Netflixable? Idealistic Youth Go Where Governments Won’t, Saving “23,000 Lives”

Posted on July 24, 2026 by Roger Moore

A story suffused with the idealism of youth, “23,000 Lives” is about young people acting on their best impulses to help during a crisis that governments — fretting over public opinion — were trying to keep at arm’s length.

It’s a sturdy, largely unembellished German (in English) film of young Germans teaming up to raise funds for a small ship that they could use to rescue refugees fleeing conflict, the rising climate crisis and general unrest in Africa and the Middle East for better lives in Europe.

If it lacks many melodramatic “Hollywood touches,” that’s in the interest of veracity. As it’s about a hot-button issue, xenophobes, racists and other conservatives have their lederhosen in a twist over these moral, idealistic young people taking matters into their own hands. No sense giving them grounds to complain. Which they were bound to do anyway.

The film sticks to the facts, with issues of human trafficking, government policies that exacerbate or alleviate the conditions that drive people to flee their homes to survive and that “better life” addressed, but largely left for another debate.

Because this story began with just one college-age kid and a simple statement of principle.

“Can we just let people drown?”

Louis Hoffman plays Lukas, a character based on Jacob Schoen, a German 19 year-old who finds direction and purpose when he hears of a tragic refugee raft sinking in the Mediterranean in 2015. His supportive college student girlfriend (Mala Emde) may not drop everything she’s doing to pitch in. But plenty of others do as the group, cause and project to be named “Jugend Rettet –– “Youth Saves” — organizes.

They need to buy a workboat/trawler/tug of some sort, vessels which turn out to be relatively cheap — at least in a Bezos/Zuckerberg yatching sense. They need to raise the hundred and fifty thousand Euros needed to buy it, more money to renovate it and refit it for their purposes and hire some professional seafarers to join their volunteer corps.

They need attention and they get it, as Lukas narrates about Europe’s generally compassionate attitude towards migrants at this moment. But attitudes will change as images of a sea of humanity flooding out of North Africa and the Middle East start to dominate international news.

“The world won’t change if no one does anything,” is how Lukas sees it.

We see them rebuffed by bankers, charities and governments, and take hard questions about their qualifications for doing any of this. And yet they persist.

As money comes in and the movement/team grows, we’re treated to the training these NGO (Non-government-organization) dreamers realize they need before putting to sea.

They round up a volunteer medical professional (Sabon Wang), a captain (Maria Dragus) and a others (Frederick Lau) with the expertise they need to organize rescues at sea.

“We’re really scared of messing up,” Lukas confesses. But as they start this dangerous work, contending with rubber rafts overfilled with panicked, traumatized refugees, most of whom speak no language their rescuers know, they don’t.

And right from the very first mission, they see the rewards in their “We can’t just wait for a just world” ethos. Trevor Magaya plays an English speaker in that first boat filled with Africans from Nigeria, Mozambique and Eritrea, a young man fleeing violence and marveling that people his age are coming to their rescue and taking care of a business.

The obstacles change as European and global public opinion shifts and the crew of the good ship Iuventa (“Youth”) contend not just with Libyan pirates or “militia,” but official European blowback that lands them in court.

Co-screenwriter Michelle Cinque did a documentary about this group’s efforts and Italian attempts to shut them down and scare off similar NGOs via the infamous Italian “justice” system. Cinque keeps the adaptation direct, not sensationalized or over-dramatized, with names changed and a few minor cinematic liberties.

Everything “factual” must be covered, even if only cursorily. But the film makes time to wrestle with the psychological scars of very young people leaving comfortable lives to face life and death situations without professional training or military indoctrination to guide them.

You have to be pretty far removed from your own humanity to not be touched by the desperate, often otherwise doomed refugees. And it’s easy to be inspired by the story of youth brought up to “do the right” and moral thing deciding to save lives and alleviate suffering, no matter what governments, haters and social media trolls think of you.

Rating: TV-MA, scenes of peril, threats of violence, profanity

Cast: Louis Hoffman, Mala Emde, Katharina Stark, Trevor Magaya, Maria Dragus, Kathy Etoa, Frederick Lau and Sabon Wang.

Credits: Directed by Markus Goller, scripted by Michelle Cinque and Oliver Ziegenbalg. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:52

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Movie Review Review: “Son of Sara,” a gorier “Rosemary’s Baby”

Posted on July 23, 2026 by Roger Moore

The Canadian indie thriller “Son of Sara” is the goriest “Rosemary’s Baby” homages to come along in years.

Childbirth at its most bloody, a graphic throat-slitting opening scene determined to make us watch somebody bleed out in real-time, a Lin Shaye look-alike as a villain and full frontal nudity are part of the package. But maybe the cheekiest thing about writer-director Houston Bone’s follow-up to “I Don’t Know Who You Are” might be its full title — “Son of Sara: Volume 1.”

Really? OK then. It’s not like he’s painted himself into a corner with this plot. And why should Hollywood be the only place where every horror tale is treated as “franchise” material?

“Sara” is a thriller that promises zero surprises right from the start, and then half-dashes its way to an utterly pre-ordained ending.

A prologue features a screaming, chained young pregnant woman pleading “Don’t take my baby!” before she gurgles her last. Some entity with bright red eyes that glow in the dark is involved, we’re sure. And sure enough…

“Three Weeks Later” we meet Sara (Chloe Van Landschoo of TV’s “From”), very pregnant and very much in love with bartender Carol (Tymika Tafari of TV’s “Slip”). Maybe a little sex will induce our overdue mom-to-be. A song by Cigarettes After Sex — you know the one — sets the mood.

The baby daddy? “Troy” isn’t in the picture. A chance meeting on the street reveals why he never called. But hey, she’s pregnant. Maybe she’d like to visit him (Garrett Hnatiuk) on his mom’s farm? As we all know that “babies are expensive,” Sara accepts the invitation with the possibility of child support, over Carol’s furious objections.

Troy’s evasions about giving Sara the address as he drives her there are a “tell.” Meeting Troy’s mom (Jane Moffat) is another. The lady could be horror icon Lin Shaye’s kid sister.

A tour of the thirty acre spread is in order. Troy’s in charge of the farm’s operation, and seeing an old barn, Sara asks “It this where the magic happens?” His answer should give her pause

“You could say that.”

As we’ve seen Sara’s appetite for raw meat — the bloodier the better — we can hardly wait for dinner, much less the weary, bleary calls to Carol’s voice mail pleading for her to join them. We’ve leapt to the ritual and on to the finale long before things go over the top.

That bloody birth foreshadowing prologue has less to do with the narrative than you’d expect. And its “spoiler alert” inclusion robs the picture of any mystery at all. Lacking that, all we have to cling to is the suspense, and even that’s slack and lacking.

The acting isn’t bad, as such messes go. And to be fair, “Rosemary’s Baby” was a LONG time ago, even if “Devil’s Due,” “Blessed” and “Deliver Us” aren’t. Maybe some potential viewers won’t know the worn out tropes of such films.

Still, there are audience participation options here. Every bloody vomit and kiss the messy vomiter bit of business could prompt a collective “Ewwwwwww.”

But “Volume 1” seems most ambitious in its titling. I guess the surprises are all saved for the sequel?

Rating: unrated, graphic, gory violence, full frontal nudity, sex, profanity

Cast: Chloe Van Landschoot, Tymika Tafari, Garrett Hnatiuk and Jane Moffat.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Houston Bone. A Saban release.

Running time: 1:28

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Movie Review: “Everyone Calls Me Mike” wants to join your Gulf of Aden Sailing Passage

Posted on July 21, 2026 by Roger Moore

We all use cinematic shorthand when describing a new movie to friends or review readers. It’s not unreasonable to expect a certain cinema literacy among fellow movie lovers.

So pitching the French sailing thriller “Tout le monde m’appelle Mike” — “Everyone Calls Me Mike” — as a tight and tense variation on “Dead Calm,” one of the just-passed Sam Neill’s finest hours and Nicole Kidman’s early break, puts everybody on the same page. “Dead Calm” is a classic.

But “Mike’s” also got a lot in common with Roman Polanski’s early classic, “Knife in Water,” with a taste of “Captain Phillips” thrown in.

There’s piracy off the Somali coast, and an uneasy, not-wholly-trusting triangle of sailors — one of them a pretty woman — giving the film a sexual edge. The violence that comes begins with a Somali pirate kidnapping, but doesn’t end there.

So it’s as immersive as its antecedents, in small boat at sea terms, and just different enough from “Dead Calm” to keep one guessing where it might go.

She and her pre-school son met dashing Jean (Pierre Lottin) in the French port of Toulon, Isabelle (Daphné Patakia) narrates. As he looks like a young David Thewlis and has a 44 foot ketch, the Monika, she takes him seriously when he suggests they sail off together.

Yes, they’re broke, but “We’ll find jobs on the road,” he’s reassured her. He seems a competent and confident mariner, and since she “didn’t want to think through” the possibilities of skipping this chance to ditch her French life and go on an adventure, she took the plunge.

Five year old Damien (Thibault Dierickx) is along for the ride, and the experience of a lifetime.

They’ve crossed the Med and transited the Suez Canal and the Red Sea when we pick up their story in the former French colony of Djibouti, where they’re having engine trouble. That’s not the only potential trouble, they know. But perhaps someone should have read the name of the strait offshore to them on their charts, “Gate of Tears.”

But they’re wary enough as it is, not leaving without that engine water pump repair because it wouldn’t do to be off of “Aden without a motor.” It’s not just tides, winds and currents that worry sailors in that part of the world. Jean listens to the radio chatter between sailboats, ships and the Task Force guarding against piracy in those waters.

That nighttime taxi ride back through town to the boat has them alarmed.

“Where are you taking us?”

An accident makes naive, idealistic Isabelle demand they stop and help. The driver is reluctant. And sure enough, the mob that forms in the dark blames the “white woman” for all this. They escape with only a busted windshield.

But the driver needs them to pay for that. And they still need that water pump. “Everyone calls me Mike,” he says. And Mike (Abdirisak Mohamed) takes Jean hither and yon to find a replacement or a repair among acquaintances, friends and relatives.

Mike seems friendly enough. But Mike doesn’t want to stay here. He wants to sail with them. He can swim, he assures them, and he has useful skills beyond his ability to translate between local languages and French (with English subtitles). Or so he says.

As one of his local contacts has rattled Jean with the offer to sell an AK-47 assault rifle “because you’ll need one, where you’re going,” non-violent Jean gives it some thought. Mike eventually talks Jean into it.

But he hasn’t seen Mike pack a pistol and disguise his goodbyes to relatives. The viewer has.

The first signs of trouble come when we see Isabelle engage in that favorite French pastime of topless sunbathing as she takes in the dolphins riding the Monika’s waves. Mike is Muslim.

“Why don’t you wear a shirt,” our poker-faced novice sailor wonders as she grabs the wheel from him to evade obstacles in the water?

It won’t be long before opportunistic Somali fishermen, bitching about foreigners fishing out their coast, spy them and do what their AK-47 and nerve allows them to do. That “Task Force” is unreachable by radio. Will Mike help, or is he in on this?

First-time feature writer-director Guillaume Bonnier makes great use of the confines of a small (ish) boat as a setting and DP David Grinberg serves up lots of seascapes, sunsets and dolphin chases in the azure blue sea to put the viewer in that world with these four people.

The film’s brevity limits the incidents and the suspense that should build in them. But that doesn’t prevent “Everyone Calls Me Mike” from paying lip service to the grievances of the long exploited and colonized as it shows the futility of naive idealism that puts the Westerners at the mercy of desperately poor people with guns and dreams of riches and/or “escape.”

The subtexts of idealism, racism and simple race hatred are tinged with just enough sexual tension to merit mentioning, which maintains the “Where is this going?” mystery of the narrative. Isabelle’s impulsive nature compounds that. What’s she capable of?

This indie French thriller isn’t “Dead Calm” or even “Knife in the Water.” But it serves up suspense and violence and how no difficulty at all in putting us in “their” shoes — the French “their” or the Horn of Africa “their.”

Rating: violence, nudity, profanity

Cast: Pierre Lottin, Daphné Patakia, Abdirisak Mohamed, Thibault Dierickx and
Saïd Helaf

Credits: Scripted and directed by Guillaume Bonnier. An Indiepix releasse.

Running time: 1:28

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Movie Review: David Morse Carries the Weight of a “Broken Land” along the Southern Border

Posted on July 20, 2026 by Roger Moore

There’s not much new that the movies can say about the open political sore that is immigration policy and realities along America’s southern borders.

The preponderance of movies on the subject have historically been pro-immigration, not a stretch for a nation founded by immigrants.

It’s hard for some people to accept that merely wanting to move here is not an instant qualification for being allowed in. And it’s impossible for many to understand that desperate human beings have always fled violence and poverty, just to survive, much less have the “better life” that living here once promised.

But if there’s a better scripted line about impersonal dogma turning personally compassionate than one in the new drama “Broken Land,” I haven’t heard it.

“She wasn’t anybody,” an embittered old rancher played by the great character actor David Morse intones. “But then she became somebody.”

The whole equation changes for empathetic people when they humanize the “problem,” or have it humanized for them when they actually meet the human beings propaganda has demonized for them.

Rancher Carson Tidwell is talking, in that memorable line, about the young stranger who broke into his shed, a young woman he shot at in the dark and wounded. Finding her hurt, reluctantly helping her and even more reluctantly not turning her in to “la Migra” — Border Patrol immigration enforcement — is the journey his character takes in this lean indie drama set outside of Laredo, Texas.

Tidwell is recently widowed, stuck out in the sagebrush with a few cattle, a house going to pot and a small ranch he struggles — in his 70s — to tend.

He’s never stopped using the word “wetbacks” when describing the immigrants who make their way from Central and South America to this long, dusty and dry border. He never learned Spanish. He can’t even be bothered to be civil to Border Patrol agents with too many vowels in their last names.

And then there’s his estranged son (Bill Heck), an agent half-looking out for the old man, half-hating him. He has his reasons.

Breaking into his old Cadillac out in the shed isn’t softening Tidwell. The warning shot he fires comes right after the cussing and after the shots that weren’t fired into the air. He finds out what he hit later the next day.

Irena (Jakylan Bejarano) took one in the leg. She is bleeding and in great pain, yet reluctant to become this callous old man’s prisoner.

We figure out hos tough she is just from her look. She shaved her head to pass for a male for her trek from El Salvador. She speaks very little English, and Tidwell speaks less Spanish than you’d expect of someone who grew up in America’s Spanglish Belt.

Her “coyote,” smuggler? “He go.” She was heading to Colorado. “YOU take,” she begs.

“No take,” he growls. “No help.”

But having this young woman under his roof connects to his sense of responsibility, the same thing that gets him up in the morning to feed and count his few cattle on parched land, to wrestle with the valves of his rusted-up water tank.

Director and co-writer Joseph T. Walker gives his feature directing debut a desolate setting and deliberate pace that suits the story arc that Tidwell travels — from myopic intolerance to understanding and even compassion.

There’s not much that surprises this sparse, well-worn narrative, although the “secret” hurt and guilt that the rancher carries is a bit of a jolt.

This picture was always going to succeed or fail based on the performances, and Morse is as sure a bet as the movies have for an actor who adds value — and then some — to every film he graces.

He lets us feel the values Tidwell has lived by and makes us ponder == along with the old man in the almost-as-old Ford pickup — how those values might be too confining and myopic to cling to.

Heck makes son Harley properly brittle and testy about a father who drinks and drives and breaks a ticket book of other laws, but whom he and his comrades let slide in the time-honored corruption of “officer’s discretion.”

Veteran bit player Theo Gutierrez (“The Long Game”) makes an outsized impact on the film’s grounded sense of reality as a Mexican American welder and handyman that the not-that-tolerant-of-Latinos Tidwell leans on.

And screen newcomer Bejarano ably conveys desperation bordering on manipulation, and the doggedness required to undertake such a journey.

One smart choice the film makes is leaving her Spanish attempts to communicate with this captor/rancher untranslated. The language barrier is just one gulf between these two. Or so they think.

One over-the-top overreaction is more grating and a harder sell than some of the others. And the “secret” is a bit of a reach that makes murky the changing motivations of our anti-hero.

But predictability and overreaches aside, “Broken Land” ia a solid, sober-minded and somber exploration of “the Border” problem, one that like Eastwood’s “The Mule,” isn’t destined to change any minds — but which might slow down a knee-jerk reaction or two.

Rating: PG-13, violence, profanity

Cast: David Morse, Jaklyn Bejarano, Theo Gutierrez and Bill Heck.

Credits: Directed by Joseph T. Walker, scripted by Joseph T. Walker and Christopher C. Young. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:40

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Classic Film Review: A Brit DJ with a Dead Brother hears the Birth of New Wave — Turn Your “Radio On”

Posted on July 19, 2026 by Roger Moore

“Radio On” is an archetypal ’60s “art film” mystery drama released on the cusp of the New Wave ’80s.

The tone is downbeat, the story and performances are minimalist and the narrative is literally driven by a 1960 Rover 80 that our hero takes forever to navigate from London to Bristol (118 miles), where he’s just learned his estranged brother died.

But this self-conscious black and white 1979 film makes for a fascinating snapshot of Britain in the early stages of Thatcherism, an artifact of its age. We view an economy in the doldrums, Northern Ireland a bloodier and bloodier thorn in the national psyche and a generation’s limited horizons utterly lashed-out in punk, danced-out in disco, desperate for a New Wave to give them escape.

That’s the “hook” of Christopher Petit’s indi film (co-financed by the British Film Institute), the changing music of a coming decade. Here’s a film filled with Bowie and Kraftwerk, Devo, The Rumour, Ian Dury, Robert Fripp. Wreckless Eric and Lene Lovich.

Whatever Petit’s merits as an out-of-his-time filmmaker — he’d go on to direct “An Unsuitable Job for a Woman,” “Chinese Boxes” and the much more recent “D is for Distance” — he had a John Hughes-like knack for building a narrative and a vibe out of the music of the unfolding moment.

And that broke guitarist bloke our anti-hero DJ (David Beames) runs into at a remote gas station and sings an impromptu duet of Eddie Cochran’s “Three Steps to Heaven” with? He’d turn a lot blonder as he became even more famous than he was when he popped up in this, his second film appearance as Sting.

Robert’s the sort of bored DJ who takes “requests” for songs like “Help Me Make it Through the Night,” and sighs “Here’s something better” into the microphone.

He’ll play that caller “Sweet Gene Vincent” by Ian Dury instead.

Robert takes the news that his brother’s dead without emotion. He takes the news that his openly unhappy live-in girlfriend (Sue Jones-Davies) won’t be going with him the same way.

He’s got his old car, one of the last British clunkers to come with a crank handle so that you could start it when the inevitable electrical failures of British motoring pop up.

He makes his leisurely B-road way from capital to coast, picking up and quickly ditching a talkative, edgy Army deserter (Andrew Byatt) fresh off service in Northern Ireland, stumbling through car troubles, drinking and driving when he isn’t stopping into pool halls and arcades in the process of transitioning from pinball to video games.

He doesn’t speak much, but we gather that Robert is looking “for answers,” the implication being that his brother offed himself in the tub. He won’t find them, no matter how much he badgers the sibling’s live-in girlfriend (Sandy Ratcliff) or the streetwise Bristol kid (Paul Hollywood) who gives him tips about where the “action” is.

It’s the German women (Lisa Kreuzer and Katja Kersen) he gives a lift to that distract Robert the most. Ingrid (Kreuzer of “The American Friend” and “The Grand Budapest Hotel”) is looking for her ex who has run off with their daughter.

The ladies eye him warily and launch into untranslated discussions in German of whether Robert can be trusted or who is attracted to him. This also happens when Robert takes Ingrid to her ex’s aunt’s house, with the Germans having the nerve to call him “rude” for stepping out as they chatter in a tongue they know he doesn’t understand.

He and Ingrid pass time together on the waterfront, in a vintage car museum. But she is still on her quest even if his is strictly a non-starter.

For obvious reasons, I kept hearing “D.J,” the song Bowie released the year this film came out but not on this film’s soundtrack while watching “Radio On.”

“I am a D.J., I am what I play,” Bowie crooned in a tune that could have been written expressly for this film.

But Petit’s artistic ambition comes in a bit of graffiti as thesis statement in the dialogue-free opening eleven minutes of “Radio On.”

“We are the children of (filmmaker) Fritz Lang and (rocket designer) Werner von Braun,” looking for “the link between the ’20s and the ’80s” as the ’80s are about to begin.

Petit didn’t know what a shadow Margaret Thatcher would cast over Britain, how big a deal Sting would become or the brevity of the post-punk/post-disco and pre-“New Romantics” era known as New Wave.

But even this slippery grasp of all that was beginning, all that was ending and the ennui settling in on a generation too bored to care about much more than their haircuts was enough to hang an interesting film on, a movie that remains mysterious and downbeat even as the years pass and its music and ethos curdle from cutting edge into sentimental.

Rating: TV-MA, adult subject matter, profanity

Cast: David Beames, Lisa Kreuzer, Sandy Ratcliff, Andrew Byatt, Katja Kersten, Paul Hollywood and Sting.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Christopher Petit, additional writing by Heidi Adolph. A British Film Institute co-production on Tubi, other free streamers.

Running time: 1:44

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Is Youtube Environmentalist “Dr. Edmund Hale” an AI Phony?

Posted on July 18, 2026 by Roger Moore

Have you seen the scores of Youtube “documentaries” featuring on camera narration by this Aussie looking (Outback wear) and sounding bloke who speaks with the authority of Morgan Freeman?

He tells hyped tales of environmental/ecological challenges and how they’ve been met with varying degrees of triumph by against the grain thinkers and doers.

Our presenter is ID’d as “Dr. Edmund Hale.”His videos are all over Youtube, and they seem to be created in mere hours, with multiple postings in some weeks or months or even days.

“Save the manatees,” “ash trees,” dogs and cats disappearing from a landfill, an English farm where they stopped “farming” and let the “animals take over” are among the subjects covered in these 20-30 minute films.

Hale sits in a student filmmaker’s idea of a “scientist’s study,” a windowed alcove with a telescope in the window and shelves of books behind him. He wears a floppy, Outback-ready “giggle hat” of the Aussie style, which many of us have bought at our favorite outfitters and used on trips into the tropics or just mowing the lawn.

And he speaks with dramatic finality and authority on these widely varied but generally “green” subjects. He explains things like an effort to clean up the Pacific Garbage Patch.

“The ocean, in the specific sense that (Boyan) Slat had proposed to a mostly empty TEDex auditorium in 2012, had answered…And here is where the answer to the specific ambition of the project genuinely expanded.”

Watch a few of these as a time killer and you’ll notice several “specific” features that Hale leans on that also fall under the “tells” that some regard as AI generated give aways.

“He” sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, citing research and correctly naming this or that species of phenomenon. He sprinkles enough “specific” science-speak into his narrations to pass muster — at least as a scraper of others’ reporting and writing.

There’s rarely much video related to the “specific” attempt or event or phenomenon that Hale is discussing. Filler footage abounds, along with the occasional still photograph. Even obvious, public domain footage that might lend him and these documentaries authority is omitted.

What’s used instead seems haphazard, snippets from all sorts of sources — film, TV commercial spots, other uploaded videos — STUNNINGLY random stuff that looks like “place-holder” edits while the producers finish hunting down more appropriate video.

There’s no nat-sound. The only audio is his flat, pedantic tutorial narration.

The “documentaries” are informative, but are “quick and dirty” in the extreme.

And the Oz (or Kiwi or South African or just plain Brit) face on camera? The lip-sync is off just enough to give one pause. And he uses one word — “specific” — like an AI robot who has discovered a favorite verbal crutch.

Every search for “who” and what “Dr. Edmund Hale” is points to two places — Youtube, which is as fakeable as anything on the internet, and a Facebook page, even more dubious.

No credentials turn up, no “institution” claims credit for him that I can find.

So who or what is producing these sloppy, talky, “feel good” documentaries about beavers bringing back this corner of the wild American West or a river system in Scotland, ocean garbage patch cleanup, the comeback of the giant otters of Argentina and the like?

And why?

Is there some nefarious operator or institution propagandizing “Things on a planet in crisis are not that bad?” What would be the purpose of that?

Or is it just some hack who’s found the right face and voice to match the subject matter of these hastily assembled “films” for Youtube (commercials inserted) profiteering?

I no longer work for a major mainstream media organization, but stumbling across this popular and seriously suspect youtube “creation” would have sent me off to pitch the story of tracking this “creator” down — flesh and blood or datacenter created.

So I’ll just mention what I’ve found with peremptory poking around, post it on a decently-trafficked website, and pose a challenge.

If you “really” exist, “Dr. Edmund Hale,” show us your credentials and prove it. Just an actor teaming up for a Youtube hustle? Admit it.

In our age of AI fakery, this strange Youtube outlier has me puzzling over why anybody would go to this much trouble to create a “brand” as “real” as a “Saturday Night Live” commercial, a fake storyteller reassuring us that humanity is doing amazing things to rescue nature.

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Series Review: Anya Taylor-Joy is…”Lucky?”

Posted on July 18, 2026 by Roger Moore

Anya Taylor-Joy spends most of her new series “Lucky” captured in lusty, loving close-ups.

Attired, dyed, made-up, eyebrowed and false eyelashed to something akin to feminine perfection, we are left with no doubts as to where her series creator (Jonathan Tropper) figures the money is.

Heck, she spends one entire episode in a form-fitting, undergarment-lacking “Cancer Sux” pink belly-baring T-shirt, as if we’re missing the point.

Sure, she’s supposed to be a broke daughter of a convict, married to the son (Drew Starkey) of another convict. But they have come into money, so maybe the sequined minidress makes sense, at least in that first episode.

“Lucky” is a slick, shallow, post-heist thriller in seven episodes, all surface gloss — chases, costume changes, flashbacks, heated arguments and drunken nights in California beach houses and a Vegas hotel.

Based on a novel by Marissa Stapley, this repetitive, meandering and sometimes plodding pursuit loses few chances to suggest “They could’ve covered this in a 90 minute movie.” But as that really only becomes an issue in the fourth episode, where things come to a cliched head and it all goes to pot in recycled “I did what I HAD to do” speeches and such, “Lucky” is worth a little of your “beach read” summer season TV streaming time.

ATJ has the title role, a redhead wronged by her loving husband Cary, who drugs her and leaves her to take the fall in a Vegas casino which is to be the jumping off point to their new life. A getaway to Dominica is in the offing.

Seeing as how they’ve stolen $10 million in mob money — some biodiesel skimming scheme (LOL) — this seems a tad stupid.

But whatever we don’t know about Cary, we can guess Lucky, at least, is no idiot.

A breathless, steal a hoodie/steal a hat sprint through the casino eludes scores of agents and cops led by the FBI’s Rand (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor) and we’re off.

Lucky will be nabbed by her beloved’s ex-con mother (Annette Bening, properly acrid) and her right-hand-hit-man (Clifton Collins, Jr., chilling), stuffed in car trunks, trapped in wrecks — often of her own creation — as she’s chased by the mob and the Federal mob in a long getaway tale where a character can shrug “America’s kind-of over, anyway” and we know what they mean.

Lucky turns on her “I don’t feel safe” beautiful and imperiled act for strangers who sneak her out of jams, take her in or let her go.

The series is well cast, with Timothy Olyphant playing Lucky’s imprisoned dad and William Fichtner as the boss of biodiesel scamming bosses, and it holds together well enough to keep us interested, even though the foreshadowing is obvious (“You kept your dad’s lighter?”). the flashbacks gratuitous and the costume changes contractually obligated.

Taylor-Joy is enough of an alluring presence that we don’t so much miss the fact that the character’s cunning and modes of speech and style of makeup and dress don’t really fit her class or place in life as just let it slide until we see what she’s wearing in the next sequence.

But our star is on a bit of a “run,” now. And not a good one. The least interesting “Mad Max” (“Furiosa”), “The Gorge,” “Sacrifice,” it’s not like she’s being challenged by the roles she’s taking and it’s not like any of them move the needle on her career.

Pray for her agent, and give “Lucky” a try. But don’t be surprised if you check out of it after a few episodes, or if she changes agents.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, profanity

Cast: Anya Taylor-Joy, Annette Bening,
Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Drew Starkey, Timothy Olyphant, Clifton Collins, Jr., William Fichtner

Credits: Created by Jonathon Tropper, based on a novel by Marissa Stapley. An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: Seven episodes @:40-54 minutes each

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BOX OFFICE: “Odyssey” makes money like it’s 2001 — A Boffo Thurs., Fri. and Sat. $124.5 million Opening

Posted on July 17, 2026 by Roger Moore

IMAX showings are selling out.

Ticket buyers started showing up early Thursday afternoon (when I caught it) and kept lining up until midnight.

“The Odyssey” scored the year’s best Thursday night “preview” take, Deadline.com reported.. Some $17.6 million (mostly premium priced) worth of tickets sold to this ancient epic based in the first great work of Western literature. That jump-started a Friday “opening day” to blockbuster status — $51 million+, Thursday night and Friday.

For the weekend? Try $124.5 million, per The Numbers.

Christopher Nolan, the most bankable film director of his generation, has the public lining up to see his latest, breathlessly hyped for the past couple of years as the Matt Damon/Anne Hathaway/Himesh Patel/Lupita Nyong’o/John Leguizamo and Robert Pattinson star vehicle made its stately way through production.

Viewed another way, a public yawning through “Supergirl” and a sea of sequels is voting with its feet in the name of “Show us something NEW.”

Disney spent $250 million+ on a live action “Moana,” and is losing Mickey Mouse’s shirt over gambling waaaaaay too much on shirtless AARP member Dwayne Johnson and lesser known co-stars.

Nolan rounded up Oscar winners Matt Damon, Lupita Nyong’o, Anne Hathaway and Charlize Theron, took them to Greece and Morocco, Sicily, Iceland and Scotland and spent the SAME $250 million and got a genuine epic out of it.

Maybe it’s the movie Steven Spielberg should have made instead of “Disclosure Day.”

“Project Hail Mary” may be cutesy and derivative and more science fantasy than science fiction in many ways, but it was different enough to become a phenomenon it took at “Toy Story 5” to unseat.

Granted, if you remember the outlines of a story told for thousands of years, and in films starring Kurt Douglas and Brad Pitt (just the Trojan War part of “The Odyssey”) and in TV miniseries, “Odyssey” is anything but “new.”

But Nolan’s critically-acclaimed take, one seeking relevance in an alarmingly unstable world lurching towards fascism and the violence that comes with it, is pulling them in.

Other films that had Thursdays like that did brisk Fridays and Saturdays and cleared $136-145 million. Filmgoing is down. Again, lots of these tickets are higher priced than general admission.

If you’re tired of sequels, reboots and superhero shlock, vote with your feet and your ducats, kids.

Nolan’s raised the bar, so let’s see if the latest “Spider-Man,” a proven property and frankly worn-out comic book franchise, can top it.

“Moana’s” meek opening is being chased by a $19 million second weekend, and for a family film to lose over half its audience, week to week, that’s another sign that this one will be a big’ol bust. It’s over $80 million, all-in, and will lose the rest of its IMAX screens to “Odyssey” and “Spider-Man” before month’s end. It’s #2 this weekend.

The latest animated “Minions,” “Minions & Monsters,” is holding more audience week to week and will finish third with $14.8 million or so.

“Toy Story 5” added $14.8 itself, and has cleared the $430 million mark. See ya, Minions. .

“Evil Dead Burn” is managed $5 million, losing most of its week-to-week audience. And that’s a pitifully low mark for a summer film to win fifth place bragging rights with.

“The Invite” is making some waves and bucks, hitting sixth this weekend with a $3.9 million take.You haven’t seen it? GO.

“Young Washington” is hanging around, clearing $3.7 million and coming in seventh. It’s in the black with a $41 million take on the bank by midnight Sunday. Are they convincing a lot of people to buy tickets for filmgoers who don’t go and see it?

“Obsession” is still the horror date movie of choice, earning another $2.5 in eighth. It will clear the $260 million mark all in early next week.

Ninth place belongs to the comic book bomb “Supergirl” whose pulse has weakened to $1.5.

And “Disclosure Day” takes tenth, $1.25 million closing in on $115.

“Jackass Forever and Ever” exits the top ten.  

Let’s hope the “Odyssey” stars — all the way down to Zendaya, Patel and Holland, Leguizamo and Remar, got a little profit participation from C. Nolan’s epic. Champagne for everyone!

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Movie Review: “The Odyssey” by Nolan

Posted on July 17, 2026 by Roger Moore

Sail we must, on Homer’s “wine dark sea” from Ithaca to Asia Minor and many points in between for the greatest story of them all, the tale of “a face, a fleet…of a war with Troy, of a man and a ‘trick'” and “Zeus’s Law,” defied at mankind’s peril.

For his latest feat, Christopher Nolan takes us on the epic quest that is the cornerstone of Western literature and Western civilization, Homer’s saga of Odysseus, “hero of the Trojan War,” a trickster ready to wield his brain and his brawn in a titanic struggle not just to win that war, but the many tests that stand between himself and “home.”

And in Nolan’s telling, what makes “The Odyssey” timeless is the remorse of civilization’s unraveling, of the violence and pitiless greed that brings great epochs and empires to an end. Odysseus, played with equal parts cunning and gravitas by Matt Damon, spends his years “coming home” from The Trojan War filled with regret at what he’s seen, what he’s done and what’ he’s caused to come to pass.

His men and even he see himself as “punished” by the gods for his acts, playing god himself as he is forced to choose who lives and who dies. He pay for his hubris with more tests, more violence and more second guessing than we’ve ever seen in in a film or mini-series about the original “classic” hero of Western literature.

Nolan’s ancient epic is more historical and slightly grander than Wolfgang Peterson’s mythic, popcorny star vehicle “Troy,” more touching than the riveting and brutally heroic “300,” and more tactile than either. We’re seeing real seas, realistic reconstructions of ancient armor, cities, galleys of war and a real dog — Argus — waiting for his master to return from decades of fighting and traveling.

Note to “Supergirl” and “Superboy” filmmakers and anybody else thinking “Let’s just digitally animate the damned dog.” Nobody cries when a digital dog dies.

If I’m honest, Nolan’s version of an oft-told tale had me from the moment I saw “the horse,” the “trick” of the tale-teller’s account of “clever” Odysseus. Troy really existed, and if there really was a “Trojan Horse,” I’ll bet it looked a lot like this — half-buried in the surf, a “Planet of the Apes” post-apocalyptic monument and tribute to the gods that had to be hauled, sans wheels, from the sand to the city whose blasphemous undoing it held hidden in its belly.

Nolan’s narrative opens with that “trick,” and tells the tale from three temporal perspectives — the Trojan War, as remembered, events back home in Ithaca with the queen (Anne Hathaway) and son (Tom Holland) that King Odysseus left behind to fight, and the epic quest to return from that war as recalled by Odysseus in the company of his most alluring captor, Calypso (Charlize Theron).

The central conflict isn’t the war, or the murderously ruthless “suitors” for Queen Penelope, foremost among them the handsome and venomous Antinous (Robert Pattinson). It is between Odysseus and his superstitious men as he struggles with hardened warriors (Himesh Patel plays his stoic but questioning second in command) convinced their commanding officer has offended and re-offended the gods, especially Troy’s patron, Poseidon.

“You can’t live by omens and sacrifices,” Odysseus scoffs. But in this “time of apparent magic,” even our Ur-hero is given pause by Cyclops, the Sirens, the enchantress Circe (Samantha Morton) and the gigantic armored man-eaters that confront them, the Laestrygonians.

And even Odysseus has his Mount Olympus spirit guide. Zendaya plays the goddess Athena, who warns him “Your cleverness will get you into trouble.”

As indeed it does.

Damon’s “brand” as an actor has long been the intelligence he conveys in all but the silliest roles. That’s put to great use here as we see him plotting and planning this escape or that ambush. “The gods help those who help themselves,” he preaches. But his Odysseus also lets us see him second-guessing himself, a wearying and ageing man weighed down by the heartbreaking burdens of leadership.

Hathaway, in the role of the dutiful wife weaving and unraveling her tapestry while bullying suitors impose themselves on her household, shows us her own burdens. She said “Promise me you’ll come back.” And all she’s left with, decades later, is rising anger at the plight her long-absent and presumed-dead husband has placed her in. She is queen, but their overmatched son (Tom Holland) is too unsophisticated and physically weak to take the throne in the presence of entitled, murderous brutes.

Jon Bernthal brings a rough bluntness to the gruff Menelaus of Sparta, a hardnosed ruler dragged into war when Helen (Lupita Nyong’o) ran away from his brother Agamemnon (Benny Safdie) to Troy.

And John Leguizamo nimbly plays the loyal blind swineherd who tries to help Penelope and son Telemachus (Holland) cling to power as long as possible against long odds that his master, Odysseus, might return. Horror icon Mia Goth plays Penelope’s treacherous handmaiden.

Nolan’s “all-star cast” makes something of a statement in terms or the film’s intentions and modern messaging. The first character we see is played by the transgender actor Elliot Page, with a Black Helen of Troy and Black and Asian characters giving this ancient world the cosmopolitan flavor it most certainly had.

A running theme through all this is the breakdown of an old order, “Zeus’s Law” about piety, square dealing and how to treat strangers and guests and the rest of the human race, Trojans included. Nolan is talking about the “Dark Ages” to come, and the “Dark Ages” which have revisited us whenever the people lose their way and the violent and rapacious are empowered over us, often at our own doing.

Take a gander at insensate monster Cyclops and who he seems to resemble. Imagine him in a diaper if you have trouble making the connection.

I love the way Odysseus plucks a musical note from his bow-string before unleashing an arrow, the treatment of the faithful dog who tells us and Odysseus of the decades he lost to an unjust war. And Nolan’s representation of Hades as a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape where the dead seek recognition from the living is one of the most artistic sequences he’s ever put on film.

Who speaks for the dead? Not just those Odysseus knew and lost. The unmistakable voice and half-face of James Remar (“The Warriors”) touches on the meaning of life and death and the residue of loss and regret that are supersedes all other considerations once you’re gone.

This “Odyssey” is almost exactly what we’d expect from Nolan, a very good film, if perhaps not on a par with the unnerving novelty of “Inception,” lacking the great performances and grandeur of “Oppenheimer” or the poetry, sentiment and stunning suspense of “Dunkirk” or “Interstellar” — just an epic yarn given a well-polished epic treatment.

This is a great filmmaker who has something to say to modern audiences, and a pretty good idea of how to say it within the context of a 3000 year old tale of “a face” that “launched” a “fleet” of “a thousand ships,” of “clever” Odysseus” and the gods and all-too-human men who bedeviled him every step of his guilt-ridden and bloody journey “home.”

Rating: R, graphic violence, nudity, profanity

Cast: Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Lupita Nyong’o, Himesh Patel, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Elliot Page, John Leguizamo, Samantha Morton, James Remar, Ryan Hurst, Mia Goth, Jon Bernthal and Charlize Theron

Credits: Scripted and directed by Christopher Nolan, based on “The Odyssey” by Homer. A Universal release.

Running time: 2:52

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Netflixable? “53 Sundays” only seems to Last that Long

Posted on July 16, 2026 by Roger Moore

The prolific Barcelona screenwriter and director Cesc Gay gave us the man and his dog dramedy “Truman,” and the edgier “The People Upstairs,” aka “Sentimental,” just remade by Olivia Wilde as “The Invite.”

So when you see his name on the credits, you expect sophistication and wit that crosses borders and transcends language barriers.

But his “53 Sundays” feels like an unstaged play he plucked out of a seldom-opened drawer and sold to the deep pocket content-cravers at Netflix.

“Unstaged” for a reason is a given. As is “suckers” at Netflix, because their mad rush to create films that play in many markets has them spending mad money on has-been or never-quite-were stars and indulging big name filmmaker/storytellers in their “dream” projects, with decidedly mixed results.

Cesc Gay has a track record. That was good enough for them.

In theatrical terms, “53 Sundays” is a four-hander, four characters in search of a laugh or at least a better story.

One, Carolina (Alexandra Jiménez), is Ms. Exposition, our narrate-to-the-camera “host” for a “fight” between three siblings — one of whom is her partner.

Carolina spends the first seven minutes of the bad play film explaining the family dynamic — the oldest brother Victor (Javier Gutiérrez) who married money and wants little to do with his siblings, the writer/college professor older sister Natalia (Carmen Machi) who workaholics through life as a way of coping with a cheating spouse, and Carolina’s half-broke, under-employed actor partner Julián (popular Spanish character lead Javier Cámara) who is the youngest and feels put upon and taken for granted by his not-wholly-estranged siblings.

The next 70 minutes show us the ways they avoid each other, promising an epic “fight” that never comes, a debate about their 89 year old father who is “forgetting” things, getting lost and “showing his penis” to the neighbors and anybody else within reach.

The pointlessness of this interminably pointless exercise is built in, structural. Consider, the first act is all Carolina and Julián prepping for a dinner party “meeting” between the siblings that doesn’t come off because Victor would rather dash off to Marbella for a little getaway.

The second act is Victor and Julián halfheartedly bickering and waiting for Natalia, who’s a no-show.

And the third act is the Big Fight over “What to do about Dad” that never reaches the level of “fight” much less “big.”

The dialogue is quotably dull, in Spanish or dubbed into English.

“I thought we’d wait an hour before we start arguing.” “Telling the truth is in poor taste.” Victor’s best put-down of his “dumbass little brother” is the script’s only biting line.

“I keep wanting more and more and you keep settling for less.”

The actors aren’t bad. They just have nothing to play. The film never overcomes the low stakes involved, low stakes which the tepid arguments barely address. And it never manages to surprise us from the moment we hear what the “real” beef they have is.

Their father is complaining of a flickering light bulb. WHO will deign to visit Dad and change it? Whose responsibility/JOB is that?

Cesc Gay will of course write and direct again. Maybe next time he’ll spend a little more time on the material, workshop it, figure out it needs more heft and maybe a few laughs.

Maybe next time Netflix will have somebody read this “content” before writing the check.

Rating: TV-MA, profanity, smoking

Cast: Javier Cámara, Carmen Machi, Javier Gutiérrez and Alexandra Jiménez.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Cesc Gay. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:18

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