Even though more than 30 years have passed since its release, Ang Lee’s Sense And Sensibility isn’t the kind of literary adaptation I would be particularly keen on trying to update. Bolstered by an incredible ensemble cast, it’s an endlessly enchanting and rapturous rendering that remains one of the finest cinematic interpretations of Jane Austen’s work. Nonetheless, director Georgia Oakley and screenwriter Diana Reid have crafted their own version of the classic novel that distinguishes itself enough tonally from other takes. It’s a more urgent and less stately production, favoring muted colors and an omnipresent music score over the bright and whimsical Austen screen dramatizations of the mid-90s. Arriving early in this year’s award season, this Sense And Sensibility finds Focus Features attempting to recreate the success they had with the somber Hamnet last year.

Set in England during the early 19th century, the story opens with news of Henry Dashwood’s death, leaving Mrs. Dashwood (Caitríona Balfe) with their three daughters Elinor (Daisy Edgar-Jones), Marianne (Esmé Creed-Miles), and Margaret (Bodhi Rae Breathnach). Forced to downsize to a country cottage and faced with the prospect of poverty, the eldest daughters set out to find suitors who will improve their situation. Soon after, Elinor meets the dashing and debonair Edward Ferrars (George MacKay), quickly falls for him and patiently waits for him to ask for her hand in marriage. Marianne, the more impulsive and idealistic of the sisters, is set up with reserved and reticent family friend Colonel Brandon (Herbert Nordrum) but is drawn to the flighty and fanciful John Willoughby (Frank Dillane) instead.

In addition to the inclusion of the Norwegian Nordrum in an ensemble traditionally comprised of English performers, Sense And Sensibility possesses a few other inspired casting choices that help it stand out. The always magnificent Fiona Shaw is a hoot as the gabby and gregarious Mrs. Jennings, who invites the Dashwoods to a consequential trip to bustling London. Conversely, Stacy Martin is perfectly prickly as Edward’s disapproving sister, the closest thing this tale has to a proper antagonist, apart from the unpredictable wicket gates of romance. But as the soft-spoken Colonel Brandon, Nordrum gives the film’s most nuanced performance that paints the character with colors we haven’t seen in other adaptations before. Elsewhere, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles do fine and familiar work in their exploration of the unbreakable bonds of sisterhood between the two oldest Dashwood daughters.

In terms of presentation, director Georgia Oakley jettisons the more whimsical touches we associated with Austen’s work to make her Sense And Sensibility a more solemn and serious-minded affair. The staid cinematography by Arnaud Potier drains the warmer colors of those 1990s Austen adaptations, favoring a more subdued palette that makes more frequent use of dramatic close-ups as opposed to wide shots. Instead of the aristocratic frolic of Patrick Doyle’s music from the 1995 movie, composer Roger Goula’s score is more melodramatic and melancholy, typified by mournful choirs and downcast strings. The music is generally more insistent in its accompaniment as well, even drowning out some of the laugh lines at key moments of comic relief. I counted multiple instances where Fiona Shaw tries to rattle off a one-liner but the score undercuts the attempted witticism.

Still, this Sense And Sensibility is a reasonable entry point to on-screen Austen and younger folks willing to give this a chance may prefer this moodier version to the refined, “capital-P productions” from decades earlier. Perhaps those more stagey cinematic creations are seen as stilted and old-fashioned now, just as musicals from the 1960s seemed to me when I was a kid in the 90s. The more dour tone of this latest iteration may more keenly reflect the way Gen Z and Alpha feel about the current conditions of financial and romantic hardships they face in their everyday lives. Do we want level-headed art that reflects how things are in the real world or do we want escapist art that lets our minds wander in fantastical worlds for a couple hours? It’s a dilemma that mirrors the two opposing temperaments at the heart of Sense And Sensibility. The “sense” crowd might eat it up but the “sensibility” group may find it stifling.

Score – 3/5

More new movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Street Fighter, starring Noah Centineo and Andrew Koji, adapts the long-running video game series in which a pair of estranged fighters are recruited to enter the World Warrior Tournament and, unbeknownst to them, the two are slated to square off against each other.
Whalefall, starring Austin Abrams and Josh Brolin, is a survival thriller in which a scuba diver searching for his father’s remains in the ocean is swallowed by a sperm whale, leaving him a short window of time to find a way to escape.
Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother, starring Mahershala Ali and John Cho, follows a devoutly religious hitman who embarks on a desperate journey across Houston to protect his children after his wife dies, confronting forces closing in and beliefs threatening to unravel.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Set in the Depression-era Pacific Northwest, the new quasi-Western The Weight stacks the cards against its protagonist quite heavily in its opening moments. We’re introduced to God-fearing mechanic Samuel Murphy (Ethan Hawke), joyriding his Ford Model 18 through the Eugene countryside with his daughter Penny (Avy Berry) in the backseat, but the good times don’t last. The two return to their apartment, where they’ve just been evicted and while going into town trying to sort things out with the bank, Samuel gets into an altercation with undercover cops and is sent to prison as a result. Months later, he’s transferred to a labor camp in Deschutes, where Warden Clancy (Russell Crowe) breaks inmates in while they’re forced to break rocks on the rough landscape. When Samuel is dubbed “Hercules” after leading an effort to dislodge a particularly difficult boulder, Clancy has another job in mind for him.

Along with Samuel’s fellow prisoners Rankin (Austin Amelio), Singh (Avi Nash) and Olson (Lucas Lynggaad Tonnesen), Clancy tasks Samuel with a dangerous mission to recover government gold and sneak it through the treacherous wilderness. Under the intense supervision of Clancy’s lackeys Amis (Sam Hazeldine) and Letender (George Burgess), the crew is flown up to the Black Hawk Gold Mines and charts out on a five-day trek back to Clancy’s outpost. With bag straps dug deep into their shoulders from the heavy cargo, the quartet of convicts with their two babysitters maneuver around the tricky terrain and accrue Indigenous runaway Anna (Julia Jones) along the way. Samuel has a guarantee from Clancy that once the job is done, he’ll sign his release papers and Samuel will be reunited with his Penny but the gold in tow is bound to generate the wrong kind of attention.

Working from a sturdy script by Matthew Booi and Shelby Gaines, seasoned editor and first-time director Padraic McKinley is a bit like Samuel, metaphorically making his way through a forest of storytelling rife with obstacles. During the journey, he indeed gets tripped up by artistic choices that are over-calculated for the kind of movie this is. Given McKinley’s long career in editing, it’s disappointing that The Weight feels fussed-over when it comes to how certain sequences are cut. It’s a sword that cuts both ways, as certain takes feel like they go on too long and others are rushed, to the extent that the action in some of the latter can be difficult to track. There’s a storm-set scene at night, lit by lightning flashes several seconds apart, where it’s difficult to discern exactly what’s happening until the sun comes up the next day. Some of the intentional long takes, particularly one where Rankin and Singh discuss socialism, don’t benefit from a conversational pace or the accompanying wide shot.

The cinematography from Matteo Cocco often favors a depth of focus so shallow that it obscures most of the lush nature surrounding our beleaguered smugglers. It plays great for close-ups, especially on Ethan Hawke as our harrowed hero, but the intensely fuzzy edges don’t work as well in medium shots and certainly not in wider shots. Some of the handheld sequences, like a grueling riverside skirmish late in the film, are thrilling in the way we’re thrust into the action, but another such scene shortly afterwards falls victim to a camera so shaky that it misses a crucial gunshot. Cocco’s reliance on natural lighting certainly tracks, given how much of The Weight takes place in the woods, although it means that the nighttime shots have to rely too much on campfires and lamplight with limited visibility.

Despite these technical aspects, the movie works overall due to the elemental endurance of what a parent will overcome to be reunited with their child. Ethan Hawke wears the conflict of the scenario beautifully, conveying Samuel’s knowledge that once this task is complete, Clancy could go back on his word and keep him imprisoned. Russell Crowe makes a meal of his brow-beating overseer and Julia Jones brings a grace to her Anna that contrasts well with the rough-and-tumble cons and cronies in her midst. Like the rickety rope bridge at the center of The Weight‘s most tense setpiece, Padraic McKinley’s latest effort is not the most structurally sound piece of cinema but it gets its point across nonetheless.

Score – 3/5

More new movies coming to theaters this weekend:
Resident Evil, starring Austin Abrams and Zach Cherry, reboots the horror video game franchise wherein a hapless courier is tasked with delivering a package to a remote hospital and soon finds himself caught in the middle of an mutated creature outbreak.
Shaun The Sheep: The Beast Of Mossy Bottom, starring Justin Fletcher and John Sparkes, is a stop motion animated comedy following the titular sheep as he attempts to save Halloween when the flock’s farmer suddenly goes missing while a beast wanders the woods.
Opening at Cinema Center is The Samurai And The Prisoner, starring Masahiro Motoki and Masaki Suda, which tells the true story of a warlord who rebels against a ruthless unifier by barricading himself and his clan inside Arioka Castle in 16th century Japan.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

In the ten years that Spider-Man has officially been a part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Disney has certainly made the most of its agreement to share the rights for the seminal superhero with Sony. Not only did they create a trio of standalone features between 2017 and 2021 but the webslinger also featured heavily in already teeming Avengers: Infinity War. Picking up directly after the gambit of No Way Home‘s conclusion 5 years ago, Spider-Man: Brand New Day finds Peter Parker (Tom Holland) reckoning with the magic spell that wiped his existence from everyone’s minds. Holed up in his apartment, he watches helplessly through social media as his best friends MJ (Zendaya) and Ned (Jacob Batalon) go off to MIT after he’s removed from their lives. Desperate for meaning, he buries himself in work as Spider-Man and works overtime to rid the city of its cyclical villains.

The film’s subtitle connotes a turning of the page for this series, a way to recontextualize Peter Parker’s relationship to Spider-Man after he commits such a staggering sacrifice to protect the ones he loves most. Taking over from Jon Watts, who directed the first three Tom Holland-starring Spider-Man adventures, Destin Daniel Cretton spends the first 15 minutes of Brand New Day setting the table for a very different kind of MCU tale before it’s back to business as usual. A new superpowered threat emerges, wreaking havoc downtown at the superhuman-policing Department Of Damage Control, led by Bill Metzger (Tramell Tillman). Unable to handle it alone, Spider-Man calls in favors from vigilante Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) and fellow Avenger Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo), who’s been teaching quantum mechanics at a local university while keeping “the green guy” within him at bay.

Like the still series-best Spider-Man: Homecoming, Brand New Day shines most when it sets its focus on the entangled relationships in young Peter Parker’s life. In past cinematic chapters with this character and other superheroes, a chief conflict has been concealing one’s alter ego from friends and family. Like the Tillman-starring Apple TV series Severance, it’s an extreme example of maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Since the events of No Way Home (to put it mildly) put Peter’s personal life in shambles, it makes sense that Spider-Man would become a workaholic escape for someone petrified of starting over with best friends. We see how painful that process can be when Peter invites himself to a packed party at Ned’s place. Not only does Peter have to reintroduce himself to his best friend but he’s also unrecognized by the love of his life as she smooches with a new boyfriend.

Being the marketing juggernaut that it is, Disney does a terrific job pitching the “this one will be different” message for every new entry in the MCU. Like Doctor Strange, they cast a well-financed spell on us where we forget how surefire their formula is and how unlikely it is, no matter what figurehead creative forces are brought in, that they’ll stray from it. The context varies for each property but in the instance of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, the implication is that we’ll get a more “back-to-basics” iteration of Spider-Man who’s picking up the pieces and trying to figure out who he is in this new paradigm shift. When Peter visits another familiar face from other MCU fare, she deems his personal problems as “small potatoes” that don’t require Avenger-level intervention. Frankly, that’s fine by me. I’d prefer to see Peter deal with his issues himself but franchise obligations necessitate appearances from The Punisher, The Hulk and perhaps newly-acquired characters from the larger universe of Marvel comics.

Even though the movie has far too much going on from a plot perspective, given that it has to tie in storylines from Disney+ shows of the past several years, Brand New Day remains reliably entertaining output from the most reliable entertainment film franchise around. Holland remains outstanding in the lead role and his real-life marriage to Zendaya gives their scenes of lost love a metatextual poignancy and gut-punch for our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. Being pulled in from the Punisher series, Bernthal is a terrific addition as a gruff, bull-in-a-china-shop foil to our still doe-eyed and altruistic protagonist. I wish there was more time dedicated to the conversations between Peter and the people he wants to remember him but I’ll have to wait another day for the truly character-forward stories the MCU so often promises.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
One Night Only, starring Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner, is a romantic comedy in which two strangers in New York try to find love on the one night of the year when pre-marital sex is legal.
Super Troopers 3, starring Jay Chandrasekhar and Kevin Heffernan, is a comedy sequel reuniting the titular goofballs as they work to bring down a pernicious new drug ring against the backdrop of an upcoming wedding between one of the Troopers and the sister of another Trooper.
Ice Cream Man, starring Ari Millen and Charlie Zeltzer, is a slasher set in an idyllic suburban town that descends into madness when a mysterious ice cream man serves sweet treats that turn children into homicidal maniacs.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

It’s been too long since we last saw a theatrical release from comedic dynamo David Wain. Since the 2014 romcom-spoofing They Came Together, the writer/director has worked with Netflix to create a Doug Kenney biopic, two Wet Hot American Summer spin-off shows and the hospital drama send-up series Medical Police. Now he’s back to the cineplex with the abundantly silly Gail Daughtry And The Celebrity Sex Pass and while it’s not the strongest effort in Wain’s canon, it features enough moments of absurd comedy that concisely epitomize his singular brand of humor. Existing somewhere between the high-concept yuks of Role Models and the go-for-broke sketch pacing of The Ten, Wain’s latest work doesn’t feel as structurally sound as his output from the aughts but delivers its fair share of laughs from his most impressive cast yet.

We meet bubbly hairdresser Gail Daughtry (played by Zoey Deutch) two weeks before she’s set to marry her fiancé Tom (Michael Cassidy) in their quaint suburban town of Willowbrook, Kansas. Inspired by a conversation with her friend and Bluebird Salon co-worker Otto (Miles Gutierrez-Riley), Gail asks Tom about a “celebrity sex pass”, effectively a get-out-of-jail-free card for one consequence-free hookup with someone famous. Gobsmacked by how quickly Tom is able to cash in on his pick, Gail travels with Otto to Los Angeles for a stylist convention so she can bed her choice before her wedding day. After an accidental briefcase swap upon her arrival in the LAX terminal, Gail unwittingly puts herself in the crosshairs of Ludovica (Sabrina Impacciatore), a criminal mastermind looking to disrupt the global economy with confidential intel.

Joining Gail on her now-perilous journey to make things even with her fiancé are an aspiring movie agent, played by Ben Wang, and a paparazzo looking for redemption, played by the film’s co-writer and Wain regular Ken Marino. Fans of Reno 911! will also be happy to see alums like Thomas Lennon and Kerri Kenney-Silver, who both collaborated with Wain previously in The Ten, pop up as memorably goofy characters. There are a few blink-and-you’ll-miss-them cameos from even bigger stars going back to the Wet Hot American Summer days. Though the film hinges on the presence of a couple well-known actors playing themselves — given that one of them is the target for the titular tryst — Gail Daughtry And The Celebrity Sex Pass doesn’t do all that much to either play into or subvert their existing personas. Had the film been able to conceal Gail’s choice from its marketing or selected a celebrity not already known for comedy chops, it could’ve made for a fun surprise.

All of the performers commit fully to the movie’s screwy version of Hollywood and as the doe-eyed lead on an outlandish adventure, Zoey Deutch holds the center beautifully. Her ability to tap into Gail’s “aw shucks” naiveté, while being able to switch into bloodthirsty or lascivious gears on a dime, evinces Deutch’s comic versatility. She has a similar kind of magnetic effervescence that Kristen Bell had in her breakout role for Forgetting Sarah Marshall back in 2008. Deutch has fine foils in Sabrina Impacciatore’s Italian villainess and her pair of henchmen, played by Wain mainstays Joe Lo Truglio and Mather Zickel. As the hapless Sergio and Niccolo, they spend an embarrassing amount of screen time searching the dark web for leads, when much more obvious clues are readily available.

As with his previous endeavors, Wain makes a meal of whatever dramatically familiar beat or trope strikes his fancy in any given moment, pulverizing it beyond recognition with an exaggerated repetition that’s become his trademark. But at a macro level, whatever genre he seems to be poking fun at this time never feels fully realized. I gather the closest type of film he seems to be satirizing is one in the romantic self-discovery category à la Eat, Pray, Love but the movie doesn’t feel specific enough in its parody to land on that front. There are also numerous The Wizard Of Oz allusions — I take “Gail Daughtry” to be a play on Dorothy Gale — but the inverted parallels to that classic tale never fully materialize into meaningful pastiche. Even though Gail Daughtry And The Celebrity Sex Pass isn’t as conceptually well-realized as Wain’s other outings, there are still plenty of hilarious gags sprinkled throughout to give it a pass.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is The Odyssey, an epic fantasy starring Matt Damon and Tom Holland, adapting Homer’s ancient Greek tale about the king of Ithaca’s long and perilous journey home, in which he encounters several mythical beings, after the Trojan War.
Streaming on Hulu is They Fight, a coming-of-age sports drama starring André Holland and Wendell Pierce, following a reformed ex-con who finds redemption by coaching a motley crew of teenage boxers at a local youth facility in Washington, D.C.
Premiering on Disney+ is Descendants: Wicked Wonderland, a fantasy sequel starring Kylie Cantrall and Malia Baker, continuing the adventures of the daughters of the Queen Of Hearts and of Cinderella as they play host to the Kingdom Cup Games.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Though directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett collectively go by the pseudonym Radio Silence, they’ve been anything but silent in the world of horror over the past several years. Since breaking out with Ready Or Not in 2019, the pair have gone on to helm two films in the Scream franchise and even dabbled in Dracula lore with Abigail in 2024. Now the duo follow up their breakthrough with Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come, a sequel that follows the mold of upping the stakes of its predecessor while attempting to replicate the surprise factor of the original as well. This one succeeds more in the former camp than the latter but with another game cast and bloody fun setpieces, it’s another winner from two filmmakers who simply know how to have a good time within this genre.

We’re reintroduced to Grace (Samara Weaving) moments after her hellish night of hide-and-seek with the devil-worshipping Le Domas family inside their opulent mansion. When she arrives at the hospital, her estranged sister Faith (Kathryn Newton) reluctantly appears as her emergency contact and Grace does her best to explain the insane events of the prior movie. All the while, members of the uber-wealthy cabal known as the High Council are notified of the Le Domas massacre, triggering a mad scramble for power. Grace and Faith are kidnapped and awakened by an unnamed lawyer (Elijah Wood) working on behalf of the demon Le Bail, who informs them of a new “game” that Grace’s survival has now put into motion. Since the “High Seat” of the Council is now vacant, members from the four remaining families must hunt down Grace to claim the top position within the ultra-powerful committee.

On the villain side of things, we spend the most time getting to know the Danforth family, represented by twin siblings Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus (Shawn Hatosy). Though their relationship isn’t quite as complex as the one between the miserable — and miserably rich — step-siblings in the Gellar-starring lark Cruel Intentions, it’s enough to say they don’t see eye-to-eye. Among the other armed-to-the-teeth participants in the deadly play for world domination are bloodthirsty billionaires played by Néstor Carbonell and Olivia Cheng. Their attire isn’t much different from how they would dress for a day of stag hunting or skeet shooting, fashion that could be dubbed “preppy tactical”. It underscores a key difference between Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come and its predecessor, which is the more expansive setting of a vacated mountain resort compared to the confines of the Le Domas manor.

One aspect of Ready Or Not that’s not possible to replicate in this follow-up is the transition of Grace’s character from doe-eyed bride-to-be to shotgun-wielding warrior. The sequel’s stand-in for character development is her strained relationship with Faith, who’s 3 years younger than Grace and resentful of what she perceives as an abandonment years prior. At the commencement of the “game”, the two wake up handcuffed to one another and while they’re on the run from their captors, they begrudgingly make up for lost time, despite the dire circumstances. Faith calls Grace out for marrying into an affluent family just for what Faith perceives as a status bump but Grace says she’s not much better for shacking up with a “finance bro” on the west side of Manhattan. Radio Silence regulars Weaving and Newton are a perfect fit for bickering sisters who have learned to take what’s theirs in a world that hasn’t dealt either of them the best hands.

But when it comes to these two action-heavy horror comedies, the main “hands” that matter are the fisticuffs in the combat between the unwitting “hide-and-seek” participants and their hunters. Like Ready Or Not, this successor features showdowns that make entertaining use out of antiquated weapons and rich folks who aren’t as prepared in close-quarters contact as they should be. The most memorable scenes of conflict this time feature locations like the washing machine area of the resort and the dance floor of an abandoned wedding reception, the latter set to a too-familiar needle drop. Thanks to other eat-the-rich romps like The Menu and Saltburn that its predecessor spawned 7 years ago, Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come doesn’t have the same bite as a satire but still delivers on gory delights.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is They Will Kill You, an action comedy starring Zazie Beetz and Tom Felton, about a young housekeeper who takes a job in a New York City high-rise, not realizing she is entering a community that has seen a number of disappearances over the years.
Also coming to theaters is Forbidden Fruits, a horror comedy starring Lili Reinhart and Lola Tung, following a secret witch cult run in the basement of the mall store after hours as their newest member challenges their performative sisterhood.
Streaming on Hulu is Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice, a sci-fi comedy starring Vince Vaughn and James Marsden, in which two friends navigate the dangerous world of organized crime, testing their loyalty and survival skills as they get deeper into the criminal underworld.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Somehow, zombies returned. Since hanging up the lightsaber — for now, anyway — in 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, Daisy Ridley has covered an admirable amount of genres across smaller projects and with We Bury The Dead, survival horror seemed to be next on the list. Along with the 28 Years Later franchise, which has another entry out later this month and a trilogy capper due out next year, zombie films may have looked dead there for a moment but they’re back up and running now. In the case of We Bury The Dead, the latest from Australian director and writer Zak Hilditch, the walking dead function more as a backdrop upon which the survivors deal with the unresolved issues they have with those they lost. As such, the film is a bit too pensive and self-conscious for its own good but has enough worthwhile elements to make it a decent change of pace within the horror subgenre.

Ridley stars as Ava Newman, a physical therapist based in the US who travels to Tasmania in search of her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan) after an EMP weapon accidentally detonates and leaves tens of thousands on the island affected. It’s bad enough that the majority of the victims are dead but somehow even worse, some have awakened in a zombified state and attacked members of the rescue effort. This makes Ava’s job in the body retrieval unit more dangerous than it typically would be, although fellow volunteer Clay (Brenton Thwaites) doesn’t seem nearly as bothered by the state of things. Blithely lighting up a cigarette as he exits a corpse-infested house behind an upchucking teammate, Clay registers to Ava as a cooler head who will help her prevail through this tragedy. After the pair get acquainted and discover a motorcycle during one of their assignments, they plan to head south and look for Mitch.

In most zombie movies, the detours these two might encounter as they zoom down military-surveilled highways would involve gory run-ins with the undead but We Bury The Dead intentionally focuses on the humans that can still be just as dangerous. One such impediment, a soldier named Riley played by Mark Coles Smith, has a particularly creepy way to express his grief about losing his pregnant wife to the experimental explosion. Similarly, Hilditch treats us to flashbacks to Ava and Mitch stateside before the latter travelled down under for an ill-fated work trip, depicting a marriage that was already against the ropes before the accident in Australia. It’s an open question through most of the film how Ava will cope if she finds Mitch alive and unaffected by the zombie-like symptoms from the blast, as unlikely as that scenario might be.

Given the obviously heavy subject material, I appreciated Zak Hilditch’s attempts to dissipate the somber mood with tension-breaking moments of reckless relief or cheeky defiance. The groovy drum shuffle of “Vitamin C” by Can always hits the spot for the former and the latter is brought to the forefront nicely, thanks to a cut from raucous Aussie punk rockers Amyl And The Sniffers. A PJ Harvey track from Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea also scores a rare tender scene that still percolates with unease and the threat of violence. The stellar music moments stand out in a movie that’s a little too light on incident and oddly self-conscious about being a zombie flick. It’s clear Hilditch is trying to sidestep the rote horror beats we’d expect but too often, he substitutes them with moments that should fill us with dread but feel too sedate to register salient amounts of fear.

As with other decent indies like The Marsh King’s Daughter and Sometimes I Think About Dying that Daisy Ridley has starred in since her Rey-cation, her performance in We Bury The Dead is one of its strongest selling points. She’s an actress who simply does an outstanding job portraying introverts on-screen, suggesting genuine inner worlds within each of her characters that effortlessly draw us into these stories. Here, Ava has the determination and intellect we’ve seen Ridley convey with her heroines before but the scenes with Mitch showcase marital vulnerability that give us a deeper glimpse into Ava’s headspace. I applaud Ridley’s effort to pursue smaller projects, and likely help get them made with her name attached, but I also wish she’d hold out for scripts that are truly next level. She’s had quite a few base hits but she really deserves a home run.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Primate, a natural horror film starring Johnny Sequoyah and Jessica Alexander, in which a tropical vacation goes awry when a family’s adopted chimpanzee is bitten by a rabid animal and suddenly becomes violent.
Also playing only in theaters is Greenland 2: Migration, a survival disaster thriller starring Gerard Butler and Morena Baccarin, following a family who must leave the safety of their apocalypse bunker and embark on a perilous journey across the wasteland of Europe to find a new home.
Streaming on Netflix is People We Meet On Vacation, a romantic comedy starring Emily Bader and Tom Blyth, following a a free-spirited travel writer and and a a reserved teacher who reunite for one last trip to mend their friendship and confront their unspoken romantic feelings.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Lynne Ramsay isn’t a director who makes movies for the brittle of spirit. 2011’s We Need To Talk About Kevin depicts a mother reeling from unspeakable violence committed by her teenage son, while 2018’s You Were Never Really Here follows a mercenary tasked with finding the kidnapped daughter of a politician. Her latest psychological drama, Die My Love, is a similarly bruising tale of a young couple who seem to have an ideal life set out before them. We meet the pregnant Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson) as they navigate around the dead leaves inside the rural house that belonged to the latter’s late uncle. It could use some fixing up and TLC to make it a proper home but they’ve decided they want to make the move, away from the hustle and bustle of the big city to raise their forthcoming bundle of joy.

Moving out to the sticks also means they’ll have help from Jackson’s mom Pam (Sissy Spacek) and her friends, all of whom make themselves frequent visitors at the residence, though not as chaotically as the
“guests” in the Jennifer Lawrence-starring mother!. Sadly, Jackson’s dad Harry (Nick Nolte) isn’t as much of a presence due to his worsening dementia that contributes to outbursts he has towards his son and his girlfriend. A different kind of crisis is brewing within Grace, who, to put it mildly, is struggling amid new motherhood. Yes, their son wakes them up in the middle of the night and, as with most new parents, Grace and Jackson both struggle with getting sleep. But the unease within Grace is something deeper, pointing to a deteriorating emotional state that threatens to unravel everything they’ve built as a family.

As with Joaquin Phoenix and Tilda Swinton in Lynne Ramsay’s two previous features, the strongest element of her films can be found in the lead performance and it’s certainly the case here with Jennifer Lawrence. Presumably drawing from her own experience as a new mom, she gives a fierce and relentless performance that feels like it’s crawled its way out of her onto the screen. An interrogation of a woman’s psyche might have caused most actresses to play things more insular but Lawrence puts everything out there, leaving no doubt about the primal instincts that are brewing within Grace. The physicality and emotional abandon of the role are impressive enough but I also appreciated the sardonic wit that she lets through as well. She’s short-tempered with pretty much everyone, from Jackson to friends at a party to the cashier at a local store. Yes, it’s sad that the lashing out points to mental health instability but Lawrence makes Grace’s moodiness quite funny nonetheless.

As good as Jennifer Lawrence is in the lead role, I wish Lynne Ramsay and her co-writers Enda Walsh and Alice Birch crafted a fleshed-out story that rises to the level of the acting. Ramsay’s movies typically have a disorienting sense of pacing and chronology, which also applies to Die My Love, but the rhythm this time feels jarring without actually lending itself to meaningful tension in the narrative. Working for the first time with editor Toni Froschhammer, Ramsay will forgo important events that would have a bearing on the plot but then focus on smaller moments for longer than necessary. Perhaps that’s the intent — to mirror the way the protagonist is trying to ignore consequential mile markers and accentuate minutia — but as such, it’s a deterrent to the dramatic weight of the material.

Much like 2024’s Nightbitch, another tale of a mother coping with the stresses of raising a child without much help from the father, Die My Love has a great ear for the kinds of goofy songs one plays to satiate a newborn. None of the needle drops here are quite as good as “Dare To Be Stupid” from that Amy Adams vehicle last year, but the movie nevertheless throws down early with a sped-up version of Chubby Checker “The Twist” and follows through with the Raffi classic “Apples And Bananas”. In another scene, Grace replays Toni Basil’s “Mickey” an inadvisable amount of times, enough to temporarily be possessed to scale the stairs like Linda Blair in The Exorcist. Unfortunately, the movie ends with a dud of a final song choice over the credits, an underwhelming cover of a thuddingly obvious selection. Die My Love is another successful venture by Lynne Ramsay to get us in the headspace of the protagonist, even if it doesn’t give us enough to do once we’re there.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
The Running Man, starring Glen Powell and Josh Brolin, is a dystopian action thriller re-adapting the Stephen King novel about a game show where contestants, allowed to go anywhere in the world, are pursued by “hunters” hired to kill them.
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson, is a heist sequel in which the legendary Four Horsemen magicians recruit three skilled illusionists for a high-stakes diamond robbery.
Keeper, starring Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland, is a surrealist horror film about a romantic anniversary trip to a secluded cabin that turns sinister when a dark presence reveals itself, forcing a couple to confront the property’s haunting past.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Dwayne Johnson steps into a different kind of fighting ring in The Smashing Machine, a biopic covering the life and career of early UFC champion and MMA pioneer Mark Kerr. Johnson’s career in the WWE as one of the best-known professional wrestlers of all time inevitably invites comparisons to the real-life fighter he’s portraying and he certainly looks the part. Even compared to his typical action movie physique, Johnson has clearly put on even more muscle than he normally sports to convey Kerr’s domineering stature. He’s not an actor known for particularly nuanced performances and, perhaps by default, this is some of his best work, juxtaposing Kerr’s brutality in the ring with a soft-spokeness and vulnerability outside it. The film is strong showcase for his talents but never quite establishes itself as anything more than that.

The Smashing Machine tracks 3 years of Kerr’s MMA career, beginning in 1997 with Vale Tudo (literally Portuguese for “Everything Goes”) fighting in Brazil. His ruthless combat style draws the attention of UFC tournament winner Mark Coleman (Ryan Bader), who invites him to compete in several bouts for the organization. Looking for an opportunity to make more money, Kerr goes to Japan with his girlfriend Dawn (Emily Blunt) to fight for Pride Fighting Championships instead. The bloodthirsty battles there cause him to increase his dependency on opioids to numb the constant pain in which he finds himself. After a nearly lethal overdose, Kerr has to reconcile his dream of being a mixed martial arts legend with the massive toll that it’s taken on his personal life.

The Smashing Machine is the solo directing and writing film debut of Benny Safdie, half of the filmmaking duo responsible for anxiety-inducing crime thrillers like Good Time and Uncut Gems. This movie could take half of the urgency of those films and still be captivating but even outside the comparison, the storytelling here is stodgy and sedate. There’s even less of an excuse for that to be the case, given how much is adapted from a 2002 documentary of the same name covering the same stretch of time in Kerr’s career. It would be one thing to use the doc as a jumping-off point to further develop a dramatization but there are numerous scenes literally taken verbatim from the existing material. That the HBO Documentary Film is a bit tricky to track down — it isn’t currently available on any major streaming platform, including HBO Max — may be enough reason to include so much of it word-for-word in this fictionalized version, but the approach nevertheless feels unimaginative.

The augmentations that Benny Safdie applies to The Smashing Machine from its source material — the complete title of the documentary is The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr — primarily focus on the relationship between Kerr and his girlfriend Dawn. Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt certainly do what they can in front of the camera to bolster what’s on the page but both are ultimately hindered by underwritten roles. It’s curious that Safdie would choose to expand Dawn’s presence in his telling of the story if he didn’t have much compelling or original to say about her as a character. Another angle that could have potentially yielded more fruitful results is amplifying the depiction of Mark Coleman’s personal and professional relationship with Kerr. Ryan Bader is an MMA competitor in real life and even with limited screen time, he gives a naturalistic and, at times, magnetic performance.

Admittedly, I went into The Smashing Machine dreading what I figured would be little more than Dwayne Johnson prepping his Oscar reel. No matter this film’s critical or commercial reception, I expect him to campaign hard in the coming months for the Academy Award he seems to covet desperately. Save a few interesting choices here and there, he’s played things extremely safe when it comes to role selection since hitting the silver screen for the first time almost 25 years ago. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so cynical about his attempt to branch out here and engage with more fulfilling character work. Whether the choice was made mainly for accolade purposes or not, Johnson assuredly does some of the best acting of his career in The Smashing Machine. The movie around him isn’t as rock solid in its execution but it’s a suitable fill-in until the superior documentary surfaces again.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing in theaters is Tron: Ares, a sci-fi action movie starring Jared Leto and Greta Lee, following a highly sophisticated program who is sent from the digital world into the real world on a dangerous mission, marking humankind’s first encounter with A.I. beings.
Also coming to theaters is Roofman, a crime dramedy starring Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst, telling the true story of a charismatic criminal who hides on the roof of a toy store and adopts a new identity while on the run from the police.
Premiering on Netflix is The Woman In Cabin 10, a psychological thriller starring Keira Knightley and Guy Pearce, about a journalist covering the maiden voyage of a luxury cruise ship who is convinced she has witnessed a passenger be thrown overboard.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

A corporate espionage thriller that stays sharp until its final act, Relay stars Riz Ahmed as Ash, a shrewd New York-based fixer who’s found a rather brilliant way to stay anonymous when brokering deals between clients. Communicating via the New York Relay Service, he sends messages electronically to relay operators and they read them to the third party on the line. They reply back, the operator types their response and Ash is able to read what they say. Of course it’s more cumbersome than a 1-on-1 phone call but has the crucial benefits of concealing Ash’s identity and being completely untraceable, thanks to protection from ADA laws. Whether he’s making demands of corporate goons or giving detailed instructions to the whistleblowers they’re trying to silence, Ash is able to type it all out from anywhere in the city with his portable teletypewriter and the person on the other end can’t even hear his real voice.

His newest contact is Sarah (Lily James), a research scientist who gets fired from biotech firm Cybo Sementis for asking too many questions about a disturbing report linking their insect-resistant crops to human side effects. While Ash’s clientele would typically request protection after the proverbial whistle is blown, Sarah instead wants his help to return the documents she stole after leaving the company. She says she’s followed everywhere she goes, she doesn’t feel safe in her apartment and she just wants her life back. To paraphrase Joseph Heller, it’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you, and the company has indeed hired thugs, led by Dawson (Sam Worthington) and Rosetti (Willa Fitzgerald), to make Sarah’s life hell until she coughs up what she knows. Through his unique communication method, Ash parlays between Sarah and the henchmen while working diligently to operate as a ghost during the process.

Relay gets off to a bit of a slow start — spending too much time on the tail end of Ash’s previous case with not enough of a narrative justification for doing so — but it’s certainly gripping once it gets going. I was reminded frequently of two movies that incidentally both star George Clooney, the first being legal thriller Michael Clayton and the assassin slow-burn The American secondarily. While his manner of cajoling conglomerates and counselors in the former is face-to-face and his character barely says five words in the latter, both films follow protagonists living life in the shadows. Riz Ahmed obviously isn’t at Clooney’s level of fame but he certainly has the acting chops to pull off a captivating lead like this. In one scene, Ash communicates in ASL with a deaf document forger, recalling his spellbinding work in 2020’s criminally underseen Sound Of Metal.

The film works best when it’s operating as a streamlined cat-and-mouse and less so when it’s trying to work other dramatic angles. Hell Or High Water director David Mackenzie and his writer Justin Piasecki relish the opportunities to explore how Ash uses procedural loopholes to stay a step ahead but falter when they foist a romantic subplot on the two leads. It feels particularly inorganic in context and was clearly added to make the later scenes of peril hit harder given the burgeoning connection between Ash and Sarah. Relay‘s worst offenses come in the third act, which tries too hard to outdo itself with out-of-left-field plot developments that threaten to derail the good will that was built up before them. Without saying too much, there’s a poorly-edited climactic foot chase that makes little sense geographically and even less sense narratively.

Up to that point, the movie finds the most success in keeping its worlds small and stealthy: the interior of a crowded surveillance van, a dimmed shoebox apartment, the back of a bustling bodega. New York City is a perfect place for Ash to stay hidden in plain sight and as with a myriad of conspiracy nail-biters before it, this film gets the most out of an urban setting where unexpected distractions are plentiful. Relay‘s raison d’être revolving around segmented conversation also fits in nicely with the tenuous lines of communication that exist between passersby in an overcrowded metropolis. Though Mackenzie and his team sacrifice intelligence in favor of simpler storytelling down the stretch, this is a mostly taut thriller with a memorable hook and an engaging central performance.

Score – 3/5

More new movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Eden, a survival thriller starring Jude Law and Ana de Armas, telling the true story of a group of outsiders who settle on a remote island only to discover their greatest threat isn’t the brutal climate or deadly wildlife but each other.
Also playing only in theaters is Trust, a horror thriller starring Sophie Turner and Rhys Coiro, following a Hollywood actress who hides in a remote cabin after a scandal, only to find herself betrayed and fighting for survival against someone she once trusted.
Streaming on Hulu is Eenie Meanie, a heist thriller starring Samara Weaving and Karl Glusman, centered around a former teenage getaway driver who is dragged back into her unsavory past when a former employer offers her a chance to save the life of her chronically unreliable ex-boyfriend.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

20th Century Fox comic book characters continue to make their way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe with The Fantastic Four: First Steps, the first film from Marvel Studios to feature the legendary superhero team. Like Superman earlier this month, this is a movie that already assumes you get the gist of these heroes and their powers, so it opts for a speed run through their origin story. Four astronauts — Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) and Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn) — survive a cosmic ray blast while in space and come back to Earth with unique abilities. Reed is able to stretch his body into impossible shapes, while his wife Sue can turn invisible and project powerful force fields at will. Ben’s skin has transformed into rock and given him superhuman strength, while Sue’s brother Ben has the ability to manipulate fire and fly.

Together, they make up the Fantastic Four and are held in high esteem as celebrities to the general public, so the news that Reed and Sue have a baby on the way is met with an outpouring of excitement and support. But the hoopla isn’t long lived, as a creature known as Silver Surfer (Julia Garner) gives the Four a heads up that her planet-devouring boss Galactus (voiced by Ralph Ineson) is hungry and Earth is next up on the menu. Attempting to reason with the gigantic cosmic being on behalf of humankind, the Fantastic Four discover that Galactus will spare their world in exchange for Reed and Sue’s unborn child. The pair rebuff the giant’s offer but after returning home, they find their adoring fans are much more willing to sacrifice the newborn if it means saving the lives of every other human. Desperate to find another way, the team works day and night to develop a plan to get rid of Galactus for good.

One of the primary ways The Fantastic Four: First Steps stands out both from previous on-screen iterations of this cosmically-converted crew and other MCU entries is its retro-futurist setting. Taking place in an alternate 1964 where flying cars exist alongside Volkswagen Beetles, every inch of the film is covered with rich details about what people in the past thought the future could look like. Production designer Kasra Farahani crafts immaculately-rendered props and sets that reflect the technological optimism and collectivist spirit of the early 1960s. It’s neat to see a Times Square that at once looks accurate to the period and is nevertheless peppered with technology that still doesn’t exist in 2025. An aerial chase scene midway through the film leverages this juxtaposition seamlessly, as a character wirelessly broadcasts audio signals to TV monitors within their breakneck pace proximity.

While I appreciate the whiz-bang zip of that particular sequence, I wish the pacing of The Fantastic Four: First Steps didn’t consistently try to match the velocity of the mid-flight superheroes. Director Matt Shakman forgoes the typical Marvel Studios production logo and goes right into a brisk catch-up montage on how the Fantastic Four came to be. But within the sub-2 hour runtime, it feels like Shakman and his quartet of screenwriters pack in too much incident and too few occasions for the characters to breathe. Shakman’s resume thus far is primarily within the realm of TV — including his work on the MCU series WandaVision — and had there not been 15 other MCU shows since that inaugural entry, perhaps Fantastic Four would’ve worked better within a television framework. This is our first time together with these performers as the Four and outside of an early dinner scene, in which Ben correctly deduces that Sue is pregnant, we don’t get enough of a sense of how their personalities colorfully bounce off one another.

The cast does what they can to punctuate their scenes with clues as to what makes their cerulean-sweatered superheroes tick. Pascal and Kirby have both romantic chemistry and tension as soon-to-be parents trying to reckon bringing a son into a world getting more cosmically horrifying by the day. I’m still not completely sold on Quinn as an up-and-coming star but he does his best bringing the brashness out of his hothead hero, even if it doesn’t quite top what Chris Evans did with the Human Torch in the past. Moss-Bachrach isn’t given much to do as The Thing but he shows a sweet side of the character we haven’t seen before and his naturalistic voice work is absent the obvious choice to go gravelly. The Fantastic Four: First Steps isn’t as marvelous as it could be but it’s certainly a step in the right direction.

Score – 3/5

New movies coming to theaters this weekend:
The Naked Gun, starring Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson, is an action comedy reboot about a detective following in the footsteps of his bumbling father, who must solve a murder case to prevent his police department from shutting down.
The Bad Guys 2, starring Sam Rockwell and Marc Maron, is an animated sequel reuniting the crackerjack criminal crew of animal outlaws, who are pulled out of retirement and forced to do “one last job” by an all-female squad of bandits.
Together, starring Alison Brie and Dave Franco, is a body horror movie involving a couple who move to the countryside but find themselves encountering a mysterious force that horrifically causes changes in their bodies.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup