Netflixable? Aspirational Filipino couple become “Sosyal Climbers”

Posted on May 27, 2025 by Roger Moore

“Sosyal Climbers” is a cleverly plotted but cloying to the point of cutesie Filipino romantic comedy about a young couple that stumbles into a shortcut to their hearts’ desire — getting rich.

It’s an Around the World with Netflix film that shows both evolving Filipino values and issues, and the Western influences that began with colonization and are ongoing, thanks to Western TV and cinema.

This rom-com is somewhat more sexual than most Filipino films that make their way onto Netflix, a lot more sexual than comparable Malaysian, Indian and Indonesian fare. But the genre tends to generate simplistic, lightweight and obvious stories and one dimensional characters all over Asia, outside of Japan, Korea and Taiwan.

The pun title is Filipino slang for “upper class” or posing as such. And that fits Jessa (Maris Racal) and Ray (Anthony Jennings) to a T.

They meet at a funeral, where she’s tacky and grasping enough to try and convince the mourners that the house purchase their now-dead father was just about to close is worth following through on. Ray, who weeps like a member of the family, was actually the deceased’s financial planner. As Jessa is cute, if a tad clueless, he backs her up with the family.

A romance begins — with assignations in parked cars, etc. They move in together as self-described members of “the aspirational class” (subtitled, or dubbed into English), trying to escape “the struggling middle.”

Her dream of dreams is to be wealthy. But what does HE want, she wants to know?

“I want you.” And he’s willing to do whatever it takes to make her dream come true.

She’s got to sell some houses to get rich quick. He needs to make himself and his clients wealthier by making smart investments, giving good advice and minimizing risks.

Damned if financial naif Ray doesn’t walk the couple, all their neighbors and a mobster known as Boss Gil (Raul Montesa) right into a pyramid scheme that the government busts up with arrests.

Ray and Jessa are on the hook for millions of Filipino pesos, and Boss Gil insists they pay everybody back. Their best bet for that is closing just one big mansion or McMansion sale. They team up to clean up one such place and make it more presentable. But a lot of work, a lot of wine, a lot of lovemaking and romping around the property convince the exclusive enclave where the house that they’re “Our new neighbors!”

Jessa and Ray decide to pass themselves off as Penelope and Kiefer to try to fit in. And once that lie is passed on, they figure out that there are ways to make this pose pay off — selling “housewarming gifts,” etc.

That’s the root of the comedy here, these schemes — including passing themselves off as pricey relationship counselors — to round up the millions they need to get back to square one financially.

There’s comical potential in some of the supporting characters that mostly remains potential. The situations have promise, too. But director and co-writer Jason Paul Laxamana (“Hold Me Close,” “The Ship Show”) never lets any premise, any plot twist or any character show much if any edge.

That renders the entire enterprise into pablum that flirts with insipid. We just know nothing bad will happen to these two adorable kid-con artists, and that they’ll see the error of their ways and repent. The treacly sweet performances by the leads underscore this.

Every film, even a rom-com, has to have stakes. Here those are so low and the obstacles so easily overcome — in the most Pollyannaish ways — that there’s little for the viewer to invest in.

Filipino film may be evolving in ways that plant its best films in the world cinema mainstream. But if “Sosyal Climbers” is any indication, romantic comedies and those who make them still have a long way to go to achieve surprises, laughs and love stories that translate and travel.

Rating: TV-MA, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Maris Racal, Anthony Jennings, Ricky Davao, Carmi Martin and Raul Montesa.

Credits: Directed by Jason Paul Laxamana, scripted by Jericho Aguado and
Jason Paul Laxamana. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:42

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Classic Film Review: A Dark Comedy of Class, Gimmicks and Great Critical Repute — “Kind Hearts and Coronets”

Posted on May 26, 2025 by Roger Moore

It is remembered for the grand stunt of casting the great Alec Guinness as eight members of a largely imperious and callous noble family, and making each so distint as to erase the label “gimmick” from what became a quintessential screen tour de force turn.

By reputation, “Kind Hearts and Coronets” is “the greatest British screen comedy,” a withering and witty triumph of wordplay, classism and mass murder.

But move past what sticks in the memory — Guinness at his most shapeshifting, star Dennis Price never more droll and a few clever killings, the cleverest presented in one amusing montage — forget its reputation and consider it as it is, a 1949 comedy from the Ealing/Brit era of “Whisky Galore,” “Passport to Pimlico,” “The Ladykillers,” “The Lavender Hill Mob” and “The Man in the White Suit.”

It is really the best of that lot? Or is there a reason we revere and remember Ealing filmmakers such as Charles Crichton (“Hue and Cry,” “The Lavender Hill Mob” and “A Fish Called Wanda”) and Alexander Mackendrick (“The Ladykillers,”“The Maggie,” “The Man in the White Suit”) and that “Coronets” director and co-writer Robert Hamer (“School for Scoundrels”) is either consigned to a lesser rank, dismissed or forgotten?

You know where this is going, because the answer to those two questions is “No” and “Yes,” and in that order.

Watching the class killing comedy anew I was struck by how slow-footed it is, how ponderous the endless voice-over narration by our killer — writing his memoirs on the eve of his execution — plays.

The dialogue still draws blood.

“I must admit he exhibits the most extraordinary capacity for middle age that I’ve ever encountered in a young man of twenty-four.”

The idea of Guinness as a boorish general, arrogant admiral, entitled toff, brazen suffragette, tippling priest etc. still tickles, as do the dispassionate, quipping killer — “I shot an arrow in the air; she fell to earth in Berkeley Square.” — and a poet/hangman who frets over clients who “tend to be very hysterical – so inconsiderate.”

But this classic has a creaking quality it never shakes. It’s a period piece that grasps for its cobwebs, a farce that never gets up a head of steam.

Based on an obscure 1907 novel about a Jewish striver murdering his way into British nobility, Hamer’s adaptation makes the anti-hero half-Italian, son of a noble daughter (Audrey Fildes) of the D’Ascoyne clan who married an opera singer and casts Price (“A Canterbury Tale”) as both the singer/father and his son, a young man who vows revenge on the family that would not acknowledge her mother’s marriage or himself, the progeny of that union.

Taught from childhood of his rightful place among the D’Ascoynes, Louis Mazzilli is twelfth in line to the title of Duke when his mother dies, denied the right of burial among her family and class. Louis, passably educated and well-spoken but forced into work as a draper’s assistant (women’s wear clerk), will murder his way up the pecking order and force British nobility to accept him.

Starting with a chance meeting with one of the more boorish cads of the clan, Louis sets up a drowning, and then poisons, shoots and bombs his way through the chain of succession — each victim, from the dull and doddering priest — “The D’Ascoynes certainly appear to have accorded with the tradition of the landed gentry, and sent the fool of the family into the church.” — to the stern banker, photography buff, obstinate admiral to defiant suffragette, played by Guinness.

 The script/and-or novel’s cleverest touch is a “Great Expectations” twist. Louis pines for the daughter of the doctor who was a friend of his mother’s. His crush since childhood, Sibella is Britain’s class system’s real villain, the “commoner” determined to marry “rich” and who teases and dismisses Louis to marry “the dullest man in London!”

“In England,” Louis counters.

“In EUROPE” she says, topping him once and for all.

Sibella is given a cloying, calculating edge by Joan Greenwood, later to appear in “Tom Jones.” She is as nakedly ambitious and unscrupulous as Louis. But rather than murder her way into comfort and station, she’s determined to marry to make that happen. If that “dull” first husband won’t do, perhaps Louis and his ever-improving prospects will.

In Sibella, we and Louis see that the entitled, inherited top tier of British society are bad enough. But those who keep them in their high places are the fawning commoners who idolize them and will do anything to join their ranks.

I remember seeing “Kind Hearts” — which takes its title from a line by Tennyson — at a university film society and laughing at the comical calculation and callousness of it all, at the array of upper class twits Guinness created for the screen, idling men and women who dabble and dally and are never challenged in life until Louis comes along to take away their status and their lives.

Some of the film’s sluggishness is erased by an audience laughing over the dead spaces at the end of scenes. But many of those scenes aren’t exactly knee-slappers. And the “creative” killings are terribly tame by today’s standards.

Hamer removed the novel’s antisemitic edge, but thought nothing of leaving a “catch a n—er by the toe” joke or two, reminding us that all the best racial slurs are British in origin, and by jove they were bloody slow to let go of that one.

Hamer’s best films are more dependent on performances than anything he brought to the pacing or situations. I’d say the later, less ambitious and much broader “School for Scoundrels” plays better.

But for all its class-crushing messaging and odd bursts of wit, “Kind Hearts and Coronets” strikes me as a film classed above its station, coasting on a title and reputation that really aren;t merited now, if they ever were.

Even Guinness’s feat has its issues, as each of his eight character “types” is just shy of laugh-out-loud amusing.

Hamer made some good films, but no great ones. And that’s “Kind Hearts,” a good film praised and passed down, by repuation, as “great” when it was never more than arch, passably daring and lightly amusing, and isn’t aging that well either.

Rating: TV-PG, off camera violence, racial slurs

Cast: Dennis Price, Joan Greenwood, Valerie Hobson, Miles Malleson and Alec Guinness.

Credits: Directed by Robert Hamer, scripted by Robert Hamer and John Dighton, based on a novel by Robert Horniman. An Ealing Comedy on Tubi, Amazon, other streamers.

Running time: 1:46

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Movie Review: “Against the Clock,” aka “Headlock” traps Agron in a Polish Joke

Posted on May 25, 2025 by Roger Moore

The lengths some guys will go to in order to get Dianna Agron to make out with them.

The first-time I paid attention to Mark Polish of the filmmaking Polish Twins (with brother Michael Polish) was when “Twin Falls, Idaho,” their breakout film came out. Interviewed them at the time.

That was way back in 1999. And honestly, the last time I noted them was with these Midwestern chroniclers’ “The Astronaut Farmer” back in 2006. The writing, directing and sometime acting Mark and writing and directing sibling Michael are making projects independent of each other these days.

But that’s not halted the downward spiral of their careers or critical reputations as evidenced by “Alarum,” one of this year’s worst-reviewed films (by Michael) and Mark’s disastrous sci-fi thriller “Headlock,” so awful that renaming it “Against the Clock” for release to streaming gives it no help at all.

As an actor, Mark Polish is generic in look and unexceptional in talent and screen presence. But he wrote and directed a futuristic CIA-reprogramming-human -tale and convinced Justin Bartha and Andy Garcia to sign on, and landed “Glee!” alumna Agron as his co-star.

Polish plays a spy caught up in spy games and head-doctor science that puts him in a coma in which his worried almost-a-widow battles the drawling, white-suited, cane-carrying Col. Sanders CIA chief (Garcia) over the contents of possibly-brain-dead Kelley’s brain.

There’s a terror mastermind, Ah Puch (José Zúñiga) that Agent Kelley and the Agency are chasing, and the CIA chief wants the “Intel” in Kelley’s head, which has been augmented and altered to maximize data input and retention, among other modifications.

If they want to know the full list of “target cities” Au Puch has in mind, beyond Venice, they’ll need to open that noggin. But Tess, Kelley’s defiant and fashion-forward wife, is doing her own hunt for the truth about what the CIA can and cannot do and will or will not say about their role in Kelley’s current state.

“The world is made up of TWO things, Black and White,” Garcia/CIA Chief Hotchiss bellows, in his best Foghorn Leghorn. “And there ain’t NOTHIN’ in between!”

“Against the Clock” is visually, aurally and scripturally incoherent, a blur of “Is he alive and ‘escaping’ while inside his head,” or are these the dying thoughts of an agent who sold his intellectual soul to The Agency?

Voices are almost constantly disembodied and echoey. Images range from hazy and out of focus to lurid and hyper “real.”

Polish makes one unfortunate technical decision after another, with overlit, washed-out “dream” sequences contrasted with the hyper-saturated colors of “reality.” Or is that vice versa? Context-free flashbacks that make no sense, montages of media coverage and the messy mental state of a man whose mind is no longer his own all jumbled together over a soundtrack that is almost start to finish a “mistake” the director insisted on.

There’s little here to grab onto and little to entice the viewer to stick with this formless fiasco to the end.

Having a “nightmare that THIS was a nightmare” and opening the film with a ponderous lecture on the brain’s computer-like capacity by a CIA brain-use futurist (Patrick Bauchau) does nothing to render the senseless sensible.

And Polish, as the disturbed, manipulated and “nightmare” within the nightmare mental state agenta compelling or even competent tour guide nor an emphatic hero that anybody roots for his drop dead gorgeous wife to “find,” revive or whatever in her quest to get to the bottom of a conspiracy.

But as least Polish got to lock lips with Agron a few times. Maybe to him that was enough.

Rating: unrated, violence

Cast: Dianna Agron, Mark Polish, Justin Bartha, José Zúñiga, Patrick Bauchau and Andy Garcia.

Credits: Mark Polish. A Gravitas Ventures release on FilmRise, other streamers, Patrick Bauchau

Running time: 1:47

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Series Review: Lambos, Pubs, Tik Tok Tractoring and health scares come to “Clarkson’s Farm 4”

Posted on May 25, 2025 by Roger Moore

One of streaming TV’s most popular “reality” series returns for a fourth season of plowing, planting, impregnating and shipping off to slaughter in “Clarkson’s Farm 4,” the British show about celebrity TV motoring reviewer/presenter Jeremy Clarkson‘s transition to gentleman farming.

A blockbuster series for Amazon that premiered at the tail end of COVID, it’s been a comical and eye-opening documentary about the grueling routines and never-ending threats to farming and one arrogant, impatient and mechanically inept “gentleman” who takes it on, late in life.

The series is an appealing blend of escapism — going “back to the land,” with the steep learning curve that portends — coupled with the ominous threats to farming as a way of life and a business, and celebrity.

Yes, it’s all about the now-climate-changed weather. And no, there’s not much anyone can do about it, “Greta Thunberg” shots be damned.

Clarkson makes a garulous, self-effacing tour-guide for the reality of this life — cocksure he can figure out every farmer’s best friend — a new work “shortcut,” or fresh angles, crop and money/time/livestock-saving devices.

With eyerolls from his young, farm-born farm manager Kaleb Cooper, farm planner/accountant Charlie Ireland and significant other Lisa Hogan, Clarkson’s tried to turn goats into a farm brambles-clearing business, attempted to break into the horse radish/wasabi market and grow giant mushrooms as a bottom-line-saving delicacy.

Longtime fans of Clarkson’s “Top Gear” and “Grand Tour” TV series are treated to his clumsy attempts at mastering the vast array of motorized vehicles on the thousand acre farm he’s named Diddley Squat. His weakness for complicated, “sexy,” overpowered and break-down prone Italian cars is reflected in his love of Lamborghini tractors.

And his celebrity means that he is able to directly market much of what he produces — from grains turned into his signature beer, Hawkstone, to potatoes, beef and mushrooms et al sold in a wildly popular, TV-plugged and celebrity-labeled farm store, which has been a headache for him and Chipping-Norton village neighbors and Oxfordshire council members and planners.

That store and the vicisitudes of Britain’s notoriously damp and climate-changed weather remain ongoing gripes of Season Four of the series, which opens with Clarkson coping with the celebrity he’s bestowed on his cherubic, practical and increasingly outspoken and famous employee Kaleb. Cooper got his own British farm-and-performance hall tour and Amazon special (“The World According to Kaleb: On Tour,” goofy and offhandedly charming) and when “Farm 4” begins, he’s not around.

That leads to Clarkson hiring a young woman, Harriet Cowan, who is both an impressively skilled farmer and a Tik Tok influencer. She’s dolled-up, hair blown-out and eyelashes added for her music videos set to the mundane work of tractoring, with implied feminist empowerment in showing her doing all the work the menfolk do.

Clarkson? He’s well-over 60, struggling with the work, health issues and unruly eyebrows even as he trots out his favorite phrase.

“I’ve had a brilliant idea.”

There are new crops attempted, new land preservation and land management issues owing to ever-shifting government “schemes” and now-changing governments.

Clarkson decides to use his celebrity to try and open a pub, attempting an end-run around “the planning police” of Oxfordshire, who reflected community resistance to all the fan-traffic that flood his farm store there. Why not try to open a pub/restaurant/butcher shop/store in the more tourism-friendly Cotswalds, then?

“Farm 4” thus takes on elements of the property-hunt series “Escape to the Country” as Clarkson & Co. note the collapse of “the village pub” — with a thousand of them closing a year over recent decades. There’s plenty of empty and historic pubs to choose from, and some lip service is paid to at least the governmental side of why so many fail or are not “allowed” to succeed — not too much — thanks to traffic, “quiet” and quality of life localism and regulations.

The series also touches on threats to small-scale farming such as a loss of local abattoirs for livestock slaughter, the rising age of the average farmer and the “loneliness” of an important profession that is all grinding routine, physical hazards and limited rewards.

On both sides of the pond, the opportunity-lacking countryside is emptying out as young people leave and an increasingly narrow, older and conservative demographic remains and recklessly votes itself into oblivion.

In the years since “Clarkson’s Farm” premiered, I’ve moved back to the rural Virginia county where I grew up and onto a farm. That’s given me fresh appreciations for this “Green Acres meets the Kardashians” concept, and of how this series attempts a balance of “scripted” bits and the simple, solitary and grueling reality of farming life.

I need to water, move water, (organically) spray apple trees, stake tomato plants, wrangle unruly farm dogs and feed chickens after I finish this review. Clarkson’s endless “What day is this?” isn’t just about the forgetfulness of age. Every day has its long list of chores, repairs, planting or harvesting prep and animal care, and that goes on even though there isn’t a film crew or a mania for “sharing” the life and work via cellphone videos. The days all run together.

Am I writing this on Sunday? Memorial Day?

The “celebrity” side of things means Clarkson can name drop like a chat show host, model a nifty cap he got from Woody Harrelson, open a “celebrity” pub like his “Grand Tour” mate James May, and command attention wherever he goes. Realtors line up to show him pubs and council members either relish the camera attention of meeting with him over his “planned improvements,” or shun camera and him in part just to put this interloper/poseur in his place.

So there are new wrinkles in the fourth season of “Clarkson’s Farm,” but no novel themes or real new challenges aside from the health scare. It’s pleasantly more of the same, more Clarkson cunning “plans,” more ridicule from one fresh face and a lot of more familiar ones.

There are a lot more “Feckin’ eejit” cracks from his just-as-farm-naive Irish TV lady friend Lisa.

Clarkson and his longtime “Top Gear” and beyond producer Andy Wilmon know where the laughs are in all the tractor confusion and mishaps, and can command a legion of tractor salesmen to show up so that Clarkson can make a TV-friendly “bit” pointing to an informed and practical decision about whether to go with a Holland, John Deere, Massey Ferguson or Case International Harvestor to work his farm.

And they know the laughs will always come from the pretentious bloke his colleagues nicknamed “Orangutan” making the flashiest and most impractically Italian choice possible. Again. The feckin’ eejit.

Rating: TV-16+, profanity, alcohol consumption

Cast: Jeremy Clarkson, Kaleb Cooper, Lisa Hogan, Charlie Ireland, Gerald Cooper, Dilwyn Evans, Alan Townsend and Harriet Cowan

Credits: Created by Andy Wilmon. An Amazon Prime release.

Running time: eight episodes @:39-:51 minutes each

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Movie Review: “Fountain of Youth” ages Everybody Involved

Posted on May 24, 2025 by Roger Moore

It begins with some sparkling action — a motorbike/fisticuffs getaway in Bangkok — and lopes into a jaunty railroading escape in rural Thailand.

There are self-aware jokes ridiculing the silliness of the very idea of a magical “fountain” that bestows health, eternal youth and the promise of wealth.

There’s even a hint of self-awareness as the action adventure rips off Indiana Jones, “Da Vinci Code” and “Tomb Raider” and the like.

You think “We’re in ‘National Treasure’ territory. Maybe all this nonsense will make sense. Somehow.”

But as the dialogue never-quite-overcomes its creakiness and the story veers towards “The Mummy” and the laughs and suspense never really show up, one can feel the wind going right out of the cast’s performances. They get that “At least the check cleared” look in their eyes.

Guy Ritchie’s “Fountain of Youth” makes you feel embarassed for the players, because they can’t hide the sheepishness that sets in having to mouth bad lines in a ludicrous story that just drags on and on with a dogged resignation that “We’ve got to get through that ‘Lost Ark’ finale, kids. Make the best of it.”

John Krasinski plays Luke, an underhanded antiquarian who isn’t above stealing famous paintings to get him where he’s going.

Natalie Portman plays his museum currator sister Charlotte, who loses her British National Gallery job when Luke ducks in to catch up, and oh, steal a Rembrandt.

There’s this rich oligarch (Domhnall Gleason) who is dying and who is determined to find the mythic “fountain of youth” to save himself. And our siblings, the children of a famous archeologist, are compelled to humor him because he’s got gobs of money and their late archaeologist/dad taught them that myths shared across many cultures must have a little truth to them.

So they’ll “chase this pot of golf” because “life is about the adventure,” and “the journey’s more important than the” destination.

Love that John Krasinksi. But he can’t hide how let-down he must have felt as he recited these hokey lines, and others like them.

The quest that Charlotte is roped into involves clues hidden in paintings by the Renaissance masters, a “Da Vinci Code” dash through a puzzle that will reveal a location for the fountain that isn’t in Florida. They hope.

They will raise a long-sunken ocean liner (Because why dive to it to retrieve an artifact?), venture from London to Vienna and beyond, doing whatever it takes because “Moneybags” has deep pockets and no time for following the rules.

Every time Charlotte says “We’re NOT grave-robbers,” we and Portman and anybody with a lick of sense thinks “Yes, you are.”

They are pursued by a sexy-flirty-but-deadly representative (Eiza González of “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare”) of people who want any such mythic fountain kept a secret (Big Pharma?) and an Interpol agent (Arian Moayed) determined to bring the art thief Luke to justice.

The violence is mostly comical until it abruptly shifts to body-count bloody in the third act. The “fun” is long gone by then, anyway.

Krasinski and González manage some light mid-brawl banter that hints at “chemistry” that the script doesn’t really provide.

Portman soldiers through it, with Gleason at his least inspired and Ritchie helming his uncoolest clunker since his divorce from Madonna.

Most of the players give away how badly they figure this is turning out in the performances, especially in a one-scene turn by the last “big name” in the cast.

If Portman, Krasinski, Gleason and even Stanley Tucci seem embarrassed, we can’t help but feel embarrassed for them.

Rating: PG-13, violence, lots of bloodshed

Cast: John Krasinksi, Natalie Portman, Eiza González, Domhnall Gleason, Carmen Ajogo, Laz Alonzo and Stanley Tucci.

Credits: Directed by Guy Ritchie, scripted by James Vanderbilt. An Apple TV+ release.

Running time: 2:05

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BOX OFFICE: “Lili & Stitch” rise again — all time Memorial Day Box Office Smash, “Mission: Impossible” might clear $77

Posted on May 24, 2025 by Roger Moore

If you’re a kid, you don’t have a sense of the bottom line cynicism, milking-an-idea-for-all-its-worth fatigue of knowing Disney’s animated hit of a couple of decades back, which also spun off a TV series, is a tad…familiar.

And if you’re a parent, you don’t care. It’s a holiday weekend. Let’s take the kids to a movie!

So the live action-with-CGI remake of 2002’s “Lilo & Stitch” is soaring into the thin air, on its way to becoming the biggest Memorial Day Weekend movie opening ever.

The Thursday night ($14 million)/Friday take at the gate was well over $50 million, and Deadline.com is projecting it will easily best the “opening day” of “Top Gun: Maverick.” Maybe $56, perhaps as high as $60. “Maverick” managed an eye-popping $52 a few summers back.

Saturdays numbers confirmed it.  “Lilo” is on track to earn $145 million over three days, a lot more over four. “Maverick” opened with back when the post-pandemic box office was on life support. “Lilo” is on track to earn$1833 million.

Reviews have been middling, and anybody old enough to remember the Orlando animated original “Lilo’s” anarchic charm, funny characters and hand-animated humanity probably don’t need to see it unless you have rugrats badgering you to go.

I covered the making of the original film, Disney’s Orlando animation studio’s last big hit. It’s a Hawaii story with Florida “types” and an alien who looks and moves like a Florida gecko. So, been there, seen that.

But packing the theaters on a holiday weekend is what it’s all about, and “Stitch” and Lilo are delivering.

That’s stealing much of the thunder from Tom Cruise’s final outing as Ethan Hunt in the eight film “Mission: Impossible” franchise. He’s going out with passable reviews as a “Mission: Impossible” The Final Reckoning” greatest hits finale — repetitive, bloated, and kind of a bummer, I thought. But a $60 million three day weekend, with a $77 million four-day Memorial Day weekend — maybe as high as $80 — will keep Paramount happy.

“MI:8” is outperforming the last “Impossible” overseas, where “Lilo” is also making bank, collecting Euros, yen, yuan, etc.

“Reckoning” will make a nice addition to Pluto TV’s all-“Mission: Impossible” movie channel, where viewers can see how closely these films hew to the same formula — motorcycles and sprinting and Cruise dangling with this or that. I watched chunks of a few of those before M:I-8 and they ran out of ideas on this franchise a while back. But kudos for back-engineering the story into one long and unlikely “narrative,” and for bringing back a bit player from 1996 for a big part in the final bow.

“Final Destination: Bloodlines” is still packing them in, too. It is losing just over half its opening weekend audience and heading over $19.6 million over three days, maybe $23 by midnight Monday.

Marvel’s latest imitation of “The Avengers,” “Thunderbolts*,” still has enough juice to clear $11.5 million over the four day holiday. It will finish its run under $200 million.

“Sinners,” the only “original” film in this top five and the biggest blockbuster of spring, should also take in another $11 million. It’s had legs all along, and held onto second place all last week, behind “Bloodlines.” It could clear the $260 million mark by Monday night.

“The Last Rodeo,” a slow-poke not-quite-faith-based/conservative virtue signaling cowpoke pic, is heading towards a $5.5 (three days), $6.4 million opening (four day/Memorial Day) weekend.

The dark bromance “Friendship,” co-starring Paul Rudd, about neighborliness that crosses lines to become romantic and unneighorliness that amounts to a breakup, is opening with a $7.4 million four-day weekend and doing that on just over 1050 screens. Not bad, A24.

The craptastic “Minecraft” has another $2.6 million in the tank. Over $421 million so far. Maybe $430 by the time it finally loses all its screens.

“The Accountant 2” is winding down its theatrical run with another $2.4. It will finish under $70 million in North America ticket sales.

That’s $1 million too much, kids. You were warned.

As always, I’ll update these figures as Sat/Sunday date rolls in.

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Movie Preview: A Student Film Gets picked up for Wide Distribution — “Lands End”

Posted on May 23, 2025 by Roger Moore

A collaborative effort by UC Berkeley students resulted in this drama of three interconnected creative lives struggling to break through.

Very polished looking, if a tad navel gazing in nature.

Freestyle will serve this up June 13.

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Movie Preview: An Irish Romance decorated with Helena Bonham Carter, Gabriel Byrne and Pierce Brosnan — “Four Letters of Love”

Posted on May 23, 2025 by Roger Moore

Novelist Niall Williams adapted his novel for director Polly Steele (“Let Me Go”), a period piece built around a youthful love affair tested and assisted by faith, history, ghosts, etc.

Ann Skelly and Finn O’Shea are the young lovers, with Carter, Byrne and Brosnan as the adults in the room, in the way or offering assistance.

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Movie Preview: Dermot Mulroney’s a crooked senator who finds “Killing Mary Sue” a bit tricky

Posted on May 23, 2025 by Roger Moore

Sierra McCormick has the title role in this June 13 first-person-shooter action comedy.

Note the “Fortnight” reference.

Mulroney, French Stewart, Jake Busey, Jason Mewes, Sean Patrick Flanery, veteran heavy Martin Kove and I assume his son Jesse are also in the cast.

McCormick was in “VFW,” which are some pretty good credentials to bring to a B-movie where you wear a lot of makeup and do a lot of shooting.

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Movie Preview: Darren Aronosky has Austin Butler and Zoe Kravitz “Caught Stealing”

Posted on May 23, 2025 by Roger Moore

Aged punks, Hassidic gangsters and a clever vanity plate tumble together in this who-stole-what-from-whom action comedy

Aronofsky’s not exactly box office, nor are his stars. So that may explain the “dumping ground of August” release date (8-29).

They cut a fun trailer out of it, anyway.

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