Movie Review: “Land of Wolves,” Thriller of Cliches

Posted on June 19, 2026 by Roger Moore

Lordy, not another thriller about men forced to fight to the death for the amusement of the masked ultra-rich, in this case labeled “Illuminati.”

That wasn’t a novel notion when “Star Trek” served it up on TV back in the mid-’60s.

“Land of Wolves” begins as a clumsy, slow-footed commando combat thriller, then staggers to a halt before ever-so-sluggishly crawling towards a “Heart of Darkness” finale, the analogy of a military man who’s gone rogue, much to the shock of those sent to retrieve him.

Just in case those plot points pique your interest, let me disabuse you of any notion that “This is for ME.” The writer-director of “Whispers of the Witching Hour” (Tommy Jackson) grinds his gears, start to finish, in this cliched claptrap about commandos, narco-terrorists and the “elite” who pull the strings and run the world.

Long before he tips his hat towards Joseph Conrad, we know he has no business attempting that.

James William Clark pays Marcus, an Afghan War vet now punching out his demons in the ring but summoned back into service by Aussie accented Capt. Briggs (Matthew Gray) to rescue a long-held-captive member of their former team “t’go say his ass.”

Four commandos head into the desert near Durango, Mexico to storm a derelict “facility” where “tangos” (terrorists) hold and torture law enforcement and military folk whom they capture.

Anderson (Melanie Browning) will be their eyes-and-ears (satellite surveillance and comms) directing them into the towering edifice in the desert. This surgical strike will entail assassinating armed guards, uncovering evidence of torture and the worst simulated “night vision goggles” footage ever put on film.

But by cracky, they’re going to free Knox or die trying in the best “leave no man behind” tradition.

Things go wrong, and the growling narco-leader known as Butcher (Felix Alexander) is soon pitting them against his best thugs in streaming video fights for the paying Illuminati.

Wait’ll this missing Knox (Russell Sheahy) turns up. Things will turn go even more off the rails, then.

There’s nothing wrong with a reach-exceeds-your-grasp effort to make something smarter than a C-movie shoot-em-up out of these settings, this cast in those guises. But mastering the basics of compelling cinema, editing the action beats into something pulse-pounding, making clear the “stakes” of it all and that what we’re watching makes a little sense comes first.

Then and only then should you tackle the source Conrad novella that inspired Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now.”

Talking villains, bloody brawls that beggar belief and hilariously costumed “Illuminati” are but petty gripes in a thriller that has nothing to cling to as real or compelling entertainment. There’s no pace, characters aren’t so much archetypes as generic “types,” and the performances fail to overcome those limitations and engage the viewer in the narrative of those suffering through it.

Rating: R, graphic violence

Cast: James William Clark, Matthew Gray, Melanie Browning, Felix Alexander amd Russell Shealy.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Tommy Jackson. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:32

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Movie Review: “Toy Story 5” is all Message, Little Fun

Posted on June 19, 2026 by Roger Moore

My least favorite “Toy Story” movie takes a solid hour to deliver its first laugh and some 70 minutes to truly get underway.

“Toy Story 5” tells a tale from three different points of view, with three storylines, and hammers its message about “tech” gadgets getting in the way of childhood “play,” development, socialization and creativity with a jackhammer.

But listening to the giggles of children in the viewing audience for the lame “wedding” finale, preceded by a toy “wedding” prologue, you remember “This isn’t for you — it’s for kids.” And if they’re laughing at toilet training humor — “You said DUTY, hehheheheh” and “He will WIPE your a…” it’s working. After a fashion.

But “Toy Story 5” has so much re-casting of voice actors — it’s been thirty years since the first film came out, and Jim Varney, Don Rickles and Estella Harris have passed away, Wallace Shawn clung to Woody Allen past his “canceled” date — that surely it must have occurred to the accountants at Disney/Pixar that they’ve been to this well a few too many times.

Having the toys face their own mortality — an incinerrator at a garbage dump (“Toy Story 3” — was always going to be impossible to top.

But this Andrew Stanton/McKenna Harris project does its best to wrestle with the ideas that kids are “growing up too fast” thanks to “tech” and social media, and that tactile toys force development of imagination in ways that passive “screens” do not, into a kids’ cartoon.

Their narrative follows three threads, at least one of which feels like a (weak) stand-alone “Toy Story” movie or spinoff all its own.

The surviving older toys now entrusted to little Bonnie’s (Scarlett Spears does the voice) care are led by rootin’, tootin’ ’50s cowgirl/sheriff Jessie (Joan Cusack), with spaceman toy Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) as her “deputy” and second in command.

Buzz is developing feelings for Jessie, which he may get her off her high horse long enough to consider. Because Jessie is fretting that Bonnie isn’t “playing” enough to be socialized. And her parents are all-too-quick to turn to a kids’ social media toy and the platform/gadget LilyPad (voiced by Greta Lee) to find her a peer group to fix her social anxiety disorder.

Former Sheriff Woody (Tom Hanks) is off with other cast-aways and his true-love Bo-Peep (Annie Potts), but still available for consulations.

And a cargo container of “Hi-Tech” Buzz Lightyear toys has washed overboard, activated itself, and taken on the goal of returning to “Star Command” — a brigade of Buzzes marching into the story for meeting in the third act.

Bonnie is getting bullied by her more social-media savvy contemporaries. Kids aren’t playing and whole classes of toys are being discarded, including the potty-training “screen” gadget Smarty Pants (Conan O’Brien), the mapping toy Atlas (Craig Robinson) and play-digital camera Snappy (Shelby Rabarra), who haven’t yet figured out their role as “part of the problem.”

How can they all come to an agreement on what it will take to win Bonnie some playmates without her surrendering to social media imprisonment in the process?

“I dunno, Jessie,” is Woody’s counsel. “Toys are for play. Tech is for…everything!”

A real horse, a pet pig, “automatic update/upgrades” and the like play into the plot, which any tech-savvy child will pick up on.

And the role of toys in childhood development is played around with, a conclusion is reached and then utterly wimped-out on, because God knows Disney online couldn’t withstand the criticism.

The childhood “play” sequences, imagining toy adventures, weddings, etc., are animated in sketchier form. And the night-and-day difference in character textures, sheens, etc., from the first “Toy Story” to this latest one is striking in a “filmed realism” sense.

But this is inferior product, an idea that’s been worn-out with characters not far removed from movie-turned-daily-kids-TV quality in terms of depth, voice-acting, story and the like.

Pixar has been rightly criticized for struggling with finding a new Big Idea. Watch the coming attractions before “Toy Story 5” and you’ll see how Disney, Universal and everybody else is facing the same story/script/character obstacles.

It’s great that they moved the “toy” story towards a plucky female character helping a little girl grow up with “Toy Story 5.” There are a couple of hard tugs at the heartstrings in the third act to give that something of a payoff. But it’s a crying shame they didn’t have more to say than that in the fifth film in the franchise that made their reputation, at least enough to justify sullying the brand in the process.

Rating: PG, toilet training humor

Cast: The voices of Joan Cusack, Tim Allen, Tom Hanks, Conan O’Brien, Greta Lee, Ernie Hudson, Scarlett Spears, Craig Robinson, Tony Hale and John Ratzenberger.

Credits: Scripted and directed by McKenna Harris and Andrew Stanton. A Pixar/Disney release.

Running time: 1:42

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Movie Review: “The Death of Robin Hood,” Who wants to See That?

Posted on June 19, 2026 by Roger Moore

Here it is, the latest “Robin Hood” that nobody asked for and perhaps nobody wanted, something that’s been the case ever since Russell Crowe dragged some merry men into Sherwood sixteen years back.

Michael Sarnoski’s “The Death of Robin Hood” demythologizes the egalitarian hero of English folklore and gives us a cynical “brigand” in his last days, accepting who he “really” was, or at least casting off some of the lore about his exploits as, –full of remorse — he sets the record straight at the end of his days.

It’s a glum and downbeat tale of the mid-Middle Ages, capturing a world where life was “nasty, brutish and short,” as the old expression goes. Fighting was grim, intimate, bloody and to-the-death, even if the stakes were as low as a loaf of bread to sustain the winner through another day.

But what makes it interesting, what pulls you in, is a compelling turn by Hugh Jackman in the title role.

This is “Logan” with “King Lear” pretensions, a cynical “hero” who recognizes that the myth is more important than the truth, but sees the limitations of that in a public that worships one false god/icon after another.

“Lies upon lies,” our wizened, white-haired murderer and armed robber describes events that “never happened,” “characters that never lived like “Little John” and “Guy of Gisbourne. “It’s just a story.“

In the treeless north (Northern Ireland locations), Robin Hood keeps to himself, feeds starving strangers who come to his fire and recognizes the clans he’s crossed in blood feuds that bring even young women seeking revenge on the man who has filled an impromptu graveyard on the snowy, windswept mountains and moors.

He reunites with a grieving Little John (Bill Skarsgård), who goes by “Edward,” having taken a victim’s name and wife and started a family with her, only to have his past bloodily catch up with him.

So many clans have been slaughtered, creating scores of enemies, that nowhere is safe. And the onetime Robin of Loxley hasn’t the stomach to “start over” somewhere new. He’s facing his fate one ambush or botched attempted rescue of Edward’s wife and child at a time.

There’s nothing dashing about being able to shoot an arrow through a tween-age boy’s eye, no time for sword fighting derring do, nothing romantic in writhing knife-fights in the mud and muck, no “Maid Marian” to save from evil Prince John/King John.

This is just a thieving/killing “villain,” denying his identity to one and all, playing out his hand, waiting for the end.

Convalescing in an island priory where Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer) practices state-of-the-art 13th century healing (bleeding) just delays the inevitable, as Edward/Little John’s daughter (Katie Breen) is taken in, and the last fighting-age male (Noah Jupe) in a clan Robin killed off is sure to show up.

A leper (Murray Bartlett “Tales of the City” and “The White Lotus”) can urge the “crippled” stranger to learn which trees to care for and which traps to set, to keep the priory going. But we know our Robin is not long for St. Clement and its elderberries, pears and apples.

Sarnoski, who did the most recent “Quiet Place” and the Nic Cage culinary classic “Pig,” works in close-ups, with limited, spare to the point of barren locations and a color palette in shades of grey, brown and red — stone, mud, fur, leather and bleeding injuries of the terminal and healing variety.

He keeps the story fatalistic and the mood glum, and the dialogue spare.

“Would you like me to pray for him?”

“If you wish.”

“The world cares only about blood.”

If there’s an allegory applying to the present day, it’s the stripping of heroes and mythos from the culture, with every figure reduced to his or her human failings and the repercussions of that through cults and culture.

But truth be told, this is hard-going as a movie-watching experience, a “Quest for Fire” without humor or sex, a “Robin and Marian” without romance, a “Robin Hood” without dash, derring do, “merry” men, just accomplices.

This is a fanboy’s idea of Robin Hood — a Dark Knight/Wolverine anti-hero bloodying his hands in a world without pity, justice or empathy and only remorse about eveyrthing that’s missing. And it’s worth asking “Who the hell wants that?”

Rating: R, gruesome, graphic violence, nudity

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Jodie Comer,
Bill Skarsgård, Katie Breen and Noah Jupe.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Michael Sarnoski. An A24 release.

Running time: 2:03

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Movie Review: James Cromwell gets back to Herding Sheep — “Owd Bob” (1998)

Posted on June 18, 2026 by Roger Moore

James Cromwell’s long run at the top of the A-list of in-demand supporting actors began with a story of a sheep farmer, his dogs and a pig named “Babe” back in 1995.

He landed a prime role in “L.A. Confidential” (1997) and delivered a stand-out turn, as well as scoring important supporting parts in “The Green Mile,” “Snow Falling on Cedars,” “Space Cowboys” and in the “Star Trek” universe.

But you can see some doubt behind his eyes and effort in “Owd Dowd,” a 1998 remake of a classic silent cinema weeper which cast him as, once again, a shepherd. “Babe: Pig in the City” came out the same year.

Was this to be his lot, forever pigeon-holed as grumpy, silent sheep farmers in Australia and the Isle of Man?

If you see one Cromwell shepherd and sheep dog-raising and competing movie, make it “Babe.” “Owd Bob” has little to recommend it aside from lovely Isle of Man scenery, non-talking sheepdogs in action and an over-familiar plot of a sullen, proud grandpa forced to take in a grandson that he barely knows when his estranged daughter and her husband die in a car crash.

Cromwell’s understated performance gives us the taste of the actor’s disappointment in a small-time production without much hope of getting noticed or even earning distribution. Still, a working vacation on the Isle of Man with sheepdogs should have been some consolation.

He plays Adam MacAdam, a solitary shepherd who tends his flock, keeps a tidy weathered cottage and ancient farm and competes his dog Zac in the island-wide sheep dog trials, where the tetchy canine dominates.

His neighbors think Adam’s a jerk and that his dog is a mean-spirited menace.

Then a social worker informs him that it’s Adam or the juvenile welfare system in America unless the farmer takes in young David (Dylan Provencher), orphaned by the death of his parents in a car crash.

David is unemotional about this “reunion” with a man he appears to have never met in his 13 or so years. Adam is stern, skeptical about fnding “somethin’ useful fer ya ta do.” The lad is perfectly willing to rebuild stone walls, muck out barns and tote bales of hay.

The one thing that excites his grandfather is those annnual dog trials, where he goes nose to nose with his hated neighbors, the Moores, led by Keith (Colm Meaney), and their dogs.

The Moores bear him no animus. Their sheep dog, “Owd Bob” (Old Bob, because of a touch of grey in his coat) shares a sire with Zac and is Zac’s only real competition.

But their ties are deep and a long-ago wound festers in Adam. He chases off fellow farmers in search of whose animal is killing their sheep, and the Moores, with the same threat.

“If you come back again, I’ll sic the dog onye!”

The hostility carries on into the pub where Adam takes his pint alone. And it extends to the Moores’ fetching daughter Maggie (Jemima Rooper), who takes an interest in the new boy and wants to show David the charms of her island world.

That disappointment one can sense in Cromwell’s performance seems to infect the rest of the cast. The now-legendary Meaney seems almost bored by how little he has to play around with in matched with a disengaged foil.

His Keith Moore is a farmer with a lot more on his mind than sheep and sheepdogs — a deathly-ill wife (Moira Booker) and a daughter he doesn’t want to raise here on the island by himself. His trophy case is as adorned as the MacAdams one.

But “a cup is just a cup, whatever your grandfather thinks.”

The story tracks along a path that could point towards reconciliation and greater understanding of others’ pain, or something more “Old Yeller” dog-centric. And there’s barely enough here to hold one’s interest.

The two leads would go on to greater glory. Provencher wouldn’t work in films or TV past childhood. But Rooper, an English Elizabeth McGovern look-alike in her youth and even today, has gone on to a career mostly on British TV and in smaller films (“What If,” an acclaimed “All My Sons”).

Cromwell, the son of a lower A-list director from Hollywood’s first Golden Age, wouldn’t return to the farm. But he’d make a lot more out of the small films that offered starring or co-starring roles (“Hideaway,” “The Education of Little Tree”) and of chewy smaller roles in prestige pictures (“The Queen,” “I, Robot”).

He’s been good enough for long enough that he’s developed a following. But “Owd Bob” isn’t one of his better films or his best efforts.

Rating: TV-PG, animal violence

Cast: James Cromwell, Dylan Provencher, Jemima Rooper, Moira Brooker and Colm Meaney.

Credits: Directed by Rodney Gibbons, scripted by Harry Alan Towers and Sharon Buckingham, based on a novel by Alfred Ollivant and the 1924 film “Owd Bob.” A Quiver release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:35

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Netflixable? Dios Mio! Dazzling “I Am Frankelda” loses the Plot

Posted on June 17, 2026 by Roger Moore

The cotton tufts of simulated fog that roll into the stop-motion animated terrors of “I Am Frankelda” can resemble hands of the damned frantically reaching up from the depths of whatever lies below.

Vividly-colored sets filled with whimsical human (ish) dolls, fanastically monstrous spiders and mantis-skeleton creatures, owl-beings and coyote-people and the like from the “Seven Clans” of a netherworld where nightmares are conjured to maintain the separation of “the realms” from the human world.

Mexico’s first-ever stop-motion animated feature film is a beautiful and ambitious bauble, and a children’s story that goes off the rails early and rarely gets a grip on much that’s coherent or even interesting to chew on.

The filmmaking Ambriz Brothers put all their energy into “Corpse Bride” level world building when script-workshopping would have done their film a world of good.

A little girl, Francisca, scribbles “terror” tales and takes inspiration from seeing her own painter mother die at the easel. Raised by a grotesque grandmother straight out of “Cinderella,” she finds her passion dismissed and her talent ridiculed.

But she’s seeing things that make their way into her writing, an owl-creature prince struggling to find himself and his place in a kingdom where his parents’ rule is threatened by ill health and a scheming Royal Nightmare Writer, the green-with-envy spider Procustes.

Francisca only comes into her own as a teen, a Frida-browed fury finding her voice under a nom de plum that takes over her personality. “I am FRANKELDA!”

And that’s when the fantasy “real” prince she’s only glimpsed tries to bridge their two worlds to use her services to provide better nightmares to maintain the distance and “balance” between these two realms. Naturally, Royal Nightmare Writer Procustes — who hasn’t had an original idea in ages — tries to steal her stories and credit for her genius.

The writing-and-directing Ambrizes prioritize low-stakes conflict and a vast clutter of characters and settings over coherence. They’re introducing new “creations” with lines to perform and roles to play right up to the closing credits.

They made this a musical, furthering the picture’s ambitions, and extending their overreach.

“You think we’re aloooone here, but there are some seeeecrets,” won’t give anybody earworms in Spanish or dubbed into English.

There’s the germ of a good idea driving all this, the notion of the value of “frights” and “What are humans afraid of now?” There’s a hint of “Monsters, Inc.” in that.

But the film is visusally all beautifully-realized effort — great effort — and all surface gloss. There’s little to identify with, the stakes seem low (Frankelda and Procustes are battling over…credit?) and our Prince of Terrors seems boy band namby-pamby.

This was Netflix money well-spent, as the tactile, “real world” glories of stop-motion make it the most delightful form of animation. Why should studios like America’s Laika and ShadowMachine, Britain’s Aardman, Russia’s Dwarf Labs and Se-Ma-For (Poland) have all the glory?

But even if the color palette and general design feels distinctly Mexican, “Frankelda’s” story is generic, unfocused and no “Book of Life”or “Coco.” It offers little for adults and even less for its alleged target audience, children.

Rating: TV-PG, scary imagery

Cast: Voiced by Mereya Mendoza, Arturo Mercado, Jr. and Luis Leonardo Suárez, with Mark Lewis and Claudis Bridgforth among others voicing roles in English

Credits: Scripted and directed by Arturo and and Roy Ambriz. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:44

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Movie Review: Douglas and Morse reminisce about Belize, “Looking Through Water”

Posted on June 16, 2026 by Roger Moore

The best most screen actors can hope for in their dotage is roles that don’t embarrass or seem beneath them.

The lucky ones land a decent scripted series or a challenging supporting role on the big screen. But too many keep their hands in via inferior piffle — scripts with no ambition, edge or point other than as a make work project for elderly stars.

Michael Douglas has turned up in a few of those — too many. But “Looking Through Water” gives him a chance to play a grand old man with a colorful life behind him and a troubled grandkid to tell it to. And he delivers.

It’s no stretch, and the script suggests the Bob Rich novel it’s based on traffics in sentimental cliches and tropes and tropical Belize settings and nothing more. But Douglas and fellow screen veteran David Morse have moments of gravitas and reflection and nobody on camera lets down the side.

Douglas is the aged, rich but laid-back fisherman/grandpa who picks up troubled grandson Kyle (Walker Skobell) after he’s lost a fistfight and fresh off his latest mouth-off with his at-a-loss mom.

The kid’s a mouthy 14 year-old, given to calling his parents and his grandfather by their first name. Gramps rows Kyle across a tranquil New England lake in his Whitehall skiff and tries to get the story of the kid’s fight out of him. So he talks about the pivotal moments from his high-flying past.

Younger William (Michael Stahl-David) was CEO of the family business, engaged to be married a second time and in the process of being honored at some “Greed is Good” era New York Chamber of Commerce function when he blew it all up. With cause.

Next thing he and we know, he’s jetting off to ’80s Belize for a father-son fly-fishing tourney, with his estranged rich drop-out Dad (Morse) and Dad’s fishing guide Cole (Cameron Douglas).

A little “time on the water” might cure what ails our CEO trying to fend off a hostile takeover by a former friend who cheated with his fiance and plans to steal the company. First, William has to give himself over to fly-casting and give up the brick phone.

“Proving things is a young man’s game,” weathered, wizened father Leo tells him.

Dad smokes, drinks Belikin out of the bottle and tries to get his adult son’s priorities straight, a story the son later relates to his grandson with similar intent.

No, the two life experiences have nothing in common that makes this relatable, but just go with it.

There are a couple of grace notes that give this “A River Runs Through It Lite” tale a touch of humanity, if not poetry. Morse is as grand at playing “the old man” as Douglas, and fits right in with the local Belizian color.

But this script is strictly paint-by-numbers “pretty.” There’s the medically-trained local cutie (Ximena Rojo) who catches William’s eye, the seasoned seaside bar owner (Tamara Tunie) who knows more than she imparts to the new gringo in town, and Michael’s son Cameron Douglas gives some over-tattooed grit to overtanned fishing guide Cole.

It’s all pre-digested because we’ve seen everything that happens here before and heard every pearl of wisdom dropped in a dozen too-too similar films in recent years.

It’s a movie where literally every scene has a punch line we see coming and every introduction sets up a relationship painted in via strokes we’ve seen a hundred times before.

But “Looking Through Water” passes the time even if it never quite surprises in any way that makes it “play.”

Rating: TV-14, fisticuffs, sexual situations, smoking and alcohol use, profanity

Cast: Michael Stahl-David, David Morse, Ximena Rojo, Cameron Douglas, Tamara Tunie, Walker Skobell and Michael Douglas.

Credits: Directed by Roberto Schneider, scripted by Zach Dean and Rowdy Harrington, based on a novel by Bob Rich. A Good Deeds release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:48

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Movie Review: “The Million Dollar Bet” is doomed to Never Pay Off

Posted on June 14, 2026 by Roger Moore

Here’s your one sentence pitch for “The Million Dollar Bet.”

A doesn’t-sweat-anything gambler talks “friends” into betting him that he can’t run 70 miles in 24 hours — in Vegas — with a sandstorm bearing down on Sin City.

You’ve got a gambling milieu, a couple of ticking clocks — the 24 hour “race” challenge, and the freak-event sandstorm (Vegas got a doozy of one in July of 2025) — inveterate gamblers, a life-threatening bet and a “true story” tag.

But true or not, collection of “colorful” if cliched characters and interesting stakes be damned, this thing never comes together.

Justin Cornwell plays Jack, a card player/gambler on a bit of a “run,” when the problems of his younger casino-trolling pal Hank (Douglas Smith) take a fresh turn.

Twentysomething Hank, out of shape but a “natural athlete,” wants Jack and others to make a “prop bet” on his ability to run the near-equivalent of three consecutive marathons in 24 hours.

The film starts to go wrong as the financing, the payout, the odds and the architecture of this bet is skimmed over and never explained. We know Jack doesn’t have that kind of cash. We know Hank doesn’t, but is fond of wild “prop bets” which are sometimes epic over-reaches.

As neither of them has a million bucks (it starts out at $150k) or a stake to put up, as others aren’t seen “getting in on the action,” where is the three-to-one odds payout coming from?

Hank’s a Vegas native, with a cranky, protective chain-smoking mom (Carrie Gibson), a dull stepdad (Todd Carroll) he ignores and a doting sister (Kristen Lee Gatoskie) who gave up the :dirty money” of casino card dealing for a new career in go-kart repair.

Jack tries to call Hank’s bluff, but he’d really hope he’ll talk himself out of this. Hank’s sister tries to convince him and his mother tries to order him to bail (and Jack to let Hank off the hook).

But Hank begins. He’ll need to average nearly three miles per hour, “no walking…taking as many breaks as I desire,” to manage 70 miles in 24 hours.

He’s doing 720 foot laps around the complex where he and Jack and “not taking sides” and not betting gambler pal Tony (Sean Rogers) live.

Colorful, cliched neighbors — the angsty, thinks-too-much tween, the nosy little old lady from across the street, the 50something shirtless Euro trash who rides his skateboard with his dog pulling it for exercise — track Hank and chat words of encouragement or discouragement.

Everybody pressures Jack to back down. An emergency room doc talks about how deadly it cam be for somebody out of shape to attempt a marathon in Vegas, much less nearly THREE marathons.

And that damned storm is coming.

I was halfway through “Million Dollar Bet,” taking notes on “dialogue that sounds ‘typed’ and not lived or spoken by living, breathing characters” before I realized it’s an Austrian production. So yes, English as a Second Language dialogue takes one out of this Thomas Woschitz film from time to time.

Cornwell, of TV’s “The In-Between,” has an interesting but not arresting screen presence.

“Guys, it’s a bet, not a funeral” was never going to pack a punch, and Cornwell soft sells it to boot.

Former child actor Smith (TV’s “Big Love” And “Big Little Lies”) shows us little that indicates edge, mania, cunning or even a character’s interior life.

The supporting players don’t register much more than that, but they’re not “carrying” the picture.

Woschitz has been around for a while — “Bad Luck” and “Universalove” are his best-known Austrian films — but he struggles to make even the simple ticking clock elements tick over.

And the payoff is more disappointing than the disappointments that precede it.

The pitch might have felt like a sure thing, but plot holes and cut rate casting made “Million Dollar Bet” a long shot all along.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Justin Cornwell, Douglas Smith, Kristen Lee Gatoskie, Sean Rogers, Billie Steiner, Todd Carrol, Dee Catrone and Carrie Gibson.

Credits: Directed by Thomas Woschitz, scripted by Andrea Liva and Thomas Woschitz. A Narrative Distribution release on Amazon Prime.

Running time: 1:29

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Movie Review: The Sad Aftershocks of “Obsession”

Posted on June 13, 2026 by Roger Moore

Months into its hype, inspiring think-piece essays on the feminist underpinnings and the cost of the toxic male gaze do little to prepare you for the actual experience of watching Curry Barker’s “Obsession.”

It’s horrific, gruesome at times and grim going for a “wish fulfillment fantasy” tale, even one that goes oh-so-wrong. But what shakes you is how deflatingly sad it is.

There are victims everywhere, and whatever you think of these fickle, fresh-out-of-high-school “kids,” at the front of your mind is “Nobody deserves this.”

Barker’s first theatrical feature after breaking-out with the viral video movie “Milk & Serial” online is premised on a jokey old saying that was dusty with age when his Alabama parents were young.

Behind every man is a woman whose life he ruined.

One young man’s “obsession” becomes a young woman’s curse — her free will and agency ended, all sacrificed against her will in service of his heart’s desire.

It’s about a wallflower’s wish for his crush to share his unexpressed and unrequited obsessive love.

“I wish that Nikki Freeman loved me more than anyone in the f—ing world!”

Baron or “Bear” (Michael Johnston of MTV’s “Teen Wolf” reboot) is a nebbishy introvert who has spent months obsessing over his fellow music shop employee, Nikki (Inde Navarrette of TV’s “Superman & Lois”), the perky, plucky and petite life of the party.

And there’s always something party adjacent going-on with the quartet of new graduates working for doddering Mr. Harper (Andy Richter) at Mad Music. Ian (Cooper Tomlinson) is the ringleader and Bear’s counselor on “never a right time” to tell Nikki how he feels. The boss’s daughter Sarah (Megan Lawless) is the fourth employee, fourth member of their bar trivia contest team and awfully attentive to Bear’s moods and well-being.

Nikki may not be aware of it, but she’s sending Bear mixed signals — begging him not to skip trivia, promising to tell him something “important,” but giving off bigtime “friend zone” vibes as she does.

Bear? He’s naive and new to all this, practicing his “pour out my soul” to Nikki spiel, at Ian’s direction, to a waitress at the local diner when we meet him.

Ian takes way too much interest in whether Bear tells Nikki “how you feel.” And Bear is still awkward enough to miss signals, too timid to take the chance of “spoiling” something that may never happen anyway.

But a trip to the New Agey crystals and whatnots gift shop sees him stumble into a bit of magical kitsch — an ’80s “Wishing Willow” (electrical plastic) stick. Break the stick, make a wish and it’ll come true. Top tip — nobody should break the stick and make a wish because these things, new in box, are “vintage” and worth something.

Another reason is “Be careful what you wish you.”

Barker and Navarrette cleverly handle Nikki’s “transition” from “friend” to someone confused about why she’s compelled to come on to this intimate opposite sex pal from work, bar-hopping and bar trivia nights.

That’s the devilish brilliance of the character and the character’s story arc. Every so often, as Nikki exits The Friend Zone and into “Bear, I love you so, so, so, so, so much,” we see the sentient Nikki wrestling with this spell. This isn’t what she wants, no matter how many times she says “I don’t think I could live without you.”

Nikki turns to the camera for that movie prostitute look during sex — fake moans and pleas of devotion on a deadpan, get-this-over-with face, whenever they make love.

And as Nikki’s obsessive clinging turns dangerous for herself and everyone else, Bear begins to grasp just what he’s done, why he can’t admit what he’s done and what he can’t do about it now. Because once Nikki starts with the explosive screams of despair at Bear’s every departure (she duct tapes the front door shut), once she makes a public scene or three or four and once she turns to incredibly violent self-harm and threats to others, Bear knows the die is cast.

Nikki? She can’t “live without you,” but she sure as hell can’t live this life she didn’t chose, either. Live with that, buster.

Barker leaves Nikki in the literal shadows for Bear to witness her descent into darkness. We witness one public meltdown by simply hearing Nikki’s off-camera deranged shrieks and we see how others at a party react in shock and confusion at what she’s become.

There’s something here for many a college-age teen to chew on — young women who identify with life choices already seemingly out of their hands, guys grasping the damage that obsessive focus on one person can cause, with guilt, regret and terror underscoring every recognizable young person foible and mistake borne of a lack of life experience.

Take away the whole supernatural element — treated comically as store clerks and wishing willow “company” hotline operator alike shrug off culpability for this deadly nightmare they’re selling for $6.99 — and there’s romantic baggage here that could make anybody at any age blush at recalling their romantic history.

Who was using whom? Who knew “devotion” has its limits and “forever” is a life sentence? We have no perspective at that age, but why should anybody take any of that seriously when they’re young?

“Maybe you’d better” is the lesson of this, the latest “smart” horror hit in a genre at long last valuing sophistication over sequels.

Rating: R, graphic, bloody violence, drug abuse, sex and profanity

Cast: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless and Andry Richter.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Curry Barker. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 1:48

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Movie Review: This “Tuner” has an Ear for Safecracking

Posted on June 13, 2026 by Roger Moore

It’s built around a methodical, arcane and dying artistic profession set in a digitized, short-attention span world.

There’s a love story whose backdrop is the classical music where virtuosos practice their art, and piano tuners practice theirs.

And a heist — or heists — threaten to come between our mismatched but complementary lovers.

As the kids used to say back in olden times, “Tuner” is a movie that hits all the notes to be “my jam.”

But an untidy narrative cluttered with loose ends and wildly illogical twists and a lead scripted and played as “passive” spoil veteran documentary maker Daniel Roher’s fictional feature film debut. “Tuner” sings, here and there, but musical montages of a love affair and the crimes that accompany it never let it jell or jam.

Director and co-writer Roher, who did “Navalny,” “Once Were Brothers” and “Blink,” gives us a “hero” with hyperacusis — accute hearing sensitivity that forces him to wear constantly wear earplugs and even noise-canceling headphones to cope with New York at its loudest.

That forced Niki (Leo Woodall) to give up a promising performing career. Now pushing 30, he’s the long-serving apprentice to Harry Horowitz (Dustin Hoffman), an ancient and talkative mentor who rides along with his protege as he services New York’s better Bösendorfer’s, Steinways and Yamahas and gets them into tune with his experience and his unerring but over-sensitive ears.

Niki has “perfect pitch.” Give him a piano and a room that’s quiet enough and he can make all 88 keys sing perfectly on key, even though “We never use the ‘p’ word” in his line of work. Tuning is own art, with imperfections and idiosyncratic biases distinct to each tuner.

Old school Harry charms the well-heeled and often rude customers — this one has Billy Joel playing at a benefit at his house, that one would love for them to fix the toilet, while they’re at it. Niki does his work in the isolation of a condition that seems comparable to deafness, with silence an elusive goal of his work and his life in a cacaphonous city.

When Harry, a bit deaf himself, locks his hearing aids in an old safe by mistake, he and adoring but scolding wife Marla (the great Tovah Feldshuh) implore Niki to give it a try.

A Youtube tutorial or two, a little listening and a bit of fiddling later, Niki succeeds. He doesn’t need a safecracker’s stethescope. His faulty ears turn out to be his superpower.

Those ears and his self-effacing manner and expertise are what get the attention of musical composition student Ruthie (Havana Rose Liu), manic to get a piano sextet finished and calmed out of her fury by Niki’s cool, professional and very musical sensitivities.

Harry tried to set them up, but that didn’t play. But Niki’s chance to be her knight in tuning armor — a disabled knight she learns soon enough — triggers a love affair.

As Niki has stumbled into some shady security company thieves who can’t crack a safe without making a racket in Niki’s workplace one evening, that’s going to get complicated. Bullying goon Uri (Lior Raz) and his Israeli henchmen and relatives lure Niki into some easy money.

They set up security systems for clients, know when the entitled rich are out of town, and then pilfer their safes — taking care to not steal things traceable to them.

“Tuner” kind of goes off the logical rails right from the moment Niki starts stealing to buy Harry’s tuner biz van and pay his mentor’s medical bills.

These are sloppy, casual burglaries. Uri & Crew are unconcerned about noise, finger prints, who sees them or who knows they know what’s in these safes, and Niki follows their lead.

As the “jobs” grow more frequent, matters escalate and violence enters the picture. Niki’s hearing is easily emperiled, and once Uri figures that out, an air horn is the only weapon he needs.

Luckily for Niki, his condition conveniently comes and goes when the script requires it. And it turns out he’s got another “superpower,” which could come in handy down the line.

Woodall’s passivity in the part was a scripted choice and any resemblence to early films of Tom Hardy — for instance — vanishes as Niki may look brawny and tough, but is just a sensitive musician with vulnerable hearing and a lost cause in a fight.

Woodall, of “Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy” and “Nuremberg,” is more convincing than compelling in the lead role.

Liu (“Bottoms,” “No Exit”) is utterly convincing as a frazzled musician calmed by this handsome working class bloke who knows a lot more about music than she first guesses.

The Israeli Raz, of “Operation Finale” and “Six Underground,” is perfectly cast as a heavy and a guy in the right place at the right time. Israeli villains are all the rage these days.

But Hoffman can’t tone down the “cutesey” in his performance to save his Oscar-winning butt. He’s made “grating” the calling card of much of his late career work.

The jazz and classical musical milieu with underworld grit flourishes pulled me into “Tuner.” Jazz great Herbie Hanock even has a cameo. But every few minutes, a contrived scene, a hammy flourish of performance or some other false note took me right out of it.

Rating: R, graphic violence, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Leo Woodall, Havana Rose Liu, Lior Raz, Tovah Feldshuh and Dustin Hoffman.

Credits: Directed by Daniel Roher, scripted by Daniel Rober and Robert Ramsey. A Black Bear release.

Running time: 1:47

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BOX OFFICE: It’s “Disclosure Day” weekend, but “Obsession” and “Backroom” are Still Making Bank

Posted on June 13, 2026 by Roger Moore

Steven Spielberg’s third shot at “The aliens have made contact” is overperforming the low expectations that Universal had put out — $35 million, they said.

For a Spielberg movie. With aliens. And Emily “A Quiet Place” Blunt.

Not a world beater, but still a weekend winner. That’s not a take that would make “Project Hail Mary” (now over $343 million) blush. And that goes to the heart of the film’s premise and a misread of The Moment that I pointed out in my review.

Aliens are REAL? Yawn.

Deadline.com says the clumsily-titled but hyped-to-hell-and-back “Disclosure Day” will clear $44. And so it did.  It earned over $6.5 Thursday alone.

In an age of vast conspiracies, when ordinary people are having their government start wars and murder civilians at sea to protect a vast global pedophile and child trafficking conspiracy, with allegations of murders, Israeli intelligence manipulation and Russian coercion and a “president” who will unleash World War III rather than let his crimes and perversions in the Trumpstein files see the light of day, would “Oh yeah, we’ve been covering up flying saucer crashes, made contact with aliens, interned them and done alien autopsies since 1947 (Roswell)” shake the world?

Nope. The movies and TV have spent most of the past century prepping us for that. Anything short of “War of the Worlds” (a radio sensation) might not lead the evening news.

“The Earth Stands Still” in the ’50s. The Earth is distracted and numbed by scandals and crimes in plain sight today.

Reviews have been generally favorable, but see it and have a laugh on the twerps wetting their pants over an “utterly conventional” version of a tale we’ve seen told better before — by Spielberg, for starters.

“Obsession,” the male wish fulfillment fantasy about “love me and only me forever” that devolves in murderous directions, with the woman trapped as unwitting/unwilling partner to this slavish devotion, is holding audience and drawing a crowd in its FIFTH WEEK of release.

It earned $19 million this weekend.

You think writer-director Curry Barker touched a nerve? I finally got around to it and was struck by how profoundly sad and grimly on target this “guy gets just what he wants” nightmare is. Review to come shortly. It’s about to pass “Get Out” on the roll of horror blockbusters.

The latest iteration of the venerable “Scary Movie” franchise is hurtling off a cliff on its second weekend. The Make Work for Wayans project is on track to earn a healthy $14.5 million on its second weekend, a steep plunge from its $50 million opening. That’s also a third place finish on its second weekend.

But here’s the thing about that. I ducked into a matinee showing of with a half-decent turnout in the suburban South. I gave it 12-13 minutes of my time, and the only thing that was remotely amusing was how much more lithe, thin and fit Shawn Wayans’ dance double was than he. The audience? Not a laugh over that entire 12 minutes. Word of mouth pushed this below $15. It sucks. Most critics didn’t even bother reviewing it. God knows I won’t.

In fourth place, “Backrooms” is still chasing “Obsession” as the horror phenom of the spring, on a pace to clear $11.26 million on its third weekend. It may not catch “Obsession,” but it’ll come close. It’s over $161 million already. “Obsession” is back to out-earning it and over $170 million.

And a “Masters of the Universe” that nobody begged for is plunging on its second weekend, enjoying the last hours of being in the box office top five with a take of $8.67.

“Michael” (8th, $4.1 million) may have left the top five, but it’s still in the top ten and just passed “Bohemian Rhapsody” as the biggest box office hit musical bio-pic of all time. It’s closing in on $360 million in North America, with another $550 million or so overseas. Lionsgate has its biggest hit ever. “Michael” Jackson’s sanitized pre-pedophile-revelations story is bigger than any “Hunger Games” outing.

“Mandalorian & Grogu” is clinging to sixth with another $$4.7 million.

“BTS: World Tour” pulled in$3.8 million for eighth.

“The Breadwinner,” “Pressure,” “The Sheep Detectives” “Super Mario Galaxy” and “Mortal Kombat” will be among the titles disappearing from the Top Ten as Rupaul’s romp “Stop! That! Train” ($2) the martial arts thriller “The Furious” ($2.27) shove them and the animated  animated Youtube hit turned feature “Amazing Digital Circus” ($1.9 on its second weekend, a catastrophic plunge from its $22 million opening) out of the Ten count.

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