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Watched on Wednesday May 21, 2025.

Among the live-action remakes Disney has done of its animated movies, “Lilo & Stitch” is not the worst — Robert Zemeckis’ atrocious take on “Pinocchio” has that trophy locked up. And it’s not the most unnecessary one; “The Lion King,” which is the animated version with different animation, holds that title.

The 2025 “Lilo & Stitch” just exists, a serviceable copy of the 2002 animated movie — which is beloved by many who saw it when they were kids, and probably not as good as they .

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/5/22/review-lilo-amp-stitch-is-a-so-so-movie-for-kids-but-parents-will-recognize-disneys-cash-grab-remake-of-its-animated-title

If you grew up loving this movie, don't watch it again — you'll likely find it's not as good as you thought it was.

It's not actively terrible. It's just mid.

Watched on Monday May 19, 2025.

Watching a “Final Destination” movie is like watching someone play the children’s game “Mouse Trap” — you see the pieces placed to start the chain reaction of events, then watch in delight as those steps play out exactly as you expect.

The sixth chapter of the franchise, “Final Destination: Bloodlines” — which is also the first made since “Final Destination 5” back in 2011 — follows the familiar formula, with a few gruesome surprises along the way.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/5/15/review-final-destination-bloodlines-is-a-fitfully-clever-horror-contraption-and-a-tender-sendoff-to-the-iconic-actor-tony-todd

Somewhere between failed experiment and vanity project sits “Hurry Up Tomorrow,” a tediously arty mess of a movie in which the fledgling actor Abel Tesfaye — better known to the world as the musical star The Weeknd — tries to get you to buy his album while also arguing how horrible it is to be a rock star.

Tesfaye’s character here happens to be called The Weeknd, and he’s an internationally famous performer who fills arenas with adoring fans wanting to hear his sing his songs. Backstage, though, he’s a miserable mess, listening to the voice message left behind by the woman who’s leaving him. There’s an entourage just out of view, and the only person we see on The Weeknd’s side is his smarmy Irish manager, played by Barry Keoghan.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/5/15/review-hurry-up-tomorrow-is-a-disaster-of-a-music-movie-a-vanity-project-for-the-weeknd-with-abstract-visuals-and-jumbled-messages

That covers a lot of ground. Say, you cover a lot of ground...

Writer-director Andrew DeYoung could have played it safe in his uncomfortable comedy “Friendship,” in which he dissects the nature of male bonding and its opposite in ways that might make the audience’s skin crawl.

DeYoung had already cast Paul Rudd, the Nicest Guy in Movies (trademark pending), as one of the two main male characters here. All he had to do was pick a comic actor with a little bit of edge, but not too much, and watch his movie travel familiar territory to please the audience.

But, no, he cast Tim Robinson, and the cringe factor got kicked up to 11, which is how DeYoung wanted it.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/5/22/review-friendship-is-a-comedy-that-takes-apart-male-relationships-and-centers-tim-robinson-for-some-cringe-inducing-comic-genius

Like a good magician, “Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning” does a very good job of misdirection — of putting so many spectacular stunts and cool set pieces in front of the viewer that they will be tempted not to notice the flimsy framework that is barely holding it together.

The eighth installment of the movie franchise, started 29 years ago when star Tom Cruise was a mere lad of 33, is a nearly three-hour effort to wow audiences. It’s also a brazen attempt to gaslight the audience, to make them believe that the three decades of these frenetic, disted movies were following some kind of master plan.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/5/14/review-mission-impossible-the-final-reckoning-lets-tom-cruise-deliver-the-stunts-in-a-bloated-story-propped-up-by-callbacks-to-past-installments

Brazilian director Walter Salles’ drama “I’m Still Here” manages to be a razor-sharp thriller, a painfully emotional tale of grief, and a deeply felt romance in which love is measured by the absence.

It’s Rio de Janeiro in 1971, under the military dictatorship known as the “Argentine Revolution.” Rubens Paiva (Selton Mello) and his wife, Eunice Paiva (Fernanda Torres), believe the regime won’t dare touch their family. Rubens, a former congressman and a critic of the dictatorship, thinks he’s too high-profile, and that if the military cracks down on him, people would talk.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/2/6/review-im-still-here-is-a-moving-drama-of-love-and-grief-in-a-brazilian-dictatorship-with-a-steely-lead-performance-by-fernanda-torres

If the “Saw” movies kept their gore but were repurposed as farcical comedies, they might look a lot like “The Monkey,” in which writer-director Osgood Perkins reveals his funny bone — and a lot of other bones, blood and viscera as well.

Freely adapted from a Stephen King short story, “The Monkey” starts with a frantic pilot (Adam Scott, in an unnerving cameo) entering a pawn shop trying to unload a wind-up monkey that plays a drum. Before the pilot can make a deal, the monkey starts banging on its drum — and when it stops, something awful happens.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/2/21/review-the-monkey-is-a-horror-movie-dripping-in-blood-and-humorous-irony-but-the-mix-doesnt-always-hold-together

Spare a thought for the plight of the fairy tale stepsister — who, as depicted in writer-director Emilie Blichfeldt’s subversively grotesque “The Ugly Stepsister,” is under a lot of pressure and hits the breaking point.

In this disturbing mix of medieval misogyny and body horror from Norway, we are introduced to Elvira (Lea Myren), a teen girl who has a crush on her kingdom’s prince, Julian (Isac Calmroth), whom she knows only from his published book of love poems. Elvira’s image of Julian is of a perfect boyfriend, tender and loving, ready to sweep up a fair maiden in his arms, even if she’s got braces on her teeth, as Elvira does.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/18/review-the-ugly-stepsister-is-a-fractured-fairy-tale-that-shows-the-fear-guiding-cinderellas-antagonist-toward-disaster

If you’re going to use your movie to launch a fresh new vampire mythology, you’d better be smart about it — and writer-director Ryan Coogler is very smart about how he creates the lore in “Sinners,” and very cool in how he builds the characters who have to deal with it.

We’re in Mississippi in 1932, and we see a young Black man, Sammie (played by newcomer Miles Caton), entering the church where his father (Saul Williams) is the preacher. Sammie is scarred, clutching the neck of a broken guitar so tightly the strings are digging into his fingers. His father acts as if he knows his son has seen the devil. The movie then goes back one day, and we learn how right Sammie’s father is.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/18/review-sinners-seamlessly-blends-jim-crow-cruelty-with-vampire-fantasy-and-serves-up-a-double-dose-of-michael-b-jordan

There’s cool and there’s cold, and the always-cool director David Cronenberg veers too far into iceberg territory in his latest body-horror exploration of self-torturing humanity, “The Shrouds.”

Karsh, played by Vincent Cassel, is an inventor whose most recent creation was inspired by his grief at losing his wife, Becca (Diane Kruger), to a brutal illness. The invention, called a “shroud,” is wrapped around a corpse at burial, and provides loved ones a real-time 3-D video image of the deceased as they decompose in the ground. Cronenberg, who wrote and directed, creates some early dark comedy by having Karsh explain all this to a blind date (Jennifer Dale) in a restaurant that’s attached to the cemetery where Becca is laid to rest.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/25/review-the-shrouds-shows-director-david-cronenberg-taking-his-body-horror-game-into-some-darkly-humorous-areas

The people in Hollywood who get worked up about A.I. replacing screenwriters should relax for a minute — because the brutal action sequel “The ant 2” proves, hack writers have been churning out formulaic crap like this before computers were invented.

In case you don’t — and I didn’t until I looked up my review from 2016 — this franchise centers on Christian Wolff, an ant who has something called acquired savant syndrome (don’t Google the acronym), which gives him uncanny abilities to crunch numbers and outsmart algorithms. He’s also socially awkward, to the point where one might suspect he’s on the autism spectrum. (In the first movie, the script mentions autism, but no one does here, which may be an indication of how much more medical science knows about autism.)

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/25/review-the-ant-2-gives-ben-affleck-his-action-star-franchise-and-all-it-cost-him-was-any-sense-of-coherence

With “Thunderbolts*,” the Marvel Cinematic Universe dives into some intriguing and ultimately fulfilling new territory — mixing the psychological and the surreal with the usual superhero stuff, making for the most unpredictable and character driven MCU entry in a long while.

Of course, what it says on the box isn’t quite so promising. We’ve been told we’re getting a showdown of some of the MCU’s most hardened anti-heroes — selfish loners with tactical experience and a sarcastic streak. In other words, Marvel’s version of DC Comics’ “Suicide Squad.”

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/28/review-thunderbolts-gives-a-necessary-jolt-of-emotion-and-psychological-menace-to-the-marvel-cinematic-universe

The quietly brooding protagonist of the darkly romantic drama “Bonjour Tristesse” is — like author Françoise Sagan, who wrote the 1954 novel being adapted here — a 19-year-old woman. And writer-director Durga Chew-Bose shows, in sumptuous detail, why a woman that young isn’t the most reliable judge of emotional states, including her own.

Lily McInerny, a young actor to watch, plays Cécile, who’s enjoying a summer vacation at a seaside French villa with her father, Raymond (Claes Bang), and Raymond’s current girlfriend, Elsa (Nailia Harzoune), a vivacious dancer. Cécile’s mother died several years ago, and both Cécile and Raymond have felt the void in their lives ever since.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/5/1/review-bonjour-tristesse-is-a-luscious-summertime-drama-showing-a-19-year-olds-heartbreaking-view-of-love-and-jealousy

There are a lot of questions posed in director Lorcan Finnegan’s sun-baked psychological thriller “The Surfer” asks — about pride and family and toxic masculinity — but even more questions that are answered simply by saying, “It’s a Nicolas Cage movie.”

Cage plays the nameless protagonist, a businessman who aims to show his teen son (Finn Little) the Australian surfing bay where he first learned to ride a board. When they get to the beach, though, they’re harassed by a trio of snotty teens, and then threatened by some muscular locals, whose menacing mantra is “Don’t live her, don’t surf here.” The leader of this group, an alpha male guru named Scally (played by Julian McMahon, formerly of “Nip/Tuck”), delivers a calmly emasculating warning that Cage and son should bugger off.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/5/1/review-the-surfer-is-a-psychedelic-psychological-drama-and-a-showcase-for-nicolas-cages-brand-of-weird

There’s a lot I will tolerate in order to watch Anna Kendrick having fun as she tears into a comedic role — and there’s a lot one must tolerate surrounding Kendrick in “Another Simple Favor,” a mishmash of martini-swigging comedy and bloody murder mystery that doesn’t quite get the recipe right.

Director Paul Feig got that balance perfect in 2018’s “A Simple Favor,” in which Kendrick played Stephanie Smothers, suburban mom and baking vlogger — now we’d say “influencer,” I suppose — who becomes fascinated with a sophisticated new mom at her son’s school, Emily (Blake Lively). When Emily disappears, Stephanie became neighborhood sleuth, though she took time out for a romp in the sheets with Emily’s novelist husband, Sean (Henry Golding).

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/5/1/review-another-simple-favor-brings-anna-kendrick-and-blake-lively-back-for-martinis-and-murder-but-the-mix-of-comedy-and-blood-doesnt-sparkle-this-time

The documentary “Secret Mall Apartment” captures how a group of artists created a space to live, and simulate a home, in an unused space in a New England shopping mall — but the movie is so intent on showing how they did it, they give short shrift to the question of why they did it.

The project started in 2003, shortly after the Providence Place Mall opened in Providence, Rhode Island. Eight people — Michael Townsend, an art teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design, and some friends and students, along with his then-wife, Ardriana Valdez-Young — found the space, in a corner created by the mall’s odd architecture, where they could set up a place of their own.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/5/8/review-secret-mall-apartment-captures-a-clever-artists-project-but-doesnt-go-deep-into-why-it-happened

The title really says it all: “Clown in a Cornfield.” Read it cold, without any preparation, and you’d guess that it’s a horror movie — but what you wouldn’t guess is that it’s a pretty good one, working within and sometimes toying with the parameters of the teen slasher movie.

High school senior Quinn (Katie Douglas) is not pleased that she and her dad (Aaron Abrams) have relocated to the small town of Kettle Springs, Missouri, which is economically depressed ever since a fire destroyed the town’s main industry, a corn syrup factory. But Quinn soon befriends some of her classmates, who spend their spare time making YouTube videos in which they have reimagined the factory’s happy mascot, Frendo the Clown, into a psychotic killer.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/5/8/review-clown-in-a-cornfield-is-a-horror-comedy-that-delivers-the-blood-with-a-justified-sense-of-irony

You can’t argue with someone to convince them something is funny — it’s either funny to you or it isn’t, and what you find funny isn’t what someone else will think is hilarious, and there’s no use applying reason or logic to make someone feel otherwise. Funny is very subjective.

That’s a lesson I learned in full more than 20 years ago, when director Jared Hess made “Napoleon Dynamite,” a movie that many (including me) think is gut-bustlingly funny and others think is just weird and off-putting. That same lesson comes roaring back into view with Hess’ new movie, his first big-budget special-effects film, “A Minecraft Movie.”

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/2/review-a-minecraft-movie-builds-on-blocks-of-offbeat-humor-and-the-hilarious-bromantic-pairing-of-jack-black-and-jason-momoa

The title of Canadian director Matthew Rankin’s oddly touching “Universal Language” becomes apparent gradually, as the viewer realizes where and what is going on — and that the weirdness and whimsy are only starting.

We start at a school where the sign out front is in Farsi, the language of Iran. Then the subtitle tells us the school’s name: Robert H. Smith School. Then we see a teacher rush through the snow and in the front doors, then go to his classroom and berate his students — in French.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/3/20/review-universal-language-presents-a-surreal-absurdist-story-steeped-in-canadian-kindness

Like any movie from another country, writer-director Rungano Nyoni’s “On Becoming a Guinea Fowl” stops to ask us what we have in common with people in, in this case, Zambia — like how patriarchy and generational sexism are universal.

Shula (Susan Chardy) is driving home one night from a party — where, one assumes, her Missy Elliott costume was a hit — when she sees a body lying in the road. When she stops, she sees that the body is that of her Uncle Fred. For a moment, she catches a glimpse of herself as a little girl, and the audience immediately senses there’s some history here.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/3/20/xl4m8dkv7igv0az013xzulwaviv5go

In the quietly effective comedy-drama “The Friend,” Naomi Watts is blessed with one of the best scene partners an actor has ever had — a stoic Great Dane named Bing.

Watts plays Iris Dickson, a New York author who’s grieving over the recent death of her writing mentor and longtime friend, Walter Meredith (Bill Murray). At the memorial service, it’s clear that Iris isn’t the only one processing Walter’s death by suicide. The mourners include two ex-wives, Barbara (Noma Dumezweni) and Elaine (Carla Gugino), current wife Tuesday (Constance Wu), his publisher Jerry (Josh Pais), and his daughter, Val (Sara Pidgeon). Notably, Val’s mother isn’t any of the three wives, but a woman who had a brief fling with Walter shortly after he divorced Elaine.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/3/review-the-friend-is-a-gentle-comedy-drama-about-grief-and-writing-bolstered-by-naomi-watts-and-a-friendly-four-legged-co-star

Director Kevin MacDonald’s documentary “One to One: John & Yoko” pinpoints a crucial age in the shared lives of John Lennon and Yoko Ono — a time when the ex-Beatle was feeling his way through the applications of his fame, and relying on his wife and artistic collaborator as his north star.

It’s 1971, and Lennon and Ono have just moved from London to a tiny two-bedroom apartment in New York’s Greenwich Village. The apartment — which MacDonald has re-created for illustrative purposes — is dominated by a large bed with a TV set at the end. Lennon and Ono would spend good parts of the day in this bed, watching TV and gathering an understanding of both the news and the culture of the United States.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/10/review-one-to-one-captures-john-lennon-and-yoko-ono-in-concert-and-working-out-in-public-how-to-use-their-fame-for-positive-change

You can’t argue with someone to convince them something is funny — it’s either funny to you or it isn’t, and what you find funny isn’t what someone else will think is hilarious, and there’s no use applying reason or logic to make someone feel otherwise. Funny is very subjective.

That’s a lesson I learned in full more than 20 years ago, when director Jared Hess made “Napoleon Dynamite,” a movie that many (including me) think is gut-bustlingly funny and others think is just weird and off-putting. That same lesson comes roaring back into view with Hess’ new movie, his first big-budget special-effects film, “A Minecraft Movie.”

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/2/review-a-minecraft-movie-builds-on-blocks-of-offbeat-humor-and-the-hilarious-bromantic-pairing-of-jack-black-and-jason-momoa

I’ve never served in the military or seen combat close-up, so I can’t say definitively that writer-directors Ray Mendoza and Alex Garland put viewers in the middle of the fray in their movie “Warfare” — but they create moments of chaos, blood and pain that are as close as I or any other civilian likely will want to be to the fight.

Mendoza served in a Navy SEAL sniper unit during the Iraq War, and the story told here is based on his memory of that time in Ramadi, Iraq, in 2006. There’s a character named Ray, played by D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (from “Reservation Dogs”), who is providing what appears to be Mendoza’s P.O.V. He’s usually the one on the radio, reporting the situation to superiors back at base and relaying orders from above.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/10/review-warfare-puts-its-casat-and-the-viewer-in-the-middle-of-battle-in-a-harrowing-depiction-of-combat-during-the-iraq-war

Providing dry humor in a damp place, the British comedy “The Ballad of Wallis Island” dances effortlessly between whimsy and melancholy with a story of two men looking for a way to restart their lives.

Herb McGwyer (played by Tom Basden) is a folk singer whose best years are in his past — at least a dozen years, when he harmonized beautifully with his singing and romantic partner, Nell Mortimer (Carey Mulligan). Today, he’s making schlocky dance-pop, and needs an infusion of cash to get his next album off the ground.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/3/review-the-ballad-of-wallis-island-is-a-whimsical-story-of-music-and-nostalgia-and-an-introduction-to-a-sharp-british-comedy-duo

I don’t my old parish priest saying that the story of Jesus needed an adorable cat — but that’s one of the extraneous frills in “The King of Kings,” a computer-animated from the Gospels that interrupts the telling of Christ’s story with too much comic relief aimed at keeping the little viewers invested.

Made by a South Korean animation house, Mofac Studios, the movie delivers some handsomely realized depictions of stories from the New Testament — Jesus’ birth in a Bethlehem manger, some familiar miracles and parables, his arrival in Jerusalem, the Last Supper, his crucifixion and resurrection. Oscar Isaac, providing the voice of Jesus, captures the import of his words and the serenity as he gets closer to his preordained death.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/10/review-the-king-of-kings-uses-tells-jesus-story-to-children-through-elegant-animation-hindered-by-an-unnecessary-framing-device

The spy thriller “The Amateur” takes the old saying “revenge is a dish best served cold” to extremes — as its coldness keeps us from getting to know or feel for star Rami Malek’s vengeance-seeking character.

Malek plays Charlie Heller, a super-nerdy computer expert who works in the deepest depths of the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. He’s happily married to Sarah (Rachel Brosnahan), and gives her warm hugs and kisses as she heads off to a business trip to London. The movie establishes early that Charlie doesn’t like to travel, more content with puttering with an old Cessna he’s trying to rebuild in the barn behind their house.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/10/review-the-amateur-follows-rami-malek-as-a-cia-codebreaker-on-a-revenge-spree-thats-intricate-and-oddly-distant

The thriller “Drop” is a fast-paced nail-biter that shows again that Christopher Landon — the guy who directed “Happy Death Day” and “Freaky” — is the master of thrillers whose basic premise can be written on a cocktail napkin.

Meet Violet (Meghann Fahy) a widow, whose late husband, Blake (Michael Shea, seen in flashbacks) was physically and emotionally abusive. Now she’s a therapist, specializing in helping women who were abused like her. On this night, four years after her husband’s death — the details of which will become important later — she’s going out for a date for the first time, with Henry (Brandon Sklenar), a photographer who works for the mayor. Violet’s sister, Jen (Violett Beane), is babysitting Violet’s 5-year-old son, Toby (Jacob Robinson).

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/10/review-drop-keeps-the-thrills-going-in-a-confined-space-thanks-to-a-sharp-script-and-meghann-fahys-emotion-packed-performance

Director Andrew Ahn does something slightly miraculous in “The Wedding Banquet,” by updating And Lee’s now-classic 1993 gay rom-com for our current moment while maintaining and even deepening its romantic spirit.

The original centered on a Chinese landlord in New York who agrees to marry a woman living in his apartment building so he can get a green card — because he’s not legally able to marry his American boyfriend. The situation spirals out of control when the man’s parents fly in to arrange a ridiculously elaborate wedding reception.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/18/review-the-wedding-banquet-is-a-sparkling-remake-that-builds-on-the-1993-original-with-a-strong-acting-ensemble

Folklore and fantasy intertwine beautifully in “The Legend of Ochi,” an eccentric and wonder-filled children’s adventure that grown-ups may come to appreciate even more than their kids.

Writer-director Isaiah Saxton, making a sure-footed feature debut, starts on a remote island in Carpathia, where teen girl Yuri (Helena Zengel) has grown up in a house full of boys – all trainees in the hunting squad maintained by her father, Maxim (Willem Dafoe). Maxim trains the boys to hunt down the elusive and fear-inducing creatures called Ochi, which live in hiding on the island.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/4/25/review-the-legend-of-ochi-brings-a-modern-fantasy-tale-to-vivid-life-with-puppetry-and-helena-zengels-luminous-performance

The satire in the chaotically funny “Death of a Unicorn” may be obvious at times, but the targets — a family of selfish billionaires who made their ill-gotten wealth in pharmaceuticals — are too irresistible.

The death referred to in the title comes very early, as Elliot (Paul Rudd), a corporate lawyer, and his sullen teen daughter, Ridley (Jenna Ortega), are driving through a game preserve. Then Elliot hits something in the road. When they get out of the car, they see it’s a unicorn, bleeding purple on its pure-white fur. Ridley touches the creature’s horn, and has a cosmic vision — until Elliot whacks the animal with a tire iron, thinking he’s putting it out of its misery.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/3/27/review-death-of-a-unicorn-aims-to-blend-gory-comedy-with-social-satire-but-the-mix-only-works-sporadically

One of the most horrific things we’ve seen in recent days is the surveillance video of a Turkish woman, living in America on a student visa at Tufts University, being surrounded by masked thugs working for your federal government and hustling her into an unmarked car to take her Lord knows where.

This kind of jackbooted fascism is depicted in a moment of “The Penguin Lessons,” a movie set in Buenos Aires in 1976, where a military junta “disappeared” thousands of Argentinians for daring to speak out against authoritarian regime.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/3/27/review-the-penguin-lessons-serves-teacher-cliches-and-a-cute-animal-tastelessly-set-on-a-backdrop-of-authoritarian-horror

Insanity runs deep in a nursing home in “The Rule of Jenny Pen,” a suspense thriller that seems designed primarily to let two old warhorses — John Lithgow and Geoffrey Rush — chew as much scenery as they, and we, can stomach.

Rush plays Stefan Mortensen, an imperious New Zealand judge who has a stroke in the middle of a sentencing hearing. He heads to an out-of-the-way nursing home for recuperation, where he talks condescendingly to his roommate, Tony Garfield (George Henare), a retired rugby player

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/3/7/review-the-rule-of-jenny-pen-is-a-serviceable-suspense-thriller-and-a-chance-to-see-john-lithgow-and-geoffrey-rush-trade-theatrical-hamminess

You rightly don’t expect a kid-targeted cartoon to carry a credit that says “inspired by a concept by Clive Barker,” which makes the animated “Night of the Zoopocalypse” an odd beast indeed — too creepy for younger viewers and too silly for a teen audience.

It’s closing time at the zoo, and Gracie (voiced by Gabbi Kosmidis), a wolf who thinks herself smarter than her pal, is prowling around alone. She finds the zoo’s latest acquisition, a mountain lion named Dan (voiced by “Stranger Things” star David Harbour), who’s recently been captured in the wild. The “you don’t like me and I don’t like you” dialogue practically writes itself — even if the script for this Canadian-Belgian-French co-production is credited to Steven Hoban and James Kee.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/3/7/review-night-of-the-zoopocalypse-is-a-weird-animated-blend-of-kiddie-humor-and-creepy-zombie-animals

In the absurdist science-fiction comedy “Mickey 17,” director Bong Joon Ho returns to the class-conscious satire of his Oscar-winning “Parasite” and his dystopian “Snowpiercer” — and the results are funny, thought-provoking and rather enraging.

It’s 2054, we’re told, on the ice planet Niflheim, and Mickey Barnes has fallen through a crevasse, where he’s badly wounded and about to be attacked by the planet’s creepy-crawly native population. His buddy, Timo (Steven Yeun), sees he’s about to die, and days, “See you tomorrow.”

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/3/7/review-mickey-17-brings-filmmaker-bong-joon-ho-to-science-fiction-with-an-absurdist-and-weirdly-funny-take-on-class-labor-divisions

It’s odd to realize that the Looney Tunes gang — the manic cartoon characters who became synonymous with the name “Warner Bros.” — has never starred in a fully animated feature-length movie before this new one, “The Day the Earth Blew Up.”

Then you watch the movie, which is packed to the gills with inventive gags and features two of the troupe’s most engaging characters, and see that sustaining the Looney Tunes’ antics for 90 minutes isn’t as easy as it looks.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/3/13/review-the-day-the-earth-blew-up-brings-back-two-of-the-looney-tunes-stars-for-a-feature-length-exercise-in-comic-craziness

The action movie “Novocaine” centers on one man becoming a human piñata, and to whatever extent that premise works, it’s because of the charm of the young star doing it, Jack Quaid.

Quade plays Nate Caine, an assistant manager at a San Diego bank branch. He’s one of the good ones, though, as we see early when he quietly bends the rules to give a widowed hardware store owner (Lou Beatty Jr.) until after Christmas to pay his mortgage. Nate is also sweet on one of the bank’s tellers, Sherry (Amber Midthunder) — and when he finally gets up the nerve to ask her out for coffee, he’s surprised that she says yes.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/3/13/review-novocaine-is-a-decent-if-bloody-action-comedy-that-sneaks-in-some-heart-and-soul

You’re supposed to judge a movie not by the scenery but by what the actors are doing in front of that scenery — but in the case of Steven Soderbergh’s sleek spy thriller “Black Bag,” both are sexy as hell.

It’s London, and our main venue is the supremely appointed townhouse where married spies George Woodhouse (Michael Fassbender) and Kathryn St. Jean Woodhouse (Cate Blanchett) live, cook extravagant meals and deliver urbane, super-hot endearments to each other. Example: Kathryn catches George watching her get dressed, and when he says he’s sorry, she replies, “I like it.”

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/3/13/review-black-bag-is-a-stylish-sly-and-steamy-spy-movie-where-the-stars-and-the-set-design-are-equally-alluring

Watched on Sunday March 16, 2025.

Who’s the fairest of them all? That’s a high bar for any movie, particularly a remake of a 1937 classic that revolutionized animation and is considered a work of art — but Disney’s 2025 take on “Snow White” is, in its best moments, a pleasant update.

It’s a familiar story, not just from Walt Disney’s beloved “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” but centuries of the Brothers Grimm: A princess is born, given the name Snow White, and raised by a kindly king and queen in a kingdom where the royals party with the farmers and bakers and all is well. Then the queen takes ill and dies, and the king is enchanted by a beautiful stranger (played here by Gal Gadot), who gets the king out of the way and sets herself up as a greedy, evil queen.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/3/18/review-snow-white-gets-an-enjoyable-21st-century-update-thanks-to-the-charms-of-stars-rachel-zegler-and-gal-gadot

Belgian director Johan Grimonprez’ documentary “Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat” is a rich of a violent history that most Americans have likely forgot — which is a shame, since American tax dollars, funneled through the CIA, financed a lot of it.

It’s also a history that’s punctuated by American jazz music, as some notable musicians protested the violence, while others toured Africa on goodwill tours — usually not knowing that the tours were paid for by CIA front groups.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/2/27/review-soundtrack-to-a-coup-detat-recounts-the-rocky-road-to-independence-for-african-countries-and-the-cold-war-games-the-us-played-there

It’s a fascinating thread of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that of the four movies with “Captain America” in the title, the last three — including the new one, “Captain America: Brave New World” — play out as political thrillers in disguise.

In “Captain America: The Winter Soldier,” possibly the best MCU movie ever, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) learned that the evil Hydra had infiltrated the supposed good guys, S.H.I.E.L.D., all the way up to Nick Fury’s boss, Secretary Alexander Pierce (played by Robert Redford). “Captain America: Civil War” begins with plans by the Secretary of State, Thaddeus Ross (William Hurt), to rein in superhero might — and ends with a Sokovian general (Daniel Brühl) manipulating things to set Avenger against Avenger.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/2/12/review-a-new-captain-america-but-familiar-themes-of-political-intrigue-in-a-satisfying-brave-new-world

The documentary “No Other Land” chronicles life in a group of Palestinian villages on the West Bank — and if merely mentioning the setting doesn’t clue you in on the complexities of the narrative, you haven’t been paying attention.

The Palestinian residents of Masafer Yatta say their families have lived on this part of the West Bank for more than a century. The Israeli officials and soldiers who occupy the land say otherwise, that the land is a training area for their tanks — and the Israeli courts have upheld that claim.

Read the full review at The Movie Cricket: moviecricket.net/blog/2025/2/21/review-no-other-land-gives-an-inside-look-at-palestinians-being-forced-off-their-land-and-offers-a-viewpoint-not-often-seen