Category Archives: New In Theaters

Reviews of what’s out now

New In Theaters

Damn Dirty Ape

Leave a comment

Primate

by Hope Madden

My working theory is that Johannes Roberts saw Nope and thought, when does Gordy get his own movie? IP being what it is, Primate is likely the closest the co-writer/director could come.

The film follows Lucy (Johnny Sequoyah) home from college. She’s summering with family—dad (Troy Kotsur, CODA), little sister (Gia Hunter), and Ben, the family’s beloved chimpanzee in their incredibly impressive compound on the side of a cliff in Hawaii.

But Dad’s off to a work event Lucy’s first weekend home, so friends crash to drink beer, smoke weed, eat pizza, and get picked off one by one when Ben turns super feral.

Roberts (47 Meters Down, 47 Meters Down: Uncaged, Strangers: Prey at Night, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City) has not built a career on nuance. He makes fun, obvious monster movies. The telegraphed scares are at least goretastic, and what he lacks in subtlety he makes up for with macabre humor.

Like any monster movie worth its chlorine, Primate is a survival tale. Quickly, the partiers assess the danger and jump into the pool because chimps can’t swim. Did you know that? I didn’t know it. Is it even true?

Google says it’s true.

There you go. Johannes Roberts taught me something today.

Superficial character development feeds into teen horror cliche as Sequoyah and her supporting players, including Jess Alexander (A Banquet) and Victoria Wyant, struggle with insipid dialog. The writing is pretty awful, and aside from jumping into the pool, the kids’ behavior is consistently dumb.

Some of the gore is inspired, though, particularly one jaw-related injury. The creature design is a little more touch and go. At times Ben’s look is passably realistic, but not always. But Kudos to Roberts for going practical, and Miguel Torres Umba inside the suit moves with menace.

There’s also an effective device made of Lucy’s dad’s deafness, handled with minimal manipulation and landing some authentic tension.

In the end, Gordy Meets Cujo delivers exactly what you should expect: jump scares, cliché, young adults behaving stupidly, and plenty of blood. Is it a great movie? It is not. Nope, definitely not. But it might be what you’re in the mood for.

New In Theaters

Shark Infested Waters

Leave a comment

The Plague

by George Wolf

2025 was yet another year with an impressive list of great performances from young film actors. Ana Sophia Heger (She Rides Shotgun), Cary Christopher (Weapons), and Nina Ye (Left-Handed Girl) were among those seasoned beyond their years. Now, The Plague‘s Everett Blunck leads a terrific ensemble of youngsters to join this group of standout turns.

Blunck (last year’s Griffin in Summer) is 12 year-old Ben, one of the young athletes spending the summer at a boys’ water polo camp in New England. A bit shy and awkward, Ben still finds a way to be accepted at the cool kids’ table.

And led by the smug, sarcastic Jake (Kayo Martin, also stellar), those kids target Eli (Kenny Rasmussen, just wonderful) – the weird kid with the rash – for taunts and bullying. Dubbing Eli’s skin condition as a “plague” that’s contagious, the boys are not shy about the finger pointing and mocking laughter.

Ben goes along to get along. But when he dares to show Eli some sympathy, he crosses an unpopular line. Jake and the King Bees decide it is Ben who now has the plague and must be cast out.

Writer/director Charlie Polinger’s feature debut bursts with vision and craftsmanship. He wanders the confines of the swimming pool, locker room and the campus buildings with a probing, studious eye, unveiling some gorgeously shot sequences with a cold detachment that fuels the mood of alienation.

Polinger’s writing is also urgent enough to make this more than just a chlorinated Lord of the Flies. Joel Edgerton’s coach character is aware of some of what’s going on in camp, but he’s purposely kept on the fringes, as Polinger explores how the boys navigate their cruelty around the adults’ anti-bullying sit downs.

Working equally as a microcosm and a singular coming-of-age narrative, The Plague is fascinating, heartbreaking and often quite beautiful. It’s a major debut for a gifted filmmaker, and an emotional showcase for a talented group of young performers.

New In Theaters

Tasmanian Devils

Leave a comment

We Bury the Dead

by Hope Madden

We Bury the Dead is an intriguing title, particularly for a zombie movie. Writer/director Zak Hilditch’s latest mixes familiar with fresh, focused less on scares than on contemplative action.

Daisy Ridley is Ava, a young woman determined to find her husband (Matt Whelan) after a US chemical weapons mishap wipes out every living thing in Tasmania. She volunteers with a group who will find, catalog, and bury the dead. As a Yank, she’s not too welcome, but her ulterior motive is to get to the heart of the catastrophe, to the resort where her husband had gone for a conference. To find him, she’ll have to risk exposure to the smoke, the military, rogue sharp shooters, and the dead who come “back online”.

Ridley has made a series of fascinating choices since being catapulted into merciless Star Wars fandom with her career-making turns as Rey. She has gravitated mainly toward quietly complicated characters in mid-budget independent films, as well as voice work in animation and documentary.

While not every project has been a winner, Ridley’s flexed a range of muscles. From dark, dry, awkward comedy (Sometimes I Think About Dying) to  meditative, spooky thriller (The Marsh King’s Daughter) to inspirational, true life-adventure (Young Woman and the Sea), Ridley brings an introspective magnetism to projects. The same can be said for her work in Hilditch’s Tasmanian zombie drama.

Ava develops a frenemy situation with her volunteer partner, Clay (Brenton Thwaites), a bad boy who smokes a lot, shows no respect for the dead, and just might be criminal enough to help Ava get through the restricted areas of the country. Thwaites’s performance is better than the script, but it’s still tough to buy the burgeoning friendship.

A late side story with Riley (Mark Coles Smith) edges the film closer to horror, but Hilditch’s interests lie in drama. The heart of the story has to be the reason Ava risks so much to find Mitch. Much credit goes to Hilditch for some of the surprises he has in store, but he writes himself into a corner he can’t quite escape.

And though he crafts a few truly memorable sequences and injects zombie lore with a few new ideas, he unfortunately leans back on one of the most tiresome and suddenly popular cliches, a choice meant to wrap Ava’s arc up in a tidy bow when dystopia calls for messes.

But Ridley and Thwaites carve a compelling odd couple and Tasmania offers a  handful of fascinating new details for the genre.

New In Theaters

Snake Charmer

Leave a comment

Anaconda

by Hope Madden

Upon first seeing the trailer for Anaconda, the Jack Black/Paul Rudd spiritual sequel to the 1997 JLo vehicle, my husband George said, “This will either be incredibly funny or unwatchable.”

I banked on the first. How could this lose?! Not only because of the upbeat comedy gold of Black and Rudd, but forever favorite Steve Zahn, plus Thandiwe Newton classing up the joint. With Tom Gormican, the madman behind The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, co-writing and directing, it seemed like Anaconda couldn’t go wrong.

Anyway, I wouldn’t call it unwatchable.

Black, Rudd, Zahn and Newton were high school besties, brought together again by a dream: to make a reboot/sequel/reimagining of the giant snake movie they’d watched dozens of times when they were young and idealistic.

It’s a funny premise!

One script, a lead on a snake handler, and 42 grand later, the friends head to Brazil to shoot this thing and salvage something of what they’d hoped to be when they grew up.

There are some funny bits. Selton Mello is joyously weird as Santiago, the snake handler. Cameos, descriptions, and bits of dialog from the original Anaconda inject a bit of mischievous fun. I will be using the term “Buffalo sober” in my future.

But as inarguably charming as this cast is, it can’t elevate the many stretches of film without a joke. Though lots of scenes are humorous, very few are laugh-out-loud funny. Both Rudd and Black fall back on schtick and timing to make up for the spare comedy of the script, and Newton is given nothing at all to do for 99 minutes.

Every scene goes on a beat or two too long, it takes the film forever to get to the jungle, and too little happens once we’re there. The fact that the film owes almost as much to a classic Black comedy Tropic Thunder as the original Anaconda only leaves you longing for something funnier to happen.

It’s watchable. It’s even mildly entertaining. But it felt like it could have been more.

New In Theaters

The Mouse That Roared

Leave a comment

Marty Supreme

by George Wolf

It’s been six years now, have we recovered from the panic and palpitations brought on by Josh Safdie’s Uncut Gems?

Better towel off and grab hold of something, because Marty Supreme serves up another harried drama set at a breakneck pace.

Served up, see what I did there? Marty “The Mouse” Mauser is a table tennis phenom looking to cement his name as the best in the world.

But when we first meet him, Marty (an absolutely electric Timothée Chalamet) is working in a shoe store in 1950s New York. He’s a born salesman, but makes it clear he’s only there to make enough money to finance his next trip to a big tournament. And in that opening few minutes, Safdie and Chalamet gives us a clear glimpse into the Marty Mauser worldview that will grab us by the throat for the next two and a half hours.

Everyone and everything is a means to an end. And Marty is relentless.

It could be an adoring young woman who’s already married (Odessa A’zion), a rich ink pen tycoon (Shark Tank‘s Kevin O’Leary in another bit of Safdie stunt casting) or his bored actress wife (a terrific Gwyneth Paltrow), or even a man out to find his lost dog. It doesn’t matter, Marty will size you up and instantly start working the angle he thinks is most likely to make you an asset.

The entire film, loosely based on Jewish-American table tennis champ Marty Reisman, is a fascinating character study and Chalamet is in mesmerizing, career-best form. Safdie (co-writing again with Ronald Bronstein) might as well just shoot Marty out of a cannon when he leaves that shoe store, and Chalamet makes you afraid to miss anything by looking away.

Like everything else here, the table tennis action is fast, furious and intense, and after an early loss to an unknown, Marty’s singular mission becomes avenging that upset and proving his greatness. But Marty Supreme could be about any type of American unafraid to dream big. It’s another intoxicating ride from Josh Safdie, with an award-worthy Chalamet digging soul deep into a man’s journey toward finding something he values more than himself.

New In Theaters

Forever in Sequins

Leave a comment

Song Sung Blue

by George Wolf

I admit it, I didn’t pay enough attention to the trailer and I really thought Song Sung Blue was a Neil Diamond biopic. And from what I did notice from the trailer, it looked like a pretty bad Neil Diamond biopic.

Wrong on all counts.

The latest from writer/director Craig Brewer leans on terrific performances from Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson for an unabashed feel good salute to the dreamers who won’t be derailed from following their joy.

Jackman and Hudson are Mike and Claire Scardina, a Milwaukee couple who built up quite a following in the 80s and 90s as Lightning and Thunder, a Neil Diamond “tribute experience.” Starting out playing restaurants and small clubs, they worked their way up to bigger venues around the Midwest – even opening for Pearl Jam! – before a terrible accident put the future in doubt.

Brewer (Hustle and Flow, Black Snake Moan, Dolemite is My Name, Coming 2 America) adapts Greg Koh’s 2008 documentary with committed earnestness. There isn’t a cynical note to be found about the Scardinas, the nostalgia circuit they love or the ways any of these people measure success. The moments of joy, pain and perseverance are proudly displayed on all their sleeves, and the film is able to pull you in pretty quickly.

Expect plenty of Neil Diamond music, and a reminder that the man has a ton of hits. Yes, the rehearsal and performance set pieces are too perfectly polished, but even that fuels the vibe of dreams-coming-true that the Scardinas are living. And also yes, Jackman and Hudson do their own singing and both sound terrific, while the ensemble cast (including Jim Belushi, Fisher Stevens, Michael Imperioli and Ella Anderson) carves out some unique support characters.

The leads also make Mike and Claire two people that are easy to root for. Off stage, the two bring hardscrabble pasts and children of various ages to their new relationship. They come to believe they were truly meant for each other, and the blended family dynamic offers many relatable beats that run from tender to tragic.

And ironically, it’s those narrative successes that make the missteps in Act III more disappointing. Brewer ends up veering from true events pretty dramatically, adding twists of high melodrama that land as overly contrived.

They also feel unnecessary for a film so committed to the worth of these people and their journey. Song Sung Blue is unapologetic feel-good filmmaking. It plays the heartstrings, the greatest hits and even the cheesy gimmicks so earnestly that the whole show becomes pretty damn hard to resist, even if sequins aren’t exactly your thing.

New In Theaters

More Than Manifesting

Leave a comment

No Other Choice

by Hope Madden

Few directors working today wield the craft as masterfully as Park Chan-wook. He combines genres and slides from tone to tone effortlessly, mingling humor and tension, satire and tenderness, mystery and pathos and blood like no one else. Though his style is unmistakable, somehow each Park film is wildly original, entirely its own.

No Other Choice may, in fact, be more unusual than the others, although there’s something familiar in its opening. Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) celebrates a gift from his paper company’s American owners with a barbeque in the back yard. He loves his home, he loves his family, his dogs, the greenhouse where he tinkers, the dance lessons he takes with his wife, Miri (Son Ye-jin). Man-su is happy.

This being a movie, and this scene being its opening, we know Man-su will not be happy for long. The filmmaker does nothing to hide the cinematic artifice of his prelude, introducing the buoyant corporate satire of reinvention, or the refusal to reinvent.

That gift of expensive eel was a going away present, and Man-su is about to be out of work, along with a lot of other local middle aged middle managers in the paper business.

There’s not a weakness in this cast, but both Lee and Son are flawless. Each character takes a proactive yet romantic approach to navigating this setback, both guided by their own internal logic. Her logic looks a little more logical: cut back on luxuries like Netflix and dance classes, sell the house, carpool.

Man-su’s plan is a little bigger: create an opening that fits his skills and eliminate all competition for that job. So, murder.

Park’s crafted a seething satire on capitalism but manages to edge the biting farce with strange moments of deep empathy—just one example of the tonal tightrope Park doesn’t just walk, he prances across.

No Other Choice is complicated but never convoluted, constantly compelling and almost alarmingly funny. Between the intricate detail of the thriller and the gallows humor of the comedy, Park crafts a wondrously entertaining film.

New In Theaters

Makes Messes Disappear

Leave a comment

The Housemaid

by Hope Madden

I am generally down for a pulpy thriller where unreasonably attractive humans behave like lunatics. The Housemaid is one such film, and though I was somewhat skeptical, seeing Paul Feig at the helm instilled optimism.

Feig’s 2011 comedy Bridesmaids is an all-time great, but it was his 2018 twisty comedy/thriller A Simple Favor that gave me hope. Sure, The Housemaid’s trailer seemed boilerplate enough. A stunning thirty-something (Amanda Seyfried), wealthy beyond reason, wants to hire a down-on-her-luck twenty-something (Sydney Sweeney) for a live-in housemaid. A gorgeous husband (Brandon Sklenar) looks on. An equally gorgeous groundskeeper (Michele Morrone) looks on, just from out in the lawn.

The fact that both women are gorgeous, curvy blondes with enormous eyes suggests something doppelganger-y afoot, but beyond that, there are really only a few directions this can take. With Feig on board, I felt confident it wouldn’t be misogyny masquerading as a cat fight.

Seyfried’s always reliable, and the trailer put me in the headspace of her star turn in Atom Agoyan’s 2009 thriller, Chloe. Except now Seyfried’s in Julieanne Moore’s place, and Sweeney’s in Seyfried’s.

Or is she? Maybe I was assuming too much.

Rebecca Sonnenshine (who co-wrote one of my favorite zombie films, American Zombie) adapts Freida McFadden’s novel with enough sly scene craft to keep you interested. Every scene is a sleight of hand, and Feig’s assured direction flirts with potboiler so often that you’re seduced away from confident guesswork.

It’s a long game Feig is playing, but still, The Housekeeper takes too long getting there. Act 3, which is a ton of fun, feels too abrupt given the lead time to get to it. And everything post-climax is anything but airtight.

The Housemaid is an enjoyable thriller, a savvy reimagining of a tired plot we’ve seen dozens of times. The cast is solid, performers delivering sharp drama while Feig delivers pulp, the balance off kilter enough to be fun.

New In Theaters

Fire Woman

Leave a comment

Avatar: Fire and Ash

by George Wolf

I saw someone post a question recently, asking when Avatar: Fire and Ash would hit streaming.

He might as well have been asking when he could plan to unload some time and money, because seeing this anywhere else but the big screen is a waste of both.

Right from the opening sequence, writer/director James Cameron pushes us one notch closer to a VR experience. The film’s sensory phaser is set to stun, even as Avatar installment number three suffers from the same narrative misfires that hampered the first two.

The timeline has moved ahead one year, with Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri (Zoe Saldaña) settling in as members of the Metkayina clan. Neteyam’s death has left Neytiri grief-stricken and bitter, particularly toward Spider (Jack Champion), who is a constant reminder of the humans who killed her son.

The clone of Colonel Quaritch (Stephen Lang) is still out for revenge on Jake and his family, only this time he has some hot-tempered help.

Varang (Oona Chaplin) is the leader of the volcano-dwelling Mangkwan clan (aka the “Ash People”), a battle-tested warrior who not only gives Quaritch a valuable ally, she alone makes the film more interesting than The Way of Water.

Chaplin digs into Verang’s talents as a Black Magic Woman, and thanks to her, the film’s complete lack of humor is offset by layers of voodoo, dark arts and the conjuring of fire. Cool.

And again, the 3D IMAX whizbangery is pretty spectacular. The human and avatar worlds blend as seamlessly as the land-to-water transitions, with battle sequences that are more detailed and thrilling than ever.

But also again, Cameron and his writing team can’t hold themselves back from bland excess. Cameron borrows from his own films (The Abyss, especially), story beats are repeated and repeated again while dialog is often awkward and sometimes unintentionally funny – unless he was trying to recall Anchorman?

More than anything, Fire and Ash is out to just batter you with its sheer experience-ness. The running time bloats to an unnecessary three hours and fifteen minutes with unrelenting attempts at crescendo moments that rarely allow any time to breathe.

I mean, come on, if every day was like Christmas, then Christmas Day wouldn’t mean that much, would it? Fire and Ash brings over all the best new toys and throws them at you until you’re feeling both exhilarated and wondering what just happened.

Unless you wait until it streams. Then you’re just watching while your neighbor rides his sweet new bike past your house.

New In Theaters

Monster House

Leave a comment

Dust Bunny

by Hope Madden

Dust Bunny is a macabre delight.

Imagine Guillermo del Toro meets Wes Anderson. Equal parts fanciful and gruesome, the film tells the tale of a precocious youth named Aurora (Sophie Sloan), who hires the neighbor in 5B (Mads Mikkelsen) to kill the monster that lives under her bed.

What a wonderful premise, and writer/director Bryan Fuller wastes not a frame of his feature film debut. The saturated colors and intricate patterns and textures of the set design, the ballet of horror that is his shadow imagery, the boldly whimsical costuming—all of it conjuring an amplified fairy tale. It’s tough to believe this remarkably confident feature is his first foray behind the camera.

Fuller’s casting is just as playful. Sloan delivers Roald Dahl’s Matilda by way of Wednesday Addams, braids and all. Mikkelsen’s adorably gruff, and watching his character mentally work through the mystery surrounding Aurora’s missing parents (eaten, he’s told) is fascinating. He and Sloan share a wonderful chemistry, never cloying for a second, and often darkly hilarious. Their banter is often priceless, Sloan landing lines with impeccably droll comic timing.

Speaking of hilarious, the great Sigourney Weaver is having a blast playing gleefully against type and shoplifting every second of screentime. All smiles, genuine joy, and murder, her character enjoys the pleasures life affords and accepts, with a smile, the reality of each situation. Again, usually murder.

Likewise, David Dastmalchian and Sheila Atim, with big support from an inspired costume designer, deliver entertaining weirdness.

Fuller’s premise could have taken many directions. It’s the sense of wonder Dust Bunny articulates that mesmerizes. But the writing doesn’t serve only to carry the visual splendor. It’s a clever script, edged with pathos and vulnerability, hinting at metaphor without ever submitting to it.