Documentary Review — “Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story”

Posted on October 24, 2026 by Roger Moore

Maria Bamford‘s been stand-up comedy’s “next big thing” off and on for decades.

She’d have a break-out tour, TV or film appearance, a chat show guest spot that went viral. And then, crickets.

The offers might be there. Netflix loves her. Just ask CEO Ted Sarandos.

But she’d “go dark,” disappear, take a “hiatus.” For months.

Watching her act, her frank joking about manic depression, “suicidal ideation,” and hearing her often manic speech, even showbiz types should have been able to figure things out.

For Maria Bamford, every day is “a mental health day.”

Ex stand-up, comic filmmaker and showbiz mogul Judd Apatow follows his more-questions-than answers “Norm” Macdonald doc with the far more revealing, engaging and hopeful “Paralyzed by Hope: The Maria Bamford Story.”

Maria Bamford’s not going to lie or evade or cover up huge periods of her life. She’s been putting it on stage for decades — her cornucopia of “mood” calming medications, her early life realization that something was wrong, her therapy, her checking into mental health facilities and the loving, supportive and damaged parents.

We hear from those parents, and from her sister Sarah in “Paralyzed by Hope,” people who take a mocking and try not to take it personally, or take it to their graves.

‘Mom, you do know that even if a coffin is tight around the hips, eventually it fits.’ But the joke’s on me because she got herself cremated, and now she’s just a pound!”

Little is out of bounds and everything is revealed and subject to a set up for a joke.

Funny folks from Patton Oswalt and Zach Galifianakis, who also broke-out on the “Comedians of Comedy” (Netflix) tour that made Bamford a star, to Conan, Sarah Silverman and Steven Colbert sing her praises.

“She’s my favorite stand-up comic,” Colbert decides. Others marvel at her openness and mercurial persona. Of course, one person’s “over-sharing” “manic comic” is another’s “She’s exhausting.” Bamford isn’t to every taste.

“Paralyzed by Hope” is the sort of film that lets us meet Bamford’s husband, artist Scott Marvel Cassidy, hear about their their romance and relationship, shared manias and phobias, coming right up to the point where Maria’s about to tell us of the impending divorce (finalized in Jan.), with Apatow interrupting to suggest saving that “for the sequel.”

Because this latest “big break” won’t change anything. It’s a career, life and search for wellness in progress.

“My therapist says I’m afraid of success. I guess I could understand that because, after all, fulfilling my potential would REALLY cut into my sitting-around time.”

The crux of her stage performances is a conversation between herself and people like her and the outside world of medical professionals and misunderstanding or under-informed people she meets.

Bamford’s act is truly one-of-a-kind. There’s that early “Ellen” likability bathed in the angst that made Richard Lewis famous, a Sandler/Silverman/Carrey parade of funny voices — from therapists and family members to showbiz types and every boss she’s ever had — and a lot of dark dips into despair, mental health problems introduced in sets that can be riotous as well as healing in the “I’m going through that too,” sense.

In her mid-50s, she’s had a busy career as a guest star, voice actress, series star, stand-up and “clown school” mascot and star attraction, as well as memoirist — “Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere.” So if she never gets any bigger than she is right now, with a feature-length documentary laying out her journey from Duluth to Hollywood, from mental illness to medicated wellness, that’s fine.

“Look at me, look at ME,” she declares. “I’m deteriorating as I speak. And still I go on.”

Rating: TV-MA, near nudity, profanity

Cast: Maria Bamford, Judd Apatow, Sarah Silverman, Zach Galifianakis, Sarah Bamford Seidelman, Marilyn Bamford, Joel Bamford, Ted Sarandos, Tig Notaro, Conan O’Brien and Steven Colbert

Credits: Directed by Judd Apatow and Neil Berkeley. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:56

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BOX OFFICE: “Clayface” doesn’t Deliver D.C. Marvel Money, “You Can See Everything” adds Screens and Cash

Posted on October 24, 2026 by Roger Moore

When it comes to comic book supervillains, Clayface isn’t remotely a household name.

So maybe that’s the main reason that the new origin story for this Superman foe is only managing $24-26 million on its opening weekend.

Mostly British cast, with few truly big “names in it. “Clayface” is an R-rated “body horror” — look what they done to my face, Ma — thriller directed by James Watkins, who helmed the James McAvoy “Speak No Evil” a couple of years back.

It’s earning mixed reviews, and ticket prices are spiking again (up 30% at my local ‘plex, following 2025’s 20% spike — Thanks, Trumpers!), so lower your expectations.

It’ll be lucky to sell two million tickets, with nationwide average prices of $13-$20. Not exactly “Wolverine” or “Deadpool” or “Avengers” or even “Aquaman” numbers.

“You Can See Everything,” the Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos scandal as documentary fantasy, added 1800 screens and is driving up its box office take. It may clear $20 million this weekend as America races out to see what all the fuss is about. This A24 sleeper will be flirting with the $50 million, all-in mark by midnight Sunday.

Stop motion animation Studio Laika’s “Wildwood” is doing a mite better than the last “Shaun the Sheep” film’s numbers, as Fathom Events looks to rake in $11-12 million with this unproven property. They could all use another “Coraline” or “Porman.”

“Street Fighter” is biting the big one, a steep STEEP Tyler-Perry picture-sized plunge on its second weekend, maybe $8 million, Deadline.com figures. That’s a 75% percent loss from its opening take and a fall all the way to FOURTH on just its second weekend of release. Oy.

The period piece sex comedy “Wicker” from no-longer-a-startup Black Bear looks to crack the top five with a $6 million take. It’s earning decent reviews and features what one could label an “all star cast” in this day and age — Alexander Skarsgård, Oscar winner Olivia Colman, Richard E. Grant, Elizaeth Debicki and Peter Dinklage.

“Other Mommy,” “Sense and Sensibility,” “Verity,” “Resident Evil.” “Whalefall” and “Heart of the Beast” will vie for the five spots in the lower half of  top ten

The Taika Waititi bomb, “Klara and the Sun,” starring Amy Adams and Jenna Ortega as an “artificial friend,” will be lucky to A) clear a $million and B) crack the top ten. Bad bad reviews for that one.

Check back as I’ll be updating these numbers as the Oct. 24 movie weekend progresses.

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Classic Film Review: Terry Gilliam at His Most Medieval — “Jabberwocky” (1977)

Posted on October 23, 2026 by Roger Moore

Terry Gilliam’s first, best destiny was always to be the greatest production designer/art director of his day.

He’s directed a handful of great films — “Time Bandits,” “Brazil,” “The Fisher King,” “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “Twelve Monkeys.” But even misses like “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” and salvage jobs (“The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus”) can be stunning to behold.

Even the Gilliam disasters (“Zero Theorem,” “Tidelands”) can stick in the memory because of their stunning look. Whoever is credited with art direction or production design on his films — and sometimes it’s him — they’re to a one visually striking and vividly textured.

Even 1977’s “Jabberwocky,” his first and not remotely his biggest flop, stands as a testament to cinematic eye candy, great art direction on celluloid, with frame after frame a textbook on cinematic chiaroscuro.

After co-directing and production designing the cult hit “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” Gilliam set out to solo direct something even more medieval, if considerably less nonsensical. “Jabberwocky” was sold as “Monty Python’s Jabberwocky” in much of the world, and it just isn’t.

Michael Palin may star, with Terry Jones the first familiar face we see and Python-supporting player Neil Innes as well as Gilliam himself in bit roles. But no Cleese, no Idle, no collaborative joked-up script, no Python.

There are flashes of wit in the script, which Gilliam and Charles Alverson wrote, stealing the title and loose inspiration from a Lewis Carroll poem.

The befuddled, aged King (Max Wall) is “Bruno the Questionable.”

Closed captioning subtitles help the less-punchy-than-you’d-like punchlines. Somewhat.

“Look! It’s a nun in the guise of the DEVIL!”

“No! It’s the Devil in the guise of a NUN!”

“Get her!” “GET HIM!” “Get THEM BOTH!”

The themes, as expressed by Palin’s character, Dennis the Apprentice Cooper (barrel maker), are about the birth of capitalism, contrived “crisis” shortages created by monopolist guilds at the expense of “craftsmanship” and the wellbeing of The People.

All of that still plays, set against a backdrop of mud, grime, earth tones and bad dentistry. This was bottom line survival where it was The People against Predators, aka bandits, royalty, armed suppression of the masses and those greedy guildfolk.

There is a gigantic beast roaming the land (dingy ancient Welsh castles and a stark quarry in Wales), the Jabberwock. It eats people and livestock, and the king’s chamberlain (John Le Mesurier) helpfully insists that the government do something about it.

But a cabal of merchants (Peter Cellier plays their spokesman) profiteering from the shortages created by fear of travel and city folk cowering indoors aren’t keen on that.

“If you destroy the monster, you destroy the city!”

The king’s half-assed solution is “a TOURNAMENT” to select “a CHAMPION” knight to ride out and vanquish this creature and cleanse the land. The chamberlain can complain all he wants about “the numbers,” how a to-the-death tourney is rendering the kingdom defenseless, one losing jouster at a time. The king and his princess daughter (Deborah Fallender) are too blinded by the bloodbath to fret over details.

It is into this city at this particularly “dark” Dark Ages moment that Dennis the Cooper’s Apprentice arrives, having undergone shunning by his dying father and the “fair” — OK, kind of grotesque — Griselda Fishfinger (Annette Badland).

Dennis will struggle to feed himself and try to fit in, even as his many suggestions of barmen and armorers and others about the lack of “efficiency” in their work regimen are discounted. His misadventures, only a few of them remotely funny, are destined to throw him into the company of a knight sent to vanquish their monstrous tormenter.

Roy Smith is the credited production designer and Millie Burns art director in this sometimes stomach turning feast for the eyes. But Gilliam’s “Holy Grail” and later “Life of Brian” and “Brazil” and “Time Bandits” and “Twelve Monkeys” touches are in every visual flourish, every weathered and unwashed detail.

It’s easy to pick out the “Holy Grail” gimmicks repeated or at least paid homage to (future Darth Vader David Prowse silently plays a couple of Black Knights). Selling this as a “Holy Grail” sequel, of sorts, was both a marketing no-brainer and serious cinematic bait and switch.

But even though Gilliam protested that approach, it suits the subject matter, in a “Well, that’s capitalism for you” way.

Pretty much everybody here has been funnier in other films and TV programs of the day. Jones alone hits just the right notes and makes his exit in the film’s opening scene, just in time to escape blame when things don’t go as well the rest of the way.

Gilliam at least learned from this experience. Don’t start production without a better script. Pythons on camera aren’t as important as Pythons behind it, when it comes to gag writing (most of Monty Python had a hand in “Time Bandits” on and off screen).

And for all its shortcomings, “Jabberwocky” is still a visual feast and something of a time capsule, with men-inside-a-gigantic costume monsters, stunts and in-camera effects that go well or don’t (check out the most useless grappling hook toss ever in a blown take that Gilliam had to use), all of it preserved on celluloid images so vivid it’s as if spherical lens 35mm cameras and production designers got their start in “the Dark Ages…ages darker than anyone had ever expected.”

Rating: PG, despite the nudity and bloody gore

Cast: Michael Palin, Harry H. Corbett, Deborah Fallender, Max Wall, John Le Mesurier, Peter Cellier, Neil Innes, Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones.

Credits: Directed by Terry Gilliam, scripted by Charles Alverson and Terry Gilliam, inspired by the poem by Lewis Carroll. A Columbia-Warner Bros. and Cinema 5 release on Tubi, other free streamers.

Running time: 1:46

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Movie Review: “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” isn’t There to Reckon with the Sins of the Father

Posted on October 22, 2026 by Roger Moore

Oscar winner Mahershala Ali plays a holy man trapped in a murderously unholy profession in “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother,” a satire on “faith” in America wrapped in an all-too-conventional hit man thriller.

As Latif, Ali is a suddenly-single dad trying to raise his three kids in his Muslim faith and get away from his side business, as a murderous “crusader” who murders for hire. He kills with his trusty saif, but only those who “threaten” his community, as ordained by his Arab-American boss (Laith Nakli). Or so they say.

Latif’s Imam (Giancarlo Esposito) knows and violently opposes this, but not enough to expel Latif and his family from their suburban Houston mosque. Forgiving a murderer his heinous sins because he’s just lost his wife seems a stretch.

But writer-director Bassam Tariq (“Mogul Mowgli” was his) has a lot of religious and American cultural commentary and judgements tucked into this violent tale a righteous but amoral man struggling to cling to the last threads of his humanity.

Latif struggles with grief over the sickly wife who died while he was out of town “on a job.” His teen daughter (Adia) is in open rebellion, hanging with the young Mormon missionaries in their apartment complex and watching furry porn (if you don’t know, don’t ask) on the sly.

Fatiha is openly questioning the family’s faith. Little brother Qadir (Jaheel Kamara) is ten, still finding himself and starting to stray in ways boys with absentee fathers do, starting with his colorful language and his pre-sexual fixations.

The film’s title, “Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” comes from a Hadith by the Prophet Muhammed, whose answer to a question about “Who is most deserving” of someone’s best wishes and efforts. That frames the movie as a fable, a father with combat training and faith overwhelmed by the huge shoes his children’s mother left behind.

Latif’s mosque is a place of serious faith. One reason the Imam despises “Mike” (Nakli) the Arab-American underworld figure who assigns Latif people to murder, is that he’s not a true man of faith. The congregation of mostly-converts takes the precepts of Islam a lot more seriously Mike and his amoral Arabic crew.

Mike and his godless young nephew Hatty (Abubakr Ali) have run afoul of the New “Law” in Town, the assault-rifle Christian fundamentalist Pastor Hwan, a metal-toothed combat vet and fanatic who inspires his followers to “cleanse” unholy places like strip clubs and unholy people like the pornographer Hatty.

Pastor Hwan is played with a “Scarface” fury by John Cho, who reinvents himself in this crazed, cracked performance. Pastor Hwan has threatened Hatty. That causes Mike to put out a hit on the machine gun preacher.

But all Latif wants is breast milk to feed his infant daughter and to avoid any more bloodying of his blade or “hits” assigned by the unworthy Mike.

Tariq’s screenplay blends the sacred with the profane, with large doses of simply explaining Islamic practices (burial, mourning, praying, etc) and terms (“Jihad” is bluntly defined in ways few Westerners have ever heard) and a sprinkling of dark, sometimes even kinky humor.

A stripper (Tiffany Boone) might be the easiest source of breast milk, especially for a man of faith who “steers clear of Uncle Sam” and state-sponsored public aid. Latif’s mosque is his support system, no matter what. The Mormons (John Henry Ward plays the “elder” Fatiha has a crush on) are the most reasonable and tolerant religious folk depicted.

But the extremists see commonalities in their faiths even if “respect” is easier to give than tolerance.

The story take turns that require bigger and bigger suspensions of disbelief as the third act slaughter begins in this world where Texas law enforcement is never so much as glimpsed. “Forgiveness” and “acceptance” know no bounds, and the finale’s literal leap of faith is an eye-roller.

Tariq must have studied hit man movies and not literal hired-killer case files, and even in that he paints himself into a cinematic corner he can’t reason his plot out of.

But the dazzling scenery-chewing Cho isn’t the only actor appearing “as you’ve never seen him before.” Ali adds another incarnation to an already impressive resume. The great character actor Esposito adds gravitas and credibility to the proceedings.

And making her feature film debut, the wide-eyed Adia, of Netflix’s “The Midnight Club” TV series, is startling in how real she makes this mourning, rebelling, responsible and yet naive and figuring it all out teen.

“Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother” is an edgy and thoughtful action film winding down its theatrical run. But don’t be surprised if this violent thriller with satiric religious and cultural commentary returns as awards season starts weeding out the winners from the losers. This cast is too good to miss.

Rating: R, graphic violence, nudity, profanity

Cast: Mahershala Ali, Adia, Abubakr Ali, Laith Nakli, Abubakr Ali, Tiffany Boone, John Henry Ward, Giancarlo Esposito and John Cho.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Bassam Tariq. An Orion/MGM/Amazon release.

Running time: 1:52

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Documentary Review: Damning “Naza” Uncovers Israeli Gaza Guilt and Regret  — But Little Remorse

Posted on October 20, 2026 by Roger Moore

A sweating, desperate father combs through the rubble of a just-bombed high-rise apartment building on the Gaza Strip. “Sa’id!” he calls out, pawing stones free, peeking into gaps of the piles of concrete before collapsing in tears.

The history of the founding of Tel Aviv has its mythic “out of the sand” spin repeated via archival footage, then debunked as we hear of the Palestinian land that was grabbed and transformed into the “most modern city” of its era.

A snippet of a pre-prime minister interview Benjamin Netanyahu gave to William F. Buckley on the PBS series “Firing Line” to plug a book forty years ago stings, as he is asked to define “terrorism,” and vividly describes — point by point — exactly what Israel has been doing for decades, long before Gaza or Oct. 7, 2023.

But for most of its running time, the New Israeli documentary “Naza” is just journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham interviewing assorted young Israeli intelligence personnel as they sit, unidentified by name, in the shadows of Tel Aviv rooftops late at night, spilling the beans on a modern genocide.

It’s one of the most buzzed about documentaries in a fall that seen several docs vie for public attention and outrage. And the buzz on Abraham and Rachel Szor’s movie can be boiled down to one word — “damning.”

Gripping and revealing, with one interview interrupted by a Hamas rocket shooting by overhead as Tel Aviv air raid sirens wail, what’s most striking about this filmed confessional is the bloodless, unemotional conversations Abraham has with “cogs” in the “machine” of a state using AI tech and scorched earth tactics to dislocate and all but wipe out the Palestinian population. People still clinging to the hope of a “two state solution” have been up against Israeli leaders, institutions and an electorate hellbent on making that a pipe dream thanks to the fait accompli of mass displacement and extermination.

“I can’t be a part of this,” one intel tech tells his interviewer (Abraham, in Hebrew with English subtitles).

“But you are,” Abraham replies.

“Yes.”

Others lay out the ways the Israeli surveillance state kept control of infrastructure in Gaza since refugees first fled there, allowing Israel to listen to any call, view the photos on any phone and trace that phone to a building that they will then destroy to kill this Hamas functionary or even low level foot soldiers or militants.

“Naza” is the Israeli Defense Forces’ name for non-combatant casualties — the number of Naza counted in a building due to phone tracking, the number of “accepted” “collateral damage” civilian deaths permitted in this or that “operation.”


Numbers as low as single digits quickly explode to “20,” “200” or even “500” “acceptable civilian deaths” as Israel is worked into a fury over the hostages Hamas took in addition to killing hundreds of civilians with that Oct. 3 attack.

“Don’t you think it’s genocide,” what Israel is doing “flattening Gaza” one “strip” or block at a time, Israeli snipers killing civilians lining up for foreign aid food distribution and the like?

“Yes,” one interviewee admits.

We almost hear remorse from an Intel officer, who has just bragged about how “elite” and hard to get into his “unit” is,” once he ties a recent visit to Holocaust sites in Poland to what he’s taking part in, and how the hatred that erupted and has been fanned by Israeli media since Oct. 7, 2023 made this sort of inhumanity inevitable.

“But what can you do?” he shrugs in silhouette.

“It’s like a video game,” another profiler of buildings to be destroyed says. “Everthing’s done remotely,” and much of the target selection is tasked to AI, further removing “humanity” from any of this.

“Naza” only briefly touches on the century-long “settlement” of Jewish zionists in “The Holy Land,” and the ways that land has been obtained.

The only Palestinians we see are those in footage of newly-bombed buildings, distraught survivors mourning their losses.

All these Israeli intelligence functionaries, and almost no one talks about the stunning failure of detecting and preventing Oct. 7. Still, Oct. 7 is very much in the foreground, just never put in the context of the Israeli surveillance, “control” and oppression in pursuit of what can only be described in Hitlerian terms — “lebensraum.”

“We cleaned that block of buildings,” one Israeli intel office exclaims, coming as close to “ethnic cleansing” as he can without actually saying that.

Any sober minded outsider looking in has been opining that “they’re just creating new generations of ‘terrorists,'” for decades. Acting shocked and victimized when that population lashes back seems disingenuous on an historic scale.

And if using “lebensraum” annoys you, try to plumb your memory for where you’ve seen and heard bloodless and largely heartless — despite the attacks of conscience that have these people agreeing to talk to Abraham — testimonials like this.

Maybe it was Nuremburg film footage from the 1940s post-war Nazi trials, or grainy video from Israeli TV from the early ’60s trial of Nazi “Final Solution” architect Adolf Eichmann.

The best thing one can say for these 24 insiders who spoke out is that least these participants recognize “the wrong side of history” when they reject it, fait accompli and Gaza beach resort dreams be damned.

Rating: unrated, footage of dead victims of air raids

Cast: Yuval Abraham, Benjamin Netanyahu and 24 unidentified Israeli intelligence operatives

Credits: Directed by Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. A Neon, MK2-Guardian Films release.

Running time: 1:17

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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 franchise.

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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