Movie reviews

The Broken Lizard crew returns to do the same Super Troopers routine for a third time, which may be everything existing fans want and was absolutely nothing I wanted. I barely remember the original, skipped the second and spent this one wondering why I had bought a ticket. The only thing keeping me in the theater was that leaving meant returning to work, and apparently even bad comedy can beat the office on the right afternoon. If this series is your thing, God bless you. Everyone else should treat the number three as a warning.

One Night Only imagines a romantic-comedy version of The Purge: an authoritarian America bans premarital sex except during one annual twelve-hour window, when New York becomes a citywide party for unattached people. That absurd setup is entertaining enough to carry Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro through a breezy summer-night adventure, and I am apparently the exact audience for a Purge/rom-com hybrid. The problem is the one place this genre cannot bluff. Both leads are extremely attractive, but the movie never convinced me why these particular people belong together. I enjoyed the experiment; I never bought the romance.

Gregg Araki returns to features with a kinky, screwball provocation that actually has sex in it—and plenty of talk that’s even filthier. The movie rides his familiar, oddball energy while circling a knotty question: what exactly is happening between a young assistant and the famous artist who becomes his dom? Araki refuses judgment, which keeps the tension lively, but the boss/subordinate power dynamic is a glaring ethical thorn the film seems to want you to wave past. Olivia Wilde nails the magnetic allure needed to justify his bad choices, and Cooper Hoffman never feels puppeted. Messy, compelling, and worth choosing over One Night Only.

Avatar: Aang brings Team Avatar back as adults and fills part of the crucial space between The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra with a story about preserving Air Nomad culture. The animation, performances and character work all feel true to the world, and simply spending time with Aang, Katara, Sokka, Toph and Zuko again is a pleasure. My complaint is entirely about scarcity: after waiting this long, I wanted more room for these people to talk, wander and exist together. Paramount gave a beautiful return an almost nonexistent theatrical release and then rushed me out just as I settled in.

Four theatrical viewings forced me to correct the record: Hadestown earns all five stars. Anaïs Mitchell’s blend of Greek myth, jazz, folk, blues and New Orleans sound gets richer each time, while Reeve Carney, Eva Noblezada, Amber Gray, André De Shields and Patrick Page make these roles feel permanently theirs. Brett Sullivan’s proshot preserves the electricity of live theater while using the camera like cinema, giving audiences far beyond Broadway access to an extraordinary original cast. I have paid to see it four times, brought different friends and loved it every time. If you are still wondering whether to go, stop wondering.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day understands that No Way Home left Peter Parker not just alone but forced into adulthood, and it builds a darker, more grounded New York story around that loss. Destin Daniel Cretton gives the city’s rooftop action real visual force, keeps the threats neighborhood-sized rather than multiversal and moves through two hours and twenty-five minutes without feeling slow. Tom Holland’s Peter is now an experienced hero working without the relationships that once defined his life, which gives the familiar web-swinging a different emotional weight. After the scale of the last film, everyday Spider-Man was exactly the right direction.

A rehearsal-dinner conversation among two engaged friends and their attendants detonates when Zendaya’s seemingly perfect fiancée reveals the worst thing she has ever done. From that simple chamber-piece setup, The Drama turns one disclosure into an increasingly uncomfortable examination of love, judgment and how quickly intimacy can collapse under public scrutiny. Robert Pattinson, Zendaya, Mamoudou Athie and Alana Haim have precisely calibrated chemistry, while the music and countless small choices keep the film unexpectedly charming. Multiple theatrical and home viewings only made it better. What began as a strong four-star movie quietly became one of my favorites of the year.

Her Private Hell is nearly two hours of immaculate lighting, costumes, bodies and production design searching for a movie. Nicolas Winding Refn photographs Charles Melton and the rest of the cast like mythic figures in a neon-soaked perfume campaign, and almost any thirty-second excerpt would stop me mid-scroll. As a feature, however, the dream logic, violence and sexuality never accumulate into characters or ideas I could feel. I will always prefer a director taking a distinctive swing to anonymous studio product, but this is the rare Refn film where the style did not merely overwhelm the substance—it seemed to replace it.

Hadestown braids the myths of Hades and Persephone with Orpheus and Eurydice through a score of jazz, folk, blues and New Orleans influences, finding complementary visions of love, sacrifice and longing in the two stories. André De Shields guides the production with effortless warmth and charisma, Patrick Page makes Hades feel monumental, and the entire original principal cast is beautifully preserved. The filming keeps the energy of live theater while bringing the audience close enough to appreciate performances most of the world could never see on Broadway. Charming, wonderfully staged and musically alive, it left me eager to return with friends.

Jana Nayagan feels like several unrelated screenplays compressed into one three-hour farewell for Vijay. A restrained Tamil family drama keeps hinting at a larger history; after intermission, the film ricochets through political thriller, action spectacle and science fiction with little time for any idea or character to breathe. I recognize that Vijay’s move into politics and his relationship with Tamil audiences give the event a cultural meaning I cannot fully share, and his star power never wavers. Even allowing for that distance, the tonal whiplash exhausted me. There are flashes of richer stories here; I wish the movie had chosen one.

Motor City strips a 1970s Detroit revenge story down to images, movement and Alan Ritchson’s imposing physical presence. An ex-con trying to rebuild his life is framed by a powerful rival, and the movie trusts us to understand the love, betrayal and rage that follow without characters explaining themselves in speeches. That near-silent approach feels like a direct answer to years of exposition-heavy filmmaking, and I appreciated the confidence even when the material itself remained familiar. This is not First Blood-level greatness, but it is a tight, bloody and highly watchable action movie that remembers film is a visual medium.

Christopher Nolan gives The Odyssey the scale of myth without losing the guilt driving the man at its center. Matt Damon’s Odysseus is brilliant, formidable and exhausted by choices that make his journey home feel partly like divine punishment and partly like self-sabotage; Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland give that absence emotional weight in Ithaca. Gods, monsters and visions remain ambiguous enough to operate as both mythology and conscience, while the images, landscapes and action demand the largest screen possible. The middle hour drags slightly across nearly three, but the opening and final stretches are magnificent. This feels destined to become the definitive cinematic Odyssey.

The Isolate Thief is a traditional Western in the best sense: lean, beautifully shot and confident enough to distinguish heroes from villains without burying them beneath false ambiguity. Mackenzie Foy plays a young woman left alone at a remote Union outpost during a brutal winter, uncertain whether the armed men seeking shelter are soldiers, deserters or something worse. She survives through observation and intelligence rather than becoming an implausible frontier superhero, and Foy keeps her vulnerable without making her helpless. At ninety-five minutes, the movie builds tension, reveals motives and leaves before the cold setting or familiar structure can wear thin.

Maddie’s Secret begins as a mildly charming story about a woman finding online success through a cooking show, with writer-director John Early playing Maddie completely straight. That casting choice dominates the screen, yet the film refuses to explore what it means—or insist that it means nothing—in a way I found more distracting than provocative. Midway through, the movie abruptly transforms into an institutional drama with echoes of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, gesturing toward treatment, control and trauma without developing them intelligently. A few competent scenes cannot rescue writing that keeps presenting fascinating questions and declining to engage with them.

Olivia Wilde turns a dinner between two neighboring couples into a funny, painfully recognizable chamber piece about stale marriages, sexual frustration, insecurity and the dangers of adult oversharing. The four characters are flawed without being sorted into heroes and villains, allowing each new discomfort to complicate rather than simplify them. Seth Rogen is indispensable as the person saying what everyone in the audience is thinking, Penélope Cruz radiates charisma, and Wilde captures someone barely holding herself together. The marketing makes this sound more graphic than it is; the film is adult because it understands adult relationships, and trusts us to imagine what happens after dinner.

Disney’s live-action Moana faithfully reproduces a movie that already worked, complete with the same irresistible songs, Dwayne Johnson’s familiar Maui charisma and a terrific Rena Owen as Gramma Tala. Catherine Laga’aia carries a major production with real presence, and the Pacific Islander casting matters. The problem is not execution but purpose: so much of this “live action” world is still digital that the remake offers little the gorgeous animated original did not already provide. Families who love Moana will get exactly what they came for. I simply wish Disney had spent this talent and money telling a new animated story.

Mark Jenkin makes Rose of Nevada look and sound like a damaged VHS recording of a forgotten 1980s British film, an impressive technical achievement built from scratches, washed-out images and distorted sound. A fishing boat lost for thirty years returns to a Cornish village, carrying two younger men into lives shaped by the community’s grief and collapsing way of life. I understand the film intellectually as an experience of collective memory rather than conventional time travel, but I never felt it emotionally. Every choice is deliberate; it simply asks for the kind of impressionistic, art-house engagement I struggle to give.

Minions & Monsters finally gives the franchise’s walking punchlines a story worthy of them. Dropping the Minions into old Hollywood is inspired: their physical nonsense makes them silent-era stars, only for talking pictures to expose the fact that nobody understands a word they say. Children get slapstick while adults get a playful tour through film history, and the buddy-comedy relationship between James and Henry supplies an actual emotional arc. My first viewing left me underwhelmed; with friends, every piece clicked. Comedy helps with a crowd, but this also may be the strongest movie Illumination has made.

Rao Bahadur uses flashbacks and magical realism to trace how prejudice, caste, colorism and obsession with family legacy poisoned one Telugu family across generations. Satyadev Kancharana is extraordinary across the title character’s youth, old age, illness and madness, making nearly three hours feel purposeful as each memory reveals another layer of the tragedy. The ancestors who appear around him embody the traditions that shaped his cruelty and eventually demand that he face its consequences. India’s history is not America’s, but as a Black American I recognized the corrosive logic immediately. This is emotionally rich, culturally specific filmmaking with universal force.

The Calamity is not bad television; it is a bad reason to sell television tickets. Everyone in my screening was enjoying the Bleach material until the presentation stopped after only sixty-six minutes, with little accomplished and no satisfying theatrical shape. That abrupt ending made the entire release feel less like an event than a money grab built from a show fans already love. Save the ticket price, wait a month and watch the same material where it belongs.

Supergirl begins with a compelling contrast: Clark Kent never knew Krypton, while Kara remembers losing her family, culture and world, carrying that trauma through drinking, detachment and aimlessness. Milly Alcock has everything needed for the role, but the script mistakes trauma for a complete personality and builds an inconsistent, surprisingly drab cosmic adventure around her. The galaxy feels small, Krypto is wasted, and Kara’s shifting power level repeatedly bends to whatever an action scene requires. After Superman made DC feel colorful and renewed, this is not terrible so much as disappointingly ordinary—the kind of mid superhero movie that fatigue was built on.

Masters of the Universe embraces He-Man as the colorful, gloriously corny fantasy born from an ’80s toy line, never apologizing for ridiculous names, broad heroes or enormous camp. Nicholas Galitzine brings the right earnestness, while Idris Elba, Jared Leto and Alison Brie understand that sincerity and hamming it up can coexist in Eternia. Nostalgia certainly helped me, but a second viewing confirmed there is a solid chosen-one adventure underneath it for newcomers and kids. It is not profound or great; it is bright, affectionate fun—and ten-year-old me would have considered it an all-time classic.

Maa Inti Bangaaram begins as a warm family comedy about an orphan trying desperately to earn acceptance from the traditional household she married into, then lets a concealed former life transform the stakes without wasting the relationships it built. Samantha Ruth Prabhu carries both sides of the movie: funny and awkward while competing to become the perfect daughter-in-law, then entirely convincing when protecting the family she worked so hard to join. This is not merely a good Telugu film with an asterisk. It is a smart, entertaining hidden-past story with comedy, emotion and action supporting one another.

Young Washington treats the future first president not as a monument but as an ambitious, overconfident young officer learning leadership through failure. His pursuit of a British commission runs into the empire’s rigid class structure, while expeditions into the Ohio Country and the French and Indian War give the history the momentum of an adventure. William Franklyn-Miller holds his own alongside Ben Kingsley, Andy Serkis, Kelsey Grammer and Mary-Louise Parker, and the film never becomes a sermon or hagiography. I entered knowing the outline and left wanting the details—the highest compliment I can give an earnest historical drama.