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

Multiplex Madness

Masters of the Universe

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Fantasy, Adventure, Action

Director:  Travis Knight

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Power Ballad

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Comedy

Director:  John Carney

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

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

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

Scary Movie

⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Horror

Director:  Michael Tiddes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Backrooms ⭐️⭐️

The Breadwinner ⭐️⭐️

The Mandalorian and Grogu ⭐️⭐️

Michael ⭐️⭐️

Obsession ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Pressure ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Sheep Detectives ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Hokum ⭐️⭐️⭐️

In the Grey ⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Hoppers ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Protector ⭐️

Coming Soon!

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

The Short

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

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

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

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

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

Thumbs Up

👍

The Livestream

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Multiplex Madness

Backrooms

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Kane Parsons

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

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

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

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

The Breadwinner

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy

Director:  Eric Appel

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

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

Pressure

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Anthony Maras

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

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

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

Tuner

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  Daniel Roher

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

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

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Devil Wears Prada 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

I Love Boosters ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Mandalorian and Grogu ⭐️⭐️

Michael ⭐️⭐️

Mortal Kombat II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Obsession ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Passenger ⭐️⭐️

Project Hail Mary ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Sheep Detectives ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Animal Farm ⭐️

Desert Warrior ⭐️⭐️1/2

Over Your Dead Body ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

Dracula ⭐️

Dreams ⭐️⭐️

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sentimental Value ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

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

Multiplex Madness

Corporate Retreat

⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Horror

Director:  Aaron Fisher

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

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

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

I Love Boosters

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy

Director:  Boots Riley

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

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

The Mandalorian and Grogu

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Science Fiction, Fantasy, Adventure

Director:  Jon Favreau

Starring:  Pedro Pascal, Jeremy Allan White, Sigourney Weaver

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

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

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

Passenger

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  André Øvredal

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

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

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

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Devil Wears Prada 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

In the Grey ⭐️⭐️

Obsession ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Michael ⭐️⭐️

Mortal Kombat II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Project Hail Mary ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Sheep Detectives ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Top Gun ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Digital

Mother Mary ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Mummy ⭐️⭐️1/2

Normal ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Bride! ⭐️⭐️1/2 

Coming Soon!

"Let's Keep Food Safe to Eat"/"Mr. B Natural" & Crow T. Robot's Festival of Shorts (MST3K Special)

The Livestream

Welcome to Crow T. Robot's Festival of Shorts!  Introduced by our shorts-master, Crow T. "The 'T' Stands For 'Taste'" Robot!  It took him a while to come up a title for it, but it finally clicked...

"CROWDANCE!"

Of course, he didn't actually come up with this title until the special was already underway, so we're just going to run with the whole "Festival of Shorts" title.  If you have ever watched one of the shorts compilation DVDs, the Festival of Shorts is the same basic thing.  What I particularly enjoyed about Festival of Shorts is that it's a similar format to Shorts Vol. 1, which had introductions by Tom Servo for each short.  That way we're getting new MST3K material to go along with it.  It's slightly grander than Vol. 1 in that the actual intros are light host segments and not just a blurb of slight wit.  Crow is featured (Hampton Yaunt version), as the title suggests, but Jonah and Tom Servo (Baron Vaughn version) also pop in to see how he's doing and help him out when he's in the weeds.  There are not any huge gutbusters in the intro bumpers, but highlights include Crow's fancy French accent introducing the affair (and trying to shoo off an interrupting Servo), Servo listing the "best Januarys" (January Jones, January Hooks, January in the Pan, ect.) and a fun little talk show style interview with Jonah.  The segment of the night honors go to Crow painting Servo head to toe in gold and having him perform a melodramatic monologue as Crow, delivering it in full Lawrence Olivier mode.  The paint seems to bother Servo the most, asking Crow "Isn't this how Shirley Eaton died in Goldfinger?"

The later bumpers that introduce the new shorts are more lackluster.  Mr. B Natrual's has Jonah running to Crow explaining that they found the lost footage of Kinga and Max watching Mr. B at the end of last season, which is good lore but not very funny.  Let's Keep Food Safe to Eat has an intro that isn't really much of anything.  It feels pretty slapped together, fueling my speculation that they initially had it set for the Christmas That Almost Wasn't livestream and kicked it over to the Festival of Shorts stream for some reason.  It's not the only sign that changes were made behind the scenes, because the stream concludes with Jonah stating they'll return for the final livestream in a few weeks, I Accuse My Parents.  I Accuse My Parents was indeed the final livestream, but there was a livestream of Overdrawn at the Memory Bank between this stream and that one.

Whatever.  Doesn't matter.  What matters are laughs and shorts, of which there a few of both.  Let's let the guffaws take us, leading up to our world premiere shorts!

A Case of Spring Fever

Original Episode:  Squirm

Fed up with fixing his couch, a disgruntled man wishes he never sees another spring as long as he lives.  Enter:  Coily, the Spring-Sprite, who grants him his wish to prove just how horrible life would be without springs!

Call it It’s a Wonderful Life…with SPRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINGS!  ::whistles::  I really dig this weird little educational short, with its kooky little Looney Tunes omnipotent character that turns the world upside down.  It gets a bit talky in its second half, as our main character lists the many uses of springs.  I do somewhat wonder who the audience of this short was.  I lean toward kids because of the wacky Coily segment, but I can’t really justify the crotchety old man as a main character if it was targeted at a younger demographic.  I also wonder if questioning the usefulness of springs was really a huge problem back in the day.  Or is it a short meant for adult spring manufacturers?  Probably.  Did they need it to do their job?  Probably not.  It’s not like you need to sell the importance of a spring.

But still, if you didn’t have a great appreciation for the many ways springs are used in your daily life, you will when this short is over.

A Case of Spring Fever is a pretty great ending to the abbreviated shorts run on the Sci-Fi era (though I think Robot Rumpus tops all three).  And it’s great that they finally featured this short on the show to give the Willy the Waffle segment in Viking Women and the Sea Serpent some context.

Circus on Ice

Original Episode:  Monster A-Go Go

Why settle for one indignity when you can have two?  Circus on Ice is exactly what it sounds like, a circus on ice.  Here we have ice skating shenanigans being put on for our entertainment.

There’s not a lot to say about this one, except that some of the show is kind of neat.  And some of it...not so much.  When we’re reduced to interpretive dance on a deer being shot then that’s when I get up to refill my popcorn.

The short probably put them in a good mood, as it was zesty and high on energy.  They warmed up with some fast and steady quips for the appetizer, which kept their level respectable for the mean, indigestible main course.

Snow Thrills

Original Episode:  It Conquered the World

The movie going public will THRILL to seeing sporting events in any form, because we’re too fat and lazy to do it on our own!

Before television was a thing, audiences had very limited ways of following sports.  You had to see it live in order to see it in practice, otherwise you had to listen to it over the radio or read about it in the paper the next day.  Shorts like Snow Thrills were meant as a means of small glimpses to things that were difficult to see in certain parts of the country.  Snow Thrills gives us a look at the wonders of snow sports, and why you should spend your vacation at a ski lodge this winter and risk a broken leg.

Nowadays when it’s easy to watch the Winter Olympics every four years, Snow Thrills doesn’t seem all that special, but back then it was something fun.  It wasn’t something you saw every day, or even COULD see every year.  The stunts are cool, and audiences enjoyed them.  Snow Thrills serves its purpose.

The short is very visual, which means there is a lot for our crew to play with.  When they’re not mocking the sports, they take aim at the narrator, and especially get mileage out of his proper pronunciation of the word “ski,” which is supposed to be pronounced “shee” (“You’re full of skit,” Joel responds, the foul-mouthed bastard).  This leads to a lot of fun with the phrase “ski jorring” (pronounced “she-whoring”).

The Selling Wizard

Original Episode:  The Dead Talk Back

For those store-owners who need to know the importance keeping food fresh and cool with attractive packaging, this short is for you.  We see a large selection of refrigeration and freezing units as well as how it might display one's product.

And speaking of attractive packaging, here's a model in a skimpy outfit to guide us every step of the way.

For those maybe interested in how your fridge cools food down, this might be a helpful guide.  Though it's primary focus is to sell coolers to stores who might need them, but let's face facts, these models are long since out of production.  So the last point of interest for those who don't care is a pretty woman in a dress.  Yay!

The Selling Wizard isn't a short I remember much when I think back over the show.  Watching again now it occurs to me that it's probably because of how talky it is, and the riffers can hardly get a word in edgewise.  There are definite moments where they drop to silence and just kind of listen to the short because they can't fit a joke in, which is sometimes frustrating.  What material that does get through is uneven, though there are some nice laughs.  It's not the worst short of the series (my personal vote goes to Junior Rodeo Daredevils on that one), though it's toward the bottom.

Pipeline to the Clouds

Original Episode:  A Tribute to Manos

This is an industrial short made to show the important everyday uses people use water for in their general lives while also acknowledging what it takes for our workers to bring water into everyday homes all across the country.  That stuff doesn't just come out of the faucet like magic, ya know!

This short's a bit haphazard as it shows off the importance of water by showing what a drought can cause and scratches the surface of how we can prevent it.  Unfortunately it only scratches that surface and not much else.  The short doesn't bother to explain how really any of this works and just comes off as a whirlwind of water related imagery.  It's a bit irritating really.  I'm being shown lots of things but I'm not exactly learning anything from them.

Likewise for the riffing, this short is like water itself:  It's there but it's not solid enough to latch onto.  The short has actual content but not enough to work with in any sort of meaningful way.  Jonah's crew is in the theater seats for this one and honestly they seem a little stumped on how to make this funny.  They do jump at what imagery they can however they can though it tends to stay tricky.  They take a few establishing shots of a dam and use them to sass call "DAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYUUUUUUUUUM!"  There are also points where we see pretty women bathing yet all they can do is catcall, which is a little lazy.  But occasionally they'll come out with something great, and Jonah gets the most killer potshot of the entire short as he targets the anti-mask/vaxx movement:

"If there is one thing Americans can be counted on to do it's to selflessly accept mild personal inconvenience for the betterment of society as a whole."

But unfortunately the first short of the Gizmoplex is a disappointment.  It's mostly subpar material aimed at a short that seems like it's an uphill battle to contend with.  This one is a sinker.

The Debutantes

This short compilation livestream concluded with two new shorts, neither of which was accompanied by a "Short of the Month Club" intro by Pearl, though Let's Keep Food Safe to Eat has one on its solo presentation online.  Pearl apologizes for the overdose of Emily shorts this season, because Jonah's crew hasn't taken on a short since Let's Make a Meal in 20 Minutes, which was ages ago.  It doesn't stop her from giving Emily another short, while Jonah doesn't get another one at all this season.

I suspect what happened is that since Emily's crew only had four episodes to themselves, as they had to go off on tour during production, they decided to make up for their lack of content by handing them the majority of shorts.  It's weird that Jonah's shorts were so few and only at the beginning of the season, and even the Mads took a few slots that could have gone to his crew.  That being said, I wouldn't trade the Mads shorts this season for anything.

Anyway, food.  Let's eat!  But are those filthy hands of yours clean?  Of course they aren't, you dirty animal, you!  Let's rectify that, and also take a look at the many ways we keep our food fresh and healthy for when we're ready to chow down.  For example, did you know if you were to leave food sitting out for a week it might go bad?  You did?  I learned that the hard way when I found a pizza box behind the couch that one time, but luckily this short is here to keep you from making my mistakes.

This short is pretty much that in a nutshell, just spelling out food safety for kids and why you shouldn't just eat that Jolly Rancher you found in the parking lot.  It's pretty encompassing, from pointing out what food is spoiled and showing off the healthy eating habits your parents have likely instilled in you already that you haven't thought about but do anyway.  It's informative but like most similar shorts, is easy to just zone out as it drones on.

"If a fly lands on your food, it can leave harmful germs there."

"But add texture and flavor."

This is probably one of the better shorts of the season, and might specifically be Emily's short highlight.  It's one of those silly little fast-talking info dump shorts with a lot of visual cues to bounce off of and educational bits to add on to.  Emily's crew does pretty solid work, from asking about the "Five second rule?" to the moral of just "Say no to leftovers."  Laughs are plentiful, including the implication that a child at mealtime with dirty hands only has them because he was so hungry that he ate dirt.  I guess Servo was right, it was a "Four Screwdriver morning."  I get it.  With kids like these, why wouldn't it be?

Thumbs Up

👍

And now for a very special presentation, as we have a short that acts as a bridge in between Seasons 12 and 13.  As one might recall at the end of Ator, the Fighting Eagle, Kinga and Max were sucked up into the theater and forced to watch Mr. B Natural.  We only got to see a snippet of that event, but now this short has been dug up from the archives and we finally get to see the duo take on Mystery Science Theater's famous musical sprite.

Nevermind that Kinga's hairstyle is clearly her shortened Season 13 do with a little bow, and not the Season 11 & 12 Wilma Flintstone look with the boney hairpins.  I assure you that is irrelevant and this totally was not a result of this short being filmed this season.

::sits crossarmed ala Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons::

Worst Fan Service EVER.

But it's cool that they went back to the pool and did this little short for the fans.  I love that they did this, even as Mr. B isn't really a favorite of mine.  But I guess since I've always felt there was room for improvement on that short, maybe Felicia Day and Patton Oswalt's go at it will make for a more appealing option for me?

My original Mr. B Natural summary from War of the Colossal Beast:

The androgynous music sprite Mr. B Natural appears to a socially awkward boy named Buzz to turn him on (?!) to the wonders of music.  Mr. B gets him to toot is own horn (?!?!) by going out and buying a trumpet.  And with no practice necessary, he is awesome at it.  Mr. B then goes into hibernation, awaiting to be called upon once again.

This weird short has been a long time favorite among MSTies for being something of an oddity.  And it lives up to the oddity part.  It tries to make children interested in music by creating a magical character out of it, but this storyline comes off less encouraging than intended.  Mr. B is a bit of a high pitched annoyance and Buzz doesn't really experience much of a growth.  His story arch pretty much consists of buying a trumpet and reaping the rewards.

Remember kids, being instantly good at music makes you popular.

To an extent, while I think some of the bigger laughs from the original short are missing, this version of Mr. B is a little smoother and more consistent to my ears.  Kinga and Max rely less on the shock expressions, and while they're still present, they work a balance with actual jokes.  I like Kinga's crack that the short feels like being "Trapped in one of the Nicholas Brothers' nightmares" and her verbal disgust to Mr. B claiming "You gotta inspect your horn, boy!"  Max has a few funny bits as well, including some points where Felicia and Patton both stay in character and Kinga treats Max like her stooge to be controlled.  That usually is a tall ask for the Mads when they're in the theater, because they usually play it as riffers first and characters second.  Max also has one of the funniest lines in the short, right at the start as he notes the director's name of "Phil Patton."

"I just love the name 'Patton,' so strong and viral!"

Is it funnier?  Well, it probably depends on perspective.  I think those who grew up with the original Mr. B for all these years thinking it's the funniest segment of riffing the show ever offered will probably treat this reriff with indifference.  I'm in a unique position where I don't really have a large fondness for Mr. B Natural and find this one pretty okay.  I think it's good enough to recommend and while some similar territory is shared, it's unique enough to work on its own.  I'd say it's above average, and even if you idolize Mr. B's place as an MST legend, it's probably good enough for a fresh chuckle or two.

Thumbs Up

👍

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 20 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

In the Grey

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Action, Thriller

Director:  Guy Ritchie

Starring:  Jake Gyllenhaal, Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Kristofer Hivju, Fisher Stevens, Rosamund Pike

Guy Ritchie is a name that can perk my ears when it comes to a quirky action movie.  Usually, even if his movies aren't anything great, they're usually something.  Something can mean stylish or fun, often both.  But if I had to choose one over the other, I'd favor the latter.  In the Grey is probably the least interesting movie I've seen from Ritchie in a while, but I also haven't seen that Fountain of Youth movie he did last year.  This movie stars Eiza González as a covert operative who is sent to retrieve a large sum of cash that was stolen, which she does so through legal and political means without getting her hands dirty.  Should the occasion call for violence, she relies on her extraction team, led by Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill.  It's an interesting take on a heist movie, though one that doesn't always have the moving pieces that a heist film requires to be engaging.  Heist movies can also sell themselves on attitude, and In the Grey is rich on attitude.  Ritchie movies are usually reliable on that.  The lack of intriguing plot development or momentum just makes it a movie that has more fun with being cheeky than it does with progressing.  The fact that the actors are having a good time does help sell it, and Gyllenhaal, Cavill, and González are all Ritchie veterans and know what's what.  Gyllenhaal and Cavill don't have much character to speak of, choosing to instead be the mysterious enforcers who get the job done.  A lot of the film's character beats lie with González, who holds her own.  González is a more interesting actress than she's often given credit for.  She has a hardened power to her presence that makes her great in roles like this, because she's like Michelle Rodriguez if she had a more emotive voice and the poise a supermodel.  She does well with the role she is given here.  So do Gyllenhaal and Cavill, even though they're given little to do except to look casually dangerous.  They shine more in the suspense and action scenes, of which there are less than you might hope.  There is a certain rhythm that Ritchie is going for in this movie by doing a heist plot through verbilization and negotiation and I'm not sure he achieved it, making it feel long in the tooth before things heat up.  I think it's interesting that he tried, even if the movie is less interesting than it could be.

Obsession

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Curry Barker

Starring:  Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, Andy Richter

Obession is a movie that most horror voices I follow online have been raving about for months.  I didn't think the trailers have been particularly noteworthy, but everyone has been insistent that this was a must-see.  So, I prepared myself, optimistically hoping that I'd see a good movie.  It turns out that it didn't matter what I expected, there was no bar I could have set, and none of the plot turns that I may have guessed in advance would make a difference.  The fact of the matter was that I was thoroughly unprepared to see a movie that went this fucking hard.

The set-up of this movie is very basic Monkey's Paw "be careful what you wish for" stuff (which is also the trite tagline on the poster).  This movie could have easily been a Wishmaster movie, but they cut out the middle man and turned the Djinn into a novelty stick.  Michael Johnston has a crush on coworker Inde Navarrette, but finds his window of telling her that he might want to be more than friends closing when she is about to quit her job.  He makes a wish on a "One-Wish Willow" for her to be in love with him and her demeanor instantly changes in the aftermath, showing a desire to be with him with little focus for anything else and wishing he return his focus similarly.  Or bad things will happen.  All in the name of proving how much she loves him.

Relationship goals.

One expectation I had for this movie was that it would gradually shift from blooming romance to horror as it goes.  Instead, the movie indicates something is very wrong from the get-go.  If I have one issue with the movie it's that it escalates way too quickly, choosing not to ramp up tension but get into the meat within an instant.  I would dock points for the movie never offering much that's new as it goes on but it makes up for it with the fact that it flies with a constant discomfort that gets under the viewer's skin.  And even if I do discredit the movie for hitting too fast, escalation still happens as even though the situation is never at any point manageable, it spirals to a point where it is impossible to contend with.  The third act of the movie, while predictable in several ways, is a zealous delivery of a nasty concoction of cringe, brutality, and terror and will sit with me for a very long time.

Inde Navarrette is remarkable in this movie, managing to make her most innocuous and attractive qualities seem sinister.  She is aided by stellar direction and cinematography, but the movie wouldn't work if her performance is off-point and she always keeps in step with what the film is doing with her.  Even something as simple as a glint in her eye carries a lot of significance.  She is spellbinding.  And she's working with thematic material that has a weight to it as the film asks us to examine the selfishness of Johnston's character in both his choices and his act of taking away her own because he was unable to verbalize himself and handle the situation properly.  The movie also touches upon how keeping our eyes firmly on one thing keeps us from seeing things of value that are just outside of that gaze.  The movie can be as sweet in its life outlook as it is brutal with how much it will deny it to the poor suckers who are stuck within it.  The movie is an anti-romance with base understanding of romantic ideals.  It just also wants to squeeze them until they pop.

The Wizard of the Kremlin

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Olivier Assayas

Starring:  Paul Dano, Jude Law, Alicia Vikander, Jeffery Wright, Tom Sturridge, Will Keen

The Wizard of the Kremlin is based on the fictional novel about a fictional Russian citizen, who started as an artist and eventually rose to be an adviser to Prime Minister turned President Vladimir Putin.  It's certainly a more interesting study of Putin's rise to power and eventual abuse of it than it is of this completely made up person, who just isn't that interesting.  This is one of those movies where you can see why the filmmakers thought it was fascinating as an idea but in bringing it to the screen there is just little-to-no life in it.  When faced with that, one needs to stimulate with a bombastic style, which this movie does not have.  It's a very lifeless movie full of talented people who all seem on different wavelengths as to what type of movie they're making.  Some actors jump at doing a thick Russian accent, some don't bother at all, working in whatever accent they feel like.  It makes the film come off as amateur hour, which is shocking for a film with this many established professionals.  But Vladimir Putin is British, apparently.  According to Jude Law's performance, at least.  That, in particular, is off-putting, because Law is very well cast otherwise.  He captures Putin's manorisms quite exquisitely, but every time he opens his mouth, the illusion shatters.  On the positive, Alicia Vikander is fun to watch, likely because she's the only character with flavor.  Everyone else is a cold politician.  But intertwining the fictional with the reality proves to be a cumbersome task, something the filmmakers seem out of their depth with achieving.  This movie can't even find a guy to do a quality Larry King impersonation.  How hard is that?

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The Devil Wears Prada 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Hokum ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Michael ⭐️⭐️

Mortal Kombat II ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Project Hail Mary ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Sheep Detectives ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ⭐️⭐️1/2

Top Gun ⭐️⭐️1/2

Top Gun:  Maverick ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Faces of Death ⭐️⭐️1/2

Project Hail Mary ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

You, Me & Tuscany ⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Twinless ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!