MST3K, RiffTrax, and Beyond: Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 7 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Cold Storage

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Comedy, Horror

Director: Johnny Campbell

Starring: Georgina Campbell, Joe Keery, Liam Neeson, Sosie Bacon, Vanessa Redgrave, Leslie Manville

Liam Neeson continues to flex his funny bone in parodies of the action/thriller persona that he has developed over the last few decades, here playing a government agent who is the only one in the system who takes a mutated fungus outbreak seriously, aided by two hapless warehouse workers who happen to stumble upon the apocalyptic event. The movie is basically just Return of the Living Dead but not as full-throttle, offering a lighter and more animated take on a horror/comedy, closer in tone to Slither. Those who like their spooky laughs to come with gooey gore and rambunctious characters get exactly that. Characterization and plot may be on the light side, but you'll get fungus zombies exploding left and right. And isn't that the important thing?

Crime 101

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Thriller

Director: Bart Layton

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Halle Berry, Barry Keoghan, Monica Barbaro, Nick Nolte, Corey Hawkins, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Chris Hemsworth does crime. He's good at crime. And he has a system for it in this thriller that sees him as a serial jewel theif who has contacted disgruntled insurance woman Halle Berry for an inside to his next job while detective Mark Ruffalo follows his pattern. Crime 101 is a pretty basic crime film, featuring a perfectionist crime master and a cop with a Magnum P.I. mustache. It has no intention of adding to the formula and there is little argument that it should. Most of the interest in the film lies in seeing how his next plan begins laying itself out in front of him, seeing Ruffalo connect the dots, and Barry Keoghan storms into the film as a wildcard that will offset both of their missions. In contrast to the efficiency of the main story, the romance scenes with Monica Barbaro feel in a vacuum and of little value, adding a romantic interest to Hemsworth's character because he's otherwise pretty sexless for such a sexy man. They are so self-contained and meandering that one wouldn't even be faulted if they theorized that they were late-production reshoots because they don't feel like they were always in this script. They weren't reshoots, because as far as I can tell Barbaro was in this cast before production began, but they just stick out. It doesn't hurt the film, except with it being probably a half hour too long and those scenes being easy material to cut. Still, it's a solid crime flick for people who dig crime flicks.

GOAT

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Comedy, Sports

Director: Tyree Dillihay

Starring: Caleb McLaughlin, Gabrielle Union, Aaron Pierre, Nicola Coughlin, David Harbour, Nick Kroll, Jenifer Lewis, Patton Oswalt, Jelly Roll, Jennifer Hudson, Sherry Cola, Eduardo Franco, Andrew Santino, Bobby Lee, Stephen Curry

Better than you'd expect for a movie whose entire existence is based upon a pun, GOAT is about a young goat who is enlisted for his local professional sports team and surprisingly sparks a winning streak for the failing franchise. They play a sport called "Roarball," which is just basketball only with quirky hazards like a Mario sports game. There's not a lot else to say about this movie because it's basically the "fresh blood inspires group of misfits to come together" archetype that most sports movies do in an enjoyable package. The movie is fun and funny, with messages of teamwork and self-belief for the wee ones. It's probably a prime counter to either Space Jam movie if you want to watch a family-friendly sports movie, and its vibe is a dash of Kung Fu Panda. It continues what seems to be Sony's animation division finally finding its niche in the wake of Spider-Verse, Mitchells vs the Machines, and KPop Demon Hunters. GOAT isn't as good as those movies but it stands tall in its own two shoes.

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre: Comedy, Science Fiction

Director: Gore Verbinski

Starring: Sam Rockwell, Haley Lu Richardson, Michael Peña, Zazie Beetz, Asim Chaudhry, Juno Temple

Sam Rockwell is basically John Conner and Kyle Reese rolled into one in this comedy that's basically Terminator meets The World's End. Rockwell runs into a diner looking like a crazy homeless man, claiming to be from the future, asking attendees to stand up with him and help him prevent the apocalypse that is happening because Gen Z uses smartphones. This movie feels like a movie I should dig because I love many movies like it but it just did not land for me. To be frank, this could potentially be the most "old man yells at cloud" movie of the year, telling its satire through the eyes of writers who seem confused and frightened by how different the next few generations are from them and displays it as an enemy to rebel against. It's chosen lens is a message of the consequences of screen addiction but they way it chooses to frame it make it feel muddled. This film features smart phones turning people into zombies to war against their elders, which feels like thin-skinned messaging from people who don't like being criticized by teenagers. But at least that's a coherent message, because another sequence has school shooting victims being cloned and turned into brainless drones that are seemingly Conservative. I have absolutely no clue what the movie wants me to take away from that. I can identify individual ideas that they're sending up in this section but they don't go together and the movie just shovels them down it's own throat and vomits them onto the screen, yelling "PARODY" as if that makes it makes sense. That about sums up my entire experience with this film because it feels like it had a lot of ideas and just threw them out all at once, making its messaging a thick mess of conflicting nonsense.

That's not to say the movie can't be a good time. I found the movie's more superficial elements to be enjoyable. If you engage this movie as an idiosyncratic ride as opposed to a work of thematic value, the movie is enjoyable to play with, though two-and-a-half hours is really pushing it for a film like this, especially with so much indulgiant fluff that the movie doesn't need. But the movie is destined to be that sort of cult classic of people who call it an underground gem, like Cabin in the Woods, another cult classic I didn't care for. I anticipate that, similarly to Cabin in the Woods, there will be a lot of people shouting how people "don't get" this movie. Also like Cabin in the Woods, I get it. It's just not anything worth taking note of.

The Mortuary Assistant

⭐️1/2

Genre: Horror

Director: Jeremiah Kipp

Starring: Willa Holland, Paul Sparks

We're only halfway through February and we've already had three movies based on horror video games. I'm hoping this isn't a trend, but if it's going to be, maybe we can squeeze in a better Until Dawn movie somewhere in there.

The Mortuary Assistant centers on a, ya'know, mortuary assistant played by Willa Holland, who finds herself working late one night and in the middle of spooky shenanigans. Ghosts, demons, possessed corpses, and twitchy guys with giant toothy grins, the works. And apparently her boss knows what's going on but won't tell her. What a jerk. There are things in this movie that work, as some of the film's scare tactics can be rather raw and chilling at times. The film is more concentrated on style, not noticing that its script is messy and its actors look disengaged. Holland at least looks as if she's putting in an attempt to fulfill the movie's need from her, but it's constantly switching what it is up on her. At times, it wants to be a slow-burn psychological haunting and others where it goes full-blown Evil Dead. The movie switching between the two on a dime is charming in its confidence, even if it overestimates itself. When it can't tie the two together, the script melts into a messy pile of puss. The best aspects of the movie make me feel there is something intriguing at its center, though the movie fumbles the ball in trying to do too many things at once.

Nirvana the Band the Show the Movie

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Comedy

Director: Matt Johnson

Starring: Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol, Jared Raab

I don't know what this is. I enjoyed it, though. It's like if Spinal Tap and The Office had a socially awkward child who lives in the basement.

I had to go on a rabbit hole hunt to figure out what the hell this was, because I couldn't tell if it was a Nirvana concert or a documentary and the synopsis said some shit about time travel and my head exploded. Turns out there is the underground Canadian comedy series called Nirvana the Band that started as a webseries in 2007 and eventually became a TV show ten years later called Nirvana the Band the Show. This whole premise centers on two dudes in Toronto who have a band and are doing absurd publicity stunts to promote it, in a very Lucy Ricardo or Ralph Kramden kind of way. One of which is calling themselves "Nirvana the Band," which will bring to mind a certain other band called Nirvana. They do these as little back-and-forths in their apartment or out in the street doing stuff that looks awkward. Sometimes they incorporate passersby into the bit who are obviously not in on the joke. It's very Impractical Jokers. The premise of the movie is a step beyond that, as the duo accidentally turns their RV into a time machine and jumps back into the year 2008, coinciding with the original webseries, which they bump into in a very Back to the Future Part II fashion.

If this whole thing sounds appealing, I bet you'll love this movie. Most of what was going on flew over my head, but even I had a good time during this. It's like uncovering some secret that your comedy buff friends have been keeping from you for years and going "Why wasn't I aware of this? I totally would have binged this with you." And the good news is that there is a backcatalog to explore now. It's not a huge one, consisting of eleven ten-minute websites and sixteen half-hours of TV, but its still something that might be worth looking into. This seems to be a weird project these guys dust off every decade or so. I guess that means whatever the next incarnation will be will hit in 2035.

Wuthering Heights

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre: Drama

Director: Emerald Fennell

Starring: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chou, Shazad Latif, Alison Oliver, Martin Klunes, Ewen Mitchell

The advertisements for this new adaptation of Wuthering Heights call it "the greatest love story of all time." Honestly, calling Wuthering Heights that particular statement feels like you read the book upside down. I mean, technically Wuthering Heights centers on a love story but the book is told through such bitterness and resentment that any notion of "love" in it is suffocated out of it. It's one of the most passively angry books ever written, which is why it's pretty much a goth community sacred text. Of course, Wuthering Heights isn't exactly known for its great film adaptations, as most choose to omit the entire second half of the book (including this one), which arguably is the portion that lays out the entire point of the story. But I think we can all agree that the best adaptation of Wuthering Heights happened within the first five minutes of Evil Dead Rise.

This particular version of Wuthering Heights is brought to us by Emerald Fennell, who brought us Promising Young Woman and Saltburn. If anybody can deliver something as twisted and toxic as Wuthering Heights to the big screen, it's her. Like many versions of it, this film concentrates solely on the relationship of Cathy and Heathcliff, two people in love who pushed each other away and only to reunite years later, Cathy married to a man Heathcliff despises, and the tension between the two leads Heathcliff to dark places. It also leads him to sexy places, as the film basically adds a full blown sexual affair between the pair. It's here where Fennell starts to lose her grasp on this movie, as she tries to find the Fifty Shades of Grey within the story and it feels like she completely whiffed the ball. Recontextualizing Whuthering Heights as a sexual awakening story feels like a broken concept to begin with, but if you're going to do it, utilizing Margot Robbie in a role of a naive sexually curious woman is spectacular miscasting. It's not that she's a thirty-something playing a girl who was nineteen at the height of the book's narrative, it's not the first time Hollywood has done this and it won't be the last, but the use of a modern Hollywood It Girl Sex Symbol for such a role soaks the virginity out of the virgin girl she's supposed to be playing. Her eyes lack the cautious curiosity that such sequences desire. She's better at playing the older Cathy, but even with that, while the sex scenes are filmed with ferocity, she and co-star Jacob Elordi don't exactly ignite the screen with chemistry. I tend to single out Robbie here because Elordi does play Heathcliff with this growing intensity of a love that is making him grow angrier with each passing day where he cannot act on it. Robbie doesn't give Cathy any such nuance, and while she's serviceable in the role, the only thing she offers the film is star power.

If I'm harping on Robbie too much, then I need to also emphasize that she probably would have been fine if the production weren't frustrating. Fennell is a confident director and I love that about her, and the vibe she lays down is absolutely the perfect vibe for a Wuthering Heights movie. When it comes to her own screenplay, it's half the perfect adaptation and half an odd indulgiance of creative liberties that don't pay off in the film's favor. The fact that the movie is neither one nor the other in its entirety makes watching it a bit of a whirlwind. I found myself watching this movie going "Oh, that's great" one minute and contrasting with "Um...that was a choice" the next. You can tell Fennell poured her whole heart into this movie and put passion in the right places, but sometimes got so into the heat of the moment that she gives an interpretation of the story that is a laughable representation of it. This especially happens deeper into the narrative, as Heathcliff starts to become a more toxic character, as Fennell shows off his toxicity but also softens it by making a recipient of his abuse a more willing participant. It's a relationship that's trying to be yucky that only comes off as unbalanced for the sake of being weird. Maybe we should be thankful Fennell opted to not cover the later portion of the book, because Heathcliff's actions get more reprehensible as the story continues and I probably don't want to see what this particular vision of the story would have done with it.

Wuthering Heights a beautiful movie to look at, a messy movie to follow, and a frustrating movie to try and keep on your good side. I liked just enough of it to think it's probably worth a cautious rental at the very least. It's certainly provokes a reaction, and that's what Fennell likes to do.

Oscar's Trash Can

Come See Me in the Good Light

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Oscars Nominated: Best Documentary Feature Film

Genre: Documentary

Director: Ryan White

Starring: Andrea Gibson, Megan Falley

This is one of those documentaries that shows off the last years of a dying person and providing the outlook on life of a person who has reached their sunset. I'm not sure if it offers anything beyond similar documentaries like this, but it does have a queer icon as it's subject: spoken word poet Andrea Gibson. The film follows Gibson and their partner Megan Falley as they navigate the last few years of Gibson's life after they were diagnosed with cancer in 2020. The film offers up their history in spurts, such as how they got their start in poetry and how they met their partner, though it's not incredibly thorough. The film is more contemplative than that, mostly sitting with Gibson on their good days where life feels normal and bad days where they're taking in how few days they have left, offering up some of their poetry as transition pieces. It all comes to a climax as they try to temper their cancer down enough to perform just one last poetry show. The film offers some nice life-affirming viewpoints in the end, along with a few tears on the way. Gibson passed away after the film was completed and released to film festivals but before it was released widely. The film was never updated to make note of this, opting to end their story with the hopeful ideal of every day being a blessing and every single one they had to look forward to being savored. That's probably the exact message this film needed.

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 ⭐️⭐️⭐️