Movie Review: Ridley’s Believe in it, or Don’t — “The Dog Stars”

Posted on August 28, 2026 by Roger Moore

“The Dog Stars” is the sort of movie that late August is infamous for — a dog that the studio couldn’t figure out how to fix or market into a success, so they dumped it on Labor Day Weekend.

It’s the sort of science fiction that fumbles around for something to say, whose filmmakers throw up their hands long before the many climaxes followed by a deflatingly anticlimactic ending.

It’s the sort of night out at the cinema that one feels confident in recommending you take your bathroom break the moment Oscar winner Allison Janney shows up.

And it’s the sort of career hiccup that makes you rush to the Internet Movie Database to be sure this won’t turn out to be sci-fi icon Ridley Scott’s last film. The “Blade Runner/Alien/The Martian” director’s got half a dozen projects in development. Here’s hoping he gets one of those up and underway, and that he’s minding his health.

This post-apocalyptic tale is about the miserable, generally hopeless lives of those who survived the next pandemic — probably one the last and least of the Kennedys will preside over. That’s pretty much as topical as this adaptation of a Peter Heller novel gets.

We’re treated to murderous survivors of every stripe, people who kill rather than cooperate their way through The World’s End, which happened sometime before 2035. None of them are truly “motivated” murderers, except in a sort of blanket condemnation of survivalists way. The ones they call “Reapers” are straight out of “Omega Man” — rampaging, cultish killers who have no point of view, motivation or leader.

Josh Brolin is Bangley, a prepper who has an arsenal, some military hardware and a whole derelict airfield in Erie, Colorado as a kill zone when intruders come poking around.

But his “parter” is Hig (Jacob Elordi), a handyman who keeps an ancient Cessna in working order for runs to “the city” (Denver) for the last supplies nobody else already scavenged. Hig is just as armed. But Hig has a dog, the surest sign of humanity.

Hig touches down on city streets and visits his old house, the one where he lost his pregnant bride to “the virus.” If it weren’t very his very vocal Belgian Malanois, Jasper, who would be a jabbermouth if he spoke English, Hig wouldn’t have the will to go on, or to restart his airplane engine on all those occasions where he tempts fate and turns it off, just to see if he could actually go through with it.

He can’t make himself do “that,” or commit to moving in with the large Menonite family of orphans and adults he drops in on and helps out. Benedict Wong plays their farming patriarch.

Events conspire to send Hig packing, off in search of a phantom radio signal from Grand Junction, and that throws him in the path of a rancher (Guy Pearce) and his med student daughter (Margaret Qualley).

Things unfold in that corner of the plot exactly as you’d expect them to.

Don’t ask what Janney plays. Don’t ask about the size of the role of the most delightful character, Jasper.

And don’t question the “logic” of much of anything in a movie with the odd punchy line — “You’are dead as the world. You just don’t know it, yet!” “Shoot first and inquire afterwards!” — and veiled references to this middle class past or even the solitary, survivalist present as “the American Dream” and to the science denying idiots at the highest levels who did us all in.

“All it takes is one cough…We lost two kids last week. We think it was measles, this time.”

Having a first rate cast and a lifetime of experience making epics of every size and scope didn’t keep Scott giving this a go right up to the point where he threw his hands up at ever having a script worth all this time and money.

Not every movie is destined to work, and not all will be hits. Disney/20th Century gave up on “The Dog Stars,” which is how it got dumped on one of the worst weekends for movies of the year. But they were within their rights. Scott damned sure gave up on it before them.

Rating: R, violence, smoking, profanity

Cast: Jacob Elordi, Margaret Qualley, Josh Brolin, Allison Janney, Benedict Wong and Guy Pearce

Credits: Directed by Ridley Scott, scripted by Mark L. Smith and Christopher Wilkinson, based on a novel by Peter Heller. A 20th Century release.

Running time: 1:58

Posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Classic Film Review: A Catfight for the (Middle) Ages — “The Lion in Winter” (1968)

Posted on August 26, 2026 by Roger Moore

It was a gilded age for high-minded British cinema, of larger than life actors taking on epics as heroes and antiheroes — a life of “Lawrence of Arabia,” “Becket,” “Cromwell,” a dash or two of Shakespeare, and “A Man for All Seasons.”

But nothing in the costumed period pieces of the ’60s could match that Plantagent lions rampant catfight that was “The Lion in Winter.” As bawdy and funny as Burton and Taylor could be in their “Taming of the Shrew,” nothing of the age compares to James Goldman’s adaptation of his play about tyrannical Henry II, his scheming estranged wife Eleanor of Aquitaine and backstabbing sons John, Geoffrey and the brawling redheaded fury they’d come to call “Richard the Lionheart.”

“A knife! He’s got a knife!”

“Of course he has a knife! He always has a knife! We all have knives! It’s 1183 and we’re barbarians!“

Giving that acrid, sneering bit of self-awareness at how all this will look to history to the formidable Katherine Hepburn hardly seems fare. Peter O’Toole at his grandest gets one and all in the holiday spirit as King Henry II. It’s a story set during the holidays in the French Castle Chinon after all.

 “Well, what shall we HANG? The holly, or each other?“

And veteran character player John Castle may not be remembered for much, but giving “extra son” Geoffrey these lines is its own bit of immortality.

” I know. You know I know. I know you know I know. We know Henry knows, and Henry knows we know it. We’re a knowledgeable family.”

I’ve seen Goldman’s play on the stage and this film in cinema society and film festival showings. It plays. It is still laugh-out-loud funny, cutting and mean and boisterous with a parade of despicable characters and a few performances that go right to the edge of “over the top.”

O’Toole is ageing Henry II, who cannot rest on his laurels — or the large pieces of France, along with England and half of Ireland — which he has taken and rules. He has locked-up his rich and powerful wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine (Hepburn), former Queen of France and a bloody nuisance when it comes to Henry’s plan of succession.

He treats his youngest, John (Nigel Terry) as his “favorite,” but the lad is 16, not so much stupid as naive and headstrong. All the grooming Henry makes time for, and the lad is still unpolished, unimposing and unmannered. Having lost his oldest son, Henry wants to make the youngest John his heir and marry him off to the young French king’s (Timothy Dalton) sister, Alais (Jane Merrow), because Henry craves her county, Vexin, close enough to Paris for Henry to maintain a threatening presence.

As she shares Henry’s bed (talk about “grooming”) we figure the old dog may not just sire his heir, but have ideas of fathering his heir’s heir.

Son Richard (Anthony Hopkins) won’t have it, as he’s next in line, the most martial and imposing of the sons. He was his mother’s favorite. Now, he’s not sure he wants to scheme with her to ensure his ascent to the throne.

“You love nothing. You’re incomplete. The human parts of you are missing. You’re as dead as you are deadly.”

And then there’s Geoffrey, whom we meet as he’s directing other men in a beachside ambush he’s arranged. He’s cunning, but more of a backstabber than a front stabber. He knows he’s an “extra prince.” He has to teach his kid brother “what happens to ‘extra princes.'” What was true later with Richard III is true in 1183, too.

Henry brings all these relations, including imprisoned Eleanor and the teen King Philip of France (Dalton) to Chinon, to hash it all out — who gets what crown, who will marry whom, what Eleanor will have to agree to and what the Pope in Rome or a handy archbishop at hand can facilitate.

Editor turned director Anthony Harvey’s film — “Dutchman” and “They Might be Giants” were his — never quite sheds the staginess of the material, with its many characters entering a room, one at a time, as earlier guests hide in the curtains to overhear the scheming and insults of their rivals.

There’s lovely footage of Eleanor’s procession by barge up the river to the castle, which is as grand, austere and imposing as the players who inhabit it (Abbaye de Montmajour, Arles, Bouches-du-Rhône was the main filming location).

O’Toole is at his most wild-eyed as he shows off his swordfighting skill. He was too young to play a weary 50 year-old Henry II, but his performance has aged beautifully and he more than holds his own with Hepburn, in her most formidable role.

Hopkins gives us hints of a great screen actor in the making. Dalton brings dash and sexual ambiguity to Philip. He’d go on to play the least successful James Bond of them all. And Terry would age into a fine King Arthur for John Boorman’s “Excalibur” a decade later.

The history is more playwright’s fantasy than reality. This “Lost Weekend” never really happened. But the machinations, suggestions of schemes and same sex attraction, the “pawns” moved around by kings, would-be kings and a queen trying to pull a few last strings lines up with history.

Nigel Stock plays the real-life witness to this history, and generations and kings beyond, William Marshal. With another ’60s classic film of Henry II’s relationship with Thomas a’Becket (O’Toole was Henry II there, as well), Marshal, “The Greatest Knight” of all, might be the one character from that period piece-loving era that filmmakers missed the boat on commiting to film.

“The Lion in Winter” may be “a Christmas movie” in the same sense that “Die Hard” is. But this is a classic best consumed in cold weather with a bottle of the “brandy wine” that all involved seemed to crave, by fireside as a means of fortifying themselves for the slings and arrows to come. And the insults.

They all suffer their put downs. But Prince John, remembered in myth as the sniveling pretender who radicalized Robin Hood, is only capable of a “You stinker” and “You turd” or two. Which is why earns the coldest burn of all.

“If you’re a prince, there’s hope for every ape in Africa.”

Rating: PG, profanity, violence

Cast: Peter O’Toole, Katharine Hepburn, Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton, Jane Merrow, Nigel Terry, Nigel Stock and John Castle.

Credits: Directed by Anthony Harvey, scripted by James Goldman, based on his play. An Avco Embassy release streaming on Tubi, other platforms.

Running time: 2:14

Posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Movie Review: Teresa Palmer obsessively Counts Everything — “Addition”

Posted on August 25, 2026 by Roger Moore

Movies built around mental maladies have a couple of consistent shortcomings, both of which the Teresa Palmer OCD dramedy “Addition” struggles with, start to finish.

There’s a tendency to treat something serious as cute and quirky. Obsessively counting everything from servings in a dim sum dish or eyelashes or bananas in your bunch in the checkout line kind of fits. Seeing visions of obsessive counter and electronic genius Nikola Tesla, who eggs our heroine into counting the bristles on her toothbrush — ALL 90 of her toothbrushes — also ticks that box.

And then there’s the suggestion that whatever psychotherapy and drugs offer, only “love” can save our disordered hero or heroine at day’s end. That proves to be the hardest trope to let go of in Marcelle Lunam’s Aussie film, based on a novel by Toni Jordan.

Becca Johnstone’s script has us spend most of the movie inside heroine Grace’s head as she voice-over narrates her every thought, taking us inside the processes that movie screenplays suggest bedevil people with OCD.

“No, obession is not a weakness,” Grace rationalizes. “Life without obsessing over things is no fun at all.”

She counts when she wakes up. She counts when she walk and counts a little when she teaches her niece’s (Lou Baxter) high school math team. She counts the tables at her only restaurant, counts the bites in her orange cake via the poppyseeds she counts in the frosting, and the waitress there has an “As Good as it Gets” tolerance of her weirdest customer.

She counts when she goes to sleep and when she wakes up, with the mustachiod Serb Tesla (Eaman Farren, given nothing to play or say), who eggs her on from bed, purring “Iljabuvi,” Croatian Serb for “my love,” after every encouragement.

It’s the counting that counts when lovely thirtysomething Grace has her “meet cute.” She swipes a banana from a distracted customer (Joe Dempsie) in line with her at a market. The “distracting” is easy because “I’m good at flirting.” Seamus, as the Brit-born house-painter is named, is no slacker at flirting himself, even if he’s a little slow about the obvious.

“You’re a bit odd, aren’t you?”

The path to romance takes us through family history, the class divide — she’s a Phd and a “genius,” he’s a mere “tradie” (tradesman) — rising expectations doomed to be demolished and of course, another sort of flirtation, with a trained psychotherapist whose novel approach is a sort of “Go or stay” attitude about a patient who obviously needs her.

The lead performances have a tenderness that makes this work better than you’d think, considering the treatment of the subject matter isn’t much more serious than your average “Big Bang Theory” episode.

Palmer’s outgrown her “Aussie Kristen Stewart” labeling, even if she never flowered into the mainstream success that seemed her destiny.

Our star and her director Lunam — the documentary “Habana Shakes” was hers — are limited by the confines of the script, which circumscribes the dramatic possibilities and makes outlying situations and characters, past and present — the teen niece, her hovering, over-achieving mother (Adrienne Pickering), Grace’s older sister, and their mother (Sarah Peirse) — feel as shortchanged as poor Tesla.

Which is a final verdict on “Addition,” that it never quite adds up to what it might have been.

Rating: TV-MA, sex

Cast: Teresa Palmer, Joe Dempsie, Lou Baxter and Eaman Farren.

Credits:Directed by Marcelle Lunam, scripted by Becca Johnstone, based on a novel by Toni Jordan. A VRC release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:31

Posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news | Leave a comment

Netflixable? “Freefall — A Reckoning for Boeing” celebrates Heroes and Names Villains

Posted on August 24, 2026 by Roger Moore

The new Netflix documentary, “Freefall: A Reckoning for Boeing,” is another “Boeing: What Went Wrong/Downfall of Boeing” expose. But this one celebrates the whistleblowers within the airliner manufacturer who sounded the alarm and often paid a price for it as the company was managed into the ground by a string of self-confident, bottom-line-fixated business school CEOs who often knew little about this no-mistakes/shortcuts allowed “business.”

There’s a taste of “America: What Went Wrong” is doc director Rory Kennedy’s expose, a film that excoriates the Jack Welch (GE tycoon) management philosophy of maximizing profits, jack up the stock value business thinking that employees of any manufacturer, media business or whatever will recognize in a heartbeat.

Layoffs, short cuts, short term thinking, more layoffs, collect bonuses and stock options as the stock price soars and damn the consequences. “Quality” and “integrity” rarely figure into it.

Welch’s proteges, from James “Jim” McNerny to David “Dave” Calhoun, with Boeing lifer Dennis Muilenburg sandwiched in between them, ran the jewel in America’s manufacturing crown into the grown — literally — by outsourcing, cost-cutting, ramping up and taking safety shortcuts every step of the way in delivering the disastrous Dreamliner 787 and the doomed retrofit 737 Max to the world’s airlines.

Kennedy (“Last Days in Vietnam,” “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib” were hers) and husband screenwriter Mark Bailey tell this story through the lives of Boeing safety inspectors and whistle blowers like John Barnett, Sam Mohawk and Merle Meyers.

We hear from crash survivors and those who survived victims of Boeing crashes such as Naoise Connelly Ryan, who became a vigorous advocate of forcing Boeing and those who ran it to face consequences.

But only one of those CEOs was fired. None of them did jail time for the hundreds of deaths they caused. And as we see Congressional showboating at its “best” when at long last Boeing leadership is called on the carpet, we accept that with a jaundiced eye. Because we’ve already seen the efforts the FAA and the Justice Dept. went to in order to spare the real villains of these tragedies anything remotely like “consequences.”

It was Welch protege McNerny who pushed Boeing to develop the Dreamliner into production at half the start-up cost of a typical new airplane designed to pick up and deliver passengers over long distances for years and decades safely. We learn of the “outsourcing” that didn’t work out as the Japanese, South Korean and other suppliers had quality control and parts compatibility problems.

We shudder at the “We don’t want unions here” new South Carolina plant heralded by then-Gov. Nikki Haley, and the videos of disgruntled, under-trained and unqualified employees who assembled many of these ticking time bombs.

And we follow the sad story of Barnett, a dogged safety inspector and lifelong company man, a blue collar hero who saw problems months and years in advance, problems the new GE-style corporate culture refused to address and the Feds failed to enforce.

It’s a widely damning documentary, as the press would often go along with the “official” verdict on this or that problem and assume it had been corrected, when it hadn’t. Meanwhile, the “capitalist tools” at Forbes and the Wall Street Journal sang the praises of the middle-aged CEOs, who were feted — to a one — by the empty-headed ditzes of TV’s CNBC (“Squawk Box” indeed) as the titans of a new gilded age.

“Freefall” doesn’t so much cover new ground as sum up a long but quick slide that many American industries experienced thanks to this stock price/cost cutting obsession. But it does give one fresh reasons to ask what plane your next flight will be using, and shopping around when you don’t like the answer.

Rating: R, profanity

Cast: John Barnett , Naiose Connelly Ryan, Dominic Gates, Sam Mohawk, Merle Meyers, with David Calhoun, Jim McNerny, Dennis Muilenberg and Jack Welch.

Credits: Directed by Rory Kennedy, scripted by Mark Bailey. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:33

Posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news | Leave a comment

BOX OFFICE: “Spider-Man” spoils one last gasp of “Insidious,” “Mutiny” might crack the Top Five

Posted on August 22, 2026 by Roger Moore

“Spider-Man: Brand New Day” is still making money well into the dog days of August, pulling in another $36 million a month after its release. Go figure.

The past-exhausted “Insidious” franchise’s sixth installment is doing a modestly robust (by horror standards) $23+ million on its opening weekend.

Thursday night and Friday’s take for “Insidious: Out of the Further” cleared the $10 million mark, a $million more than “Spider-Man.” But that was a night and a day’s take.

And Jason Statham’s venerable action career winds down a bit — and then some — with the bloody-minded shoot-your-way-off-a-cargo-ship thriller “Mutiny,” which The Numbers says cleared $7.5.

The cash take of each of these is impressive enough to make one wonder if Hollywood no longer can regard late August as a dumping ground of movies they can’t see spending a lot on marketing, movies with limited audience prospects and no potential awards season buzz. Ridley Scott’s latest, “The Dog Stars,” opens next weekend, after all.

But “Mutiny” isn’t on track to sell even a million tickets. “Insidious: Out of the Further,” will sell only a couple of million. Neither of them woke the critics up.

Don’t let Trumpflation fool you. These aren’t hits any more than Paramount’s low-ceiling “Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie” (just over $9 million on its second weekend, good enough for fourth place) is.

“The Odyssey” has drawn a crowd all through the second half of the summer, pulling in some $18.5 million this weekend as it lands in third place.

“The End of Oak Street” may hit $8 million, falling off over 60% from its opening weekend. It may lose fifth place to “Mutiny.” Figure fifth place for that one if “Mutiny” falters.

The dreadfully unfunny “Spa Weekend” isn’t making much noise $3 million, ninth place), and a fairy tale starring Andrew Garfield, “The Magic Far-Away Tree,” isn’t expected to do more than a million either. And wider releases of “Tony,” about hipster chef, writer and rambler Anthony Bourdain ($5, seventh place) the Gillian Anderson-starring “Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” ($1.3 million, tenth) and “It Ends” may crack the top ten on a late summer weekend where most of the blockbusters have run their course. But the re-release of 2001’s franchise-launching “The Fast and Furious” is on track to clear $3.3 and finish eight, preventing that.

“Spider-Man” thus wins the summer, with some $840 million in the bank by midnight Sunday. “The Odyssey,” in the mid $530s by Sunday, will come in second. “Toy Story 5” (in the $480 range) will take third.

But we’ll have to wait and see who strains to get in this week’s second five on this late August weekend, and who drops out of the top ten. Check back in as I’ll be updating these figures as the weekend progresses.

Posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Movie Review: Statham at Sea means “Mutiny”

Posted on August 21, 2026 by Roger Moore

When Jason Statham growls, “Trust me, I’m coming back for everybody,” what self-respecting hostage wouldn’t consider themselves as good as rescued?

J.Sta’s latest, “Mutiny,” is a “Die Hard” at sea that, thank to “Mesrine” director Jean-François Richet, uses that laybrinthine setting to great effect. From engine room to anchor well, our ex-cop/hero flees a bevy of bad guys just long enough to start picking them off, one by one, two by two and so on.

It’s a formulaic thriller, set in Bangkok and at sea, shot in London and Malta, slick on its surface but labored in its opening acts and eager to run off the rails in the finale.

There are fights that are brilliantly shot and cut together, and one or two that make you wonder what was left out — what did we not see — when this or that villain goes down. The star who used to choose his projects based on how brilliant the stunt coordinator was is more obviously doubled, here and there (outside that anchor well).

But hey, the ex-competitive diver turned action star is pushing 60. A little Mel Gibson/Stallone in Winter is to be expected

Statham is Cole Reed, ex-London cop (check him out, all stubbled up, in his bobby helmet) turned bodyguard for a Thai shipping magnate who treats him like “family.”

When his client is killed, Cole is framed and Cole is pissed. He takes the identity of one of the killers, an American crewman on one of the boss’s freighters, the MV Artemis, to see what really went down and who’s behind all this.

Danish actor Roland Møller plays the dastardly Danish ship’s captain. Annabelle Wallis plays the brought-on-at-the-last-minute third mate who, like Cole, tumbles across a shipping container packed with human cargo. And Adrian Lester plays the U.S. Navy skipper whose Oliver Hazard Perry frigate (a retired class) named “U.S.S. Hazard Perry” standing by and wondering what the hell’s going on with that container ship.

Salty viewers will note that the Artemis almost never seems to be in motion, and in one scene set astern seems to be going in reverse.

But the scripted problem solving is adequate — start a fire, sneak around in that favorite lazy thriller writer’s crutch, “the air ducts,” empty machine gun after machine gun, pistol after pistol, without counting the rounds used and rounds left.

And Statham still gives fair value, still delivers what his audience craves even if we, like he, aren’t as lithe, young and discriminating as we used to be.

Rating: R, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Jason Statham, Annabelle Wallis, Roland Møller, Chanell Kullar and Simon Kluth

Credits: Directed by
Jean-François Richet, scripted by Lindsay Michel and J.P. Davis. A Lionsgate release.

Running time: 1:35

Posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Movie Review: “Spa Weekend” is every bit as Bland as it Sounds

Posted on August 21, 2026 by Roger Moore

It turns out, putting the two dudes who scripted “The Hangover” (and “Bad Moms”) in charge of writing and directing a midlife crisis moms at a spa farce wasn’t the smartest move ever.

“Spa Weekend” — a title as colorless as the product — is a laugh-free farce of the “Girls Trip,” “Bridesmaids,” “Joy Ride” variety. Only old and moldy.

Think of it as a passing of the torch, from the Goldie, Lily, Jane, Rita or Jada generation to new “funny women of a certain age,” and you still won’t have lowered your expectations enough.

It’s meant as a break-the-rules/cut loose farce of the “Bad Moms” school — only funnier. Or funny. It doesn’t work. Ever.

Mid-50s Leslie Mann is birthday gal Jane, one of the four tween moms, “friends since middle school,” who do a girls’ get-away at the Solstice Spa up the California coast from their busy busy lives. She’s a lawyer, no longer married and lovelorn.

“The tough one,” Coco (Michelle Buteau) is newly divorced and ignoring her anger management issues as she shares custody and mocks her husband for taking up with an older woman.

Sophie (Anna Faris, at her least amusing) is still married, trying to hang onto a job as gopher/assistant to a hapless rich brat who can’t bear to run out of Cheetos when she’s out of town.

And Mel, “the crazy one,” the one most of them agree to not invite, is played by just-turned-50 Isla Fisher at her most Aussie and over-the-top. She’s just the one to fix up Jane up with the “manotantric” yoga instructor (Peter Thurnwald) at the spa.

“She’s on the ‘older’ side, but she’s got a porno body!”

That’s the comic level of the dialogue, here. The bar is so low on the physical comedy that pretty much any “accident” or pratfall carries the success or failure of the movie with it.

Erika Heynatz doesn’t do much with the role of spa guru/owner, a role that could have been a comic highlight in more skilled hands. Kathryn Hahn wasn’t available?

Actresses who clear 50 have few choices, and it’s almost too much to hope that a “First Wives Club” or “Something’s Gotta Give” or anything with a little dignity and message to it will be there when that AARP card arrives in the mail. It’s not out of order to try a little late career “raunchy” and lewd. But if it isn’t funny, limited choices or not, you should know better.

Faris and Fisher know funny. Mann? Well, she’s married to Judd Apatow. She, more than anybody, should know better and beg for a little script doctoring.

It’d be mean to point out who is battling Mother Time the hardest, or to name who is suffering from “Sandra Bullock Face” owing to fillers. Because that’s beside the point.

Let’s put the blame for this fiasco where it lies and repeat that old Hollywood maxim that applies –and how.

“Old guys (behind the camera) can’t do comedy.”

Rating: R, pot use, suggested sex, profanity

Cast: Leslie Mann, Anna Faris, Michelle Buteau, Peter Thurnwald, Erika Heynatz and Isla Fisher

Credits: Scripted and directed by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore. A Black Bear release.

Running time: 1:37

Posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news | Leave a comment

Movie Review: Kidnapped in Ukraine? The Russkies never see the “Man of War” coming to the Rescue

Posted on August 20, 2026 by Roger Moore

LaMonica Garrett gives off strong Michael Jai White vibes in the title role of the new American commando in Ukraine thriller “Man of War.” I LOVE Michael Jai White.

Garrett, of TV’s “1883” and “The Terminal List,” stands out like a bald, bemuscled bull in a china shop in this thriller about a “retired” commando who takes it on himself to rescue his aid-worker niece when the Russians invade Ukraine in the winter of 2022.

As Mike Conner, he’ll punch, stab, grenade and shoot-shoot-shoot the marauding Muscovites who’re hellbent on raping, pillaging and murdering their way through a former client state that has designs on joining the EU and NATO.

Yeah, it’s a straight-no-chaser B-movie, a commando with “special skills” and LOTS of them killing his way through a headline-grabbing war zone. But that topicality, with Bulgaria doubling for wartorn Ukraine — just spraypaint a “Z” on a Soviet era tank and you’re golden — and some pretty savage action sequences recommend it, even if no character, situation or flinty line of dialogue is remotely novel, new or surprising.

The first “I got this” comes after the “Hate makes you sloppy” in combat observation.

“I must say,” the Russian torturer/villain (Daniel Bernhardt) purrs, “I never knew much about people, until I took the time to take them apart.”

Conner gets the video call from niece Riley (Rosemary Yaneva) just as the Russians storm in. One call to his “old friend” (Jason Patric in the logistics and “support” role) gets Conner on a plane and into Kiev. where his “loud” local tour guide (Andrew Howard) is meant to get him to the combat zone to track down the niece with a trackable smart watch.

Russian commandos get in their way. Ukrainians might take them for Russian spies. And artillery makes no distinction in its victims, even if drones sometimes do.

Those loutish Cockney Brit commandos we meet early on are destined to return at an opportune time, and many a “good” guy is fated to get his own death scene.

Director and co-writer William Kaufman (“Shrapnel,” “The Channel,” “Warhorse One,”“The Brave”) is more of a one-trick-pony than an action auteur. This film’s relentless, repetitive last 25 minutes is one long shoot-our-way-out out of Kharkiv and that’s kind of a signature of his. But this isn’t “Heat” and he’s no Michael Mann. Stand-offs are resolved the same way more than once (Ukrainians shoot, from off-camera, abruptly wiping out Conner and his tour guide’s antagonists).

Garrett isn’t bad as the lead, Howard is more convincingly Ukranian than you might guess and Bernhardt makes a perfectly vile villain. Kaufman often finds a role for Patric, and in this case, the one “name” star of the film got to play his part in street clothes and sandals, always a cell-phone call/satellite image away from the action.

Introducing a little politics into this — with Conner repeating Putin/MAGA talking points — only serves the purpose of riddling them with bullet holes. And Conner can only complain about Ukranians saying they have “no time for prisoners” whom they execute in the hope that we forget we’ve seen Conner himself play the same game — one-shot-to-the-head of his defeated, wounded and disarmed foe.

The film’s overfamiliarity may be a selling point to those looking for combat film comfort food. You know what you’re getting from a Kaufman kill-em-all. But like every film of his I’ve seen, there’s a ceiling on what we can expect, and his imagination and skill set never ever punch through it.

Rating: R, graphic violence, implied rape, profanity, smoking

Cast: LaMonica Garrett, Andrew Howard, Linds Edwards, Rosemary Yaneva, Daniel Bernhardt and Jason Patric.

Credit: Directed by William Kaufman, scripted by William Kaufman and Paul Reichelt. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:51

Posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Movie Review: Rose Byrne is one “Tow” away from Homelessness

Posted on August 18, 2026 by Roger Moore

Get past the gorgeous, glamorous star power in the cast and a tone that lurches from cute to Kafkaesque and the homeless-woman-goes-to-court dramedy “Tow” will still hit you right in the ol’heartstrings.

A sentimental tale told with a bitter bite, veteran TV director Stephanie Laing’s drama asks us to believe Rose Byrne as a bleached (and re-bleached) blonde “vehicular housed” homeless woman who loses the car she’s living in and her chance to get on her feet, get out of the ’91 Camry and get down to see the daughter she gave up (Elsie Fisher) in time for Christmas.

And thanks to Byrne and a seriously impressive supporting cast, we do believe this “true story” of one broke woman’s battle against The System, in the form of a predatory Seattle towing company with no interest in ever doing the right or kind thing.

She’s tested by an oily, rich and insensitive lawyer, which Corbin Bernson could play with his eyes closed. She’s challenged by a homeless shelter and AA devotee played by Oscar winner Octavia Spencer, befriended by homeless women played by Oscar winner Ariana DeBose and singer Demi Lovato, playing a single expectant mom who sings.

Simon Rex is the tow truck company functionary with a heart, even if Cliff won’t do the right thing and just release her car and lose his lousy job over it.

And Dominic Sessa plays the crusading kid attorney who goes to battle for this woman who teeters between sobriety and despair as she sees her world — a nearly useless car (that still runs, it’s a TOYOTA) with everything she owns in it — stolen from her.

Byrne’s Amanda Ogle is determined to get a job as a veterinary tech (she passed the qualifying exam without college), determined to stay sober and determined to get back to see her cosplaying seamstress kid (Fisher) in Urah in time for Christmas.

All that goes to hell thirteen minutes into “Tow” when her Camry is stolen, turns up on a street across town and gets towed. “It’s not my fault” has been Amanda’s mantra for a while, but damned if she isn’t right this time. Kaplan Towing holds her car, with all her things, hostage for a hauling and lot storage fee that is bad and destined to get much worse.

When you’re homeless, you may be able to afford a cell phone (which you charge at a select few places that you figure out), junk food, smokes and blonde hair dye (which you renew in public restrooms where you wash up). But you sure as heck can’t afford Kaplan Towing (“The Nice People in the Towing Business”) slapping fees on your misfortune thanks to an exclusive county towing contract.

“This is NOT over,” Amanda vows, after the crying and pleading is done. She may have been a barmaid, but she knows a thing or two about researching a thing or two. She represents herself, gets a sympathetic clerk to get her into court, and convinces a judge to issue a court order.

Ah, but the predators in our business culture know how to stall, “discovery” and dodge doing the court’s doing — with the judge and “system” doing nothing to protect the little woman. Or man.

Millions will identify with this story of Amanda vs. Goliath, as this sort of predatory towing crap is everywhere. A newspaper where I worked in Orlando tore into this story, and TV stations are still at it, and damned if there’s any justice to be had short of pulling a gun on these bastards in the act.

The film’s timeliness is in every unwanted “Data Center” headline, every Trump flouting of “the rule of law,” every rich creep protected from “consequences.”

The shortcomings of “Tow” are its banal predictabilty. We know Amanda will dismiss the kid attorney working for a non-profit when they first meet. But we know they’ll come around to “needing each other.”

We can guess Spencer’s shelter proctor speech before she utters it.

“We run on rules, not excuses,” she preaches. “No porn” in this shelter. “We’re on the LORD’s WIFI” in this church.

We catch Bernson’s walking “dead lawyer” joke on his rowing machine, talking up African safaris to rich pals, or on the driving range, dodging court dates as he “waits out” his opposition.

The script may not explain how Byrne surfs the ups and downs of sobriety with no visible means of support, and no inserts of dogs at the clinic/boarding spa where she wants to work in holiday costumes (she fights this battle for a year) don’t paper over that.

But Byrne is a fiesty delight, and her scenes with comic Lea DeLaria, DeBose, Lovato, Rex and Spencer score even if the client-lawyer stuff seems wanting.

And there’s always the comfort food element to the plot. We need to be reassured that some powerless people fight a “rigged” system, no matter what the odds. Because when they do, regimes fall and the world changes.

Rating: R, substance abuse, profanity, smoking

Cast: Rose Byrne, Octavia Spencer, Dominic Sessa, Simon Rex, Elsie Fisher, Ariana DeBose, Demi Lovato and Corbin Bernsen.

Credits: Directed by Stephanie Laing, scripted by Jonathan Keasey and Brant Boivin. A Veritical/Roadside Attractions release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:44

Posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news | Leave a comment

Documentary Review: A Filmmaker Father Reckons with the Loss of his Son — “Remake”

Posted on August 18, 2026 by Roger Moore

The grim finality of loss hangs over legendary filmmaker Ross McElwee’s “Remake.”

A meditation on grief, guilt and an obsession to honestly and frankly document one’s life and share it with the world, it may not be the last film of the director and star of “Sherman’s March.” But in its sober reflection and heartbroken mourning, it feels like his last statement on living one’s life publicly, and imposing that always-filming ethos on everyone you love.

“Sherman’s March” (1986) was McElwee’s playful, deadpan stroll through one 30something’s search for love and meaning. The documentary made him that turned out to be a lot more personal and interesting than the simple “The Lingering Impact of Gen. George T. Sherman’s lethally destructive ‘March to the Sea” doc that he set out to make.

Released years before social media and the narcissistic “attention economy” that launched, that film is revisited in “Remake,” and commented on. And in ways that McElwee seems too emotionally raw to fully reckon with himself, “Remake” shows us consequences of the redefininition of “fame” and “success,” and what that did to his family.

The filmmaker lets us know early on that his son Adrian, whom he filmed “a few minutes a month” for most of his life, is dead. We meet the precocious infant turned precosious child in that footage. And in McElwee’s most nakedly honest work yet, we see that child turn troubled in ways too many parents will recognize.

The child “lives on” in this old footage, and is in every way a delight and the apple of his parents’ eye. But as we know from McElwee’s musings in voice-over narration, every home movie — fishing and crawdad trapping, traveling and playing and painting and toying with dad’s camera himself — McElwee is moving himself, his boy and us “closer to the day you would die.”

In classic McElwee fashion, this documentary is conjured up in the editing of the hours of footage McElwee has shot, both in the making of documentaries and indulgently documenting his home and family life. The “Remake” hook comes from an early 2000s effort to turn his honored and iconic “Sherman’s March” into a fictionalized feature film.

Hollywood director/producer Steve Carr (“Next Friday,” “Daddy Daycare,” “Dr, Doolittle 2”) was and is no Scorsese (“Movie 43” was also his. Oy.). But he was an avid fan of “Sherman’s March” and was sure this mopey, deadpan doc could be a hit big screen comedy. Or sitcom. Something.

McElwee agonized over the whether or not to sell the rights to his prized work, his “life,” in essence. But his then-teenaged son helped convince him. McElwee would make a documentary on the elusive pursuit of that stillborn “March” project. That turned out to be but one element of “Remake,” a movie about an indulgent filmmaker seeing the self-destruction of his indulged son.

We get a glimpse of McElwee’s privileged life — born into “a family of doctors” — and an implied taste of Adrian’s. As his son became the focus of some of his lesser-seen documentaries (“In Paraguay,””Photographic Memory”), the kid accompanied dad onto the film festival circuit.

Premieres, parties, press conferences where reporters asked Adrian questions and took his answers seriously, cruising the canals of Venice in posh speedboat, we see it all turn the kid’s head.

He’s asking Dad for a leg-up in the industry. He’s hunting for a shortcut to the “hard work” as a film production flunky that his father and legions of film folk like him endured, and whining when he doesn’t find one. He’s criticizing his father for not “making me a child star” when he was a cute, too-camera-friendly kid.

Through it all, McElwee’s marriage suffers from his incessant filming. His own health deteriorates (McElwee turned 79 in July) and his son flails and fails at college and life in Boston, and develops — as Adrian confesses on camera — a $50,000+ a year drug habit, on his own in Colorado.

We see the conclusion McElwee is dancing around but afraid to confront. But parents might stop short in their second guessing as McElwee forces us to walk a mile in his shoes.

The film charmingly revisits a few of the ageing figures from “Sherman’s March” — that poetry teacher/matchmaker Charleen Swansea, old and losing her memory of ever being filmed by Ross, here, his sister DeDe and the “hippy” linguist/scientist Wini, just as intellectually out of his and our league now as she was back in the ’80s.

But the point of it all has to be some sort of commentary on “hiding behind your camera” and craving the attention and lifestyle that fame offers without fully weighing that commitment’s psychic and emotional cost.

“Selfie Sticks” and “influencer culture” were decades away when “Sherman’s March” through the South was undertaken on almost no budget and a worn out MG-TD roadster. In “Remake,” McElwee’s life of filmed navel-gazing is both celebrated and questioned in this, his most personal film yet. He takes stock and asks hard questions of himself and by implication, the personal essay “attention culture” he helped create.

And if he never asks or answers the hardest questions, we can still sense the regret that if he had it to do over, he most certainly would leap at the chance, even if it meant putting the damned camera down for a while.

Rating: unrated, substance abuse scenes

Ross McElwee, Adrian McElwee, Charleen Swansea

Credits: Scripted and directed by Ross McElwee. A Music Box release.

Running time: 1:53

Posted in Reviews, previews, profiles and movie news | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment