REVIEW: The world of cyberhacking has changed so much over the years. I still remember the sillier days of hacking, looking like a weird 3D video game in the 90s. And so much nonsensical typing. I actually kind of miss that, because the reality is that most hacking is done via computer programs and coding that look about as interesting as installing iTunes. Wardriver takes the concept of modern hacking via unsecured wireless networks and gives it a fun criminal twist.

Dane DeHaan plays Cole, a wardriver who sets his sights on vulnerable corporations versus everyday people. He’s a bit of a Robin Hood type, always trying to help out those in need. Unfortunately, he rips off the wrong business and is forced to target a woman (Sasha Calle) who has nearly a million dollars in her account. Turns out, that money isn’t hers, and she’s holding it for a very dangerous man. Cole’s guilt over the hot water he’s gotten her into means he has to use his hacking skills to try to make things right.

Cole is clearly a very lonely man, desperate for any form of connection. So it’s not entirely unbelievable that he would fall so hard for Sarah and be willing to do so much for her. It all comes together in the end, but it’s hard not to see Cole as a bit of a dummy with his love blindness. DeHaan and Calle have an interesting dynamic, as Cole gives her an opportunity to escape the life that she’s fallen into. Their story isn’t typical, and I think that’s what makes it work.

I’ve liked Jeffrey Donovan since Burn Notice, so it’s fun to see him as the bad guy here. He’s not your typical villain, and seems to have fallen into a bad situation, and is enjoying the lifestyle that it has given him. He’s not outright evil, but he’s certainly not a good person either. But those are the best kinds of villains. Mamoudou Athie is intimidating as the man forcing Cole to commit these crimes. But I think William Belleau is one of the film’s biggest surprises. I’ve really been enjoying his career in recent years and this is role that feels more layered than the standard henchman.

There is something a bit contradictory in how Cole operates at a certain point. He has a rule where he goes after corporations versus people, but all of that seems to go out the window once he’s trying to help Sarah. He starts ripping off ordinary people who are using ATM’s when he’s already shown that he’s more than capable of taking large amounts of cash from businesses. Wardriver really likes to play in that gray area, where nothing is nearly as black and white as it may seem.

Wardriver really comes together in its final act, giving a satisfying conclusion with some interesting twists and turns. There are times where the pacing lags in the middle, and it can feel a little “been there, done that,” but the end makes up for it. I had never heard of a wardriver before, but I’m not surprised that this is something that’s going on in the world. If anything, this serves as a big lesson to make sure you’ve put a password on any WiFi network you have, because you never quite know the damage that someone can do by accessing it. It’s great to see DeHaan back in a lead role, as any character he plays manages to be interesting.

Wardriver is playing in select theaters on March 20th, 2026 and on digital on March 27th, 2026.

Wardriver

GOOD

7

The post Wardriver Review: Dane DeHaan brings a Robin Hood approach to modern day cyber hacking appeared first on JoBlo.

Review: Of all the series I have reviewed over the years, Peaky Blinders is one that consistently fell by the wayside. A big hit with fans of Boardwalk Empire and The Sopranos, Peaky Blinders was peak Steven Knight period drama that gave Cillian Murphy an iconic role years before he won his Academy Award for Oppenheimer. The six-season Netflix series fostered fashion trends before it went off the air in 2022. Bringing back legacy cast members as well as new additions Barry Keoghan, Rebecca Ferguson, and Tim Roth, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man gives the saga of Tommy Shelby the big-screen treatment while maintaining the same violent scope and epic storytelling, compressed into just under two hours. Fans of the series will be excited to see Cillian Murphy don a three-piece suit, but the film fails to reach the heights of a full season of the small-screen version. Nevertheless, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man looks and feels more cinematic than many television-to-film continuations.

Despite being a continuation of where the series finale left off, Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man often feels like a retread of elements we have seen before. Set five years after burning all of his belongings and riding away into solitude, Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) returns as World War II is beginning to impact the British Isles with bombings. There has long been a threat of nationalism and extremism within the historical context of Peaky Blinders, and seeing the impending arrival of Nazis fits within the context of the series. Tommy, older and still suffering from PTSD from World War I, is attempting to write a memoir of his life titled “The Immortal Man” to try and move on from the years of trauma he has endured. In Tommy’s absence, his son, Duke (Barry Keoghan), has risen to the challenge of running criminal enterprises in Birmingham, including stealing from British soldiers. Duke, who has a parental relationship with criminal Beckett (Tim Roth), is frustrated with his station and wants more. Hence, Tommy must return to re-establish the rightful balance of power through the Peaky Blinders.

Because this is a movie, there are new additions to the cast as well as returning favorites. Stephen Graham reprises his role as Hayden “The King of Liverpool” Stagg, while Packy Lee returns as Johnny Dogs, Ned Dennehy as Charlie Strong, and Sophie Rundle as Ada Thorne, with Rebecca Ferguson joining as twins Kaulo and Zelda. Because of the countless familiar actors from the series’ six seasons, many of whom did not survive the final season, there is a lot of time spent discussing who is not present in The Immortal Man. The power vacuum left by many of the characters also means there is a lot of time spent explaining who represents which factions and expository dialogue to help bridge the half-decade gap since the series ended. While Peaky Blinders spent a great deal of time building relationships between long-time members of the cast and each season’s new additions, it is challenging to build the same dynamic with new characters joining this story for a limited amount of screen time. It is great to see Dennehy, Lee, and Rundle, but this film hinges on the father-son relationship between Cillian Murphy’s Tommy and Barry Keoghan’s Duke. The vibe feels very similar to the chemistry between Daniel Day-Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio in Gangs of New York, with Keoghan a perfect fit as Murphy’s son.

Where Peaky Blinders has always been strongest has been in the gritty, violent world of the 1920s and 1930s in England. The gang factions and crime families that inhabited the region have always given the series a feeling distinct from other gangster sagas. While each series only comprised six episodes, The Immortal Man still feels far too short to do justice to the story being told. The anachronistic soundtrack still remains a key element of the series, but the compressed running time does not do the story any favors. Tommy Shelby’s legacy looms large over the film, and his time away from being the head of the Peaky Blinders has not changed the man. By making the film’s predominant villains Nazis, the power dynamic shifts from criminals against authority to criminals as heroes. By making Tommy into a good guy, some of the anti-hero vibe of The Immortal Man feels out of place compared to the more punk-rock underdog-fighting-the-power vibe of the original series. This does not detract from the storytelling quality of the movie, but it does make it harder to appreciate the transformation of Tommy Shelby that long-time fans of the series will experience when they watch it.

Director Tom Harper, who helmed three episodes of the first season of Peaky Blinders, brings a cinematic quality to The Immortal Man, making it feel like more than an extended episode of the television series. Harper has worked on bigger-budget projects like the Gal Gadot spy film Heart of Stone and the Prime Video period adventure The Aeronauts, but he is right at home in the gritty, violent world of Peaky Blinders. Cinematographer George Steel lensed The Immortal Man in a way that accentuates the film’s cold, winter setting, offering triumphant, heroic shots like the image of Tommy riding on horseback used in the film’s marketing materials. Steven Knight knows these characters well at this point, and there is never any doubt that this is the next phase in the journey for Tommy Shelby, but the same cannot be said for the rest of the screenplay. The melodramatic peaks and valleys of this movie sometimes border on silly, with the feature-length running time sometimes betraying the outsized emotional reactions of the characters. There is way too much crammed into this two-hour film, and it often feels like Knight could not figure out what to focus on and what to leave out.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is worth seeing for the absolutely fantastic performances from Cillian Murphy and Barry Keoghan. Two of the finest actors working today, seeing that they play father and son, are more than worth the price of admission. But, if you are a newcomer to the world of Peaky Blinders, you will likely feel lost as you try to orient yourself in a story set over two decades from where it started. Peaky Blinders has developed a fanbase thanks to its blend of action, violence, and drama, told through the saga of a family spanning 36 episodes. Trying to encapsulate and continue that dynamic in just 112 minutes is a daunting feat, and Tom Harper and Steven Knight do not quite make it work. The bloodbath at the core of Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is worth seeing on the big screen, but the rest of this movie could have waited until it hit streaming. A bit more time spent working on the characters, or even turning this into a shorter, seventh season, would have done better justice to the franchise.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man is now playing in theaters and premieres March 20th on Netflix.

Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man

AVERAGE

6

The post Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man Review – Cillian Murphy returns in a violent continuation of the gangster series appeared first on JoBlo.

REVIEW: Poetic License marks the directorial debut of Maude Apatow, a familiar face from her roles in her father Judd Apatow’s films, as well as HBO’s Euphoria. One thing that has marked many of Judd’s later films is his shift from hardcore comedy to gentler comedy-drama in the mold of James L. Brooks, and his daughter Maude seems to share very much the same vision in that respect. Indeed, in the introduction to Poetic License at SXSW, the moderator mentioned that the film feels like it was plucked out of another era of moviemaking, which it does — and I mean that as a compliment.

The fact is, high-end comedy-dramas like this often don’t get made anymore, so it’s worth celebrating when a new one comes out, especially when it’s this good. The recent failure of Ella McCay shows just how hard it can be for movies like this to connect critically, but what Apatow has done here is make an old-fashioned movie that’s up-to-date enough that it doesn’t feel like a relic.

She gives her mother, Leslie Mann, a great part as Liz, a former therapist who, after a career-ending error, opted to become a stay-at-home mom. But with her beloved daughter, Dora (Nico Parker), in her last year of high school and wanting some independence, Liz has a whole lot of free time, especially now that she’s moved to a college town where her husband, James (Method Man), is an economics professor.

Mann is excellent, with Liz overbearing but also cool and charismatic enough that she never loses your sympathy. Most importantly, you believe why this kind, understanding, and — let’s face it — hot woman totally upends the relationship between the film’s other two leads, Cooper Hoffman’s Ari and Andrew Barth Feldman’s Sam.

The two men are co-dependent best friends, the type who do everything together and tend to interfere in each other’s lives. Feldman’s Sam is an economics student on the verge of graduating who’s unsure about his future in finance, an industry he’s starting to think he’s unsuited for. Hoffman’s Ari is a trust-fund kid with no direction and is also somewhat depressed, when he’s not wildly manic. As someone who was a lot like Ari in college — minus the trust fund — I found him easy to relate to, with Hoffman once again showing what a charismatic performer he’s growing into. Feldman, who impressed in No Hard Feelings (and has a kind of Martin Short-style vibe) is likable as the nice, low-key Sam, and you understand how both men would fall hard for Liz, to the point that they start competing for her. Liz has no romantic interest in either of them, but she’s so self-involved that she fails to notice how the boys are starting to fall for her.

In Apatow’s movie, which has a sharp script by Raffi Donatich, everyone comes off as well-intentioned and nice. While Liz is self-absorbed, she doesn’t want to hurt the boys, while neither of the guys becomes a creep in his pursuit of her. It’s all played for laughs, which is refreshing, as most modern movies would label at least one of the characters “problematic.” Here, they’re all just three-dimensional people, albeit ones without any real malice in them.

Apatow has also surrounded the three stars with an interesting ensemble. Nico Parker continues to be one of the best young actors out there as Liz’s daughter, who loves her mom but needs a bit of space to do her own thing. Method Man is terrific as Liz’s husband, perhaps the most versatile rapper-turned-actor in recent memory. He’s been great in a lot of things, and you buy him completely as a university academic and family man. One of the best parts goes to Martha Kelly as the hilariously blunt, deadpan poetry teacher. Plus, Maisy Stella from My Bad Ass is fun as Sam’s mean-spirited, obnoxious girlfriend, who is the bane of Ari’s existence. Like her father, Maude Apatow has a knack for letting her supporting players shine.

Upstart distributor Row K is set to put out Poetic License in theaters this summer, and hopefully folks give it a chance, as it feels like a breath of fresh air. Most rom-com-style movies are either too silly to be taken seriously or too cautious in their approach. Poetic License feels like one of those movies where everyone involved just focused on making an entertaining film rather than one that checked all the necessary boxes.

Maude Apatow

GREAT

8

The post Poetic License (SXSW) Review: Maude Apatow’s debut is pleasant fun appeared first on JoBlo.

PLOT: Fresh off surviving her brutal, life-or-death game of hide and seek with her now-former in-laws, Grace (Samara Weaving) once again finds herself forced to participate in a deadly game. This time, she’s up against four families, each of whom is vying for the position she’s on the verge of winning — the head of the devil-worshipping council that rules the world. To make sure she plays, her estranged sister, Faith (Kathryn Newton), is forced into participating as well.

REVIEW: Ready or Not proved to be something of a sleeper for Searchlight when it came out in 2019, grossing $57 million worldwide on a reported $6 million budget. Now, directorial duo Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett (aka Radio Silence), fresh off two successful Scream movies, are back with a bigger and bloodier follow-up, which seeks to expand on the demonic mythology by introducing a much larger organization controlling the world, with the patriarch played by none other than David Cronenberg.

While it’s not as surprising or innovative as the first movie, it’s still a bloody good time, with Weaving once again a delightful action heroine to follow around. The wrinkle this time is that not only is she wounded after her first game, but now she has to protect her sister, played by the ever-spunky Newton, who proves to be cut from the same cloth as her tricky, tough sister.

One thing that really works is the action design, which makes it more palatable that Weaving and Newton could hold their own, given that the families hunting them are well-armed but not especially proficient. They are the demonic equivalent of nepo babies. Some of the fights are a lot of fun, including a scrap between Grace and the woman her ex-fiancé jilted in favor of her, Maia Jae’s Francesca, with their fight being scored by Bonnie Tyler’s classic “Total Eclipse of the Heart.”

Yet, unlike the first film, the tone of Ready or Not 2: Here I Come is sometimes inconsistent. While a light action-comedy, one of the fights takes a disturbingly gruesome turn when Shawn Hatosy, as the most formidable opponent, brutally beats up Newton in a harsh, one-sided fight. The fact that it crosscuts back and forth with Grace and Francesca’s sillier, more comedic fight is jarring.

It’s also too bad that Sarah Michelle Gellar, perhaps wanting to save her action comeback for the new Buffy the Vampire Slayer, doesn’t really get too involved in the physical action, with her brother, played by Hatosy, more active. Perhaps knowing that topping the first film in terms of action would be tough to pull off, the movie also scales back on the fights in the third act in favor of a franchise-expanding twist, which is still nicely done, suggesting the franchise can go on. Elijah Wood also steals scenes as the unflappable lawyer assigned to enforce the diabolical rules, with him a nice addition to the franchise.

In the end, Ready or Not 2 isn’t quite the blast the first movie was, but I had a great time watching Weaving and Newton, who are both always easy to root for, do their thing. Gorehounds will appreciate the barrels of blood used, while the pace and momentum never lag. It’s a fun action-comedy (it’s lighter on the horror this time), and if the franchise continues, I’m more than ready for round three.

Ready or Not: Here I Come

GOOD

7

The post Ready or Not 2: Here I Come Review: Weaving and Newton Engage in Another Fun Game of Life or Death appeared first on JoBlo.

PLOT: Bear (Michael Johnston) is a shy music store employee with a monster crush on his long-time friend and co-worker, Nikki (Inde Navarrette). Too shy to confess his feelings—and possibly aware that she only thinks of him as a friend—he innocently makes a wish upon a dime-store “one wish willow” that she’d “love him more than anyone else in the world.” His wish comes true—and the consequences are nightmarish.

REVIEW: Obsession is going to strike a chord with a lot of viewers. I think everyone, at some point in their lives, has had a crush on someone who didn’t share their feelings, making Bear’s initial predicament easy to relate to. Others may also relate to Nikki, who’s perhaps been the object of affection from someone they simply aren’t interested in. Obsession becomes a nightmare for both halves of the equation, with Nikki utterly robbed of her agency, choice, and consent in order to fulfill someone else’s fantasy, while Bear—who thinks of himself as a “nice guy”—becomes a predator, and eventually a victim himself.

It’s a lot to chew on, and it marks the arrival of a major new talent in director Curry Barker. Stylishly directed and often darkly humorous, Obsession is a slow burn that pays off with an increasingly horrific final act. It includes one of the most memorable gore scenes in recent memory—so intense that Barker reportedly had to trim it to secure an R rating, and Focus gave it a wide summer release.

It’s exceptionally well-acted by both of its stars. Inde Navarrette is a hoot as the increasingly unhinged Nikki, yet she maintains your sympathy at all times, as you’re constantly aware she’s being manipulated by a force she can’t control. It’s almost a Linda Blair–esque performance, and it should put her on the map in a big way.

Yet of the two, Michael Johnston has the trickier role, playing a character most audience members will grow to despise without losing his humanity. In many ways—especially early on—Johnston’s Bear is as much a victim as Nikki, initially guilty of nothing more than making a dumb, throwaway wish on a gag toy he never expected to work. Yet at a certain point, he decides to go along with it, with a smash cut at one pivotal moment revealing that, despite thinking he’s a good man, he utterly lacks scruples, becoming a willing participant in Nikki’s tortured existence. Of course, things start to go wrong, and he tries to undo the wish—but as anyone who’s seen a horror movie knows, that’s easier said than done.

Barker guides the film with a sure hand and doesn’t shy away from hammering home his message about the difference between real love and obsession. Many will note the movie’s gallows humor, with gore-heavy moments happening so randomly and brutally that you can’t help but laugh at how demented they are—only to realize moments later that what you’re watching is, in many ways, a classic horror tragedy.

The supporting cast is excellent, with Megan Lawless a standout as Sarah, another record shop employee who would be a much better match for Bear if he could get over his obsession with Nikki. Cooper Tomlinson plays his more effortlessly charismatic friend, Ian. Also keep your eyes peeled for Andy Richter in a small role as the owner of the music shop they all work at (which feels like a cursed version of Empire Records).

If Focus plays its cards right, it might have the next indie horror sleeper on its hands with Obsession. It played like gangbusters at both TIFF and SXSW and is a great movie to see with an audience. It’s a strong communal horror experience and one of the more creative indie horror films to emerge in recent memory.

SXSW

GREAT

8

The post Obsession (SXSW) Review: A Slam-Bang Indie Horror Gem appeared first on JoBlo.

PLOT: A school teacher (Ryan Gosling) with a doctorate in molecular biology wakes up on a spaceship light years away from home with no idea how he got there. Slowly, he begins to realize he’s been sent on an Earth-saving mission from which he will never be able to return.

REVIEW: Rarely has a studio had as much faith in a movie as Amazon/MGM seems to have with Project Hail Mary, the biggest film they’ve produced since the streamer started to ramp up its theatrical release calendar. Based on the novel by Andy Weir (The Martian) and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (the Spider-Verse films, 21 & 22 Jump Street), the film has not only been getting a lot of word-of-mouth screenings, but this weekend it’s set to play a limited 70mm engagement a week before it goes wide. Clearly the studio is convinced they have a winner, and having finally seen the film for myself, I’m inclined to agree.

While time will tell whether Project Hail Mary turns into the theatrical event it’s being positioned as, it’s a thoroughly entertaining space adventure which, like The Martian before it (also adapted by screenwriter Drew Goddard), aims to be an optimistic, feel-good story that should inspire a generation of would-be astronauts — or scientists for that matter.

Ryan Gosling is perfectly cast as the hero, Dr. Ryland Grace, who’d prefer to be teaching science in a middle school than floating in outer space, making him a less-than-stoic hero. Gosling excels in the part, imbuing him with a large dose of humor while never making him come off as anything other than the brilliant man he’s supposed to be. He’s goofy but never silly, and Gosling has the presence needed for the role, with it almost becoming a one-man show for a good chunk of its running time.

Well… that’s almost true. In fact, beyond Gosling, the movie has another star in his alien buddy Rocky, whom Grace encounters on his journey and who is also trying to save his own planet from the same phenomenon that threatens Earth — a star-destroying organism called Astrophage. Rocky becomes Gosling’s dominant co-star, being a visual-effects-enhanced puppet who was actually operated on set and becomes a true scene-stealer. The friendship that sparks between Grace and Rocky gives the movie its heart, and by using older methods to animate him, he feels real in the way classic sci-fi characters like E.T. or Yoda did, which is strikingly different than if he had just been CGI. He’s a true special effect.

In fact, Lord and Miller, who will likely become the two hottest directors in town after this, have made a deliberate attempt to adopt and adapt some older VFX techniques, with the film eschewing green screen for practical sets and using CGI to give everything a finished polish. It feels like a reaction to the overly CGI-driven Hollywood blockbusters that are becoming endangered by the growing use of AI. While many will compare it to The Martian, it also seems inspired by Peter Hyams’ underrated sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010, to which it shares a few visual similarities (plus they both open with the classic MGM logo).

It’s also innovatively photographed by Greig Fraser, with it showing in a variety of formats, including 2.35:1 70mm and IMAX screenings. In the IMAX screening I saw, the aspect ratio changes, with the Earthbound scenes in scope while the frame opens to the IMAX ratio for all the sequences in space. The Earth sequences only take up about 20% of the movie, but like the rest of Project Hail Mary they have a lot of warmth, with Grace becoming close to Sandra Hüller’s character — the cold head of the Hail Mary project. In a nod to her work in Toni Erdmann, in which she memorably sang Whitney Houston’s “The Greatest Love of All,” she gets another karaoke moment, singing a stirring version of Harry Styles’ “Sign of the Times.”

While it runs a hefty 156 minutes, the running time zips along, with Lord and Miller having a good handle on pace. It’s really an impeccably made movie, with everyone involved doing superlative work, including Daniel Pemberton, who contributes a strong score. It’s the kind of movie that deserves to become the next Sinners, so hopefully audiences will give it a shot. It’s upbeat and leaves you walking out of the theater feeling optimistic — which I think all of us could use in these rather somber times.

Project Hail Mary

AMAZING

9

The post Project Hail Mary Review: Does It Live Up To The Hype? appeared first on JoBlo.

PLOT: Mike (James Marsden) is a low-level enforcer for a crime syndicate who wants to run away with his lover, Alice (Eiza Gonzalez), but he has a problem. She’s married to his former friend, a vengeful gangster named Nick (Vince Vaughn), who, when he learns of the affair, sets Mike up as a rat in his organization, with him being marked for death. But a remorseful Nick from the future unexpectedly shows up, having somehow gained access to a time machine, hoping to undo the damage he’s caused to Mike and Alice’s lives.

REVIEW: Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice is a movie that badly deserves a theatrical run but, for one reason or another, will be heading straight to streaming, premiering on Hulu on March 27th. It’s the highest-end movie to premiere on the service and is such a blast that one figures it would have done really well in theaters, but such is the state of the business nowadays that this high-concept action-comedy will never be seen that way. I saw it here at SXSW in a packed theater, and it rocked the house. It slaps and marks the arrival of BenDavid Grabinski (who wrote Scott Pilgrim Takes Off) as a major talent.

While some won’t be able to take the movie seriously because it uses a time machine, despite not being a science-fiction movie, it doesn’t really ask you to. The whole film adopts a kind of cartoonish anarchy that totally works thanks to the quality of the action and the committed performances by all three leads.

Vince Vaughn makes a welcome return to action as Nick, who, in the present, is a vengeful, cold-blooded gangster, but in the future is a man somewhat haunted by his own misdeeds, bitterly regretting setting up his friend to be killed. As future Nick, he has to not only win over Mike to make his plan work, but also somehow convince the mean-spirited present Nick to participate, and Vaughn expertly plays off both Marsden and himself. Vaughn gets to show off the comedy chops that made him one of the biggest stars of the 2000s, while also digging back into action for the first time since his two S. Craig Zahler films, Brawl in Cell Block 99 and Dragged Across Concrete, with the movie loaded with some major gunfights and violent scraps.

Yet, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice also marks a huge change of pace for James Marsden, who makes for a terrific action hero. His fight scenes are even better than Vaughn’s, with him really nailing the choreography while also not departing too much from the likable, easygoing presence he’s shown in his comedies. His Mike is a nice guy, with him convincing as a romantic lead opposite Eiza Gonzalez (who’s arguably never been this loose and seems to be having a blast), or a comic foil for the sharp-tongued Nick (both versions).

The film is set in a kind of heightened underworld, where a kingpin named Sosa (Keith David) is the boss and is celebrating the return of his beloved son, Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro—who steals a lot of scenes as his amusingly moronic character), from prison. The cast is peppered with all kinds of recognizable names thrown into the fray, including Lewis Tan as an amusingly dumb muscle man appropriately named Road Rage Ryan (while Arturo Castro is funny as the aptly named Dumbass Tony). The film has to walk a thin line, as the tone has to remain comic but also set up real stakes, with Sosa being a legitimate threat—he’s so evil his favorite hitman is a cannibal who likes to eat his still-living victims (the ultimate identity of this killer, named The Barron, is too good to spoil).

Through it all, Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’s pace never lags, with Grabinski contributing some witty asides, such as repeated deep dives into the leads’ shared love of Gilmore Girls. The film is also packed with eighties and nineties needle drops, which—for once—aren’t the obvious, lazy choices. It’s also gleefully R-rated, with tons of gory carnage, especially in the final battle royale, which even has a few nods to John Woo’s A Better Tomorrow with how weapons are hidden for our heroes. It’s a rollicking good time and is easily the best action comedy I’ve seen in the last couple of years. And really, how can you not love a movie that starts with a Billy Joel song from Oliver and Company?

Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice

AMAZING

9

The post Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice (SXSW) Review: This time travel action comedy is a blast appeared first on JoBlo.

PLOT: A young woman, Asia Reeves (Zazie Beetz), fresh out of prison, poses as a new hire at an exclusive New York high-rise, planning to find her missing sister. Once there, she realizes the building’s residents and staff plan to use her as a blood sacrifice to appease the satanic presence that has a hold over them.

REVIEW: They Will Kill You continues Warner Bros. and New Line’s run of slick, fun horror flicks. They’ve had tremendous success recently with new installments of The Conjuring, the revival of Final Destination, and wound up making one of the best movies of the year—horror or otherwise—with Weapons. They Will Kill You should be another crowd-pleasing hit, packed with blood-soaked carnage and a smartly cast Zazie Beetz in action-heroine mode.

While it shares certain similarities with Ready or Not and even its sequel (the sister-in-jeopardy plotline), it has a few key differences that keep it from feeling too familiar. For one, Beetz’s Asia Reeves is much more of a straight-up action heroine than Samara Weaving’s character in the Ready or Not films, where the appeal came from her reliance on ingenuity to survive. Reeves is more of a badass, having spent a decade in prison and becoming a master of hand-to-hand combat and improvised weaponry. Her foes are also deadlier than Weaving’s, with the joke of those films being that she was hunted by often idiotic bad guys. Here, the residents of the building have certain strengths that make them much harder to defeat—but I won’t spoil what those may be.

Beetz makes for a fun heroine, packing a lot of attitude and not being too squeamish to do things like knock a child out cold when the brat stabs her in the back (literally). The joke of the film is that no matter what is thrown at her, she rises above, with director Kirill Sokolov staging some dynamic action scenes. My favorite is a battle where Asia, wielding an axe with the blade wrapped in flaming cloth, lights a dark room full of opponents while splitting heads. The movie is really well shot by Isaac Bauman, eschewing the overly dark digital look that’s marring a lot of modern studio horror. It looks like it has a healthy budget that was used wisely.

One thing horror fans will love is the practical gore effects, which are emphasized over excessive CGI and give the proceedings a much-needed kick. The eyeball gag, which hopefully won’t be spoiled by ads, is especially effective.

Beetz is also surrounded by a great cast, with Patricia Arquette playing the Irish head of staff, who proves to be Asia’s most formidable opponent. Heather Graham also has a lot of fun playing against type as one of the meanest residents, with her involved in many of the standout gore moments. Former Harry Potter star Tom Felton is quite funny as a tenant flummoxed by Asia’s resilience, while Myha’la gives the movie some heart as the only maid in the building to somewhat ally herself with Asia.

They Will Kill You winds up being a bloody good time, even if some of the narrative threads never pay off (different themed floors—with one being a “f*ck floor”—are teased but never go anywhere), and the climax feels a bit too rushed and convenient. While it will undoubtedly suffer coming out so close on the heels of Ready or Not 2 for horror fans, it’s different enough that no one will feel it’s a retread and can accept it on its own merits—even if I can’t help but think one of the two movies should have moved, given how close together they’re opening.

Zazie Beetz

GOOD

7

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Review: Rose Byrne has explored some interesting projects over the last several years, including serving as an executive producer on her films and series like Physical and Platonic. Coming off her Golden Globe-winning performance and Oscar nomination for If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, Byrne is back with another powerful performance that touches similar themes as her award-winning role, but from a very different perspective. Based on the true story of Amanda Ogle’s fight against a shameless towing company, Tow looks at elements of addiction, homelessness, and the spirit of perseverance in a seemingly unwinnable situation. With supporting turns from Oscar winners Octavia Spencer and Ariana DeBose, as well as co-stars Demi Lovato and Dominic Sessa, Tow is a feel-good movie that hits many of the right notes, though it misses a few others.

With bleached-blonde hair done up in a Rosie the Riveter-style bandana and donning false teeth, Rose Byrne plays Amanda Ogle, a homeless woman living in her 1991 Toyota Camry in Seattle. Trying to put her veterinary tech certification to use, Amanda is a recovering drug addict and alcoholic trying to get her life back in order so she can reunite with her teenage daughter, Avery (Elsie Fisher), who lives in Utah. Judged for her lack of a college degree, Amanda moves from her car to homeless shelters before ending up at a church facility run by Barb (Octavia Spencer). When Amanda finally gets a job opportunity, she finds her car has been stolen. When she tries to reclaim it from the impound yard, she is told she has to pay. Amanda decides to sue the towing company and ends up in a protracted battle with their corporate attorney, Martin La Rosa (Corbin Bernsen). Little did she know, but Amanda’s battle would last for over a year.

Compressing Amanda’s 338-day battle to get her car back into one-hundred minutes means that Tow keeps the momentum moving on the journey for justice, but always keeping the focus on Rose Byrne. While her lawyer, Kevin (Dominic Sessa), works hard on her behalf, this movie is another showcase for Byrne. Amanda is brash and loud and comes across like an unhoused Erin Brockovich, but this movie rests more on Byrne’s ability to convey so much with just her facial expressions. Clad in big pink sunglasses, boots, and cool jackets, Byrne plays Amanda as a single-minded woman who is too proud to admit she is homeless but is so much more than that. Tow tries to give us that same sentiment about the various other shelter residents, including drug addict mother Denise (Ariana DeBose), pregnant Nova (Demi Lovato), and bully Jocelyn (Lea DeLaria). There are moments of weakness for all the shelter residents, but the movie does not delve into their journeys; rather, it focuses on how their similarities to Amanda lend realism to her story. Tow tugs at the heartstrings with these moments, but they never really hit as much as they could have had the supporting players been more key to the overall story.

There is always an appetite for David-and-Goliath stories, especially those where the protagonist wins in the end, but the majority of Tow fails to dig into the failures of government and legal systems or to focus on the triumph of the human spirit in the face of uncertainty. Seeing Dominic Sessa and Rose Byrne rail against the stall tactics and unabashed greed personified by Corbin Bernsen’s character definitely makes you want to see the faceless corporation held accountable, but Tow never really takes us where it seems to want to go. On the flipside, we see the struggles Amanda faces and learn snippets of how she ended up homeless and alone, but, like her fellow shelter residents, the movie does not go deep enough into anyone’s journey beyond the year Amanda spent trying to get her car back. It makes for an inspirational story that could have been more inspiring. By the sheer force of Rose Byrne’s presence, Tow delivers some satisfaction.

Directed by Stephanie Laing and written by Jonathan Keasey and Brant Boivin, Tow is inspired by the real Amanda Ogle, who features in the closing credits alongside the real Avery and attorney Kevin. Jonathan Keasey and Brant Boivin make their writing partnership debut with this film, with Keasey having previously scripted the feature film Parallel. Stephanie Laing has worked extensively on series like Your Friends & Neighbors, Interior Chinatown, The Better Sister, and Palm Royale. Liang also directed 24 of the 30 episodes of Rose Byrne’s Apple TV series Physical, which explains the connection between the filmmaker and the actor/producer. The musical score is also memorable, hailing from Este Haim and Nathan Barr. Everything about Tow feels like what you would expect from an indie film, with multiple award-winning actors who lend a passion-project feel.

The direction that Tow heads is one you will spot a mile away, as it hits all of the expected beats of a heartfelt story about an underdog trying to stick it to the man. While it glosses over some of the more challenging and hard-to-see aspects of homelessness in modern society, the movie does a serviceable job of treating its characters with humanity and dignity. This is not an exploitative film, but it is one designed to evoke sentimentality. Once you reach the end of Tow, if you don’t feel a blend of justice and injustice for what Amanda went through, then you don’t have a soul. Rose Byrne’s performance is more than enough to warrant checking this movie out, even though the film isn’t as good as it could have been.

Tow opens in theaters on March 20th.

Tow

AVERAGE

6

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REVIEW: Sender starts with a misguided bait-and-switch. The film opens ominously, with a woman (played by Jamie Lee Curtis—who also produced—in a cameo) receiving a package that triggers her to violence. It seems to set up that Sender is going to be a genre film, but after this random opening, which never really re-enters the plot in a meaningful way, Sender settles into becoming a fairly standard recovery drama with some light thriller elements.

The mystery—who keeps sending Julia these boxes and why—is never that compelling, and the eventual resolution doesn’t make much sense. Yet, what keeps Sender from being a total write-off is the fact that Severance star Britt Lower, in a leading role, makes for a compelling protagonist. A former alcoholic whose antics got her fired from her last job three weeks ago, she’s on a shaky path to sobriety. Her tenuous grip on not drinking isn’t helped by her overbearing sister (Anna Baryshnikov), who resents her moving out on her own and won’t leave her alone.

Without Lower in the lead, Sender would be a slog. Writer-director Russell Goldman delivers a good-looking film, but it’s pretty familiar stuff, and the notion to go surreal at times never pays off. The vignette with Curtis feels like it comes from another movie and is clumsily returned to, with a gore moment that sticks out like a sore thumb in a movie that’s essentially about recovery.

Some of the supporting roles also don’t add up to much, with the great David Dastmalchian as a Smirk courier who develops a kind of quasi-romance with Julia, although you never quite buy that one would end up with the other. Dastmalchian is made to play his role in an occasionally creepy way, perhaps to ramp up Julia’s paranoia, but given her mental state, it’s hard to believe that at one point it briefly becomes a romance, only to suddenly drop that plotline as well.

Yet, Lower has real star quality and is always worth watching as she sinks her teeth into the self-destructive Julia. She’s matched by a brief turn from Rhea Seehorn as “Whisky” Whitney, a caustic fellow AA member Julia wants as a sponsor. Of everyone, Seehorn, as the gradually recovering Whitney, feels like she’s giving the most authentic performance as a person in AA, although a third-act twist involving her character comes out of absolutely nowhere and just adds to what eventually becomes a confusing, anticlimactic payoff.

It’s always a drag to trash a movie like this—without distribution—at a fest like SXSW, as it’s clear Sender was a passion project for all involved. Perhaps, without the Curtis element—which again feels lifted from another movie—there’s a better version of Sender that might see the light of day. As it is, though, I found this to be a slog.

Britt Lower

BELOW AVERAGE

5

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PLOT: When the interim sheriff of a small town (Bob Odenkirk) tries to defuse a bank robbery, he inadvertently stumbles upon a conspiracy that engulfs the whole town, leading to a massively violent firefight.

REVIEW: I really enjoy Bob Odenkirk as an action hero. While most modern heroes seem reluctant to take a big-screen beating, Odenkirk is defined by his willingness to take a licking, with his characters aspirational in their resilience. Getting knocked down happens—but can you get back up again? Just like Nobody spun his Better Call Saul persona into a killer action role, Normal does the same with the scene-stealing turn he delivered in Fargo’s first season. Here, he plays a modest part-time sheriff (albeit one with a tragic past) who makes up for what he lacks in brawn with craftiness, and who’s easy to underestimate thanks to his easygoing demeanor.

Normal, which comes from Nobody writer Derek Kolstad, plays perfectly to Odenkirk’s strengths. It’s loaded to the brim with action, mostly in the form of shootouts (though there are some brutal hand-to-hand scraps peppered in). It recalls Ben Wheatley’s Free Fire, with about an hour of the movie taken up by a sustained action sequence spanning the geography of the town in which Odenkirk’s character, Ulysses, is trapped.

The plot is admittedly convoluted, with the town somehow tied to the Japanese Yakuza, meaning everyone is armed to the teeth and thoroughly corrupt, aside from a few stragglers. Mostly, it’s an excuse for Odenkirk to wield heavy firepower as he goes to war with the townsfolk, with doses of black humor in the way he dispatches some unlikely villains.

The movie is definitely a showcase for Odenkirk, but he’s less indestructible here than Hutch in Nobody. Ulysses doesn’t have the same hidden skill set—he’s competent with firearms thanks to his lawman training, but when he starts firing off heavy artillery, his being outmatched becomes part of the appeal. The fights are similarly desperate and violent, as Ulysses usually faces opponents as untrained as he is, with both sides using anything around them to inflict maximum damage.

Ulysses is also shown to be highly empathetic, striking up a strong bond with Jess McLeod’s Alex, a young veteran and daughter of the late sheriff, who’s considered an outsider in town due to her identity (nicely conveyed in a quick sequence). Her training proves valuable, and she shares a father/child kind of chemistry with Odenkirk. Lena Headey is solid as the town’s barkeep, while Ryan Allen is alternately funny and menacing as the deputy sheriff eyeing Ulysses’s job. And then there’s Henry Winkler, cast against type as the shady mayor, who scores one of the film’s biggest crowd-pleasing moments.

As much fun as I had with Normal, Wheatley and company struggled at times to keep the tension alive, with the device that set up the final showdown feeling a bit too convenient. That said, the climactic battle royale is terrific, so it’s ultimately worth it—even if the resolution leaves a few too many threads dangling for my taste.

In the end, Normal was exactly what I wanted from a Bob Odenkirk action flick. It’s packed with carnage, with him in top form as both action star and leading man. His chemistry with McLeod is especially strong, and if a follow-up were to focus on the two of them as a team, I’d be first in line to check it out.

TIFF

GREAT

8

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REVIEW: There are very few directors out there whose work I look forward to more than John Carney. I’ve never disliked any of his movies (Flora and Son was a recent delight), and two of them (Once and Sing Street) are among the best movies ever made about music. His latest, Power Ballad, is another gem, anchored by one of star Paul Rudd’s best performances. He also shows off a surprising flair for singing, harkening back to an unheralded early role where he once (very convincingly) played a washed-up rock star on the late, great Veronica Mars.

In Power Ballad, Rudd plays Rick, a gifted singer-songwriter who once fronted a pop band but fell in love with an Irish woman, Rachel (Marcella Plunkett), and abandoned his rock star dreams for a quiet life as a family man in Ireland. There, he’s a loving husband who dotes on his daughter Aja (named after the Steely Dan album?), played by Beth Fallon. He even gets to keep playing music, serving as the lead singer for a top-notch wedding band, where he sings (quite well) all the old classics people want to hear.

It’s when he absolutely kills a gig at a high-end wedding that he meets Nick Jonas’s Danny, who was once in a boy band and is now struggling with a solo career. After performing together, the two spend the rest of the night drinking and jamming, but when Rick shares a great song he’s been tinkering with for years with Danny, he doesn’t know what he’s in for.

Power Ballad walks a fine line. In any other movie, Nick Jonas’s Danny would be a villain, callously stealing Rick’s song. But Carney’s movies are more nuanced. While not excusing the act, we see Danny grappling with the notion that his talent isn’t quite as vast as he once thought, and that his career is on the verge of ending if he’s not able to capitalize on his former boy-band fame soon. He deludes himself into thinking what he’s doing isn’t wrong, and Carney never portrays him as wholly unsympathetic. Yet, he also doesn’t excuse how callous Danny becomes once the song is a smash hit, and how he lacks the scruples to admit his wrongdoing, with him easily swayed by his sleazy manager—Carney favorite Jack Reynor as Mac.

Jonas is well cast in a role that demonstrates his singing ability but also a degree of vulnerability, as you never truly hate Danny. Yet it’s a showstopping movie for Paul Rudd, who has one of the best roles of his career as Rick. Rudd is one of the most sympathetic, likeable leading men working, and the fact that he plays Rick as not necessarily vengeful—just bent on getting some kind of acknowledgment—is perfect. But Carney also doesn’t let Rick come off as too idealized, with him succumbing to some bitterness early on when he realizes his song really was good enough to become a phenomenon, but that he’ll never get his moment in the sun. Marcella Plunkett is wonderful as his loyal, loving wife, while Beth Fallon is a find as his daughter.

Best of all, though, is Peter McDonald as Rick’s lifelong sidekick, Sandy, who plays in the wedding band with him and—while a bit of a silly shambles—always has his back. That’s really what you get in a Carney movie: a collection of people who represent the best parts of life rather than the worst. It’s this quality that always makes his movies feel like a breath of fresh air, and the SXSW audience I saw this with ate it up. Hopefully it does well enough that Carney can keep making these movies for a long time—he’s quietly becoming one of the best directors of our era.

Power Ballad

AMAZING

9

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PLOT: A couple (Jason Segel and Samara Weaving) on the rocks take a weekend trip to a secluded cabin where each has separately come up with a plan to murder the other.

REVIEW: Over Your Dead Body is an American remake of Tommy Wirkola’s dark Norwegian comedy The Trip, with MacGruber’s Jorma Taccone taking over as director. Fairly faithful to the original, the big change is that this remake sports action design by none other than 87North, with the second half of the movie featuring surprisingly potent, very gory action.

If you want to go into Over Your Dead Body completely unspoiled, proceed with caution, as there’s a second-act twist that changes the movie’s concept somewhat, but it’s already been revealed in the trailer and even in most online plot synopses. When it happens, it’s actually quite welcome, as the second half of this movie — or more specifically, its final third — is what makes it worth watching, as it’s a bit of a slog for a larger chunk of its running time than I anticipated.

For much of the film, we’re supposed to believe that Jason Segel and Samara Weaving’s characters hate each other so much that they want to kill each other. In Wirkola’s The Trip, you believe it. Here, you don’t for a second. In fact, the two leads come off as terribly unlikeable for the first half, with him a one-time hot young director who’s fallen on hard times, while she’s a struggling actress who never made it. With them on the verge of bankruptcy, they figure they can cash out on insurance money and start their lives over, but you never quite buy that either has the malevolent streak to go through with their deadly plans. Neither Segel nor Weaving can sell the idea that each hates the other so much that they would resort to murder.

Thankfully, the film fares much better when (MILD SPOILERS INCOMING) they are forced to unite against a bigger threat, when their cabin is infiltrated by two escaped cons (Timothy Olyphant and UFC fighter Keith Jardine) and their crooked former jailer (Juliette Lewis). Now in the crosshairs of three legitimate psychopaths, they have to team up to defeat their captors, and it’s here that the movie really starts to work — and 87North comes in.

The final third of Over Your Dead Body is a rollicking action flick, with 87North and Taccone showing some innovative action design as our distinctly non-pro leads use whatever they have handy to fight their captors, including billiard balls, pitchforks, and even — grotesquely — a lawnmower. Against all odds, you actually start to root for Segel and Weaving, which is a coup, as for most of the movie, I despised them.

Segel comes off as too affable to be playing a weak-willed loser who would be willing to kill his wife. He fares better as an unlikely action hero, where he comes off well using improvised weapons. Weaving has more experience as an action heroine, having done two Ready or Not movies and a bunch of others, but the action she does here is less polished, as she’s playing someone who’s never thrown a punch in her life. It’s a tribute to both of them that, after the rough first half, you want to see them survive their ordeal.

Over Your Dead Body also marks another step toward full-fledged action for Taccone, who’s been playing with the genre since MacGruber. He does a good job with the carnage, allowing the film to be pretty gruesome at times. Olyphant makes for a smooth bad guy, with Jardine more of the physical threat, although a graphic scene where Jardine’s attempted rape of Segel is played for comedy nearly stops the movie cold — it’s something that maybe worked in Wirkola’s movie but comes off poorly here. Lewis seems to be having a ball as perhaps the most evil of the villains, while former CSI star Paul Guilfoyle pops up a few times and nearly steals the whole show.

While I fully anticipated trashing Over Your Dead Body after the first half of the film, I was surprisingly engaged by it by the halfway point. Segel and Weaving’s chemistry in the second half, along with the inventive action scenes, make it worth checking out, even if it takes almost too long to get going.

Over Your Dead Body (2026)

AVERAGE

6

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PLOT: A misanthropic author (Adam Scott) travels to a remote inn in Ireland where his late parents once honeymooned, planning to spread their ashes. Once there, he becomes embroiled in a mystery that may involve a haunting, forcing him to reckon with his tortured past.

REVIEW: Neon has steadily built a reputation as Hollywood’s biggest horror studio, usurping the once-dominant A24. Their taste and track record are so strong that each new release turns into an event for horror fans. As such, among all the movies premiering here at SXSW, none seemed to have the anticipation of Hokum, which was programmed in their midnight section and is directed by Damian McCarthy, whose previous films, Caveat and Oddity, both took on Irish folklore.

Hokum does a similar thing, with it being a tale of Irish spirits haunting a creepy hotel, but by casting an American in Adam Scott’s cynical Ohm Bauman, it’s probably McCarthy’s most accessible work to date, with it being a well-executed ghost story wrapped up in a surprisingly potent morality tale.

Adam Scott is great as Ohm, an author dealing with childhood trauma who hides behind a façade of ego and even flashes of cruelty. Yet, he finds himself unexpectedly owing a personal debt to the hotel’s kind bartender (an excellent Florence Ordesh), and when she goes missing, he seems to be the only one committed to finding her, along with a local derelict, Jerry (David Wilmot), whom she was similarly kind to. The two find themselves working to unravel the mystery of her disappearance, leading to Ohm being trapped in a long-locked honeymoon suite said to be haunted by malevolent spirits.

McCarthy does a good job establishing Ohm as an anti-hero who, while initially insufferably arrogant, proves to have a somewhat brave streak, making this—more than anything else—a redemptive tale. It’s also a very creepy one, with lots of subtle, spooky imagery in the first half paving the way for more grotesque, legitimately scary ghouls as the film goes on, and lots of screaming from the midnight audience I saw it with.

It also proves to be a pretty cracking mystery, even when not considering the supernatural element, which becomes a major part of the film’s second half. McCarthy has made a beautiful film, shot on location in West Cork, with gorgeous cinematography by Colm Hogan. It’s produced by veteran horror producer Roy Lee, with The Conjuring composer Joseph Bishara providing a spine-tingling soundtrack. Hokum, at times, feels almost like an elevated Conjuring installment with a bit of an international, indie flavour, and the local cast is terrific. Wilmot steals scenes as the surprisingly resourceful Jerry, who, like Ohm, is haunted by his own past, while Peter Coonan is good as the hotel manager who may or may not know more than he lets on.

While it remains to be seen if Hokum can tap into the zeitgeist the same way other Neon movies have, the audience at SXSW had a blast with it, and I never found it to be anything less than totally compelling. Neon is giving it a prime early May release date, and it could become a breakout hit, while Scott continues to impress as his career quickly rises thanks to Severance. This is another strong role for him.

Hokum

GREAT

8

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PLOT: A ballet troupe, on the way to a prestigious competition in Budapest, gets stuck in a dive bar when their bus breaks down. After witnessing a murder, they find themselves hunted by the minions of the murderous bar owner, Devora (Uma Thurman), and are forced to band together to survive the night.

REVIEW: Prime Video has become a solid spot for meat-and-potatoes action flicks. Road House, Heads of State, and The Wrecking Crew all did well, and now 87North, the action team behind the Nobody films, Violent Night, and The Fall Guy, has entered the fray with a unique take on the genre. While last year’s Ballerina was the first movie to embrace the notion that the hard, punishing lifestyle of a ballerina could make for a strong action heroine, director Vicky Jewson’s Pretty Lethal is a lot more fun. Moreover, it actually features ballerina choreography as central to the action, with teamwork, flexibility, and physical prowess helping our heroines survive the night.

Running a tight eighty-eight minutes and adopting a light, breezy tone, with lots of dark comedy mixed in, Pretty Lethal is a total blast. The girls in the troupe are deeply dysfunctional but learn—in classic action movie fashion—to work as a team, with the dynamic between Maddie Ziegler’s Bones and Lana Condor’s Princess giving the movie its heart. Bones is a streetwise dancer from the wrong side of the tracks, but the most talented in the troupe, something which rankles the uptight, spoiled Princess, who is used to being the star. The rest of the girls are a bit less developed, but still a lot of fun. The highlight is definitely Mean Girls (the musical) star Avantika as Grace, the religious one who gets dosed with Molly and spends the rest of the movie high. Then there’s Iris Apatow and A Quiet Place star Millicent Simmonds as sisters, although both wind up offscreen for large chunks of the movie, with the focus staying on Ziegler and Condor.

Ziegler, who initially rose to fame as a dancer, makes for an engaging action heroine, with her dominating the action sequences. Jewson, who previously helmed the well-received Naomi Rapace action flick Close, and 87North do a good job making the fights relatively credible and not too silly. The petite ballerinas aren’t throwing hulking men across rooms. Rather, they surprise their opponents with agility and teamwork, with them putting razor blades in their shoes and using high kicks to slice necks. The fact that they are physically overpowered is pivotal, as Ziegler’s character injures her hand when she tries to punch one in the face. As such, you really get invested in their survival, and the dance fight sequences are almost reminiscent of Gymkata—where gymnastics influenced the choreography—but to be sure, this is better designed and a lot less cheesy.

However, one can’t deny there are a few missed opportunities. Uma Thurman is cast against type as the villain, Devora, but it’s a bit of a cheat when perhaps the greatest female action star of her era never really gets to do any fighting, with her just ordering around goons. They also work hard to give her some pathos, but it’s laid on a little too thick at the end, which feels too convenient.

Even still, Pretty Lethal is a blast, and it’s the perfect movie to pop into the streaming queue on a Friday night after a couple of beers. Ziegler and Condor have solid buddy movie chemistry, and Jewson has a good sense of action, with 87North once again delivering a well-honed product. This was better than I expected.

Pretty Lethal

GOOD

7

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Review: The last memorable stoner comedy was Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle and its multiple sequels. The genre has not been kept up as consistently as it was back in the 1980s, but every now and then, we get a nice reminder that drugs can be funny. Well, as long as it isn’t heroin or meth. The new indie film Pizza Movie hails from internet comedy duo BriTANicK (Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher), who take on the college-comedy genre by injecting it with Gen Z energy and a lot of concepts. It is an overwhelming mix of hallucinations, body-swapping, and time travel to tell a story about good friends and the importance of being true to yourself. Starring Stranger Things’ Gaten Matarazzo, Sean Giambrone, and Lulu Wilson, Pizza Movie is one of the weirder movies coming out of SXSW this year, before it hits Hulu in a couple of weeks.

Pizza Movie follows college roommates Montgomery (Sean Giambrone) and Jack (Gaten Matarazzo). Montgomery has a crush on Ashley (Peyton Elizabeth Lee) and is struggling to have enough confidence to ask her out. Jack is hated by the entire school for getting their football team kicked out. The nerdy roommates just want to have a fun Friday night full of drinking and games, but it is ruined by bully Logan (Marcus Scribner) and his cronies, who have made it a regular habit to fart in the faces of their prey. Montgomery and Jack’s friend, Lizzy (Lulu Wilson), has started hanging out with Logan’s crew and ditched her fellow nerds, leaving a rift between them. When Montgomery and Jack discover a tin of pills left by the room’s former resident, chemistry student Frankie (Sarah Sherman). As the drug kicks in, Jack and Montgomery are subjected to six distinct phases that can only be mitigated if they can get to the pizza they just had delivered. What follows is an odyssey that takes them from the top floor of their dorm to the lobby and so many more places in between.

At a quick ninety-two minutes, Pizza Movie goes everywhere you could imagine and places I never expected. Once the drugs are in effect, Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone are hilarious at contending with hallucinations that include a weird pink octopus, a Venezuelan James Bond, a creepy Pinocchio man, and the most exploding heads you could fix into a five-minute scene. The drug, known as M.I.N.T.S., has very specific rules that make for some very funny moments. I found myself laughing out loud multiple times through Pizza Movie, but almost exclusively at things related to Jack, Montgomery, and anyone else under the effect of the pills. There is also a plot involving the resident advisors, led by Blake (Jack Martin), that combines elements of The Dark Knight and The Lord of the Rings in a way I never thought I would see on screen. To say Pizza Movie is stupid is a disservice to the silly brand of vulgarity on display that is right at home alongside iconic stoners like The Dude, Jeff Spicoli, and Cheech & Chong.

The closest duo Jack and Montgomery resemble is Harold and Kumar, with surreal dream sequences similar in both movies. Pizza Movie definitely follows a more Gen Z mentality, with the protagonists living in a very different world than the one the movie stoners mentioned earlier. Gaten Matarrazo is not far off from playing Jack as a modern variation on Dustin from Stranger Things, but his personality comes through much more naturally here. Sean Giambrone, best known for his extensive voice work in animated films and shows, has some standout moments here as he deals with his crush as well as when interacting with his pet butterfly, Lysander. Lulu Wilson has fun as Lizzy, playing a very different character from the one we saw in her Becky movies. There are some fun supporting turns in the movie from comedian Caleb Hearon as new RA Sidney and Justin Cooley as Byron.

Writer/director duo Brian McElhaney and Nick Kocher, known on the internet as BriTANick, have been making sketch comedy for years, building a large YouTube fanbase and a brief tenure writing for Saturday Night Live. The pair also wrote the upcoming Jorma Taccone movie Over Your Dead Body, starring Jason Segel and Samara Weaving, but Pizza Movie is right in their wheelhouse. if you have seen their sketches online, you have a good idea what you are in for with this movie. Pizza Movie has more slapstick violence and profanity than anything else, focusing on making the funny moments as bizarre and surreal as possible, and a wild meta-joke in the final scenes that would be right at home in a Monty Python or Kids in the Hall movie. It is appropriate that Pizza Movie is making its debut at SXSW, the perfect forum for a ridiculous comedy like this. Because it is a low-budget independent movie, Pizza Movie benefits from the name recognition Gaten Matarazzo brings to the project.

Pizza Movie is too dumb to be great but is also too fun to be bad. It falls somewhere in the middle and will likely be the perfect movie to throw on in college dorm rooms around the country. I don’t foresee Montgomery and Jack turning into the stars of an ongoing franchise, but I had enough fun with the moments in this movie to give it another watch. McElhaney and Kocher packed a lot of material into Pizza Movie, which gives it a bit of an uneven tone. It shifts from funny to bizarre and back again, with many moments either undeveloped or wasted. As sketch comedy writers, there is some brilliance hidden within Pizza Movie, but it lacks an overall structure to let it work as well as it could have. I enjoyed Pizza Movie, but I think it works better as a series of moments rather than as a feature film. I know several scenes I will definitely watch again and again, and that makes this at least a moderate success from a pair of up-and-coming filmmaking talents. This is a movie designed to be enjoyed with a pizza and your mind-altering substance of choice.

Pizza Movie premieres on Hulu on April 3rd.

Pizza Movie

AVERAGE

6

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REVIEW: Monitor is one of the buzzier horror titles to play SXSW this year. Produced by Temple Hill, the same folks behind Smile, it’s the kind of movie that could easily tap into the zeitgeist and become the next really popular mainstream horror franchise — if it’s acquired by the right people. While many will compare it to A Nightmare on Elm Street, as it introduces a character that has the potential to become another Freddy Krueger, to me it feels similar to a later Wes Craven movie, Shocker, substituting doomscrolling online video for terrestrial cable as the preferred method of transport for our mysterious killer.

In Monitor, rising scream queen Brittany O’Grady (It’s What’s Inside) stars as Maggie, a young woman who works in a remote office for a YouTube-esque company as a moderator, eliminating the most vile internet content before it gets online. Imagine the worst things anyone could post, and that’s what she sees day to day, but she and her tight-knit group of fellow moderators have built a surrogate family, where the most senior moderator, Sara Alexander’s Claudia, says they serve a higher purpose. Of course, they all toil for minimum wage, while Maggie grows increasingly disturbed that, under the company’s policy, she’s unable to report submitted content to the police (it’s a real discussion going on right now about the responsibilities companies like YouTube or OpenAI have).

Maggie receives a weird, surreal video she struggles to describe but feels inclined to delete, inadvertently unleashing hell on her and her colleagues. The video seems to contain the spirit of a malevolent “tulpa,” a being able to materialize if enough people believe in it — hence the video, which it wants to get out into the real world. One by one, Maggie’s friends start to suffer from violent attacks, mobilizing them to try and stop this entity in its tracks.

It’s a slick feature debut for directors Matt Black and Ryan Polly, with it based on their own short. Shot in 2.35:1 scope and looking like it has a relatively healthy budget, it feels like it’s aimed squarely at mainstream horror audiences, with lots of gore and some gnarly scares. The imagery used to depict the tulpa is upsetting, and the premiere screening at SXSW was filled with people who screamed at a few of the film’s more unsettling jump scares.

O’Grady is a likeable heroine, with her given a convincing backstory where her sister committed suicide after becoming a victim of the very worst the internet has to offer. She’s well supported by the maternal Alexander, while One Piece’s Taz Skylar plays her not wholly unsympathetic but duplicitous boss. Perhaps the most effective performance comes from Gunnar Willis as a jovial, nice-guy colleague who undergoes a horrifically transformative experience with the tulpa, showing real gravitas as the film reaches its conclusion.

Stylistically, it has some nice touches, including the effective use of clips from Mary Martin’s Peter Pan, which ties into the film’s premise — that a shared delusion can make something imaginary feel very real. While it’s not high-end arthouse horror in the A24 vein, the meat-and-potatoes aspect is actually refreshing and should find it many fans once it picks up distribution. With the right handling, this could be a franchise.

Monitor

GOOD

7

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REVIEW: Colleen Hoover seems to be the new Nicolas Sparks in terms of romance books being adapted into film. I was never a Sparks guy, and I can definitely say I’m not a Hoover guy, as it’s quite frustrating that she keeps getting movies made. I didn’t enjoy It Ends With Us or Regretting You, but I could see the appeal to certain audiences. Reminders of Him is a new low, as it can’t even be saved by its two lead actors, who I tend to enjoy in all of their other roles. But they’re constantly dragged down by a story that feels like it was written by a robot.

Reminders of Him follows Maika Monroe’s Kenna as she’s released from prison and trying to restart her life and reconnect with the child she lost along the way. And what better time to have a meet-cute with her baby daddy’s best friend, Ledger (Withers), with whom she develops a love connection. There are times when it just feels like a mishmash of romance tropes and is absolutely suffocating with its stupidity. Every time a new element is introduced, it’s as insane as the last one and feels so over-the-top.

Usually, I talk about the performances first, but I feel like I need to mention the writing, as there’s just no actor on earth that could pull off what is on the page. Colleen Hoover seems adamant to create the most unrealistic characters/situations that her mind can conjure. The dialogue, which tries to tug at your heartstrings, results in so many unintentionally funny moments. They try to make the phrase “is that a frickin’ pigeon” into a thing. Even the title, Reminders of Him, feels so on the nose that it slaps you over the head with it repeatedly. Yes, we know, Kenna is reminded of him.

I’ve always really liked Maika Monroe, from It Follows to The Guest, but she feels miscast here. Her narration feels disjointed and doesn’t ever connect in any meaningful way. She has good chemistry with Tyriq Withers, who seems to be great in anything he does, but their romance feels forced. They feel drawn to each other, not because of circumstances that naturally bring them together, but simply because the writer says these two need to get together. It feels unnatural and makes the moments they do finally get together ring hollow.

There’s melodramatic, and then there’s whatever Reminders of Him tries to do. I’m not sure there’s a single moment that actually comes across as real outside of the ending. Otherwise, this just feels like a story that’s so disengaged from reality and is just trying to create some drama porn. There are awkward editing choices that had me laughing out loud. Which is good, because the only other bit of humor comes from a character with Down syndrome, who the writers decide to just say random things for bits of levity.

If there’s one element that stood out, it’s the cinematography, which showcases Wyoming and its beautiful landscapes. There’s a house at one point that has one of the best views you can imagine. It’s too bad we spend so much of the rest of the film in drab bars, backrooms, and rundown motels. And I’m not sure whose idea it was to denote the passage of time with different facial hair, but it resulted in some terrible looks.

Twenty minutes into Reminders of Him, and I knew I was in for trouble. I’ll always enjoy a thoughtful romance, but this is void of anything that could even be considered as such. Every major moment feels unearned, and its narrative structure destroys any forward momentum between the characters. The plot moves forward, not because the characters are able to prove themselves, but because the runtime is drawing to a close and they need to wrap things up.

Reminders of Him releases to theaters on March 13th, 2026.

Reminders of Him

TERRIBLE

3

The post Reminders of Him Review: Maika Monroe and Tyriq Withers can’t even save this romance that’s dead on arrival appeared first on JoBlo.

REVIEW: Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You was a whacked-out satire, but if you thought that movie was off the wall, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The director’s long-awaited follow-up is a completely gonzo caper comedy, where the stakes escalate from shoplifting to interdimensional time travel without a blink. The fact that by the time stop-motion, animated, skinless bad guys begin pursuing our heroines, it doesn’t even seem all that unusual in the world he’s created says something.

It’s unlike anything I’ve seen recently, and while the exhausting vibe occasionally makes it feel like an endurance test, it all comes together in an easy-to-absorb message about how big business exploits both its workers and customers, and that sometimes a line in the sand needs to be drawn.

Keke Palmer stars as Corvette, an aspiring fashion designer who’s been reduced to squatting in an abandoned fried chicken restaurant. She makes ends meet with a highly intricate boosting operation, where she and her two friends, Naomi Ackie’s Sade and Taylour Paige’s Mariah, routinely clean out designer boutiques and resell clothes for about 30% of their value. There’s a modestly philanthropic side to the operation, with them clothing folks who can no longer afford the necessities, but largely their crimes are a way of striking back at Demi Moore’s Christie Smith, a soulless fashion maven at her wit’s end with the boosters, who specifically target her stores.

I Love Boosters has a strong supporting cast, anchored by Palmer’s Corvette, who, despite her loathing for Christie’s tactics, can’t help but harbor some admiration for her empire, being a frustrated designer herself who favors bold colors like turquoise (or, as she’s corrected by Christie, aquamarine).

The film is a scathing satire of business and high-end fashion, with Christie’s fashions quite gauche, and each new line uses only one color, including piercing yellow, orange, and more. While Palmer is the star, Paige and Ackie have a lot of presence as her fellow boosters, as they get caught up in the increasingly surreal adventures, which hit a zenith when Poppy Liu shows up as a portal-hopping worker from a Chinese sweatshop hoping to undo Christie’s empire. A lot of big names show up in small parts, including an unrecognizable Don Cheadle, buried under layers of prosthetics as a pyramid-scheme-loving guru, Eiza González as a wannabe revolutionary working in one of Christie’s stores, and Will Poulter as a pretentious, wimpy boss. Riley’s Sorry to Bother You star Lakeith Stanfield also shows up in a supporting part as the object of Palmer’s affections — a model for a TJ Maxx catalogue who also might be some kind of demon or vampire. Moore, for her part, relishes playing the completely unsympathetic villain, tapping into the same grand guignol style as her big comeback movie, The Substance.

Riley’s visual style is a hoot, with Natasha Braier’s cinematography embracing bold, primary colors, while the production design feels like a mix of Brazil, Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, and TikTok. I especially loved Riley’s deliberately fake-looking VFX, with lots of stop-motion and miniatures contributing to the movie’s overall vibe.

While I Love Boosters often has a little too much going on, to the point that I would have liked to pause it a few times to keep it from feeling like overkill, it’s certainly one of a kind and boldly original. It’s a big swing for Neon, who produced it in-house, but the audience I saw it with at SXSW loved it, and with Palmer’s recent One of These Days making serious cash, I’d bet on it crossing over beyond the arthouse circuit and into the mainstream

I Love Boosters

GOOD

7

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REVIEW: The passing of James Van Der Beek rocked the entertainment world last month. Thankfully, he did have a few projects that he’d completed before his untimely passing, the first of which being The Gates. Horror isn’t a genre that we’ve seen the actor appear in often so it’s exciting to see him in the part. Let alone as the villain.

The Gates follows three friends as they’re heading out to party for the night. In search of a shortcut, they end up in a gated community and witness a murder. Now, they must try to escape while the murderer, the most trusted man within the community, is after them. We get the classic horror trope of everything starting because of one poor decision: taking a detour. And while there are many familiar elements, I think the execution is what makes the film escape mediocrity.

Mason Gooding is becoming a staple of the horror genre, and I couldn’t be happier about it. From Heart Eyes to the later Scream films, he’s often a highlight and is instantly likable. Here is no different, and he’s very easy to root for. It’s too bad he’s the only one of the friend group that is. Algee Smith’s Kevin is one of the most frustrating characters, constantly pointing at race for all his problems, versus acknowledging his behavior is that of an asshole. He doesn’t know how to engage in any situation without conflict, and it makes him incredibly obnoxious. They try to redeem him but by that point, it’s too late. Keith Powers’ Tyon also has a bit of a tacked-on arc.

James Van Der Beek is really great as the preacher, Jacob, who has done a very bad thing. He is the most interesting kind of villain there is: one that thinks he’s a good guy. His church and what he’s done for the community give him such an altered perception of his own actions. There are some great moments for Van Der Beek to really sink his teeth into. The manipulation of his community is great, and it makes you wonder what other nefarious things he’s gotten away with over the years. I also really enjoyed Brad Leland, whom I’ve been a fan of since his Friday Night Lights days.

I really liked most of the story, but there are times when it stumbles a bit. One of the dumbest moments is when, after trying to get into the gated community, they’re immediately bemoaning that they want to get out. You were literally trying to get in! I’d point more towards the writing than anything because there was a way to go about it without making the characters look so impatient and stupid. Maybe try this thing like continuing to follow your GPS since you trusted it enough to take you into such a place. Plus, it’s hard to believe any map service would send you through a gated community, let alone one that is so locked down.

I also had a hard time really getting a grasp on this gated community, as it seems like it practically has its own economy with a country club, yoga studio, and a house party that implied there were a lot of people living in the area. We don’t really see enough of the place to get a grasp of the scale, and so many of the interactions are just one-on-one, even when it’s a big party setting.

It doesn’t break any new ground, but I quite enjoyed The Gates as it reminded me of 2022’s Emergency. It dealt with race in an interesting way and doesn’t come across as overly preachy (which is ironic, given the subject matter). While I wish he were still with us, this is a respectable role for Van Der Beek to go out on, as he really shows out for it. He and Gooding are clear standouts, and it’s all the more baffling why this is seemingly being shadow-dropped on Friday the 13th of all days. Here’s hoping it finds an audience, because I think this will surprise a lot of people.

The Gates releases to theaters on March 13th, 2026.

The Gates (2026)

GOOD

7

The post The Gates Review: James Van Der Beek’s final film gives him a good send-off appeared first on JoBlo.

PLOT: A woman hosting a paranormal podcast receives strange recordings involving a married couple experiencing paranormal noises in their home.

REVIEW: The Canadian-made Undertone was one of the big hits of the Fantasia Film Festival last summer, with it being snapped up for a nationwide release by none other than A24. It’s taking a victory lap here at Sundance, where it played as part of the Midnight section. Sadly, this low-key horror film, with the expectations now attached to it thanks to a major horror label putting it out, didn’t do the movie any favors, with it paling in comparison to other Midnight entries like Leviticus, Saccharine, and even the uneven but imaginative Buddy.

Taking a page from Paranormal Activity, this microbudget horror film takes place in a single location and tries to do for podcasts what that movie did for found footage. It follows Evie (Nina Kiri), a young woman taking care of her terminally ill mother, whose only real refuge is the podcast she hosts with her friend Justin (an unseen Adam DiMarco). Kiri is the only person on screen for the majority of the film, with only her comatose mother (Michèle Duquet) also shown.

The two host a paranormal podcast where they examine viral phenomena, with Evie the skeptic to Justin’s believer. They receive an email containing ten audio recordings featuring a married couple, Mike and Jessa, with the latter talking in her sleep. She seems to be saying things backwards, and as they listen, Evie starts to discover hidden messages related to classic nursery rhymes like “Baa Baa Black Sheep” and “Rock-a-bye Baby,” which reveal a deep mythology involving demonic possession and human sacrifice.

Of course, this being a movie shot for $500k, all of this is left to the imagination, with Evie listening to increasingly disturbing recordings that seem to be evoking a demonic entity. If Evie had ever seen a horror movie, she and Justin would have stopped listening to these messages as soon as weird things started happening—like Evie’s comatose mother somehow leaving religious icons around the home. But then again, we wouldn’t have a movie.

Undertone is a tough one to review, as I didn’t jive with the premise or style at all, but I can also respect that a certain audience may find this really spooky and hip. To me, it played out as eighty minutes of build-up, followed by ten minutes of belated payoff. The sound design is well done, and director Ian Tuason deserves credit for having made a microbudget movie that connected with a lot of people, but it’s nothing you haven’t seen before—just done on a much lower scale.

It doesn’t help that Nina Kiri’s Evie isn’t given much of a personality, with us learning only a scant few things about her. Mostly, she just listens to the weird recordings and doesn’t make much more of an impression than the unseen Justin. Kiri’s performance is fine; she just isn’t given much to work with beyond the podcast gimmick, with the real focus of the movie being the creepy audio design featured on the recordings—which I’ll admit is impressive.

In the end, Undertone may well find an appreciative young audience, but veteran horror fans will likely be like me, left scratching their heads over what exactly A24 saw in it. It’s familiar and often tedious, but respect is due to all involved for the effort. Were it given a more modest build-up, it might have seemed like an interesting experiment, but given how A24 is positioning it, Undertone just feels like a whole lot of hype.

Undertone

BELOW AVERAGE

5

The post Undertone Review: This A24 movie is a lot of build up with very little payoff appeared first on JoBlo.

REVIEW: A few years ago, we got a supernatural horror film called Body Cam, which starred Mary J. Blige. Now, the Shudder streaming service has teamed with one of their favorite modern genre filmmakers, Brandon Christensen (his previous films, Still/Born, Z, Superhost, The Puppetman, and Night of the Reaper, were all released through Shudder) to bring us another supernatural horror film called Bodycam, which has nothing to do with that Blige movie and presents the title as one word instead of two. So when horror fans have text conversations, we’ll know when Body Cam is being referenced and when we’re talking about Bodycam instead. Another way to differentiate between the two: this is “the found footage one.”

Scripted by Brandon Christensen and Ryan Christensen, the new film tells the story of police officers Jackson (Jaime M. Callica) and Bryce (Sean Rogerson), who respond to a domestic violence call in the early hours of October 13, 2025. After making their way past a group of “tweakers” who are reminiscent of the homeless people in John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness in that they linger around and are directly tapped into the horror that ensues, they enter a rundown home that’s infested with rats and has occult symbols drawn on the walls.

The situation gets stranger the further they go into the house. There’s an injured dog in a crib. A mysterious hole in the basement floor. And a couple of people who do not respond to questions or orders. Things don’t go well. Within minutes of entering the home, there are three dead people on the scene and Bryce is having a meltdown because he shot and killed a man. He thought the guy was armed, but he was actually holding a baby. And the whole encounter was recorded on his bodycam.

In fact, almost the entire movie is presented solely through the bodycams worn by Jackson and Bryce, although other angles are shown when they’re in their cruiser. At first, Bryce’s primary concern is how he’s going to destroy the footage from his camera… although, even after he’s worried about that, he’s still dedicated enough to recording everything that he’ll set the detached camera aside in just the right spot to film himself making a bathroom phone call. Then, as it becomes increasingly clear that something supernatural is going on here, Bryce has bigger concerns to focus on.

I’ll be up front: I am not a fan of the found footage style, and when I watch a found footage movie I’m often left feeling that it was either a complete waste of time or that it would have been a better movie if it was shot in the traditional style. A found footage movie has to be really good to win me over – and sometimes they do. Despite featuring good performances from the lead actors, along with Catherine Lough Haggquist and Angel Prater in supporting roles, and having some creepy moments, Bodycam did not win me over.

The film is just 75 minutes long (72 when the end credits start rolling), but it reaches that length by stretching the concept to its absolute limit. Even with such a short running time, it manages to drag and feel both longer than it is and longer than it should have been. Cut it down and make it part of an anthology, and it might have worked better. (And director Alejandro Brugués, working from a script by The Blair Witch Project collaborators Gregg Hale and Eduardo Sánchez, did make something like this for Sam Raimi’s short-lived anthology show 50 States of Fright.)

Bodycam did do some things that I liked. The situation at the house has completely fallen apart by the 12 minute mark, and I was concerned that the whole rest of the movie was going to be Jackson and Bryce stuck at the house, debating the issue and jumping at strange noises. Thankfully, the story does branch out into other locations, eventually allowing for the best, most effective sequence in the movie, which involves Jackson having an unnerving experience while driving through city streets and talking to his mom on the phone.

The movie has plenty of horrific ideas, but I didn’t find the presentation to be very engaging. In the end, things sputter out in the usual found footage movie fashion and I was left underwhelmed.

Bodycam starts streaming on Shudder on March 13th.

Brandon Christensen

BELOW AVERAGE

5

The post Bodycam Review: There’s Not Much to See Here appeared first on JoBlo.

REVIEW: I’ll always love a movie that isn’t quite what it seems on the surface. Even when you see the poster for Heel, with a family looking picturesque only to notice the chain and dog collar on one of them, and you know you’re in for something different. And with two powerhouse actors at the forefront, it’s hard not to have high expectations. The story follows Tommy, a public nuisance who spends most of his nights partying and being a hooligan. If left unchecked, he’s going to be yet another criminal who makes society worse. He’s kidnapped by a mysterious family and chained up, and they try to teach him how to behave and atone for his past behavior.

Stephen Graham (who was in last year’s fantastic one-take TV show Adolescence) is extremely layered as Chris. There’s something off about him, and it’s all bubbling beneath the surface. Yet there’s still a kindness there, where it feels like he’s genuinely doing this with the best of intentions. When Tommy needs punishment, it’s almost a punishment to Chris as well. I loved his dynamic with Andrea Riseborough’s Kathryn, who plays his voice. She’s very subdued, having lost her son, and is a bit shut off from the world. But she clearly agrees with her husband’s methods and is the ying to his yang.

I can’t remember the last time I disliked a character as much as Anson Boon’s Tommy. He’s such a little shit and the way he treats people is pure selfishness. He thinks of only himself and it works so perfectly for this story. If they didn’t go as far with these qualities, the rehabilitation would have felt out of place or harsh. But this is what Tommy deserves and it really allows for a more nuanced story to unfold. Boon does a tremendous job and has you feeling for him by the end. And it’s extremely impressive what he’s able to do while chained up for most of the film.

There are moments of beauty amongst the dark chaos, and director Jan Komasa refuses to color things black and white. There’s a lot of morality that stays in a uniquely gray area, and it makes everything so much more interesting. It really challenges you as, especially in the first act, everyone seems like an antagonist and seems to fit in a box, one way or another. But perceptions can change as the human element is put more at the forefront and decides to avoid putting things in a binary way.

Even the title, Heel (originally titled Good Boy but changed due to the dog movie from last year) has multiple meanings. You can take it in the professional wrestling way of the name for the antagonist, of which the film has many. Or you can think of it in terms of the command used in dog obedience, where the dog is taught to walk on or off a lead. Like the story itself, it’s really in the eye of the beholder as to which carries the most importance.

Heel does the impossible and actually had me rooting for the kidnappers. As disturbed as they were as human beings, they had the right motivations. Tommy is a misguided and terrible person who was never going to change on his own. Sure, the methods are pretty harsh but he’s far enough gone that it feels like a suitable option. And as dark as the concept is, this is a human story that has deep familial roots. I won’t deny that it’s not dark, but it’s shockingly more heartfelt.

Heel releases to theaters on March 6th, 2026.

Heel

GREAT

8

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Review: Much like a crowd of zombies after hurling a leaking gas tank into the oncoming horde, Capcom is on fire right now. The time-honored game studio unleashed the latest chapter of its Resident Evil franchise late last month, Resident Evil: Requiem, and it’s an all-timer. From the start, Requiem takes a different approach to the hallowed horror franchise by putting you in control of Grace Ashcroft, an FBI analyst with a traumatic past, an anxiety disorder, and personal demons to exorcise. As Grace, your boss tasks you with investigating a rash of mysterious bodies, the latest body having been discovered at the Wrenwood Hotel, where Grace’s mother met her untimely end several years prior. Gathering her wits and limited expertise in fieldwork, Grace investigates and quickly discovers that the past is far from over, and the reason she’s a walking disaster is that the horror will start again if she doesn’t get her s**t together.

By placing us in Grace’s shoes, Requiem leaves players feeling vulnerable as they explore the hotel, Grace’s labored breath catching with each discovery, and startling revelations about a shadowy organization, Umbrella, striving to create bioweapons out of humankind, living or dead, it doesn’t matter. On a similar path to uncover the truth about Umbrella’s latest apocalypse in the making is Leon S. Kennedy, a seasoned veteran and fan-favorite hero of the Resident Evil franchise. By giving players control of two vastly different characters, Capcom splits the game into two halves. Grace traverses the game’s terror-inducing, haunted-house-like beats. At the same time, Leon tackles the more action-heavy sections like a ’90s action hero on steroids, complete with one-liners and grimdark humor that make him a fan favorite.

Among many stand-out elements of Resident Evil: Requiem is the game’s pacing. The writing team knows exactly when to end a chapter of the game, pushing you toward set pieces involving over-the-top action or the next piece of a dark mystery. At the center of both game types is Requiem‘s villain, Dr. Victor Gideon, a former Umbrella Corporation researcher obsessed with carrying out the eugenicist legacy of Oswell E. Spencer. Antony Byrne plays Dr. Gideon to perfection, introducing a corrupt antagonist who’s oddly charismatic, creepy, and dangerous. Beyond his imposing look, with his infected complexion, Icabod Crane-like headgear, and crooked gold teeth, I love, love, love Dr. Gideon’s voice. It’s strangely soothing, and one of the best voice performances I’ve ever heard in a video game.

Regarding gameplay, Resident Evil: Requiem never stops perfecting old tricks or introducing new ways to fight your way through hell while playing as either Grace or Leon. While not as skilled as Leon, Grace is a survivor, constantly innovating and using her know-how to craft items that give her an advantage. At the start of the game, Grace can barely wield Leon’s Requiem revolver. When she takes aim, her hands tremble, the gun sways, and you essentially need to fire it on a wing and a prayer. However, as Grace makes her way through the game, she becomes more capable, her aim steadies, and by the end, she’s firing that cannon as straight as an arrow. It’s an awesome progression, and we love to see it. In the handful of reviews I’ve seen, critics aren’t giving Grace’s evolution enough credit. She’s a fantastic addition to Resident Evil‘s pantheon of heroes, and I’d like nothing more than to continue her story in another game.

Meanwhile, Leon’s gonna Leon, with his knee-slapping one-liners, no-holds-barred attitude, and fearless approach to reducing zombies to nothing but a pile of mince meat. I played through the game on a PlayStation 5, and the control over both characters was flawless. I never felt the game hitch, my character never misbehaved, and if I died, I knew it was my fault, not the game’s. Capcom has spent decades polishing the Resident Evil gameplay experience, and its efforts have never been as rewarding as with Requiem.

Another outstanding element of Requiem is that the game doesn’t forget its roots. Included in the dread-filled adventure are all the puzzle elements you remember from the game’s past. Find the key, read the document, locate the missing fuse, fill a tank with gasoline. All the stars are here! Still, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and Requiem does an exemplary job of impeding progress through puzzles without losing the game’s killer pace or sense of urgent exploration. Furthermore, while some Resident Evil games tend to dip in quality during the game’s final act, Requiem feels like a game comprised of three Act 1s stitched together for a non-stop injection of fun, action-packed immediacy. In my experience, there are no boring stretches, and, as I said, switching between Grace and Leon and back again feels like a formula Capcom has perfected and should use in RE games in the future.

If you’re looking for Resident Evil: Requiem to do more than play the hits, don’t worry, there’s some cool stuff waiting for you in this game. For example, the infected behave differently in Requiem. Blind zombies, for example, will only react to sound, so if you don’t make any noise, you can usually sneak past them pretty easily. However, if you want to use this quirk to your advantage, you can throw a bottle toward an enemy, and the blind zombie will follow the sound, swinging its IV pole in blind rage, damaging nearby enemies to a significant degree. In fact, if you’re strategic about it, you can get the blind zombie to take out some of the game’s stronger foes, like the Butcher, or Chunk, a massive, blob-like zombie slithering through the halls of the Rhodes Hill Chronic Care Center. There are other enemies with behaviors that could work to your advantage, but I don’t want to spoil all the fun. My advice is to get creative. The game allows for several combinations of combat and antagonism that could turn the tide in your favor.

I remember buying the original Resident Evil sight-unseen from Planet Comics in the Smithhaven Mall on Long Island, New York, in 1996, and having it change my opinion of what horror video games could be. I’ve played every mainline entry in the franchise (and many of the spinoffs and offshoots), with my favorites being Resident Evil, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 4, Resident Evil 7, and Resident Evil Village. If RE 7 felt like an homage to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Village was a twisted fairytale that was never concerned with taking itself too seriously, Resident Evil: Requiem is a shining example of how dedication, hard work, and imagination can take a decades-old property and make it feel like an essential example of how video games are still capable of blowing our minds. Resident Evil: Requiem is not only an early Game of the Year contender, but it’s also an entry that stands out as one of the best in the RE franchise. I’m already counting the days until Capcom officially announces DLC for Requiem, and I’m the proud owner of Grace Ashcroft’s Fortnite skin. I started my second playthrough of the game last night and don’t plan to stop until I’ve at least gotten all the alternate costumes. Or, until Capcom’s Pragmata comes out next month. Whichever comes first.

Resident Evil: Requiem

AMAZING

9

The post Resident Evil: Requiem (Video Game) Review: A Nonstop Fright Fest in Capcom’s Legendary Horror Series appeared first on JoBlo.

REVIEW: It feels like there’s very little effort in putting together a brand new slasher villain, instead relying on relics of the past. Don’t get me wrong, I love the old guard as much as the rest of you, but I’m always craving something new. Thankfully, with shades of other famous horror villains, there’s a new killer in town. And she likes to wear porcelain doll masks and wear dresses.

Dolly follows a couple as they head into the woods to a beautiful lookout, with the prospect of a proposal on the horizon. Unfortunately for them, they’re interrupted by a crazy woman obsessed with dolls and must fight for their own survival. It’s a pretty basic setup, but most slashers are. It’s really about the atmosphere and the tension. Oh, and the kills. Can’t forget about those. Most of the story follows Macy as she’s being held captive by the crazy woman known as Dolly. I always prefer when a film tells a singular story and doesn’t try to add too many elements to try and spice things up.

The film is shot in a bit of a grindhouse style, with proper grain and film imperfections. There’s also what seems to be a bleach bypass, which lowers the saturation and gives the visuals a worn-out look. These kinds of movies will always benefit from being shot on film versus digital, and I wish more would take this path. I really enjoyed it, and it helps with the backwoods aesthetic. All the performances are good, with Fabianne Therese really impressing. Seann William Scott isn’t around as much as you’d think, and Ethan Suplee continues his streak of wonderfully disturbed characters.

Dolly goes in some pretty unexpected directions and can be quite brutal. The deaths are few but very impactful. I was also impressed with how the FX work is handled, with a jaw rip being an absolute standout. They appeared to be practical, maybe with a bit of CGI enhancement, but they always look great. However, some of the blocking when it comes to the kills can be a bit “let me just stand here so you have enough time to kill me.” That will always annoy me, and it feels a bit lazy.

It’s cool to see a slasher villain that’s not just a hulking man (even if instead it is a hulking woman). There is no doubt plenty of comparisons to be made to Leatherface, especially the more Next Generation version of the character. In fact, it can get a little blatant, especially with some of the mannerisms. But I still found Dolly to be creepy enough that she’s able to overcome the obvious similarities. There’s only so much you can do with a brutish slasher villain. Professional wrestler Max the Impaler brings a good physicality to the role. And I like that her main tool of destruction happens to be a shovel, as we don’t see that often.

I think where it stumbles is its betrayal of the grounded nature of it all. As much as the film wants to be on the more realistic side, it can get a bit absurd at times. There’s one moment in particular that had me rolling my eyes with how over the top it got. It doesn’t help that some of the character decisions are just colossally stupid. Especially in the third act. I’ve heard the term “Fairy Tale” bandied about, but outside of a few abstract shots, it doesn’t really fit the motif. I always like a movie that makes me feel like I need to take a shower afterwards, but Dolly feels a bit lost. There are some really interesting ideas here, but it sometimes devolves into dumb slasher territory when it could have stuck with its more interesting cat-and-mouse, psychological approach. And it’s going to be tough to avoid the Texas Chainsaw Massacre comparisons when you blatantly recreate one of the most famous scenes.

Dolly is playing in theaters on March 6th, 2026.

Dolly

AVERAGE

6

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Review: Milla Jovovich is a straight-up asskicker. There is no argument to the contrary. For the last twenty-five years, Jovovich has headlined stunt-heavy projects big and small, almost always playing the hero. While her work has predominantly been in horror and science-fiction movies with Luc Besson or Paul W.S. Anderson, Milla Jovovich has branched out with other directors time and again. Her latest film, Protector, is a more grounded thriller with no CGI and no supernatural trappings but still focused on monsters, this time of the human variety. Playing a mother out to rescue her kidnapped daughter from human traffickers, Protector is heavy on the hand-to-hand combat that delivers multiple opportunities for Milla Jovovich to use her particular set of skills. Beyond that, this is a movie light on logic and even lighter on a cohesive narrative. Try as it might, Protector is an underwhelming movie.

Opening with on-screen text decrying the prevalence of human trafficking in the United States and the world at large, Protector starts with Nikki Halsted (Milla Jovovich) deployed as a soldier overseas. On her third birthday, we see the passage of time and the missed opportunities to spend time as a family due to Nikki’s commitment to the armed forces. Finally home for her daughter’s sixteenth birthday, Nikki and Chloe (Isabel Myers) fight over Nikki’s constant absences and overprotectiveness. Chloe sneaks out to a bar with her friends, where she is drugged and kidnapped. Paranoid Nikki was already tracking Chloe, and the first major action scene kicks off the film’s conceit: a parent has 72 hours to find their child before the odds are they will never be found. While that is an approximation, Protector takes it literally, and the on-screen countdown begins.

While the idea is intriguing, Protector immediately skips almost 30 hours into the countdown with no explanation of how Nikki figures out the intel she does, but it puts her on a path to track down members of the trafficking gang known as The Syndicate. Nikki progressively faces off with henchmen of The Syndicate’s leader, The Chairman (Gabriel Sloyer). From The Butcher (Manny Montana) to Mr. Sullivan (Don Harvey), Nikki fights her way back to Chloe and kills everyone in her path. For the majority of Protector, Milla Jovovich is mowing down bad guys through car chases, house fights, compound battles, torture scenes, and none of them with any real break. Jovovich is almost the only character in her scenes, aside from the faceless goons she fights. The rest of the cast are in their own scenes where police Captain Michael (D.B. Sweeney) discusses how to stop Nikki with detectives Blake (Michael Stahl-David) and Jane (Lydia Hull), as well as with Nikki’s former military commander, Colonel Joseph Lavelle (Matthew Modine).

Throughout the movie, something feels a bit off. There are some weaker elements of the production that I could excuse as budgetary constraints, but they almost all occur outside the action scenes. When Milla Jovovich is in fight mode, Protector is a blast. The choreographed stuntwork here is good, with a nice balance of knife, gun, and grappling fights, along with an impressive chase scene at the beginning of the movie and the compound battle at the end. Each fight is bloody and intense, though they do start to get a little repetitive by the final minutes of the film. The problems in Protector stem from weak dialogue and even weaker narrative twists. No one talks like a real person; some responses are delivered in a robotic manner, making me wonder if the actors were all given the same script. It is often easy to overlook weak plot points when the action is really good, but Protector is not quite at that level of forgivability.

Director Adrian Grunberg has directed Mel Gibson in Get the Gringo, Sylvester Stallone in Rambo: Last Blood, and Josh Lucas in The Black Demon, three very different action movies, but he seems to be headed in the wrong direction with Protector. Screenwriter Bong-Seob Mun strives to copy the template set by Taken, written by Milla Jovovich’s former husband, Luc Besson, but fails to capture any nuance in crafting a story about a parent out to find their child by any means necessary. Operating with a restricted budget, Grunberg does what he can to deliver what the audience came to see, but Protector feels deliberately structured with the blandest dialogue possible to facilitate easier translation in dubs or subtitles for foreign markets. There was so much potential in this movie, and I liked a lot of things, especially the bass-heavy score by Don Cherel, but even Milla Jovovich plowing down bad guys for ninety minutes requires a little more logic.

Protector feels like a copy of a copy of a copy of Taken, which has lost the energy and uniqueness that film brought to the action genre. Even a final act twist fails to invigorate Protector into anything other than a generic action movie. Milla Jovovich should be above this, and I never thought I would say that I missed her collaborations with Paul W.S. Anderson, but at least the Resident Evil movies didn’t take themselves too seriously. Protector is not a fun movie to watch as it deals with very serious subject matter, but what it sacrifices in narrative sense it fails to make up for in any other way. If you are fine with only looking up from your phone during the violence, then Protector is up your alley. Everyone else should steer clear.

Protector is now playing in theaters.

Protector

NOT GOOD

4

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Review: Nothing beats a good action movie. In the eighties and nineties, action movies didn’t try to mess with the formula of putting unnaturally muscular heroes in the path of a threat and then letting them shoot their way to a resolution. Contemporary action flicks have evolved thanks to The Matrix and John Wick, with complex choreography and stuntwork allowing anyone from Bob Odenkirk to Bert Kreischer to lead an action movie. But throwbacks to the lean, mean movies of Stallone, Schwarzenegger, and Van Damme can be incredibly satisfying when done well. War Machine, starring up-and-coming action star Alan Ritchson, is a standard template action movie that blends Predator with Transformers, but is so much better than that reductive comparison. Full of gory violence and solid direction, War Machine is a blast.

Alan Ritchson plays a veteran soldier referred to only as 81, his number assigned during the Army Ranger Assessment and Selection Program (RASP). There to fulfill a promise he made to his brother (Jai Courtney). The first forty minutes of War Machine show 81 as he endures the nonstop challenge of RASP under the watchful eyes of commanders Torres (Esai Morales) and Sheridan (Dennis Quaid). 81 refuses any leadership opportunities and avoids fraternizing with his fellow RASP candidates. When 81 reaches the final round, Torres and Sheridan name him squad leader for the final field exercise in which they must experience a combat simulation in the field armed with blanks. Alongside 7 (Stephan James) and a squad, 81 reluctantly heads the exercise into the wilderness. It is then that War Machine takes a turn: the soldiers come across an armored vehicle crashed in the forest, which turns out to be a heavily weaponized mech that begins taking them out.

Once the mech begins to attack, War Machine is nonstop action for the remainder of its running time. As the soldiers are picked off in varying levels of gruesome ways, 81 begins to accept his role as leader of the squadron. We don’t get a whole lot of backstory on most of the soldiers, but they all have particular value that adds to the mission, including 15 (Blake Richardson), 60 (Keiynan Lonsdale), 44 (Alex King), and 109 (Jack Patten). There is also the bespectacled soldier 23 played by James Beaufort, who co-wrote War Machine with director Patrick Hughes. Beaufort’s role and glasses are a clear nod to Shane Black, who did uncredited rewrites on Predator and appeared as Hawkins in that film. There is a great debt that War Machine owes to Predator, as the two share much of the same core DNA, down to the final showdown between 81 and the titular machine. Even though War Machine does exemplify the importance of a team and the collaboration that soldiers exude, this movie centers on Alan Ritchson, and rightfully so.

By isolating 81 and his fellow soldiers in the remote wilderness, the team is forced to use their training and resources to survive. There is not much dialogue devoted to exposition, as this film is less concerned with explaining why the aliens are here or even what they are. Each sequence of the film is about survival against a seemingly unstoppable threat, but the film never turns Ritchson’s 81 into a superhero. These characters bleed and get injured as they rely on intellect and instinct to survive. There is a gritty realism to War Machine despite the antagonist being a massive robot that shoots energy pulses. By using a lot of practical stuntwork and location shooting, the film keeps CGI mostly limited to the machine itself, giving it a realistic feel we were accustomed to for decades before the twenty-first century. Because the body count is high and the gore is plentiful, there are very few moments for the audience to catch their breath, and I found myself glued to the screen from the beginning to the very end.

Director Patrick Hughes has worked in comedy and action with The Hitman’s Bodyguard and its sequel, as well as The Man from Toronto, but he is also familiar with drawing on the annals of retro action, having directed The Expendables 3. Hughes teamed with James Beaufort, a former Power Rangers actor, to script this lean action vehicle that has all of the hallmarks of a big-budget studio project. While Lionsgate produced the film, Netflix landed the rights to release War Machine, despite its potential to be a big-screen hit. There is a strong current of patriotic energy behind the military in War Machine, as it exemplifies the Army Ranger mentality and discipline while also drawing on countless movies over the years. Hughes and Beaufort do not try to mess with the familiar dynamic we have seen in similar movies, with Predator serving as a very similar blueprint for this movie. They made the wise decision not to “unmask” the aliens, with the ending moments of War Machine serving as a nice conclusion with some open-ended potential.

With a rousing score from Dmitri Golovko, War Machine keeps its structure generic and familiar, but that is one of this movie’s strengths. Alan Ritchson has carved out a niche for himself in his Reacher role while trying his hand at other styles like Guy Ritchie’s The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare and the Kevin James buddy comedy Playdate, but he is perfect here as the stoic hero who spouts some memorable one-liners and saves the day. Ritchson’s character is more visibly mortal than the action heroes of the eighties and nineties, but never surrenders in the face of the enemy. War Machine is a fun and action-packed throwback that is one of the better action movies in recent memory. You will come to see a hero fight a giant robot alien, and you will not be disappointed. This is not a movie that changes the genre, but it exemplifies how to do action right.

War Machine is now streaming on Netflix.

War Machine

GOOD

7

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PLOT: After being murdered, a gangster’s moll, Ida (Jessie Buckley), is brought back to life by the brilliant Dr. Euphonious (Annette Bening) at the behest of Frankenstein’s monster, aka Frank (Christian Bale), who’s looking for a companion.

REVIEW: The Bride (or rather The Bride!) is The Lost Daughter director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s highly ambitious take on the 1935 sequel to Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, centering on the mute character from James Whale’s classic Universal Monsters film (she doesn’t actually ever come to life in Mary Shelley’s book). This actually isn’t the first modern movie centered around the character, with it having inspired a little-remembered 1985 film, also called The Bride, which starred Jennifer Beals, Clancy Brown (as the monster), and Sting as Dr. Frankenstein — not that anyone remembers.

It comes along at perhaps a bad moment, with it having to exist in the shadow of Guillermo del Toro’s recent Frankenstein, which is up for a slew of Oscars this year. Yet, anyone fearful of another take on that familiar story need not worry, as Gyllenhaal’s movie does its own thing — quite radically. It doesn’t always work, with it being a bit of a mess more often than not, but at times it’s a pretty dazzling spectacle.

The film is set in a deliberately anachronistic 1930s-era Chicago, with it home to bootleggers and gangsters, but also goth clubs where bands like Fever Ray play neon-lit raves. In terms of visuals and style, The Bride is a triumph. Gyllenhaal has built a unique world for Jessie Buckley’s Bride and Christian Bale’s Frank to inhabit, with dazzling production design and razor-sharp cinematography by Lawrence Sher.

The performances all swing for the fences, with Buckley’s work here an interesting contrast to her Oscar-nominated turn in Hamnet. That movie was about nuance; this is maximalist, ear-shattering rage from start to finish. In fact, the film plays more like a horror take on Bonnie & Clyde meets Sid & Nancy rather than a Frankenstein movie, with Christian Bale’s Frank a kindly, lovesick guy who’s sensitive — even if he won’t hesitate to cave in the occasional face or two. Buckley is dialed up to eleven, while Bale is her low-key foil.

It’s too bad that Gyllenhaal’s screenplay feels a bit too much like a hodgepodge of ideas, many of which don’t work. The idea to have The Bride occasionally possessed by the spirit of Mary Shelley (also played by Buckley), who also breaks in now and then as a narrator, is very gimmicky and takes away from Ida/The Bride’s character arc, sending the movie off on tangents that are more confusing than gripping.

The influence of Todd Phillips’s Joker is also palpable, with the film not only using the same DP (Sher) and composer (Hildur Guðnadóttir), but also a producer — Emma Tillinger Koskoff. It feels like the movie must have been pitched as Frankenstein meets Joker when that was still fashionable (the film was already well underway when Joker: Folie à Deux flopped), and it covers a bit too much of the same ground, with The Bride influencing women all over the world the film is set in to rise up, give themselves the black facial mark the Bride has, and murder men.

It feels like this notion was just tacked on, with it never really paying off. Some of the dialogue is also a bit too on the nose. While it’s definitely a feminist take on the genre, having The Bride literally yell out “Me Too” has the subtlety of a jackhammer.

The film is also overloaded with characters who distract from the Bride/Frank dynamic, specifically Peter Sarsgaard as a lazy detective and Penélope Cruz as his brainy secretary, who’s the real sleuth of the pair. A lot of time is spent on them, but they feel like they walked in from another movie, and whenever we leave The Bride and Frank, the film grinds to a halt.

Yet, there are some inspired casting choices, with Jake Gyllenhaal having a fun role as the Fred Astaire–style movie star that Frank idolizes, with him even leading a few full-on musical numbers. Oddly enough, of all the Frankenstein movies Maggie Gyllenhaal seems to be pulling from, the one she references the most is Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein, with Bale’s Frank shouting out “Puttin’ on the Ritz!”

Much has been written about how the theatrical cut of The Bride took some time to come together, and it has the feel of a movie that’s been edited down. It’s uneven, at times frustratingly bad, but then at others it’s absolutely riveting. Regardless of whether or not The Bride goes down as a failure or a success (it will almost certainly become a cult movie), there’s no denying that Gyllenhaal has serious chops behind the camera and is a rising talent as a director.

The Bride is a movie that I loved at times and disliked at others. Is it actually great? No. But it has more than a few moments of brilliance within it, and at its worst it’s never dull.

The Bride (2025)

AVERAGE

6

The post The Bride Review: Messy, But Occasionally Brilliant appeared first on JoBlo.

REVIEW: We’ve gotten a whole lot of documentaries about The Beatles over the last few years, with Disney+ having given us the definitive Get Back, along with newly refurbished versions of The Beatles Anthology. John Lennon has gotten a couple of good documentaries, and George Harrison got a brilliant two-part doc from Martin Scorsese (Living in the Material World), leaving Ringo and Paul somewhat overlooked. Now, Paul’s post-Beatles career gets some overdue attention in Morgan Neville’s Man on the Run. Not meant to be exhaustive or definitive, rather than tackle McCartney’s entire career it focuses on one pivotal period, starting with the breakup of The Beatles and ending with Paul’s decision to scrap Wings, the band he headed throughout most of the seventies.

Much of Wings’ discography gets lumped in with Paul’s solo work, which is understandable, but for quite a while they were distinctive, with their work markedly different from what Paul did with The Beatles—which was the intention. The band consisted of Paul on lead vocals and bass guitar, his wife Linda McCartney on keyboards, and Denny Laine on guitar, along with a revolving slate of musicians who played in different eras of the band. While a lot of their work is considered classic now, with Band on the Run usually regarded as one of the best albums of the decade, critics in the seventies did not take kindly to Wings. Nor did John Lennon, who often criticized McCartney’s output (although not as vehemently or cruelly as people sometimes misremember).

Neville’s film features extensive interviews with McCartney, his daughter Mary, surviving members of the band, as well as Sean Ono Lennon—all presented in voiceover, with no talking heads. The documentary dives into Wings’ complicated history. It’s fascinating, as it does a good job showing just how harshly the public turned on Paul in the aftermath of The Beatles, particularly in the UK, where his American wife, Linda, was viewed as some kind of interloper (much the way Yoko Ono was by others). McCartney sets the record straight here, insisting John was the one who ended the band and defending the early solo work that was attacked by critics. One such example is his now-classic album Ram, which is ardently defended by Sean Lennon, who also uses the documentary to open up about the fact that Lennon, toward the end of his life, still followed McCartney’s career, owning a well-played copy of McCartney II, which came out not long before he died.

The documentary isn’t as much of a deep dive into Wings as I was hoping for, with Neville’s film clearly designed for an audience who may not know much about the band. It’s also far less about their music than McCartney’s state of mind at the time, with some of the classic singles like “With a Little Luck,” “Goodnight Tonight,” and “Live and Let Die” not getting much attention. Yet it’s interesting to hear how the critical reaction to Wings still strikes a nerve with McCartney, especially regarding how the late Linda McCartney was treated (she was actually a great keyboard player, in my opinion). It also examines exactly why Wings ended, with its demise not coincidentally coinciding with John Lennon’s murder, with Sean Lennon unpacking the way the narrative around McCartney’s reaction to his death was spun. McCartney also sets the record straight, admitting he and Lennon had reconciled shortly before his death, and that at its worst their relationship was nowhere near as frayed as the press made it seem.

In the end, Man on the Run isn’t the definitive McCartney solo-era documentary I would have liked (it would have needed to be as long as The Beatles Anthology), but it’s still a very welcome addition to the canon of Beatles documentaries. Now someone needs to give Ringo his due too.

Paul McCartney

GOOD

7

The post Paul McCartney: Man on the Run Review – Wings finally gets its due? appeared first on JoBlo.

PLOT: While trying to save a local forest glade, an animal-loving college student, Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda), discovers an experimental program where humans can transfer their consciousness into animal avatars. She transfers herself into a beaver body and infiltrates a colony, hoping to repopulate the glade so it can’t be demolished — but she doesn’t realize just how complicated the animal kingdom can be.

REVIEW: Hoppers comes along at a rough time for Pixar. Sure, Inside Out 2 was a smash, but as far as animated hits go, the company has been steadily outpaced by Walt Disney Animation, with both Moana 2 and Zootopia 2 setting box office records. Perhaps in a sign of the times, Hoppers takes a page from what its parent studio has been doing, ditching the high concept of some of their more ambitious efforts for a straightforward, comedic tale with a lot of cute animal characters they can make toys out of.

Hoppers is definitely inoffensive fun, opening at a good time, as a lot of kids will be on March break over the next few weeks and need something to occupy them for a few hours. But it can’t help but feel like a creative step back for the studio that once produced generation-defining animated classics like The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, and Wall-E.

It seems reverse-engineered to win back the audiences it may have lost with some of their more message-heavy fare. The message here is no more provocative than humankind needing to find a better balance with the animal kingdom. Who could argue with that? Unlike other animated movies, there are no real bad guys here. Jon Hamm’s town mayor, Jerry, initially comes off like he’s going to be a villain, but the makers (including We Bare Bears: The Movie director Daniel Chong) make it clear that even if he’s greedy, when the chips are down he’s not such a bad guy. He takes care of his elderly mother and doesn’t actually want to hurt anyone — or anything — when it comes down to it.

Piper Curda’s Mabel is very standard for this kind of Pixar movie, once again headstrong and anti-authoritarian, who through her animal adventures learns how to work on a team. She’s very similar to the protagonist of Disney’s last movie, Elio, albeit not as annoying — mostly thanks to Hoppers having a more creatively cohesive feel, as it wasn’t reworked at the eleventh hour (as infamously happened with a lot of recent Pixar projects). The human stuff is a bit dull, with the first twenty minutes or so of Hoppers struggling to find a good pace. Yet it picks up once Mabel gets plugged into her beaver avatar (there’s also a funny nod to James Cameron’s franchise — from which much of the plot was knowingly pinched).

Hoppers is stolen by former SNL star Bobby Moynihan, who voices the beaver monarch, King George — an affable, cuddly character who will no doubt become a favorite with kids. Much of the film is based around his and Mabel’s friendship as they try to undo some of the damage she causes when she interferes with the natural order of things among the animals. The second act, which takes place in King George’s communal “Superlodge,” is the best part of the movie, before a more madcap third-act twist finds Jerry marked for death by an animal council summoned by Mabel.

The voice cast is spot-on, with Hamm having the right vocal presence for animation (amusingly, his character is clearly based exactly on his actual appearance). Moynihan is the MVP, but Curda also does a good job, as does veteran actress Kathy Najimy (Sister Act), who plays the inventor of the hopping technology. Some bigger names turn up as the council kings, including the late Isiah Whitlock Jr., and Meryl Streep in an amusingly brief turn as the all-powerful insect queen. Dave Franco winds up playing the closest thing the movie has to a bad guy as Titus, her character’s son, amusingly imitating Hamm — albeit in a more high-pitched version — in the final act.

So is Hoppers the next Pixar classic? Definitely not. But to my surprise, I actually had a better time watching this than I did with Zootopia 2. Even if they’re not firing on all cylinders, the brain trust at Pixar still knows how to crank out good family entertainment. The only question is whether they can win back an audience that’s gotten used to watching their stuff on streaming, with the animation not quite as hip as what’s happening at Sony Animation and other studios.

Hoppers

GOOD

7

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