Despite some slight interest at first glance, I was initially hesitant to see Weapons thanks to so many modern horror films bordering on the absurd (2024’s Longlegs and the X series comes to mind) or excessively violent these days. But similar to the likes of say, Sam Raimi’s DragMe to Hell, Weapons is just unique enough to be an entertaining ride all of its own.
The film centers around the aftermath of a group of young students, all in the same elementary school class, who mysteriously vanish in the middle of the night at the exact same time without any explanation, and intertwines the stories of several individuals connected to the event.
Alex (newcomer Cary Christopher), the only student from the class unaffected by this, ultimately holds the secret via a very distant (and very sinister) aunt named Gladys (played with ease by Amy Madigan) who just came to stay with him and his parents.
The atmosphere is top notch, and high caliber acting from Josh Brolin, Julia Garner, Aiden Ehrenreich, Austin Abrams, and Benedict Wong, all contributes equally to the proceedings. There’s a realistic vibe to it all that makes it all that much more unsettling.
While not without the occasional flaw or two, Weapons still holds just enough interest and creepiness suitable for appropriate Halloween viewing this year; give it a whirl if you have not yet done so.
Back in the fall of 2012, I was still a single father of a six-year-old boy, and one of the easiest downtime activities to do back then was take him to the movies – that year’s ParaNorman was one of many we made it out to. So thirteen years later when my-now grown son expressed wanting to go see the 3D re-release with his old man again (with his girlfriend along for the ride this time too, of course), I couldn’t say “no.”
The original film centers around an 11-year old social outcast named Norman (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who is misunderstood by his family and bullied by his peers for his strange and unusual behaviors – he can see and talk to ghosts that others around him cannot. But things change once the dead starts rising from their literal graves and scaring the locals.
With the help of his goofy best friend Neil (Tucker Albrizzi), his self-centered older sister Courtney (Anna Kendrick), the school bully (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), and Neil’s older jock brother Mitch (Casey Affleck), Norman must stop the zombies roaming the town, while also uncover their secrets that ultimately lead to their arrival to begin with.
The new short film, The Thrifting, finds Norman, Neil, and Courtney (Anna Kendrick once again in the only returning voice role) attempting to locate a Halloween costume in a dark and desolate second hand store that has some built-in permanent ghostly residents. Finn Wolfhard of Stranger Things fame also lends his voice as the store clerk in this entry.
Flyer for the all-new ParaNoman short film, The Thrifting.
All in all, each film in the ParaNorman universe is harmless family entertainment and fun in their own ways; the world needs more films like them right now.
In an alternate, dystopian world, young men participate in an annual walking marathon until only one contestant remains. The contest is a lottery of sorts, where survival of the fittest is all that matters.
Contestants or “walkers” are given a lengthy rulebook beforehand. The rules are simple. They must maintain a certain pace and cannot stop for any reason. They’re allocated a maximum of three warnings per hour.
Exceeding a final warning, they’re shot dead by accompanying soldiers. The last walker to survive is (supposedly) granted anything they want. So begins The Long Walk.
This intriguing premise was facilitated by the early works of Stephen King, based on a 1979 novel he wrote under the pen name Richard Bachman. King, of course, is the master of the setup. It seems only fitting that his latest screen adaptation would draw upon a novel he wrote in college as a likely allegory for the Vietnam War.
The Long Walk also shares thematic elements with another King/Bachman work, The Running Man, in which condemned contestants face off against American Gladiator–style killers while their deaths are broadcast as entertainment.
But where The Running Man turns carnage into ratings, The Long Walk frames its brutality as a tool to foster national unity and pride in a totalitarian society. Nearly 50 years later, King’s freshman novel has finally made its way to the big screen, and it’s clear that upon seeing the film, it was well worth the wait.
The Long Walk is an intense and at times harrowing ride, portraying a desolate America still reeling from the aftermath of a distant civil war. Poverty is rampant, while dissidents are swiftly eliminated—or “squaded”—by government mercenaries. The future appears bleak, yet even in such a world, entertainment remains essential to pacify the masses and rally support for the state.
Both the novel and the movie are unflinching in their portrayal of weaponized entertainment. The Long Walk presents a contest where victory depends on sheer strength and endurance, with the sole survivor awarded “anything they desire,” including boundless wealth.
Ultimately, it highlights the thin line between willing participants, spectators, and the grim reality of using human lives as expendable under the guise of duty and honor—echoing the gladiatorial contests of ancient Rome.
The many strengths of this film adaptation include excellent performances, expansive cinematography, haunting music, precise direction, and a genuine commitment to the source material.
Its opening moments deliver shocking immediacy and carnage—much like the stark beginning of No Country for Old Men (2007). Despite its bleak tone, the film weaves in moments of humor, heart, and intrigue, with its greatest strengths lying in the depth of its character development.
Early on, we’re introduced to the contestants on the first day of the walk. The film largely centers on Raymond “Ray” Garraty (Cooper Hoffman), who entered the contest despite his mother’s desperate pleas.
Hoffman, son of the late-great Phillip Seymour Hoffman, delivers a tremendous performance, carrying much of the film’s emotional weight. We see events unfold through his eyes, much like the novel, and he’s instantly relatable and sympathetic in the lead role.
Garraty forms a bond with fellow contestant Peter McVries (David Jonsson), and their relationship becomes the dramatic core of the film. Jonsson delivers an equally excellent performance as a genuinely good-natured person who repeatedly tries to keep morale high despite the circumstances.
The cast provides uniformly strong performances, and even brief glimpses into each character’s story create a sense of tragic loss when they’re eliminated. The film also smartly reduces the number of contestants from 100 in the book to 50, allowing for a more intimate and focused narrative.
Some contestants, like the ruthless and cunning Barkovitch (Charlie Plummer), are only in it for themselves. Others, like the sardonic Stebbins (Garrett Wareing), offer very little about themselves or their motives. Most are just normal kids, foolishly entering a contest with no discernible end.
The powerful and sadistic leader of the contest, known only as “The Major” (Mark Hamill) applauds the boy’s “patriotic” efforts with multiple bellowing speeches. Hamill has done great things (Tobe Hooper’s segment “Eye” in the 1993 horror anthology Body Bags, anyone?), but he seems a bit off in the role and never really ventures beyond caricature.
Nonetheless, the film achieves remarkable technical artistry throughout. Nearly every scene unfolds in motion, with performances and choreography seamlessly integrated into the act of walking.
Expansive tracking shots capture decaying towns and the mounting exhaustion etched across the contestants’ faces as days drag on. Time and distance are marked by mileposts, each one underscoring the relentless progression toward inevitable doom.
The Long Walk is a solid dystopian thriller that effectively captures all the right elements. I’d rank it in the top ten King adaptations overall.
Francis Lawrence, director of The Hunger Games series (not surprisingly), has ultimately crafted a horror classic a long time in the making.
Typically when asked what my “favorite movie of all time” is, I struggle to give a definitive answer. But in the field of comedy films, for decades now my mind has almost instantly always gone to 1984’s This Is Spinal Tap, the rock mockumentary featuring the fictional band of the same name. So as soon as I heard the news about Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, I knew I would be there on opening night (or more accurately, an early IMAX screening of it on September 10).
The film itself follows the core of Spinal Tap, Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest), David St. Hubbins (Michael Mckean), and Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) reuniting after a fifteen year gap for a comeback concert in New Orleans, all while being filmed again by Director Marty Di Bergi (Rob Reiner).
Inner band turmoil and the search for that ever elusive drummer all ensue, and there’s appearances by the likes of Paul McCartney and Elton John (among others). But the jokes unfortunately don’t always go to “11” this time around, despite how hard they may try to (although the pay off in the end is rather satisfying).
Flyer for the previously-mentioned early showing of Spinal Tap II the author attended on 9-10-25, although the Q&A advertised here was nowhere to be found, only a brief introduction from Director Rob Reiner prior to the film was present.
Can I recommend Spinal Tap II? Of course. But if you’re not as big of a fan of the first film as myself, you might find yourself lacking interest in the proceedings here. But still, we live in a world where Spinal Tap (the band) are still around to give us at the very least one more round; that alone can’t be all that bad.
After laying dormant for over three decades, The Naked Gun has finally been resurrected with Liam Neeson in place of the late legend Leslie Neilsen. It’s not easy to bring back something once held with such regard though, and that’s surely proven here.
Nesson plays Frank Drebin, Jr., the son of Neilsen’s original character. He meets the beautiful bombshell Beth Davenport (Pamela Anderson) after her brother is suspiciously murdered, and a rather uninteresting plot to uncover some shady corporate cover-up (headed by Danny Huston) ensues.
The two leads do work together well, resulting in some humorous moments (the montage with the snowman played to the tune of Starship’s “Nothing Gonna Stop Us” was rather amusing), and there’s even a couple of cameos from series regulars like Priscilla Presley and “Weird Al” Yankovic (blink and you might miss the former). But the laugh-out-loud jokes are way to widespread, and viewers were already given a quarter of the film via trailers prior to ever even stepping foot in a theater.
The original Naked Gun film series was comic gold, and it speaks volumes that the producers of this film did not even reach out to either of the Zucker brothers behind it for this one. But I can remember going to see Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult when it came out in 1994 (I think even on opening night if memory serves correct) and thinking “this isn’t that good in comparison to the first two films.” I got that very same feeling again while watching this one.
The original Happy Gilmore was Adam Sandler in his prime; I can remember sitting there in the theater laughing with friends in 1996, just one year after he began his domination of modern comedy with 1995’s Billy Madison. It was harmless enough fun that we relished in back in those days.
Happy Gilmore 2 is definitely…a different story. It starts off innocently enough, with Happy (Sandler) washed up and at rock bottom. With the help of his (mostly grown) kids (one of which is played by one of Sandlers’ real-life children to appear in the film, Sunny Sandler), he reaches sobriety and returns to professional golf while battling a new competitive league called Maxi Golf.
The premise/setup alone is fine, but the execution is muddled with far too many crude, over-the-top jokes that often fall flat. The nostalgia and throwback references are definitely there, as are many familiar faces (Julie Bowen, Christopher McDonald, and Ben Stiller all return from the first film, among others), and the supporting roles and cameos are far too many to even mention (though real-life pro golfer John Daly is perfect in an extreme version of his self, and modern WWE legend Becky Lynch is always pleasing on the eyes no matter what she may be in).
Whereas the first Happy Gilmore was ripe with quick one-liners and had it’s own unique, quaint charm, this belated sequel tries to cram in as much absurdity as it can within its two hour runtime and hopes you overlook all of its many flaws (much like another recent Sandler vehicle, Hubie Halloween). Again, the concept is there, but the heart of it mostly falls through the cracks; a little less would’ve likely gone a lot further this time around.
Just three years after the last Jurassic World entry, Dominion, executive producer Steven Spielberg concocts a new way to keep the series afloat with Rebirth, a definite improvement over not only said initial predecessor, but 2018’s Fallen Kingdom as well (even if it just treads more all-too familiar terrain)
The plot is nothing revolutionary; a team lead by a covert op expert (Scarlett Johansson), a paleontologist (Jonathan Bailey) and jack-of-all trades boat captain (Mahershala Ali) are all taped by a pharmaceutical company to collect some samples from dinosaurs on an island inhibited by uber dangerous mutant dinosaurs. Along the way they encounter and rescue a shipwrecked family (lead by Manuel Garcia-Rulfo) before arriving to the island where the chaos fully ensues.
Much of the action sequences do offer some exciting and tense (albeit often predictable) moments, but the majority of the characters here are merely cookie-cutter. Even the admittedly easy-on-the-eyes Johansson can’t do much to help things out all that much here.
Still, Rebirth does contain all the makings of a summer blockbuster, and if escapist entertainment without much originality is what you’re looking for, it certainly delivers.
In the movie business, timing is everything. 28 Days Later (2002) delivered escapist entertainment not too far removed from the tension, anxieties, and darkness of a post-9/11 world.
The gritty, realistic, and highly influential post-apocalyptic horror film resonated with audiences to great success.It reinvigorated both the dormant horror genre and zombie sub-genre, paving the way for The Walking Dead series and countless zombie films since. Of course, the Rage Virus “infected” were not zombies, but the George A. Romero influences were clear.
28 Days Later was the result of director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland, two brilliantly creative minds at the top of their game. Boyle, the Oscar-winning director of Slumdog Millionaire (2008), honed his distinct visual style through a diverse body of work that includes Trainspotting (1996), The Beach (2000), Sunshine (2007), and 127 Hours (2010).
Alex Garland went on to write and direct 2014’s Ex Machina, easily one of the best science fiction films in recent times. 28 Days Later also launched Cillian Murphy into the mainstream long before his best Actor Oscar win for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (2023).
The film brought together all the right elements and delivered an intense, unnerving experience that was ultimately powerful and emotionally resonant, thanks to its compelling story and characters. More importantly, it felt fresh and original.
Shot on digital video, the grainy aesthetic added to its realism. Its visual flair was accompanied by a foreboding and atmospheric instrumental rock soundtrack expertly synchronized to each scene with the kinetic energy of a music video. As part of its target audience roughly twenty-three years ago, I can attest to the effect the movie had.
Boyle and Garland have since re-teamed to deliver 28 Years Later (2025), the first of three films continuing the franchise. Hearing the news, I was genuinely excited—more than I had been for any theatrical release in quite some time.
How does the latest installment measure up?For starters, it’s a definite improvement over the sequel, 28 Weeks Later (2007). The film delivers its share of striking moments—intense chase sequences, impressive cinematography, superb special effects, and bursts of heart-pounding horror.
Like the original, it pulls no punches. Yet, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. At best, it’s a mixed bag.
The story centers around a survivor community living on a quarantined island 28 years after the initial outbreak.The Rage Virus has supposedly been eradicated throughout most of continental Europe save for the British Isles.
12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) lives with his scavenger father Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and bed-ridden mother Isla (Jodie Comer), who struggles with an unknown disease. Jamie routinely travels beyond the fortified walls of their coastal community to forage for food and supplies. Infected roam the hillside and surrounding forest, deterred by the rising tide that leads to the camp.
Jamie brings his son to the mainland, exposing him to the dangers that exist. Both father and son carry bows and arrows (their community has no technology or modern weaponry). Jamie presses his son to take a shot at some of the infected, thus teaching him how to survive. Spike is hesitant at first but soon makes his first kill.
While it’s interesting to see things from the perspective of a child born into this world, things gradually falter to a sense of underwhelming disappointment.
The film introduces infected variants, including bloated worm-eating crawlers and a mutated breed of stronger, more intelligent infected. There are even pregnant infected who can give birth to perfectly healthy babies for some reason.
As his mother’s condition worsens, Spike takes her beyond the camp in search of a reclusive and mysterious doctor who resides somewhere on the island. Mother and son have several close calls along the way and even encounter a group of shipwrecked soldiers who, despite being heavily armed, are no match for the infected.
They eventually encounter Dr. Ian Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), whose painted body and rambling demeanor suggest he’s gone mad. He carries tranquilizer darts, has access to modern medicine, and lives among towering temples of human skulls. It’s one of the most impressive set pieces of the movie, enough to be featured on the poster. Naturally, Fiennes gives an excellent performance, and his brief presence is a highlight.
Spike’s journey unfolds through a series of close calls, as his resistance to the surrounding dangers steadily intensifies. The movie then abruptly ends with little to no resolution. I witnessed baffled groans from the audience, some angrily bolting for the doors.
Only later did I discover that 28 Years Later was shot back-to-back with another installment, TheBone Temple, to be released next year. It makes sense, but after all this time, I expected more world-building and an artful, emotional journey through unknown horrors.
Despite the talent involved and opportunities to take the story in any direction, the movie played out more like an extended Walking Dead spin off than anything else. Strange editing, confusing pacing, forced sentimentality, and a shockingly bad soundtrack all contribute to a step down from the original.
28 Years Later is not a total failure, but it is a strangely lackluster way to introduce a new trilogy. Opinions are divided, however, with rave reviews and many calling it a masterpiece. I hope the future movies will be better, that is, if I’m willing to take another chance.
It says a lot about a franchise that stayed dormant as long as The Karate Kid to still be able to make a comeback as successful as it has, first with the revival series Cobra Kai, and now with this latest big screen addition, Karate Kid:Legends. I actually went back and re-watched some of the older films in preparation, and it is worlds above several of them (most notably 1994’s The Next Karate Kid).
The film starts out in typical fish-out-of-water fashion when young Li Fong (Ben Wang) is suddenly removed from Beijing and the kung fu training by his master/great-uncle, Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) after his mother (Ming-Na Wen) relocates them to New York City.
Things start off innocently enough for Li, who quickly befriends a local fellow new classmate, Mia (Sadie Stanley) after meeting in the pizza shop her father and former boxer Victor (Joshua Jackson) runs. Unfortunately for Li (now jokingly dubbed “Stuffed Crust”), Mia has a hot-headed ex-boyfriend and martial artist (Aramis Knight) with a chip on his shoulder, and the usual bullying ensues, ultimately leading to a showdown between the two at an annual tournament called The Five Boroughs.
Eventually not only does Mr. Han reemerge to train Li, he manages to recruit the former protege of his old friend Mr. Miyagi (the late Pat Morita, who also appears in archival footage), Daniel (Ralph Macchio in his first appearance on the big screen as the character since 1989’s The Karate KidPart III).
There’s a definite modernized feel to this entry, similar to more recent Spider-Man or TeenageMutant Ninja Turtles films. But this one has something that so few of the Karate Kid sequels were truly able to capture…heart. There’s even a brief appearance of William Zabka as Johnny Lawrence that’s nothing short of brilliant (and hilarious).
For all the doubt or uncertainty going in to such long overdue sequels or remakes/reboots (or in this case I suppose, crossovers), Karate Kid: Legends helps restore faith in just how decent filmmaking can still be achieved these days.
For a quarter of a century now the Final Destination franchise has given modern horror films the same type of mindless (yet often clever), gory fun that fans have come to expect from the likes of Freddy or Jason, but without an actual face to go along with it like the aforementioned other hard-hitters (the film does give off some major Halloween 2018 vibes at the onset though).
This latest installment (first since 2011 and sixth overall) sticks close to the usual formula, but adds a slight twist to the proceedings. This time around, college student Stefani Reyes (Kaitlyn Santa Juana) feels the need to get in touch with her estranged grandmother (Gabrielle Rose) after experiencing a recurring nightmare involving her at a younger age (played by Brec Bassinger).
Come to find out, Granny actually saved a lot of lives back in the day, but it came with a hefty price. Death not only come back to claim all of those who did not perish that night so long ago in the ’60s, but their entire lineage as well.
One by one, Stefani’s family get claimed by the Grim Reaper as they scramble to avoid their respective gruesome fates. Most of the deaths are over the top in their own cartoon-y ways, actually making it somewhat more tolerable than more realistic horror films these days (which I’ve admittedly lost much interest in).
But despite all of its chaos, there is a bittersweet side to it here, now being the final film role/appearance of the late Tony Todd (the film is dedicated to his memory at the end credits).
It’s not a perfect movie by any means, but if you’re looking for escapist entertainment without having to put much thought into the plot, this will do.
