MST3K, RiffTrax, and My Cinema Playground: Cinema Playground Journal 2026: Week 35 (My Cinema Playground)

Multiplex Madness

Buddy

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre: Horror, Comedy, Fantasy

Director: Casper Kelly

Starring: Cristin Milioti, Delaney Quinn, Patton Oswalt, Michael Shannon, Topher Grace, Keegan-Michael Key

We can't have nice things. All of childhood must be weaponized into something dark and deranged by the horror genre at some point, because we can't allow innocence and all that is good must be corrupted. This movie takes place in a backyard straight out of a PBS children's show, where a group of kids play with their magical stuffed unicorn pal, Buddy. The children slowly begin to realize that they might actually be prisoners and Buddy is actually a violent monster feeding off of their love. Obviously, the movie is a play on that Barney stereotype of preschooler show, showcasing it as a sterile purgatory that one's senses recognize as fakery. The film uses this as a hurdle for a bizarre fantasy survival scenario for children, as it's leans into being a weird combination between a Grimm fairy tale and a really out-there Goosebumps book. It can experience slowdown as it stumbles upon its segmented format, but it's hard to be upset at a movie that is this proudly weird and off-center for too long. The movie is not going to be for everybody, and its ending is more of a rambunctious explosion than a conclusion, but it felt to me like this movie was more about the weird journey than it is in telling a conventional tale.

Colony

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre: Horror

Director: Yeon Sang-ho

Starring: Jun Ji-hyun, Koo Kyo-hwan, Ji Cang-wook, Kim Shin-rok, Shin Hyun-been, Go Soo

I had the choice between sitting through a Christian rock musical for free or driving to a different theater and paying real money to see a Korean horror movie. I made my decision and I stand by it.

Yeog Sang-ho is back with another zombie movie. Considering he directed quite possibly the greatest zombie movie of all time with Train to Busan, that comes with lofty expectations. But I'm willing to let him cook. Colony takes place mostly confined to a building, where a biological attack infects people and they begin to attack everyone in their way. They also begin to display insect-like attributes, seemingly communicating and working in a hive mind. It's an interesting reinvention of the idea of a zombie movie, but it also comes at the cost of listing out its dense rulebook as it goes. The amount of explanation required to understand everything almost makes one wish the movie came with an instruction manual. Still, Sang-ho is a master in crafting set-pieces. The movie has excellent sequences of suspense and the climax is genuinely spectacular. And anybody who was impressed with the zombie choreography in Train to Busan will find a lot to admire here, which takes that craft to the next level. The movie doesn't hit nearly as hard as Train to Busan but it's also not trying to be Train to Busan. Train to Busan arguably wasn't even a horror movie. Colony is a nastier movie through and through. Yet, it's not as memorable.

Coyote vs. Acme

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre: Comedy

Director: Dave Green

Starring: Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, Will Forte, Lana Condor, John Cena, Tone Bell, Luis Guzmán, Martha Kelly, P.J. Byrne, Eric Bauza, Kenneth Choi

I really hate that this movie is always going to have an asterisk next to its name. Coyote vs. Acme is now famous for the notoriety of having been a movie that has escaped being forever vaulted by Warner Brothers as a tax write-off after their merger with Discovery Media. This resulted in several movies being scrapped deep into post production, including Batgirl, Scoob: Holiday Haunt, and nearly another Looney Tunes movie called The Day the Earth Blew Up, which Ketchup Entertainment released last year. Ketchup also did its due diligence in acquiring Coyote vs. Acme, letting the world finally see what David Zaslav thought nobody wanted. Oddly, the negative press for the near-junking of this film probably put more eyes on it than it would have gotten otherwise and the movie might now just be a focal point of supporting art and sticking it to the corporations that were partaking in activities that were both anti-artist and anti-consumer. If a movie does its job correctly, a viewer shouldn't think positively of it out of spite. Luckily, that shouldn't be the case here. Creative, heartfelt, and wildly entertaining, Coyote vs. Acme comes the closest to replicating the magic of Who Framed Roger Rabbit that so many movies have been struggling to recreate for decades.

We all know the Road Runner cartoons. Wile E. Coyote chases him, Road Runner runs, Wile E. Coyote fails, often with a weird gizmo exploding. Those gizmos are normally made by the Acme Corporation. Wile E. takes his frustrations to small-time lawyer Will Forte, where it balloons into a massive multimillion dollar lawsuit. When one looks at the types of movies the Looney Tunes have done in the live-action/animation hybrid space, be it a Space Jam or a Back in Action, they're usually high-concept ideas that inject the Tunes into a big adventure. Coyote vs. Acme scales that back and uses these cartoons as actual characters and not big personas littering a wacky narrative with jokes. The film maps out an actual story and uses them to tell that story and enhance the satire, which is a refreshing novelty when it feels like the Looney Tunes haven't been used like this in a very long time. It makes the movie feel like it has a purpose and isn't riding a gimmick.

I had always heard that this movie had a surprising heart at its center. I wasn't sure how much I believed that, because it's difficult to graft emotional pull onto a character like Wile E. Coyote, who is a pretty big jerk. But the movie is actually pretty smart about what his appeal is, as it makes a very interesting point about Wile E. Coyote's tenacity, showing him as an example of never giving up, even if you're used to failure. Sometimes the coyote's more greedy attributes overwhelm the message the movie is going for, as he mostly just wants to use the trial as a giant trap to catch the Road Runner, but the movie does know how to use this character to his maximum potential and it follows through. The fact that this nearly lost piece of media that we only got through popular demand has a message of living to fight for what you want is oddly perfect.

This is a great movie. I'm not just saying that to justify what it took to release, nor from being a long-time lover of the Road Runner cartoons, it is legitimately one of the better movies I've seen this year. People shouldn't just see it to thumb their noses at Warner; they should see it for its own merits, of which there are many. Looney Tunes fans should see it because it's easily the best Looney Tunes movie ever made. Families should see it because it's a ton of fun. And we should all breathe a sigh of relief that it is here and we can enjoy it.

The Dog Stars

⭐️⭐️

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Director: Ridley Scott

Starring: Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Guy Pearce

The Dog Stars is not a terribly interesting book, but it's more interesting than you'd assume by simply watching the film adaptation. Jacob Elordi plays a widower who lost his wife during a pandemic who flies around in a little airplane and kills time with survivalist Josh Brolin. He goes out flying to search for greener pastures, where he stumbles upon Margaret Qualley and father Guy Pearce living on their ranch. Ultimately, the book uses a post-apocalyptic backdrop as an allegory for wallowing in greif. The movie feels like it understands this but works surprisingly hard to stifle it. I've never seen a movie try so hard to pretend it doesn't have a point.

In fairness, I do think a lot of the plot needed to be reworked. The book is meandering and repetitive, turning in circles before progressing its story in any given direction, often feeling like it was written by someone whose favorite episodes of The Walking Dead are the boring mid-season ones where people glower around and nothing happens. A lot of the plot points in this adaptation are simplified and gussied up as an action sequence to give the movie a bit more whiz-bang than just a story of a sad man who finally discovers the only woman in town and decides he's also really horny. To my surprise, a lot of this comes at the expense of numbing the romance between Elordi and Qualley. Considering that relationship pushes the entire theme of the story, one would think you would fight to keep that fleshed out. Stripping it down makes your story feel like it has nowhere to go, and the movie leads to its greatest creative liberty in an action-packed third act that is more noise than payoff. I'm not sure how good of a movie you could have made out of The Dog Stars but it certainly feels like they took their eyes off the ball.

Idiots

⭐️⭐️1/2

Genre: Comedy

Director: Macon Blair

Starring: Dave Franco, O'Shea Jackson Jr., Mason Thames, Kiernan Shipka, Nicholas Braun, Peter Dinklage

Two losers are tasked with driving a spoiled rich kid to rehab in this comedy that is more brash than funny. The movie's most positive attribute is that it escalates in ways that try to counter predictability. Whether or not its smart plot progression is a matter of perspective, but it's not afraid to get bold, even if it's just bizarre. It wears its brazzenness with confidence, and it's always good to see a comedy that is this sure of itself. The problem is that the movie is very aggressive with its escalation, which boarders on being too unpleasant to be amusing. I can't call this a bad movie but I also can't call it a good time. I appreciated the effort to make a unique goofball of a movie, though.

It Ends

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Drama, Horror

Director: Alexander Ullom

Starring: Phinehas Yoon, Akira Jackson, Noah Toth, Mitchell Cole

I hope horror fans love psychological movies about purgatory because they are spoiled for choices this year, between this, Exit 8, and Backrooms. It Ends hits the road with a quartet of friends who find themselves on an endless highway that seemingly has no destination, and they just drive into the distance hoping to find a way off. I hate road trips too. It's an experience of being trapped in a metal container with people you're somewhat fond of and slowly growing more irritated at them. If It Ends let's down in its existential ambitions, at least it understands that part of life. This movie can be proud that it's an excellent simulator of it. It Ends seems to be an exploration of a group of people who are in a situation without reason, watching what hope they maintain and the eventual loss of it. As to what's actually happening, the movie doesn't explain this. It offers hypotheticals, but never an explanation. The only aspect of this that's bothersome is that it offers a very specific set of rules that it demands its characters to follow, and also a vague notion of the things that happen outside of the car, but it offers little in the way of exploring itself other than just living with the characters. It feels like there is more movie here and this is just a proof of concept. But still, it's an interesting movie. There's not enough here to fully resonate, but they took a swing at something big with very little resources and I respect that.

Art Attack

Finding Emily

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Comedy, Romance

Director: Alicia MacDonald

Starring: Angourie Rice, Spike Fearn, Minnie Driver

I saw Obsession seven times over the summer. Every time I saw it, the last trailer during the opening previews was for Finding Emily, which was Focus Features' next big acquisition release, coincidentally also dealing with a "love obsession," albeit in a different way. Finding Emily didn't make it to my multiplex, despite how very familiar I became with the trailer because they were showing it. Maybe it'll expand next week, I don't know, but I felt like I needed closure to my Obsession experience. So I drove down to my little arthouse and sat down with the daffy little romcom.

Finding Emily centers on Spike Fearn, a guy who meets an "Emily" at a club but is accidentally given an incorrect phone number. He tries to find her on her college campus, and his stunts get more extravagant as he is encouraged by Angourie Rice, who who decides to study him for her psychology thesis without his knowledge. It's high-concept romcom shenanigans, more cute than funny, but the last romcom I took in was that not-so-great One Night Only movie, so just being a pleasant smile-inducer was more than welcome. The one thing that really struck me while watching this is that the concept is a minefield of conflict because when one aspect of the story is wrapping up, another one ignites. It makes the third act feel very extended as even if the main conflict is resolving, further are still in the air, and it even ends when arguably there are still more to resolve. It's pretty interesting on how much this film choses to juggle when we all know the ending is just going to be Fearn and Rice doing a big kiss. There is some commentary on modern-age romance in a social age that is inclined to scrutinize but it's watered down and played for silliness. That doesn't matter because the romcom audience wants the big kiss. That's the money. The movie has big kiss, so it delivers.

Late Fame

⭐️⭐️⭐️

Genre: Drama

Director: Kent Jones

Starring: Willem Dafoe, Greta Lee, Edmund Donovan

Willem Dafoe plays a former poet living in obscurity in Manhattan who is taken in by a group of young, upper-class writers who push him into writing again. That sounds like a feel-good story, right? Then you're reading it wrong. Ultimately, Late Fame is the comparison of how art and artists is used and mistreated by those who don't value the work but use it to dress themselves. Dafoe's character is an actual, grounded, lived-in person. The movie puts him in a room full of people who are performative, acting as if they're supporting and influencing his passion when they are really pressuring him to help them improve their stature and impress others. Dafoe goes along with it because he never achieved success and had never had this type of attention before. The film is a realization that he is leaving reality behind for something fake, seduced by the idea of recognition (and also the allure of Greta Lee in a ridiculous wig). The movie wants to frustrate because it showcases art being made, used, and discussed for the wrong reasons, and it will hopefully prompt a discussion of what art should really mean to the person who makes it and the people who consume it.

Movies Still Playing At My Theater

The End of Oak Street ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Insidious: Out of the Further ⭐️⭐️1/2

The Magic Faraway Tree ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Mutiny ⭐️1/2

The Odyssey ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie ⭐️⭐️1/2

Spa Weekend ⭐️1/2

Spider-Man: Brand New Day ⭐️⭐️⭐️

Tony ⭐️⭐️⭐️

New To Digital

Her Private Hell ⭐️1/2