Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 6 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Dracula

⭐️

🏆"Hurst So Good" Must-See Bad Movie Award🏆

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Luc Besson

Starring:  Caleb Landry Jones, Christoph Waltz, Zoë Bleu, Matilda De Angelis, Ewens Abid, David Shields, Guillaume de Tonquédec

When I talked about Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein movie last year, I lamented that there wasn't a Dracula movie on the horizon.  Little did I know that Luc Besson had already made one and it had already seen release in France, so I stand corrected.  Now having seen it, I'm probably still likely I'm going to pair Del Toro's Frankenstein with Robert Eggers' Nosferatu primarily because they're of similar artistic passion.  Also, Besson's Dracula is hilariously bad.

This version of Dracula leans into that thing a lot of Dracula adaptations do (most notably the Francis Ford Coppola version) that has Mina Harker as the reincarnation of Dracula's past wife, something that was not a thing in the original book.  But most of the key elements are here.  Jonathan Harker meets Dracula, Dracula keeps him prisoner, Dracula travels to Jonathan's homeland (which is France in this version) and preys upon Mina.  It's an altered variation on the book, which seems to be because Besson's vision is trying to be poetic and operatic.  It's impressive how much he fails at it, turning Bram Stoker's gothic entertainer into artless smut.  A sizable percentage of this movie is senseless trash, while a good portion is also endearing kitsch that one wishes the movie exploited more.  There are a lot of scenes in this movie that are inexplicably weird, including impromptu dance numbers and little gargoyle minions, just like Quasimodo in Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame.  And they act like Munchies.

The only component the movie utilizes to it full potential is the typically outstanding Christoph Waltz, who starred in both a Dracula and Frankenstein movie within months of each other, which makes him this generation's Edward Van Sloan and/or Peter Cushing, if you think about it.  He plays the movie's Abraham Van Helsing, though he is not mentioned by name, opting to be a mysterious priest who is searching for vampires.  He's not the only one who is trying to save this movie, either.  The roles of Renfield and Lucy have been combined and replaced by a new character named Maria, played by Matilda de Angelis, who is the one person in this movie having the most fun.  If more people in this movie followed her lead with the campy sex appeal, this movie could probably be glorious.  Sadly, it's stuck behind Caleb Landry Jones as Dracula.  Jones is not a poor casting choice, he's just a boring one.  He brings no, pardon the pun, blood to the role.  He fills a lot of requirements for a good Dracula, he just plays him without personality.  Without a solid lead and severe inconsistency in its camp value, Besson's Dracula is a spectacular misfire from top-to-bottom.  I don't know if it's the worst Dracula movie because I'm not nearly as obsessed with seeking them out like I am with Frankenstein, but of the ones I have seen, it's bottom tier.  But I hear Dario Argento's was worse.  Maybe I should watch that and give this movie a challenger for the title.

The Moment

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Aiden Zamiri

Starring:  Charli XCX, Alexander Skarsgård, Rosanna Arquette, Kate Berlant, Jamie Demetriou, Hailey Benton Gates, Isaac Powell

Pop star Charli XCX stars in this fictionalized drama version of the tail end of "Brat Summer," which people much younger than I am know more about.  All I know is that it happened in 2024 and "brat" was one of those stigma words that was reclaimed and turned into a positive, like us Millenials saying the word "bad" to mean good when we were tweens.  The Moment isn't always firing on all cylanders as a drama.  Charli XCX's idea for this movie seems to be of the psychological pressures of being a pop artist, which is fair enough.  An actual documentary might have been better for what she wants to get across instead of her scripted situations, which often feel like planned stunts.  To be fair, Charli XCX is a pretty compelling lead and her creative frustrations of everything coming together, falling apart, then being reassembled actually lead to an interesting psychoanalysis of the collaborative creative process.  Some aspects of this feel one-dimensional, especially Alexander Skarsgård's director character, who is a one-note douchebag throughout all of his scenes.  I think if Charli XCX managed to flesh out more of this movie, it could be an artistic triumph.  As is, it's an "Almost had it."

Solo Mio

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Romance

Director:  Chuck Kinnane, Dan Kinnane

Starring:  Kevin James, Kim Coates, Nicole Grimaudo, Alyson Hannigan, Jonathan Roumie

Kevin James gets jilted at the alter.  Why?  The movie doesn't seem to care.  It's just a thing that needs to happen so he can be alone and sad in Italy.  He wanders around until he meets a cafe owner that he begins to have a new romantic spark with, and thus romcom blossoms, despite not being very funny nor romantic.  I guess this movie is harmless enough and not unpleasant to watch.  It's just so empty, meandering, and meaningless.  Instead of telling a story, James just wallows in depression about a woman who won't marry him until he stumbles upon a woman who will.  The movie might as well be a bad reality show competition to see who gets to be his replacement wife.  Maybe the movie would be fine if there were any substance to the blooming romantic couple, but their relationship is too plastic to be charming.  It only exists because a broken heart isn't allowed to exist and in RomComLand it demands to be mended instantly.  It's just a hollow approximation of an emotional bond, and if the emotional bond in one of these movies falls flat, then it has nothing to offer.

In the end, if you want a romcom in Italy, there is no shortage of them.  My personal favorite is Roman Holiday, and this one likely won't be the favorite of many.

The Strangers:  Chapter 3

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Renny Harlin

Starring:  Madelaine Petsch, Gabriel Basso, Ema Horvath, Richard Brake, Rachel Shenton, Ella Bruccoleri

In a weird way, this is probably one of my most anticipated movies of the year.  I have become utterly fascinated with the existence of this new Strangers trilogy.  The entire idea is so perplexing to me.  A recognizable and mostly respected horror brand falls into your lap and this is what you chose to do with it?  Craft a three-part story that put on full display just how much you misunderstood the first movie?  I had to bring closure to this, because I just need to see the whole mess, at this point.

Maybe they were counting on people like me to bring in the box office to these movies.

I even went as far to re-watch the last two films in preparation for this.  I didn't really get anything new out of them, though it's weird how noticeably "better" (in a relative term) Chapter 1 is over 2, even though it's just "The Strangers but worse."  What did strike me on re-watch is that Chapter 1 has sturdier plotting, which I realized is because it's using the skeleton of the original movie, so that one thing it does right is not something it can credit to itself.  They finally do their own original take on this story in Chapter 2 and it's just not anything.  It seems to want to be a paranoia thriller but is so distracted by maintaining slasher movie tropes that it never actually soaks in the paranoia.

And now the climax is here.  This movie is guaranteed to suck.  The question is, was there any point to this entire project?  For what it's worth, it's the best of the three films.  Unlike the first, it feels like it has an idea.  Unlike the second, it has a semblance of cohesion.  But it also was set up for failure no matter what movie they made with this one.  The best thing about it is that its honors the previous movies by being terrible.

We last left our exhausted final girl Madelaine Petsch having successfully killed Pin-Up Girl.  Remaining killers Scarecrow and Dollface then take Petsch captive and try to train her to be the new Pin-Up Girl, which is an idea that I'm sure makes sense to them but is in reality really stupid.  The idea of "you killed and now you're a killer" has been done in horror movies before, and much better than it has been done here.  Hell, in this movie it makes even less sense.  They just grab her and put the Pin-Up mask on her, like it's supposed to be Tim Allen's The Santa Clause and she's just supposed to magically turn into a saucy serial killer.

I mean, this kinda happened with Amanda in the original Saw trilogy.  She actually had an arc, though.  This is "You stab someone, you do stab things now."

Probably the most appealing thing about this trilogy is how it seems to have been written with the promise of finally giving a backstory to the serial killers who had no explanation.  The lack of an explanation was kind of their entire point in the first place but we're on the fifth film now, so new info would be kinda nice.  We were teased with Pin-Up flashbacks in the last one, which were odd and simplistic.  This new movie doubles down on it, telling an oddball love story between her and Scarecrow.  And eventually Dollface too, who, spoiler alert, is just some random chick they picked up.  I guess this is as good a backstory as any for them, but the Strangers don't have the personality to carry a Bonnie & Clyde story.  Child's Play characters Chucky and Tiffany, for example, are the right types of personalities for a movie like that.  The Strangers are too static for something like this.  It's like having Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees do Shakespeare.  If you were to ask me what I would have done, I think these sequels would have been better off trying to have Petsch's character try and figure out who the killers are and see that the trail led to mundane people who had normal lives.  That would have been an approach, exploring the abnormal beneath "normalcy."

But no.  The Strangers are just freaks.  And they're obviously freaks, too.  This trilogy feels like it has been trying to subvert the expectations of what we assumed was underneath the original Strangers movie, but all it did was turn it into every other type of slasher movie.  The second movie reveals who Pin-Up Girl is in the first scene, which was the most surprising of any of the killer reveals and they just flat out threw it down like it was notgung.  Then they flaunt the guy who is obviously Scarecrow throughout the rest of the movie, then act like they're being coy about it, only for the third movie to go "Yeah, it's him.  We tricked you, didn't we?"  Then they just rush out a Dollface origin because it feels like they forgot about her.  All of this and a "town lore" too, because it's not enough that the Strangers are just bad people, there has to be a conspiracy around them, too.

If you watched the original Strangers film in 2008 and thought all this shit was going down beneath it, you have a more active imagination than I do.

But at least this movie is something.  The last two movies weren't anything.  So, extra credit for that.  Did I waste my time?  Yes.  Was it mine to waste?  Also, yes.  I needed to see what this was because from minute one I couldn't figure out what they were doing.  Now I know what they were doing and I'm more confused than ever, which means I'm somehow even more obsessed with these three stupid movies.  When something grabs my curiosity, I can't shake that.  Congratulations to this awful trilogy.  You stole my attention, which is the most valuable thing I have.

Whistle

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Corin Hardy

Starring:  Dafne Keen, Sophir Nélisse, Sky Yang, Jhaleil Swaby, Ali Skovbye, Nick Frost, Percy Hynes White, Michelle Fairley

Death comes too soon in this soon-on-Shudder horror flick where a group of teens discover a "death whistle," which summons a ghostly entity and kills the summoner by bringing the moment of their death to the present.  It's a little like Final Destination, except with a physical conduit to revolve around.  Whistle exists squarely in the realm of horror that has a concept and grisly death scenes and serves up little outside of that.  As popcorn horror goes, it's pretty entertaining and a little gross, which makes it efficient despite its lack of ambition.  The movie's major selling point has the characters being chased around by entities that take the form of themselves in what form they would take on the day they die, so if you die of old age, a creepy old person chases you, or if you die in a fire, it's a charred corpse.  There's an allure to that creativity because quite a few of them line up with the context clues given, while one in particular is weirdly specific to act just as an excuse to get someone to randomly combust into a shower of blood.  As horror movie junk food, Whistle can be silly and fun, while it also plays with that moral you'd assume Final Destination would have if their characters weren't all paranoid:  you never know what day death comes, so live in today.  And it also utters an exchange that should be an unofficial slogan of the horror genre:

"What if I don't wanna die?"

"Then you shouldn't have been born."

Art Attack

The Voice of Hind Rajab

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Oscars Nominated:  Best International Feature Film

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  Kaouther Ben Hania

Starring:  Saja Kilani, Motaz Malhees, Amer Hlehel, Clara Khoury

Here to absolutely wreck us is the Tunisian International Oscar Nominee, which uses the real life audio of a six-year-old girl named Hind Rajab who was trapped in Gaza as Israeli forces killed her family in an attack, leaving her trapped in a car trying to phone for help.  The film dramatizes the Palestinian call center who are trying to send a team to rescue her, facing bureaucratic red tape and logistical hurdles of sending an ambulance into a war zone, where they could theoretically have her out in less than ten minutes, delaying the operation for hours.  This is a difficult film to talk about because it's uniquely frustrating and upsetting, making it worse is the fact that we're reminded every minute that this actually happened because of the actual audio.  What did strike me about this film is that if this were a film made in the USA, it would be a film about the perseverance of rescue teams who put their lives on the line and get results, all for a moment of feel-good hero worship at the end after saving the day.  That's not what this is.  What this movie does is fiercely show the reasons why such efforts feel futile in the moment, knowing that if the plan is executed poorly, more than a little girl might be lost.

If one is sensitive to child endangerment, I highly recommend looking up the story of Hind Rajab before going into this movie because the way things turn out might be difficult for some.  I'm not sure if that's a spoiler or not, but this story is public record and so are the audio recordings, which were released on social media to help push people into action.  Part of me thinks the use of the actual audio is a little ghoulish, but it also hammers in the heartache that the film is trying to provide.  It succeeds.  That's one thing I can say for certain.

Oscar Nominations

The Alabama Solution (N/A)

All the Empty Rooms (N/A)

Arco (N/A)

Armed Only with a Camera:  The Life and Death of Brent Renaud (N/A)

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Blue Moon ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bugonia ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Butcher's Stain (N/A)

Cardboard (N/A)

Children No More:  "We and Are Gone" (N/A)

Come See Me in the Good Light (N/A)

Cutting Through Rocks (N/A)

The Devil Is Busy (N/A)

Diane Warren:  Relentless (N/A)

Elio ⭐️⭐️1/2

F1 ⭐️⭐️

Forevergreen (N/A)

Frankenstein ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A Friend of Dorothy (N/A)

The Girl Who Cried Pearls (N/A)

Hamnet ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You ⭐️⭐️⭐️

It Was Just an Accident ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Jane Austen's Period Drama (N/A)

Jurassic World: Rebirth ⭐️1/2

Kokuho (N/A)

KPop Demon Hunters ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Lost Bus ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Marty Supreme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Mr. Nobody Against Putin (N/A)

One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Perfect Neighbor ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Perfectly a Strangeness (N/A)

Retirement Plan (N/A)

The Secret Agent (N/A)

Sentimental Value ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Singers (N/A)

Sinners ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Sirāt (N/A)

The Smashing Machine ⭐️⭐️1/2

Song Sung Blue ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Three Sisters (N/A)

Train Dreams ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Two People Exchanging Saliva (N/A)

The Ugly Stepsister ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Voice of Hind Rajab ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Weapons ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

28 Years Later...:  The Bone Temple ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Clika ⭐️

The Housemaid ⭐️⭐️1/2

Iron Lung ⭐️⭐️

Marty Supreme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Mercy ⭐️1/2

Send Help ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Shelter ⭐️⭐️1/2

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

The Dutchman ⭐️1/2

Hamnet ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Housemaid ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Plague ⭐️⭐️⭐️

We Bury the Dead ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

Keeper ⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 5 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Iron Lung

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Horror, Science Fiction

Director:  Mark Fischbach

Starring:  Mark Fischbach

YouTube's invasion of movie theaters continues.  Following last year's almost depressing total of three movies directed by content creators (where only one of them was any good), now Mark Fischbach AKA Markiplier throws his hat in the ring.  To make matters worse, his movie is also a video game adaptation.  I just suffered through Return to Silent Hill, somebody kill me now.  Iron Lung is an enclosed space indie horror game that apparently Fischbach is very fond of, so he made it his mission in life to bring it to the big screen, even if he had to write, direct, and star in it himself.  Which he did.

I try not to throw around the phrase "self-indulgent" lightly, but...goddamn, dude.

Iron Lung takes place in the distant future where irrelevant bad stuff has happened.  It's lore so complicated that it takes the Wiki synopsis six full paragraphs to explain it before getting to the actual movie.  Long story short, space colonies dying, ocean of blood for some reason, submarine missions into blood ocean.  Fischbach plays a convict who has been sent into the ocean for a bone sample of a giant creature.  The mission goes sideways, likely because there are giant sea monsters swimming in blood, and now he's trapped on the ocean floor.  But, as important as this mission seems to be, Fischbach's actual set-up seems almost intentionally impractical.  The idea is that he's a disposable asset just dumped in a death trap but given that a lot seems to hinge on his success, you might want to give him a little more to work with than a fancy x-ray camera and lackluster navigation.  That in mind, the movie isn't without its interesting qualities, being that of a slow-burn, enclosed space thriller.  The film's biggest problem lies with pacing, where the film circles itself in redundancies until it finally stumbles to a bizarre conclusion.  A good half hour of this movie could be cut and all you would lose is dead air and irrelevant psychological mumbling to oneself.

On the positive side, Fischbach does carry the film quite well and he throws himself into the role.  Direction is not without promise, though sequences where the little sub is capsizing fail to convince because while Fischbach does commit to flinging himself around, cinematography is so inert that it feels as if nothing is happening.  Some of the film's camera pics are suitably creepy, even if the film is not very scary.  There is probably something promising here, though Iron Lung feels like the most base version of it.  It's full of nonsense and doesn't really support the elements it needs to to succeed bit I can't say the movie is actually a failure.

Shelter

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Action, Thriller

Director:  Ric Roman Waugh

Starring:  Jason Statham, Bodhi Rae Breathnach, Bill Nighy, Naomi Ackie, Daniel Mays

Jason Statham is back and playing the most Jason Statham character of all time, a former Black Ops agent who is now on the run from the government who used to employ him.  His cover is finally blown when an orphan girl stumbles into his life, and the duo go on the run together.  Insert gunplay and father figure allegories.  Shelter meets pretty much most standards that it sets for itself, exceeding at very few of them.  The action is solid, though the plotting is safe, generic, and not very elaborate.  We get details to help understand why this is all happening but not enough for it to really be juicy.  The flavor of the movie instead lies in Statham's relationship with Bodhi Rae Breathnach, who didn't get the memo that she is in a time-killing action movie and decides to go for a heavily emotional performance.  Breathnach steals the movie and makes it more heartfelt than it should be.  I never thought I'd be able to say a Jason Statham thriller succeeded in getting me emotionally invested but Shelter proved me wrong.  If the rest of the movie lived up to that, this movie could have been quite exceptional.

Tafiti:  Across the Desert

⭐️

Genre:  Adventure, Comedy

Director:  Nina Wels

Starring:  Cosima Henman, Bürger Lars Dietrich

It's hard to imagine that Tafiti:  Across the Desert's inception was anything other than "store brand Timon and Pumba," as a meerkat and a hog go on a comedic adventure.  It's primary selling point is likely to be reminding young children that The Lion King exists and this might be something similar.  Tafiti is a meerkat who journeys across a desert to find a blue flower to save his ill grandfather, joined by Bristles, a goofy pig with a good heart that Tafiti has been conditioned by his family to avoid.  The moral of the movie is the idea of trusting and making friends outside of one's comfort zone but it chooses to word this through a character who is warned "Don't trust strangers" then finding out strangers are good actually.  Y'all really need to reword this message because impressing upon young children the idea that strangers just want to be their friend is very dangerous.  On top of that, as children's entertainment, the movie isn't very good.  It's comedy is oddball and often just trying to be gross for the sake of being gross while its adventure aspects are pretty barren, meaning the movie fails with both its moral center and it's entertainment value.  If a children's film can do neither, it's value is nothing.

Worldbreaker

⭐️

Genre:  Science Fiction, Horror

Director:  Brad Anderson

Starring:  Luke Evans, Milla Jovovich, Billie Boullet

A Quiet Place meets The Last of Us in this personality-lacking misfire where Luke Evans survives the apocalypse with his teenage daughter on an island while wife Milla Jovavich leads a girl-power army against giant bug critters that can turn men and sometimes women (but not always) into mutant monsters.  The movie is really weird about this tidbit of worldbuilding because one would assume this would be setting up some sort of storyline about procreation and species survival but the movie has little value in it.  The only reason it's brought up is so it can have the image of an all-women army at the beginning of the movie.  Otherwise, it plays very loosely with this "sometimes" rule that doesn't have any bearing on what is actually happening.  Most of the movie is Evans training his daughter and telling her tall tales, which doesn't amount to much.  Nothing in this movie does, to be honest.  The movie feels like it doesn't have a story to tell.  It mumbles out lore and hopes people find it cool enough to not notice that nothing is happening.  It doesn't really start to come alive until the last ten minutes when the movie finally makes it understood what it thinks it's doing, being a tale of parentage and how they influence the person we become and the great things we might accomplish.  It's a shame it's not in a better movie because young actress Billie Boullet is really throwing herself into this role and occasionally the movie throws in some horror framing that is inspired.  The movie is eighty minutes of dud and about five minutes of "Yeah, I guess."

Oscar's Trash Can

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oscars Nominated:  Best Actress in a Leading Role - Rose Byrne

Genre:  Drama, Comedy

Director:  Mary Bronstein

Starring:  Rose Byrne, Conan O'Brien, Danielle Macdonald, Christian Slater, A$AP Rocky

Adulting is hard.  Rose Byrne gets it.  This movie sees her as a mom on the edge, dealing with a flooded apartment, an ill child, an absent husband, a disengaged therapist, and her own therapy clients who are piling their own problems on her when she can't even figure out her own shit.  That dam is about to burst, and we witness the catastrophic act happen as Byrne is constantly screaming for help at those who could listen yet nobody will answer.  The movie also takes into account self-responsibility, as a good chunk of Byrne's spiraling is within her control but she indulges herself for the sake of taking the edge off (a little wine, a little weed, a little black market substance abuse).  The film is very visceral in its depiction of life becoming too much for one person to handle, at times probably so much so that it can be difficult to take in.  It's a movie that every mom should probably watch.  It will induce one of two reactions.  The first is a traumatic response, where it physically hurts them to watch it because they don't want to think about this crap.  Or they'll just look at it and go "Oh my god, I feel seen."

It Was Just an Accident

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Oscars Nominated:  Best Writing (Original Screenplay, Best International Feature Film

Genre:  Drama, Thriller

Director:  Jafar Panahi

Starring:  Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ibrahim Azizi, Madison Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr, Delnaz Najafi, Afssaneh Najmabadi, Georges Hashemzadeh

It Was Just an Accident begins with a mother calming her child after her husband accidentally hits a dog with their car, claiming that somehow that was a part of God's plan and they just need to see how it unfolds.  God's plan, as it happens, is kinda weird, because that accident starts a domino effect that results in the man being kidnapped by Iranian prison camp survivors who accuse him of being an ranking official who tortured them.

I gotta admit, when I looked at the poster, this is not what I assumed this movie would be about.  Consider my expectations thoroughly subverted.

This is the latest film from renegade Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi, claimed by France for International Oscar contention because, like most of Panahi's works, the Iranian government would rather see it burn than be an awards contender.  As per usual, the film is a scathing commentary of the regime of Panahi's home country while also being a story about trauma, what we are able to move past and what stays with us.  There comes a point in the film whether it doesn't seem to matter whether the man is who these people suspect him to be because he is representing a conduit for past horrors that haunt them.  The movie is very unpredictable and emotionally engaging, with the only sour mark being that it stalls as the second act is booting up, going through one too many variations of "Is it him?"/"I don't know."  It's a hurdle that's well worth getting past because the whole package is pretty fabulous.

The Perfect Neighbor

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Oscars Nominated:  Best Documentary Feature Film

Genre:  Documentary

Director:  Geeta Gandbhir

Starring:  Ajike Shantrell Owens, Susan Lorincz

The Perfect Neighbour starts out like the worst episode of Cops you've ever seen.  It's a lot of frivolous calls to the police from Susan Lorincz, a woman who doesn't seem to know how the suburbs work.  Told mostly through bodycam footage, we come out to her house time and time again to hear her complain about her neighbors, while her neighbors offer up more reasonable stories along with frustration over her attitude.  Did I mention she's white and they're African American?  Stick a pin in that because that might be important.  Anyway, we see these mundane complaints over and over until it's not a mundane complaint anymore.  One night, the cops come because shots are fired and Ajike Shantrell Owens has been killed.  Susan Lorincz is now detained for manslaughter, claiming self-defense.  The Perfect Neighbour is an analysis of the escalating situation, from the minor complaints to her eventual trial.  The film is primarily a criticism of Florida's Stand Your Ground laws which open up the question of whether or not she was within her rights to just open fire because she felt threatened.  She says she was.  Following the psychology of Lorincz is an interesting avenue because my impression of her is that she is prone to lashing out through traumatic stress responses, and when addressing people of authority, she tends to scale-down of her own actions while hyperbolizing other people into being the aggressors.  This is pretty much confirmed when she is informed of her arrest and she just freezes in place, telling the officers that she won't comply, turning the tragedy on its head and trying to recontextualize it in her own perceived victimhood.  Then there is the underlining racism of what is going on, which remains subtextual until the question of the "n-word" being used in the confrontations with her neighbors is raised.  She claims that she never used it but if she did, she used it in the proper context that her upbringing defined, which is the most telling statement she makes.

The film's motions of viewing the process of such a situation proves to be very timely, considering the recent violence in Minnesota that is also not seeing proper justice being served.  The Perfect Neighbour is frustrating in how gently the authorities treat this woman, which could be because of her age but could also easily be because she's white.  The fact that justice seems to be weening her is angering.  This movie is at times fascinating, perplexing, and ultimately just downright upsetting.  It's a tough watch if you have any sort of empathy.

Oscar Nominations

The Alabama Solution (N/A)

All the Empty Rooms (N/A)

Arco (N/A)

Armed Only with a Camera:  The Life and Death of Brent Renaud (N/A)

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Blue Moon ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bugonia ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Butcher's Stain (N/A)

Cardboard (N/A)

Children No More:  "We and Are Gone" (N/A)

Come See Me in the Good Light (N/A)

Cutting Through Rocks (N/A)

The Devil Is Busy (N/A)

Diane Warren:  Relentless (N/A)

Elio ⭐️⭐️1/2

F1 ⭐️⭐️

Forevergreen (N/A)

Frankenstein ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A Friend of Dorothy (N/A)

The Girl Who Cried Pearls (N/A)

Hamnet ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You ⭐️⭐️⭐️

It Was Just an Accident ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Jane Austen's Period Drama (N/A)

Jurassic World: Rebirth ⭐️1/2

Kokuho (N/A)

KPop Demon Hunters ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Lost Bus ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Marty Supreme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Mr. Nobody Against Putin (N/A)

One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Perfect Neighbor ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Perfectly a Strangeness (N/A)

Retirement Plan (N/A)

The Secret Agent (N/A)

Sentimental Value ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Singers (N/A)

Sinners ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Sirāt (N/A)

The Smashing Machine ⭐️⭐️1/2

Song Sung Blue ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Three Sisters (N/A)

Train Dreams ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Two People Exchanging Saliva (N/A)

The Ugly Stepsister ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Voice of Hind Rajab (N/A)

Weapons ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

28 Years Later...:  The Bone Temple ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Anaconda ⭐️⭐️

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Clika ⭐️

The Housemaid ⭐️⭐️1/2

Marty Supreme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Mercy ⭐️1/2

Return to Silent Hill ⭐️

Send Help ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Testament of Ann Lee ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Anaconda ⭐️⭐️

Ella McCay ⭐️⭐️

Greenland:  Migration ⭐️⭐️

Silent Night, Deadly Night ⭐️⭐️1/2

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Physical

The Thing with Feathers ⭐️⭐️

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 4 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Clika

⭐️

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Michael Greene

Starring:  Jay Dee, Laura Lopez, Peter Greene, Eric Roberts

Clika is a movie that seems to be made by music producers trying to sell a new artist named Jay Dee.  I don't know why they think they'll sell music with a cliche amateur drama but at least this movie is more coherent than Hurry Up Tomorrow, so Jay Dee can say he did at least one thing better than The Weeknd.  Jay Dee stars as a peach farmer who becomes a parttime drug runner to make money fast so he can work on his music or something.  To be frank, this movie comes off as a fake soap opera that would be playing on TV in other movies.  Jay Dee doesn't sell it, as he is a flat actor with no charisma who is just floating around from place to place.  The film looks and feels like a dailies reel of random scenes the director collected because they needed to shoot something because they'd otherwise get fired, tied together with a rambling narration in hopes to convince the audience that there is a narrative.  There is nothing of value in this movie, especially since its primary purpose is to sell Jay Dee albums and it doesn't even show off his music that well.  I don't know what they expected me to get out of this movie.  The moral of this movie seems to be you can get rich by either selling drugs or becoming instantly famous, so do one or both.  And with that money you can buy a Playstation 5.  Thanks for the advice.

H Is for Hawk

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Philippa Lowthorpe

Starring:  Claire Foy, Brendan Gleeson, Denise Gough, Sam Spruell, Lindsay Duncan

Based on the autobiography of the same name, Claire Foy stars as writer Helen Macdonald, who is grieving the death of their father and during this period, they train a Goshawk as a companion.  This is a movie made for people who like watching movies breathe, as the film progresses with a soft casualness.  It almost produces a feeling of lost daze, replicating the uncertainty of its main character, sparking to life during the hawk training scenes because those are the points where they feel alive.  It's a quality drama, though its grief themes are similar to many movies of its type, which makes the film a bit small potatoes in the wider picture.  Whether one appreciates it will likely depend on if one resonates with the journey, and there is enough humanity here to make it worth a look.

Mercy

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Science Fiction, Mystery

Director:  Timur Bekmambetov

Starring:  Chris Pratt, Rebecca Ferguson, Kali Reis, Annabelle Wallis, Chris Sullivan, Kylie Rogers

Look, all I'm saying is that if I had only ninety minutes to live, I'd want to spend it staring at Rebecca Ferguson too.  That's the starting idea behind Mercy, where Ferguson plays an AI judge who is tells Chris Pratt that he has an hour-and-a-half to prove that he's innocent of a crime that he is accused of.  The entire idea is weird, if only because ninety minutes is a bullshit amount of time to do an actual investigation, let alone put together a defense strategy.  But it's kind of a high concept idea that you need to roll with because, if done well, a movie like this could underline how important due process is.  That's something the movie seems aware of, though opening with lines of dialogue like "guilty until proven innocent" are probably way too on-the-nose.  Still, I was willing to enjoy the ride, even if the movie had little to offer than to be a dumber variation on movies like Minority Report and Source Code, with a dash of Searching for good measure.  For a good hour, the movie had base entertainment value, telling a real time investigative mystery that also had satirical commentary on the differences between the ways a human intelligence acts and an artificial intelligence acts.  These are all good qualities no matter how redundant a movie is.  When its third act begins, the movie starts to get loopy.  The investigation begins piling on too many twists that start to become absurd and it starts getting flummoxed, seemingly unsure of how it's supposed to end.  The movie's mistakes are summed up when it empathizes Ferguson's AI character.  She becomes so humanized that it feels like the movie has completely forgotten it's entire point.  When a movie undercuts itself that thoroughly in the home stretch, it's hard to really maintain enthusiasm for it.

Return to Silent Hill

⭐️

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Christophe Gans

Starring:  Jeremy Irvine, Hannah Emily Anderson

Silent Hill is a video game series that I have very limited exposure to.  I know that they exist, are very foggy, and apparently get much, much worse as they go.  That's it.  I saw the original film adaptation when it hit DVD in 2006 and remember next to nothing about it except that I found it very dumb and boring.  That movie has accumulated a decent cult fanbase over the years, mostly of Silent Hill video game players who say it's a faithful recreation of the series.  I don't know if this means the games are also dumb and boring but that's what I've assumed.  There was a sequel that I never watched, but everyone hated it so I probably didn't miss out.  Now there is a brand new "true" sequel directly based on the original Silent Hill 2 that was made by the original creatives of the first movie, and that game is hailed as one of the greatest video games ever made.  Everyone hates this one too.

I feel like I just can't win here.

For what it's worth, Return to Silent Hill features few references to the previous films, so I there was little reason to be lost from that perspective.  But don't worry because the movie will totally confuse you of its own accord.  The story is mostly just surrealism without a plot, but what little that is here has to do with some guy who journeys into the foggy spot of oddities to find his missing girlfriend.  It's very clear that his girlfriend is likely dead and he knows it, but shush, let the man have his mental breakdown in peace.  Once we get to Silent Hill, we find that the town is littered with monsters, glossy backdrops, and populated by randos that either have bad hair or bad wigs.  As to why it's like this, there is no explanation present in this particular movie.  There might have been one in the first one or the video games, but Silent Hill in this movie is mostly an excuse for a surrealist grief and PTSD metaphor than anything to be taken literally.  I can get behind that but I also need the movie to put in the work.  Surrealism is something that can get out of hand quite easily, and if you don't check yourself, you're going to find that it can turn into nonsense pretty easily.  Return to Silent Hill turns into a barrage of baffling bullshit almost as swiftly as it begins and doesn't even have the buffer of being well-made to sugarcoat it.  The movie looks like ass, is poorly acted, and it isn't even fun to try and decipher because it's both obvious in its themes and perplexing in its execution.  I just can't with this movie.

I feel like when I put up with a movie this nonsensical, the only way to address it is in a nonsensical way.  Ergo, if you were to ask me my thoughts on this movie, my response has to be that the CGI spider had a nice ass.

Send Help

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Thriller

Director:  Sam Raimi

Starring:  Rachel McAdams, Dylan O'Brien

An early access screening for the new Sam Raimi movie?  I am so there!  And he's back doing what he does best, as Rachel McAdams survives a plane crash with her asshole boss Dylan O'Brien.  Between this and Red Eye, McAdams should really start avoiding planes altogether.  But as the sole survivors on an island, McAdams suddenly finds herself in a position of power as she clearly has better survival skills than her boss does.  The film is clearly about the nature of power dynamics and what skills are treasured in civilization as opposed to nature.  That's clear just from the advertisements.  What the advertisements don't show is just how funny the movie is, to the point that its comedy outweighs it's thriller elements.  The first act is pure cringe comedy, as McAdams stumbles through work in her socially awkward way.  The second sees her flip the power arrangement on its head and show that she's now in her element.  The third act is pure Sam Raimi chaos, offering up unpredictable turns and absolute splatstick comedy, making this the purest Raimi film since Drag Me to Hell.  Send Help also parallels that film in thematic ways, being about "weak" people proving strength through cruelty.  It's his patented "revenge of the meek" story, probably in its purest form because this film relies heavily on a power struggle between the abrasive and the soft-spoken.  Who wins?  Whoever bleeds less.  Those who know what a Raimi film looks like will get exactly what that promises.  Those who don't should be warned that the movie is much wackier (and bloodier) than you'd assume but is absolutely worth the ride.

The Testament of Ann Lee

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama, Musical

Director:  Mona Fastvold

Starring:  Amanda Seyfried, Thomasin McKenzie, Lewis Pullman, Stacy Martin, Tim Blake Nelson, Christopher Abbott

Oh, good.  It's a movie about religious zealots.  My favorite thing ever.

The Testament of Ann Lee is a semi-musical biography of the the titular founder of the "Shaker" sect of Christianity, notable for practicing celibacy and pacifism.  This group is much smaller today.  Who would have thought that not having sex would have led to a lack of population?  But the movie treats it's subject with respect, choosing to focus on the Ann Lee's life with a lens of fascination.  And it is a pretty interesting life, and her story allows the filmmakers to explore a variety of topics including the religious fanaticism, influence of personal experience on spirituality, oppression of sexuality, spreading gospel, and martyrdom.  What the movie chooses to really lean into is the way the church-goers pray, with a very seismic-like body movements, which the movie uses as an excuse to portray through elaborate dance choreography.  This is also the thing that makes me not want to think about this movie ever again.  I appreciate how exceptionally passionate and well-made the movie is, but the amount of chanting, lunging, flailing, and wailing in the movie's setpieces makes the experience of watching it almost like being trapped with Florence Pugh in Midsommar.  I'll be honest, this movie gave me a headache.  Technically, this movie is great and I should be singing it's praises but I also need to point out that it's an excruciating experience.  I hesitate in saying it's for the right reasons because I'm not convinced the movie knows how shrill it can get when it's fully locked in on what it's doing.  Because of that, I can recommend the movie but only just barely, because I never want to watch it again.

Oscar's Trash Can

KPop Demon Hunters

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oscars Nominated:  Best Animated Feature Film, Best Music (Original Song) - "Golden"

Genre:  Musical, Action, Comedy, Horror

Director:  Maggie Kang, Chris Appelhans

Starring:  Arden Cho, Ahn Hyo-seop, May Hong, Yunjin Kim, Daniel Dae Kim, Ken Jeong, Lee Byung-hun

Full disclosure, I didn't know KPop Demon Hunters was a thing until well past when it dropped.  I'm pretty sure I heard the title at some point but I think I got it confused with Demon Slayer and thought it was a movie spin-off of an anime show that I didn't watch.  At some point in the aftermath, it became clear that not only was this movie a thing, it was the thing.  It was the one movie of 2025 that was rivaling Sinners as the defining cultural touchstone film of the year.  I probably would have watched it earlier but never found the time and I knew I was going to likely watch it for the Oscar roundup anyway, so here I am.  I know nothing about KPop except what I learned from Joy Ride, but I'm going to give this everything I've got.  Let's do this.

I'm going to tell my children that these were the KPop Demon Hunters.

The titular KPop Demon Hunters are a trio known as Huntrix, who entertain the world with their music by day and fight demons by night.  The demons then eventually fight back by creating their own KPop boy band to steal the fans that give them power.  I think there is more to it but the lore of the film is so fast and loose that it's hard to grasp at times.  Huntrix seems convinced that by winning some award they'll be able to seal off the demon world.  I might have missed something, or it's the power of fan love or whatever, but I'm not exactly clear on why that would be a thing.  The movie is very vague and a little scatterbrained, often feeling like it was getting distracted from its own plotline for the sake of digressive humor.  The good news is that a lot of the humor is very funny, but it just seems nothing is getting accomplished at times.

The aspect that resonates most is that it's pure visual stimulus.  The movie itself is the visualized vibrations of an actual pop concert, Korean or otherwise.  And in premise, the movie is the most Buffy the Vampire Slayer-coded thing I've seen since Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  I grew up with a lot of things like KPop Demon Hunters, so it's easy to see why it's so beloved.  I think it was too busy massaging my eyeballs to tell when it was losing me mentally.  That being said, I'd watch it again because it's a little bit of a blast.

Train Dreams

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Oscars Nominated:  Best Picture, Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Best Cinematography, Best Music (Original Song) - "Train Dreams"

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Clint Bentley

Starring:  Joel Edgerton, Felicity Jones, Nathaniel Arcond, Clifton Collins Jr., John Diehl, Paul Schneider, Kerry Condon, William H. Macy

Netflix's third big Oscar contender probably has less of a shot at taking home a trophy than Frankenstein or KPop Demon Hunters but it's worth checking out what is probably the least talked about Best Picture nominee on the list.  The movie centers on a logger in early 20th century who lives a quiet life away from civilization.  The film celebrates the undervalued and unwritten people who lived their lives and left this Earth, not leaving a legacy other than being here.  The film starts out about a simple life but becomes about just continuing past the point where your concieved purpose might have long past.  Contemplative, melancholy, and sometimes just downright sad, the movie is a rather enveloping work that sucks you in with its quiet study of the "unimportant."  It might frustrate some with its lack of a traditional plot structure, and is often lacking closure on a lot of elements, but all of this is with purpose as it tells the story of someone who might have walked into someone else's life but kept his own to himself.

Oscar Nominations

The Alabama Solution (N/A)

All the Empty Rooms (N/A)

Arco (N/A)

Armed Only with a Camera:  The Life and Death of Brent Renaud (N/A)

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Blue Moon ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Bugonia ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Butcher's Stain (N/A)

Cardboard (N/A)

Children No More:  "We and Are Gone" (N/A)

Come See Me in the Good Light (N/A)

Cutting Through Rocks (N/A)

The Devil Is Busy (N/A)

Diane Warren:  Relentless (N/A)

Elio ⭐️⭐️1/2

F1 ⭐️⭐️

Forevergreen (N/A)

Frankenstein ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A Friend of Dorothy (N/A)

The Girl Who Cried Pearls (N/A)

Hamnet ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

If I Had Legs I'd Kick You (N/A)

It Was Just an Accident (N/A)

Jane Austen's Period Drama (N/A)

Jurassic World: Rebirth ⭐️1/2

Kokuho (N/A)

KPop Demon Hunters ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Little Amélie or the Character of Rain ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Lost Bus ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Marty Supreme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Mr. Nobody Against Putin (N/A)

One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Perfect Neighbour (N/A)

Perfectly a Strangeness (N/A)

Retirement Plan (N/A)

The Secret Agent (N/A)

Sentimental Value ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Singers (N/A)

Sinners ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Sirât (N/A)

The Smashing Machine ⭐️⭐️1/2

Song Sung Blue ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Three Sisters (N/A)

Train Dreams ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Two People Exchanging Saliva (N/A)

The Ugly Stepsister ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Voice of Hind Rajab (N/A)

Weapons ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

28 Years Later...:  The Bone Temple ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Anaconda ⭐️⭐️

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Charlie the Wonderdog ⭐️

Dead Man's Wire ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Greenland:  Migration ⭐️⭐️

Hamnet ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Housemaid ⭐️⭐️1/2

Is This Thing On? ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Marty Supreme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

No Other Choice ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2

Primate ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Sinners ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

The SpongeBob Movie:  Search for SquarePants ⭐️⭐️1/2

New To Physical

Fackham Hall ⭐️⭐️1/2

One Battle After Another ⭐️⭐️1/2

Roofman ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Truth & Treason ⭐️⭐️1/2

Wicked:  For Good ⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!

Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 3 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

28 Years Later...:  The Bone Temple

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Nia DaCosta

Starring:  Ralph Fiennes, Jack O'Connell, Alfie Williams, Erin Kellyman, Chi Lewis-Parry

I called the previous 28 Years Later the equivalent of reading a boring YA novel and I absolutely still think that.  That movie is all exposition and meandering with minor thematic resonance at its destination that definitely was not worth the journey.  I wasn't really looking forward to a sequel but here we are.  I didn't know I needed a buddy stoner movie between Ralph Fiennes and a zombie in my life but now it's here and I dig it.

The movie sees our child protagonist from the previous film taken captive by a group of Satanists who wander the landscape and mutilate people.  Meanwhile, Ralph Fiennes gets experimental with an alpha infected man, who responds positively to his sedatives.  The movie doesn't always feel like a natural progression from the previous film, which is its weakest aspect.  The protagonist from the previous film is severly underplayed here, becoming a passive hitchhiker who just keeps his head down.  I felt my interest in the 28 Years Later storyline spiked when Fiennes enters the picture, so I was happy to see the second film focused more heavily on him.  That might make the movie less appealing to some of the fans of the previous film.  For my money, it makes up ground for just how weird and insane it is.  This movie is pure macabre extravagance from minute one and never lets up, from an apocalyptic Harley Quinn wannabe doing a Teletubbies dance to its climax where Fiennes puts on a one-man death metal show.  And if you think I'm exaggerating, you clearly haven't seen the movie.  This movie is a blast and it probably renewed my interest in this franchise.  I don't know if anything that follows this will be able to live up to its insanity but I'm willing to see what they have up their sleeve.

All You Need Is Kill

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Science Fiction, Action

Director:  Kenichiro Akimoto

Starring:  Not Tom Cruise nor Emily Blunt

I don't always see the anime movies that come to my theater because most of them are spin-offs of TV shows that I've never seen and I would be completely lost if I even tried to follow them.  All You Need Is Kill caught my attention because I recognized the title, which was a Japanese novel and manga series that inspired one of Tom Cruise's best movies, Edge of Tomorrow.  I was curious what a Japanese adaptation might be, though it seems that the Cruise movie was actually a straighter adaptation than this movie.  All You Need Is Kill refocuses the narrative on Rita (who was Emily Blunt's character in Edge), and the film takes place on the first day of an alien invasion rather than deep into one.  Rita finds her day repeating over and over again as she dies from the deadly alien attack repeatedly, hoping to try and use the time loop to stop the invasion.  I think this movie would have benefited if it tried to be a prequel to the original story, showing how Rita became "Full Metal Bitch," but that's not what this is.  This is just a reimagining of the entire concept utilizing a supporting character as a main.  Still, the movie is an entertaining time loop story, though the most interesting aspects were already used in prior versions of this story.  If you like Edge of Tomorrow, you might find this to be an interesting curiosity.

Charlie the Wonderdog

⭐️

Genre:  Comedy, Superhero, Adventure

Director:  Shea Wageman

Starring:  Owen Wilson

A dog gets kidnapped by aliens and gets superpowers in this family film equivalent of watching absolutely nothing.  Everything you expect this movie to do is accounted for but it doesn't even have the decency to do it in an appealing way.  The movie is so dull and lacking personality, only opting to hit the most basic needs of a children's movie.  It's a movie that actively chooses not to tell a story, believing that "see dog fly" is sufficient.  What the movie doesn't realize is that children are likely to opt in favor of similarly premised movies like Bolt or Dogman instead because those movies actually leave an impression on them.  This movie will just make them stare blankly at it because it's in front of them.

Dead Man's Wire

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre:  Thriller

Director:  Gus Van Sant

Starring:  Bill Skarsgård, Dacre Montgomery, Cary Elwes, Myha'la, Colman Domingo, Al Pacino

A movie starring two of my favorite current working actors, Colman Domingo and Bill Skarsgård?  Don't mind if I do!

This thriller, based on a true story, sees Skarsgård as a man who was screwed over by a mortgage company, who then decides to retaliate by taking the son of the company president hostage.  The details of the situation can feel absurd at times, with the intricate trap details that force the cops to comply with his demands, but, sure enough, most of this actually happened and the movie has the footage to prove it.  This movie is mostly pretty tight, though the film does slow its pace down when it's reduced to Skarsgård and former Power Ranger Dacre Montgomery sitting in a room with awkward tension, which is most of the movie.  The ace in the hole is Skarsgård, though.  I love watching Skarsgård in anything because you never know what performance you're going to get but, whatever it is, you know it's going to be good.  This is no different, playing a man who is at the end of his rope who has an irrational form of rationality.  That Skarsgård can take the insane to the edge of near-sanity but not quite committing to crossing that threshold is a testament to his talent.  The movie is fun to watch because he's fun to watch.  The movie is tense because of how stressed he is, and you never know where that stress will take him.  The whole thing rides on his shoulders and he takes that weight and runs with it.

Night Patrol

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Ryan Prows

Starring:  Jermaine Fowler, Justin Long, Freddie Gibbs, R.J. Cyler, YG, Nicki Micheaux, Flying Lotus, CM Punk, Dermot Mulroney

In case you were wondering what Sinners would look like if it sucked, here comes Night Patrol, a brand new take on the Black experience and racial tension underlined by vampires doing vampire shit.  One can't fault Night Patrol for not trying.  What can be faulted to it is that its metaphors have gotten so over-stimulated that they suffer erectile dysfunction and just can't satisfy.  The film hits the streets of Los Angeles, focusing on the infamous street gangs of the Bloods and the Crips, though the real enemy is the L.A.P.D., who are actually vampires out to prey upon every Black person in the city, in a not-so-subtle allegory for police power abuse, racial discrimination, and excessive force.  There's an idea in this movie that I like but the film itself just can't execute.  Its script is conceptually anemic, clearly working with some sort of lore but acting as if the logic its using should be obvious to any asshole.  Its self-explanatory elements can only go so far, as it comes off as undeveloped characters running through a whirlwind of bullshit.  The movie swiftly becomes a swift barrage of passive exposition delivered during chaos, meanwhile Justin Long is running around as a newly turned vampire searching for blood to drink like a college stoner on an all-night fraternity beer run.  It all comes to a close with a climax involving a Green Lantern ring and a glowing spear that hums like a lightsaber.  That might read like I'm exaggerating but that's literally what happens.  I'll give the movie props for having an idea and trying to deliver it with swagger, but the movie is unpolished and its script is unfinished.  I was kinda hoping this movie would be something.  I guess that's my fault for having optimism.

No Other Choice

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Comedy

Director:  Park Chan-wook

Starring:  Lee Byung-hun, Son Ye-jin, Park Hee-soon, Lee Sung-min, Yeom Hye-ran, Cha Seung-wan

South Korea's submission for the International Oscar award is a black comedy about how much the rat race sucks.  I didn't need this movie to tell me this but I am very happy that it did so in such an inspired and entertaining way.  Lee Byung-hung stars as an out-of-work manager for a paper company who starts to find his comfortable life unraveling.  Desperate to fill a top management position, he creates a hit list of his competition and sets out to assassinate each one.  It's a very entertaining premise that gets more unhinged as it goes, enhanced by some powerful satire.  Metaphorically, the movie showcases the cut-throat nature of shrinking job security in an industry that has little value for you as an individual.  One gets their hands dirty to get on top, and maybe there was cruelty in one's actions, but it's easy to wave that off when you're reaping the rewards.  This is very relevant and resonate messaging, packaged in a uniquely entertaining, unpredictable, and thought-provoking film.  No Other Choice is the type of treat I was looking for all of last year and just couldn't find.  Some assholes were trying to tell me that the movie I was looking for was One Battle After Another but I'm pretty sure they were trying to get me to look the other way so they could smash my head with a potted plant.

Sheepdog

⭐️⭐️

Genre:  Drama

Director:  Steven Greyhm

Starring:  Steven Greyhm, Vondie Curtis-Hall

Sheepdog is apparently a passion project for writer/director/star Steven Greyhm, who stuck with trying to sell the film for thirteen years.  Now with the film finally on screens, one can only assume that the reason it took so long to make was because other people have already made this movie, complete with the crisis hotline number at the end.  Did we need another?  Arguably, the message is an important one, but when you have a movie like My Dead Friend Zoe releasing not even a year ago, doing its inspired spin on the mental health message and its powerful gut-punch of an ending, it's hard to look at a movie like this utilizing its well-worn cliches and go "Yeah, this movie needs to be made."

Greyhm plays the main character, a veteran who lives with stress, trauma, and guilt on his shoulders, being forced by court order to seek therapy.  Meanwhile, his ex-wife's estranged father, also a troubled veteran, comes to town and the duo strike a friendship.  All of this and a lot of melodrama.  Greyhm isn't content with the soldier backstory for his character.  He needs even more fucked up shit to happen to him, which includes a bonus backstory that the movie tries to play coy with but is pretty easy to figure out from the context clues available.  Then when the movie drops the bomb that it thinks it's being foxy about, it's so overdone that it's almost accidentally funny.  It's an objectively bad scene that is pinned as the emotional crux of a mediocre movie.

I don't know much about Steven Greyhm.  From my admittedly little research, it seems he is a career actor who has no actual military background.  I'm not sure why this subject matter is important to him but I'm going to trust that it is for good reason.  All I know about Greyhm is that he looks like the bastard child of Mark Wahlberg and Elden Henson, has no screen presence, and has a really weird beard.  What I do appreciate about Greyhm is that he worked actual therapeutic work into his movie.  That's the best part of it, really.  But these details are not exactly drama, especially if the personal details of his trauma are falling flat.  Sheepdog isn't exactly a bad movie.  It might actually be serviceable to the audience it was made for.  What weighs it down is that it's a stilted movie made by artists who think they have something important to say when in reality their work is just a trite regurgitation of themes that other movies have done better.  Greyhm never justifies why this movie should exist in addition to the ones that already address the concepts he wants to address except that he just wanted to put a bunch of tropes in a blender and drink the milkshake.  That's a disservice to the message you're trying to send.

Signing Tony Raymond

⭐️1/2

Genre:  Comedy, Sports

Director:  Glen Owen

Starring:  Michael Mosley, Mira Sorvino, Rob Morgan, Marshawn Lynch, Brian Bosworth, Champ Bailey, Charles Esten

Someone saw the movie Air and thought to themselves "This movie ain't vanilla enough," then decided to rock the sports world with their own patented and admittedly impressive level of blandness.  Signing Tony Raymond's most notable aspect is that I keep almost accidentally calling it "Singing Tony Randall," which probably would have been a better movie, to be honest.  The film centers on a Louisiana University football coach who has been sent to recruit a promising high school player to their team, only to find other coaches who are willing to play dirty and a lot of rednecks who are willing to hustle him.  The film stars Michael Mosley, who is pretty much just playing Dollar Store Zachary Levi, which is weird because Levi isn't above doing movies like this.  He kinda fumbles around with a daffy grin on his face in situations that grow increasingly absurd, with so much good-hearted white trash that you might as well rebrand this movie as Joe Dirt 3.  The weirdest thing about this movie is that they take some huge swings at "big lol" moments that are just slight goofy lines that might induce a smirk but they are so underlined that you can tell the movie thinks they are hysterical.  The movie is too unsure of what its tone is to actually be funny.  Some people are playing it like its a humorous drama, while others are full-blown Looney Tunes.  There's no naturality to this movie, as it has more than a few moments where it doesn't feel like the anybody is seeking the obvious solution to any problem the characters are having.  This movie is like a circus clown.  I can tell just wants to make me smile but it makes me queasy for some odd reason.

Throughout most of this movie I went back and forth undecided on whether this was a bad movie or just an uninspired movie.  My final thought was that it wears its lack of inspiration so shamelessly that it almost seems proud of it, and that just rubs me the wrong way.  If the movie has one virtue that makes me want to lay off, it's that it does seem to be made with a good heart.  It wears it on its sleeve sometimes but it doesn't counter the many things it does carelessly.

Netflix & Chill

Killer Whale

⭐️

Streaming On:  VOD

Genre:  Horror

Director:  Jo-Anne Brechin

Starring:  Virginia Gardner, Mel Jarnson, Mitchell Hope

I didn't have to watch this movie.  I chose to watch this movie.  I paid money to rent this movie.  January is the month for shit horror movies and none of the ones I've seen so far were adequately trashy enough.  I wanted to watch this movie because it looked so stupid.  It did not disappoint.

I don't suppose anybody remembers a movie from 1977 called Orca, which was Dino De Laurentiis's big stab at the post-Jaws creature feature.  The movie featured an Orca that was hunting whaler Richard Harris for killing its mate.  Orca is a bad movie but it's certainly an interesting specimen in its era of monster movie because it feels like it's trying to be an emotional epic adventure and not just a cash grab.  Suffice it to say, Orca wasn't Jaws.  And Killer Whale isn't Orca, which probably says everything I need to about Killer Whale.  If I were to say more about what kind of movie Killer Whale is, I'd say if Orca is a post-Jaws creature feature, Killer Whale is a post-The Shallows creature feature.  By that, I mean to say it's basically The Shallows again, but with an Orca instead of a shark.  I'd call Killer Whale a low rent copy of The Shallows but The Shallows was just a copy of The Reef with big studio money and ridiculous setpieces, so fuck The Shallows.

The familiar premise sees two gal pals on vacation only to be trapped on a rock off the coast, hunted by an angry Orca that is upset at being in captivity for years.  Like the afore mentioned Orca horror movie from the 70's, this Orca also is vengeful because apparently its calf was either stolen or died or something.  The movie keeps it vague what exactly happened, but the fact that it treats it as some sort of conspiracy is really funny because there is no payoff to it.  In fact, a lot of the setup in this movie is over-the-top.  There is a superfluous backstory to Virginia Gardner's character who had a boyfriend who saved her from a bank robbery and died at the scene.  The entire sequence is staged in a goofy way because his heroics are dangerous and stupid, making him come off as an impulsive idiot, only to have him save the day out of dumb luck and mowed down in the parking lot with a truck during the tender aftermath.  It's so jarring and sudden that it inspires laughter when the movie is trying to be emotional.  The movie then jumps to a year later, where Gardner still has baggage from this irrelevance but just wants to have a good time with her rambunctious friend, bad shit happens, then they just gotta survive somehow.

Come to think of it, the plotting in this movie has a lot in common with another Virginia Gardner movie from a few years ago called Fall.  That movie didn't center on Gardner, who had the role of the wild, horny, social media influencer bestie who was obviously going to die because they wouldn't kill the main character.  This time she switches roles.  At least that means she's moving up in her career, right?

As for whether or not this is an entertaining bad movie, it can be at times but it's often just not worth a rental fee.  The movie mostly feels like an excuse to get Gardner and Jarnson down on their hands and knees so they can thrust their bikini butts at the camera, so if you like bikini butts, you'll get bikini butts.  To be honest, I was hoping for more goofy Orca action.  There is a lengthy period where the movie is nothing but Gardner and Jarnson on a rock sorting out emotional issues and the Orca just disappears from the movie.  If they were interesting issues, it would be one thing, but they're two-dimensional characters in a one-dimensional movie.  I did get some good laughs at an open moment of revealed betrayal that sours their relationship.  It genuinely is shocking but not because of story reasons, rather because it serves so little purpose to the movie and kind of makes the already funny opening even funnier.  The Orca action we do get is blurry with quick cuts of bad CGI, and it's not just limited to our antagonist beastie either.  The rear projection in this movie is a sight to behold because it's not just that the actors are composited badly on top of a poorly rendered CGI backdrop, it's that they tried to fake the distance to the mainland by making the backdrop look fuzzy and they also made the fake water that's supposedly in their immediate surroundings equally fuzzy too, so most of the movie is made up of crystal clear shots of the actresses on top of blurry water.  Gardner and Jarnson are so clearly acting in a vacuum that it feels like they could have shot most of their scenes in a parking lot.

I went into Killer Whale wanting to watch a bad movie and I got what I paid for.  I wish it were one to be enthusiastic about but many bad movies are bad just because they're not anything.  Killer Whale is a movie that could have been a wacky good time but wound up lacking the necessary entertainment value for a delightful shitshow.  Too bad.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

Anaconda ⭐️⭐️

Avatar:  Fire and Ash ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Greenland:  Migration ⭐️⭐️

Hamnet ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

The Housemaid ⭐️⭐️1/2

I Was a Stranger ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Is This Thing On? ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Marty Supreme ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Primate ⭐️⭐️⭐️

The SpongeBob Movie:  Search for SquarePants ⭐️⭐️1/2

Zootopia 2 ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Dust Bunny ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Rental Family ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Song Sung Blue ⭐️⭐️1/2

Coming Soon!