Table 19 (2017) **1/2

 

Scrolling through my Netflix options one night, I paused on this film, because I saw it was by Mark and Jay Duplass. Turns out the Duplass brothers did write the screenplay and were meant to direct, but at some point, they were out. The production company brought in a guy named Jeffrey Blitz to rewrite the script and direct.

An ensemble cast including Anna Kendrick, Craig Robinson, Lisa Kudrow, and Stephen Merchant find themselves at a wedding reception seated way in the back at table 19. This turns out to be the table for random guests with minimal connection to the bride and groom, people who, as one character puts it, “Should have known to just RSVP that they weren't coming, after picking out something tasteful from the registry.” If you are guessing that these misfits wind up bonding, working through their issues, and forming an unlikely family – Bingo! It's basically “The Breakfast Club” at a wedding.

I won't ruin the film's few surprises by saying any more about the plot. It's really not that great a movie. Some of the plot elements don't make a lot of sense, and the actual sound mixing is dodgy, making it hard to hear what characters are saying at times. Still, a talented cast makes up for the bad script enough to make “Table 19” reasonably entertaining, and I'm giving it an extra ½ star for being less than an hour and a half long.

I assume there was some controversy at some point about the Duplass brothers leaving this film, but no one is talking about it, as a casual google search did not produce any stories about why there was a change. I wonder if it would have been a better film if the brothers had stuck around.

2.5 stars out of 5

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (2026) **** --Spoiler Alert--

 

This film picks up where 2025's "28 Years Later" left off, so it really isn't possible to talk about this movie without giving spoilers about the previous film.

“28 Years Later” left Spike (Alfie Williams) having just met some colorful, blond warriors. Well, it turns out they are a murder cult, wandering the British countryside fearlessly killing Infected and torturing and murdering any un-infected that they find. Spike is given no choice but to join them, but he is looking for a way out. Meanwhile, Dr Kelson (Ralph Fiennes) was living in something of a detente with the local Infected. We find him now trying to develop more of a relationship with the Alpha, whom he dubs Sampson.

Up til now, the “28” franchise films have treated the Infected pretty much like every other zombie movie: mindless beasts to be killed en masse, video-game-style. In “The Bone Temple,” we are reminded that the Infected are not zombies. They are not reanimated corpses. They are living people stricken with a virus. Through Dr. Kelson's budding friendship with Sampson, we start to peel back the layers of what is going on in the mind of someone with the Rage Virus.

If the monsters are a little more human in this sequel, the humans are more monstrous than ever. Jack O'Connell (“Sinners”) is menacingly charismatic as cult leader Sir Jimmy Crystal, but his cult's brutality is hard to watch. Even for a zombie movie, this film has scenes that will make you want to wash out your eyeballs.

If you can get past the gore and violence (If you are this far into this film franchise, I suspect you can.), “The Bone Temple” continues this story in a way that, even after 4 films, makes me want to keep watching. 

 

4 stars out of 5 

The Running Man (2025) **1/2

 

A while back, I re-watched the 1987 Arnold Schwarzeneggar movie "The Running Man." Those Schwarzeneggar action movies were big hits with Gen-X when we were teens, but as a grown man, I found “The Running Man” only mildly entertaining. It's too bad, really, as the story concept is a good one. I was excited when I saw that they were rebooting the movie, with Glen Powell starring. Powell (“Hit Man”) has a lot of charisma, and director Edgar Wright has a slew of excellent credits, including “Shaun of the Dead”, “Scott Pilgrim vs the World”, and “Baby Driver.” I had reason to be optimistic.

The essential concept of “The Running Man” remains the same, but Wright updates and changes the details quite a bit, compared to the 1987 film. Powell plays Ben Richards, who this time is not a convict, but a working Joe blacklisted for talking to a union rep. He is one of many desperate, unemployed people in an economy even more K-shaped than the one we have now. Richards and his family live in a shitty, urban desert with limited access to healthcare, while another portion of the populace live in a nice, clean, walled city, with armed guards keeping the poor out. Needing money for his sick daughter, Richards signs up to compete on The Running Man, a game show where a schmo like him tries to go on the run and stay alive for a month while being pursued by professional Hunters, bounty hunters, and the public at large. The show is a massive hit with an American audience that loves watching runners get messily murdered.

So, does Wright improve on the 1987 film? Just barely. I did find this version of the game, with runners being hunted in the world at large rather than on a set, more compelling, and it is apparently more true to Stephen King's 1982 novel. Some might say that the theme of a big corporation essentially running America, controlling the media and polluting the environment while a huge portion of the population struggles to find work and healthcare is very timely. Others might point out that these themes are presented in a hackneyed, puerile, 6th-grade-reading-level manner that does not live up to Edgar Wright's previous work. The film is clearly pitched to the level of young teens and tweens, and I suppose they need movies, too, but I was hoping for more.

2.5 stars out of 5

No Other Choice (2025) ***

 

What first turned me onto this film is that it is based on a novel by Donald Westlake. The Ax tells the tale of a mid-level manager with technical expertise in a shrinking industry who gets laid off. Eager to get back to work, he finds that every time a job in his field becomes available, there are a handful of unemployed guys with his same skill set hustling for it. As the months go by and his joblessness takes a toll on his family, he hatches a plot to murder the other similarly-skilled men, so that he can get the next job that opens up. It's a dark story with moments of dark humor. It's a high-wire act for Donald Westlake to occasionally inject his trademark sense of humor into what is really a horrible tale about the people left behind by capitalism and progress. As I recall, he manages to pull it off.

Park Chan-wook (“The Handmaiden” “Oldboy”) follows Westlake's plot surprisingly closely in his Korean adaptation of the story. Lee Byung-hun (“Squid Game”) does a fine job as the desperate anti-hero. I will say that Park struggles a bit with the tone. His unemployed manager's inexpert efforts at murder create some madcap scenes of comedy that are a poor fit with the theme of good, family men murdering each other over a job. Still it's a good watch and a good story about the human cost of technological progress – a good fit for the zeitgeist in the era of AI anxiety. (This isn't the first film adaptation of this story, by the way. There is apparently a 2005 French film called “Le Couperet.” Maybe I'll check it out!)

One other thing, and this isn't limited to this movie: everybody yells a lot. This seems to be a feature of Asian films in general. Characters frequently yell and act in a campy, exaggerated way. And yet, in real life here in the U.S., the Asian people I know tend to be chill and on the quiet side. What's up with that?

3 stars out of 5

Bugonia (2025) ****

 

This was one of 2025's Oscar nominated films that I hadn't gotten around to watching yet. I guess I was put off by the weird title and the image of Emma Stone's shaved head. I finally resolved to do my homework, and I'm glad I did.

Stone plays Michelle, a Big Pharma CEO who speaks corporate speak and wants to be the kind of leader who puts values over profits, but at the end of the day, she's just the biggest cog in a machine. Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Don (Aidan Delbis) are cousins who blame that machine for their sad, low-rent lives. Teddy pressures Don, who is developmentally-delayed, to help him kidnap Michelle. His motive is not ransom or even murder, however. Teddy is convinced that Michelle is one of many aliens who live among us, secretly running and destroying the world. The cousins kidnap Michelle, shave her head (to keep her from signaling her mother-ship), and attempt to negotiate Earth's fate with her, while Michelle just tries to figure out how to survive.

“Bugonia” is an English-language remake of the South Korean film “Save the Green Planet!” Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos ("Poor Things"), with a screenplay by Will Tracy ("The Menu"), the film has a strong pedigree of dark comedy, and it lives up to it. Jesse Plemons and Emma Stone (even with her shaved head) are riveting. Stavros Halkias ("Let's Start a Cult") puts in an excellent, nuanced supporting performance. I'd say Aidan Delbis steals the show, though. Delbis is autistic himself, and his conflicted portrayal of Don, who is torn between his conscience and his loyalty to his cousin, is heartbreaking.

As for that weird title, it's a nod to the film's environmental themes. Bugonia was supposedly an ancient Greek folk practice in which farmers would sacrifice an ox, believing that bees would spontaneously generate from its corpse.

4 stars out of 5

With “Bugonia”, I have watched the majority of last year's Oscar nominees for Best Picture. It may be tough to complete the list. “The Secret Agent” looks okay, so I'll probably check it out. “Hamnet” looks long and boring, and I really don't feel compelled to watch that Timothee Chalamet movie about ping-pong. I mean, maybe if it were pickle-ball!

Fackham Hall (2025) ***

 

Everyone who watches TV or has read Jane Austen knows that British landed estates can only pass to a legitimate male heir. Thus, a lord without a son faces the prospect of his wife and daughters being kicked out of the family mansion upon his death, so that a brother or nephew can take over the lordship. The only solution, apparently, is to marry one of those daughters off to the inheriting nephew, thus keeping everything in the family, so to speak. This is why those old paintings of British royalty feature such, ahem, distinctive jawlines.

Variations on this theme have formed the backbone of many a British, period drama, with “Downton Abbey” being a recent example. “Fackham Hall” is a broad sendup of these dramas. This silly farce features all the archetypes: the slutty daughter, the smart daughter, the haughty cousin/heir, the poor orphan with a mysterious past. These characters ham it up, delivering rapid fire jokes reminiscent of “The Naked Gun.”

What “Fackham Hall” lacks in comedic refinement, it makes up in quantity. The jokes are fired at us non-stop out of a machine-gun of broad, British wit. The theory is that if you aren't laughing at the last joke, you'll laugh at the next, which comes right on top of it, or maybe at the next one. It mostly works. The film isn't a comedy classic, but if you have ever watched a British period drama, you'll get the satire and at least a few chuckles out of it.

3 stars out of 5

The Housemaid (2025) ***

 

OK, first a little housekeeping. There was the dystopian TV show starring Elizabeth Moss called “The Handmaid's Tale.” There was the 2016 Korean erotic thriller "The Handmaiden." And now there's this domestic thriller starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney, called “The Housemaid.” That's the one we are talking about here.

This type of movie is all about plot twists and turns, and I don't want to give them away. Sydney Sweeney plays Millie, a girl down on her luck and desperate for a job. Nina (Seyfried) hires her for a live-in maid position. It doesn't take long before we learn that both of them have some secrets, and the job isn't what Millie thought it would be.

Any more details would ruin the trashy fun of watching this erotic, scary, sometimes funny movie. The film is based on the novel by Freida McFadden, directed by Paul Feig (“Bridesmaids” “Freaks and Geeks”). It's not a movie that is going to change your life, and honestly, it's not going to make you like men very much. What it is, is solid entertainment. When it shows up streaming free on one of your services, I suggest you check it out.

3 stars out of 5

Honey Don't (2025) ****

It still feels strange to me to see the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan, pursuing separate projects. For most of my movie-watching life, they were a legendary team: writing, directing, and producing films like "Raising Arizona," "Miller's Crossing," and “The Big Lebowski” together. The reality is that since 2021, they have been doing their own separate things. What Ethan Coen has been up to is working with his wife, Tricia Cooke, on a trio of lesbian-themed films. You can't really call it a trilogy, as the characters and stories are not linked. The first film in the trio was 2024's “Drive-Away Dolls,” which I found reasonably entertaining, but not nearly as good as the Coen brothers' best work. Now, with their second film, Coen and Cooke seem to be finding their footing.

Margaret Qualley starred in “Drive-Away Dolls,” and she returns for “Honey Don't” as a completely different character. She plays Honey O'Donahue, a private eye with a weakness for booze and the ladies. When a prospective client dies in a car crash, Honey wonders what are the odds that someone would call her office in trouble, then die the next day in an “accident.” She starts poking around, and the trail leads to a shady, cult-like church. The pastor, Reverend Drew (Chris Evans) regularly has “congress” with his female parishioners, and he runs a drug dealing operation out of the church. Meanwhile, Honey may have found her soul-mate in a lady cop (Aubrey Plaza).

“Honey Don't” does not break any new ground, nor is it trying to. Honey is a textbook noir detective from the school of Chandler and Hammett, who just happens to be female and gay. All the traditional plot elements are in place: the murdered client, dark secrets, the tension between the private detective and the established police force. Coen and Cooke do here what many noir directors have done before them, and they do it well. The dialogue is snappy, the twists are surprising, and the lesbian angle adds just enough spice to make it all feel fresh. (And by spice, I mean graphic, lesbian sex.)

4 stars out of 5

Roofman (2025) **1/2

 

In the late 1990's, Jeffrey Manchester robbed about 50 McDonald's restaurants. His modus operandi was to hack through the roof of the store in the middle of the night, then wait inside to rob the store at gunpoint when the employees showed up the next morning. His unique mode of entry made him famous as “Roofman”. Of course, he eventually got caught, but he managed to escape from prison to the town of Charlotte, NC, where he hid out in a Toy's R Us store. He made himself a hidden nest where he slept during the day, coming out at night for food and exercise. He wound up living there secretly for 6 months, dating a local woman and joining her church.

It's no surprise someone would make a movie out of this story. What does surprise me is that writer/director Derek Cianfrance made such a hackneyed, predictable film out of this wild tale, and assembled an all-star cast to do it. Channing Tatum plays Manchester, Kirsten Dunst plays the love interest, and they get support from LaKeith Stanfield, Peter Dinklage, and Juno Temple. While the cast is talented and game, the script is no great accomplishment. The only surprising story elements are the ones that come from Manchester's real-life antics. The narrative glue that Cianfrance inserts to turn the story into a 2 hour movie is treacly and predictable. You can see every plot point coming a mile away.

“Roofman” does offer something we don't see a lot in film, namely people attending church regularly. It's also a very family-friendly movie, despite its R rating (presumably because we witness a couple of armed robberies and Channing Tatum's naked butt.) For these reasons, I suspect the film will find an audience, and good for 'em! Not everybody wants to watch art movies about gay cowboys eating pudding (If you know, you know.)

2.5 stars out of 5

The Phantom of the Paradise (1974) ***

 

If you thought “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” was too conventional and predictable, this is the movie for you! Writer/Director Brian De Palma is known for pushing boundaries in movies like “Carrie” and “Scarface”, but this black-comedy rock opera is outre even for him. The film borrows themes from “Faust”, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and of course The Phantom of the Opera.

William Finley plays Winslow Leach, a singer-songwriter whose music is stolen by an unscrupulous producer named Swan (Paul Williams, who wrote the music for the film). When Winslow tries to assert his rights, his face gets horribly disfigured, so he dons a mask and takes to haunting the music hall owned by Swan. Lurking in the shadows, Winslow promotes a singer with whom he is obsessed (Jessica Harper), and he learns Swan's secret to youth.

There's no way I could describe just how strange this musical film is; you just have to see it for yourself. This bizarre flick is not good in any traditional sense, but it is eye-and-ear candy for lovers of cult classic films. Paul Williams really lets himself go wild with the music, and Jessica Harper is as charming here as she would later be in 1977's “Suspiria.” Whether you are a Brian De Palma completist or just love a cult classic, this is one to check out when you are in the mood for something weird.

3 stars out of 5