Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a man walks into a busy LA diner and says he’s from the future. It’s not, per se, the setup for a joke but rather the starting point for Gore Verbinski’s daffy and deliriously delightful genre mashup Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. Dressed in a clear poncho adorned with myriad jerry-rigged gizmos, the “future man” (played by Sam Rockwell) warns the patrons that the future is not as bright as they may think it is. Even a haphazard bomb threat is barely enough for the folks there to unglue their eyeballs from their smartphones but a select few choose to join the purported time traveller in his quest to save the future. We learn their motivations to stop an out-of-control artificial intelligence stem from unnerving tech run-ins that point to things heading down the wrong path.

There’s Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson), dressed like a Disney princess in a corner booth, whose allergic reaction to any tech device puts a strain on her relationship with her boyfriend Tim (Tom Taylor) when he gets addicted to a VR world. Mark (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz) are married schoolteachers whose students lumber towards them like zombies when they’re separated by their phones, which are hypnotizing them with an ominous pyramid symbol. But the first to volunteer for the world-saving mission is Susan (Juno Temple), a grieving mother who, following the death of her ninth-grade son in a school shooting, resorts to having a not-quite-right clone of her son created to cope with the loss. Unaware of what the night has in store, the recruits follow the man from the doom-and-gloom future for an adventure that will hopefully correct the course for all of humanity.

After a nine-year hiatus following the 2017 head trip A Cure For Wellness, it’s great to have Gore Verbinski back in the director’s chair for something as go-for-broke and unvarnished as Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. Best known for helming the first three Pirates Of The Caribbean movies, Verbinski proves he doesn’t need a Kraken-sized budget to effectuate his “yes and” ethos of filmmaking. In the backstory vignettes he intersperses through the storyline, he introduces satirical sci-fi concepts that feel descendant from the British era of the tech-paranoid series Black Mirror. Though they’re telling stories that feel specific to each of the characters, they bolster the overall feeling that this world is extremely close to a tipping point into oblivion.

The cheekily apocalyptic tone is embedded in screenwriter Matthew Robinson’s outstanding script, which brilliantly synthesizes the anxieties that have crept up over the past few years around AI and the overwhelming pace of technovation. When the central characters sneak through neighborhood backyards for their covert mission, there isn’t much fear about being discovered because all the residents are so mesmerized by their touchscreens; “Nobody sees anything they don’t want to see,” Rockwell’s weary time-traveller tells them. As with any scribe who includes social commentary about tech-induced anti-intellectualism, Robinson runs the risk of coming across like a scold who’s been beaten to the punch by other movies and TV shows that have tapped into similar themes. But in this case, the biting humor fits right in.

Ever the wild card, Sam Rockwell is a perfect vessel for Verbinski’s zealous storytelling sensibilities and Robinson’s sharply comic screenplay, the latter of which gives him one-liners like “I didn’t mean to punch him that hard, I have apocalypse strength!” The extended opening sequence, in which Rockwell’s madman rambunctiously works his way around the diner, is a masterpiece of magnetic acting by Rockwell and superb blocking by Verbinski. Down the stretch, Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die goes down narrative avenues that some will find too goofy to indulge and the movie, admittedly, has too many endpoints tacked on. But in a world where existing IPs and unnecessary sequels continue to rule the multiplex, it’s hard not to admire a film that flies in the face of convention with this much confidence.

Score – 3.5/5

More new movies coming to theaters this weekend:
“Wuthering Heights”, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, is a romantic drama loosely inspired by Emily Brontë’s 1847 novel involving a passionate and tumultuous love story set against the backdrop of the Yorkshire moors.
Crime 101, starring Chris Hemsworth and Mark Ruffalo, is a crime thriller in which the paths of a disillusioned insurance broker and an elusive thief eyeing his final score intertwine, while a relentless detective trails them in hopes of thwarting their heist.
GOAT, starring Caleb McLaughlin and Gabrielle Union, is an animated sports comedy in which a small goat with big dreams gets a once-in-a-lifetime shot to play professional Roarball, a full-contact sport dominated by the fastest and fiercest animals in the world.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

There’s technically only been a four-year gap between director Sam Raimi’s two most recent projects — 2022’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and his newest release Send Help — but in many ways, it feels like the first true “Sam Raimi” movie we’ve gotten since 2009’s Drag Me To Hell. Untethered by franchise restraints, be they Marvel or Oz-imposed (as with 2013’s Oz The Great And Powerful), he’s able to get back into the gleeful gross-out groove he’s perfected over the past 45 years. Those who have been waiting patiently for the director’s return to the world of unrepentant gore, squishy sound design and manic close-ups should find plenty in Send Help to scratch the itch. It may not quite be one’s top desert-island movie pick but it’s a ruggedly raucous remedy to a historically slow stretch of the movie year.

Rachel McAdams turns in delightfully unhinged work as Linda Liddle, a strategy and planning manager at Preston Strategic Solutions, who’s been quietly holding out years for a VP promotion. Her odds for advancement worsen when the CEO’s knavish son Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) takes the reins from his late father. The two are en route to Bangkok for business when their corporate jet crashes near a desert island somewhere in the Pacific. As luck would have it, Linda is an experienced survivalist and proves much more useful in their stranded state than Bradley, who sustained a leg injury during the crash. He makes the mistake of assuming the power dynamic the pair had at their company, and it’s enough to say that Linda doesn’t take too kindly to Bradley’s chauvinistic demeanor and pushy attitude as they attempt to secure rescue.

Once Linda sets up camp for them, Send Help turns into a tense two-hander that recalls captivity thrillers like Misery and Hard Candy, even if Raimi’s film is markedly less subdued in its operation by comparison. Bradley’s entitled and arrogant personality more or less remains the same after the accident but once Linda washes ashore, a switch flips and the meek underling transforms into a confident outdoorswoman. A less repugnant boss would see her leadership skills as an asset but he’s stuck in the mentality that he wields power over her, even though org chart-hierarchy means nothing this far away from headquarters. An early montage, wherein Linda leaves Bradley to fend for himself after he insults her, portends the nastiness to transpire between them; “We’re not in the office anymore, Bradley,” she sternly reminds him upon her return.

Rachel McAdams has been superb in both comedic and dramatic realms over the past 20+ years but what she gives in Send Help has a exuberant ferocity and manic energy that we haven’t quite seen from her before. Not only is Linda more self-assured once she and Bradley are deserted but she lords her newfound power over him in a way that can turn our sympathy against her, even knowing how horribly she had been treated previously. In a more straight-laced rendering of this setup, Linda would turn into a heroine who overcomes her resentments but McAdams plays things more ambiguous morally, so the gulf between protagonist and antagonist isn’t large as one might expect. She and Dylan O’Brien also have believable romantic chemistry too, which lends itself to tonal textures that can shift from one moment to the next.

If anything, Sam Raimi stays in the “psychological game of wits” territory a bit too long before Send Help inevitably gets violent and he finally goes gonzo with the thing. The pacing before then feels a bit off, there’s a corny jump scare that seems included only to check the “horror” box on the genre list, and a couple of the plot developments are telegraphed a bit too obviously. But few directors revel in nasty practical effects more than Raimi and he certainly lets the blood and guts fly when it counts. Co-scribes Mark Swift and Damian Shannon, who put their heads together for slashers Freddy Vs. Jason and 2009’s Friday The 13th, are likely more comfortable in that area too, although they do a nice job developing the stakes here beforehand. Here’s hoping we don’t have to wait another 17 years for the next Raimi film that actually feels like a product from his cheerfully demented brain.

Score – 3.5/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Iron Lung, a sci-fi horror film starring Mark Fischbach and Caroline Rose Kaplan, adapts the submarine simulation video game in which a convict explores a blood ocean on a desolate moon using a watercraft to search for missing stars and planets.
Also coming to theaters is A Private Life, a comedy mystery starring Jodie Foster and Daniel Auteuil, following a renowned psychiatrist as she mounts a private investigation into the death of one of her patients, whom she is convinced has been murdered.
Premiering on Amazon Prime is The Wrecking Crew, an action comedy starring Dave Bautista and Jason Momoa, in which two half-brothers, one a loose cannon cop and the other a disciplined Navy SEAL, must work together to unravel a conspiracy behind their father’s murder in Hawaii.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Filmmakers — and certainly studios — may not like to hear this but bad movies have value in the way they can make great movies even better. Take Night Patrol, the latest release from Shudder. It’s a political horror film that coincidentally possesses overlapping themes with two of last year’s best films: Sinners and One Battle After Another. But the way that it so badly mangles a story, one which also contains vampires and ex-revolutionaries forced back into action due to loved ones in peril, makes one appreciate the sterling pair of 2025 Warners releases even more. I’m not sure if revealing that the titular task force is comprised of vampires is even a spoiler. The trailer hinges on it, the poster has fangs on it but in the film itself, director and co-writer Ryan Prows treats it like a mind-blowing third act revelation.

Further establishing himself as a horror mainstay, Justin Long stars as Ethan, an LAPD cop putting his new partner Xavier (Jermaine Fowler) through his paces out on their patrol routes. While he pursued law enforcement as a career path to transcend his gang-affiliated past, Xavier’s mom Ayanda (Nicki Micheaux) and younger brother Wazi (RJ Cyler) have reasons to distrust the police. The latter was just witness to a murder committed by an officer trying to gain his way into Night Patrol, a secret squad within the department that carries out off-the-books operations under cover of darkness. But what Ethan doesn’t know is that there’s more than one reason Night Patrol hunts at night: its members, led by Sarge (Dermot Mulroney), are part of a vampiric order that has literally been draining blood from the community.

Along with his three co-scribes, Prows attempts to reframe the decades-long gang wars in Los Angeles not between rival human factions like the Bloods and Crips, but between vampires and those who practice Zulu sorcery. Even attempting this type of narrative within a horror framework requires a deft hand, given that it’s tackling tricky themes like systemic racism and police brutality while also developing its own supernatural lore. Not only does Prows not give the political material the nuance and sensitivity it deserves, he doesn’t lay out the monsters vs. magic groundwork until well into the film’s third act, when we should already have a clear understanding what’s happening. Strangely, he plays coy with who Night Patrol is and what they’re looking to accomplish for far too much of the narrative, which makes for a muddled story as opposed to lending it an air of mystery.

Had Night Patrol announced its genre intentions from the get-go, perhaps it could’ve been enjoyable at least as a campy horror mashup that invokes the real-life horrors of gang violence in LA. But Prows plays things deadly serious, presenting his project as a gritty cop thriller with unclear stakes and ambiguous character motivation for most of the runtime. There are numerous scenes — a particularly egregious one shot in monochromatic infrared and set to heavy metal music — that depict Black characters we’ve never met getting terrorized and/or murdered by Night Patrol for seemingly no reason. Given their correlation to tragedies we’ve seen play out in the real world time and time again, these upsetting images require some serious justification for their inclusion in the movie but instead, they just feel exploitative and wrong.

It’s a shame that Night Patrol is so dreary and distasteful because there are some fun casting choices that could’ve led to moments that really click with audiences. Rapper Freddie Gibbs, who has only popped up in a few TV series before this, is a commanding screen presence as a gang leader pressing Wazi on the details of the killing he saw firsthand. Multi-hyphenate Flying Lotus, who directed and scored the cosmic horror film Ash last year, has all-too-brief time on-screen as a Zulu member who takes a beat to school his compatriots on monster mythology. They deserve better material that doesn’t crib from regressive stereotypes in an attempt to address the harsh realities of lethal street violence. Night Patrol needs to be called into its police chief’s office to have its badge and gun taken away before being forced into a leave of absence.

Score – 1/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Mercy, a sci-fi mystery starring Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson, finds an LA detective on trial for the murder of his wife, with 90 minutes to prove his innocence to an advanced AI judge.
Also coming to theaters is In Cold Light, a crime thriller starring Maika Monroe and Troy Kotsur, follows a young woman who’s trying to lay low after her recent prison stint but is forced on the run after she witnesses her twin brother’s murder and is framed for it.
Streaming on HBO Max is Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!, a 2-part documentary covering the life, career, friendships, and loves of legendary writer, director, producer, and performer Mel Brooks, chronicling his early experiences and rise to superstardom.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Those who have lived in Indiana long enough likely know the story of Tony Kiritsis. In February 1977, the Indianapolis resident walked into a mortgage office with a concealed shotgun and held a broker hostage after falling behind on payments for a piece of undeveloped real estate. The heavily publicized events were the subject of the 2018 documentary Dead Man’s Line and now we have the fictionalized version in the form of Gus Van Sant’s Dead Man’s Wire. It follows a spate of recent biopics like The Smashing Machine and Song Sung Blue, whose respective documentaries haven’t been readily available on streaming, thus leaving the opportunity for filmmakers to deliver their own adaptations. But all these iterations face the age-old test of whether or not they actually expand on the original text in a meaningful way, which this movie doesn’t pass.

In the film, Kiritsis is played by Bill Skarsgård, taking a step out of the supernatural realm after his recent stints in The Crow, Nosferatu and It: Welcome To Derry. Tony’s hostage plan immediately hits a roadblock when he arrives at the offices of Meridian Mortgage to find that M.L. Hall (Al Pacino), the bank’s owner and Kiritsis’ intended target, is on vacation. Instead, his son Dick (Dacre Montgomery) greets Tony in the lobby and offers to take the meeting in his dad’s place, not knowing the sinister turn that it would take. Once in Dick’s office, Tony holds him up at gunpoint and fashions a wire around Dick’s neck connected to the trigger of his shotgun, making for a particularly volatile standoff situation. Shortly after, the pair make their way to the streets and head for Tony’s apartment, as police officers and news media quickly register the crisis as it unfolds.

Even though Tony Kiritsis was a real person, Gus Van Sant’s character is clearly meant to share a kinship with disaffected and desperate protagonists of gritty 1970s crime sagas like Taxi Driver and Dog Day Afternoon. Along with the social consciousness of those films, Dead Man’s Wire is also of a piece with 1976’s Network, whose infamous “mad as hell” line is partially quoted by a cop trying to surmise Kiritsis’ state of mind. These era-defining thrillers are strong sources of inspiration upon which to reconsider this bizarre kidnapping, but Van Sant simply can’t compete with what Sidney Lumet and Martin Scorsese were cooking 50 years ago. Perhaps it’s not fair to compare him with two of the greatest filmmakers America has produced but when the influences are this obvious, it’s not difficult to find Dead Man’s Wire comparatively lacking in tact and tension.

Stylistically, Van Sant does what he can to mimic the mise-en-scène of the masters’ mid-70s movies, with cinematographer Arnaud Potier using refurbished broadcast cameras to emulate the grain-laden aesthetic of the time period. The set decoration and costume design are all on point, while the soundtrack is comprised of radio hits like “Love To Love You Baby” and “Your Move”; “Cannock Chase” pops up again after also being used brilliantly in Sentimental Value recently. The song choices are framed as being those of local DJ Fred Temple, played by Colman Domingo, whose smooth segues are often heard in voiceover. For some reason, Kiritsis has a god-like adoration of Temple and insists on talking to him during the standoff for comfort and consultation. Domingo certainly fits in the role and appears in the film a substantial amount but Van Sant doesn’t go much further into how this parasocial bond of Kiritsis’ became so strong.

Besides Tony and Dick, all of the other characters pushed out to the periphery don’t fare much better with their limited screen time. Cary Elwes barely registers as the constantly consternated cop who first gets called to the scene, while rising star Myha’la doesn’t make much of an impression as a TV reporter trying to chase the career-making story. Al Pacino, who I’m assuming was cast primarily due to his Dog Day Afternoon connection, literally phones it in with an aggressive Southern accent in a couple scenes. I suppose I can’t blame him for trying something because Gus Van Sant struggles throughout Dead Man’s Wire to make these real-life events interesting. In past films like To Die For and Milk, he’s covered this thematic material and this era much more evocatively before in his career. Between this, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot and The Sea Of Trees, it feels like a once great filmmaker is lost in the forest.

Score – 2/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Arriving in theaters is 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, a horror sequel starring Ralph Fiennes and Jack O’Connell, continuing the tale of a teenage survivor from the zombie apocalypse as he joins a gang co-led by a ruthless gang member and a boundary-pushing doctor.
Also landing in theaters is Charlie The Wonderdog, an animated adventure starring Owen Wilson and Tabitha St. Germain, in which a dog gains superpowers after his owner is abducted by aliens and together, they battle an evil cat threatening humanity.
Premiering on Netflix is The Rip, an action thriller starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, following a group of Miami cops as they discover a stash of millions in cash, which leads to distrust from outsiders as they learn about the huge seizure.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Writer/director Rian Johnson is officially 3 for 3 with his Knives Out mysteries, as Wake Up Dead Man becomes the latest addition to the wonderful whodunnit cinematic collection. The brilliant and suave gumshoe Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) is back on the case again, traveling to a Catholic church in upstate New York, where its fiery leader Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin) is found fatally stabbed in the storage closet. As police begin to investigate, the young Reverend Jud Duplenticy (Josh O’Connor), recently transferred to Our Lady Of Perpetual Fortitude due to a physical altercation, initially becomes the primary suspect. But police chief Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) has a hunch that this murder isn’t as simple as it seems and once Blanc arrives, he agrees there are many more factors that make this crime anything but open-and-shut.

In addition to Jud, Blanc proverbially makes his way up and down the pews to investigate core members of the church with which Wicks spent the most amount of his time. Among them are the town doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner), the lawyer Vera Draven, Esq. (Kerry Washington) and her politician son Cy (Daryl McCormack), concert cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeny) and prolific author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott). There are also those employed at Our Lady Of Perpetual Fortitude, including Wicks’ right-hand woman Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close) and groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church). All seem to have been accounted for in the congregation during the Good Friday service when Msgr. Wicks is discovered with a knife in his back but no one’s alibi is as airtight as it seems.

As with 2019’s Knives Out and 2022’s Glass Onion, Wake Up Dead Man uses its twisty narrative and beguiling mystery to explore themes of division and polarization that have seemed to define our current era. In this chapter, Johnson investigates faith, religion and what passes for being considered a “good person” in the year of our Lord 2025. A former boxer with a checkered path to penitence, Rev. Jud seems like an obvious choice upon whom to pin the murder of the monsignor but it doesn’t take many flashbacks to see that Wicks didn’t have trouble making enemies. From a literal bully pulpit, he would tailor homilies to specifically call out newer members he suspected of trying to “poison the flock” merely with their presence. Johnson ties this brand of public shaming to the daily digital pile-ons that occur on social media and argues that whether it’s under a cassock or behind a keyboard, it’s easier to dish it than it is to take it.

These films routinely benefit from a bevy of acting talent and the ensemble this time around is aces as always. Daniel Craig is absent for the majority of the first act, allowing Josh O’Connor to cement himself as the film’s lead as Ana De Armas and Janelle Monáe did in the previous two Knives Out installments. Despite Jud’s position in the church, he’s still human after all: he lets loose the occasional curse word, he has a temper that he works hard to keep at bay and he isn’t above casting judgments of his own. But despite this, it’s clear that the reverend is honorable and his empathy for others is anything but performative. With his stellar breakout in Challengers last year and lead roles in three indies outside of Wake Up Dead Man in 2025, O’Connor should be well on his way to becoming a household name.

Rian Johnson once again spins up a superlative script full of playful misdirects, convincing red herrings and testy exchanges that make for whodunnits that you can revisit numerous times even after you know, well, who done it. Teaming again with cinematographer Steve Yedlin and editor Bob Ducsay, Johnson crafts a puzzle box that is slick in its execution and inviting in its aesthetic without broadcasting how proud it is of itself. He’s as consistent as ever with the branding of his franchise too, once again adopting a title from a rock song that cheekily applies to the narrative too. I also appreciate that Johnson has considered the seasonality of these movies too; the sweater weather autumnal Knives Out and suns-out-guns-out summer flare of Glass Onion find a companion in the promise of redemption and spring awakening of Wake Up Dead Man. Whether it’s on Netflix or through another studio, my hope is that Johnson has one more winter-set Knives Out mystery in him.

Score – 4.5/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Opening in theaters is Ella McCay, a political dramedy starring Emma Mackey and Jamie Lee Curtis, following an idealistic lieutenant governor who juggles familial issues and a challenging work life while preparing to take over her mentor’s gubernatorial position.
Also coming to theaters is Silent Night, Deadly Night, a slasher remake starring Rohan Campbell and Ruby Modine, involving a Santa-costumed killer who embarks on a violent quest for retribution against those responsible for a traumatic event from his childhood.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is Merv, a romantic comedy starring Charlie Cox and Zooey Deschanel, which finds an estranged couple awkwardly reconciling over the holidays when they learn that the dog they share is suffering from depression following their break-up.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup