Monthly Archives: May 2026

Reel Views, Review

The Mandalorian And Grogu

Cobbled together from a jettisoned fourth season of the Disney+ series The Mandalorian, the unmemorable The Mandalorian And Grogu hobbled into theaters this Memorial Day weekend. It’s the first theatrical Star Wars release in 7 years — incidentally, 2019 was also when the first season of The Mandalorian was released — but doesn’t arrive with the fanfare typically befitting an entry from the multi-billion dollar franchise. With 10 seasons of live-action Star Wars shows already available to stream at home, audiences understandably need to feel compelled to go out to the theater when there’s already so much to dig into on TV. Each Episode of the Sequel Trilogy, and even 2016’s Rogue One, cleared that bar but this cinematic adaptation of the saga about a helmeted bounty hunter and his adorable sidekick doesn’t pass the Knee-Crack Couch Test.

Picking up where the third season left off, The Mandalorian And Grogu finds Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his foot-tall companion Grogu working under Commander Ward (Sigourney Weaver) of the New Republic. She tasks the pair with finding Janu Coin (Jonny Coyne), a former Galactic Empire leader now operating as a crime lord somewhere on the dissolute planet Shakari. To get more specifics on his whereabouts, Ward consults with the Hutt Twins, descendants of Jabba from Return Of The Jedi who are looking for his son Rotta (voiced by Jeremy Allen White). With the help of streetwise food stand vendor Hugo (voiced by Martin Scorsese), the Mandalorian discovers Rotta is working as a gladiator in a fighting pit run by Coin and endeavors to free the slug champion from his proverbial chains of servitude.

The film opens with a bleary setpiece victimized by the same style of concrete mixer color grading that has plagued Disney’s live-action output since 2016’s Captain America: Civil War and disproportionally affected 2018’s Solo: A Star Wars Story. Thankfully, the rest of The Mandalorian And Grogu isn’t as dim and drab as its snowbound opener but it doesn’t exactly instill much confidence from the outset either. After the successful mission, The Mandalorian turns in a holographic bounty card to Ward, she hands him a new card for Coin and the movie’s titular pair scurry off for another adventure. From there, the main characters are shuffled around like playing cards flipping through a deck, hitting the barebones story beats required to keep things moving but doing so in dramatically inert fashion.

Like its corresponding series, The Mandalorian And Grogu has plenty of action scenes where “Mando” gets to show off his sharpshooting and hand-to-hand combat prowess; him stating “I try to avoid violence” at one point essentially counts as a laugh line. His fights with all manner of space aliens and Stormtroopers are undoubtedly the high points of the film, most notably a nocturnal skirmish with metal-brimmed assassin Embo. It’s a sequence that feels particularly indebted to Westerns like Once Upon A Time In The West and the “Man With No Name” Trilogy that inspired director and co-writer Jon Favreau when creating The Mandalorian. That the movie strings together several well-choreographed conflicts while avoiding Easter eggs and memberberries should be enough to put it in the “W” column as a Star Wars outing.

But like any suit of armor — even the protagonist’s beskar-crafted uniform — there’s always a weak spot, and the plotting and pacing of The Mandalorian And Grogu is undeniably its fatal flaw. There’s a narrative cohesion and sense of consequence missing from this movie that makes the proceedings feel perfunctory and dull. Nearly all scenes of dialogue simply feel like filler, akin to unskippable ads in between songs on the free tier of a Spotify membership. The closest Favreau and his co-writers Dave Filoni and Noah Kloor get to character development is with Rotta The Hutt but Jeremy Allen White’s voice work is so bland that the pathos lands with an intergalactic thud. As much as Baby Yoda mightily strains to lift the film up with the Force from his tiny hand, his precious efforts are all for naught.

Score – 2.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Backrooms, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, adapts a sci-fi horror YouTube series in which a therapist ventures into an otherworldly dimension in search of her missing patient.
Pressure, starring Andrew Scott and Brendan Fraser, follows General Dwight D. Eisenhower and Captain James Stagg as they face an impossible choice: launch the largest and most dangerous seaborne invasion in history or risk losing World War II altogether.
The Breadwinner, starring Nate Bargatze and Mandy Moore, finds a supermom switching roles with her breadwinner husband after she lands a Shark Tank deal and he struggles to adapt as a stay-at-home dad to their three daughters.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Obsession

After releasing micro-budget chiller Milk & Serial for free on YouTube two years ago, 26-year-old sketch comedian Curry Barker has graduated beyond the confines of streaming with the new horror outing Obsession. Picked up by Focus Features at TIFF last September for a reported $15 million price tag, it’s the kind of high-concept buzzy title that competitors A24 and NEON may still be kicking themselves months later for not securing. At the same time, the fact that there are enough promising Gen Z filmmakers around to trigger these kinds of bidding wars among distributors with their projects is a good problem to have. It represents not just an investment in future cinematic storytellers but a commitment to creative forces that audiences have come to know through platforms like YouTube and Reddit.

In Obsession, reserved twentysomething Bear (Michael Johnston) slaves away at a local music shop and harbors a longtime crush on co-worker and childhood friend Nikki (Inde Navarrette). It’s enough of an open secret among his other co-workers and trivia mates Tim (Cooper Tomlinson) and Sarah (Megan Lawless) that he practices spilling his guts to Nikki when they’re around. With hopes of replacing a necklace Nikki lost, Bear wanders into a gift shop and finds a One Wish Willow trinket that promises to grant the owner their greatest desire. After another frustrating night in the friend zone, Bear impulsively wishes that Nikki loved him “more than anyone in the entire world.” Much to his surprise, the magic behind the kitschy novelty toy kicks in but it doesn’t take long for her amorous affection to turn ominous and even dangerous.

In effect, Obsession is a suffusion of two well-worn tropes in the romantic and horror genres: a boy being too shy to tell the girl he’s pining after how he feels and the “be careful what you wish for” tale. In his writing and direction, Curry Barker uses these familiar starting points as a way to investigate the dark underpinnings behind these touchstones. When Bear casts his wish, it’s not as though Cupid shoots his arrow at Nikki and a romance slowly builds. Her entire personality turns on a dime and we learn that her real self is in essence a prisoner to this new possessed and obsessed version of Nikki. Some of the film’s scariest moments occur when the “real” Nikki pops back to the surface for terrifying interludes where we realize she’s essentially being held captive in her own body. It’s a horrifying concept that Barker explores within his take on the classic The Monkey’s Paw short story.

The quartet of young actors all add distinctive touches to their respective performances but Inde Navarrette’s work here is simply sublime. Under Bear’s seemingly innocuous spell, Nikki becomes unsettlingly possessive and violently co-dependent, erratically dithering between dewy-eyed obsequiousness and explosive neediness. As the affected version of Nikki for most of the movie, Navarrette hits notes of desperation and frustration that give Obsession a plethora of sustained uneasiness and well-earned beats of humor too. When Bear draws a Jenga piece at a party and is tasked with planting one on the person sitting to his left, Nikki’s remedy to the situation is both hilarious and creepy. I hadn’t seen Navarrette in anything prior to this but her commanding and unforgettable work here will rightfully open more doors for her in the future.

Though Curry Barker certainly pushes his story to gorier and more emotionally visceral lengths than we often get with typical tales of twisted wish fulfillment, its ending is telegraphed relatively early on. Interactions with both the employees where Bear procured the cursed charm and employees of the company that produces the One Wish Willow are marked by wickedly cavalier candor but serve to remind us of this film’s inevitable conclusion. But before that point, Barker sustains a timbre of absurdist tension that feels like a sketch from I Think You Should Leave and an episode from Tales From The Crypt got mutilated in a blender together. Like fellow YouTubers Markiplier and RackaRacka, who have also made the leap to theatrical horror filmmaking, Curry Barker has demonstrated that he won’t be ignored.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
The Mandalorian And Grogu, starring Pedro Pascal and Jeremy Allen White, continues the Star Wars saga of the titular bounty hunter and his cuddly companion as they traverse the galaxy to rescue the son of a powerful and notorious crime lord.
I Love Boosters, starring Keke Palmer and Naomi Ackie, is a crime comedy which finds a group of shoplifters (known as “boosters”) as they take aim at a cutthroat fashion maven after she steals their designs.
Passenger, starring Jacob Scipio and Lou Llobell, is a supernatural horror film following a young couple who witnesses a gruesome highway accident and soon realizes they did not leave the crash scene alone, as a demonic presence won’t stop until it claims them both.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Column, Midwest Film Journal

All Is Farrell: Horrible Bosses

Originally posted on Midwest Film Journal

At this point, it’s cliché to say that actors look “unrecognizable” in certain roles but when Colin Farrell appeared as The Penguin in 2022’s The Batman, it was an apt adjective. Sporting a fat suit, gold tooth and facial prosthetics that took hours to apply, his rendering of a mid-level crime boss with an aggressively recessed hairline was strong enough to warrant a lauded HBO spin-off series in 2024. As memorable a role as it’s been for Farrell, it’s not his first time sporting a combover to play a corrupt narcissist in charge. That honor goes to 2011’s raunchy comedy Horrible Bosses, in which Farrell portrays Bobby Pellit, one of the three head honchos that terrorize a trio of hard-working average Joes. “Playing Pellit was all about channeling my inner douche,” Farrell commented in the film’s production notes, and his work as the unhinged heir to a chemical company is a big part of what makes the crime caper work 15 years on.

The opening of Horrible Bosses introduces us to pals Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis), and Dale (Charlie Day), who routinely commiserate with each others’ workplace woes over beers. Nick is under the thumb of David Harken (Kevin Spacey), a sadistic executive at a financial firm who belittles and shows contempt for everyone under him. Conversely, Kurt gets along great with his mentor Jack Pellit (Donald Sutherland) but a fatal heart attack puts his incompetent son Bobby in charge of Pellit Chemicals. Dale gets the least amount of sympathy from his buddies regarding his situation, where he’s sexually harassed on a daily basis by his superior Dr. Julia (Jennifer Aniston) at her dental practice. At the bar one night, the boys take to a cockamamie plan in which they each kill their respective bosses to alleviate the abuse they’re all suffering at the hands of three psychopaths.

If their ruse sounds a bit familiar, it’s a comedic riff on Hitchcock’s classic Strangers On A Train, which is name-dropped explicitly by Kurt and mixed up with Throw Momma From The Train by Dale. They’re aided in their plot by “murder consultant” Dean Jones (Jamie Foxx), who adopts a colorful, tough guy nickname so as to not be lumped in with the 1960s Disney leading man of the same name. Among other actors in Horrible Bosses, Foxx represents the film’s “time at club/impact at club” ratio, wherein performers score lots of laughs with limited screen time. Ioan Gruffudd is a whiz-bang wonder in his cameo, portraying an all-business gentleman whom Dale hires via Craigslist for “wet work” thinking he’s a hitman. Comedy legend Bob Newhart even shows up in the movie’s coda as a seemingly harmless CEO harboring a terrible secret that he asks Nick to overlook with a wink.

Likewise, Farrell is comedically efficient on-screen as Bobby, who is introduced as “Dipshit Cokehead Son” by the movie’s enormous text overlay. We first hear him snorting lines in — and holding up the line to — the company bathroom, from which he storms out and grouses to his dad Jack that he can’t get any privacy. He’s a nuisance that Kurt tolerates in a job he otherwise loves but Jack’s passing automatically puts blowhard Bobby in the big boss’s chair. He rolls it out into the hall to confront Kurt when he’s “three hours late” to work after acting as pallbearer for Jack’s funeral, which Bobby presumably did not attend. The screw-up scion wastes no time taking an axe to his father’s company so he can line his own pockets; “this is just an ATM to me!” he blurts to Kurt in their first pow-wow with Bobby at the helm. It’s made clear that they’re all now residing in the “State Of Bobbyville”, which he revises to “The United States Of Me” soon after.

Being a studio comedy from the 2010s, Horrible Bosses and its director Seth Gordon presumably gave plenty of latitude for the central actors to play around with improv during their takes. But as evidenced by the outtakes over the end credits, it seems Farrell may have taken advantage of the opportunity even more than Aniston or Spacey. The bloopers feature what appears to be a deleted scene involving Bobby’s trip to the pharmacy, wherein he pesters a beleaguered pharmacist with queries like “do you like karaoke?” and “do you have MDMA?” He makes full use of his gross haircut too, heaving his combover as he sneezes into his open hand and shows it to the defeated druggist. Primarily for plot reasons, Bobby’s time in the movie is abbreviated in comparison to Julia and David but as the most crudely exaggerated of the titular heavies, Farrell works hard to sell lines that are designed to horrify.

The actor also contributed ideas toward the conception of Bobby’s garish fashion and ostentatious lifestyle, particularly an affinity for Asian appropriation through nunchuck twirling and Chinese dragon decals. He brags at one point that he’s a green belt and has “Kung Fu Fighting” as his ringtone at a time when people still selected those as extensions of their personality. When our protagonists visit Bobby’s vacant house for recon, they find his man cave packed to the gills with samurai regalia and katanas hung on the wall. They’re possessions of a self-stylized “master of the universe” so obnoxiously self-involved that we can’t really feel too bad about him getting what he deserves. The Julia and David subplots in Horrible Bosses haven’t aged especially well — the former due to its cavalier attitude regarding sexual assault and the latter due to the presence of Kevin Spacey — but Colin Farrell’s performance as the boisterous Bobby makes the horrible hilarious.

Reel Views, Review

The Sheep Detectives

Based on the international bestseller Three Bags Full by German crime writer Leonie Swann, The Sheep Detectives counts as one of the year’s biggest surprises thus far. When I go into a theater, I do what I can to give myself the best shot to enjoy what I’m about to watch. I typically avoid clips and trailers when I can; I inevitably see footage for upcoming releases either in theatrical pre-roll or scrolling through social media but I don’t seek out promos. If I can go into a movie knowing only a brief synopsis of what I’m about to see, that’s the ideal scenario. Going into this film, I knew it was a live-action murder mystery with CGI talking animals. Right, wrong, or otherwise, that sets my expectation bar relatively low, even given the fact that I don’t consume many G and PG-rated offerings. This is a rich family entertainment, packed with genuine intrigue, warm humor and wisdom around worthy themes.

The Sheep Detectives opens with voiceover from George Hardy (Hugh Jackman), a staid shepherd who prefers the company of his flock over the complications of human interaction. Though he tends to dozens of sheep, he has names for all of them and while he’d rather not pick favorites, he nevertheless has two: Lily (voiced by Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and Sebastian (voiced by Bryan Cranston). Every night after the day’s chores are done, George sits outside his mobile home in the meadow and reads whodunnit novels to a captive ovine audience. Little does he know, the smartest of the sheep have been taking mental notes and Lily especially seems to know the endings before they’re even read. Unfortunately, their collective knowledge of murder mysteries becomes useful when George is discovered dead by fellow herder Caleb (Tosin Cole) one day.

Dim-witted officer Tim (Nicholas Braun) arrives shortly on the scene and it’s clear to Lily and company that he needs all the help he can get in solving the crime at hand. With the help of the world-weary Mopple (voiced by Chris O’Dowd), Lily and Sebastian make the trek outside their field to listen in on George’s will reading in the nearby English town of Denbrook. Gathered with George’s attorney Lydia (Emma Thompson) are George’s daughter Rebecca (Molly Gordon) —traveling across the pond from America— along with local townspeople like persnickety innkeeper Beth (Hong Chau) and priest Reverend Hillcoate (Kobna Holdbrook-Smith). Putting their hooves and horns together, the sheep must follow the clues to untangle the mystery of which of these seemingly innocuous interlopers know what happened to their departed leader.

The quaint English setting and computer-generated animal cast may quickly call to mind the George Miller Babe films from 1990s and while those still certainly hold up, The Sheep Detectives features special effects that show how far we’ve come. The rendering for each of the creatures —be they Icelandic Leadersheep or North Country Cheviot sheep— is exquisitely detailed and charming in its flourishes. I got a kick out of how expressive each of the sheep’s ears were, flickering and twitching in ways that mirror how they’re feeling at a given moment. Of course the voice cast does an exceptional job bringing these CG creations to life, led by beautifully affecting work from Julia Louis-Dreyfus in the lead role. As the foil to Lily’s lively determination, fellow Seinfeld alum Bryan Cranston provides a gruff, cynical cadence to Sebastian’s timbre.

In the cinematic world, screenwriter Craig Mazin has hung his hat on entries from raunch comedy franchises Scary Movie and The Hangover but in the television realm, he’s spearheaded critically-acclaimed fare like Chernobyl and The Last Of Us. Being rated PG, The Sheep Detectives obviously steers clear of the four-letter words from the sophomoric comedies but doesn’t get as dramatically heavy as his TV output either. The humor is often droll and calls attention to the differences between how these talking sheep see the world compared to the humans bickering around them. But by the film’s conclusion, Mazin and director Kyle Balda weave together powerful themes about belonging and memory that will resonate with audience members of all ages. Filled with tenderness and twists in equal measure, The Sheep Detectives is a sheer delight.

Score – 4/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Obsession, starring Michael Johnston and Inde Navarrette, is a supernatural horror movie in which a music store employee buys a supernatural “One Wish Willow” toy and wishes for his childhood friend to fall in love with him.
In The Grey, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Henry Cavill, is an action thriller involving a secret elite team of agents who are tasked with reclaiming a vast fortune stolen by a ruthless tyrant.
Is God Is, starring Kara Young and Mallori Johnson, is a revenge thriller following twin sisters with disfiguring burn scars as they’re ordered by their bedridden mother to kill their abusive father who caused their scars.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Reel Views, Review

Hokum

Three features in, Irish writer-director Damian McCarthy seems to have found his niche. His first two films, Caveat and Oddity, are supernatural horror movies set in Ireland that intersect human folly and folklore to give the mystical elements a moral grounding. The filmmaker’s latest offering, Hokum, falls in line thematically with those two projects but by sticking with familiar narrative territory, McCarthy has refined how he tells his spooky story. This is his most narratively compelling and consistently unnerving effort to date, led by a familiar face and several others that may not be as familiar to American audiences. It’s also one you’ll want to see with a crowd, not only because it’s best enjoyed in a dark, distraction-free area but because there are different moments that may generate the biggest scares among the audience. Caveat and Oddity both had one jump scare that was clearly meant to be “the big one” but Hokum has a few that could qualify.

The film stars Adam Scott as Ohm Bauman, a morose author of a popular book series involving a conquistador and his journeys. While drinking and writing late one evening, he has a nagging feeling of unfinished business in addition to writing the epilogue of his latest novel. His late parents requested that their ashes be spread at the hotel in rural Ireland where they honeymooned, so Ohm makes the trek to honor their wishes. He’s surly with the staff, including the desk clerk Mal (Peter Coonan) and bellhop Alby (Will O’Connell), but his interest is piqued when bartender Fiona (Florence Ordesh) tells him the honeymoon suite has been locked off by the hotel’s owner Cob (Brendan Conroy). He claims that the room has been haunted by a witch for years and he doesn’t want to risk letting the evil out. After Fiona goes missing during his stay, Ohm suspects she may have gone missing in the haunted quarters and breaks in to confirm his theory.

Adam Scott is likely best known for his television work as sympathetic protagonists in Parks And Recreation and Severance but his character in Hokum is markedly pricklier. He brusquely refuses to sign one of his books for a fan and when Alby confesses he has aspirations to write, Ohm burns Alby’s hand with a hot spoon and mocks, “You’re gonna need thicker skin than that if you’re gonna make it as a writer.” During the initial part of his stay at the Bilberry Woods Hotel, you’re almost hoping some terrible creature of Irish myth comes out and devours this guy. But in time, we find out what drives him to drink: a tragic accident in childhood that permanently fractured his relationship with his parents. Scott does excellent work shifting Ohm’s arrogance and ego in the first act to a care and curiosity when the one person he opens up to at the hotel disappears without a trace. By the time he makes it up to the room, he’s about as petrified as we are.

Teaming up again with Oddity cinematographer Colm Hogan, Damian McCarthy does an outstanding job filling Hokum with mostly-static frames of dimly lit halls and rooms where we’re forced to reckon with what waits in the shadows. One reason McCarthy excels at delivering superlative jump scares is that he sets them up with patient shot selection where our eyes slowly adjust to differing levels of darkness. But for those wary of artsy “slow burn” horror that goes nowhere, believe that McCarthy knows how to pay off the moments of silence and stillness brilliantly. The overall pace of Hokum feels more brisk than McCarthy’s previous films but it reflects a confidence in storytelling rather than a director trying to rush through things. This is a filmmaker who’s honing his craft and refining the ways he can chill us to the bone.

True to its title, the otherworldly aspects of Hokum tend to be the most compelling and the more formulaic human-based mystery takes over a bit too much of the third act. There’s a specific sequence set around a ringing bell that’s tense for a time but ends up feeling more contrived as it plays out. But like the possessed wooden golem in Oddity, McCarthy again populates his tale with memorable ghouls to keep us up at night. Will O’Connell does double duty in a nightmare scene as Jack The Jackass, a demented children’s show host that sports Pennywise-like bulging eyes and surrealist anthropomorphization out of a David Lynch offering. If you’re someone who’s always looking for more things that go bump in the night, Hokum is happy to oblige.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Mortal Kombat II, starring Karl Urban and Adeline Rudolph, is an action sequel in which martial arts combatants from the Earthrealm battle in a high-stakes contest designed by the tyrannous emperor of the Outworld.
The Sheep Detectives, a comedy mystery starring Hugh Jackman and Nicholas Braun, follows a flock of sheep as they work together to solve a murder case after their beloved shepherd is found dead.
Billie Eilish – Hit Me Hard And Soft: The Tour is a 3D concert film directed and produced by James Cameron, featuring performances from pop superstar Billie Eilish during the Manchester, England dates of her Hit Me Hard And Soft tour last year.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup