• Good Fortune

    Good Fortune

    Good Fortune opens with an angel played by Keanu Reeves, because of course it does. He floats in like a well-moisturized guru and decides the best way to help a struggling gig worker is to pull the classic “life switch” move. This is the kind of plan you’d expect from a celestial being who just discovered reality TV and got too emotionally invested in Undercover Boss.

    Aziz Ansari plays Arj, a man who delivers things for a living and gets paid in vague apologies and low battery warnings. He’s exhausted, underpaid, and one algorithm away from a full breakdown. Meanwhile, Seth Rogen plays Jeff, a tech billionaire with the emotional maturity of a scented candle. His biggest problem is his kombucha fridge being too full.

    Then Keanu shows up as Gabriel, a divine force who talks like every motivational quote that’s ever been cross-stitched onto a throw pillow. He decides to swap their lives, not through any kind of divine order, but because he has the spiritual decision-making skills of a confused yoga instructor.

    Now Arj is waking up in a silk robe wondering what a Peloton is, and Jeff is suddenly broke, sweaty, and very angry at public transit. Gabriel floats around trying to keep things together while looking like he’s about to start a band called Eternal Stillness. Every time he speaks, it sounds like he’s either solving the universe or reading aloud from his own cologne ad.

    Keke Palmer plays someone with common sense. Sandra Oh plays the upper-management angel who is clearly one spreadsheet away from firing Gabriel on the spot. At one point there is probably a dramatic monologue about finding your purpose while standing in front of a very expensive toaster.

    It’s a comedy with heart, or at least a heart-shaped reminder that billionaires are just weird guys with too much furniture. Some of the jokes land. Some wander off and become think pieces. But it’s worth it to watch Keanu stare into the middle distance and say things like, “Maybe the life you want isn’t the life you need,” while soft music swells in the background.

    4 out of 5 spiritual HR violations

    Because even heaven has a performance review.

  • The Long Walk: America’s Next Top Trauma

    The Long Walk: America’s Next Top Trauma

    Stephen King’s The Long Walk asks one simple question: what if middle school gym class ended in state-sanctioned execution?

    In a future where the government solves boredom by making teenage boys walk until they literally drop dead, 100 kids are forced into a cross-country death march with exactly zero snack breaks. Walk too slow, get three warnings, and—boom—you’re deleted like last season’s streaming content.

    Cooper Hoffman plays Ray Garraty, a sad-eyed boy with just enough backstory to make his inevitable demise feel poetic. He’s joined by Peter McVries (hot, haunted), Stebbins (probably a clone), and Barkovitch (definitely not okay). Meanwhile, Mark Hamill shows up as The Major, a military daddy figure who hands out trauma like participation trophies.

    It’s bleak. It’s brutal. It’s allegedly a metaphor. And according to early buzz, the movie changes the book’s ending—which has already triggered at least five Reddit meltdowns and one guy threatening to walk in protest.

    4.5 out of 5 government-issued step counters.

    Come for the existential dread. Stay because you physically can’t stop.

  • BUGONIA

    BUGONIA

    A tale of bees, billionaires, and breakdowns — just another Tuesday in the corporate hive mind.

    Bugonia is what happens when you let Yorgos Lanthimos drink cold brew and watch The X-Files while reading Fast Company. It’s a sci-fi dark comedy in the same way that swallowing a beehive is a “spa treatment.”

    In this film, Jesse Plemons plays a man named Teddy who is either:
    a) a beekeeper
    b) a conspiracy theorist
    c) a philosophy professor on sabbatical
    or d) all of the above, with untreated seasonal allergies.

    Teddy becomes convinced that Michelle (played by Emma Stone in full Glossier war paint) is not just a pharmaceutical CEO but an alien. You know, because she has power, charisma, and a Wi-Fi signal so strong it bends spoons. So naturally, he kidnaps her. As one does in a free market.

    From what we gather, the film includes scenes where characters stare into the middle distance while muttering things like “The hive must protect the queen,” which is either a metaphor for late-stage capitalism or an actual instruction from Beyoncé.

    The trailer is scored with Green Day’s Basket Case because nothing says “psychological thriller about alien corporate espionage” like a 1994 pop-punk breakdown. It’s perfect. It’s chaotic. It’s giving millennial burnout with a side of propolis.

    Behind the scenes, Yorgos tried to film a dramatic 70-corpse pileup on the steps of the Acropolis, but Greek officials—who apparently draw the line at alien mass murder near priceless ruins—politely told him to buzz off. So the shoot relocated to a beach, which is historically where most humans have also gone to experience both enlightenment and heatstroke.

    Emma Stone, meanwhile, struts through this movie like she’s on a runway made of quarterly earnings reports and broken dreams. She speaks only in cryptic one-liners that may or may not have been pulled from Slack threads and marketing decks. It’s not acting—it’s a TED Talk for emotionally unavailable space monarchs.

    Is Bugonia a thriller? A satire? A veiled attack on Elon Musk? Nobody knows. But early festival viewers reportedly walked out whispering, “I think I’ve been pollinated,” which is either high praise or a lawsuit.

    3.75 out of 5 combs full of existential jelly.
    Come for the bees, stay for the stone-faced metaphors, leave with an allergic reaction to capitalism.

  • The Toxic Avenger

    The Toxic Avenger

    They said justice is blind. They didn’t say it would be radioactive, shirtless, and wielding a mop.

    Toxic Avenger marks the triumphant return of Tromaville’s least subtle hero, this time courtesy of a reboot starring Peter Dinklage as a disfigured janitor turned toxic crusader. Directed with campy precision and just enough budget to make you wonder where the rest went, this film revives the spirit of Troma’s cult classic—and smears it across the lens in glowing green goo.

    Kevin Bacon plays the villain, a corporate overlord who’s one part Elon Musk, one part melted action figure. He chews scenery with the same intensity you’d expect from a man who once danced angrily in a warehouse—only now he’s doing it in a lab coat, surrounded by sentient sludge and evil interns.

    The film took years to see the light of day, with early cuts reportedly considered “unreleasable” and at least one test screening ending in what eyewitnesses described as “confused applause and a guy dressed as Toxie mopping the floor of the lobby in tears.”

    Peter Dinklage commits fully, giving Toxie a soulful, gravelly presence that makes you forget he’s holding a mop the entire time. The practical effects are gloriously gross, the jokes hit like radioactive bricks, and yes—there’s a surprise musical number set in a toxic waste facility.

    It’s ridiculous. It’s violent. It probably violates three EPA regulations.

    4.5 out of 5 Glowing Mops

  • Americana

    Americana

    From what I can gather, Americana is about a magic shirt. Not Harry Potter magic—more like “if your uncle’s old rodeo jacket had ghosts and bad intentions.” This so-called “ghost shirt” gets stolen, and suddenly a dusty small town is knee-deep in crime, blood, and country music dreams.

    Sydney Sweeney plays Penny Jo, a waitress with a stutter and big aspirations. She’s apparently the emotional anchor of the whole thing, which is ironic because just a few months ago the internet was roasting her denim ad for looking like a campaign commercial filmed in a Bass Pro parking lot. Compared to that fiasco, Americana at least gives her something resembling dignity, even if she’s propping up a movie that critics say zigzags between Tarantino shootouts and Hallmark small-town drama.

    The supporting cast looks like it was assembled from a very weird raffle: Paul Walter Hauser brooding, Simon Rex sleazing, Halsey wandering in because… sure, why not. Zahn McClarnon shows up and, as usual, everyone agrees he deserved more screen time than the script itself. And then there’s a kid convinced he’s Sitting Bull reincarnated, which sounds less like a plot device and more like something you’d overhear at a county fair.

    Critics keep calling it “ambitious,” which is Hollywood code for “we’re still trying to figure out what the hell we just watched.” The San Francisco Chronicle said it’s like a toddler with a blender, which feels accurate. The box office didn’t love it, but hey, maybe it’ll find a second life on streaming, confusing people who thought they were clicking on Yellowstone.

    Rating: Two haunted shirts out of five.

  • Weapons

    Weapons

    Some movies ease you in gently. Weapons kicks down the door at 2:17 a.m., kidnaps 17 third-graders, and leaves one kid behind to stew in a boiling pot of trauma. The setting is small-town America, which of course means a handful of people will take it upon themselves to solve the crime instead of letting, say, the FBI handle it.

    The plot unfolds in six overlapping perspectives: a guilt-wracked teacher, a hollowed-out father, a detective with questionable coping skills, a child who’s probably going to need five therapists, and a couple of other locals whose main contribution is walking ominously through bad lighting. Critics have called it The Shining meets Prisoners, with a dash of Magnolia if Magnolia had a voodoo tree and a human soul-sucking aunt named Gladys.

    Gladys—played by Amy Madigan—might be one of the most bizarre horror villains in years. Part PTA chair, part ancient evil, she’s the kind of neighbor who bakes you cookies while plotting to absorb your life force. The kids eventually fight back in a scene that reviewers describe as “equal parts cathartic and holy hell.” It’s gruesome, weirdly funny, and apparently set to a pounding techno score that makes you question your own heartbeat.

    Praise online has been loud: Rotten Tomatoes sits in the mid-90s, with some critics calling Zach Cregger’s direction “masterful” and “a thrilling mystery that shouldn’t work but does.” The structure jumps between characters and timelines, each revealing another unsettling layer. The score by Larkin Seiple has even been called “a character in itself,” which is one step away from someone giving it its own SAG card.

    But not everyone’s buying it. The Guardian dismissed it as “stylish but hollow,” some Letterboxd reviews accuse it of leaning on tired witch-lore tropes, and Reddit threads have gone deep on whether the ending is genius or just lazy. One user summed it up as, “Best horror of the year, and I still wanted to throw my popcorn at the screen.”

    Whether it’s high art or high-gloss horror nonsense depends on your tolerance for metaphor, grief-porn, and kids committing ultra-violence. Either way, Weapons seems to have hit its target—just not everyone’s sure if they wanted to be in the line of fire.

    4 out of 5 haunted PTA bake sales.

  • War of the Worlds (2025)

    War of the Worlds (2025)

    So apparently aliens have upgraded from tripods to… Microsoft Teams? In this one, Ice Cube is a Homeland Security analyst fighting an alien invasion entirely from his laptop. Which means instead of laser beams and mass panic, we get screen shares, awkward buffering, and the occasional “You’re on mute” while humanity burns.

    Critics have been savage. At one point Rotten Tomatoes slapped it with a perfect 0%, which feels less like a score and more like a dare. Some people say it’s actually fun in a “drinking with friends and watching a dumpster fire” sort of way, but that might just be Stockholm syndrome from all the product placement. Amazon drones show up so often I half expect them to deliver the ending.

    On the bright side, there’s an “It Was a Good Day” vibe if you squint: no barking dogs, no spilled coffee, no UFO parked outside your house… just Ice Cube looking into his webcam like he’s troubleshooting his Wi-Fi while aliens delete the planet.

    1 out of 5 alien Zoom backgrounds, plus half a star if you watch it on a Friday and your pager doesn’t go off.

  • Happy Gilmore 2

    Happy Gilmore 2

    The internet tells me Happy Gilmore is back, older, creakier, and probably icing his back between drives. People are calling it a nostalgia parade with golf balls. Reports of Travis Kelce covered in honey while a bear lurks nearby have turned the movie into a conspiracy theory magnet. Some fans swear the bear is secretly Taylor Swift. Netflix is saying nothing, which makes it funnier.

    The sequel leans hard on memories of the original. Expect ghostly nods to Chubbs, lots of hockey jerseys, and cameos that feel like Sandler just texted every contact in his phone. Critics are split. Some call it a warm hug from 1996. Others say it’s like watching your uncle retell the same joke three times at Thanksgiving. Reddit summed it up best: “I laughed once, but it was a deep laugh.”

    It’s the kind of movie you can picture without seeing it. Happy probably hits a ball through a window. Someone yells “You can do it!” Celebrities you forgot existed pop in to wave. And somewhere, a CGI bear licks honey off an NFL tight end because that is apparently cinema now.

    3 out of 5 Bears Licking Honey Off Golf Clubs

  • The Fantastic Four: First Steps

    The Fantastic Four: First Steps

    This is Marvel’s 87th attempt to make the Fantastic Four work on screen, which is impressive if you consider that most people give up on a Rubik’s Cube after six minutes and one thrown coffee mug. But this time, it’s going to be different, allegedly because Marvel gave the project to a director who has both a “vision” and the ability to hold actors at gunpoint until they stop smirking during green screen takes.

    The Fantastic Four, in case you’re unfamiliar, are a group of scientists and one hothead who went to space and came back with the kind of mutations you normally only get from expired gas station sushi. They are:

    • Mr. Fantastic, a man who can stretch his body like taffy and somehow still thinks he should be in charge.
    • The Invisible Woman, who has the power to disappear and still gets talked over during team meetings.
    • The Human Torch, who flies around on fire and would absolutely commit insurance fraud for fun.
    • The Thing, who is made of rock, yells a lot, and looks like what would happen if a chicken nugget wished to be a linebacker.

    The plot is likely something between family drama and apocalyptic science fair. There will be some kind of glowing portal that someone warns them not to go near, followed immediately by everyone going near it. Then chaos. Possibly a cloud. Possibly another dimension. Possibly a villain who speaks in vague metaphors about entropy.

    There will definitely be a scene where Mr. Fantastic stretches his arm across a room to press a button, and everyone acts like it’s normal. There will be at least one emotional conversation about “what it means to be a team,” possibly delivered while someone is literally on fire.

    Also, the trailer features a slow zoom-in on a cosmic event, a cryptic monologue about destiny, and a musical sting that implies someone just discovered either dark matter or that their ex is dating Dr. Doom.

    Speaking of which—Dr. Doom is probably the villain again, which is fair because he has “doom” right there in the name. He’s either a sorcerer, a dictator, or a very angry LinkedIn user. Possibly all three.

    To be clear, I’m rooting for this movie. I want it to work. I want to believe that four people with wildly different powers and clearly no HR department can unite to save the world without needing six spinoffs and a Disney+ series to explain how.

    But if history is any indication, this movie will either be amazing or a beautiful train wreck, like watching someone attempt a backflip during a wedding toast. Either way, I’m in.

    I give it 3.5 out of 5 unstable molecules, with bonus points if they finally let The Thing wear pants.

  • Superman: Legacy

    Superman: Legacy

    Boots first, justice later.

    I have not seen the new Superman movie, but based on the trailer, leaked set photos, and the collective Reddit meltdown over whether the cape is too red or not red enough, I feel fully qualified to review it.

    James Gunn directs this one, which is a bold choice for a character whose emotional range usually runs from “concerned squint” to “stoic hovering.” But Gunn, who once made us weep over a tree with a three-word vocabulary, seems determined to give Superman his feelings back—whether we like it or not.

    This time around, Superman is played by David Corenswet, a man who sounds like he was named by IKEA but looks like someone AI would generate if prompted with “Make me a trustworthy jawline.” He’s got the classic look: square shoulders, noble brow, and the aura of someone who could solve world hunger but is instead stuck writing columns for a dying newspaper.

    Lois Lane, portrayed by Rachel Brosnahan, is back to doing what she does best: uncovering the truth, risking her life daily, and somehow not realizing that Clark Kent is Superman despite the glasses being literally the only disguise. Meanwhile, the villain is either Lex Luthor, an evil space algorithm, or late-stage capitalism—unclear from the trailers.

    The teaser does give us one very intense shot of Superman slowly putting on his boots while chaos rages outside the window. A bold choice for a guy who’s canonically faster than a speeding bullet. If I’m being attacked by a sky-laser, I’d prefer my superhero not be out here mood-tying his laces like he’s late to yoga.

    But let’s talk about the real hero of the film: Krypto the Superdog. This four-legged missile of love is not just comic relief. He’s a full-blown emotional support weapon. He catches missiles in his teeth, fetches entire satellites, and pees liquid justice. Honestly, if this franchise had any sense, they’d let Krypto take over the Justice League and put Batman on pooper-scooper duty.

    The plot, as far as I can tell, is about Superman grappling with his legacy—which is superhero movie code for “he cries at least once while staring out over a cornfield.” Expect lots of brooding, some high-concept speeches about hope, and the now-mandatory slow-motion cape shot while a melancholy indie cover of “Take On Me” plays in the background.

    In summary, this isn’t your dad’s Superman—unless your dad’s Superman also had a therapist and a dog with laser eyes. It’s got action, heart, and a protagonist who looks like he could file your taxes and crush a tank in the same afternoon.

    4.5 out of 5 superdogs