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!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 39 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Avengers:  Endgame - Encore

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Superhero, Science Fiction, Action, Adventure

Director:  Joe Russo, Anthony Russo

Starring:  Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Josh Brolin, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd, Bradley Cooper, Karen Gillan, Don Cheadle, Brie Larson, Danai Gurira, Gwenyth Paltrow, Benedict Wong

Oh look.  One of the highest grossing movies of all time is back to make more money.  Oh well.  I earned this money so I could spend it, I guess.  This would be the fifth time I've seen this movie in a theater, which would have tied my old theatrical record of seeing Avengers:  Infinity War and Godzilla Minus One five times each, but that record was already shattered this year when Obsession came out of nowhere and I wound up seeing it seven times.  That was a special case where the movie kept attracting large crowds and I would just keep going to watch people's reactions, and the environment was always pure electricity.  In the case of Avengers and Godzilla, I just really like Avengers and Godzilla and both were damn good Avengers and Godzilla.  Endgame got into the five-time-plus club based on two re-releases that promised bonus material.  The first was in late-summer 2019, where they just had some cobbled together bullshit after the movie was over and I barely remember what it was.  This time offers a "brand new version" that "sets up" this year's Avengers:  Doomsday.  I had no idea what this would be, but based on the last Endgame re-release, it was probably just going to be a sneak preview at the end of the movie of some kind.  I guess that's what it still is, but what Endgame - Encore actually is involves something more bold, yet also slighter.

Technically, Encore is an extended cut, but not in a traditional way.  The added footage is clearly newly filmed.  Part of Doomsday's production, most likely.  Whether they are scenes that are actually going to be in Doomsday or if they're exclusive to Encore, I can't say for certain.  If you're wondering what the full Encore experience is (without spoilers), then just know that Endgame mostly plays out the same way it always has, but the last scene in the movie extends beyond what used to be Endgame's final shot, adding a full bonus sequence in its immediate aftermath.  In addition to that, there is now a mid-credit scene that confirms the current state of a character that some might have questions about.  The final addition, which I will spoil fully because it's a big nothing-burger, is that the very end of the end credits now has small flashes of Doctor Doom.  Whoopty-doo.

(Editing Note:  Since writing this, I found out that there would have been a bonus BONUS scene had I had seen this in "InfinityVision," whatever the fuck that is.  Seems pretty shitty to ship out two separate versions of this movie to sell something you've pulled out of your ass to make up for all the IMAX screens you lost to Dune 3.  Whatever this scene is, I don't know what it is, and I'm not going out my way to see it again just for thirty seconds of whatever.)

To anybody who is wondering if this is worth the price of admission, my advice is that Encore is worth seeing if you love Endgame enough to see it again in a theater, and you'll get some sugar on top at the end.  If you're going for a first look at Doomsday, you might find the anticipated dessert pretty light.  I was happy to see the movie again.  I enjoy it quite a bit.  It's not my favorite Avengers movie, as this failed to top the balance and excitement of Infinity War (I am also an Age of Ultron defender, so eat me).  I had a good experience, and the extra scenes were fun.  I wouldn't have seen this for those alone, though.

Charlie Harper

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama, Romance

Director:  Mac Eldridge, Tom Dean

Starring:  Emilia Jones, Nick Robinson

The movie Charlie Harper is not about anybody named "Charlie Harper."  Instead, it's about two characters named "Charlie" and "Harper" who fall in love, and I'm assuming "Charlie Harper" is their online shipping name.  "Charlie Harper" is also the name of Charlie Sheen's character on Two-and-a-Half Men.  Coincidence?  I don't really care.  Two-and-a-Half Men sucks.  Maybe whoever wrote this really liked it and had to name his characters, and was like "I dunno.  Charlie...and Harper."  Anyway, Charlie and Harper are two people in a relationship, but as Harper's career as a chef begins, Charlie finds his life stagnant and falls deeper into alcoholism.  Despite their best efforts to stay together, they both spiral as they fail to justify why their relationship is worth saving.

This is the second movie in the last month starring Emilia Jones that involves aspiring chefs and struggling romances.  Is this some sort of weird typecasting niche that she has fallen into?  Either way, Jones is very charming, like a young Mary Elizabeth Winstead.  She's in a movie that's only going to be as strong as the leads it has, and they keep the slightly overwritten script in check by playing it with sincerity.  Most of what the movie struggles with has to do with what feels like a touch-and-feel production, which has the vibe of being made by ambitious amateurs who are throwing themselves into a movie, for better and for worse.  The storytelling is a little messy, with some odd non-linear elements that fall flat and make it a little confusing.  The movie has changing aspect ratios, which might reflect mood, but prove to be the most pointless use of such a thing since Michael Bay's dizzying perversion of it in Transformers 5.  There is an earnestness to the movie that is almost endearing, though.  It feels like a movie wanting to be an honest and heartfelt portrayal of a strong bond that wasn't meant to last but is kept sacred by what it meant when it was full of passion.  There is little that's inspired about how it's handled, but there is also very little that's wrong with it.  It's a movie made for people who like melodramas about romantic struggles and blooming lives.  In pandering to that audience, a capable movie was made.

Forgotten Island

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Fantasy, Comedy, Adventure

Director:  Joel Crawford, Januel Mercado

Starring:  H.E.R., Liza Soberano, Dave Franco, Jenny Slate, Manny Jacinto, Dolly de Leon, Jo Koy, Ronnie Chieng, Lea Salonga

DreamWorks Animation's latest sees two best friends at the end of high school about to say goodbye to each other as one is about to leave the country.  A magic portal then appears to the magical island of Nakali, where the two wake up without recollection of what transpired the night before.  This, of course, means Hangover shenanigans.  Child friendly, this time.  And oddly more grounded, despite all the fantasy elements.  The pair piece together what they've forgotten, hoping to find a way home, but also there is a vampire who is big mad.  Uh-oh.  It's a lot of nonsense that leans very hard into a random and chaotic narrative.  Normally, I'd claim that as a detraction, but with this particular story, it feeds into the Alice in Wonderland style adventure that's at play.  Most of the film is whimsy designed to feed the emotional state of the character, while the humor is based in their rebellious personalities.  The movie sometimes stutters with its functionality because there is limited focus.  This is enhanced by the fact that there are two separate villains in the movie that have different desires, neither of which have full development and only serve as plot devices.  It's pretty crowded in this movie, but the main focus is on friendship, which is where the movie's soul comes in clutch.  It can be touching when it wants to be, though getting it to sit still long enough to be so can be challenging.  But it's not every day that you see an animated movie that features a clip from Predator.  I dare say that means it did something right.

Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Josef Kubota Wladyka

Starring:  Rinko Kikuchi, Alberto Guerra, Alejandro Edda, You, Yoh Yoshida, Damián Alcázar

Ha-chan is a Japanese woman grieving the death of her husband and dance partner.  After spending months wallowing in her own grief, she finds she's sexually attracted to her dance instructor and struggles with the thought of taking a new lover.  This is one of those movies that has a great deal of good qualities but I found myself struggling to be won over by.  That's not for a lack of trying, because everything it does is with gusto.  Its rhythm just falls slightly out of sync with itself.  The movie has little flourishes that are inspired by anime and manga, such as chapter titles and expressionistic fantasy.  I'm not entirely sure this adds anything of value to the movie, but it does give it a vibe that it chases, and sometimes stumbles, after.  Ha-chan's husband appears to her in a giant black bird mascot costume, which brought to mind that Benedict Cumberbatch movie from last year, The Thing with Feathers, which portrayed grief similarly.  I'd say this movie is more successful than that one, but it's also leaning into something cuter and less moody.  That cute nature can feel odd during the film's darker moments, and we watch Ha-chan jump into fantasy and ignore reality when her mind can't comprehend it.  This leads to Ha-chan making several senseless mistakes, which are purposefully portraying a spiral, even when it feels like she's doing things she probably wouldn't even do in this mindset.  The movie stops working when it jumps into these odd corners of its narrative, but it has fun with itself, and hopefully the viewer has fun while it's doing its dance.

Heart of the Beast

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  David Ayer

Starring:  PUPPY!!!, Brad Pitt, J.K. Simmons

Survival thriller and pet lover cinema crossbreed as former soldier Brad Pitt crashes his airplane in the woods.  He and his combat trained dog Odin traverse the dangerous wilderness to find medical attention.  I was relieved when I found out the dog's name was "Odin," because so many of the shouting scenes make it sound like his name is "Odie," and to those of us who grew up on Garfield will know that would have been an unfortunate personality to bestow upon this dog.  Odin is smarter than Odie, though just as durable.  The movie is a rather base idea of a man and his dog surviving the elements, with both bond and spirit prevailing as hardship is smothered to death in shmaltz.  But the adversity is tense and the emotion is strong, making the film one to seek out for all the canine lovers in the world.  It's a movie with simple ambitions, and one that succeeds in all of them.

Primetime

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Lance Oppenheim

Starring:  Robert Pattinson (line?), Merritt Weaver, Skylar Gisondo, Phoebe Bridgers

Robert Pattinson plays NBC reporter and To Catch a Predator host Chris Hansen, as it chronicles the show being adopted to as sensationalized entrapment of sexual predators as prime time entertainment.  It's an interesting movie, though sometimes I struggled with whether it was interesting enough.  The film's focus tends to widen out and display the predatory nature of every direction, including Hansen himself, and I'm like...yeah.  Obviously.  This movie doesn't really add anything that wasn't already in the discussion about Hansen and To Catch a Predator.  It's a movie about scummy people exposing scummier people for scummy personal recognition, and it's very on-the-nose with the way it decides to portray this (the movie features a long shot focusing on an ad featuring Jared from Subway, in case you were worried it was going to be too subtle).  The only thing the movie is saying is predators are everywhere, which is a lesson we all should learn at some point.  The movie dresses it up with as a lacking psychological drama that has limited psychological insight.  If the movie has something else to say throughout its runtime, I might cut it more slack, but it seemed insistent on looping the same messages over and over again.  If it ever scratches anything else, it's usually asking for a sliver of sympathy for the people who wound up cornered on Hansen's show.  Sorry, but I don't think I have that in me.  It's like that scene in Rear Window where Raymond Burr has that desperate look in his eyes when he first faces James Stewart.  That look is meant to represent the violation that Stewart did in invading Burr's privacy.  It still didn't change the fact that Burr's character was a murderer.

The Stunt Driver

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Drama

Director:  Michael Dowse

Starring:  Jay Baruchel, Ed Helms, Ben Foster, Lawrence Leboeuf, Dan Bakkedahl

Jay Baruchel plays Ken Carter, a real-life Canadian "stunt driver" (because he hates the term "daredevil").  He concocts the ultimate stunt to fly a rocket car a full mile over the Saint-Laurent River, which he meticulously plans out over the 1970's.  I need to stress that last part because a lot of this movie is devoted to planning the jump.  It's a little surprising about how much of a slow burn this movie is, as a lot of the time is talking about the jump and hammering out the details.  It makes sense because of how complex it is, but given the film's tone and talent working on it, one almost expects it to be more snappy.  The movie is a pretty chill psychological comedy about a man painstakingly perfecting his artform (complete with footage of the actual stunts being performed).  Art can be frustrating while it's being made, so the film can be equally frustrating.  The important perspective is to trust that the process is leading to somewhere.  It's not a fun movie, nor is it really a rewarding movie.  It's more of movie that asks to be understood.  You're going to sit there and get it or you'll just get sick of it.  I found the character study engaging, which made the effort worthwhile.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Coyote vs. Acme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Daniel and the Fiery Furnace ⭐️1/2

The Odyssey ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Practical Magic 2 ⭐️⭐️

Resident Evil ⭐️⭐️

Spider-Man:  Brand New Day ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Weight ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Ice Cream Man ⭐️1/2

Idiots ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Magic Faraway Tree ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Spa Weekend ⭐️1/2

Super Troopers 3:  Farva's Wedding ⭐️⭐️1/2

Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Evil Dead Burn ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Girls Like Girls ⭐️⭐️

I Love Boosters ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Scary Movie ⭐️

The Secret Agent ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Toy Story 5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Young Washington ⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 38 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Daniel and the Fiery Furnace

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama, Faith

Director:  Daniel Kooman, Matthew Kooman

Starring:  Mena Massoud, Elijah Alexander

God has space lasers!  And an AI generated Jesus pops out of the other side!  That was my main takeaway from this attempt at a biblical epic, based on the story of Daniel, who has his faith tested under the rule of King Nebuchadnezzar, where he is tasked to build a golden statue of the king that he and his comrades fail to worship, desiring to onlyworship their one true God.

This movie is pretty shoddy, but there are things in this movie worth discussing enthusiastically.  It's a faith drama that went out of its way to utilize a Middle Eastern cast to tell its story instead of whitewashing it.  That might seem like a small victory but it's a victory nonetheless.  The movie also has ambition, where it feels like it's reaching out to be like one of the biblical epics of years past crossed with Bollywood over-the-topness.  All of this is countered by the amaterish production, especially the screenplay, which reads like a church group community stage play.  Little of it feels like naturalistic dialogue, as pretty much every scene has the characters relating to the audience how their most remedial of tasks relate to their faith, while our villainous king spends practically every speaking moment mocking the idea of a "one true God."  The script is littered with moments designed for stage theatricality, and it's filmed in an indulgence of presenting every moment as being powerful.  It mixes into a very unique brand of hammy melodrama that wears the viewer down.

Probably the big talking point when the movie ends is it's use of AI for its CGI.  I couldn't find any concrete information about the film's special effects production, but I did find that I wasn't the only one who suspected AI use in the making of this movie, as most reviews I read brought it up.  If one dislikes AI being used to create "art" (quotations used because art, by nature, is designed by human mind and hands and not algorythm), then they'll likely want to avoid this movie.  It's used pretty extensively as a cost-cutting measure for special effects and establishing shots.  My favorite thing to do during this movie was studying all the digital landscapes, intricately detailed at first glance, and then looking at all the people who inhabit it who are just frozen in place or floating forward because the AI couldn't animate it properly.  And then there was the ending with a very plastic looking Jesus, which was probably the funniest thing I've seen all year.

Allowing for full disclosure, I fell asleep for about ten minutes of this movie.  It's not the movie's fault, I just didn't sleep well the night before and fatigue hit me like a bulldozer while watching it.  If that negates anything I have to say about this movie, I understand.  I don't think I missed much.  Daniel was smelting gold in the furnace when I fell asleep and he was smelting gold when I woke up, and there was very little going on that I didn't understand.  I'm not going to go back and watch it again though.  My apologies to the haters.

The Musical

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy

Director:  Giselle Bonilla

Starring:  Will Brill, Gillian Jacobs, Rob Lowe

Will Brill plays a middle school teacher who has a mental breakdown following his break-up with Gillian Jacobs, who begins dating school principal Rob Lowe.  Pushed past the edge, he turns the school's presentation of West Side Story into an abrasive and offensive portrayal of 9/11, just to make people angry.  Maybe Speilberg's version of West Wide Story would have won more Oscars if it had the same twist.

The Musical is one of those movies that I looked at from a bunch of angles and still had a hard time reading it.  The closest I came to was that this was a men's mental health commentary, about how certain men can be so unhappy that they weaponize their misery and try to make everyone around them suffer, but that's entirely a take I'm projecting onto this movie because I'm not sure I understand it.  This could just as easily be a movie that's just trying to be subversive in very awkward ways without actually being about anything.  Brill's character is played as both the hero and the villain of the movie, as the movie never bothers to make us sympathize with him but it also seems to want us to root for his revenge fantasy.  I'm not entirely sure how successful that latter aspect is since there's really nothing to be excited for except anarchy for the sake of anarchy.  The movie is as fearless as it is aimless, and that's almost charming by itself.  There are things the movie could lean into to make it stronger, like the exploitation and radicalization of children to be raged against the source of one's personal grievances, but the movie doesn't really do as much with the kids' part in this little slice of lunacy as you might hope, and while they are on board with it by the end, it's never clear why.  But I also think there are aspects to this movie that are flying over my head, because certain scenes seem staged in such a particular way that I have to wonder if this movie is a parody of something very specific that I'm not familiar with.  It's also possible that the movie is referencing many things simultaneously and is doing its own spin on them to enhance satire.  The satire isn't particularly strong enough here for that to work, making the film an awkward showcase of awkwardness.

Resident Evil

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror, Comedy

Director:  Zach Cregger

Starring:  Austin Abrams, Paul Walter Hauser, Zach Cherry, Kali Reis

Resident Evil's movie series isn't exactly known for adapting the video games it's based on.  This is the eighth film in the series (not including four boring Japanese CGI animated movies) and thusfar only two of them have actually sourced their stories from the games (Apocalypse and Welcome to Raccoon City).  Most of them have been Paul W.S. Anderson's Mary Sue girl power fantasy about his wife Milla Jovovich, while characters from the games have been sidelined in favor of her.  Resident Evil 2026 is actually the first of these movies since 2002 to not feature any character from the game, unless you consider the character of "Matt" a video game character considering he mutates into Nemesis in the sequel.  Or if zombies, angry dogs, and the Lickers count.  All of this is to say that the Resident Evil fan frustration of getting another movie that sidesteps the source material in favor of an original story is more understandable than some might claim.  It's been a long cycle of history repeating itself with the withering hope of "Maybe this time will be different."

I'm not one to knock Resident Evil's film legacy.  I find most of the movies they've made so far to be a campy good time (Apocalypse is peak on the "fun bullshit" metric).  Maybe I'm the problem because people don't seem to want Resident Evil to be campy, which is weird when you remember this franchise began with a game that delivered the line "You almost became a Jill sandwich."  And I have no particular attachment to the games.  I've played a couple of them, but never finished them.  I do have a fondness for Zach Cregger, who directed this movie, being a big fan of Barbarian and having really enjoyed Weapons.  Mostly, I just wanted the new Resident Evil movie to be a good Zach Cregger movie.  Sadly, it didn't achieve that one goal.

The latest non-adapting adaptation in this franchise sees Austin Abrams playing a medical courier who is tasked to take a package to Raccoon City.  This happens to coincide with the certain event that gamers know happens in Raccoon City, which was chronicled in the video games Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3:  Nemesis, where a contagion reanimates corpses and mutates living beings into beasts.  Cregger said his approach was to make a side-story that felt like video game rather than adapting the game itself.  To this, I find the movie a minor failure.  Most Resident Evil games put us in the shoes of competent characters who are taken aback by the scenario but adapt to the situation.  Abrams' character is not that.  He starts off as a bit of a joke and stays a joke throughout the entire movie.  It's arguable whether or not he's even competent enough to have his courier position because he's not very good at it, while any success he has out of it is simply because he hasn't died yet.  And the movie leans pretty hard into his little brand of silliness.  It often feels more like a slapstick comedy showcase for Abrams than it is a horror movie.  But the Resident Evil franchise used to be a wire-fu high kick showcase for Milla Jovovich, which is a more lateral trade-off than I think most people will want to admit.

To be fair, the movie is funny.  It's also scary.  It gets less funny and scary as it goes, and not for a lack of trying.  Zach Cregger has a very distinctive tone to his horror movies and Resident Evil struggles at balancing it.  Cregger has unique ways of framing a horror shot, and it will successfully create a jolt or a moment of suspense.  And he'll let the surprise of such a moment bleed into creating comedy.  Unlike Barbarian and Weapons, it feels like the movie's desire for levity is taking priority, and while it's not unpleasant, it feels like it's all Abrams exists for in this movie.  I found it hard to genuinely care about what happened to him because he kept fumbling around and had an unreliable sense of alertness.  The movie just becomes an episodic string of scenarios for him to just waffle around in, scream, kick his little feets at, and run away from.  The movie is at it's strongest in the first half when it's fresh and fun, but the more plot that it starts to introduce into itself, the more the movie becomes less creepy and the more distant Abrams feels from it, just having him running around in big visuals because he carries the McGuffin.

I was already starting to feel a little bored by the end (the movie started to lose me once he leaves the farmhouse), but I was ready to give this movie a minor pass.  Then we got to the climax, and the last ten minutes really left me in a sour mood.  The finale to this movie is objectively bad, and it genuinely feels like someone was written into a corner, threw their pen at the wall and said "Fuck it, I'm done."  I could have lived with this movie being a being about a dummy stumbling around in an apocalypse as long as it had a destination.  Since I didn't even get that, a lot of the movie's positive aspects started to dim in my hindsight.  The movie then reached the status of apathy.  Now it has failed as both an adaptation and as an original story.  Congratulations?

Shaun the Sheep:  The Beast of Mossy Bottom

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Horror

Director:  Steve Cox, Matthew Walker

Starring:  Justin Fletcher, John Sparkes, Kate Harbour

The little Claymation studio Aardman Animations, best known for Wallace & Gromit, is back with another quirky outing, returning for their third feature film based on its sheep flock characters.  This one has Shaun inventing a growth serum to save a destroyed pumpkin patch, only for their farmer to mistake it for hair growth serum.  Growing hair all over his body, the sheep flock mistakes him for a monster that is terrorizing their small town.  Those who are familiar with this animation studio know what quirkiness to expect, and the latest Shaun the Sheep movie continues to deliver the goods.  Like Wallace & Gromit, a little bit of Shaun the Sheep goes a long way, which means I'd have more investment in short films than an eighty minute movie.  But Shaun the Sheep's big distinction from Wallace & Gromit is that it's done in pantomime, which keeps my admiration for a feature film up even if I'm starting to feel a little tired.  And there are some cute little macabre touches that make it fun as a family Halloween movie.  If you or your kids love Shaun the Sheep, this is an easy recommend.  If you don't, you probably skipped reading this and it doesn't matter.

Tiny Fugitives

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Adventure

Director:  Michael Lewen

Starring:  Johnny Knoxville, Benjamin Pajak, Aaron Harris, Isa Bernal Steiner, Jay Saunder, Arrian Kenneth Wu, Alyssa Gervasi

Get ready for one of those movies that gets all of its mileage out of foul-mouthed kids, as Tiny Fugitives tells the story of a group of camp friends who don't want the summer to end, so they run out into the woods and are chased down by camp counselor Johnny Knoxville.  It's a little Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but it primarily reminded me of that episode of The Simpsons where Bart plays hooky and Principal Skinner is chasing him down.

The movie makes sure the audience knows that its favorite joke is children who curse and talk trash.  It's as if all of the Losers from It were just Richie.  The movie can be overbearing on this, but what's interesting about this aspect is how it contrasts this with their realistic childlike innocence.  These characters talk a big game and seem to know a lot about what adults do behind closed doors, but when they're actually in the "intimate" situations of childhood, it's very childlike.  They can play it up in dirty ways, but a first kiss between two characters will be portrayed as a nervous peck instead of any of the extravagant descriptions they'll play it off as.  The movie's tender moments are much cuter than they have any right to be.

But I also feel like I've seen various spins on this type of movie.  The film plays out like one of those rambunctious kid movies we all watched when we were children, but this one is rated R, so it can't have that audience.  It tries to make up ground as a "coming-of-age" story for the adult audience, but it's also not detailed enough to be one.  It exists in this awkward middle ground where it struggles to appeal to either side of the fence, and while it's a decent afternoon killer, it's hard to picture it gaining traction as something that resonates with people.

The Weight

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  Padraic McKinley

Starring:  Ethan Hawke, Russell Crowe, Julia Jones

There's gold in them thar hills and Russell Crowe needs a few good men to haul it.  Ethan Hawke is a convict on Crowe's labor crew who has been hired to smuggle gold bars through the woods and keep it safe, though challenges and danger prove to be an inevitability.  Sometimes the movie is a bit too base for its own good, as Hawke's motivation is a slight prologue about being separated from his daughter, which almost feels as if it was written after the rest of the movie to give emotional stakes.  It's an effectively made movie, though.  It's well-directed and tense.  Some of the hurdles in the plot are underdeveloped, but it feels like it just wants to keep our focus within the group, not fully knowing what's going on, just wanting to survive it.  I liked this, and it makes me hope to see the talent behind it go on to do bigger things.

Netflix & Chill

The Last Kiss

⭐️⭐️

Streaming On:  VOD

Genre:  Mystery, Horror, Comedy, Romance

Director:  Yoko Okumura

Starring:  Mckenna Grace, Akira Chantaratananond, Jaden Michael, Riley Davis

Mckeena Grace can see the future deaths of whoever she kisses in this odd little mystery that is conceptually just The Dead Zone but with more tongue.  Upon kissing her new boyfriend, she finds that he dies in a massacre with several classmates at the school dance, and she tries to figure out who the killer is.  By kissing people.  A lot.

I mostly checked this movie out because I was curious as to how well this movie maintained its gimmick, because while it sounds like an interesting idea, it also seems hard to wrap a story around.  I think my skeptism was somewhat justified because the film can struggle to adequately push its story forward based on this chosen plot device.  Kissing is an inherently intimate act, and for Grace to do what needs to be done, the plot requires her character to put on the mask of being a loose woman who is forcing herself onto other people.  Some of her actions brush upon crossing the line into sexual misconduct because she is kissing people for her own needs that she is keeping that private.  The movie does try and avoid the problematic line, but it comes closer that it probably wanted.

Despite this, the movie has a fun, playful vibe to its dark story.  If they had pulled half of this off, this might have been a decent macabre option for a Valentine's Day release.  Its a decent combination of mopey self-absorbed teen dramatics and off-beat anxiety-fueled dark humor tearing through it.  Unfortunately, there is also a small understanding of why this went straight to VOD while watching it because while it has mostly assured directing and a solid cast, there is something about it that just isn't snapping into place.  You can tell there that there was probably a vision for this movie and it's not paying off.  Sometimes you just have to take the swing even if it doesn't connect, though.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Buddy ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Cars ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Coyote vs. Acme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Hope ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Insidious:  Out of the Further ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Odyssey ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Practical Magic 2 ⭐️⭐️

Runner ⭐️1/2

Spider-Man:  Brand New Day ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Transformers:  The Movie ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Uprising ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

The End of Oak Street ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Finding Emily ⭐️⭐️⭐️

It Ends ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Rivals of Amziah King ⭐️⭐️

Tony ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Stop!  That!  Train! ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!