BOX OFFICE: The Youtube Business Model takes over — “Backrooms” Blows Up, “Obsession” Booms

Posted on May 30, 2026 by Roger Moore

Legendary screenwriter William Goldman, the guy who scripted “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “The Princess Bride” and “Misery” and who literally wrote the book on how Hollywood works and what to expect when trying to get a movie made, famously said this about the decision makers and the movies that they’d decide get made.

“Nobody knows anything.”

But what would Goldman make of a moviegoing weekend like the last one of May, 2026?

Two Youtube creators, with one taking a youtube series onto the big screen with actual movie stars, are dominating the box office and the movie conversation.

Skip by a lot of the conventional Hollywood paths to the green light. Create your thing and get it in front of the public. Then make your deal with A24 or Focus features from a position of strength and the confidence that you’ve already built audience and awareness — THEIR jobs, usually — and that you’ve got something people will want to see.

The alternate, horrific universe of the “Backrooms” of Chiwitel Ejiojor’s furniture store are the stuff of nightmares in Kane Parson’s intellectual property (4chan to Youtube to a Theatre Near You). And it is blowing up the box office model in a “Mandalorian and Grogu” summer.

This film, which A24 is disrupting the box office with, may clear $80 million on a non-holiday weekend, per deadline.com. A lot of good reviews are helping it along.

The guy dreamed this up and started telling this story online as a teen. So? Film school, shmilm school.

“Obsession” has no name stars and good reviews and a young, “show me something new” audience and BOOM goes the box office.

The nightmare of a shy guy getting his “wish” and winning the attentions of his crush is on track to clear the $100 million mark for Focus, with a big piece of that going to online comic (“that’s a bad idea”) turned horror filmmaker Curry Barker. It’ll earn $25 million this latest weekend, and skipped past the Disney “Star Wars” film spin off from the streaming series “Mandalorian and Grogu” mid-week as the better daily earner.

“The Mandalorian and Grogu,” merchandising be damned, will drop to THIRD place this weekend with a $24 million take. Critic-proof “content” or not, the writing may not be on the wall for worn out IP sequels and spinoffs like “Star Wars,” anything Marvel or “Scream” or “Final Destination” related. But the rewards of trying something new(ish) are back in the backroom Hollywood conversation.

Hollywood’s “content” obsession and milking IP “brand” entertainment like the streaming-driven “Mandalorian” is running up against “original ideas” and gettings its ass kicked. This is a real up is down moment for the mandarins of movieland.

“Michael” is still making bank out of whitewashing Michael Jackson’s career as King of Pop and will take in another $16 million for fourth. Bad reviews, the inconvient truths about Jackson’s freak show private life and later public stunts be damned, the faithful are honoring his sugar-coated and formulaic bio-pic.

Nate Bargatze’s journey to big screen comic icon has been rattled as the comedy “The Breadwinner” from Sony is on track to do a mere $8 million on its opening weekend, enough to crack the top five, but barely. Bad reviews aren’t helping.

And there’s a Brendan Fraser as Ike Eisenhower at D-Day drama “Pressure” that’s doing middling business and yet still may earn $5 million on its opening weekend for sixth place. Good reviews aren’t making much of a difference.

I’ll be ducking into theaters for a marathon catch-up day, and I suggest you do the same. This is a turning point moment for an industry that has been stumbling around looking for novelty and any new sure thing that’ll get ticketbuyers up and out of the house. None of us want to miss that.

And I’ll update these figures as the weekend progresses.

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Series Review: Nic Cage’s a Private Eye Ensnared in “Spider-Noir”

Posted on May 28, 2026 by Roger Moore

Nicolas Cage dons the hat, mask, leather and goggles and plunges straight into the Spider-Verse in “Spider-Noir,” the latest Marvel spin-off to earn a series treatment.

An appearance previewed way back in the animated “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” predicated on a 1930 or so version of the web slinger fighting crime and monsters in Prohibition Era New York, would hardly seem a natural fit for the 60something but well-preserved Oscar winner.

But who doesn’t love Nic Cage? Especially in the Comic Con classes?

Oren Uziel’s made a superhero series with “supers” — villains with powers — and many of the trappings of film noir — an exotic femme fatale, fedoras, trench coats and tommy guns, a mob boss who “runs this town” and corrupt officials who let him. Standing against them is the last man with principles, a former “hero” reluctant to get involved.

Naturally, he’s a private investigator, a “dick,” a “gumshoe,” a shamus or whichever nickname you prefer.

But “trappings” alone do not a film noir make. “Mortal Kombat” and “Lost City” screenwriter Uziel and his co-writers have no ear for “hard-boiled” dialogue or monologues — the kind gumshoes like Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe and Ben Reilly, formerly “The Spider,” are preordained to deliver.

The dialogue here has anachronisms — “I ain’t tryin’ t’die in no PHONE booth!”

And the gimmick of being able to watch this series in bright, vibrant color or “film noir” black and white doesn’t play. Ask any cinephile who saw “Mank,” “Roma” or “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and they’ll recite chapter-and-verse why black and white celluloid and the lighting techniques of the 1940s don’t look like the simple “erase the color” flatness of digital cinema.

I watched most of the series in color, and that just makes the overly tidy soundstages and CGI recreations of “lost” 1930 Manhattan (Penn Station) look even more fake.

Throw in a few performances as colorless as the noir “Noir,” and you too will be comparing this to “WandaVision” and “The Penguin.” Because no way in hell is this in the same league with even B-picture noirs of the past.

Five years ago, The Spider ceased being New York’s savior. As Ben Reilly (Cage) narrates, he lost the woman he was going to marry and with her most of his interest in “getting involved” in Gotham’s problems.

That’s given the Irish mobster Finn Byrne, aka “Silvermane” (Brendan Gleeson) free rein.

But an attempt on the mob boss’s life sets events in motion ensnare Reilly, his sassy secretary (Karen Rodriguez), favorite kiddie pickpocket (Cary Christopher) and the lounge singer Cat Hardy (Li Jun Li) and tears at the very fabric of the city.

The arsonist who torched Silvermane’s mansion can turn himself into a flame, until he’s shot and killed.

And he’s not the only new “super” in town. A select few WWI vets seem to have these powers.

Reilly keeps The Spider under wraps as he takes assignments from this character and then that one, all trying to figure out the nature of the threat and who is backstabbing whom.

LaMorne Morris plays Robbie Robertson, the veteran reporter trying to get back on with the big newspaper where he used to deliver his scoops. He’s also pals with Ben, which gives him an inside track to the “monsters” among them.

Jack Huston plays the great love of Cat Hardy and a “super” whose name gives away his ties to this and every other Spider-Verse — Flint Marko.

And former child star Lukas Haas has the Elisha Cook, Jr. role, that of a mob functionary who may be as tough as he talks. Maybe not.

The narrative plods along from episode to episode, with one or two bits of action per every 40-50 minutes and maybe one laugh per installment.

The assorted screenwriters and the show runner struggle to supply “fan service” sequences — bits of fan-friendly casting and action and the like — and somehow give all this the grit and grim gravitas that putting “noir” in the title suggests. They fail.

Cage, entirely too old to be playing a WWI vet 12 years after the war ended, delivers fair value and seems to improvise a few “cool” takes to go with the digitally-assisted stuntwork of his stunt double.

“I guess I underestimated you.”

“‘Happens.”

Li Jun Li does her own torch song singing, which passes muster even if it’s as bloodless as pretty much every performance in this.

Listening to Gleeson’s 1930 mob boss explaining “entropy” to our private dick is one of a parade of eye-rolls that park this firmly in the realm of over-exposed comic book franchise “content” and not something that even measures up to the best of its contemporaneous super hero TV series.

In black and white or in color, “Spider-Noir” is basically a collection of gimmicks in search of a better story and writers who’ve seen “The Maltese Falcon,” “The Big Sleep” and “Double Indemnity,” or more importantly HEARD them.

Rating: TV-14, violence, smoking, profanity

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Li Jun Li, LaMorne Morris, Karen Rodriguez, Lukas Haas, Abraham Popoola, Cary Christopher, Jack Huston and Brendan Gleeson.

Credits: Created by Oren Uziel, based on the Marvel comics. A Sony/Marvel release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: Eight episodes @ :42-:50 minutes each

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Classic Film Review: The Tragedy of Thatcherism as it Happened — “Looks and Smiles” (1981)

Posted on May 27, 2026 by Roger Moore

Finding love and then discovering there’s nowhere for it to go thanks to a contracting economy and government hellbent on “breaking” the working class is what Ken Loach’s very fine “Looks and Smiles,” a 1981 classic that offered the first signs of nostalgia for pre-Margaret Thatcher Britain, serves up.

It was Loach’s sixth film, full of the stunning naturalism of acting that doesn’t look like acting (amatuer cast) and a real world of unvarnished harshness and thick, untranslated “dee dars” working class accents. Scripted by Barry Hines, its story provides an apt vehicle — a “lost generation” in the making — for the political awareness that became a Loach trademark.

Not widely seen upon its release, viewed today “Looks and Smiles” provides a stark contrast to the glossy period pieces and Bond-inspired escape of the British cinema of the “Chariots of Fire” era. Today we can stream it at our pleasure and watch it with subtitles on to cut through the “nowt,” thee, thou” Sheffield accents of the cast.

We meet best mates Mick and Alan, played by screen newcomers Graham Green and Tony Pitts, as they’re facing the end of their academic lives and the beginning of adulthood.

They’re not above pranking each other or their friends with a “nicked” (stolen) motobike, as they’re young enought o outrun any copper. But Mick is starting the search for a job in the mechanical repair/engineering field and finding nothing available. Alan spares himself the trouble by enlisting in the army. Mick would, too, but his parents (Pam Darrell and Phil Ashkam) won’t hear his “Army’s the answer” complaints.

It’s the early ’80s, and the British Army is expending much of its energy, moral certitude and blood occupying Northern Ireland. Alan, at least, will find that out. The rest of the country saw industry after industry — manufacturig to mining — gutted by Margaret Thatcher policies without a lot of forethought or compassion.

Mick? He calls on businesses looking for work, applies for “the dole” (unemployment relief) and tries to stay focused, stay positive and not get discouraged.

“Why aren’t there any jobs,” he fumes at the employment counselor? What happens to “workers” when there’s “nowt work to do?”

A generation raised on disco but educated by punk was figuring out that even the limited horizons of their class-conscious underclass parents was going to be beyond their reach.

What can Mick say he does when they meet a cute “bird” (girl) at a club? “On the dole” and “livin’ with me parents.”

Karen (Carolyn Nicholson) has a job in a shoe store and appreciates Mick’s attention enough to treat when they go out to the movies. But she’s bristling at clueless parenting as well. Her single mum (Cilla Mason) has a new fella, and Karen doesn’t approve. If Mick has no prospects he’s not going to be much help getting her out of this situation.

Perhaps the father that fled shortly after his “declared redundant” layoff will take her in.

Loach shows us a stumbling courtship that doesn’t need BIG concerns to trouble its waters. Mick is clueless enough about women to not know how his thoughts of staying at the football match while she makes her own way home with a stomach virus will play.

But we root for the two of them, are charmed by her efforts to help him manage the math of a job aptitude test and wonder if his skill with motorcycles might be his ticket to ride and earn an honest living.

Alan, meanwhile, comes home on leave, picks fights in the club and leads Mick astray in all the old ways that they used to act out — breaking and entering, “nicking” a car. He’s been hardened by his first tour in Northern Ireland.

Most of the cast were amateurs making their screen debut, with “Looks and Smiles” Green’s only screen credit. He is damned near perfect in the part — with the “attempted mustache” of youth and die-hard reasoning that his youth, his muscle and knowledge of engines will take care of him for life.

The story’s arc sets us up for predictable let-downs, but Loach and Hines keep gently upending expectations. I love the way Loach leaves stumbled-over lines in the final cut, adding to the reality of it all.

The parents come off as a tad naive, but well-meaning. Dad’s about to be “made redundant” himself. But he’ll not have his boy enlisted and sent to Ireland.

“Look mate,” Mick’s dad lectures. “Until you’re 18, you’re under our control.”

Karen’s dad has his own dose of reality to dole out, and surprises us with his sympathy for Karen and Mick’s lot.

The film’s politics are subtle, until Mick’s “what do workers do when there’s nowt work” for them to do speech.

And the romance — tentative, chaste and charming — gives away the origins of the movie’s title. How do young women win the fancy of young men, in good times and bad?

With “Looks and smiles,” Chekhov wrote nearly a century before Loach’s film. And so they did and still do, no matter how rough the world they grow up in handles them, no matter how callous “their (elected) betters” treat them.

Rating: unrated, adult situations, fisticuffs, smoking, profanity

Cast: Graham Green, Carolyn Nicholson, Tony Pitts, Cilla Mason, Arthur Davies, Pam Darrell and Phil Askham.

Credits:Directed by Ken Loach, scripted by Barry Hines. An ITC Entertainment release on Tubi, Apple TV, Amazon, other streamers.

Running time: 1:44

Rating: unrated, adult situations, fisticuffs, smoking, profanity

Cast: Graham Green, Carolyn Nicholson, Tony Pitts, Cilla Mason, Arthur Davies, Pam Darrell and Phil Askham.

Credits:Directed by Ken Loach, scripted by Barry Hines. An ITC Entertainment release on Tubi, Apple TV, Amazon, other streamers.

Running time: 1:44

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Documentary Review: Sate your Bond Appetite with Music — “The Sound of 007”

Posted on May 26, 2026 by Roger Moore

With the overdue annointing of a new James Bond coming any day/week/month or year now, those hunting for a 007 fix can be excused for tapping their watches and glowering at MGM/Amazon, which will be producing and releasing it. Eventually.

But that’s reason enough to watch and listen to the vicarious thrills provided by the iconic music of the 60+ year-old series.

For years, I’d keep the James Bonds’ Greatest Hits CD in my car for road trips. And over the decades, I’ve chatted up everybody from Shirley Bassey, Rita Coolidge, Simon LeBon, Sheena Easton to composer Marvin Hamlisch (“Nobody Does it Better”), and Bonds Roger Moore, Pierce Brosnan and and producer Barbara Broccoli about the music that became, early on, a signature of the British spy thrillers.

“The Sound of 007” is the one documentary that rounds most of them and many others up to talk about the happy accidents and inspired choices that created and recreated assorted Bond themes and the ways rock stars and pop singers craved the chance to make a musical statement in the movies.

Here’s Michael Caine recalling a ’60s stretch where he roomed with the most important Bond composer, John Barry, and got to hear the signature musical themes of the series before anybody else.

U-2 punched-out a rough draft of “Goldeneye,” insisted Tina Turner was the only one who could sing it, and it became one of many picks for “the most underrated” title tunes. George Martin produced Paul McCartney’s “Live and Let Die,” brought the tape to the tin-eared co-producer Harry Saltzman, not a “rock” fan, who kept asking “Who should we get to SING it? What do you think of Thelma Houston?”

Simon LeBon and John Taylor of Duran Duran relish getting the call to do “A View to a Kill,” the best New Wave Bond theme. Because if they’d been asked to do “Quatum of Solace” “nothing RHYMES with ‘Solace’…except for BOLLOCKS,” LeBon cracks.

Radiohead wanted to do one in the worst way, and Daniel Craig — a fan — was down with that. They did two tunes, one recorded before the request that they pitch a song for the then-upcoming film, another downbeat one that didn’t come in soon enough.

Amy Winehouse took a meeting with Barbara Broccoli and others and was interested, but too broken and broken hearted to come to terms with the assignment.

Hamlisch and McCartney revel in how quickly they whipped up their instant classics.

And Bond villain Rami Malek complains that Queen never got to do a Bond tune. Of course.

We see and hear legendary film and TV composer Hans Zimmer in the recording studio, working out ways to incorporate the Bond themes and the hummed and sung melody of the title tune of “No Time to Die” by Billie Eilish into the score.

Not every song or every film is covered. But the singular Shirley Bassey is here to remind us of the theatricality of her singing (and live performances) of “Goldfinger,” the song that set the Bond title tune standard, and others sing the praises of her under-rated and slinky “Diamonds are Forever” turn.

Sheena Easton, Jack White, Nancy Sinatra and Tom Jones talk about the prestige of being offered such a chance, and Jones remembers hitting and holding “THUNDER-Baaaaaaaaaaaal” so long he almost passed out at the mike.

It’s all good and informative fun — breaking down the Indian, Caribbean and Middle Eastern rhythms, the origins of Monty Norman and Barry’s contributions and the importance of horns in the best, “Rule Brittannia” “Swinging ’60s” tunes, which made those films time capsules and yet timeless.

And as we’re not getting a new Bond or Bond film any time soon, clips of great scenes and the great tunes of “The Sounds of 007” will have to do, for now.


Rating: TV-14, nudity, some profanity

Cast: Shirley Bassey, Sheena Easton, Jack White, Barbara Broccoli, Billie Eilish, John Barry, Naomie Harris, Nancy Sinatra, Sam Mendes, Hans Zimmer, Thomas Newman, Michael Caine, Rami Malek, Marc Forster, Cary Joji Fukanaga Lulu, Paul McCartney and Daniel Craig.

Credits: Directed by Mat Whitecross. An MGM release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:28

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Movie Review: Even the most Righteous Revenge has a Cost — “Is God Is”

Posted on May 25, 2026 by Roger Moore

Writer-director Alaesha Harris makes a furious feature film debut with “Is God Is,” an ugly, unblinking slice of African American Gothic horror as relevant as a headline and as timeless as a parable.

It’s about two fire-scarred sisters “always on the outisde looking in” given the chance and the responsibility to avenge themselves and their family on the man who did this to them. One is hardened enough for the quest, and the other too compassionate or just too beaten down to be.

Blood will be shed on a north to south, coast-to-coast quest to track down the father who burned their house, with them and their mother in it, got away with it and thrived, guilt-free in a new life. Nothing will be simple and little’s going to be pretty in this Old Testament styled manhunt/man-punish odyssey.

Racine and Anaia are twins, bonded since birth in ways the movies often treat as supernatural.

“If one finds trouble, the other can feel it,” one of them narrates. They can communicate telephatically. And if you pick on one, and you’ve got to deal with the other.

Racine, played with a cold-blooded resolve by Kara Young (of TV’s “I’m a Virgo”). is the tough one — petite, with most of her scars on her arms and torso. But God help you if you call her more badly-scarred sister Anaia (Mallori Johnson of “Steal Away”) “ugly.”

They’ve grown up in the foster care system, abused and neglected and unloved. These days, they can’t even keep custodial jobs. ‘Cine takes any second glance as an insult, any repellent look as an outrage.

Then they get a summons they were never expecting. Their mother, whom they’d been told died in that long-ago fire, is alive down Virginia way and breathing her last.

But mother Ruby, played through scar tissue and gritted-teeth by Vivica A. Fox, doesn’t have a tearful reunion in mind. She knows who did this to them and has a notion of how to find him. There’ll be no “forgive and forget.” Ruby declares she’ll have “no peace until I know he’s gone.”

She is their mother, the one who “created” them, “God” to the two sisters. Her word is the law.

Racine’s violent temper tells us straight off that she’s down for this “mission.” Anaia isn’t, but is too weak to resist her sister’s furious focus and too loyal to let her take on this quest by herself.

They will encounter figures worthy of a Homerian odyssey in their travels — their father’s faith-healer/preacher second wife (Erika Alexander), his beautiful, kept-in-comfort third wife (Janelle Monáe), assorted step siblings and dad’s old and mute (tongue taken out) lawyer (Mykleti Williamson).

But little that they experience prepares them for The Man (Sterling K. Brown) himself.

The script’s narrative is somewhat static, even as it’s on the movie. And its messaging is direct to the point of simplistic.

But this cast plays the hell out of this violent parable about what one endures, who one believes caused it, the need for revenge and the cost of giving those who deserve it their comeuppance.

Fox has her best role in years and registers grief eaten up with outrage under layers of makeup and in pre-fire flashbacks. Young practically seethes off the screen, Johnson gives the movie its humanity, with Alexander, Monáe and Williamson adding different shades to the black and white, good and evil simplicity of the plot.

And Brown shows up to bring it all home, delivering a character study in “the villain’s point of view” — cold, calculating, unsentimental, the “monster” any horror film simply must have to come off.

Rating: R, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Kara Young, Mallori Johnson, Vivica A. Fox, Janelle Monáe, Mylkelti Willaimson and Sterling K, Brown.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Alaeshea Harris. An Amazon/MGM release.

Running time:

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Documentary Review: Celebrating the NBA Player, Coach and GM — “Jerry West: The Logo”

Posted on May 24, 2026 by Roger Moore

“Jerry West: The Logo” is a glossy updating of the timeworn NFL Films era formula of documentaries celebrating athletes.

It’s officially sanctioned, touching on only the uncomfortable corners that its subject — NBA legend Jerry West — approved of. West may have died late in production (in June of 2024), but we hear first-time doc director Kenya Barris on camera and off thank people who knew West for participating.

“Jerry thanks you” too, he hastens to add on a couple of occasations.

Barris does a fine job of hitting the high points and the red letter events of West’s life in what must have seemed, even to him (he created TV’s “Black-ish”), a pretty old fashioned and downright corny hero’s journey tale.

There’s a whiff of “Hoosiers” in the story of the small town hardscrabble childhood that shaped West — abusive father, idolized older brother killed in the Korean War, but a kid who taught himself the game with a hoop nailed to a tree in the backyard of his Chelyan, West Virginia home.

The elderly West, who revisits that town and that home for the film, recalled fantasizing “big game” scenarios as he practiced his soon-to-be-iconic jump shot, focusing on pull-up jumpers where his feet landed “in the cylinder” he jumped from.

He starred for the West Virginia Mountaineers in college, a high-scoring guard and small forward leading his team to the Final Four. But a pattern was established. They lost the championship game. And West was named tourney MVP, which, as it repeated itself in his NBA LA Lakers years of losses to the Boston Celtics, was like rubbing salt in the “We LOST” wound for the hyper-competitive West.

Barris sits down with West’s second wife and sons from his two marriages, with former teammates like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and future “Showtime” Lakers coach Pat Riley. We hear about West’s temperament and frustrations with a decade of finals losses, his self-admitted unsuitability for coaching — despite getting the Lakers into the playoffs in that role in the ’70s.

But West’s lasting fame came from his GM years, getting Riley into building the Lakers’ “Showtime” dynasty, then the Kobe-Shaq dynasty, and later still the Golden State Warriors dynasty, the one build around the greatest shooter since West, Stephen Curry.

Michael Jordan empathizes with the competitive drive, Magic Johnson shares and feels the love West didn’t openly express during their years as management/star player, and hears how West broke down at the news that Magic’s career was over due to contracting the AIDS virus.

It’s all good enough, up to a point. But we’re in a new golden age for surface gloss documentary biographies, and nobody is churning out more of those than Netflix.

West’s repeated “I don’t give a s–t” cracks about his “country” ways, temper, successes and failures don’t get us into his head. Barris questions West about the formative tragedies of his life, his moments of pride and depression over coming close but failing to achieve his ultimate goal many times. But we never feels we “get” what drove him.

Big controversies, like the team owner Jerry Buss public firing of Paul Westhead at Magic Johnson’s very public urging, and the incredibly messy way Riley became coach, are ignored.

And more simply, there’s not enough analyis of his on-court skills — how he sharpened them, who he learned from the most, how he adjusted from huge scorer to assists leader — to explain his on-the-court greatness.

Barris has an easier time underscoring West’s later-life glories. It was his own hard-won skills at sizing up opponenents on the court that made him a genius at evaluating talent and engineering draft picks (Kobe, Magic) to match with complementary trades (Shaq, et al).

West’s Kobe “discovery” in high school was one of the great coups in pro basketball history, and his devastation at Bryant’s post-career death in a helicopter accident can be felt. West’s ability to relate, player-to-player, with Black teammates and stars he later recruited and advised for the Lakers is mentioned but not explored.

There’s just not enough of that material, too little done with the personal life, far too few Kareem Abdul-Jabbar anecodtes — he and West are the smartest guys in the room, here — revealing how his former teammate and then boss played on the court and then manuevred in the LA Forum office suites to put legendary teams on the court.

It’s all too “officially sanctioned” to come off as unfiltered and definitive.

Barris has made a good film. But this gloss-over makes the case that wee don’t need a feature film about West, that the most complicated West we’ll ever see was in TV’s “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” And cunning front office tactitian that he was, that Jerry West was merely part of an ensemble of once-in-a-lifetime talents, role players, ownership that had to be placated and a vibrant, culture-defining “scene” that he was never really a part of.

West will be “The Logo” until some future NBA commissioner figures some photo version of Jordan, Kobe, Curry or whoever merits that honor.

Rating: TV-14, profanity

Cast: Jerry West, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, Michael Jordan, Pat Riley, Karen West, Ryan West, David West, Stephen Curry, Rod Thorn, Jonnie West, Klay Thompson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Credits: Written and directed by Kenya Barris. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:01

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Movie Review: The Revolution will be Shoplifted– “I Love Boosters”

Posted on May 23, 2026 by Roger Moore

Capitalism’s end game is taunted and satirized in “I Love Boosters,” a loopy, anarchic comedy about shoplifting, fashion, media mass indoctrination and This Cultural Moment.

The latest from the rapper and songwriter turned filmmaker Boots Riley (“Sorry to Bother You”) has a touch of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” sci-fi and “One Battle After Another” energy. But just a touch. Sweeping up everything from teleportation to a succubus, generational angst (Gen Z and Alpha, mostly), pyramid schemes to con the poor, draconian Chinese labor practices and a parade of TV interviews with “fake” gig workers and apartment renters extolling the virtues of not making enough money to live on and the evils of rent control, it’s all a bit out of hand and yet furiously on the mark.

“Everything ‘they’ told us we could rely on seems so temporary these days.”

Not all of it works and pacing and flow call attention to themselves when the picture lurches into lower gears. The targets are recognizable in daily life in 2026, even if the means of “resisting” the villains stumble into the sci-fi fantastical

But Riley rounded up a winning cast, giving Keke Palmer her most glamorous and dressed-to-kill leading role and landing Don Cheadle, Eiza González, Will Poulter, Taylour Paige, Naomie Ackie, Popi Liu and LaKeith Stanfield in support.

And as the entitled, smart, rich and predatory designer Christie Smith, Riley serves up Demi Moore at her most villainous and most grandiose.

“I drape bodies that become a human landscape,” she bellows, a line that the “Devil Wears Prada 2” crew would have killed for.

Palmer plays “Corvette,” a Bay Area fashionista who dresses in her own fashion-forward creations and dazzles as she does. She may be using a silly fake name and squatting with her running mate Mariah (Taylour Paige of “Zola” and “Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F”) in a derelict fried chicken joint. But there’s always time for hair, makeup and dressing well.

Because these ladies — with fellow “crew” member Sade (Naomi Ackie) and other decoy “shoppers” — are professional “boosters.” You want to shoplift in high end couture shops like icon Christie Smith’s Metro Design, you have to “pass” for a customer with money. Especially if you want to stuff so much clothing down your track suit that you look like the Michelin Man’s pretty-in-pink sister as you waddle out.

The media has just enough shop-provided CCTV footage of the thieves in action to give them a name — “The Velvet Gang.” Christie takes their pillaging personally. She’s a former science prodigy who made her killing in designer clothing, and these boosters “are reducing our margins.”

Riley writes a clever scene that puts the predator and the prey in the same room, with Christie giving a disguised Corvette career advice that plays like a moment of “sisterhood.” The “first rule” of managing people?

“You never let them see you’re f—ing managing!“

Corvette is convinced that one of Christie’s new outfits was swiped from her Instagram post of her own version of that design. It’s game on, time to bring down the titan of the fashion industry.

But there’s competition in the rob-Chrstie-out-of-business game. This brassy Chinese woman (Popi Liu of TV’s “Hacks,” “No Good Deed” and “The Afterparty”) seems to be ducking into stores and literally vacuuming dresses off the racks. Turns out, she’s got stolen Chinese tech that she’s using to rob Christie and highlight the awful pay and working conditions in the clothing factory where she and others slave away to make Christie’s creations.

The “teleportation device” prop kind of hijacks the picture as writer-director Riley would rather embrace the gimmick than struggle to find something hopeful to say about mistreated store employees (Eiza González, Najah Bradley) finding common ground with exploited Chinese garment laborers.

Considering the many targets Riley passingly singles out as part of “The Problem.” Moore’s Christie quite righltly complains about being singled out . “Why (only) my s—” is being pilfered?

Palmer anchors the narrative with her vengeance-seeking fashionista who might discover feminism if she learns to listen instead of just lashing out and taking charge.

LaKeith Stanfield finds laughs as the misty-eyed model who always gives the ladies what they want — with a catch. Cassandra, aka Corvette, isn’t falling for it.

Will Poulter does his best “Are You Being Served?” gay clothing store manager. And an almost unrecognizable (heavy makeup, fat suit) Don Cheadle plays a pyramid scheme guru without the polish or digital distraction of “crypto” in his spiel.

It’s all more cluttered than you’d like, but that’s implicit when the filmmaker is reaching for “anarchic.”

The more solid than silly performances and a whimsical production design belp. There’s a Leaning Tower of San Francisco apartment high rise for the richie riches, chases down streets even steeper than the ones you find in real life San Francisco and Cassandra’s nightmarish vision of the Indian Jones boulder that her life has given her, a crushing ball of bills, eviction notices, old cell phones and the like that follows and pursues her as she scrambles to make that Big Score.

“I Love Boosters” makes a fine down-market, down-and-dirty and more pointed take on the Fashion Industrial and Media Complex than any “Devil Wears Prada” outing. I won’t say it’s funnier, because it isn’t. But Riley’s film gives you a few things to chew on between succubus sex scenes, teleportations gone awry and the Big Debate of any given fashion season.

Is it turquoise, or just plain “aqua marine?”

Rating: R, violence, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Keke Palmer, Taylour Paige, Naomi Ackie, LaKeith Stanfield, Popi Liu, Eiza González, Alan Z, Will Poulter, Don Cheadle and Demi Moore

Credits: Scripted and directed by Boots Riley. A Neon release.

Running time: 1:40

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Netflixable? Sally Field and an Octopus each Ponder “Remarkably Bright Creatures” peering through the Glass

Posted on May 21, 2026 by Roger Moore

“Remarkably Bright Creatures” is a sweet, sentimental and gratingly-cloying tale of a grieving widow who forms a relationship with the ageing Giant Pacific Octopus at the small town aquarium where she’s the cleaning lady.

It introduces but never really addresses issues of grief and fear of impending death as the narrative contorts itself into one contrived coincidence after another meant to add weight to the plot.

Sally Field weeps about her character’s loss and her fears of the life that shrinks for the last time once the phrase “assisted living” enters the conversation. “Answers” replace aching questions about a mysterious death and Alfred Molina — Sally’s villainous husband in “Not Without my Daughter” — voice-over narrates the running monologue of Marcellus, the octopus in question.

Marcellus takes an interest in Tova Sullivan’s (Field) life, reluctantly. As she lets bits of it out as she chats to his tank, he can guess or even intuit what is going on with a life not unlike his own — winding down.

Hers might still have the veneer of being “full,” but she was shattered by tragedy and is just now facing late life if not end-of-life decisions.

Tova has her gossip-and-knitting circle, The Knit-Wits (Kathy Baker, Joan Chen and Beth Grant), but they’re just going through the motions (and movie tropes) these days. She’s friends with the local deli/quick stop shop owner (Colm Meaney), who might be sweet on her. She has a lovely home with a view.

But the husband who shared that waterside cabin and who made assisted living reservations for them is gone, and that room in the house she keeps shut-up and preserved was for a son who died.

It takes the arrival of musician Cameron (Lewis Pullman of “Salem’s Lot” and TV’s “Outer Range”), on the last teetering legs of a rock stardom dream that dies hard — 30something and living in a van — to give Tova purpose and Marcellus a mystery to ponder and solve. Well, if he can work it out when not fuming about “the hell of a class field trip” at his aquarium home, his efforts to escape from his tank maybe Tova and then Cameron’s confessional chats with the captive critter behind the glass will give him something to work with.

It’s either that or “I can go back and watch algae grow.”

As Shelby Van Pelt’s source-novel came out about two years after Netflix collected an Oscar for the touching and revealing life-intelligence-and-death of an octopus documentary “My Octopus Teacher,” one might leap to the conclusion that inspired “Remarkably Bright Creatures.” That certainly inspired Netflix to want it filmed.

There’s also whiff of “Free Willy” and “Turtle Diary” in the feel-good but unsurprising, anticlimactic twists in the plot. And every potentially emotional turn of events is undone by the unlikeliness of this or the cutesey nature of that.

The octopus has all the punch lines, and in the hands of director and co-writer Olivia Newman (“Where the Crawdads Sing”), none of them merit more than a muted grin.

“I am subservient to a species beneath me in every observable measure.”

At least “day 1401 of my captivity” has a little more to it than watching “algae grow.” But not much.

Rating: PG-13, profanity, deaths

Cast: Sally Field, Lewis Pullman, Joan Chen, Kathy Baker, Beth Grant, Colm Meaney and the voice of Alfred Molina.

Credits: Directed by Olvia Newman, scripted by Olivia Newman and John Whittington, based on a novel by Shelby Van Pelt. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:53

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Movie Review: Faith & Family meet in a Vegas Brew Pub — “God & Beer”

Posted on May 19, 2026 by Roger Moore

A dash of Irish twinkle provided by Jared Dalley isn’t enough to recommend “God & Beer,” a drab little faith-based dramedy set in a Las Vegas brew pub, of all places.

Flatly-acted, with indifferent direction, amateurish writing, staging , makeup and editing, it’s as lifeless as any 74 minutes you’re likely to spend in front of a screen.

“God & Beer” is about an Irish brewmaster (Dalley, the pride of Boise State) who travels to Sin City to track down the daughter he hasn’t seen since she was eight. Showing a photo of her at that age isn’t much help in a city where a visitor can only ask a street preacher for directions, and “nobody” actually lives in and around The Strip.

But there’s this couple in marriage counseling, Nora (Nicole Butler, ID’d as “Emma” on the Internet Movie Database) and Jamie (Mark Justice) who figure in that search. She’s Irish, a real estate broker married to an “entrepreneur,” which is what professional dilettantes call themselves.

Jamie’s latest passing fancy is a brew pub/restaurant he’s just bought. It’s a business he knows nothing about, but it allows him to show up to work with a perma-stubble, and sleep one off any time he has a tad too many. They’re in couple’s counseling because he’s a drunk who owns a bar and is basically living there, in other words.

Oisin Quinn (Dalley) wanders into coffee shops, appalled at being served espressos in paper cups and into the HUDL brew house where he has to instruct a barmaid in how to “proper” pour a Guinness draft.

He’s just what Jamie needs. Oisin’ll even get the “brewing” started so that the brew pub can live up to its name. The employment deal he strikes is awfully similar to pieces of Guiness family lore he passes on to one and all — “10 percent of every pint” he brews that sells.

Meanwhile, he keeps missing Nora as she ducks into the coffeeshop as he leaves or steps out of the pub as he steps in. Sure, we know she’s his daughter.

Oisin’s here to fix a broken family, get Dad involved in his aspiring hoops player/actor-wannabe son’s life and ensure that Jamie’s little girl starts speaking to him again.

Most everything about “God & Beer” is half-hearted, undercooked and stiff. The acting is almost uniformly amateurish. The clumsy framing device of couple’s counseling slows an already leaden pace to a crawl.

But Dalley breathes a bit of sober (faith-based film, after all) life into his scenes, serving up Irish wit — “The well-fed do not understand the lean.” — and Irish biblical justifications for drinking.

What was Christ’s first “miracle?” Turning water into wine. There are also cornball bits of Guinness the beer-making empire’s family lore.

The presence of Dean Cain as a school principal and a few shots at “Bud Light” are about as close to an agenda as this picture gets.

It can’t be cheap to film a movie in Las Vegas, even one as generic in settings as this one. Which is enough to make one wonder why anybody involved bothered? With drama this flat, stakes this low and entertainment value this paltry, the safer investment might have been at the roulette table.

Rating: TV-PG

Cast: Jared Dalley, Nicole Butler, Mark Justice, Jessica Adams, and Dean Cain.

Credits: Scripted and directed Jessica Adams and Natali Nichols. A JC Films movie on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:14

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Series Review: “How to Get to Heaven from Belfast” takes Derry “Girls” to Dublin and Donegal along the Way

Posted on May 17, 2026 by Roger Moore

Here’s a delighftul weekend’s binge, a daft and darkly comic trip to the Emerald Isle that’s a lot cheaper than flying, with a lot more laughs than you’ll get from wrangling with DHS.

“How to Get to Heaven from Belfast” has a hint of Hitchcock, a dab of “Ab Fab” and a big fat dash of “Derry Girls.” It’s an “Only Murders in the Building” where the building or buildings have burned down and only “three Belfast eejits,” gal-pals since Catholic School, can get to the bottom of things.

Creator, principal writer and “Derry Girls” writer-creator Lisa McGee has turned out a cleverly cast, playfully-plotted Ireland-tweaking, Brit-bashing, Catholic Church-torching hoot.

And you’ll want to catch it with the subtitles on, as you won’t want to miss a single bit of the slangy craic or wisecracks, the Derry-accented digs and down and dirty witticisms.

“I was RIGHT! You doubted me like that lad…that fella from the BIBLE!”

“Peter?”

“PETER! You’re all DOUBTING Peters!”

Our four “separate but inseperable” friends met at Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic School. But only three — TV crime show creator Saoirse (Roism Gallagher), whose name her British co-workers never pronounce correctly, the eternally testy well-heeled mother of three Robyn (Sinéad Keenan) and gawky lesbian Dara (Caoilfhionn Dunne) — stuck together into their late ’30s.

Cryptic messages and the mysterious death of their classmate Greta (Natasha O’Keeffe) summon them all South, to tiny, coastal Knockdara, where Greta’s widowed Garda (police) inspector husband (Emmett J. Scanlan) has a creepy way of mourning her passing and Saoirse’s clumsy effort to put a photo of all of them together in the dead woman’s coffin reveals the truth — to her any way.

That’s not Greta’s corpse. The body has no rune/tattoo that Greta made all the girls share, way back when.

There was a “Big Bad” back in their school days. And over the eight episodes of the series, from Northern Ireland to Ireland, London to Portugal via a passing parade of character points of view, the surviving trio track and parse anagrams and their collective past (flashbacks) and other cryptic clues to find their still-living classmate.

“DNA doesn’t just wash off — like Catholicism!”

That’s with the Knockdara constable and part-time tow-truck driver Liam (Darragh Hand) who is sweet on Saoirse always three steps behind them. But the son of a man (Josh Finan has both roles) who disappeared in their youth is also sniffing around, trying to figure out the “Big Bad.”

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