MST3K, RiffTrax, and Beyond: Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 8 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

How to Make a Killing

⭐️⭐️

Genre: Comedy, Thriller

Director: John Patton Ford

Starring: Glen Powell, Margaret Qualley, Jessica Henwick, Ed Harris, Bill Camp, Zach Woods, Topher Grace

Glen Powell stands to inherit a lot of money. There are just a few people in his way. The bastard offspring of a wealthy family, Powell decides to turn his financial situation around by murdering the line of heirs above him until he becomes sole heir to the fortune. It seems like a good time at the movies, to me. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a bland misfire. The script exists in this odd space where it's amusing but also lazy. Whether or not it's worth watching depends on whether you can be content with it being the bare minimum without ambition of actually being fun. What cannot be denied is that it features a stacked cast who all feel like they're ready to bring it at a moment's notice, but they're rarely given much of anything to do that feels worthy of such an acting line-up. How to Make a Killing could have been a black comedy for the ages. It settles for being an offbeat distraction that could have been worse but also much better.

Midwinter Break

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre: Drama

Director: Polly Findlay

Starring: Lesley Manville, Ciarán Hinds, Niamh Cusack

Lesley Manville and Ciarán Hinds play an aged Irish couple who take a trip to Amsterdam, only to be faced with an existential crisis during their getaway. Quiet and contemplative, and also very short for a movie that is trying to be this deep. It's interesting how this film will linger on the mundane but rush through some of its most interesting plot developments. I think that's part of the worn-down and lived-in aesthetic of two people who are used to each other and are at the point where they don't know if spending all that time together was just a waste of their lives or not. The movie has that going for it, even if it isn't always engaging. Manville and Hinds do good work with their characters, with Manville spiraling and Hinds at a loss of just what he is supposed to do about it. They carry the well-intentioned effort across the finish-line, even if it still seems meager.

Psycho Killer

⭐️

Genre: Horror

Director: Gavin Polone

Dtarring: Georgina Campbell, Malcolm McDowell, James Preston Rogers

Second week in a row with a movie starring Georgina Campbell. Too bad they can't all be winners. Psycho Killer has her chasing after the titular Psycho Killer, a satan worshiping masked killer who is leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, including her husband. The most interesting thing about this movie is how long it took to make, evidently in various stages of production for fifteen years before finally being filmed in 2023 and shelved because it just wasn't very good. One does understand why a serial killer movie from the screenwriter of Se7en is probably always kept on the table but sometimes it's best to cut one's losses, especially when the screenplay is just not very interesting. Its attempts to be shocking are mundane. Its confuses mystery with inanity. It has a woman getting hit by an exploding semi truck by running directly at it screaming like a lunatic, which is pretty hilarious. Other than that, it's like following someone who is obviously a serial killer but somehow nobody is sus of this guy, looking like Tyler Mane in the Halloween remake only less approachable. But that's only half of the movie's problems because it's just a half-hearted production. It's almost impressive how disinterested the movie is with its own premise, plot twists, gruesome violence, and even its own continuity. If apathy were a style, Psycho Killer would be an Oscar contender. It's a barren script with a crew that doesn't seem all that committed to it, making it an experience of tossing your hands up and giving up because why should you believe in a movie that doesn't believe in itself. It doesn't even have Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer" in it. I don't say this often, but that means that the Vin Diesel movie Bloodshot is a step above it.

This Is Not a Test

⭐️⭐️

Genre: Drama, Horror

Director: Adam MacDonald

Starring: Olivia Holt, Foy Gutierrez, Carson MacCormac, Corteon Moore, Chloe Avakian, Joelle Farrow, Luke MacFarlane

When you're a teenager, everything seems like the end of the world. What about when the end of the world happens when you're a teenager? A zombie apocalypse strikes and a group of students barricade themselves inside their high school, an idea that's basically Dawn of the Dead produced by the CW. The Walking Dead: World Beyond already cornered that market of teenage angst with undead backdrop, but sure. Let's see how this plays out. Not all that differently than you'd expect, showing little innovation for either zombie flicks or high school drama. But the film is based on a YA novel, so leaning into tropes and melodramatics is to be expected. It's those melodramatics that underline most of the film, which is that goth phase "life sucks and I'm sad" vibe. The film chooses some heavy themes for this, including teenage suicide. It's the element that seems to be the most central to the plot but it's weirdly underdeveloped. Main lady lead Olivia Hoult (one of these days her agent is going to stop booking her auditions for high school roles, but that day is not today) has reasons for depression, including abuse and abandonment issues, though her mental process is very muddy throughout most of the movie. I imagine the source material might have have had more development to what leads her down such dark thoughts but this film is never insightful on the subject. She's suicidal when it begins and by the end we're supposed to think she's not anymore, though there is little to support that as an actual emotional arc through this story. It doesn't have the thoughtfulness that such a fragile story deserves. But if you took it away, the movie would just be a bunch of kids being mopey because people are eating each other outside. That seems like a genuine reason to be depressed but, according to this movie, it's just an annoyance. Nobody besides Holt has much of a personality except being sad, angry, and maybe a little horny. That probably fulfills the desire its audience came for. That's good because if they came for characterization, they're going to leave pissed.

Art Attack

Oscar Nominated Short Films - Animated

Butterfly

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Based on a true story, this film explores a Jewish Olympic swimmer who lived through the Holocaust. Beautifully animated using canvas paints, the movie looks like a living piece of amateur artwork that's telling a somber and sad story about life and perseverance. This is a quality piece.

Forevergreen

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

A bear befriends a pine tree in this touching little film. The animation feels stopmotion inspired but with a unique CG animation style that also owes a bit to Disney and Pixar in model characterization. It's brief, happy, sad, and touching, what you'd assume a little cartoon about a bear and a tree would be.

The Girl Who Cried Pearls

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

A dark little fairy tale about a poor boy who was neighbors with a sad girl whose tears turned into pearls, which he sells outside of her knowledge. Whimsical, if melancholy, easily the most interesting of the animated short selection this year. The animation is told primarily through dolls, which is either really smooth stop motion or really textured CGI, possibly using digital scanning of handmade dolls. I can't tell which, which is part of the magic. The use of CGI to enhance the speech scenes in the bookends is remarkably effective. One of the most memorable films of the entire Oscar lineup.

Retirement Plan

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Brief short features Domhnall Gleeson as a man daydreaming of his retirement and everything he plans to do, though curiously he might not have enough time to do it. Creative, though I'm not entirely inspired to remark upon it. It's easily the least impressionable short I've seen for this year's line-up.

The Three Sisters

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Three sisters live on an island together, and they all begin fighting over a man who has recently moved in. It's cute and restrained. It's fun how expressive this story is when it is told through small gestures and grunts. I enjoyed it.

BONUS SHORT!

Éiru

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

This year's showcase ran short (lol pun), so they threw in a little bonus. This short I had actually already seen because Éiru was paired with the screening of Little Amélie or the Character of Rain that I went to, which also seemed to be because the film wasn't very long. Éiru is a tale of a viking child who dreams of becoming a warrior who has to venture out to find out why their village has no water. It's a very entertaining tale, fueled with little morals of what fuels life and how war takes it away. It's colorful and vibrant, making it an easy watch with children.

Oscar Nominated Short Films - Live Action

Butcher's Stain

⭐️⭐️⭐️

The Academy very much likes these movies about the collateral damage of Israel's war in Palestine, which finds this short film adjacent to it. A Palestinian butcher is accused of tearing down a poster of Israeli hostages at his workplace, which he claims innocence of. The working environment grows more tense as more people see him as an enemy sympathizer. It's a simplistic look at the prejudice that comes with wartime, where those who sympathize with the people who are hurt by conflict are seen as an "other" and the hurt such a brand does. There is more that can be said about this that is never touched, but the film only has a basic story of a man who was resented outlined.

A Friend of Dorothy

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Cute story of an old lady who befriends a youth and encourages him to follow his passions. It has more star power than most of its competition, including Miriam Margolyes and Stephen Frye, though it might be the most basic of the shorts in the line-up. It's still a very amusing watch.

Jane Austen's Period Drama

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I may not know much about art but I know what is fun, and if Jane Austen's Period Drama isn't the upset of the night, then this entire Oscar thing is a wash and we should erase all of it and start from scratch. This parody film starts out as a Jane Austen romance themed film with sophomoric double entendre names for every character. A man is about to propose marriage to his fair maiden, only for him to notice that her dress is stained with blood. Heroically, he races her to medical care, as she struggles to explain to him why this particular bleeding isn't an emergency. Nominating Jane Austen's Period Drama for the Best Short Oscar is like nominating Splitsville for Best Picture (which it should have been, but I won't get into that). The short is so snappy, intelligently constructed in its parody (even with its lowbrow subject matter), and is hilarious from start to finish. Maintaining that laugh quota from start to finish, even for a twelve-minute film, is a very rare achievement. The short feels very Monty Python inspired, servicing absurdist comedy against a traditionally dramatic backdrop, highlighted with wry British accents taking the shenanigans just seriously enough to give the punchline more power. This is superbly done comedy filmmaking, and probably my favorite thing I've seen from the Oscar line-up this year. Suck it, Hamnet.

Will it win? What I will say is that it brought the house down at the theater I saw it in. The mostly full theater roared so loud that I'm sure we missed a few jokes in several spots. That doesn't guarantee that it will steal the spotlight on the big night, but it was certainly the showcase stealer in that theater. It's hard to tell where the Academy might swing in the shorts categories because they're pretty inconsistent as to what they favor. Last year, the award went to I Am Not a Robot, which was easily the most outrageous short of the bunch. Are they still in that mood? I would love nothing more than to say this is an Oscar winner, especially when a movie as mid as One Battle After Another is lined up to win Best Picture. I'd love to have this one little win in a night that's sure to be disappointing.

The Singers

⭐️⭐️⭐️

A lowley tavern full of depressed men holds into a singing contest, which spirals into men impressing each other with their vocals. Pretty fun, if basic. The film is about how music provides human connection as we try to drown our sorrows. Not much to say about it, but it's a good time.

Two People Exchanging Saliva

⭐️⭐️1/2

One of the reasons I always look forward to the annual short film screenings is that I never know what I'm getting. They're always full of surprises and some are shamelessly weird. Two People Exchanging Saliva is one of the weirder ones. This expressionistic flick takes place in a world where kissing (and maybe physical intimacy itself) is forbidden. Why? Dunno. Honestly, the idea is absurd since procreation is a basic key to human survival. But the discouragement exists here for some reason, as two women fight their romantic attraction to one another in fear of being "boxed." The use of the queer lensing is interesting because it shapes the movie as a metaphor for being judged for loving the person you have chosen. This idea is deflated in that everyone is discouraged from loving, including the heteros, so that messaging becomes murky. Add in the odd little quirks, including the use of slaps as a currency, which I assume is some French thing that flew over my head because I sincerely don't understand what that is supposed to be. It's certainly the most stereotypical "artsy" movie that has been nominated this year, to the point that it almost feels like a self-parody. I'd think that this is just me being dense but nobody in my audience seemed to have a positive opinion of this one, even causing a few walk-outs, which is something I've never seen at these short film screenings. If you can't sit through a half-hour, that probably says something. It's too bad that those people missed out on Jane Austen's Period Drama because of this one. But all of this probably means it's going to take home the trophy, because if I don't get it, that means the douchy film nerds probably love it.