Set in the 1980s while emanating Steven Spielberg vibes from the 1990s, the mostly entertaining “The End of Oak Street” hearkens back to the crowd-pleasing blockbusters of yesteryear. Writer-director David Robert Mitchell has crafted an unashamed Twilight Zone meets Jurassic Park throwback. But Mitchell throws in just enough of his own original flourishes to make this is more than some lazy Spielberg impression. It still has its issues, but it also has its fun.

“The End of Oak Street” is the kind of proudly preposterous popcorn entertainment that has the end goal of taking its audience on a no-nonsense, creature-filled thrill ride. And it mostly succeeds in doing that. It’s a smorgasbord of genre conventions, tapping into everything including science fiction, domestic drama, and even survival horror. Just don’t go in expecting it to make much sense. In fact, by the end, making sense seemed to be the least of its worries.

Mitchell’s story is set in the summer of 1982 and kicks off with the neighborhood of Flowervale gathering for a block party. It’s a nice introduction to the people of Oak Street, most importantly the Platt family. Ewan McGregor plays Greg Platt, a down-on-his-luck husband and father who recently lost job yet hasn’t mustered the courage to tell his family. His wife Denise (Anne Hathaway) is a talented writer who has backburnered her ambitions to raise a family.

Greg and Denise put on a good show, but their marriage has hit a rough patch. And their bookish daughter Audrey (Maisy Stella) and their sensitive son Brian (Christian Convery) are starting to notice. As Greg pretends to deliver pizzas for “some extra money”, Denise is secretly writing a novel in the basement. Neither are willing to deal with their secrets. He would rather drown them with swigs of whiskey from his hidden stash in the garage. She pours her feelings out on the pages of her book.

Outside of Greg and Denise’s semi-buried personal struggles, the family live a pretty normal life. But with one blinding flash of white light, their idyllic 1980s suburb is whisked away to the Jurassic Period some 250 million years into the past. And yes, I means the entire neighborhood. Of course the Platts aren’t immediately aware of what has happened and the movie takes a little too much time revealing it to them. The first hint comes when they travel to end of their street only to find it dead-end at a massive chasm. But the real teller comes during their first of many encounters with…you guessed it…a dinosaur.

The real fun begins here as the film finally kicks into gear. It’s easy to enjoy such a bonkers premise when the movie operates with such self-awareness. Mitchell has a field day conceiving new ways for dinosaurs to terrorize a superb. The effects are pretty impressive and they’re instrumental in building much of the excitement and tension. They also emphasize the film’s surprisingly nasty edge which is seen in a handful of delightfully gruesome dino kills.

While the fun-factor is a huge positive, “The End of Oak Street” isn’t without its issues. Mitchell throws in a couple of storylines that are underdeveloped to the point of being uninteresting. There’s a strange bully bit involving Brian that all but vanishes until it pops back up again at the most baffling time. Then there is the new neighbor Jeannette (Jordan Alexa Davis) who tags along with the Platts after her parents are devoured off screen somewhere. She adds a ham-fisted romantic angle to the story that feels clumsily tacked on. And it diverts the movie away from doing what it does best.

The movie also employs nearly every trope you can list to go along with an assortment of side character archetypes. By no means do these gripes break the bank. But they do strip away some of the originality. And it’s compounded by an ending that is content with surface-level explanations of what is actually happening. You could nitpick several other things about “The End of Oak Street”, but in the end it delivers exactly what it promises. And it does so with more than enough humor and heart to go along with the wild and wacky spectacle.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

Starting with its inception in 1981, the Evil Dead film series has maintained a distinct identity all its own. And that’s quite an accomplishment in the regularly crowded horror genre. After three movies, original masterminds Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell mostly stepped away in 1992. But the film series was far from done. In 2013 director Fede Álvarez gave us an obviously inspired soft reboot. It was followed by Lee Cronin’s 2023 stand-alone sequel. And now Evil Dead fans have a new entry to once again make them squirm.

“Evil Dead Burn” is another worthy installment that comes from director Sébastien Vaniček. He plucks several elements directly from the franchise’s core to tell his own story, although one with some surprisingly deep connections to its predecessors. Working from a script he co-wrote with Florent Bernard, Vaniček takes his audience on another wince-inducing horror ride. And he doesn’t shirk on the franchise’s key signatures, namely the gore-drenched set pieces and sudden moments of pitch-black humor.

As everyone should know by now, Evil Dead movies aren’t for the faint of heart. But “Burn” ratchets up the grisly horror even more than normal, with Vaniček using nearly everything at his disposal to unsettle his audience. Fish hooks, corkscrews, candle wax, a fountain pen, a dishwasher, a shower curtain – that’s just a small sample of the many objects he weaponizes in some devilishly gnarly ways.

As for the story, it loosely builds itself around the theme of domestic abuse, with characters representing survivors, abusers, and enablers. Souheila Yacoub plays a young woman named Alice. After her abusive husband William (George Pullar) is killed in a car wreck, Alice attends the funeral with his family. Afterwards they all congregate at the family’s homeplace where we get a clear understanding of who these characters are and of the family conflicts that seem ready to boil over.

In addition to Alice, there is William’s angry father Edgar (Erroll Shand) and his oblivious mother Susan (Tandi Wright). There is William’s empathetic but weak-kneed brother Joseph (Hunter Doohan) and his wife Thya (Luciane Buchanan). Lastly there is William’s grandmother and Susan’s mother Polly (Maude Davey) who is struggling with dementia. Bitterness, favoritism, passivity, negligence, animosity – just some of the sins that paint a troubling picture of this broken family.

But in true Evil Dead fashion, the terror kicks in with the arrival of the Deadites – malevolent demons who violently possess the bodies of the living or dead. They’re summoned by the reading of cursed texts from ancient demonic books such as the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (aka The Book of the Dead). In this case, they’ve been drawn by Joseph’s study of his late grandfather’s research into the Deadites. We learn the missing patriarch devoted his life to studying the Necronomicon and searching for an ancient artifact believed to hold the secret to killing the Deadites.

As franchise fans will expect, the violence unleashed on the family by the Deadites is gruesome, vicious, and sadistic. The movie’s creative uses of blood and gore energizes the horror by its sheer audacity. The bulk of it is realized through a strong reliance on inspired practical effects and terrific makeup artistry. And it’s all enhanced by a slew of crafty camera tricks that rattle us to our core. Vaniček and DP Philip Lozano firmly ground us in the terror with an array of rotating cameras, intense tracking shots, sharp zooms, and more.

It may sound cliché, but once “Evil Dead Burn” has you in its twisted clutches, the movie refuses to let go. While die-hard fans will have a blood-splattered ball with it, the graphic violence is fairly relentless which may end up pushing some folks away. And the film is tagged with an ending that isn’t nearly as potent as everything that comes before it. Yet “Evil Dead Burn” features the same wicked edge that the series is known for while also introducing some compelling new layers to the established lore. And it features two end-credits scenes (yes two, so stay till the very end) that tease some wild and gnarly things to come. Feed me more!

VERDICT – 4 STARS

Netflix has been good to Millie Bobby Brown. She gained worldwide recognition for her role in the insanely popular Netflix streaming series “Stranger Things”, which premiered in 2016 and ran for five successful seasons. She also struck gold in 2020 with “Enola Holmes”, an infinitely charming mystery movie based on author Nancy Springer’s book series “The Enola Holmes Mysteries”. An equally delightful sequel followed in 2022, and now she’s back with the third entry.

“Enola Holmes 3” features more of the same cheeky humor and playful self-awareness that made the previous two films so enjoyable. New director Philip Barantini and returning screenwriter Jack Thorne once again tap into the comedic friction between a fiercely independent young woman clashing with the rigid norms of Victorian-era London. And they use the familiar tricks from the previous films including Enola’s witty narration and constant breaking of the fourth wall.

But while the pieces are all there and Brown is still as energetic and charismatic as ever, “Enola Holmes 3” is easily the weakest installment of the three movies. Its issues start with the central mystery which is never as cohesive or compelling as its predecessors. Plot holes and contrivances are littered throughout and become more noticeable in the second half. Thankfully Brown makes them easier to endure with her infectious spirit that pours out of a role she’s quite clearly comfortable with.

But an even bigger hurdle is the glaring on-the-nose messaging. The Enola Holmes films have always had social commentary cleverly woven into the fabric of their stories. But here it’s obvious to the point of being clunky. The movie admirably seeks to tackle the serious topic of British colonialism. But it does so with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. And while Enola’s fight for independence and autonomy has organically blended into her past stories, it’s more force-fed this time around, right through to the ham-fisted ending.

Following the events of the second film, “Enola Holmes 3” sees our titular protagonist preparing to marry Tewkesbury (Louis Partridge) in a lavish ceremony in Malta. All of the pomp isn’t really Enola’s cup of tea. But Tewkesbury’s aristocratic family, led by his snooty mother (Hattie Morahan), plan a sizable wedding fit for the rich and pampered. Because she loves Tewkesbury, Enola goes along for the ride, much to the chagrin of her renowned brother Sherlock (Henry Cavill), who thinks getting married is beneath her.

Enola’s wedding day is thrown into chaos after she learns that Sherlock has gone missing, possibly kidnapped. So she leaves Tewkesbury at the alter and sets out on what is meant to be her most challenging and most dangerous case yet. But she’ll need a lot of help if she is to find Sherlock. And she gets it from a number of supporting players including Sherlock’s friend and confidant, Dr. Watson (Himesh Patel), her own radical outlaw mother Eudoria (Helena Bonham Carter), and even the heartbroken puppy dog Tewkesbury.

The mystery is its most fun early on as Enola searches for clues while remembering Sherlock’s training. The movie wastes no time leading her down a trail of arson and murder as she parses through potential suspects. Perhaps the local British government is involved. And what role does the crazed (and heavily rewritten) Professor Moriarty (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) play? Established in the previous film as a victim of a corrupt system, this Moriarty remains a dramatic shift from the criminal mastermind working from the shadows that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle envisioned.

Everything from the buildup to the inevitable clash between Enola and Moriarty underwhelms. Character motivations are murky and their actions can be even more baffling. Meanwhile Cavill’s Sherlock spends most of his time offscreen which deprives us of their playful brother/sister camaraderie. Still Brown keeps the energy high and she’s such a delight in a role she seems meant to play. Unfortunately this time around the heavy-handed material routinely lets her down.

VERDICT – 2.5 STARS

“Ella McCay” is the first film in fifteen years from writer-director James L. Brooks. Sadly, it’s hard to say it has been worth the wait. In fact, it’s hard to believe it comes from the same acclaimed filmmaker who made “Terms of Endearment”, “Broadcast News”, and “As Good as It Gets”. That’s because “Ella McCay” is a dull, frustrating mess that never feels rooted in the real world despite trying really hard to be.

It’s a shame because there is so much talent attached to the movie. Brooks has proven himself to be a great filmmaker and storyteller. But he miscalculates so much here, leading to him overstuffing his story, undercooking key moments, and diluting his characters. Even worse, the authenticity and sophistication he’s known for is nowhere to be found. It leaves us desperately looking for the humanity and struggling to find it.

Emma Mackey gives her all in the title role, doing her very best to deliver a character worth latching onto. Unfortunately, Ella’s story plays out through a cluttered narrative structure that’s littered with clunky flashbacks and annoying plot devices. It’s surprisingly unfunny as a comedy, noticeably lazy as a movie about empowerment, and completely ineffective as either a political or family drama.

Ella’s life is filled with enough drama to fill a primetime series on The CW. As a teenager, she and her kid brother were forced to navigate a difficult childhood, in large part due to their contemptible father, Eddie (Woody Harrelson). He was a habitual cheater who lost his job as a hospital administrator because of various sexual relationships with staff. When he and their mother Claire (Rebecca Hall) decide to move to California for “a fresh start”, Ella stays behind to finish school, moving in with her beloved Aunt Helen (Jamie Lee Curtis).

Now in 2008, the 34-year-old Ella is a lawyer working as her home state’s lieutenant governor. She has a close but hard to read relationship with her boss, Governor Bill Moore (Albert Brooks) who seems more interested in a potential position in the sitting President’s cabinet. Bill finally gets his big promotion, leading him to step down and leaving Ella to serve as interim governor for the next fourteen months. Ella is excited and ready to get to work for her state. But the political establishment sees her as nothing more than a lame duck.

As for her family, we learn Ella’s mother died sixteen years earlier and she hasn’t seen her loser father in thirteen years. That is until he suddenly shows up hoping to fix things with his estranged daughter. Meanwhile Ella’s dopey husband Ryan (Jack Lowden) is ate up with his wife’s newfound status and is encouraged by his comically overbearing mother (Becky Ann Baker) to milk it for all it’s worth. And if that wasn’t enough, Ella is trying to help her brother Casey (Spike Fearn) who has spent the last year isolated in his apartment after an issue with his girlfriend (Ayo Edebiri).

Sadly none of the above drama connects on any meaningful level, mainly because the story is too bloated and woefully overwritten. Yet it’s a movie full of thankless roles from actors trying to add weight to underwritten characters. Harrelson is collecting a check, popping up at the most peculiar times and then vanishing. Kumail Nanjiani is wasted as Ella’s loyal driver and head of security. Hall is essentially a cameo. Edebiri’s character could be erased and the movie wouldn’t be impacted at all. And Lowden is given an embarrassingly bad role to try and make interesting.

“Ella McCay” ends up disappointing on so many levels. It’s far from what you would expect from an accomplished filmmaker like Brooks. It squanders the perfectly capable but poorly equipped Emma Mackey who (like the rest of the film’s talented cast) finds herself stuck trying to find purpose in this empty and often confounding slog. As well-meaning as it may be, “Ella McCay” is a glaring misfire and a far cry from the significantly better films that have defined James L. Brooks’ career.

VERDICT – 1.5 STARS

With his ambitious new film “Eternity”, director David Freyne combines classic screwball comedy with an old-fashioned romance, seasoning it all with a dash of wacky fantasy. He tells a story (co-written by Freyne and Pat Cunnane) that’s so strange on paper it never should work on-screen. Yet the surprisingly sincere and impressively imaginative “Eternity” is considerably more entertaining than you would ever expect it to be.

“Eternity” begins with an elderly husband and wife on their way to a family gender reveal gathering. As they drive, the crusty Larry (Barry Primus) and the needling Joan (Betty Buckley) have all the qualities of a couple who has been married for 65 years. Larry is a bit of a curmudgeon but a very caring one. Meanwhile the opinionated Joan has been diagnosed with terminal cancer – heartbreaking news which they’ve yet to reveal to the kids and grandkids.

But their life together screeches to a halt when Larry chokes to death while at the party. In a snap, he suddenly awakes on a train, now as a much younger get version of himself (played by Miles Teller). When the train stops, Larry and a mass of other people are ushered into a waiting area called “the junction”. There he is instructed to wait for his Afterlife Coordinator. After a lengthy wait he’s finally greeted by his personal AO, Anna (Oscar winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph).

Anna immediately begins explaining things to the understandably confused Larry (and us). We learn Larry is in something resembling Limbo. It’s a depot of sorts where the recently deceased are given seven days to choose their eternal destination out of the many themed eternities offered. There’s an eternity for every taste imaginable – Beach World, Vampire World, Library World, Catholic World, Smoker’s World, Men Free World, and even a world dedicated to Paris in the 1960s. Once a person enters their chosen world they must stay their for eternity. Any attempt at escaping will see them cast into an ominous space called The Void.

As for his younger appearance, Larry is told that after death people revert to the form of their happiest self in life. That’s why days later he is stunned to see a younger Joan (now played by Elizabeth Olsen) fresh off the train and just as confused as Larry was. But their sweet reunion is interrupted by the dashing Luke (Callum Turner), Joan’s first husband and the love of her life before he was killed in the Korean War. Luke reveals he has waited 67 years for Joan to arrive, biding his time as a bartender in the junction.

So Joan is left with an impossible choice. Does she spend eternity with the man she had already built a life with or with the man who died before she was able to? That dilemma forms the crux of “Eternity”. For the most part Freyne keeps things sweet and endearing while also including some nice splashes of humor, mostly during his film’s first half. Yet there is an running undercurrent of heartache that grounds the many emotions surrounding this classic love triangle. And it doesn’t hurt to have such a capable trio as Olsen, Teller, and Turner anchoring things.

When it comes to world-building, “Eternity” plucks ideas from agnosticism, universalism, and Christian eschatology to create an equally interesting and imaginative fantasy setting. As for the story, you’ll find it easy to spot the cracks if you give it too much thought. But if you let the movie operate on its own terms, you’ll have a hard time denying its beguiling charm, admirable sincerity, well-struck comic beats, and welcomed originality. What can I say, I certainly found myself under its spell.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

The indomitable and irresistible June Squibb once again shines in “Eleanor the Great”, the directorial debut for Scarlett Johansson. Written by Tory Kamen, this unusual little drama sees the 95-year-old Squibb once against putting her playfulness and charm on full display, Yet while she certainly gets in a few good zingers, the movie is more of a heartfelt drama that offers a thoughtful meditation on grief through very different life experiences.

The 95-year-old Squibb plays 94-year-old Eleanor Morgenstein, a feisty and straight-shooting New Yorker living in Florida with her best friend and roommate Bessie (a sublime Rita Zohar). Since their husbands died, the two longtime friends have done everything together from taking walks down by the beach to shopping. But their closeness is seen most in the times at home when Bessie, a Holocaust survivor still haunted by traumatic memories, pours her heart out to Eleanor.

Eleanor’s life is shaken to its core when Bessie dies. Unable to stay alone, Eleanor moves back to New York to stay with her daughter Lisa (Jessica Hecht) and her grandson Max (Will Price). The move proves to be a challenge for all three. Eleanor hasn’t been close to her daughter for years. Lisa is a career woman who’s worried about leaving her mother alone during the day. Lisa would rather she be in a senior care home which Eleanor resists.

Johansson and Kamen take time to consider this complex mother/daughter dynamic – showing yet not overplaying the tension between them while empathizing with both sides and their set points of view. Some of the film’s best laughs come in Eleanor’s moments with her daughter (a well-timed Guantanamo reference had me laughing out loud). But it’s the more serious aspect of their relationship that is the most compelling, and I wish it was given more attention.

While visiting the Manhattan Jewish Community Center, Eleanor stumbles into a Holocaust survivors support group meeting where she ends up sharing Bessie’s survival story as her own. It’s a lie for sure, but one born out of her own grief. The story he shares grabs the attention of Nina (Erin Kellyman), a 19-year-old NYU journalism student siting in on the group’s session. Eventually an unlikely friendship forms as both Eleanor and Nina find someone they can connect with.

Nina is the daughter of a workaholic television news anchor named Roger Davis (the always reliable Chiwetel Ejiofor). At home, Roger has been distant and closed-off ever since his wife and Nina’s mother died six months earlier. As a result, Nina has been emotionally stranded and left to deal with her grief on her own. It’s a heart-wrenching storyline that adds new layers to the movie’s treatment of loss. Especially once Eleanor enters their lives.

Johansson knows the treasure she has in Squibb and she allows the actress the space to both cut loose and dial it back. Squibb offers up a brilliant balance of feistiness and vulnerability. But the nicest surprise is Kellyman who matches her cast mate step for step. Kellyman gives an emotionally nuanced performance marked by some wonderfully subtle touches while at times being profoundly affecting. She’s a revelation.

Some may take issue with the movie’s conceit – more specifically, a story of someone falsifying their connection to the Holocaust. But neither Johansson nor Kamen make light of Eleanor’s offense or paint it as acceptable. Eleanor herself is uncomfortable with where her lie takes her, and there are significant consequences despite the film’s somewhat tidy ending. But Johansson is all about the humanity behind the actions, and her film examines it all maturely and with reverence.

“Eleanor the Great” tells an emotionally rich and morally complex story built around well-defined characters and their own personal bouts with grief. It’s an impressive directorial debut for Johansson who proves to be keenly in touch with her characters and the material. Her style is fittingly straightforward and shines most in her willingness to let her actors work. It may sound like a small detail, but Johansson conveys volumes by simply setting her camera on Squibb, Kellyman, Ejiofor, or Zohar and letting them go. It’s those instincts that leaves me excited for what she’ll do next. “Eleanor the Great” is in theaters now.

VERDICT – 4 STARS