Movie Review: A Chinese Saga About the Iraq War’s Victims — “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East”

Posted on October 19, 2026 by Roger Moore

“Once Upon a Time in the Middle East” is a Chinese blockbuster with an Iraqi War setting and spaghetti Western title.

As epic sagas go, Muye Wen’s film lurches along a tightrope, teetering between intimately sprawling and ambitiously overreaching, between an Eastern perspective on conflict children and straight up People’s Republican agitprop.

Wen, who directed “Dying to Survive” about “foreign” control of life-saving medicine, and who contributed a segment to the “My People, My Country” anthology film celebrating the founding of the People’s Republic, waits until the later acts of the film to bend it towards “child victims/child soldiers” of international conflicts. So the messaging feels like an afterthought in a tale of one righteous Chinese chef’s struggle against Western Imperialists, Islamic terrorists and “Americanized crap” Chinese dishes like General Tso’s Chicken and Chop Suey.

The perspective can be fascinating to Western eyes. The filmmaking is immersive enough to take us into the beginnings of the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 — vivid grounds-eye-view scenes of the first air attacks on Baghdad — on into the horrors of terrorism that spread throughout the Middle East when Saddam Hussein’s regime was brought down.

The storytelling? It’s kind of a mess — meandering and occasionally damning until it zeroes in on our hero’s efforts to “save those kids” — war orphans — and goes all sentimental on us.

It’s framed within a flashback that begins as an aged and scarred Chinese chef, Xu Fu (Teng Shen) faces hard present-day questions from the customs officers of an unnamed state (Iraq). He was labeled a “terrorist” years ago. Why should we let you back in?

“It’s more complicated than that,” he says.

In the days after 9-11, Xu was a widowed cook deep in debt who took a job in Loong Restaurant in far-off Baghdad. He left his young teen daughter with his mother and traveled far for big bucks which will allow him to pay his bills.

Desperate as he is, he takes umbrage at any how-Chinese-food-should-be-cooked questions from Zaid (Sharif Subhi), a Ba’athist and former government minister who owns Loong Restaurant and appears to be on the outs with Saddam’s regime.

But with manager Ma Jungsheng (Qiming Jiang) acting as peacekeeper/intermediary, Xu takes the job and proceeds to dazzle the locals and keep the place packed.

All those TV press conferences with their American and Iraqi posturing and saber rattling? “Just noise,” Xu is reassured.

Then the bombs start and the city and country shut down in war mode. The neighboring orphanage, which still has children from earlier conflicts, still needs to be fed, as do the occupiers. Zaid, back in power thanks to the American alliance, arranges for this lone restaurant to feed the Green Zone thanks to U.S. food supplies and other black market arrangements.

Xu takes on the orphan boy Saif (Omar Sherif) as an apprentice. And Zaid takes and pays bribes, trying to save his sickly daughter via black market U.S. Army medicine.

And then things break down, the Iraqi uprising begins and all that food prep and pep talks to orphans is set aside as Xu runs afoul of first one side and then another. The restaurant becomes an illegal after-hours bar. One “ABC” (“American Born Chinese”) GI (Aarif Lee) is either the best intermediary they could wish for if they want to get rich off this war, or the guy who could be their downfall.

And that one English phrase Xu’s quick to master doesn’t do him nearly as much good as he’d like when the door is kicked.

“Cook. NOT terrorist!”

The narrative is over-reliant on voice-over (Mandarin with English subtitles) narration as the script has Xu try to keep a story that’s all over the place on the screen somewhat more coherent just with words. The pace suffers as the plot proper takes forever to get to the starting line before ambling along to the finish.

Teng Shen of China’s rally racing “Pegasus” film franchise creates a stoic and enterprising hero to build the story around. But every new character — our “ABC” GI, the Iraqi restaurant owner who changes priorities, a jihadist “head master” teaching kids in prison — adds a plotline that has only cliches and archetypes to recommend it.

The pictures comes to a halt any time the picture pauses to underscore some point about those nefarious Yankee Imperialists, or the Muslims China fears and stereotypes just as much. Yeah, we get it.

The production values are great, and the food prep montages sparkle and tempt. But I found the whole unwieldy as “Once Upon a Time in the Middle East” staggers into this cliche, that predictable turn of events and one villain after another.

It’s perfectly fair to paint American interventionists and future members of ISIS in a damning light. But surviving and escaping them should require more than just plucky plot tropes slathered in sentimentality.

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Teng Shen, Qiming Jiang, Aarif Lee, Sharif Subhi and Omar Sherif.

Credits: Directed by Muye Wen, scripted by Qunli Lang, Muye Wen and Wei Zhong. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 2:20

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Documentary Review: “Who is Martin Mull?” remembers the Comic, Musician, Actor and Painter

Posted on October 19, 2026 by Roger Moore

“Martin Mull,” some viewers — ones who remember one of the great comic phenomena of the ’70s may wonder? “Didn’t he die?”

Yes. Yes he did. Back in 2024, by which time he was not so much “forgotten” as a pop culture figure, just one who “transitioned” into something beyond stand-up comedy, musical ditties and TV and film acting.

But he wanted to answer the question “Who is Martin Mull?” in the last years of his life, when the accomplished songwriter, actor and comic had become famous in the art world. Beloved comic Bob Saget idolized Mull, and was in the process of directing this documentary when he himself suddenly passed two years before Mull, in 2022.

One was widely mourned, thanks to his years playing a TV dad for generations. The other earned respectful obituaries that didn’t ripple very far in the culture, prompting “Didn’t he die?” queries when word that this doc was finished, years later.

But Mull was the droll, musically-inclined headliner playing big venues who paved the way for Steve Martin’s big breakout. He was a conceptual comic, not just sarcastic, but doing that “anti-comedy” shtick that Martin would take further.

Mull’s traveling show included a comfy living room with easy chair, coffee table and lamps and a band to back his singing and guitar playing, with both billed as Martin Mull & His Fabulous Furniture.

Start with a sight gag. Inject puns and silences that wrong-foot the audience, pop a few naughty musical ditties into the mix and you had yourself an act. It was something to see, man. And hear.

Steve Martin had “King Tut.” But the year before, Martin Mull had wicked wink bossa nova, “The Humming Song.”

Director Neil Berkely, with his sometime collaborator Oscar winning pop culture documentarian Morgan Neville producing, finished the film Saget started, a charming and sentimental look at a showbiz polymath’s career of always being “pretty good” at comedy, comic songwriting and comic acting, just always surpassed by others who followed or who broke through alongside him and then became pop culture icons.

But all his life, Mull described himself as an artist. “All the show business stuff,” he says in the documentary, “was just to support” his career as an artist.

He’d paint witty homages to Disney animation on animation cells, dabble in photo-realism, neo-realism, impressionism and collages. In a world where many a pop culture figure passes her or himself off as a painter, sculptor, collagist and the like — from Buddy Ebsen (Jed Clampett) to John Cougar Mellencamp — Mull actually had the training and the chops.

No less a collector than art connoisseur Martin was one of the first to start snatching up the works of the Rhode Island School of Design alumnus. And not just because they were friends who once toured as “Steve Martin-Mull” in a double-bill.

“Who is Martin Mull?” shares a lot in common with the many other recent docs about comedians. He wouldn’t talk about his unhappy childhood, but Saget and Berkely got relatives (including Mull’s second wife, Wendy) and old family friends to fill in the blanks, something Judd Apatow’s Norm Macdonald film failed to address.

Mull comes off as more modest about his gifts and work than Steve Martin and Eddie Murphy, also the subjects of recent documentaries.

And while comics are pretty much to a one testy (Seinfeld, Murphy), unhappy or somewhat troubled (Martin) or tragic (John Candy, Chris Farley), Mull seemed at peace with his Mr. Second Best, Mr. “White” Americana image. The native Ohioan even made such people the subject of his artwork, with “American Gothic” sneaking around the thematic backgrounds of much of his work.

The late Norman Lear and Fred Willard sit down with Mull to chat about their ground-breaking comedy series, “Fernwood 2 Night,” which Lear created and Mull and Willard starred in, a snarky small town cable access chat show sendup that predated Garry Shandling’s “Larry Sanders” take on that idea by by more than a decade.

“Who is Martin Mull?” comes along at the perfect moment to remember why we all should have taken more notice when this Boomer funnyman passed, and how funny he was.

You couldn’t listen to college radio in the ’70s and early ’80s without hearing his loony tunes, couldn’t channel surf by a chat show without seeing him on one — he guest-hosted “The Tonight Show” thirty times — or sending them all up with “Fernwood.”

And Mull, bless his heart, seemed as mystified as anybody else that the comic Christmas season ’85 bomb he and Madeline Kahn, Michael McKean, Lesley Anne Warren, Jane Wiedlen and Tim Curry starred in — “Clue” — became a cult favorite among the generation who grew up with it on TV or VHS tape. Modest to the end.

As “Who is Martin Mull?” finishes with a bittersweet musical flourish, it not only answers the questions implicit in its title, it becomes a sweet, self-deprecating and amusing template for such post-mortem appreciations of the funny women and men who light up the culture and eventually pass on.

Let’s hope the upcoming Richard Lewis doc, and every one that follows, takes that in.

Rating: TV-MA, profanity

Cast: Martin Mull, Steve Martin, Bob Saget, Wendy Mull, Tom Waits, Fred Willard, Anodea Judith, Patton Oswalt, David Alan Grier, Kerri Kenney, Penn Jillette, Eric Idle and Norman Lear

Credits: Directed by Bob Saget and Neil Berkley. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:34

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Netflixable? Not a Career “Sacrifice” for Evans — Anya Taylor-Joy?

Posted on October 18, 2026 by Roger Moore

Too glib to be a serious satire and too grim to be any damned fun, “Sacrifice” is the best recent example one can think of to justify why “nepo babies” deserve to be named in movie reviews.

It was directed by the son of famed Greek filmmaker Costa-Gavras (“Z,” “Missing”). While thematically this vapid riff on celebrity, the climate crisis and belief vs. science reaches for political importance, a trademark in the films of Romain Gavras’s daddy — the plot, execution and messaging is pretentious, muddled hackwork.

But hey, the Greek and Bulgarian locations — what little we see of them — are striking.

Chris Evans plays a stressed, highly-strung movie star who had a public meltdown at the premiere of his last blockbuster. Mike Tyler starts his “comeback” by appearing in a high-profile public event, in a marble quarry/mine on a Greek island where a Zucker-Besos oligarch (Vincent Cassel) is holding a soiree to gin up support for his “save the planet” via “deep sea mining” Poseidon Alliance.

Mike’s manager is sure this is the right move, but Mike sees the lunacy of flying the rich and famous via private jets to a remote island to “Make Earth Cool Again.”

“We got tired of raping the Earth so now we’re raping the ocean?”

He’s just committed another viral step-in-it faux pas when terrorists led by no saint Joan (Anya Taylor-Joy) come in commando gear, armed to the teeth and wiring the mine with explosives.

She has a prophecy. “The world will end in two days.” She and her compatriots have “a mission,” to find a King, a Nature Child and a Hero to take to a newly-active volcano and “sacrifice.”

Mike, passionately improvising her cult’s message to the media, seems like an ally. But “Nothing is real until one faces death.”

Mike is just a big screen “hero.” As testy and yet unshaken as the “King” hostage (Cassel) is, at least he’s defiant. Mike may just “want to show people I can be of use.” But “people” almost certainly is limited to “Hollywood” show-folk, and “use” has its “whatever will make me rich and famous again” limitations.

Will he be a hero in “Joan’s arc” (the script makes that story arc pun)? Or will meeting her father (John Malkovich) sway him, one way or the other?

Evans dials back the dizzy actor shtick here, as if he feels more connected to the impulsive “activist” side of the character. Taylor-Joy’s joyless turn as the shrill idealogue doesn’t do the film or this screen couple’s chemistry any favors.

Cassel and Salma Hayek Pinault, playing his character’s wife, set off more combative and on-key sparks, suggesting they’re the ones who understood the assignment.

Malkovich shows up and takes on another accent and reaches for laughs that aren’t scripted.

Sam Richardson plays Mike’s talent manager, who sees “comeback city” in this appearance, which was his idea and which he seems inept at capitalizing on. His is a particularly a colorless performance.

So much about this plot, this message and this stumbling narrative seems wrong-footed and off that it’s hard to know who gets most of the blame for the soulless stretches of “Sacrifice.” Those dead patches tear the guts and heart out of whatever they figure they’re accomplishing with the finale.

But it’s not like this will be anything more than another blip on Chris Evans’ resume. He’s had a few, and he always works again.

Anya Taylor-Joy didn’t turn her career trajectory around in taking on the Apple TV series “Lucky.” A tiny role in the “Dune” franchise seems more strategic than artistic or ambitious. Pairing up with Miles Teller for “The Gorge” would have gotten her agent fired if our star wasn’t still coasting on whatever buzz the underwhelming blockbuster “Furiosa” delivered.

And even having a “Lord of the Rings” film in production doesn’t say much for her or her handlers’ role selection. Ask Liv Tyler about career bump illusions and how one’s choices narrow when you make enough bad ones, even in a sure-thing franhcise.

Let’s hope the on-camera talent collected their checks and squeezed in a little sight-seeing with this one. Because it didn’t do their artistic bottom lines one whit of good, and “moving on” gets harder with every passing stinker.

Rating: R, bloody violence, profanity

Cast: Chris Evans, Anya Taylor-Joy, Vincent Cassel, Salma Hayek Pinault, Sam Richardson and John Malkovich.

Credits: Directed by Romain Gavras, scripted by Will Arbery and Romain Gavras. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:40

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BOX OFFICE: “Street Fighter” opens Well, not Great, Elizabeth Holmes Goes to Jail Doc makes Bank

Posted on October 17, 2026 by Roger Moore

The umpteenth — OK SEVENTH — “Street Fighter” video game film adaptation is opening #1 at the box office, as one might expect.

But it’s not doing summer “event” movie numbers, or making holiday weekend blockbuster bank. It’s doing good for late October numbers, adjusted for Trumpflation.

A $12 million+ Thursday night and all-day Friday “opening day” points to a $31 million+ opening weekend, per Deadline.com.

The novelty, I guess, is that there are real MMA fighters in the cast? Along with (checks notes) Jason Momoa, Eric Andre and um, (remember) 50 Cent? Reviews haven’t been awful, but they haven’t been kind. Selling under three million tickets, which is all a $30 million weekend suggests, isn’t to be sneezed at. But this is set to be a money-loser, all-in.

But with “Resident Evil” proving there’s still money to be made off aged game-turned-film franchises, so we’ll see how she fares.

“You Can See Everything” is that rare documentary that draws a crowd. America can’t get enough of seeing one rich, murderously callous evildoer going to prison. Theranos bloodsucking/poisoning/“testing” mastermind Elizabeth Holmes is followed by filmmakers as she and her partner prep for her to go to prison.

Does the point of this A24 release — which is opening in the $13 million range (2nd place) — include “We only lock up rich and evil women in America (Martha Stewart, etc)?” One wonders. And one will track it down. Eventually.

The pre-Halloween horror tale “Other Mommy” may take third place if it can earn over $7.9 million. That’s not far from putting it in the black as it crosses the $40 million mark at the box office.

It’ll need to clear $7 healthily to best the new I-broke-up-with-my-dad-and-got-swallowed-by-a-whale thriller “Whalefall.” There’s a lot that’s horrific and original in this one, which goes further south the more sentimental it gets. But hey, a nice role for Josh Brolin and it’s great seeing Elisabeth Shue (“Back to the Future”) for the first time in ages. Mixed reviews won’t kill it, but the ceiling appears to be $7.5 million distinctly possible heading into Sunday.

It should and might edge the latest version of “Sense and Sensibility,” which won’t be a big enough hit to revive the Jane Austin Mania that gripped the cinema and cable TV (A & E’s “Pride & Prejudice”) of the ’90s, which is on track to fall in the $6.5-$6.9 million range.

Reviews have been respectful and generally positive.

I found it romantic enough and defensibly different enough in tone from the frothy version Emma Thompson won the Oscar for scripting and Ang Lee directed back in ’95. People are less classic lit literate in this era, one finds, unless Anya Taylor Joy is playing “Emma.” Nobody showed up to see Dakota Johnson butcher “Persuasion.”

The latest weekend take of “Verity” will land just shy of that, over $6, probably closer to $6.5, probably just outside of the top five in sixth place.

“Resident Evil” has enough in the tank for seventh place, $5+, maybe $5.

“Heart of the Beast” keeps on plugging along, a Brad and his Dog adventure that is also on track to clear $5 million, probably landing in eighth place, maybe as his as seventh.

The Indian thriller “Jailer 2” should crack the top ten with a $2-$2.5 million weekend as it opens wider from platformed limited release.

And “Forgotten Island” may be underwhelming the animated box office, but it’s the only family film game in town and it will clear $2 million to stay in the top ten, still having earned only $35 million in total. Expect a LOT more animated sequels, as franchises seem the only safe bet for big studio animation these days.

“The Social Reckoning,” “Digger” and “Angel and the Badman” all tumble out of the top ten.

Check back here as the weekend progresses and I’ll update these figures as Sunday data comes in.

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Documentary Review — “Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald”

Posted on October 16, 2026 by Roger Moore

He was a very smart guy who played dumb to the bitter end. He repeatedly claimed he’d dropped out of high school (he graduated at 14) and that he’d never been to college (he went to two).

Norm Macdonald would butcher grammar and haltingly launch into jokes about World War II with “I just found out/figured out” obvious lessons from history. He’d seen his idol, David Letterman, get laughs out of stating the stupidly obvious, or asking “What time do they tape ‘Saturday Night Live?” That became Norm’s shtick

He’d tell jokes, often-off-color ones he wrote, or recycled oldies — the hoarier with age, the better. He did pages and pages from an ancient joke book his dad had long ago owned when he was supposed to be roasting his longtime friend, Bob Saget for a TV special.

Macdonald bombed. And not just that night. He seemed to relish it, beating a bad joke to death or stretching a comic thread well past its breaking point, grinning and daring you or this or that talk show host or hostess not to laugh. Because you would and they did. Eventually.

He’s the only reason anybody remembers Don Ohlmeyer, one guy who was pretty sure Macdonald “wasn’t funny.” Ohlmeyer fired Macdonald for years of relentless OJ the murderer jokes on “SNL.”

And Macdonald lied. A lot. Almost always comically. In one of his last sets, he groaned to the club crowd he was playing to about being 68 (he died just shy of 62).

So Macdonald the joker, wit, provocateur and poseur remains an inscrutable figure even in death — unknowable. Even as the late stand-up comic, actor, writer and “Saturday Night Live” “fake news” anchor earns an affectionate biographical tribute in Judd Apatow’s new documentary, “Norm: The Tale of Norm Macdonald,” we don’t “know” him.

The doc is culled from Macdonald’s decades of stand-up (he was in college in the first grainy clip), appearances on chat shows from Letterman to Larry King, “Saturday Night Live,” podcasts by the bushel basketful and radio appearances.

Friends weighed in on his talent, with everybody from Adam Sandler and David Spade to Letterman, Conan and Stern voicing platitudes whenever Norm turned up on their shows/podcasts, etc., which Apatow uses rather than actually interviewing anybody.

And Macdonald reads from his book, “Based on a True Story: A Memoir,” which he referred to as a “novel.” Because, you know, he lied about everything. Well, in a “just a joke” sense. Sort of.

“Death is a funny thing. Not funny haha, like a Woody Allen movie, but funny strange, like a Woody Allen marriage.”

Unknown to the world, he fought cancer in his youth, and then, decades later, at the end of his life. And he saw Richard Farnsworth, star of “The Straight Story,” as a role model for how to treat that struggle — privately. “That’s brave,” Macdonald thought. Farnsworth killed himself at the end.

Macdonald gambled. A lot. And he philosophized about it.

“As long as the red dice are in the air, the gambler has hope. And hope is a wonderful thing to be addicted to.”

But for all his work, his rare film appearances, his TV efforts, his controversies, his years of punchy, pithy tweets — “A fellow told me he used the word “incorrect” as his password. That way if he forgot it, it would say, “your password is incorrect”. Haha.” — it’s hard to say that even those who knew him best “knew” him, or ever gave away who he really was to interviewers.

As the film samples insights from Nick Swardson and the interviewers are radio DJs, Tom Green or David Spade or Harland Williams,, that’s not necessarily shocking. Which is why maybe Apatow should have knuckled down and committed to doing some interviews himself to get hard answers instead of serving up “a clip show.”

Four years gone, Macdonald is still doing his act, an archival Youtube kingpin — memorable chat show appearances, podcast outtakes, interviews and “SNL” “OJ” jokes and Burt Reynolds and Bob Dole impersonations abound.

That’s how I first got a handle on his brilliance, as I was very slow to warm up to a comic who came off distant and patronizing if you weren’t necessarily on his wavelength. Montages of OJ jabs passed off as jokes were the highlights of his “Weekend Update” years. He followed Kevin Nealon (also appearing here) in that anchor’s chair and never clicked the way Dennis Miller had before him or Che and Jost have since.

I watched some of his posthumously released “Nothing Special,” which has sentimental value, if nothing else.

Maybe it’s that Macdonald, as “SNL” producer Lorne Michaels says of his TV show in the doc “Lorne,” “clips well.” He’s better in short, punchy doses, where the unease he tried to create had a clock running on it. That discomfort you feel in MacDonald’s full appearances, in his “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee” installments, wasn’t just in the funereal final car ride.

Anything might happen. But would it be funny?

The worship that Letterman pours on the guy who worshipped him reminds you that Letterman wasn’t to every taste, either. Letterman also played “dumb,” and worked hard at inventing someone unknowable off camera.

“Greatest” comic ever?

So this father of one, private life rarely discussed comedian remains funny — archived as long as Youtube exists — and is still a mystery, despite a whole lot of talking heads, including his own, dancing around the subject of who he really was, what he really thought and where his comedy was centered and where comical inspirations truly came from.

Rating: R, profanity and lots of it

Cast: Norm Macdonald, Larry King, David Letterman, Sarah Silverman, David Spade, Harland Williams, Tom Green, Jeffrey Ross, Howard Stern, Adam Eget, James Downey, Gilbert Gottfried, Dave Chapelle, Conan O’Brien and many others.

Credits: Directed by Judd Apatow A Netfix release.

Running time:

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Movie Review: “Sense and Sensibility,” The Next Generation

Posted on October 16, 2026 by Roger Moore

Every era deserves its own take on Jane Austen, and 2026 gives millennials and Gen Z a go with a new “Sense and Sensibility,” revisiting the oft-revisited novel that Emma Thompson starred in and won an Oscar for scripting in 1995.

The new “Sensibility” is darker, as suits our times. “Natural lighting” dims the frothiness, indoors and out. The poverty is more acute, the desperation to marry and marry money more overt.

And still those darned Dashwood sisters are determined to “marry for love.” Well, one of them is, at least. Unless both are doomed to have their dreams dashed.

Daisy Edgar-Jones of “Where the Crawdads Sing” is pragmatic, restrained and “always right” sister Elinor. Esmé Creed-Miles (“The Thicket”) earns her Kate Winslet-sized big break as headstrong and “passionate” younger sibling Marianne.

Where Emma Thompson found humor in the “poverty” of the entitled and beautiful, screenwriter Diana Reid and director Georgia Oakley (“Blue Jean”) forsake fun and plunge right in with the family awaiting their late father’s (Caitríona Balfe plays the woe-is-me/woe-is-us mother) will.

In a flash, it’s there, as is son from Mr. Dashwood’s first marriage (Tom Brooke) and his venomous mean-girl-blonde wife, Fanny (Stacy Martin). Tom decrees, at Fanny’s insistence, that the Dashwood women (Bodhi Rae Breathnach plays third sister Margaret) must turn over their beloved Norland estate and find lower-cost digs elsewhere.

Fanny makes sure that husband Tom does as little to “provide for them” as his loyalty to his late father allows.

The coastal Devonshire cottage that their distant, tactless chatterbox of a cousin (Fiona Shaw, delightfully gauche) arranges is “modest” in the extreme — Tudor, tiny, with unfinished stone walls and low ceilings and exposed beams indoors.

What’s worse, it’s isolated. How will Mrs. Dashwood find proper, propertied mates for her girls?

Elinor has met and become smitten with stepsister-in-law Fanny’s dashing brother, Edward (George MacKay). But sister Fanny can’t wait to get Elinor of the picture. At least Marianne has a dashing man to sweep her off her feet the moment she twists an ankle in the Devonsire surf.

Frank Dillane plays Mr. Willoughby, who suggests the “passion” that Marianne craves. There’ll be no “making a match” for her with the “dull,” haunted, Heathcliff widower Col. Brandon (Herbert Nordrum).

Reid’s script leans hard on “the man on whom all my happiness depends” plotting, and that “man.” That’s a wise choice, as MacKay (“1917”) is the film’s one serious upgrade from the most famous “Sense and Sensibility,” in which Thompson talked her chum Hugh Grant into playing Mr. Ferrars.

Love Hugh Grant, but he himself has grumped at what a lovely stiff he was in the 1995 film. MacKay brings guilt and heartbreak to the role and makes us feel his hesitation in allowing himself to fall for Elinor.

Edgar-Jones is properly spunky, showing flashes of temper and a “reserved” young woman determined not to be “embarrassed” by her heartbreak.

Creed-Miles offers a darker, more furious and more sensual take on Marianne, whose loss of control was subtler back when Winslet played her. When Creed-Miles recites, “If I am to fall, I prefer it to be from a great height,” we believe. Marianne will have her man or die like a proper Empire-waistlined tragic heroine

I fretted a bit over poor Nordrum’s impossible task of playing the most dashing role on the late Alan Rickman’s formidable resume, his Col. Brandon in the ’95 “Sensibility.” But damned if Nordrum doesn’t keep it all under control until he just breaks our hearts and Dashwoods’ hearts when his moment comes.

Grey, overcast and stark west Buckinghamshire locations help underscore the grimmer, higher-stakes tone the filmmakers were going for.

There are novelties to the screenplay, deviations from the novel with events both invented and that Austen kept off-stage that Reid and Oakley decide to show us. And I have to say that I miss the humor that Thompson so deliciously leaned into.

Shaw’s daft and over-the-top turn as Mrs. Jennings half-steals the picture. And Turlough Convery’s take on Sir John Middleton, the hale fellow/hunter-landlord of Barton Cottage (Mrs. Jennings’ son-in-law), always showing up with pheasants, ducks or hares he’s shot for their kitchen, and Chloe Pirrie’s church mouse turn as Lady Middleton, daughter of a blowhard who married a blowhard, are the only other hearty laughs here.

But this “Sense” makes daring and defensible choices and turns into a more-than-serviceable adaptation, as romantic as any of its big screen or TV serial predecessors, well-acted and more pointed in its depiction of the genteel poverty Austen herself endured.

And this Marianne speaks not just for Austen’s generation of women in perhaps the clearest voice of any Austen heroine. Marriage, “comfort,” and money in the same man, but without “passion?”

“I simply cannot content myself with so little.”

Rating: PG

Cast: Daisy Edgar-Jones, Esmé Creed-Miles, George MacKay,
Caitríona Balfe, Stacy Martin, Herbert Nordrum, Frank Dillane and Fiona Shaw.

Credits: Directed by Georgia Oakley, scripted by Diana Reid, based on the Jane Austen novel. A Focus Features release.

Running time” 2″:16

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Movie Review: A Harrowing Way to Reconnect with Dad — “Whalefall”

Posted on October 16, 2026 by Roger Moore

“Whalefall” is a sentimental story of fathers and sons and giants of the briny blue sea.

When it’s good, it’s “127 Hours” set inside the mouth and throat of a sperm whale, a terrible life test that makes its hero take stock of the person he is and how he relates to others.

Sentiment gets the better of Brian Duffield’s film of Daniel Krause’s novel in the finale, but “sticking the landing” is a common problem in films these days.

Still, the effects are quite good, and the harrowing, claustrophobic nature of the tale puts it over. We know this happens, occasionally, in some species of whales. And so we “work the problem” with our distraught scuba diver. Because it isn’t like cartoons, where Pinocchio can light a match and make the whale sneeze.

Or is it?

Austin Abrams of “Weapons” and the latest “Resident Evil” incarnation is Jay Gardiner, a Monterey, California native taught to dive on the kelp forests off the coast by his hard-driving, PBR drinking and downright abusive father, played by Josh Brolin.

Mitt Gardiner’s the sort of old salt who still calls tourists “lubbers,” and the kind of guy who’d rather strap on a weight belt and take the plunge — sans suit or tanks — in deep water than face the diminished life that lung cancer gives him. Only his buddy (John Ortiz) was aboard that day.

Jay? He’s gone to college and started a post grad career in Iowa. A year after the old man’s suicide, he’s no longer willing to visit the grave with his mom (Elisabeth Shue), just as he wasn’t willing to visit Dad during his later hospitalizations.

But the kid feels guilty enough to want to find some evidence of his father’s remains, to give his mother and two sisters closure. That’s how Jay winds up slipping past beach closures, ignoring warnings, to take a one hour dive on the undersea shelf where his father took his final plunge.

When we see the giant squid, we take it as a warning. Jay doesn’t. Because what’s chasing that squid through the kelp is what swallows him, a great non-white sperm whale of the “Moby Dick” variety.

Jay’s a goner. Or will be.

But in blackouts and hallucinations, Jay hears his father’s lessons about “the Gardiner way” of surviving under the sea — “You don’t listen to me, you die!” “Breathe like you’re asleep.” Jay tries to navigate the upper digestive tract, get his bearings on where the blowhole comes in and fend off the also-swallowed/fighting-for-its-life squid.

Jay’s chatter between breaths eventually turns kind of cutesy. Blame the hypoxia, or director and co-screenwriter Duffield (the alien-invades-a-house “No One Will Save You” was his), but talking to a luminous jellyfish so that it’ll light the way and “we’ll get home” is kind of cringy-cute. The latter acts are entirely too talky for my taste.

But for all that, the situation is properly hopeless and horrific. The father/son sentiment that sinks in for that third act kind of plays. And it’s not like we’re allowed to root against the whale, after all. Or the kid.

Brolin delivers tough love and life above and below the sea insights like Cap’n Quint from “Jaws” without the accent. He never goes over the top, but he makes the guy loveable pretty much in spite of himself.

It’s not “Jaws” in terms of suspense and carnage, and the pathos is lacking as some characters are left undeveloped and some opportunities are missed. A suggestion that “asking for help” is “the bravest act of all” is left dangling, for instance.

But “Whalefall” is still unlike any thriller, at least since “Pinocchio,” a Jonah story with a life helps those who help themselves and don’t give up and a movie that takes all of us a lot closer than we’d ever want to be to getting swallowed by a whale.

Rating: PG-13, peril, violence, bloody images, profanity

Cast: Austin Abrams, Josh Brolin, John Ortiz and Elisabeth Shue.

Credits: Directed by Daniel Duffield, scripted by Daniel Kraus and Brian Duffield, based on the Daniel Kraus novel. A 20th Century release.

Running time: 1:46

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Series Review: Woody and Matthew laugh it up and Get Paid Doing it as “Brothers”

Posted on October 13, 2026 by Roger Moore

I binged the new comedy series “Brothers” because it pairs up a couple of longtime faves — Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. And while I didn’t instantly regret that, regret did come early — by the second episode. And it stuck around, mostly in the foreground or boiling over in the background all the way to the not-even-bitter end.

This tale, “Based on a True Rumor,” has the leads playing versions of themselves, “Brothers” in all but birth certificate. They’re flung together with their “TV families” in and around Austin, Texas, and we see the bros deal with marriage, fame and mostly parenting over the eight episodes.

And the moment that focus becomes clear, early in episode two, it’s hard to check back in on the show to see it through, no matter how devoted you are to these two.

The premiere sends Harrelson & Co. — Brittany Ishibashi plays his wife, and Oona Mei Yaffem (Kai) and Highdee Kuan (Olive) play his daughters — hippy bussing cross country from Malibu to Austin because Woody can’t figure out how to comfort oldest daughter Olive after she’s jilted.

McConaughey is trying to compose a tribute to his late and celebrated father, when his brood — Natalie Martinez plays his wife, Nolan Almeida his 16 year-old son, with two much younger TV kids thrown in for laughs — becomes the least of his distractions.

Woody talks his bestie into taking off from tribute-writing for “just one drink.” There’s a goofy “Uber Pool” ride with a couple of younger drunks and a driver who won’t turn off the AC no matter how much Woody “freon” shames him, and assorted mishaps on their way to bars they never quite get to.

Hey, Vrothers, that right THERE is your series. Eight episodes, one long Austin-and-points-South or wherever bacchanal or its married-guy equivalent, a “Hangover” with honky tonking, bull-riding, TMZ hitchhiking and whatever other mischief two guys who know better could get themselves into.

Virtually everything else that happens in the series could and should have been written out — father-son hunting trip, one’s son and the other’s daughter budding romance as the Big Dance approaches, even Matthew considering a political run. Little of that material plays, and the bits that do could have been shoehorned into a single night-long binge.

Holland Taylor takes on an elaborate drawl and all but steals the show as McConaughey’s boozy, blowsy mom.

“Mah INSIDES are STEAMIN’ lahk a CRAWfish boil!”

Kids get words of wisdom from Father Matthew and crack, “Wasn’t that from a Lincoln commercial?”

A tiny tot chirps “Awright awright awright ALL RIGHT,” only to be corrected in the number of those McConaugheys use. “Remember the copyright!”

Stoner environmentalist hippy parenting (with home schooling) is contrasted with a sterner “McConaugheys do NOT take SHORTCUTS” child-rearing generates little more than a smirk.

Each compliments the other’s parenting and husbanding, even if that isn’t funny. There are acting references and a “Dazed and Confused” tribute, also less than amusing, and an elaborate prank that lands flat.

Nothing comes close to that “pilot” episode, with Woody blissing “Let the universe UNIVERSE” their way through an evening finds a several giggles and promises more that never come.

I’ve never heard the rumor that they looked so much alike growing up that they could be siblings. Then again, there was a rumor one of them might run for office, and that’s addressed here.

But love these guys or not, do either of those plot threads sound like a fun series premise?

Rating: TV-MA, pot smoking, profanity

Cast: Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson, Natalie Martinez, Brittany Ishibashi, Oona Mei Yaffem, Nolan Almeida, Skyler Gisondo and Holland Taylor.

Credits: Created by David West Read, Lee Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson. An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: Eight episodes @:30 each

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Movie Review: “Operation Kabul” to the Rescue

Posted on October 13, 2026 by Roger Moore

Well, damn.

Who’d have guessed that the best combat thriller about the evacuation and fall of Kabul, Afghanistan would be Hungarian, and about Hungarian NATO troops battling to get Hungarian nationals and embassy staff out of that benighted country?

“Operation Kabul” — more dramatically titled “Dragons over Kabul” (“Sárkányok Kabul felett”) in Hungarian — is about the last couple of days that the airport was open, and is an edge of your seat thriller about soldiers airlifted into chaos and hoping for the best.

It’s got in-your-face combat, suspense and melodramatic pathos all swirling through the maelstrom of collapse.

The Trump Administration politics and blunders which caused the debacle are cast aside as the focus is narrowed to the Hungarian NATO unit sent in to secure a tiny piece of airport tarmac to try and get “our people” out.

“We can’t save everyone” is a given, but eventually somebody’ll have to say it out loud (in subtitled Hungarian and Pashto, and English).

But there’s this one Hungarian doctor (Blanka Mészáro) “who thinks she’s Mother Teresa” who misses her bus and mucks up the works. There’s your melodrama. Because as flashbacks reveal, Lt. Bálint (Gábor Jászberényi) has a connection to her.

Will he and his hand-picked trio of troopers be able to track her down and “extract” her, by any means necessary?

“Operation Kabul” is a genre combat thriller, start to finish. As such films aren’t given many surprises, the important element is execution. And this one immerses us in this world of gunfire, panic and political murders by the vengeful Taliban, who ride their 5000 released POW fighters into town for a mass bloodletting.

Characters face life and death decisions and dilemmas — gates to the airport mobbed with desperate civilians who worked for various NATO governments and will surely be murdered if they’re left behind, children trapped in the violence, officers trying to focus on the narrow parameters of the “mission” while their subordinates badger them into doing more.

The performances are sturdy and steadfast, the emotions subdued and the twists mostly unsurprising and only a tad far-fetched. Zsombor Dyga’s (“Köntörfalak”) direction is precise and unfussy, the editing (by Béla Barsi and Julia Hack) by is crisp and close to breathless.

And what’s the bottom line in any genre pic, combat films included? Do we buy in? Does it play?

“Operation Kabul” answers both those questions in Hungarian, with subtitles. Affirmative!

Rating: unrated, graphic violence, profanity

Cast: Gábor Jászberényi,
Blanka Mészáros, Dávid Hajmási, Nóra Trokán,
Szilveszter Pálinkás,
Gusztáv Dietz and
Tamás Borovics

Credits: Directed by Zsombor Dyga, scripted by Áron Horváth. A Well Go USA release.

Running time: 1:37

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Netflixable? Polish Rocker Rebels and Resists as “Less of a Stranger”

Posted on October 11, 2026 by Roger Moore

All the cliches, tropes and tricks of the rock star biopic are trotted out for “Less of a Stranger,” a Polish prance down the primrose path of pop stardom.

“Less of a Stranger?” That phrase applies to this Polish production in almost every way as overfamiliarity dogs it for the better part of two hours.

But here’s the thing. This is about Lady Pank, a New Wave era Polish band who were Fight the Man role models for the likes of Pussy Riot and others resisting authoritarianism via punk poses and Hendrix-style guitar solos.

Our guitar hero/narrator is Jan Borysewicz, whose Wikipedia page doesn’t do him justice. The film follows him from his first act of childhood revolt — a tween turning the radio back up over his Dad’s objections and smashing dishes with his big brother when he hears Jimi Hendrix — to a climactic riot at a concert interrupted by Polish “militia” state police in 1983, and the state-enforced mental hospital committal that followed.

Borysewicz himself voice-over narrates the recent past and distant past episodes, and everything in between. And when adult actor Mikołaj Bukrewicz takes over for young Miroslaw Tomczuk, a lot of his lines are dubbed by Borysewicz as well.

That’s…a choice.

As we finally get around to the pre-ordained “rise-to-the-top” montage an hour into the film, with another quarter hour passing before the hedonistic, drug-fueled sex party that tells us Jan’s “too far gone,” the endless voice-over and voice looping business aren’t the picture’s biggest distractions.

The kid Jan gushes to his brother (Julian Gostymski), “I’m going to AMERICA (in Polish with English subtitles)! I’ll be FAMOUS!”

Both things will prove to be true, but not before his sibling buys him his first guitar, allowing boy-Jan to stop pretend-playing a cutting board, not before Jan’s first abortive music lessons, not before his bitter ex-musician father (Ireneusz Czop) has yanked the strings out of it forbidding him from joining his first band.

Complications? His mother’s (Kinga Preis) “tremors” turn out to be multiple sclerosis, a lifelong, life-shortening disaster that hangs over the family, even ever-on-the-road Jan.

An abortive “tour” of the Netherlands is what triggers Jan’s decision to drag his songwriting partner/manager (Patryk Pietrzak) off with him as he starts his own band. A one-night stand with fetching hairdresser Magda (Bernadetta Statkiezicz) leads to a baby.

“I don’t want a ROCK star,” she fumes. “One child in the house is enough!”

And The State? They’re taking notice of songs like “Less than Zero,” that become anthems on Poland, with that song making it on MTV in the U.S. Better not play it tonight, comrade. Can’t disturb the peace, you know.

Our rebel has already thrown LPs at American record company execs and tangled with uniformed militia on the streets. You think he won’t incite a riot? Think again, towarzysz.

If director Kristoffer Russ (“Into the Wind”) had approached the cliches of the story with a need to speed through them, this worthwhile tale might play. Then again, the performances are across-the-board superficial and the twangy ’80s tunes, even the edgy ones, have a “You had to be there. And be POLISH” to get much out of this.

“Less of a Stranger” never gets close enough to its subject to be intimate and that robs the film of its importance in Polish and European history. Without importance, this is just “Bohemian Rhapsody” with more colorless Bohemians.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, drug abuse, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Mikołaj Bukrewicz, Kinga Preis, Patryk Pietrzak, Ireneusz Czop, Mikołaj Matczak, Hubert Milkowski, Krzysztof Oleksyn, Bernadetta Statkiewicz and Marcel Barra.

Credits: Directed by Kristoffer Russ, scripted by Joanna Kozlowska and Wiktor Piatkowski. A Netflix release.

Running time: 2:03

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