Director: Yuen Woo-ping
Writers: Tai-Lee Chan, Chao-bin Su, Larry Yang
Stars: Jing Wu, Nicholas Tse, Jet Li

Synopsis: Dao Ma, the “second most wanted fugitive,” who is entrusted by his benefactor, the chief of Mo family clan, to take on a mysterious escort mission-escorting the “most wanted fugitive,” to Chang’an.

Yuen Woo-ping’s Blades of the Guardians might have set a record for the times I said, “Hell yeah!” during the course of a film. While that accomplishment is certainly not the lone merit the film enjoys, it stands as an excellent entry in the wuxia subgenre of martial arts films.

Despite being 80 years old, director Yuen proves he still has what it takes to deliver action spectacle, even under today’s action-movie standards. Blessed with his years of personal experience, a more than capable cast of actors, and the affording of a big-budget, Yuen delivers an action film to rival his multitude of classics in the genre.

Even with all that action adventure, there needs to be a semblance of plot, which Blades of the Guardians has in spades. Bounty hunter Dao Ma (Wu Jing) spends his days bringing in wanted bandits alongside his young nephew, Xiao Qi (Charles Ju). Dao Ma’s benefactor, Lao Mo (Tony Leung Ka-fai), asks him to escort the most wanted fugitive, Zhi Shilang (Sun Yizhou), to safety across the desert.

Joining Dao Ma is Lao Mo’s daughter, Ayuya (Chen Lijun), who has recently broken off her engagement to a powerful family leader, Xeyi Xuan (CiSha). As they flee, the group runs into the mysterious swordsman Shu (Yosh Yu), who is bringing in the sultry Yan Zuniang (Li Yunxiao). As political lines shift, one of Dao Ma’s former compatriots, Di Ting (Nicholas Tse), throws his hat in the ring in order to get their hands on Zhi Shilang.

All of that doesn’t really matter. It’s just a means to an end in order to get everyone fighting. And boy, do they ever fight. Gone are the shaky cam fights of the early 2000s. Instead of the gravity-defying acrobats of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (also choreographed by Yuen), we are treated to down and dirty martial arts with little suspension of disbelief. On the whole, these fights seem feasible in reality. At one point, Jet Li shows up as an evil regional governor just to have an excellent fight scene, and then goes away. And that’s in the first 20 minutes! If you can dispense with Jet Li after 20 minutes and still have another 100 minutes to go, you know you have something special on your hands.

Yuen utilizes the underseen parts of the Chinese landscape to give his film (and fight scenes) texture and substance. In a scene seemingly inspired by Mad Max: Fury Road, the group attempts to escape into a sandstorm to evade a caravan of pursuers. Dao Ma and Di Ting have an epic sword and martial arts fight as the sand whips around them and dust devils take the characters off their feet. It’s a perfectly crafted scene of imagination and innovation. Obviously filled with a mix of practical and visual effects, each progressive scene looks incredible and feels that much more impressive.

There is too much plot, and the various factions and former battalions blend together, but that doesn’t matter when you have the world’s coolest decapitation scene. It doesn’t matter if the audience is confused on the character allegiances…did you see the sword fight with oil and fire? Yuen has made a career of filling the frame with well-versed and easy-to-follow action sequences. Why did he decide to bog down the film with excess plot? Who cares? Look at that lady shoot arrows on horseback!

That action wouldn’t work if there weren’t charismatic actors doing the work. Wu, in particular, maintains a stoic heroism essential to the film’s success. Yu shows up as what seems to be a secondary character, to eventually emerge as the co-lead. Lijun might do the most impressive work as a righteously avenging angel of beauty and capability, while Li and Leung get the most weighty of scenes. All actors are very impressive physically and non-physically.Blades of the Guardians is just too freaking cool. Don’t get too worried about the plot mechanisms, you’ll catch up eventually. Just sit back and take in the first-class martial arts action adventure.

Grade: B+

Director: Matt Johnson
Writers: Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol, Jared Raab
Stars: Matt Johnson, Jay McCarrol, Ben Petrie

Synopsis: When their plan to book a show at the Rivoli goes horribly wrong, Matt and Jay accidentally travel back to the year 2008.

17 years ago, two friends Matt Johnson and Jay McCarrol had a singular dream: to start a band and play the Rivoli, a prominent bar and restaurant space in Toronto that would catapult them to the top. “Nirvanna the Band” would constantly try to make this dream come true, with all manner of absurd schemes and ideas put into play, though all of them were to no avail. Despite their trials and tribulations however, Matt and Jay stayed the best of friends, and kept things afloat no matter what. “Nirvanna the Band the Show” is a treasured cult show for many in Canada, being a love letter to the country and Toronto itself, as well as a fun and bizarre collection of adventures that never seemed to work out entirely for Matt and Jay.

Years after the series, the two friends make one more play to feature at the Rivoli with Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. The plot is simple: now in 2025, Matt is still certain that he and Jay can potentially pull off this feat, and while Jay is still tagging along for the ride, he wonders if all this is worth it, or if they should just move on with their lives. In an attempt to get it right once and for all, Matt comes up with one final plan: to convert their RV into a time machine and going back to 2008, the year they first decided to play at the Rivoli, and change things so that life works out in their favor and they get the musical careers they had always wished for. However, as time travel usually works, once they make it back to Toronto 2008, things begin to go horribly wrong and change the future for the worse.

Much of Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is a sequence of events that will make you wonder “how did they do that?” every 5-10 minutes of its 1 hour, 40 minute runtime, as the shenanigans and stunts become increasingly more bizarre and unbelievable. Johnson and McCarrol waste no time getting to it, opening the movie with a plan to skydive from the CN Tower into Rogers Stadium to announce they will be playing at the Rivoli. Much to the shock of the viewer, they do in fact go the extra mile and then some to make that plan come to life, and it is an astonishing feat of physical comedy and stuntwork, and that stunt is just a taste of what is to come. It had to be a logistical and legal nightmare for them to pull some of this stuff off, especially when the movie directly begins homaging Back to the Future and brings in very direct references and even Alan Silvestri’s musical cues to bring the journey to life. It is a testament to the duo, then, that Nirvanna is as real and tangible as it is. The result is one of the funniest movies of the year, and one of the wildest.

Johnson’s attention to detail and slick direction is on full display here, even when portraying 2008 in the most accurate way imaginable, with ads for The Dark Knight and Grand Theft Auto IV looming over them, loud screenings of The Hangover, using camcorders from the time to reflect the show’s original visual style, switching aspect ratios from 1.85:1 to 1.43:1, connecting moments from the original web series into the newly filmed footage seamlessly. Where this attention to detail is most effective, however, is in showcasing Toronto and its various landmarks. Nirvanna is unapologetically Canadian in every facet, being a love letter to Canada and its culture, with tons of in-jokes and references to nostalgic advertisements, celebrity situations, real events that made the news, food items and drinks–a lot hinging on an Orbitz bottle in this story–making the movie a whole lot more special.

Johnson and McCarrol are fantastic here, realizing the dynamic between their two fictional counterparts wonderfully, as Matt tries to remain more fun and youthful, coming up with plan after plan to finally become a success, as Jay is getting increasingly frustrated and thinking about going on his own path. And yet, the movie excels in showcasing their friendship and how despite everything that comes their way, they still look out for one another, especially when they get to revisit and remark upon moments of their lives while Nirvanna the Band was coming to fruition and are reminded of why they have endured all these years. It’s a surprisingly effective, heartfelt and hilarious ode to the people in your lives who will be there for you through thick and thin, even if it involves entertaining plans surrounding jumping off the CN Tower or going back in time using an RV. 

The less said in detail about Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie, the better. It is a movie best experienced by just going to the theater yourself. Once they get back to 2008 and the timeline begins to get ruptured, the sequence of events that follow are outrageously funny, shocking, and even unbelievable to witness, and the result is a memorable continuation of the cult show Johnson and McCarrol started all those years ago. Do some jokes land a little less effectively? Sure. Are some plot beats predictable as it is a direct riff on Back to the Future? Also yes. Despite those minor gripes, one couldn’t ask for a more satisfying comedy venture from this team, and if Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie is any indication, it seems like they are just getting started as far as their vision goes, and the world is all the better for it.

Grade: A

Director: Mark Fischbach
Writers: Mark Fischbach, David Szymanski
Stars: Mark Fischbach, Caroline Kaplan, Troy Baker

Synopsis: In a post-apocalyptic future after “The Quiet Rapture” event, a convict explores a blood ocean on a desolate moon using a submarine called the “Iron Lung” to search for missing stars/planets.

Iron Lung has been hard to get a full gauge on since it was announced. The film is directed and co-written by Mark Fischbach – more commonly known as ‘Markiplier’ for his immense YouTube fame – in what is his directorial debut on the big screen. Thus, given his multi-million follower popularity, Fischbach’s name has clouded this film with a sheen of support from his varied cast of diehard fans. 

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but Iron Lung is more about Mark the filmmaker, rather than Mark the YouTuber. Even so, his transition from the latter to the former went smoother than most, it seems. Iron Lung is a visceral, well-acted, sharp thriller. It’ll do anything but blow you away, but for his first swing at a feature film on a reported budget of less than $3 million dollars, this is a win for Fischbach’s young future in the field.

Following Simon (also performed by Fischbach), the film is set in an apocalyptic future in which stars and planets have disappeared. Our main character is then forced to explore a desolate moon’s ocean of blood in a submarine; for the film’s circumstance, this is a groundbreaking discovery.

How exactly you could define this one, whether sci-fi, thriller, horror or otherwise, Iron Lung carves a unique identity regardless. It’s one of those that may combine a number of genres to tell a story that, despite being a bit thin, weaves through each of them with precision.

While it may overstay its welcome with a runtime just over two hours, Iron Lung manages to find success through sharp colors and claustrophobic sets, in addition to Fischbach’s strong performance as basically the movie’s only constant character. He’s emotional to an extreme at times, but the thing is shot more than competently in a way that structures his outbreaks in audience understanding. Angles are tight, and the walls of his literal iron lung, in the form of the aforementioned submarine, are grimy and pressing.

Fischbach is sweating and shouting in equal parts; if you’ve played the video game the film is based on, it replicates that intended feeling quite well. The concept’s nihilistic attitude, as tiring as it may be, is also retained. It’s a gritty watch that certainly won’t be for everyone. Then again, on a landscape of big, blockbuster movies without any stakes – not that this film is necessarily a blockbuster, although it shares a space with them – Iron Lung’s tangible stakes are a breath of fresh air.

And the film’s ending, too? It almost feels like a direct response to those sorts of movies; the sort that don’t challenge or ask anything of the audience. Iron Lung can be messy, unfocused and, at times, terribly slow, but it’s also a movie committed to this story to a fault. Fischbach clearly believed in the tale, and the film doing well at the box office in spite of its low budget and plain issues is a testament to general moviegoer’s desire for that.

After all, there’s enough in Iron Lung – whether or not you have a YouTube background with the director – to get just about anyone through on the early-year cinematic landscape. Especially considering the harsh reality that stuff like this, with a shoestring budget and sole vision, is extremely rare and becoming rarer with time, this is one to be celebrated.

Come for the noise about a content creator turned moviemaker, stay for properly eerie visuals and a solid lead performance, both of which drive this low-budget thriller up the wall and over the edge. Iron Lung is worth a look at least once for that reason alone. It helps that the movie looks good, plays things (mostly) straight and is clearly a passion project. Take the proper excuse to go to the cinema and be glad things like this can still exist in the medium today.

Grade: B-

Director: Jonny Campbell
Writer: David Koepp
Stars: Joe Keery, Georgina Campbell, Liam Neeson

Synopsis: When a highly dangerous fungus escapes from a secret laboratory, a former bioterrorism agent is called back into action. Alongside two young employees, he must confront an invisible and out-of-control threat.

Public storage facilities have become ubiquitous in our human landscape. There seems to be one off every interstate exit and one every ten city blocks. It’s a wonder these monuments of human hoarding haven’t made for fun fictional fodder before. There could be any number of horrifying, terrible things hidden in these units. So it stands to reason that a public storage facility built into the remains of a secret army base would have the most horrible things of all.

The plot of Cold Storage, while requiring a suspension of disbelief, is rather ingenious. A-list screenwriter David Koepp adapted his own novel for the film. It’s intricate, if farfetched, and each piece of the plot fits snugly together. Even the idea that it is farfetched is etched into the script and all possible plot holes you could try and poke at have an explanation, if a silly one. There are strange and funny characters, as well as circumstances that are shockingly ridiculous.

Without a solid cast, though, this script and plot wouldn’t work. The two leads, played by Joe Keery and Georgina Campbell, are charming and funny, but it’s the odd couple of Liam Neeson and Lesley Manville that steal the show. Neeson and Manville play old colleagues who had a hand in originally locking the deadly fungus away. The character’s comfort and knowledge of each other makes for an exciting chemistry. Neeson’s gruff believability mixed with his excellent comedic timing in tandem with Manville’s wild card bravado is a match made in heaven.

Even with this good script and excellent characters, the film relies far too heavily on deus ex machina for moving the plot along. There’s the old woman, Mrs. Rooney (Vanessa Redgrave), whose enigmatic reasons for being in the facility lead to her purpose and then quietly shuffling away from the horror. There’s Mike (Aaron Heffernan), Naomi’s (Campbell) exe, whose reason for being at the facility is even more bizarre. It’s not lazy writing, but it is a shortcut that feels like it moves the story along faster than it should. It could also be that the fungus itself is too powerful and this was the only way to show that. Even if it looks good on screen, this fungus is near unstoppable, which makes for a whopper of an ending.

The visual effects that bring the fungus and several of its hosts to life aren’t flashy, but they really convey how much of a destructive force it can be. The fungus is a lush green and it pulsates when it’s trying to find new hosts or just spreading across a surface. It feels like the filmmakers used CGI to enhance some delightfully gross special effects. The makeup team created some gnarly stages of infection. As fast as the infection and the plot moves, it’s exciting to see that level of detail for something so brief in many instances. Everything is so slimy and crawling, it’s wonderfully icky to watch this goo take hold.

A film like Cold Storage is a pure entertainment vehicle and it really delivers on that. In spite of what the logic center of your brain will say about some of the story elements, the portion of your brain that just wants something funny, gross, and entertaining will get an absolute kick out of this film. It’s worth taking in for the side bits of story alone, like Romano’s (Manville) little back-and-forth with her son as she and Quinn (Neeson) tote something that likely never should have left a military base from the son’s basement. Let the mayhem overtake you and you won’t be disappointed.

Grade: B

Director: Maryam Touzani
Writers: Nabil Ayouch, Maryam Touzani
Stars: Carmen Maura, Marta Etura, Ahmed Boulane

Synopsis: An aging Spanish woman in Tangier resists her daughter’s decision to sell her home. Determined to stay, she does everything she can to keep her home and reclaim the belongings of a lifetime. Along the way, she rediscovers love and desire.

When I went into Calle Málaga,  I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. I went in completely blind, and if you (like me) enjoy being put under a film’s spell, you will certainly be entranced here. Calle Málaga is a filling, heartbreaking, and rich film about one’s home and the forces that want to take that away from us. But I had no idea just how invested I would be by the city of Tangier, Morocco and the world set up by Calle Málaga. Simply put, Calle Málaga is as excellent as it is crushing.

Calle Málaga is about an elderly woman in Tangier named Maria Angeles (Carmen Maura) who is unceremoniously evicted from her home of over forty years and her fight to get it back. The kicker is that the person evicting her is Maria’s own daughter, Clara (Marta Etura), who legally owns the flat and is selling it to cover expenditures relating to Clara’s messy divorce in Madrid. The eviction, while tragic in its own right, has also given her a new lease on life. The set up and delivery is incredibly simple but its unremarkable quality is a major feature for this film. In going this direction, the film’s focus is incredibly controlled and you can then spend more time to see how the seeds planted through each scene blossoms until the very end.

Maria is a stubborn yet densely layered woman. Her resilience is admirable and left me immensely charmed during the duration of the film. This woman has a routine of seeing a childhood friend who is now a nun, vowed to silence, and Maria tells of her daily drama, going to her local street market asking the men who run the various shops to do favors for her, and visiting the graveyard where her husband and various deceased friends now reside. In another film, this routine could become incredibly stale and quite quickly, but Maura’s presence and charisma keeps the film moving. Hell, I can’t relate to an elderly Moroccan woman who is on the verge of losing everything but Maura can really sell it.

With that said, Calle Málaga’s greatest feature is its texture. Tangier, as much as Maria, is a character in its own right. The film’s director, Maryam Touzani, is a native of Tangier and her experiences and lifestyle feel rich and, although I’ve never been to Tangier myself, I feel as if I understand it better having seen this film. Tangier has been Maria’s home for all of her life, and the prospect of leaving it feels devastating. To an extent, Calle Málaga feels like a break-up film, given the untimely removal from her home. While obviously displacement places a greater toll on someone than a romantic break-up, the feeling of devastation is easily translated to someone who has never felt geographically displaced.

Calle Málaga pulls a veil over your eyes during the duration of the runtime. You are lulled into this false sense of safety, as if everything will be alright. Maria is at the hands of her daughter who has clearly made up her mind about what she’ll do with the flat without consulting her. But Maria is spunky, she fights hard to keep her home and rebuild it after parts of it go away. The heartbreak you feel at the beginning of the movie drops like a hammer at the end when you see how much community she has built for herself. Few films can pull off the “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me,” but at the end you feel betrayed, in the most morbidly delicious ways possible. I walked out of my screening heartbroken but proud to have been put under this film’s spell – to feed from the director’s hand then to take it away from you (thank you Maryam Touzani).

If you want to spend a good two-ish hours in the theater you will not be disappointed with Calle Málaga. I was the youngest person in my screening of the film, but that shouldn’t stop you from seeing it. If you want a good cry, whether happy or sad, you will have no shortage of reasons to pull from. A film that lifts you up then pushes you down should not feel this good (but it certainly does). Calle Málaga is a charming film and Carmen Maura completely captures your heart with her no nonsense drive as Maria.

Grade: B

Directors: Prashanth Kamalakanthan, Artemis Shaw
Writers: Prashanth Kamalakanthan, Artemis Shaw
Stars: Prashanth Kamalakanthan, Artemis Shaw, Katerina Shaw

Synopsis: Struggling with new parenthood and stalling careers, Kallia and Ram’s lives are thrown into chaos when Kallia’s blind mother goes on a mission to exorcize the family from the evil eye.

Even if we choose not to have children of our own, there comes a point in life where we may have to parent. The hard part is parenting the people who raised us when they become unable to take care of themselves. It’s hard to imagine watching that deterioration of someone who seemed such a solid stalwart in our lives for so long. It’s harder still when they can’t see it for themselves and still believe their cognition has not altered. This intergenerational parenting is at the heart of Removal of the Eye.

One of the most engaging aspects of the film is the cinematography by co-director, co-writer, and co-star Prashanth Kamalakanthan. The film keeps us off kilter from the moment it begins. There are extreme closeups, Dutch angles, and a unique use of 360 degree cameras that create an out of body effect. The 360 degree camera’s closest equivalent is a fish eye in the way it curves the world of the scene, but unlike a fish eye, we see the elongated limbs from the other side and all the action around what the camera is pointed at. In Kamalakanthan’s hands it’s used to upset the audience and ingrain the idea of the presence of the evil eye in each scene it’s used.

The whole film feels off balance. It’s chaos playing on the edge of a knife. While other filmmakers may try and choose a more frenetic pace for this type of story, Kamalakanthan and co-director, co-writer, and co-star Artemis Shaw build a languid unease and discomfort. They make us sit in these situations of parental anxiety. We have to be uncomfortable in order to empathize with the discomfort of the situation. It makes each fight, slight from a conversation with their own parents, and unwanted comparisons from other young parents seem all the more awkward.

This awkwardness fits well with the precision of Kamalakanthan’s editing. The simultaneous scenes of Ram (Prashanth Kamalakanthan) and Kallia (Artemis Shaw) feel like they’re happening side-by-side and it heightens the tension of each because they mirror each other in some ways. It’s a technique Kamalakanthan employs throughout the film. This connection into how their interactions outside their relationship affects their relationship comes into focus as Kallia has a very terrible video call interview and Ram is failing to convince a fellow musician, Dax (Mons Vi), his vision for his music video is good. The scenes then connect in one of the best scenes in the film.

After her terrible interview, Kallia comes back to the apartment to find her baby alone, covered in spit up, and crying. She finds out from the trash that Ram has been feeding the baby formula to get him to nap, which is something Kallia has previously put her foot down about. As Ram flounders his last pitch to Dax, he turns to see an irate Kallia. The scene has no dialogue, just the images of a shouting Kallia in slow motion with her baby strapped to her chest as she tears open formula tubes and sprays Ram with the contents. The scene brings to the surface all of Kallia’s frustrations and finally gives Ram the comeuppance he deserves.

If Removal of the Eye has faults it’s in the execution of its full vision. As a whole the film feels somewhat incomplete. There feels like the need for a bit more explanation or finality to the experience. There is a good catharsis at the end and great scenes in between, but it just lacks the compelling narrative oomph to make it great.

In spite of that, the unique perspective and the semi-autobiographical nature of the film lend it to an enthralling cinematic experience. This family, both in front of and behind the camera, made for an eerie, heartfelt, and funny film about the complicated nature of intergenerational parenting. It’s well worth seeking out.

Grade: B

Director: Bart Layton
Writers: Bart Layton, Don Winslow
Stars: Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Halle Berry

Synopsis: An elusive thief, eyeing his final score, encounters a disillusioned insurance broker at her own crossroads. As their paths intertwine, a relentless detective trails them hoping to thwart the multi-million dollar heist they are planning.

Bart Layton has had a pretty interesting career as a director so far. His sleek styled visuals and their thrilling elements go together like Crystal hot sauce and catfish. In his third film, Crime 101, Layton sets up a chessboard full of characters that are going through the motions of everyday life and wanting to stay true to themselves while being presented with opportunities that could change their lives for the better or ultimately, for the worst. Today in a lot of action movies we get over-the-top action, pretty faced actors, ugly visual effects, and nostalgic ‘80s and ‘90s music. Luckily, Layton decides that none of those things are needed for his picture. He transports us back to a time where crime films were dark, suspenseful, and relied on good acting and an interesting story. 

In the beginning, we’re introduced to our protagonist, Mike Davis (Chris Hemsworth). He’s a professional jewel thief that’s very detail oriented in his heists. He performs a body hygiene routine before going out into the field, does the proper recon on his subjects, and makes sure that no one in the heists is physically hurt. Mike enjoys having money from the robberies that he commits but he doesn’t flaunt his wealth. He doesn’t buy lavish cars and flashy outfits. He’s a plain jane kind of dude that enjoys living comfortably. Throughout Hemsworth’s career we’ve seen him play mercenaries, Norse Gods, car drivers, and even Optimus freakin Prime. Mike Davis is nothing like any of the roles and that’s why I really enjoyed him in the movie. You could say that he got inspiration from James Dean in Bullitt and maybe even Val Kilmer in Heat. 

Mike doesn’t leave much for police to really investigate after the robberies because of his caution. He’s been committing robberies all over the 101 freeway. Cops have given up and moved on from the case, but there’s one detective that won’t stop pushing himself to find the culprit and that’s Lou Lubsenick (Mark Ruffalo). Ruffalo has played a ton of characters in law enforcement so it’s safe to say that he has this particular role down pat. There’s a cliche detective story with Lou that a lot of crime thrillers can’t let go of, he’s getting divorced and facing a midlife crisis. He’s chosen his work life over his spouse played by Jennifer Jason Leigh, a great all in a day’s work performance from her. Lou also catches strays at work. His colleagues are constantly clowning him about him not holding his own weight as a veteran  detective. Even Lou’s partner Tillman (Corey Hawkins) thinks that he should retire and spend his time on the beach with a new girl by his side. Lou doesn’t want to go out like that so he drags Tillman up and down the 101 to see what clues he can find.

In the second act, we are introduced to a woman named Maya (Monica Barbaro) during a small traffic accident she has with Mike. He tries to pay her off with cold hard cash but she wants to  handle this through the proper channels. They go out on a date, he invites her over to his house and they share an emotional and romantic connection with each other. I’ve only seen Barbaro in Top Gun: Maverick but I have to say that she’s so damn charming and comforting in this movie. In the little screen time she has,  she wins over the audience with her voice, personality, and her lack of ulterior motives for being in a relationship with Mike. As time passes, Mike starts to let his guard down and opens up to Maya about his past, even if only for a moment. As his feelings for her start to grow, he decides that it’s time to do one more job and then leave his life as a professional thief for good. 

The queen on our chessboard is Sharon, played by the prominent Halle Berry. Sharon is an insurance broker. She makes sure that rich people have the best insurance on their most expensive possessions. She’s one of the top earners in her firm and she’s constantly being told by her bosses that she’s up for a partner position. She’s committed most of her life to her work and, as an audience member, I could relate to that feeling of working at a job for so long and not having much to show for it. She prides herself on being a good employee by protecting her clients. Halle’s performance could possibly be seen as mirroring her own real life profession as an actress. At one point, she has a conversation with her manager about her halted promotion. He tells her that she can’t just leave their firm because she’s 53 and that nobody wants to work with an old woman. In a lot of industries, older women are treated as disposable and that no one will work with them because of their age. This sets the events for the third act into motion. She teams up with Mike for the ultimate score so that she can stick it to her coworkers and her entitled clients.

Aside from these characters, we’re introduced to a young thief played by Barry Keoghan. He commits crimes for the thrill of it and some of his actions put Hemsworth’s Mike in a tight situation that could make his whole career come tumbling down. I know that A LOT of people will compare this film to the classic crime dramas such as Heat and Thief. In my experience with those films and Crime 101 I think this has more to offer in the characters’ dialogue, their motivations, and what the story says about a lot of the rich people in America. A lot of rich people are greedy, like to flaunt what they have and they don’t contribute anything of value to society. Layton’s script from Don Winslow’s 60 page book adds a lot more to the story and it fleshes out the characters that are already in the novel. Sadly, the down sides of this movie are some pacing issues and the little amount of action with guns and hand-to-hand combat. Favorably, this movie has good performances from its cast, good cinematography, and thrilling set pieces. Put this movie on with Top Gun: Maverick and you’ll have a dad movie night that will go over great with family and friends.

Grade: B

Director: Emerald Fennell
Writers: Emerald Fennell, Emily Brontë
Stars: Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, Hong Chau

Synopsis: A passionate and tumultuous love story set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire moors, exploring the intense and destructive relationship between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.

It pains me to say, but not nearly as painful as sitting through the latest adaptation of Wuthering Heights, that Emerald Fennell’s latest film is a misfire on several levels. When a film reinterprets a classic work through a different lens, it challenges the audience’s moral norms and expectations. When handled the right way, a filmmaker can deepen the already established thematic impact of the source material.

However, Fennell doubled down on the boundaries she pushed with last year’s Saltburn, which makes the impact feel manipulative and, in particular, hollow. Which is a shame, since Fennell, a gifted filmmaker, has two stars in the leads, but the effort that leaves the audience feeling exploited instead of illuminated. This Wuthering Heights is reduced to “gotcha” flash and sex appeal, a vapid romp with little to build on the classic work.

Perhaps most damning, Fennell’s interpretation feels troublingly disconnected from the present moment. 

The movie begins with some cheap shock value, showing a man, we think, committing suicide by hanging. That’s before we are forced to assume that there is some serious bed-springy lovemaking going on. Young Catherine (Charlotte Mellington) watches the public execution, witnessing the victim’s “angel lust.” She lives with her father, Mr. Earnshaw (Shakespeare in Love’s Martin Clunes), in a mansion that has seen better days.

Catherine’s father is a world-class alcoholic who brings home a young boy, telling Catherine to meet her new pet. The young lad (Adolescence’s Owen Cooper) has no name, so Catherine calls him “Heathcliff,” after her dead brother. Taking care of the children, probably because if alcohol-soaked Mr. Earnshaw stands near a fire, he may burst into flames, is Nelly (Showing Up’s Hong Chau), a household maid jettisoned to a career of service because she is the out-of-wedlock child of a nobleman.

Yes, the first act is a provocative setup intended to create cognitive dissonance. The young orphan continues to take beatings for Catherine, even when he had nothing to do with them. Years later, Catherine (Margot Robbie) is married, but has an affair with Heathcliff (Frankenstein’s Jacob Elorbi) when he returns years later. Here, it is interesting to see Catherine treated like a doll, a piece of property, but you can easily see how Heathcliff was treated as a “pet” and as property of the Earnshaw estate. 

Fennell burst onto the scene with Promising Young Woman, a bold, provocative, and timely thriller that was so original and audacious we had never seen anything quite like it. Her third film, often a career peak for most filmmakers, tests whether she has lasting legs. For instance, Fennell reframes the material without recontextualization. Why take the time to show examples of Catherine’s inherited trauma through erotic shock imagery without real consequences?

When the film shifts into adulthood, the emotional wounds feel generational, like rocks forming on the bed of a rushing river. This is used to intensify the romance, a toxic passion that frames trauma as an aesthetic. Still, you cannot deny the exceptional chemistry between Robbie and Elorbi, in the way that two beautiful, horny people have when they hardly have the choice of free will in their own lives. 

However, without that emotional connection that forms the bond, there is no reason to believe there is a deeper connection beyond the physical. That is an insult to Emily Brontë’s 1847 classic work. This Wuthering Heights withers under a leering eye instead of a symbiotic one, forgetting the genuine intimacy underneath all the feral intensity. 

You can watch Wuthering Heights exclusively in theaters starting February 13th!

Grade: C-

Director: Jeremiah Kipp
Writers: Tracee Beebe, Brian Clarke
Stars: Willa Holland, John Adams, Paul Sparks

Synopsis: Follows Rebecca Owens, a mortuary science graduate who takes a night job at River Fields Mortuary. What begins as a routine job soon turns sinister as she faces terrifying supernatural forces.

Adapting a beloved horror video game is a risky business. Lean too hard into fan service, and the film risks becoming an illustrated cutscene; stray too far, and the core audience revolts. The Mortuary Assistant, directed by Jeremiah Kipp, walks that spooky narrow corridor with surprising confidence, delivering a film that understands the specific dread of its source material while reshaping it into something distinctly cinematic. The result is a slow-burn, demon nightmare that favors atmosphere over excess, though not without a few blood-curdling shocks along the way.

Set almost entirely within the River Fields Mortuary, the film follows newly certified mortician Rebecca Owens (Willa Holland), who takes a solitary night shift embalming bodies after hours. It’s a premise that feels tailor-made for horror: fluorescent lights, stainless steel tables, the oppressive quiet of a workplace designed for the dead rather than the living. From the outset, The Mortuary Assistant understands that its greatest asset is confinement. The mortuary isn’t just a location; it’s a psychological pressure chamber, closing in on Rebecca as the night drags on.

Holland delivers a restrained and effective performance, anchoring the film with a brittle calm that slowly fractures. Her Rebecca is competent, guarded, and visibly burdened by unresolved trauma. Holland resists genre histrionics, which is a smart choice, especially in a film that trades heavily in suggestion rather than spectacle. Raymond, her boss’s performance, feels more wooden than the intended creepy, but you can overlook it. His character is still strange and untrustworthy and brings an unsettling ambiguity to the film’s moral center.

As disturbing events escalate (typical horror tropes that include flickering lights, shifting bodies, the phone randomly ringing), The Mortuary Assistant avoids the cheap jump-scare reflex that plagues so much contemporary horror. Instead, the film leans into sustained tension. When violence does arrive, it emerges organically from the film’s creeping unease rather than erupting on cue. 

The script, co-written by Tracee Beebe and game creator Brian Clarke, smartly expands the game’s mythology without drowning the audience in lore. Demonic rituals and possession are introduced gradually, woven into Rebecca’s personal history in a way that makes the horror feel intimate rather than abstract. Embalming, like horror, is repetitive, methodical, and deeply uncomfortable. The film draws a quiet parallel between Rebecca’s professional obligations and her psychological unraveling, suggesting that horror isn’t always about what lunges at you in the dark, but what you’re forced to confront alone, over and over, until something breaks.

Visually, the film benefits from its commitment to practical sets. River Fields Mortuary is rendered in detail, its narrow hallways and clinical surfaces creating a sense of inescapable realism. The effects aren’t cheesy, bad CGI, (thankfully) and some sections are very tense. The ‘demons’ are very effective and might cause some sleepless nights. Especially the ones just casually looking through doors – pure nightmare fuel.

That said, The Mortuary Assistant is not without its shortcomings. At times, its devotion to mood threatens to stall narrative momentum. The film’s music choices are a little distracting and silence could have been a stronger option. While fans of the game will appreciate the fidelity to its rhythms, newcomers may find themselves wishing for sharper narrative turns or deeper exploration of the film’s theological implications.

Emerging from the same production lineage that brought audiences Terrifier, The Mortuary Assistant is notably less interested in excess than endurance. It doesn’t aim to shock viewers into submission, but to wear them down, scene by scene, shift by shift. In doing so, it offers a thoughtful, unnerving addition to the growing canon of video game adaptations that respect their origins while asserting their own identity.

With a runtime of just over an hour and a half The Mortuary Assistant is an intense, chilling horror film that leaves you with the reminder not to work late. Go home, lock your doors, and think twice before offering some overtime.

Grade: B

Directors: Tyree Dillihay, Adam Rosette
Writers: Aaron Buchsbaum, Teddy Riley, Chris Tougas
Stars: Caleb McLaughlin, Gabrielle Union, Nick Kroll

Synopsis: A small goat with big dreams gets a once-in-a-lifetime shot to join the pros and play roarball, a high-intensity, co-ed, full-contact sport dominated by the fastest, fiercest animals in the world.

Plenty will marvel at Goat, I am guessing mostly for the film critic dad-joke puns, hoping for exposure for a quote pull that will be a slam dunk. See what I did there? However, the latest animated feature from Sony’s burgeoning animation division, which is anchored by the amazing Spider-Verse franchise, is a combination of other cartoons, but not nearly as well-executed, and is hardly “nothing but net.”

Simply put, Goat is all flash, a considerable amount of technical, candy-colored flash, with little originality and nothing but recycled substance.

The story follows a “small,” which refers to almost anyone who has ever tried to play basketball but couldn’t make the team because of their genetics. That would be Will Harris (Stranger Things alum Caleb McLaughlin), a teenage boar goat who dreams of being a professional basketball player in the Roarball League. However, as he gets older, Will’s dream appears to be farther from reality.

Will still holds onto that dream, however, while continuing to cheer for the league’s greatest of all time, Jett Fillmore (Top Five’s Gabrielle Union), known as the “Face of Thorns.” An all-star, she is a black panther who is always on the prowl for the hoop. She won a championship for the Vineland Thorns years prior, but now they are the worst team in the league. That’s when team owner Flor Everson (Broadway royalty Jenifer Lewis) has an idea.

To boost ticket sales, she signs Will to a contract after a video of him goes viral, showing him breaking the ankles of the Mane Attraction (Rebel Ridge’s Aaron Pierre) in a pickup game, and viewing him as more of a novelty than someone with genuine talent and skill. Of course, Jett, the legend, team captain, and front-office executive, is flabbergasted at the idea of a “small” playing on her squad.

What happens next in Goat is predictable, contrived, and, when the film tries to channel family-friendly themes, trivial. The movie was produced by Stephen Curry, who obviously relates to the underdog story, given his rise to basketball greatness from a small college in North Carolina. He must have felt a kinship with the source material. Based on the book “Funky Dunks” by Chris Tougas, the film lays on the themes thick, almost sacrificing humor for preachiness.

While the film tries, and tries too hard,  to be family-friendly, the rest of it is uninspired. Director Tyree Dillihay (Bob’s Burgers, Axe Cop), working from a watered-down script by the writing team of Aaron Buchsbaum (Psych) and Teddy Riley (Shangri Dawn), never finds a basketball scene or cliché it doesn’t love to recycle. For instance, there is a scene clearly stolen from the 1993 Super Bowl advertisement, “The Showdown,” starring Michael Jordan and Larry Bird. 

You need to find a niche for comic relief in a movie like this. Remember, the Minions were a sideshow before striking it big with Despicable Me. The best joke comes from Will’s landlord, voiced by Wayne Knight, and his thousands of gerbil children. Besides one snarky comment from Patton Oswalt, who plays a proboscis monkey and head coach, I don’t remember laughing once. 

Perhaps most importantly, neither did any kids at the Saturday morning screening I attended. This family film is tiresome, tries too hard, and never plays the game naturally. Curry and company forget the fundamentals, running a frantic full-court press on the audience before finally traveling its way to the buzzer. And at this point, I’m committing more basketball puns than the film commits traveling violations. See how flashy, but lazy and repetitive that is? 

Now you know what it is like to sit through Goat. 

You can watch Goat only in theaters starting February 13th!

Grade: D+