Song Sung Blue (2025) ****

 

Hey Kids! Want to see a movie based on the real-life story of a Neil Diamond tribute band?! Yeah, I didn't think I would either, but it turns out “Song Sung Blue” is a pretty good time, with some winning performances and a rousing soundtrack.

Hugh Jackman plays Mike Sardina, a musician and recovering alcoholic struggling to make a living with his guitar. The thing about the music industry is that so many people want to be in it that you wind up with loads of truly talented musicians living hand-to-mouth, playing whatever small gigs they can get. Mike seems destined to remain in this tier. Then, in 1987, he meets a fellow struggling singer named Claire (Kate Hudson), who points out that he looks and sounds a bit like Neil Diamond. The two put together a Neil Diamond tribute act that, with their charm and talent, eventually wins them some regional success, although life continues to throw challenges their way.

Mike and Claire are real, and this is their real story, with the usual artistic liberties taken. The film is actually based on a similarly-titled 2008 documentary about the couple. While the timeline is compressed, the most bonkers parts of the film are all true. For example, Mike and Claire did open for Pearl Jam and play with Eddie Vedder, and in fact it was Vedder who later lobbied Neil Diamond to allow the use of Diamond's music in the documentary. Directed by Craig Brewer ("Hustle & Flow"), “Song Sung Blue” is a big-hearted tribute to Diamond's amazing musical catalog and to people who keep getting back up when life knocks them down.

4 stars out of 5

Is This Thing On? (2025) ***1/2

 

Written by Will Arnett, directed by Bradley Cooper, and based on the life of a British comic named John Bishop, “Is This Thing On?” is a quiet, funny dramedy about a failing marriage, a failing life, and turning it all around.

Arnett stars as Alex, who is splitting up with his wife Tess (Laura Dern). Alex and Tess try to make the separation as easy as possible on their kids and their friend group. It isn't easy, as people have a tendency to take sides in these situations. Meanwhile, their bickering friends Christine (Andra Day) and Balls (Bradley Cooper) seem like the ones who should really be splitting up.

One night, on a whim, Alex signs up to do open-mike comedy, and he turns out to be good at it. His new hobby allows him to talk about his life, and the thrill of doing something creative gives him a newfound confidence and perspective. At the same time, Tess, who was once an Olympic volleyball player, is wondering if she peaked too soon.

“Is This Thing On?” is something we need more of: an unassuming, empathetic story about grown-up relationships. The emotions are real, the performances are excellent, and the comedy is actually funny.

3.5 stars out of 5

Joy Ride (2023) ***

 

When Audrey (Ashley Park) gets the chance to visit China to close a business deal, she takes along her friend Lolo (Sherry Cola), who invites her weird, K-pop-obsessed cousin DeadEye (Sabrina Wu). In China, the girls meet up with Audrey's college friend Kat (Stephanie Hsu), formerly a horny wild-girl, but now an actress famous in China for playing good girls and saving herself for marriage. The four wind up on an Odyssey to find Audrey's Chinese birth mother, and there you go.

It's not a bad setup for a raunchy, road-trip comedy, featuring Asian women instead of black women, college guys, or middle-aged dudes. I guess everyone needs their own road-trip movie, and now Asian girls have theirs. I found it distracting how focused on race the characters were, but maybe that's how it is when you're a minority. As a white dude in a place that is mostly white, it's easy for me not to think about race. Audrey and Lolo, as the only Asians in their small, Ohio town, were probably never allowed to forget that they look different from everyone else. As Audrey says in Beijing, “If I lived here, I wouldn't always be the 'Asian girl'. I could be the 'smart girl' or the 'funny, nice girl'”.

As road-trip comedies go, “Joy Ride” is reasonably watchable. Director Adele Lim is best known as a writer on “Crazy Rich Asians”, but here, in her directorial debut, she shows promise behind the camera. She gets decent performances from a talented group of comediennes, and she keeps the story humming along, bringing it together in an hour and a half, which is remarkably concise for a movie these days. “Joy Ride” is not going to change your life, but if you want an uncomplicated laugh, take the ride.

3 stars out of 5

Send Help (2026) ****1/2

 

I wasn't really sure what to expect from this film. I never saw a trailer for it, and the posters just featured Rachel McAdams on an island, covered in blood. Then I learned it is directed by Sam Raimi, who has done some truly great, original films (“Darkman”, The “Evil Dead” movies), but has also signed on for some Marvel Comics movies, so I had no idea which Sam Raimi would be showing up here. Turns out, “Send Help” is old-school Raimi – original, hilarious, in-your-face horror-comedy with a very sly sense of humor.

Rachel McAdams plays Linda Liddle, a nerdy office drone who is truly great at her job, but gets passed over for a promotion in favor of her boss's incompetent frat-buddy. Linda doesn't let it get her down. She talks to her pet bird, puts her nose to the grindstone, and vows to work even harder to earn her place. Then the company plane goes down, leaving Linda and said boss (Dylan O'Brien) as the only survivors on a tropical island. One other thing about Linda: she has aspirations to be on the show “Survivor.” Turns out she has made herself an expert on desert island survival. Even as she saves his life, though, her boss Bradley has trouble giving Linda the credit she deserves. The longer they are stranded, the more friction arises.

I won't give away any more than that. “Send Help” is full of surprises that I don't want to ruin. Raimi gets outstanding performances from both his stars, and McAdams ought to get an Oscar nomination. “Send Help” is funny, oddly-dark, and the best new movie I've seen so far this year.

4.5 stars out of 5

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