The campy supernatural tale Forbidden Fruits is, as I’m told the kids say, a lot. Adapted from the 2019 Lily Houghton play *big breath* Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die, the big-screen treatment opts for a snappier title but maintains the verbose spirit of the source material. The snarky screenplay, co-written by Houghton with director Meredith Alloway, is littered with allusions to female-facing millennial mainstays like The Devil Wears Prada and Mean Girls. That the film’s narrative so obviously mirrors the latter at the outset seems to be by design, luring us in with a familiar story of yore to develop into something more dangerous and deadly. While it never reaches the subversiveness of titles like Heathers or The Virgin Suicides, it’s a pastiche ripe with themes about how hard it can be for young women to stick together.

Forbidden Fruits takes place almost entirely within the confines of fictional Texas shopping center Highland Place Mall, where the supercilious Apple (Lili Reinhart) and her fellow Free Eden employees Cherry (Victoria Pedretti) and Fig (Alexandra Shipp) rule the roost. When they arrive at the food court, other mall workers scurry to leave them at what now becomes the popular kids’ table. It doesn’t quite scare off Pumpkin (Lola Tung), a new hire at the Auntie Anne’s fill-in Sister Salt’s, who offers them pretzel bite samples and piques their interest in the process. Pumpkin subsequently applies to work at their Urban Outfitters-like store and when she passes the interview with flying colors, she not only joins their clique but also their secret coven, where they perform rituals in the basement of Free Eden after-hours.

It’s when things get witchy — and a word that rhymes with “witchy” — that feminist fable Forbidden Fruits feels free to let its freak flag fly. Once Pumpkin is in the group, she discovers how controlling Apple is over Cherry and Fig’s lives, blocking off their personal calendars for them and casually lobbing barbs like, “that’s another unattractive quality we need to work on.” She also learns of a hex that befell ex-employee Pickle (Emma Chamberlain), so catatonic as a result of the witch’s curse that she’s seen literally banging her head against windows of outlets in the mall. There’s obviously something rotten at the root of this supposed paradise atop Apple’s guise of sisterhood and the more time Pumpkin spends with the trio, the more resolved she feels to expose the extent of the performative friendship they have in place.

Diablo Cody, who penned high school-set comedies Juno and Jennifer’s Body, serves as executive producer here and it’s fair to say that if she had written a reboot 30 years removed from The Craft, it could’ve come out very similarly to Forbidden Fruits. Even though this movie is seemingly set in the present day, it certainly maintains the late-aughts veneer of Cody’s most notable efforts; depicting a shopping mall as bustling in 2026 is arguably more anachronistic than featuring smartphones in a film set 20 years ago. What feels fresh in this film is how it angles against Apple’s brand of false feminism, wherein she can assert poisonous control over her friends’ lives by labelling any male interloper as part of the patriarchy. She feels so threatened by the suggestion that these ladies talk through their feelings at therapy that she forces them to confess their sins to the spirit of “ultimate femme martyr” Marilyn Monroe in a designated dressing room.

It may be too much to ask Forbidden Fruits to be more of anything but I wish it had committed to the edginess of its very first scene — involving a hot latte and a lecherous man’s crotch — in its storytelling. Meredith Alloway also delays the peripheral horror trappings to the degree that the violent final 20 minutes and mid-credit scene almost feel like they belong in a different movie. But the film’s more crucial aspect is the satirical heightened reality that she and her quartet of young actresses establish before the conclusion. Everyone here is on the same page aesthetically and tonally, down to Lili Reinhart’s ostentatious amber wig that seems to have been snatched from Nicole Kidman’s character in Practical Magic. Just as fashion is never finished, films like Forbidden Fruits about women navigating the tricky territory of burgeoning bonds will always be en vogue.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Beginning in theaters on Wednesday is The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, an animated adventure starring Chris Pratt and Anya Taylor-Joy, continuing the saga of the Super Mario Bros as they team up with Yoshi and Princess Rosalina to take on Bowser’s son Bowser Jr.
Also coming to theaters is The Drama, a black comedy starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, in which a couple’s relationship is shaken days before their wedding when one partner discovers unsettling truths about the other.
Premiering on Hulu is Pizza Movie, a college comedy starring Gaten Matarazzo and Sean Giambrone, following a pair of psychoactively-inhibited students who face an unexpectedly epic journey when they must navigate two flights of stairs to retrieve their pizza delivery.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

After his terrific feature debut Emily The Criminal, writer-director John Patton Ford returns with another desperate-times-desperate-measures thriller in How To Make A Killing. A loose adaptation of the dark comedy Kind Hearts And Coronets, the film makes another strong case for rising star Glen Powell as a leading man on the heels of Twisters and The Running Man. His devilish charisma has been put to great use in effects-heavy sequels and remakes like those, but in a comparatively smaller budget indie like this, watching Powell work his way around a stacked ensemble feels like its own special effect. The movie marries the one-percenter bloodlust of last year’s Death Of A Unicorn with the satirical roll-up-your-sleeves gumption of recent release No Other Choice, and while it doesn’t reach the transcendent heights of the latter, it’s assuredly a better time at the movies than the former.

Powell stars as Becket Redfellow, a menswear associate making his way in New Jersey after his mother was cast out of their obscenely wealthy family as a teenager for having Becket out of wedlock. His childhood crush Julia (Margaret Qualley) pops into the shop one day and as they catch up on old times, she asks him about the fantastical family fortune he routinely mentioned when they were kids that he would eventually inherit. It turns out that even though he’s estranged from the Redfellows, seven living family members are all that stand between him and billions of dollars. “Well, call me when you’ve killed them all,” Julia jokes as she leaves, but after Becket is ousted from his job to make room for the owner’s son, he hatches up a precarious plan to knock off each of the affluent obstacles one by one.

It’d be hard to tell a sympathetic story of a reluctant serial killer, even in a black comedy, if his victims were virtuous, so How To Make A Killing makes sure to play up the pomposity of the relatives on Becket’s hit list. His youngest cousin Taylor (Raff Law) is introduced almost doing Becket’s job for him, jumping out of a helicopter and miraculously not breaking his neck as he lands in a pool surrounded by partygoers. Elsewhere, cousins Noah (Zach Woods) and Steven (Topher Grace) squander their money and status with hipster photography and vainglorious preaching, respectively. But Becket’s plan hits a snag when his uncle Warren (Bill Camp) takes him under his wing and gets him a job in the banking business. His scheme gets put on hold further when he also takes a shine to Noah’s schoolteacher girlfriend Ruth (Jessica Henwick).

Where John Patton Ford’s previous effort was committed to solely being a lean-and-mean crime thriller, How To Make A Killing stretches itself thinner in terms of genre convictions. The emergence of a love triangle puts portions of the plot in romantic territory, while the dynamics of the crime storyline recall the film noir archetypes of the hard-luck everyman and femme fatale. Ford bites off a bit more than he can chew narratively as well, front-loading too many flashbacks and utilizing an ironic framing device that renders the ending preposterous. But Ford’s sharp writing finds the absurdity in Becket’s situation and even when he’s in peril, Powell makes the zingers zing. “There’s a rumor out there that money doesn’t buy happiness,” he smirks. “Money does buy happiness. We’re all adults here. Let’s move on.”

Handsome and brimming with confidence, Powell could just as easily be playing one of the WASPy schmucks that Becket targets but he plays up the character’s underdog qualities to the degree that we can root for him. Conversely, Topher Grace and a typically brilliant Zach Woods make their characters so hilariously despicable in their self-centeredness and vapidity that we simply can’t wait for them to get it. Jessica Henwick makes the most of an underwritten cypher for Becket’s morality and Margaret Qualley radiates sex appeal with a dash of danger as the unhappily married Julia. Even when the plot swerves in more directions than is advisable, this killer cast makes How To Make A Killing worth getting your hands into its risky business.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Opening in theaters is Scream 7, a slasher sequel starring Neve Campbell and Isabel May, in which a new Ghostface killer emerges in the town where Sidney Prescott has built a new life and her darkest fears are realized as her daughter becomes the next target.
Also playing in theaters is EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert, a documentary and concert film of the titular King Of Rock And Roll featuring newly restored and never-before-seen footage from long-lost 1970s Las Vegas residency footage.
Streaming on Hulu is In The Blink Of An Eye, a sci-fi drama starring Kate McKinnon and Rashida Jones, weaving together three storylines, spanning thousands of years that intersect and reflect on hope, connection and the circle of life.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

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

After a detour on Hulu, with two entries that streamed exclusively on the platform, the Predator franchise is back on the big screen for the first time since the 2018 dud The Predator. Those direct-to-Hulu movies, Prey and Predator: Killer Of Killers, and this latest theatrical release, Predator: Badlands, are all headed up by 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg, who has effectively taken over the series for 20th Century Studios. Reteaming with his Prey scribe Patrick Aison, Trachtenberg continues to delve deeper into this treacherous universe and reconsider what a Predator movie can even be. This particular chapter explores more about the Yautja extraterrestrial species, who typically act as the “Predator” villains in most of the other films but essentially serve as the main characters this time out.

On the planet Yautja Prime, we meet the brothers Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) and Kwei (Mike Homik) as they spar to train and prove themselves to their bloodthirsty tribe. As the runt of their clan, Dek is even most desperate to assert his dominance and ventures to the deadly planet Genna in order to win the respect of his father Njohrr (Reuben de Jong). There, he intends to hunt the “unkillable” Kalisk creature and bring it back as a trophy, as their kind is wont to do. On other planets, the Yautja may be considered “predators” but on Genna, they’re lower down on the food chain and about as vulnerable as the humans were in the original ’80s actioner that kicked things off 38 years ago. Fortunately, Dek finds help in the form of Thia (Elle Fanning), a bisected android whose knowledge of Genna and its perils can help Dek on his mission.

Reframing a Predator movie as one where the titular creature is on the run as opposed to running things lends itself to a hero’s journey and Badlands makes a proper protagonist out of Dek. Thanks to stellar motion-capture work by Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, this is the most expressive and vulnerable a Yautja alien has looked in the franchise thus far. Sure, they may not be much more glamorous than how Arnold memorably described them in Predator, but Dek’s eyes adequately convey the emotions we need to relate to his struggles. There are other tweaks to the design that help too, like leaving Dek without the typical Yautja armor and giving him one tooth that’s shorter than the other three to drive home his underdog state. As his peppy sidekick, Elle Fanning sometimes lays it on a bit thick but Thia’s wide-eyed optimism generally plays well against Dek’s fierce determination.

Predator: Badlands is rated PG-13 but it certainly doesn’t skimp on the sci-fi action that we’ve come to expect from these movies; apparently the MPA goes easier on bloodletting when the blood in question is bright green. Thia isn’t exaggerating when she tells Dek that everything on the planet is designed with death in mind. Not two minutes after crash landing on Genna, branch monsters are out to kill the new visiting Yautja. With spontaneously exploding caterpillars and fields of grass so sharp that it can cut flesh just by grazing it, this is clearly a planet that woke up and chose violence. The ways that Dek and Thia battle back implement creative creature design and inventive choreography, as when Dek first tangos with the Kalisk to find that it can regenerate limbs at an alarming rate. Another terrific fight scene finds Thia’s disconnected top half and bottom half simultaneously duking it out with fellow Weyland-Yutani synthetic robots.

In attempting to expand this universe, Trachtenberg and his team have dug deeper into the mythology behind the Yautja creatures and have woven themes about how they live into Predator: Badlands. “The Yautja are prey to no one, friend to no one and predator to all,” an opening card reads, but Dek’s tale of rugged determination intentionally calls these core tenets into question. It turns out the lone wolf strategy doesn’t work so well when you’re this far away from home field advantage and, as Thia reminds Dek, the alpha wolf isn’t necessarily the strongest but the one who best protects the pack. It’s a long way from macho contras getting picked off one by one in a Central American rainforest but, perhaps improbably, Trachtenberg is 3 for 3 in telling unique stories from this initially myopic Predator world.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Wicked: For Good, a fantasy musical starring Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, continuing the tale of Oz citizens Elphaba and Glinda as they embrace their new identities of Wicked Witch Of The West and Glinda The Good.
Also playing in theaters is Rental Family, a family dramedy starring Brendan Fraser and Takehiro Hira, centering around an American actor living in Tokyo who starts working for a Japanese “rental family” service to play stand-in roles in other people’s lives.
Premiering on Netflix is Train Dreams, a period drama starring Joel Edgerton and Felicity Jones, following a logger who works to develop the railroad system across the US, causing him to spend time away from his family as he struggles with his place in a changing world.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Emma Stone and director Yorgos Lanthimos continue their creative collaboration with Bugonia, their third project together in as many years. This time, the two-time Academy Award winner plays Michelle Fuller, the CEO of a powerful player in the pharmaceutical space called Auxolith. She’s the kind of well-paid boss babe who gets up at 4:30 in the morning to run on a treadmill that probably costs more than most people’s cars and has table ornaments with platitudes like “let’s kick impossible’s [butt]” inscribed on them. Her routine of power striding into the office and confusing subordinates with corporate doublespeak is interrupted by the presence of cousins Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis) at her house after work. They’re there in Jennifer Aniston masks and they’re there to abduct her.

Michelle is drugged and when she wakes up, her head is shaved, she’s chained up in a basement and is accused by Teddy of being the queen of an “Andromedan” alien species. Why Teddy and Don are so convinced Michelle isn’t actually human, and the lengths to which she will go to prove that she is, are best left for viewers to discover for themselves. Bugonia is a remake of a South Korean movie called Save The Green Planet!, though they’re both so seemingly singular that it’s hard to imagine either one has ties to anything else. Even more surprising is how closely Lanthimos and his scribe Will Tracy follow the narrative beats of the bugnuts predecessor, to the extent that seeing the original may actively ruin the experience of seeing this reimagining. Still, the pair do enough to distinguish this tonally and thematically from Jang Joon-hwan’s film to justify the refresh.

Stone gave what is likely the best performance of her career a couple years ago in Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things and even though her work in Bugonia likely won’t score her another Oscar, it’s another perfectly-calibrated piece of acting. The CEO character in Save The Green Planet! is actively awful and spends the majority of his captivity mocking the kidnappers. He even brags about his IQ at one point, a go-to for the intellectually insecure. By comparison, Michelle is much more sympathetic, still calloused and condescending in a way she can’t seem to help — her correction of Teddy’s pronunciation of “shibboleths” is so impulsive that it’s basically a sneeze — but nonetheless someone who doesn’t deserve what she’s being put through. As her eyes dart around the musty basement when she comes to, you can practically see her desperately attempting to recall hostage negotiation techniques she was likely taught at some point.

A way that Lanthimos and Tracy most meet our moment with Bugonia is in tapping into how much of a communication breakdown we’ve sustained by siloing ourselves off from one another. Jesse Plemons does an outstanding job as Teddy, a man who’s been done dirty enough that he’s retreated to the conspiracy-ridden internet to find meaning when the real world simply doesn’t make sense. He wants to turn the tables, to act as though he’s in control of the situation with power over someone who would have power over him in any other scenario, but he’s ultimately scared and confused. He wants to be right in his theory that Michelle is from another planet but he won’t accept her just telling him what he wants to hear either. The lack of direction makes things difficult for Don too, who’s blindly accepts just about everything that comes out of Teddy’s mouth but develops moral scruples when contradictions arise.

Bugonia is powerfully acted, sharp-tongued and, for all its peculiarities, is probably Lanthimos’ most approachable work since The Favourite — if you haven’t seen any of his movies, I’d consider this as strong a starting spot as any. Still, I wish he had done more to depart from the existing text and made this tale his own, not from a stylistic sense but from a narrative one. He carries over a police character, here played by Stavros Halkias, that could’ve just as easily been converted into a different plot device that forces Teddy and Don to scramble. Teddy’s backstory is better implied than directly shown, with black-and-white flashbacks that work too hard to spell out his motivations. There’s also a scene at a hospital that makes absolutely no sense. But as a darkly funny cat-and-mouse game set against the backdrop our divided times, Bugonia has plenty in it worth buzzing about.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Predator: Badlands, starring Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi, is a sci-fi action film following a young Yautja Predator outcast from his clan who finds an unlikely ally on his journey to find and defeat the ultimate adversary.
Christy, starring Sydney Sweeney and Ben Foster, is a sports biopic chronicling professional boxer Christy Martin’s rise to becoming America’s most well-known and successful female pugilist in the 1990s.
Nuremberg, starring Russell Crowe and Rami Malek, is a historical drama involving a World War II psychiatrist tasked with evaluating Nazi leaders before the Nuremberg trials, growing increasingly obsessed with understanding evil as he forms a disturbing bond with Hermann Göring.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

The medical dramedy Code 3 is a bit like if the Emmy-winning series The Pitt had an episode that stepped outside the titular emergency room and just focused on the paramedics who rush patients to Dr. Robby and his crew. Like that show, the film envelops us in the world of these workers as they navigate the perpetual pains of their profession, mainly associated with the build-up of emotional trauma from the horrors they’ve seen. Granted, there’s more humor here, and it’s more of the fourth wall-breaking variety than interpersonal chatter, but director Christopher Leone’s aim remains to put us in the shoes of the medical community’s most unsung heroes. Leone penned the script with Patrick Pianezza, who worked 12 years as an EMT and brings to the screenplay the kind of world-weary wisdom you can only really get from firsthand experience.

Code 3 takes place over the final 24-hour shift of 18-year veteran paramedic Randy (Rainn Wilson), who gets a surprise job offer from a medical insurance company after a seemingly disastrous interview. He’s much overdue for a career change, beyond burned out and suffering panic attacks in a job where most people don’t make it past 5 years. After he gets the call, Randy is ready to leave right away but his dispatch manager Shanice (Yvette Nicole Brown) tasks him with showing the ropes to ride along trainee Jessica (Aimee Carrero) on his final day. Along with Mike (Lil Rel Howery), the only driving partner who’s been willing to put up with Randy’s surly disposition over the years, the trio zoom across California highways responding to all manner of non-stop emergency calls and try to keep their heads on straight in the process.

During his 9-season tenure on The Office, Rainn Wilson got plenty of opportunities to talk directly to the camera and Code 3 makes quick work of handing him the reins with an opening voiceover. “So…how’s your life goin’?” he asks, as we see an ambulance blaring past numerous cars en route to a crime scene. “I am your best friend on your worst day,” he continues, although his tone doesn’t exactly convey the geniality and inspire the assurance one might hope. We soon learn that Randy doesn’t exactly have an ideal degree of proverbial bedside manner, arriving on-site praying for a potential drug overdose to instead be a disturbing the peace matter so he can let the cops deal with it. Disgruntled, he assesses the OD victim while grilling a tagalong med student and then turning to the audience to remind us of our mortality. As dark as the humor on The Office could be, it never quite got to cut-to-black existential crisis levels of nervous laughter.

As director, Christopher Leone threads a fine needle with Code 3 between dark comedy and procedural drama in his depiction of EMS workers putting everything they have into their job. It also provides insights into hierarchies within the medical community and takes well-deserved jabs at a healthcare system that’s as disheveled as the psyche of our broken-down protagonist. This combination is best typified by a slow pan around a hospital, beginning with an arrogant surgeon played by Rob Riggle, which overlays the average salaries for everyone on staff and calls attention to how comparatively undercompensated paramedics are. Centered around three characters on the chaotic front lines, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the film can also at times resemble a war movie, specifically The Hurt Locker in a notable narrative parallel.

Along with tone-controlled direction and a trenchant script, the performances in Code 3 feel of a piece with the lived-in ethos of the engrossing project. Wilson does an outstanding job dappling drips of hopefulness upon the overwhelmingly cynical canvas that is his beleaguered tech’s mindset. Before roaring into a searing monologue aimed at everyone with whom he interacts on a daily basis, Randy asserts that he builds emotional walls not to keep people out but to keep all of the bad experiences in. Howery’s role doesn’t have as much dramatic heft and is more within the actor’s wheelhouse of comic relief but it’s certainly a welcome salve for the often intense proceedings. His hypothetical conversation as a Subway customer with would-be sandwich artist Randy isn’t quite the year’s funniest scene to invoke that ubiquitous eatery but it’s an easy second.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Him, a sports horror film starring Tyriq Withers and Marlon Wayans, involving a young athlete as he descends into a world of terror when he’s invited to train with a legendary quarterback whose charisma curdles into something darker.
Also coming to theaters is A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, a romantic fantasy starring Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell, telling the imaginative tale of two strangers and the unbelievable journey that connects them.
Streaming on Hulu is Swiped, a tech biopic starring Lily James and Dan Stevens, centered around the life and career of entrepreneur Whitney Wolfe Herd, the founder and former CEO of the online dating platform Bumble.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

The chilling mystery Weapons, writer-director Zach Cregger’s follow-up to 2022’s out-of-nowhere camp hit Barbarian, finds the The Whitest Kids U’ Know alum following the sketch comedy-to-horror filmmaking path paved by Jordan Peele. It’s a formally and narratively more ambitious movie than his previous effort, telling its twisty-turny tale through the eyes of six different characters, each contributing their own fragments to the master narrative. At times, the chronology overlaps and we see the same scene from a different perspective but Cregger mostly uses the technique to parse out bits of information until the entire picture is filled in. While it falls victim to the logic gaps and plot holes that have plagued multi-layered stories before it, the film is a freaky fun puzzle box to unlock and contains some of the year’s best scares to boot.

Set in the fictitious small town of Maybrook, Weapons opens with elementary school teacher Justine Gandy (Julia Garner) arriving at her classroom with only one of her 18 students, Alex (Cary Christopher), in attendance. The ensuing police investigation reveals that the other 17 kids all woke up at 2:17 AM the previous night and ran out of the respective houses, vanishing into the dark. As days and weeks go by with no further understanding of what caused this tragically bizarre event, the parents of the missing children like Archer Graff (Josh Brolin) gradually turn on Justine and press the school principal Marcus Miller (Benedict Wong) for answers. Also feeling the pressure from desperate townspeople are police captain Ed Locke (Toby Huss) and his son-in-law officer Paul Morgan (Alden Ehrenreich), the latter of whom is looking to rekindle a flame with Justine.

Through creepy bookend voiceovers, the first of which sets up a story in which “a lot of people die in a lot of weird ways”, Weapons percolates with the unease we feel collectively when faced with the unimaginable. In the wake of tragedy, we can’t accept that there is no solution and no way to prevent its future occurrence. The fractured narrative underscores the social fissures that the disappearance creates between the people of Maybrook, who have a much more difficult time working the problem separately than if they had done so together from the start. As the storyteller, Cregger delights in patiently putting the pieces together while simultaneously including numerous terrifying moments designed to make us jump out of our seats. A night-set scene, in which Justine is asleep in her car, is a masterclass in how lighting, sound design and a petrifying performance can lend themselves to a perfect horror setpiece.

Like many horror outings, Weapons‘ spookiest scenes are set in the wee small hours of the morning, while the whole town should be asleep but its citizens are burdened by somnambulance and unshakeable nightmares. But even during the daytime moments, cinematographer Larkin Seiple is able to carry over a half-awake nerviness to the shot composition that makes everything feel that much more unpredictable. Much like DP Roger Deakins accomplished in 2013’s Prisoners — another small-town thriller centered around missing kids — Seiple drenches each frame with a visualized version of the dread and dreariness that fill our characters. If you can see this film in IMAX, it’s worth the upgrade to get a better glimpse into the shadows and darkness on the edge of town.

Given its story structure, Weapons doesn’t have quite as much time as I’d prefer to more deeply develop its characters but the talented ensemble does a great job imbuing their roles with ardor and unexpected bits of humor too. Josh Brolin and Julia Garner turn in reliably great work crashing up against one another as types they’ve played before, the former as a gruff everyman looking for justice and the latter as a troubled young woman looking for solace. Besides another actor whose presence is best left to be discovered, the movie’s secret weapon may be Austin Abrams as a drug addict who’s more credible than the rest of the community seems to think. Weapons doesn’t quite hit all the ambitious targets it’s shooting for but it shows that Cregger is anything but a one-hit wonder after Barbarian and has the chops to go the distance as a filmmaker.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Nobody 2, an action comedy starring Bob Odenkirk and Connie Nielsen, following a former lethal assassin whose violent past catches up with him once again, this time on summer vacation with his family.
Also playing only in theaters is Witchboard, a horror remake starring Madison Iseman and Aaron Dominguez, involving a cursed spirit board which awakens dark forces and drags a young couple into a deadly game of possession and deception.
Streaming on Netflix is Night Always Comes, a crime thriller starring Vanessa Kirby and Jennifer Jason Leigh, telling the story of a desperate woman who sets out on a dangerous odyssey, confronting her own dark past over the course of one propulsive night.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Even though it’s statistically more likely for one to die by a falling coconut than by a shark, that hasn’t stopped filmmakers from framing the finned fish as killing machines hungry for human flesh since Jaws first terrorized audiences 50 years ago. While the new Shudder release Dangerous Animals continues this trend by depicting them as violent, it’s decidedly more nuanced than a standard creature feature. Instead, director Sean Byrne’s latest project exists in the middle of a horror-based Venn diagram, where the shark movie, survival film and slasher subgenres somehow swim together. Set in the deceptively idyllic location of the Gold Coast in Australia, this is a creepy and creative export glowing up from the land down under.

After a brutal cold open that perfectly ripples the waters, Dangerous Animals introduces us to Zephyr (Hassie Harrison), an attachment-averse surfer whose beat-up van doubles as her domicile. An ask for jumper cables from fellow surfer Moses (Josh Heuston) leads to a one night stand, where Zephyr skedaddles in the morning before he can treat her to a pancake breakfast. On her way to the next sunrise surf spot, she borrows a fin key from nearby bloke Tucker (Jai Courtney), just before he ambushes her with a bag over the head and drags her unconscious onto his boat. Under the guise of Tucker’s Experience Cage Diving & Adventure Tours, it turns out the captain has been moonlighting as a serial killer, using his victims as bait for hungry sharks miles off the coast. Pitted against a physically imposing murderer, Zephyr’s only hope is to outsmart her captor and make it safely back to shore.

The premise is a bit ridiculous and stretches credulity more than once but Dangerous Animals works as well as it does in large part due to the two central performances from Harrison and Courtney. Zephyr may seem like a free-spirited surfer girl at first glance but Harrison shades her with survivalist grit that has us fighting tooth-and-nail along with her. She also has a movie star quality to her that lights up the screen; I was reminded of Helen Hunt in the mid-90s around Twister‘s release. On the subject of Hollywood presence, Courtney’s maniacal role recalls fellow Aussie Russell Crowe’s menacing turn in 2020’s Unhinged. He’s an actor who hasn’t had much success as a leading man in blockbuster fare like Terminator Genisys and Insurgent but he seems to be a much better fit as a ruthless antagonist.

While Nick Lepard’s script doesn’t contribute much new on the page when it comes to serial killer tales, Sean Byrne adds loads of little flourishes in his direction that remind us Dangerous Animals is a shark of a different color. The way he uses Aussie singer Stevie Wright’s “Evie” diegetically to show off his killer’s not-so-killer dance moves recalls how “Goodbye Horses” was used in The Silence Of The Lambs to get us into the antagonist’s headspace. The set design inside Tucker’s quarters is full of easy-to-miss visual clues as to how this guy developed his MO and has gone undetected for as long as he has. Even in the digital age, he still has a fondness for video tape and a shot of his chillingly well-populated VHS closet portends a grisly fate for Zephyr.

On the sonic side of things, composer Michael Yezerski lends a tense and thrilling music backdrop that always hints at more danger right below the surface. The soundtrack counters the tension nicely in some of the earlier quiet scenes, set to ethereal cuts from Fleetwood Mac and Cigarettes After Sex, where Zephyr and Moses connect. There’s even a running joke about Zephyr being gobsmacked that Creedence Clearwater Revival’s take on “Ooby Dooby” is Moses’ all-time favorite tune. For those curious: the Arctic Monkeys song that shares its name with the movie does not pop up in the soundtrack. Though the title initially reads as a touch generic, Dangerous Animals reminds us that man remains the most dangerous animal, especially when compared to seemingly sinister sharks.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is How To Train Your Dragon, a live-action remake starring Mason Thames and Gerard Butler, retelling the story of a timid Viking who defies centuries of tradition when he befriends a feared but misunderstood dragon.
Also coming to theaters is Materialists, a romantic comedy starring Dakota Johnson and Chris Evans, following a young and ambitious New York City matchmaker as she finds herself torn between the perfect match and her imperfect ex.
Premiering on Apple TV+ is Echo Valley, a family thriller starring Julianne Moore and Sydney Sweeney, involving a horse trainer whose world is turned upside down when her daughter arrives at her door covered in blood that is not hers.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Concluding both the Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One chapter from 2023 and possibly the whole series, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning seems to at least be the final time we’ll see Tom Cruise in the superspy Ethan Hunt role he first portrayed almost 30 years ago. Naturally, it’s a bittersweet sendoff: necessary given how much unmatched physicality the now-62-year-old Cruise puts into these productions but unfortunate that it winds down one of the very best action franchises around. While this last adventure is both the most narratively simplistic and somberly apocalyptic in the series, it’s bolstered by a terrific ever-expanding cast and two extended setpieces that are unmatched in their guileless ambition and technical coordination.

We pick up the action two months after the events of Dead Reckoning, with the world in chaos due to the proliferation of The Entity’s reality-bending influence on the digital landscape, and with Ethan Hunt in possession of the key to stopping it. The locked chamber that holds The Entity’s source code is aboard a sunken submarine buried deep in the ocean, the coordinates of which are known only by Ethan’s enemy Gabriel (Esai Morales). Bent on triggering nuclear annihilation, The Entity has every world leader, including US President Erika Sloane (Angela Bassett), up against the wall watching control of the arsenals being seized by the evil AI. IMF team regulars Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg), along with new members Grace (Hayley Atwell) and Paris (Pom Klementieff), are all in with Ethan to put an end to The Entity’s reign.

Combined with Dead Reckoning, The Final Reckoning caps off a storyline that runs over 5 and a half hours and now that we’ve seen this second portion, I would’ve preferred the series not end on a two-parter. The main reason is that Gabriel and The Entity are promising villains that would’ve worked better separately in their own films, as opposed to having them split time to face off against Ethan. Dead Reckoning teases exposition with Gabriel that The Final Reckoning doesn’t properly pay off, likely because there are too many other narrative threads that need to be tended to. As for non-human villains, The Entity has a couple moments of menace but in this final chapter, the articulation of its power is mainly relegated to people in power distressingly staring at screens. There are plenty of terrifying ways to depict a rogue artificial intelligence and this Reckoning arc doesn’t fully realize that potential.

But anyone who has watched the Mission: Impossible series knows that Ethan’s truest archnemesis is gravity and as such, The Final Reckoning has what may be their most exhilarating showdown to date. The climactic biplane sequence has been the focal point of the film’s marketing but no matter how many glimpses you’ve seen of it so far, it’s an entirely different experience watching it play out at-length in an ideally IMAX theater. The Burj Khalifa setpiece in Ghost Protocol remains my favorite scene in the series but this new plane chase is a very close second. It’s a peerless showcase of stunt work and if the Academy Award For Achievement In Stunt Design was being handed out for the first time next year instead of in 2028, I would be appalled if it didn’t go to this crew.

The Final Reckoning dedicates plenty of its extended runtime looking back on the series it’s summing up and likewise inspires us to reflect on what’s given the franchise its staying power. The most obvious answer would be Tom Cruise as the lead actor but I would argue Tom Cruise the producer is equally as important to what’s made each of these entries so consistently enjoyable. Though he’s technically never been credited with directing a film, Cruise clearly has an almost innate infatuation for storytelling and his influence in that regard has been particularly felt during the Christopher McQuarrie-directed Missions over the past ten years. It’s hard to argue there’s someone who believes in the magic of the movies more than Cruise and though he’ll likely be wearing a different hat the next time we see him on-screen, I can’t wait to see what he’ll pull out of it next.

Score – 3.5/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Bring Her Back, a horror film starring Sally Hawkins and Billy Barratt, centered around a brother and sister who are introduced to their new sibling by their foster mother, only to learn that she has a terrifying secret.
Also playing only in theaters is Karate Kid: Legends, a martial arts sequel starring Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio, following a kung fu prodigy who embarks on a journey to enter the ultimate karate competition with the help of two seasoned veterans.
Premiering on Max is Mountainhead, a satirical dramedy starring Steve Carell and Jason Schwartzman, which finds four ultra-wealthy friends in the tech industry retreating to a snowy mountain mansion amidst an ongoing financial crisis.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup