems alien to the Little House on the Prairie persona that the film has adopted but only in a way that seems like a Sunday School Play performance of debauchery.  A smarter production would have utilized this as an invasion of the film's purity.  Instead, the movie softens it up, trying to portray acts of violence in a very clean and unnatural way.  It's easy to picture the movie picking up an audience who thrive off of reruns of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, but it probably won't grow past that.

The Beast

⭐️

Genre:  Action

Director:  Renny Harlin

Starring:  Samuel L. Jackson, Joel Kinnaman, Colin Morgan, Guy Burnet

This is the third Renny Harlin movie of the year.  You've been warned.

This one has Samuel L. Jackson playing the President of the United States.  After a vague global uprising that the movie never embellishes upon, the majority of his security detail is killed, leaving him to try and evacuate by driving his Secret Service car, known as "the Beast."  It's all decked out with big guns and gizmos, like the Batmobile, setting up an action movie that takes place almost entirely within its interior.  It's like somebody saw Jackson's car sequence in Captain America:  The Winter Soldier and decided to turn it into an entire movie.

I like the idea of this movie.  I would have liked it better if it had any thought put into it.  There is just not enough here.  The conflict is a plot device, and the details of it probably has no relevance on Jackson's story but the fact that we don't know why it's happening means that we don't know what's at stake, we don't know what they're trying to accomplish, and we don't know what Jackson can accomplish by simply surviving it.  The only thing we know is that he is a world leader and they want all world leaders dead (and it sounds like they were surprisingly effective at this wide-ranging master plan).  I know what Jackson wants and I know what they want.  I don't know why any of this is happening.

The movie obviously has a very limited budget which means a lot of the action is done through implication rather than visualization.  This sparks some creativity in framing, but sometimes the action is too flashy and quick to actually make sense of what just happened.  The movie's sole virtue is Jackson himself, who plays an anemic sceenplay with determination.  The filmmakers probably know this.  They even throw in a self-aware reference to his casting, as Joel Kinnaman tells him "I love it when you say 'motherfucker,' sir.  It sounds so good when you say it."  It's gives the impression the people making it are having fun.  It's unfortunate the final product isn't.

Double Trouble

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Heist, Action

Director:  Shaun Piccinino

Starring:  Violet McGraw, Madeleine McGraw, Andrew Koji, Struggle Jennings, Azazi Donnelly

This movie appears to be a vehicle for real life sisters Madeleine and Violet McGraw, who are best known for the Black Phone and M3GAN franchises, respectively.  I don't know if they're popular enough for any sort of film union to mean anything for a tween audience but I also don't know what kids are into these days beyond Paw Patrol and KPop Demon Hunters.  The title brings to mind all those Olsen twin movies that would go direct to video back in the late 90's.  I'm pretty sure one of them was called "Double Trouble."  There had to be one.  Right?  I'm not going to check, so you're on your own.

Double Trouble is practically two types of child entertainers rolled into one.  The first is the two teen stars in a "clever kids outsmart the dummy adult criminals" scenario.  The second is one of those family friendly action movies Jackie Chan used to make because his popularity with youngsters skyrocketed.  Just replace Jackie Chan with Andrew Koji.  The basic premise has the McGraw sisters bored while their parents do adult things in Las Vegas, so they break into the back offices of their casino hotel and get busted by security officer/former criminal Andrew Koji.  All of this happens at the same time a heist is going down, masterminded by Koji's former partner.  Koji does some kicks and the girls do some Home Alone shenanigans.

This is one of those movies that I would watch on the Disney Channel when I was ten, not think about while I was watching it, and then completely forget existed.  I'd cite examples but none come to mind.  Fundamentally, it's a product targeting a very simple mindset.  There are a lot of jokes, but it's not particularly funny.  There are action scenes, but they don't excite.  There is holiday cheer, but it's just dressing.  It's not particularly good at anything, it's just an empty calorie watch.  There are also some tonal oddities in the movie.  Koji and the McGraw sisters sometimes feel like they're in two separate movies.  Main villain Azizi Donnelly is playing her role far sexier than you'd expect for a kids movie, with dirty talk and innuendo.  Even the Las Vegas setting seems inappropriate for the movie's tone, though it works for the setpieces they've concocted.  This movie is not particularly great but it doesn't matter because I won't remember it in an hour.

Falling.

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Romance

Director:  Colin Krisel, James Krisel

Starring:  K.J. Apa, Isabel May, Archie Rinaux, Emma Laird, Alex Jarrett

The spirit of late 90's bittersweet Miramax romance lives on in Falling, which chronicles womanizer K.J. Apa reluctantly finding a woman he's willing to settle down with in Isabel May.  His newfound monogamous relationship finds itself in jeopardy when his best friend, Archie Rinaux, falls in love with May.  To make matters worse, she might just love him back, as the two begin an affair behind Apa's back.  What's most concerning about this is that the movie almost seems to be romanticizing cheating at first.  This actually isn't the case because it has a specific destination in mind that examines the lives of two different men, one that is put-together and confident and another that is self-doubting and stuck in a rut, and comparing what each can achieve and how they affect one-another.  I found the ending to this movie very interesting because it says a lot with very few words.  The question becomes whether the journey to get there is worth the time it takes because this flick can be a chore when it's hiding its cards.  Falling is very tropey.  It wants to have a rebellious indie charisma but a lot of the build-up to it's interesting finale is too genre-pandering.  That doesn't necessarily make it bad but it does chip away at the personality that it wants to project.  This movie is such a banal love triangle romance until it finally reveals that it isn't really a romance that the latter element cannot effectively eliminate the former.  I wish it did.  The point it was making had was worth a genuine discussion.  It just came in too late.

Never After Dark

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Dave Boyle

Starring:  Moeka Hoshi, Kento Kaku, Kurumi Inagaki, Matsuo Yoshioka, Tae Kimura

In case you need something Japanese before Godzilla Minus Zero storms into our lives next month, it's time for some J-horror spookums.  This movie has a psychic called upon to investigate a secluded house where the owner claims that there is a ghost wandering around the halls.  Using her link to the other side, she discovers the dark secrets that this spectre carries.  Never After Dark plays with a very basic premise that has been done before but does so with flavor and atmosphere.  Our psychic lead is interesting and her methods are creative, while the mystery has some neat turns.  The film sometimes drifts into putting its story on the backseat in hopes of creating some memorable visuals, which occasionally causes slowdown in the plot.  It adds the the film's casual creep factor though, making it a ghost story that'll haunt in the moment, if not after it's over.

Other Mommy

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Rob Savage

Starring:  Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass, Arabella Olivia Clark, Dichen Lachman, Arian Moayed, Karen Allen

A young girl has a "special friend" who lives in her closet and happens to look like her mother, Jessica Chastain.  But his entity that she calls "Other Mommy" has more nefarious needs than just being a friend.  Other Mommy is the premise and structure of a Goosebumps book trying to be dressed up as a more adult level of horror.  Sometimes it's effective at it, but often it can seem too childish to jolt the way it wants to.  There are things in this movie that are objectively pretty great, and I was enjoying this movie for good long while.  There is some fun popcorn horror craziness and the film has one particular gore scene that is actually one of the most spectacular things I've seen all year.  That's not to last, because the movie almost seems to sabotage itself as it transitions into its climax.

The movie starts to lose some gas once it introduces paranormal investigators and the entire vibe of the movie shifts to being some sort of needless Insidious knock-off.  Visually, this sequence is a treat, and I like seeing Dichen Lachman show up in things because...well, frankly there is no way I can finish this sentence without incriminating myself, so I'll just say "because reasons."  Unfortunately, the entire sequence just seems lifted from a different movie entirely and it feels like we've briefly been thrust into an obtuse camp horror for five minutes.  The energy the film loses drifts into the climax, where the movie starts swinging with some big ideas that never land.  The film's third act is a trainwreck.  I think it's trying to be unconventional, but every aspect of its delivery is miscalculated.  It ends the movie on what feels like an unearned note, where it knows it's time to end but does so by just saying "Here's your metaphor.  Have at it."

It's a shame.  Chastain is really good in this.  She is lathered in digital enhancement for most of her horror scenes, which makes her less effective than she probably could have been otherwise, but this is an excellent performance.  She's a centerpiece to things in this movie that could have worked but never get to shine.

The Social Reckoning

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Aaron Sorkin

Starring:  Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Bill Burr, Wunmi Mosaku, Billy Magnussen, Betty Gilpin

The Social Network was a movie about some assholes that accidentally changed human interaction.  The Social Reckoning is about whether or not they changed it for the better.  Spoiler:  the answer is no.  The movie covers the events between 2019 and 2021 where Facebook employee Frances Haugen (played by Mikey Madison, in her first post-Oscar role) exposes Facebook's skewed algorithms and lacking fact-checking systems to journalist Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White).  This lead to the publishing of "The Facebook Files" in the Wall Street Journal.

And I just want to say that all of this is why I rarely use social media anymore.

The difference between The Social Network and The Social Reckoning is the difference between internal politics and public perception politics.  It's also the difference between a David Fincher political drama and an Aaron Sorkin political drama.  That might read as a backhanded compliment but I don't want to take anything away from Sorkin.  The man has been doing his thing for decades.  He has won many awards for it.  Some of which were for writing The Social Network.  But Reckoning is less rhythmic and playful than Network was, feeling more in the vibe of Sorkin's TV dramas.  The movie doesn't come alive like the previous film did, as it just wants to deliver a clear and concise message.  And the message is received.  The movie is not subtle about it.  It doesn't use a hammer to make its point, it uses a bulldozer.  But when going up against tech oligarchs, maybe subtlety is best left to the wind.

There is one big flaw in this movie; one that is an intentional choice and I understand why it was made.  The movie talks a lot about consequences and while it discusses social media being an indirect cause of them because of algorithms, it always avoids the direct cause of certain incidents by name because that is a much bigger can of worms.  But it also comes off as if it's avoiding them out of cowardice, creating the image of a political drama that is afraid to get political.  Because of that, the movie's message can't hit as hard, but it's still a message worth sharing.

Netflix & Chill

Animals

⭐️⭐️

Streaming On:  Netflix

Genre:  Thriller

Director:  Ben Affleck

Starring:  Ben Affleck, Kerry Washington, Gillian Anderson, Adriana Paz, Luis Gerardo Méndez, Steven Yeun

Ben Affleck's latest self-starring directorial film has him playing a mayoral candidate who finds himself in the middle of a hostage scenario.  With most of his money spent on his campaign, he seeks desperate measures solve the problem.  There is little about Animals that has bite.  It's a very basic kidnapping plot, very basic plot turns, very long-winded and repetitious dialogue scenes that tell us stuff that we already know, and the most interesting aspects are things it never leans into.  I don't know if this would have improved the movie but the thing that caught my attention the most was that Affleck's son is the intended target but they accidentally mistake him for the son of an undocumented immigrant instead.  I wish there was more of that dynamic in this movie, showing us politicians relating with illegal citizens as they were both caught up in political violence gone wrong.  The movie never does this, choosing to instead play its cards with Gillian Anderson as a mysterious "helper" agent that does dirty deeds.  Like all 90's kids, I'm fond of Anderson, but this amounts to very little.  In fact, there were portions where I forgot she was even in the movie.  Her competence is called into question when the finale is said and done, which makes one wonder why we were supposed to consider her a towering presence in the first place.  That one of several problems in a messy finale, which makes Animals just kind of a dull version of a thriller we've already seen before.

V/H/S/Mixtape

⭐️1/2

Streaming On:  Shudder

Genre:  Horror, Anthology

Director:  Flying Lotus, Renee Zhan, David Moreau, Ernest Dickerson, Tobias Forge, RZA

Starring:  Josh Willis, Barbara Crampton, Julie Clergerie, Elie Kaempfen, Jihad Brent, Alex Hsu, Neela Jolene, Understanding Diggs

Ya'know, I've gotten to the point where I'm looking forward to V/H/S every year.  It's not because it's always a winner but rather because because it's nice to have some off-beat horror thingy that comes out every October that you can hold your watch to.  They used to do this with Saw and Paranormal Activity back in the day, and I never missed a single one.  It might be a "Tis the season" thing.  I dunno.  All I know is that this year's October franchise entry was a letdown.

This year's installment of the found footage anthology series has adopted the theme of "sound and music," crafting a group of spooky tales that revolve around some sort of rhythm or beat.  They also utilize a director's list that mostly hails from the music industry, including RZA, Tobias Forge, and V/H/S veteran Flying Lotus.  I kinda wish they had taken this music idea to another level and made this a full-blown musical or something showstopping but I think they pump these out too fast to coordinate something like that.  Most of the stories here feel rushed with a very base idea.  You can see creativity starting to germ but there is not a lot to hold onto and most of the segments are just vague horrific images.  It's like watching a fourteen-year-old horror fan's experimental home movies.  The one that is probably hurt the most is the one that I really wanted to like, which features a group of puppets coming to life and murdering people.  This segment has puppets from Jim Henson's company and everything, but it drops the ball because it's not really anything but "puppets do murder."  The rampage is kinda fun but the rest is mostly a snooze.  I also think that this segment was hurt by the release of the film Buddy this year, which did the children's show backdrop as a horror scenario in a superior way.

Another segment has a couple trapped in a chamber that enhances sound.  I don't think this idea comes across the way they had hoped and it just feels like a generic "going mad in an enclosed area" montage.  Following that has a mysterious apartment neighbor who plays music upstairs for a mysterious purpose, which is creative but lacking a lot of context.  The most ambitious segment is the final one, which has a woman murdering people to utilize the sounds they make as demo tracks.  This is also one that feels like it's lacking something but it also feels like the most complete idea of the bunch.  If nothing else, it has a vibe.  None of the other segments do.  Case in point being the wraparounds that feel like parodies of MTV, but while there is some creativity in an animated segment and a heavy metal music video full of violence, most of them feel aimless and obnoxious.

The V/H/S series has long lived with its nadir being the third film, V/H/S:  Viral, which left the franchise for dead before Shudder resurrected it's corpse.  It's probably a stretch to say Mixtape is as bad as Viral, which was unispired from beginning to end.  Mixtape, by comparison, has ideas.  They're not as developed as they should be, which makes this outing come off as jibberish.  V/H/S has already announced its tenth film, so another bad movie in its filmography isn't going to hurt it.  I just hope they have more to work with next time.

MST3K Note:  Growler puppeteer Russ Walko worked on the puppets during the Dance, Dance, Dance, Dance segment.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Coyote vs. Acme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Digger ⭐️

Forgotten Island ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Heart of the Beast ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Odyssey ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Practical Magic 2 ⭐️⭐️

Primetime ⭐️⭐️1/2

Resident Evil ⭐️⭐️

Spider-Man:  Brand New Day ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Verity ⭐️

New To Digital

Fall:  Deadpoint ⭐️1/2

Insidious:  Out of the Further ⭐️⭐️1/2

Onslaught ⭐️⭐️

Spider-Man:  Brand New Day ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Jackass:  Best and Last ⭐️⭐️1/2

Late Fame ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Moana ⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 40 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

April X

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Science Fiction, Noir

Director:  Michel K. Parandi

Starring:  Connor Storrie, Lilly Krug

In a vague future city, a man goes into heavy debt with mobsters and his sister goes missing.  He proceeds to spend years paying off his debt and searching for his lost sibling, eventually linking her disappearance to a cloning prostitution ring.  The neo noir aspect of this movie is very 1940's, wandering around in alleys with an inner monologue decorating all the brooding.  The movie wants to compel with its introspection and mystery, but it seems disinterested in both the world it created and its story in favor of just wanting to look cool among its peers.  The movie becomes a lot of ideas and concepts, seemingly wanting to be a low-budget Blade Runner.  It never achieves this because it never intrigues with anything it throws out there.  But I admire its ambitious spirit.  And Lilly Krug gets to wear a lot of wigs.  That's fun.

Beware Boiúna

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Mike P. Nelson (NOT THAT MIKE NELSON)

Starring:  Kiana Madeira, Jessica Rothe, Logan Marshall-Green

In case you were disappointed that last year's Anaconda reboot was a parody, here's a comparable adequate giant snake movie to fill that void in your life.  In Beware Boiúna, a group of humanitarians are providing medical services in the Amazon, only to find out that the local legend of "Boiúna," a giant serpent that protects the rainforest, might actually be real. Boiúna is based on actual myths from South America, so that's fun.  What's less fun is the lackluster journey it takes to get to its monster mayhem.  Doing a giant snake movie is going to draw immediate comparisons to Anaconda (and I'm referring to the original right now and not last year's equally mediocre Jack Black movie), and while Anaconda is not a great movie, it is a very zippy movie.  That movie whizzes by at a clip, and Beware Boiúna is a more of a casual story with less colorful characters.  It takes a really long time to get to the snake, and when we finally get there, the movie doesn't seem to have any energy to make it exciting.  In fact, most of the characters that we've been following are killed pretty instantly once we enter Boiúna's turf, leaving only a handful trying to escape.  Because of that, the movie doesn't even have that simple slasher appeal of "Who's dying next?" because the movie has almost no characters left during the meat of the horror.  A couple of the suspense sequences are well done, including a scene in quicksand that is pretty well played.  The movie is easily skippable though, because it's just not exciting.

Digger

⭐️

Genre:  Comedy

Director:  Alejandro G. Iñárritu

Starring:  Tom Cruise at his most insufferable, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jessie Plemons

I remember the first trailer to this movie, which mostly consisted of clips of previous Tom Cruise movies and just showing off Tom Cruise being Tom Cruise.  I had no idea what this was, wondering why I was watching something that was aggressively selling me the concept of Tom Cruise like some sort of lifestyle brand.  Then it crashed into a scene where Tom Cruise was in terrible old man make-up and a cowboy hat, yelling "BANG BANG BANG!"  This trailer made an impression on me because it's not every day I see an advertisement that seems to be actively trying to get me to boycott its product.  I wish I had listened.

What we're actually getting from Digger is probably more than a short trailer can explain.  The Tom Cruise of this movie is a throwback to the experimental, arthouse Tom Cruise that made Eyes Wide Shut and Vanilla Sky.  It's the type of Tom Cruise we haven't seen in a while.  And now that he's in his sixties and hasn't died from doing eight Mission:  Impossible movies, maybe it's time to go back to that.  In Digger, he plays an oil tycoon who's operation in Greenland blows up, accidentally creating a global catastrophe.  Cruise then conspires with U.S. President John Goodman to try and spin the global destruction positively for them.

I kinda love this idea.  I didn't love this movie.  I actually thought it was pretty miserable.  Digger is a movie with clear, focused, and virtuous ambitions of being a modern Dr. Strangelove that is drowned in self-absorbed obnoxiousness.  I admired almost everything this movie tried to do, and I also hated every goddamn second of it and am bitter that I even wasted my time on it.  Ten minutes into the movie, I felt like I had been sitting there for two hours, indulging the movie in its quirks, waiting for it to feel inspired and not have the desperate attention-seeking bravado of a seven-year-old boy who is running around in his underpants, screaming, with the sole ambition of just getting all the adults in the room to pay attention to him.  Any actual point the movie was trying to make was drowned out by the fact that I could feel the spittle of the movie directly shouting in my face.

And that's just the primary narrative.  Things get more odd when the movie layers a meta on top of itself.  I won't spoil it, but it actually explains a lot about the movie's presentation, including the curious choice of casting Tom Cruise in this role when he's just acting like a hammy Tom Cruise in bad make-up.  The meta doesn't improve the movie, though.  The intent doesn't become clear until the final shot, where it seems the message is that civilization needs to actually address global crises and not just acknowledge them through the media they consume and immediately ignore them once it's over.  This is another idea I liked, but was already off-board with it because of how little slack the movie was giving with the meta subplot until this point.  I spent the entire movie trying to figure out what purpose the movie's twist added to the movie.  The movie kept giving nothing to work with until the third act, where it it info dumps a lot and also stops to explain the concept of satire to the audience.  At that point, it was hard to think anything other than that the filmmakers thought that the high-brow, award season audience that it was made to directly appeal to is too stupid to understand the concept of subtext.  After that, I was just done with this movie, feeling like I was trapped in a narrative without end.

Digger will undoubtedly find an audience, likely with fans of Alejandro G. Iñárritu who don't mind it when he's gone full insanity.  That's probably what they want.  It worked out for Birdman, which I remember liking quite a bit.  With Digger, I just could not get on board.  I liked the messages and there is an idea here.  It has just gotten far too out of hand.  The people who really need to hear what this movie has to say will likely turn it off, either because the movie is talking down at them (at everyone, really) or because the film is too strange and inaccessible.  So, it occupies this strange corner where the only people who will watch it are the people who already agree with it and decided they already loved it before watching it, while those who might actually benefit from what the movie is trying to say aren't going to bother.  Congratulations on creating a movie that will have zero impact.

I have considered that I'm being hard on this movie.  Then I remember practically anything in it and think to myself no.  Fuck this movie.

The Influencer Project

⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Mike Nybroe

Starring:  Chiara King

Cinemas have been littered with horror movies from YouTubers for the last few years.  Now it's Instagram's turn, I guess.  Real life social media influencer Chiara King plays herself in this movie that was "influenced by actual events."  That's a cute pun, but I can find very little information on what this "actual events" thing is referring to unless it just means Chiara King is a real person and maybe this could happen to her.  Maybe she had a cyberstalker that got under her skin and she decided to make a slasher movie out of it?  That's the basic movie in a nutshell, as King visits Copenhagen with a documentary crew in tow, only to have a cyberstalker begin threatening her.

If I were to hazard a guess as to what King is hoping this project will achieve, I would assume that she's trying to start a conversation about how vulnerable influencers are.  She occupies a space where she has to put herself into public eye every day, which attracts different kinds of attention.  Some of which can be dangerous, and they're not always equipped to handle an unhealthy obsession.  There is also a light social commentary that seems to be on the tip of the movie's tongue about how an influencer's audience only views them as entertainment and doesn't actually care about their well-being, being willing to watch their deaths if it's good content.  This sounds like it would be amazing introspective on King's part for participating in this film, but if she actually had that introspective, chances are she would quit being online.  Which she hasn't.  The ideas the movie is playing with are scary, but while The Influencer Project wants to be provocative, it's not very interesting as a movie.  A lot of the movie has King glued to her phone, looking worried.  When it goes for big scares, it'll shake the camera around with a big screeching noise on the soundtrack.  The film is remarkably ineffective, which compounds when it's also this thinly written.  Frankly, the movie is just boring.  I had an internal debate of whether the boredom equated being bad, but the boredom was a result of the movie failing to execute its idea.  The movie is just a failure at all its ambitions and it comes off as just something made without a completed story idea that only crossed the finish line because King is a notable online presence.  It reminded me of last year's House on Eden, which was made by YouTuber KallMeKris.  That movie wasn't good either, but it had an aura of just being the result of friends and amateur filmmakers who were just bullshitting around and made whatever-the-fuck, so it had minor amusement value.  The Influencer Project is taking itself more seriously and is failing at what themes it's attempting, which is why I can't give it the same leeway that I gave House on Eden.

But if you want a good influencer based horror movie, log into Shudder and watch Influencer.  Excellent watch, and it had a pretty solid sequel, too.

Rolling Loud:  The Movie

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy

Director:  Jeremy Garelick

Starring:  Owen Wilson, Matt Rife, Christine Ko, Christian Convery, Henry Winkler, Jolene Blalock, Travis Scott

Rolling Loud is an annual hip-hop music festival, and apparently they filmed a movie at the latest one.  Owen Wilson sneaks his thirteen-year-old son into the event, who swiftly gets lost in the crowd.  Wilson begins a frantic search of the grounds while trying to avoid security, picking up a few quirky sidekicks and bumping elbows with music superstars along the way.  The film acts as an appendum to the festival itself that fans may be able to enjoy year-round, while also being something of an advertisement for it.  I'm not sure how well that latter ambition is, because showing off an awkward, middle-aged man who doesn't listen to hip-hop wandering around and being inconvenienced by the event isn't actually a compelling argument to attend.  I don't think the film has very high ambitions, as it's just Wilson going on misadventures with the festival as a backdrop.  Sometimes it's amusing, and sometimes it's just dumb.  I like little moments of it.  I like that he picks up goofball characters who try to help him as he goes.  One of them has the funniest line in the movie, as Wilson finally finds his son in the climax, and he just says "I've seen that kid like twenty times today."

There are a few things that are off with the movie.  A few punchlines feel rushed into, which might be an editing failure that hurts the comedic timing of the film.  Or it could just be that the movie isn't very funny and they're trying to rush through it.  I dunno.  Parts of it made me snort, but it also felt like most of the time the comedy was just a gag that existed to be present because nothing else was actually happening or some bullshit vignette was taking too long.  The movie is not really anything, but it's also hard to actively dislike because that feels like that would take too much effort to think about than this movie deserves.

As a minor sidenote, Jolene Blalock is in this movie.  She also produced it.  The Star Trek:  Enterprise actress has been retired from acting for about a decade now, returning for an episode of Lower Decks and now this.  She's also credited on Nimrods from last month, which I didn't clock at the time, but that was also a music industry self-promotion film (and was also much better than this one).  I don't know why this is her thing now, but welcome back, queen.

Verity

⭐️

Genre:  Thriller

Director:  Michael Showalter

Starring:  Anne Hathaway, Dakota Johnson, Josh Hartnett, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Brady Wagner

It seems to me that I'm talking more about Colleen Hoover's work more than I ever intended to in my lifetime just by going to the movies and seeing whatever is there.  But Hollywood keeps buying her books and making movies out of them, like they did with John Grisham way back in the day.  Unlike most Hoover adaptations, I actually listened to the audiobook on Verity.  I figured it would probably hold my attention better than her other books.  It's not a mopey love story about depressed people learning to love while remaining sad.  This one is much smuttier.  If I'm going to read sex fiction, I want it to be suitably trashy, thank you.  Or for it to be a pornographic How to Train Your Dragon knock-off.  That might seem like a weirdly specific demand, but I've always been haunted by that time I listened to the audiobook of The Fourth Wing thinking it was going to be dumb YA fantasy, not knowing what kind of book it was, and getting to a certain chapter, listening to the explicit details of its brand of horny, and going "Oh.........okay then."

True story.  I was at work when this happened.  If you've never read this series, the one thing I'll tell you is that ain't nobody reading The Fourth Wing for the dragons.  Whew boy.  Makes A Game of Thrones read like Jane Austen.  But I digress.

In this movie, Dakota Johnson plays a small-time author who is hired by Josh Hartnett to finish a book series that was started by his wife, Anne Hathaway, who was left in a crippled state by a car accident.   While searching through Hathaway's notes, Johnson finds a manuscript for an autobiography that reveals Hathaway's sinister thoughts and dark secrets.  The movie is mostly faithful to the lay-out of the book, with a few simplifications.  If one loves Hoover's book, this will be an adequate representation of it. That also means that if you're like me, you'll think just as highly of it as the book, which wasn't very high.  Despite a promising set-up, the story grows more senseless as it goes.  As my questions about the story grew to a head, the climax offered to bring resolution with the twist ending and answers all of them by assuring the audience that nothing makes any goddamn sense.  The feature film version is true to that, but it waters down the books eroticism and makes some choices that make the twist at the end even dumber.

It's possible that if you don't think about the story, it plays out better.  Then the fault of the movie starts turning to the melodrama that it has chosen to make thicker.  The acting in this movie is that style of acting from early M. Night Shamaylan movies where everyone looks sleepy and whispers all their lines, which personally drives me up a wall.  It especially hurts Dakota Johnson.  I like Johnson, but she seems very disassociated with this movie.  I think it's intentional because she's playing an introverted character, and she even jokes that people tell her that she has "resting bored face."  But I think back to a scene where she mentions "Instagram," but she says the like it's a completely alien concept that she has never heard of.

It was hard for me to really connect with the movie's "sit at home and watch while eating ice cream" ambition because it never leaned into any of its spice.  It seemed uncomfortable with being sexy, it had no interest in thrilling, and everyone just looked bored.  I almost started yearning for the one-note sadness of Hoover's Reminders of Him.  At least that movie was interested in what it was.

Art Attack

The Incomer

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy

Director:  Louis Paxton

Starring:  Domhnall Gleeson, Gayle Rankin, Grant O'Rourke, Emun Elliott, Michelle Gomez, John Hannah

Domhnall Gleeson arrives on a remote island to evict the sole inhabitants, a brother and sister who have been living in isolation for thirty years.  Gleeson is labeled an "incomer," a stranger from the unknown mainland, and is kidnapped by the duo.  He slowly begins to gain their trust over the course of days, and they begin to accept him as being one of their own.  The movie plays a lot with introversion and social awkwardness, utilizing a "stranger in a strange land" scenario as a showcase for oddballs who have rarely communicated with anyone.  It's comedic in how weird their personalized culture is, and it's often swift to point out being an outsider isn't a bad thing.  And curiosity about cultural differences is more helpful than fear of it.  The comedy is mostly dry Brittish wit intermingled with off-the-wall nuttiness.  It proves to be an excellent showcase for Gayle Rankin, who gives an overwhelming performance as the abrassive and protective older sister, who is also more interested in mainland culture than she lets on, and her sexual repression leads to romantic curiosity about Gleeson.  The role asks a lot of her and she gets into the weeds with it.  The film is a delight, a lot of fun, and full of heart.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Avengers:  Endgame - Encore ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Coyote vs. Acme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Forgotten Island ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Heart of the Beast ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Odyssey ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Practical Magic 2 ⭐️⭐️

Primetime ⭐️⭐️1/2

Resident Evil ⭐️⭐️

Spider-Man:  Brand New Day ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Stunt Driver ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Coyote vs. Acme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Idiots ⭐️⭐️1/2

Paw Patrol:  The Dino Movie ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Uprising ⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!