Director: Kyle Valle
Writer: Kyle Valle
Stars: Kyle Valle, Erin Áine and Domenic Jungling

Synopsis: A couple boards a Gomo – a self-driving rideshare cab – only to find themselves trapped with no way out.

The rise of micro-shorts and bite-sized storytelling has transformed the way audiences consume content. With viewers increasingly turning to short-form platforms and seeking entertainment that fits around busy schedules, creators are finding innovative ways to tell compelling stories in just a few minutes. Horror, in particular, has thrived in this format. The genre’s ability to create tension, suspense, and shocking twists in a short amount of time makes it perfectly suited to micro-series storytelling. At the same time, horror continues to dominate our screens, from blockbuster cinema releases to streaming hits and viral online content. Combining these two growing trends, Autonomous feels perfectly timed, delivering a tense and engaging horror experience that can be enjoyed in short bursts while still leaving a lasting impression.

Built around a premise that feels both futuristic and unsettlingly plausible, this micro-horror series throws its characters into a nightmare scenario that many of us have probably joked about at some point: what happens if we get into a self-driving car and can’t get out? The story follows a couple who step into a self-driving rideshare vehicle expecting a routine journey. Instead, they quickly realize they are trapped inside with no way out. From there, Autonomous transforms an everyday convenience into a claustrophobic prison, proving that some of the best horror concepts come from taking something familiar and twisting it just enough to make it terrifying.

One of the things I enjoyed most about Autonomous is how accessible it is. This isn’t a horror experience that relies on excessive gore or relentless jump scares. Instead, it leans into suspense and the growing sense of dread that comes from being trapped in a situation beyond your control. The micro aspect does make you feel as if you’re watching a live stream, a very interesting concept where the traditional filming style takes on a documentary feel.

The confined setting is particularly effective. Much of the action takes place within the vehicle itself, and that limitation actually works in the film’s favor. Horror often thrives when characters have nowhere to run, and the enclosed space creates a sense of pressure making the audience feel almost as trapped as the people on screen.

The performances from Erin Áine and Domenic Jungling help sell the premise. In a story that depends heavily on character reactions and emotional responses, believable performances are essential. Both actors bring enough authenticity to their roles that I remained invested throughout. Their growing fear and frustration feel genuine, helping to maintain the suspense even when the narrative remains relatively simple.

As a micro-horror production, the series keeps things moving at a brisk pace, which makes it an easy watch for fans looking for something entertaining without committing to a lengthy feature film. The shorter format also suits the story well, allowing the tension to remain focused rather than diluted. Some hooks in the beginning could have been stronger to keep audiences invested and watching, as for some audiences, this type of storytelling will feel disjointed. The hooks in the middle, where they’re standed, stuck and there’s a strange figure outside are very strong and this is where the pace picks up. I did make me question why not just a short film? But again, this is a new method of storytelling.

Is Autonomous going to be for everyone? Probably not. Shortform is quite bespoke and is very easy to switch off and leave. But the performances are strong and the horror is just enough to keep you guessing and intrigued.

With 16 episodes, this micro-series falls somewhat short of what is expected (50-80), but I think it’s a strong toe-dip into a growing way of telling stories. 

Overall, I had a good time with Autonomous. It’s a straightforward, entertaining horror experience that delivers exactly what it promises: tension, claustrophobia and a healthy dose of technological paranoia. It’s the kind of project that demonstrates how a strong idea, solid performances and effective atmosphere can be just as important as a large budget. For horror fans looking for an easy watch with a clever modern premise, this is well worth adding to the watchlist.

Grade: C+

Director: Pierre Coffin
Writers: Pierre Coffin, Brian Lynch
Stars: Pierre Coffin, Allison Janney, George Lucas

Synopsis: Follows the Minions in 1920s Hollywood as they search for frightening creatures for their monster movie, partner with a green creature, and must save the planet after unleashing monsters.

The Minions have had an impressive run, with Minions & Monsters serving as the third entry in the prequel franchise and the seventh movie in the Despicable Me universe — the powerful and almighty DMU, for short. And that is not even counting Illumination’s brand exploitation of its intellectual property for fast food, beverages, theme parks, candy, the auto industry, and even insurance sold to families worldwide.

Yes, Illumination uses the Minions like Felonious Gru himself, sending those obsequious, mindlessly loyal followers out to do its bidding. Fortunately, somehow, each installment remains very funny, even as the franchise shows signs of becoming stale. Minions & Monsters still brings a truly unique sense of humor that owes a great deal to Looney Tunes: old-fashioned, smart, subversive, and equipped with near-perfect comic timing.

This type of world-class comedy is hidden beneath a candy-coated animated shell. The movie is filled with utter slapstick chaos, hilarious gibberish, and wild cartoon violence without consequence, displaying an impressive command of comic escalation. Sure, there isn’t much of a plot when it comes to these psychopathically magnetic but misunderstood evil little lemon goblins, but the joy is in experiencing everything and the kitchen sink approach.

The fast-moving bits, pratfalls, and Hollywood parody make Minions & Monsters as enjoyable as any entry in the DMU so far.

The story follows a new group of Minions looking to upgrade their subservient ways by finding the world’s greatest villains. Among them is James, an artistic Minion with a passion for painting, who becomes the third wheel to Henry and Ed (all three voiced by Peter Coffin), two Minions with an infamous backstory of their own. During their search for a new master after the death of silent films exposes their gibberish, they acquire a warlock’s spellbook.

After a director (Christoph Waltz) hires the trio to star in his movies following their accidental interruption of a staged train robbery, they must contend with egotistical studio heads (Jeff Bridges). Hoping to secure their place in creature features, they summon a squid monster named Goomi (Trey Parker). Then, a robotic alien named Dort (Jesse Eisenberg), an ode to The Day the Earth Stood Still, arrives, and the yellow-bellied troublemakers immediately begin following the metal tin can as their new leader. And “Eureka!” — down the Minion hole we go.

From Pierre Coffin, Minions & Monsters works so well because it is, well, a monster mash of genres with a comedic spin, much like those Warner Bros. cartoons we mused about above. The film embraces the 1920s silent Golden Age of Hollywood, musical numbers, and creature features, blending them into madcap bliss. In fact, the screenplay by Brian Lynch and Coffin lacks structure, which you admire, as it embraces what makes IPs so special to begin with.

Coffin, who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature for Despicable Me 2, finds, beneath all the infectious fun, an odd appreciation for Hollywood — an Illumination love letter, if that is even possible. Of course, the experience is heavily dependent on your enjoyment of the Minions, which is great news for kids and adults who can never get enough of them. Not to mention the nonstop action, comedy bits, and beautiful animation.

Minions & Monsters knows its audience. How many manic animated films can pay homage to the stars of silent comedy and modern-day sci-fi mythmakers while surrounding them with manic gibberish, and even satirizing the studio’s own retail market for the titular characters? The movie is for kids, adults, and cinephiles, all within under 90 minutes, astutely understanding what the filmmakers want to accomplish and what their intended audience deserves.

You can watch Minions & Monsters exclusively in theaters starting July 1st!

Grade: B

Director: Jeff Tremaine
Stars: Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, and the whole rest of the gang

Synopsis: The fifth and final installment in the Jackass franchise sees the crew go on one last insane crusade.

If insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, what’s the word for going back to the well and willingly falling down the bore in the name of cinema? Thankfully for us, the Jackass troupe doesn’t need a hard and fast term nor a definition of any kind to make sense of the thing they’ve gleefully and perilously dedicated their lives to for the better part of three decades. Thousands of injuries, tens of thousands of swift blows to the genitals, and a handful of near-death experiences on, Johnny Knoxville and co. are best known and will forever be singularly remembered for voluntarily putting themselves in harm’s way for the sake of a laugh: Ours and one another’s. Questions regarding the stunt of the day tend to be few and far between. It’s better that way; some might even argue that it’s beautiful.

The last 30-ish years of escapades dreamed up by Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, et al. are best distilled down to a single idea by the tagline for their 2022 collection of (mis)deeds, Jackass Forever: “Some people never learn.” Flipping that statement around and directing at their eager audience lets it ring just as true. From its dawn as an MTV clip show in 2000 through its endless run of spinoff feature films and the many “0.5s” smattered in between, people (generally men) have delighted in watching Bam Margera fall into a pit of fake snakes only for a handful of real ones to be added moments after the initial misguided terror wore off; in seeing Jason “Wee-Man” Acuña convince multiple cast members that there definitely wasn’t a massive, hidden hand attached to a spring-powered pendulum around the corner from where they’d be walking, waiting to wallop them in the grill (“HIGH FIVE!”); or in enjoying insert cast member name here’s next (but never first) encounter with a bite-happy reptile. You need not rack your brain too much to imagine what these creatures are all too happy to bite, and these men are all too happy to let them. They pull these stunts over and over again, and yet as a viewing experience, Jackass never gets old. 

But the Jackasses themselves have, and Jackass: Best and Last — the fifth and final installment, as has been proclaimed in the film’s marketing and is reiterated a few times on screen by cast and crew alike — doesn’t hesitate in acknowledging that fact. Its opening credits, a trademark performance in each entry that simultaneously introduces the cast and pummels them with blunt force, is a Jamiroquai-inspired “dance” number that doesn’t require the featured players to move all that much. (Helping matters is the “Virtual Insanity”-lite treadmill floor; a few participants don’t even have to walk in order to meet their makers.) The film’s opening bit is a robot-administered prostate exam; later comes a gag — emphasis on the gag — in which a handful of castmates chug the intolerable liquid one drinks to prepare for a colonoscopy and play a smelly game of “Twister.” Knoxville and longtime Jackass steward Jeff Tremaine discuss that “this is what Jackass looks like at 50,” only for that humorous sentiment to be later one-upped by the revelation that one more bull-inflicted head injury might just kill the face of the franchise. It’s all fun and games when somebody gets hurt. Not so much if someone dies.

And so while there’s plenty of new to be found here, including the still sorta new gaggle of young castmates (Zach Holmes, Sean “Poopies” McInerney, Jasper Dolphin, Eric Manaka, and Rachel Wolfson, who quite specifically gets nothing to do),  Best and Last spends less time introducing skits and stunts into their everlasting arsenal of classic pranks than it does revisiting those those of films and episodes past. Some are shown in snippets, while others — like Forever’s “Silence of the Lambs,” 3D’s “Poo Cocktail Supreme,” and the “abduction” of Brad Pitt circa 2002 — are replayed in full, often with additional, unseen commentary thrown in for good measure. To use an aforementioned distinction, Best and Last would be safe to categorize as a “0.5,” the sort of “here’s what we left on the cutting room floor” films that the crew would typically release between new chapters with a slightly different tone and structure… insofar as a Jackass film holds to a specific structure, that is.

Like the installments to have come before it, Best and Last’s editing is limited to fade outs and fade ins between clips, a touch that always made the series feel undeniably homemade from a filmmaking perspective. (As if building a ramp and a slingshot designed to launch a man in a wheelbarrow into an inflatable pool isn’t “homemade” enough.) That persists here, though many of the on-cams chaps carry with them a somber tone, acknowledgements that this is, indeed, an ending. It being the ending may depend more on how much Paramount loves money, or cares to reinvent the procession for its streaming arm with “Poopies” and Jasper et al. as its stars. But those whippersnappers hardly carry with them the fervor for this sort of stuff that Chris Pontius has for swinging his penis in circles like a helicopter blade. Nor are they remotely as willing as their fearless leaders, particularly Knoxville, to step into the ring with a bull hellbent on cracking open its opponent’s skull. And who would (or could) be? It takes an especially sick person to appreciate crafting their own pain in order to make others laugh. 

The gratitude this particular critic feels for these lunatics goes beyond the bounds of their balls and bullets taken. It has often been shared, albeit glibly, how beautiful Jackass is, a visual representation of a smattering of very unique, very male friendships locked together by a common insanity. But the series, from television to cinemas, has also spotlit the growth that its stars have experienced, with Best and Last perhaps offering the most concrete examples of development. Between archival and present-day footage, we watch Steve-O go from refusing to shove a toy car up his ass to the guy willing to take a robot’s finger instead. In other news, he’s gotten sober, and the crew has enforced on-set sobriety in order to ensure maximum safety while performing the dumbest shit imaginable. We’ve come a long way from the days when Knoxville [redacted] himself in the [redacted] with nothing but [redacted] as protection, a stunt that opens this new film and had never been seen before. (Unless, of course, you were really dying to see the truth to the many rumors of why Knoxville is the captain and found it on YouTube before it was taken down.)

We’ve come a long way from a lot in the context of Jackass, from when the majority of their crusades had to do with riding skateboards to now, when budgets are larger yet men are less capable of taking the same hits they once took. Best and Last’s new set pieces aren’t recycled but are underwhelming by comparison to the old days. Imagine a de-aged, stomping Robert De Niro in The Irishman that absolutely looks every year his actual age; that’s sort of what it’s like to watch how much time has aged our beloved boys out of what they’ve always been capable of. 

What hasn’t changed is how much joy they find in their jobs, a crazy concept in and of itself that they take to levels unheard of prior. No longer are they the same 20-something warriors who challenged MTV to air “The Convict,” a bit in which Knoxville was actually threatened with an arrest after dressing up like an escaped prisoner and using a hardware store’s saw supply to rid himself of handcuffs, or literally took a dump in a different hardware store’s display toilets for shits and giggles. Now, they’re a bit more like us: Weathered from life on the exterior but young and dumb at heart. Jackass: Best and Last takes pride in the knowledge that it’s okay to move on and to revel in the glory days all at once, even if the glory days theoretically concluded long ago, six concussions and 19 broken limbs in the past. But they’ll never fully learn, no matter what certain medical professionals tell them to do, and likely never will. Thank goodness for that.

Grade: B

Director: Rod Lurie
Writers: Rod Lurie, Marc Frydman
Stars: Scott Eastwood, Colin Hanks, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor

Synopsis: A wounded American soldier is trapped behind German lines during the Battle of the Bulge.

World War II movies are supposed to make an impact. The Greatest Generation fighting off the tyranny and evil of Nazi Germany should make you feel something. Rod Lurie’s Lucky Strike manages to be forgettable and somehow anonymous about anything and everything the film is interested in. 

Scott Eastwood stars as Captain Castle, the leader of a group of World War II Army engineers in Belgium during the winter of 1944. Tasked with blocking a forest path, Castle and his men make their way into the wilderness and stop an approaching German Panzer division. Castle helps disarm a machine gun placement, but is cut off from his men, who are killed by the arriving Panzer.

Caught behind enemy lines and equipped with little more than his new Motorola radio, Castle must navigate the Belgian countryside, avoid detection, stave off multiple injuries, and attempt to get back home to safety. Along the way, he fights off German divisions, encounters occupied locals, and attempts to outsmart the Panzer group.

World War II soldier trapped behind the lines during the Battle of the Bulge should work on some level. Weirdly, the film decides to zero in on odd choices instead of developing any character, including Castle. It’s one thing to make your hero a normal everyman, it’s another to avoid developing him in any way. He keeps his private life private, but not in some mysterious way. It’s almost like the filmmakers didn’t want to put in the effort to flesh out his backstory and left it as some sort of mystery no one cares to solve.

Without spoiling anything, even the title Lucky Strike makes no sense. In the first five minutes, you see Castle smoking with the titular seal burning on a cigarette. That’s the last Lucky Strike mention for well over an hour. When the plot device comes back around, you completely forget it’s the title of the film, much less acting as some pivotal plot point. It reminded me of an episode of The Studio where Seth Rogen attempts to get Martin Scorsese to direct a film about Kool-Aid. I have no idea if the actual, still-in-existence brand is directly involved, but it wouldn’t surprise me.

It begs the question: who is this film even for? It’s not very exciting, has no narrative rhythm, features no performances worth remembering, and touches on the slightest bit of history that is very well publicized already. It’s not overly violent, has no tension, and gives you no reason to care about the main character. Not to mention, an opening framing device clearly establishes Castle’s well-being, zapping any bit of tension out of the proceedings.

At the film’s conclusion, you realize what the filmmakers have been up to, and you sit there gobsmacked at what just transpired. That? That was what all this was about? When it comes to basic filmmaking structure and audience understanding, Lucky Strike goes out of its way to keep you completely in the dark about what is important while being as obvious as possible about everything else. Nazis bad? You don’t say. This guy seems a little shady…he’s shady. The film is almost impressive in its staggering mediocrity, surpassed only by its confounding conclusion.

If anyone other than Eastwood is the main face in front of the camera, maybe some of my problems go away. Unfortunately, he is as bland as possible, to the point I forgot he was the actor in question, on-screen for 80% of the runtime. You could easily put a cavalcade of boringly handsome faces in the role and they would be as ineffective as Eastwood. If not for his occasional teeth gritting, he doesn’t even remind you much of his father.

Colin Hanks shows up for one scene and at least acts like he wants to be there. Poor Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor is on the other side of the two-handed framing device, but she doesn’t have anything to work with. No other actor makes the slightest impression, all vaguely looking the same if they are Americans and all slightly evil looking if they are Nazis.

Lucky Strike is boring, bland, and uninspired. Between Scott Eastwood’s nothing performance and Rod Lurie’s nothing direction, only the confounding filmmaking choices provide anything memorable.

Grade: D

Director: Julian Schnabel
Writers: Julian Schnabel, Louise Kugelberg
Stars: Oscar Isaac, Gerard Butler, Gal Gadot

Synopsis: A handwritten manuscript of Dante Alighieri’s poem “The Divine Comedy” makes its way from a priest to a mob boss in New York City, where it is taken by Nick Tosches after he’s asked to verify its authenticity.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen such a gargantuan piece of flopsweat so unwatchable that not even its star-studded ensemble could save it. I mean – Oscar Isaac. Gerard Butler. John Malkovich. Jason Momoa. Franco Nero. Sabrina Impacciatore. Al Pacino. MARTIN. SCORSESE! You would think that this amazing ensemble could make Julian Schnabel’s decade-spanning In the Hand of Dante feel somewhat palpable or, at the very least, watchable. Sadly, you’d be wrong, but it shouldn’t come as a surprise if you’ve essentially seen what happened following its Venice premiere. Despite such an impeccably mounted cast, the movie couldn’t even get a major studio to acquire it; instead, Netflix dumped it on its streaming service with little to no fanfare.

Only Al Pacino gives In the Hand of Dante’s sole memorable performance – in one scene – as Nick Tosches’ (Oscar Isaac) uncle, Carmine, because he distills the essence of what Schnabel’s adaptation of Tosches’ book of the same name is about. In one single sequence, he tells the audience what’s most important to retain of Schnabel’s story that mirrors two time periods with each other, one where Isaac plays Dante Alighieri as he is in the process of writing his masterpiece, “The Divine Comedy,” and the other where Tosches is looking for the lost manuscripts of Dante’s work.

Many actors play dual roles, including Gal Gadot as Dante’s wife, Gemma Donati, and Nick’s current secretary, Giulietta. The movie tries to create parallels between the performances, but they end up bloating the film’s already long runtime to interminable lengths and introduce characters late in the runtime when it should stop adding new narrative (and thematic) threads on top of the ones that should already be developed. The conceit of the film sees Tosches help mob boss Joe Black (John Malkovich) and his second-in-command, Louie (Gerard Butler), retrieve the manuscripts and authenticate them, but the film takes so many detours that it never fully gets to the point.

Louie might be one of the dumbest mobster characters in movie history, as he kills literally everyone with potential knowledge of what Nick is currently doing, which leads the son of a slain boss (played by Jason Momoa) hot on his trail. The existential historical drama by way of Temu Terrence Malick doesn’t really work (although Roman Vasyanov’s striking black-and-white and color photography is certainly a highlight), but the mob storyline is even worse.

While Schnabel benefits from tableaux of a spiritual dimension and the aid of Martin Scorsese in portraying Alighieri’s mentor (even if his overall performance has little impact), the significance he attempts to link between the past and 2001 doesn’t have the intended effect. However, nothing will prepare you for the soap opera theatrics of its final half-hour, where Momoa, in a ridiculous Italian accent, attempts to top another historically terrible performance from Gadot, with zero emotional nuance or complexity, as she portrays Giulietta/Gemma’s longing with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

Instead of staying in a gritty tone, which is exacerbated by the film’s striking use of black-and-white, Schnabel opts for tawdry melodrama, leaving his cast adrift, unable to latch onto anything that would make their work credible. It’s especially apparent for Isaac, who, after one of the most richly-layered turns of his career in the second season of Beef, plays Tosches and Dante with no real conviction and exaggerated histrionics that it’s almost laughable, but not as funny as the aforementioned Gadot and Momoa, “who can pull off the worst Italian accent you’ve ever heard” confrontation.

Even when the movie attempts to scratch deeper than its surface by attempting to link Tosches’ story to the universe’s grander theological designs and make Uncle Carmine’s words cut deeper than a knife wound, there are so many embarrassing sequences in this disaster that one even wonders what made Schnabel such an auteur in the first place. His portraits of artists (Basquiat and At Eternity’s Gate) are certainly his best movies, but when he gets esoteric and begins to fly off in a thousand different directions, that’s when they don’t work.

In the Hand of Dante falls in the latter category, but it’s not even a special kind of awful that you can laugh about with your friends while drunk. It’s a painfully miserable and overlong experience that saps your soul and reminds you that life isn’t worth sitting through these meaningless slogs that offer nothing of value to the audience, but most importantly to the people in front of the camera. Oscar Isaac has never been this bad. Gerard Butler has never been this bad. Martin Scorsese usually brings a welcome presence to his on-screen performances – even in films like Shark Tale, Outcome, and The Mandalorian and Grogu – but he can’t make his character work. It might just be the biggest waste of talent and time we’ll see in this modern era, and will hopefully dissuade anyone from ever collaborating with such a vacuous “artist” like Schnabel ever again.

Grade: D-

Director: Josh Feldman
Writer: Josh Feldman
Stars: Shawn Baker, Eric Berg, Ken Berry

Synopsis: A provocative look at modern dietary misconceptions and their impact on health, exploring the disconnect between ancestral eating patterns and today’s corporate-influenced food landscape.

Food documentaries have become one of the most influential genres in modern filmmaking. From films promoting plant-based diets to exposés on processed food and industrial farming, audiences have spent years being told what they should and shouldn’t put on their plates. What makes Animal different is that it doesn’t merely question conventional nutritional wisdom; it charges directly at it with a sharpened knife and a very large steak. Available to stream free on Tubi, this ambitious documentary argues that much of what we’ve been taught about meat, fat, and healthy eating may be fundamentally wrong.

Directed by Josh Feldman, Animal positions itself as an investigation into humanity’s relationship with meat and the cultural, economic, and political forces that have shaped modern dietary guidelines. Through interviews with doctors, nutrition advocates, researchers, and prominent figures in the carnivore movement, the film argues that fear of animal-based foods has contributed to many of today’s chronic health problems.

This documentary was especially interesting to me as a viewer, being a lifelong vegetarian (which doesn’t come without its health issues) and knowing people who have been told by medical professionals to be vegan to help their health problems – from high cholesterol to eczema. There are many reasons to be meat-free, and there are also many reasons to eat meat, and this documentary does well in explaining the latter. Animal knows the argument it wants to make and pursues it relentlessly. That conviction makes for engaging viewing, even for audiences who may disagree with many of its conclusions.

The documentary’s central message is clear from the outset: humans evolved eating animal products, and the move away from those foods may have come at a high cost. To quote one of the doctors featured in the documentary, not eating meat is making us “shorter, sicker and fatter.” The film aims at decades of nutritional advice surrounding low-fat diets, food pyramids, and grain-heavy eating plans, questioning whether these recommendations have delivered the health outcomes they promised. We hear from credible doctors and physicians who have experimented with diet and exercise (including being a vegetarian), and have worked on the balance of nutrition, exercise and rest, to make them firmly believe a meat diet is better for everyone. We also hear from influencers like Eddie Abbew, and we even go shopping with him and make some ‘Eddie burgers’. As he says, just learn how to cook it! 

Visually, the film is polished and slickly produced. Interviews are well shot, the pacing remains brisk throughout its 89-minute runtime, and the documentary does an effective job of translating complex nutritional discussions into something accessible for a general audience by the use of images and animations. Scientific terminology and metabolic health concepts are presented in a digestible way without feeling overly simplistic.

The most compelling moments come from the personal stories. Individuals discuss health transformations, lifestyle changes, and their experiences moving away from conventional dietary advice. Whether viewers find these stories convincing or anecdotal, they add a human element that prevents the documentary from becoming an endless stream of statistics and studies.

However, Animal is likely to divide audiences for one very simple reason: balance. The film openly aligns itself with carnivore and animal-based dietary philosophies, featuring numerous advocates of those approaches. While it references research and encourages viewers to examine the evidence for themselves, it spends considerably more time building its case than challenging it. Viewers should understand that Animal is less a neutral investigation and more a passionate counter-argument to mainstream nutritional thinking. 

What makes the film worth watching is not whether you agree with it. It’s the fact that it encourages audiences to question assumptions. The documentary asks difficult questions about food industry influence, public health messaging, and why rates of obesity, diabetes, and metabolic disease continue to rise despite decades of dietary guidance. Even skeptical viewers may find themselves reconsidering long-held beliefs. It will make you think about what you’ve been taught, what you believe, and question what is really going into your food.

Animal doesn’t settle the debate around nutrition; it presents a provocative perspective that challenges the status quo and invites viewers to make up their own minds. If you want my personal view after watching? I’m still going to be a vegetarian, but I have spent years working on a diet that works for me and my beliefs. If the meat industry can be clean (not pumped with hormones and pesticides) and ethical (no fish or meat farms), then I’m all for it. 

Whether you walk away craving a steak or simply questioning what’s in your fridge, Animal is exactly what a good documentary should be: thought-provoking, engaging, and impossible to ignore.

Grade: B+