Gal Gadot does a lot of running in her new Prime streaming feature aptly titled “The Runner”. Sadly, even at a lean 84 minutes, her latest film ultimately comes across as an endless jog to nowhere. To Gadot’s credit she gives it her all, firmly committing herself both physically and emotionally. But you’ll need more than a suspension of disbelief to stick with this preposterous, often tedious, and suspense-free thriller.

Gadot plays Maia Marten, a prosecutor living in London with her young diabetic son, Noah (Rory Wilmot). Maia is on the verge of closing out a high-profile double murder case against a powerful criminal kingpin named Boyd. Her entire case hinges on the testimony of a key witness, Tafa (Phoenix Di Sebastiani). After walking Noah to school, Maia takes off on her daily jog to her office. But her run is suddenly interrupted by a terrifying phone call from Noah’s phone.

The Caller informs Maia that he has abducted Noah and placed him in a diabetic coma. He tells her that he will kill her son if she doesn’t do exactly what he says. And he has hacked her phone and smartwatch to ensure she complies. He orders Maia to start running to the Excelsus Hotel which is where Tafa is being held by Witness Protection. Once there, she is to kill Tafa with a gun he provides. If she doesn’t do it within one hour, Noah will die.

So she runs…and runs…and runs. And just when you think the movie is taking a turn, she runs some more. Director Kevin McDonald and screenwriter Mark Gibson throw in a few encounters that break up the monotony. But these moments struggle to generate any excitement and they certainly don’t add any much-needed suspense. Even the handful of technical flourishes do little to energize this frustratingly flat and mostly empty affair.

“The Runner” throws in some rather shallow commentary about our addiction to digital devices only to completely forget it by the halfway mark. It also introduces some past trauma that never factors into the story in any truly meaningful way. There’s even a former (or is he current – who knows?) love interest who only seems to exist because the final act needs him (vague, I know). All of these are admirable swings at adding story depth. Unfortunately none of those swings connect.

Again, it’s a toughie for Gadot who simply can’t keep this film afloat. It’s not for a lack of trying. But the subpar material routinely lets her down, right through to its ridiculous and utterly predictable finish. It’s such a half-baked production that’s lacking in nearly every important category. Thankfully it’s only 84 minutes, so it won’t eat up too much of your time. Then again, you may be ready to check out well before those 84 minutes are done.

VERDICT – 1.5 STARS

[“The Rivals of Amziah King” will be screening on August 14th at Filmland 2026 followed by a Q&A with its star, Matthew McConaughey.]

With 2019’s “The Vast of Night”, director Andrew Patterson delivered one of the most impressive feature film debuts in recent memory. The film was a smart and stylish genre-bender set in 1950’s New Mexico that took a familiar B-movie science-fiction concept and enriched it with two entertaining central characters, absorbing dialogue, and a mystery that was easy to get involved in. Altogether it was an absolute treat for those who love genre filmmaking.

Patterson’s much anticipated follow-up is the wildly different yet equally terrific “The Rivals of Amziah King”. It features some of the same ingredients that made “The Vast of Night” such a delight – a distinct rural setting, a vibrant sense of community, and the shrewd blending of genres in a number of surprising ways. Yet Patterson’s latest stands out most for its sheer unpredictability. It never stops surprising us. And it certainly doesn’t hurt having the star-wattage of Oscar-winner Matthew McConaughey, who manages one of his very best performances.

“The Rivals of Amziah King” is a movie that is impossible to pigeonhole. Just when you think it’s one thing, it suddenly morphs into something else. It begins as a charming, community-rich comedy laced with the kind of absurd laughs that will have you grabbing your side. Then we get a scene where the music takes over, and songs full of local flavor transport us to a drive-in or a living room in rural Oklahoma. And just as our hearts are full, Patterson breaks them with a second half coming-of-age angle that evolves into a crime thriller/heist movie hybrid, punctuated with a crowd-pleasing finish.

That may sound like a lot of movie, and in many ways it is. But the miracle is in Patterson’s ability to weave it all together into a richly detailed tapestry of the American South. His love for the people, the region, and the culture seeps from every pore of the production, from his storytelling to his craftsmanship. And who better to anchor it all than the cinematic face of Southern charm, Matthew McConaughey. From his very first scene, this is a role that feels custom-made for him.

The 56-year-old McConaughey slides right into the skin of Amziah King, a small-town Oklahoma honey-maker who loves nothing more than tending to his bees and making folk music with his friends. He owns and operates a small business called King Honey where he and a modest crew collects honeycomb frames from his bee hives, extracts the honey, drains it, strains it, and bottles it up to be sold. When not making honey he’s making music with his friends, plucking his mandolin and singing his heart out.

One day Amziah runs into a young waitress named Kateri (Angelina LookingGlass). We learn that when Kateri was a little girl, she and her brother spent a couple of years with Amziah and his late wife. The children ended up with another foster family and the two haven’t seen each other since. Their sweet reunion leads to Amziah offering Kateri a job helping him tend to his bees. From that moment it’s hard not to be drawn to their unique relationship.

The first half offers up the film’s most endearing moments, whether we’re watching Kateri and Amziah as protégé and mentor or as a young woman and her only real father figure. McConaughey and LookingGlass have an easygoing chemistry that makes their scenes all the more authentic. Then there is the humor which pops up at the most unexpected times and in the most unexpected ways. It may be a bonkers experience with a honey extracting machine or a hilarious elementary school sequence that nonchalantly descends into pure comic chaos.

But the second half begins with an unexpected jolt that catapults the story in an entirely new direction. Stolen beehives, a powerful criminal enterprise, a daring heist – all are significant plot points that turn this big-hearted slice-of-life dramedy into a high-stakes mystery/crime thriller. Yet somehow Patterson makes this dramatic shift both smooth and organic. And he does so in ways that keep us immersed in his world and even more invested in his growing collage of characters.

That vast array of characters is one of the film’s biggest strengths. McConaughey is effortlessly great and LookingGlass gives a fabulous debut turn. But it’s the supporting cast that seasons the story: a perfectly cast Kurt Russell as a corrupt businessman, the great Rob Morgan as Amziah’s friend and spur-of-the-moment lawyer, Scott Shepherd as a good-hearted but nearly unintelligible local (think Boomhauer from “King of the Hill”), Cole Sprouse as a fast-food tech guru, and Jake Horowitz as a loyal bee worker who comes through in the clutch.

Six years ago Andrew Patterson wowed us with a sparkling feature film debut. Now he’s made one of the best movies of the year. “The Rivals of Amziah King” is a full-hearted celebration of community and culture that pulsates with Southern flavor and rural charm. It transports us to the very real world of potlucks, pickups, and folksy bluegrass jam sessions. It’s also a genre lover’s delight, taking us down roads we never expected to travel and entertaining us in ways we never could have imagined. And all from a young filmmaker who possesses the kind of fresh and invigorating voice that doesn’t come along too often.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

Adapted from Shelby Van Pelt’s 2022 best-selling novel of the same name, “Remarkably Bright Creatures” is a heartwarming drama that’s not made for the more cynically minded. It’s an earnest and empathetic tearjerker, yet one with enough restraint to make its handful of cliches easier to digest. Most importantly, it never loses sight of the humanity at the core of its story. And that’s what makes the film resonate.

Director Olivia Newman, who also co-wrote the screenplay with John Whittington, gives ample time to the book’s central themes of tragedy, grief, aging, isolation, etc. And she does so through the unconventional pairing of 79-year-old Sally Field and 33-year-old Lewis Pullman. Both give emotionally rich and textured performances in bringing to life two broken people who find solace in each other and one deeply empathetic Pacific octopus.

“Remarkably Bright Creatures” gives an especially touching role to Sally Field. She plays Tova Sullivan, a withdrawn widow working as the overnight cleaning lady at an aquarium in the small fictional town of Sowell Bay, Washington. Tova is still struggling from the deaths of her beloved son Eric thirty years earlier, and more recently her husband Will. Rather than lean on the local townsfolk who clearly care for her, Tova only shares her heart with Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus voiced by Alfred Molina who serves as the film’s wise and witty narrator.

The similarities between Tova and Marcellus are many. Both are elderly. Both can be a little cantankerous. Both are lonely. And both face their own sense of captivity, with Marcellus longing to be out of his tank and back in the ocean before he dies, and Tova facing a big decision on whether to sell her family home and move into a senior care facility. The two form a sad yet heartwarming bond that takes an unexpected turn after another person enters both of their worlds.

Cameron (Lewis Pullman) is passing through Sowell Bay when his beat-up van, which also serves as his home, breaks down in the middle of town. With no money to pay for the repairs, Cameron gets a part-time job at the aquarium filling in for Tova after she takes a fall. But ever the perfectionist, Tova immediately takes issue with Cameron’s methods. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do things,” she preaches with the conviction of an evangelist.

At first the two seem utterly incompatible. But over time a connection is formed between them as Tova sees reminders of her son in Cameron. But we learn there is more to Cameron than just some drifter passing through. We discover he has his own painful past and has come to the area for a very specific reason. But his fateful meeting with Tova opens the door to lives both of them had given up on. But carrying so much pain through that door proves difficult.

While Tova and Cameron are terrific centerpieces, Newman surrounds them with a host of entertaining supporting characters. Colm Meaney plays a kindly general store owner Ethan who has eyes for Tova. Joan Chen, Kathy Baker, and Beth Grant are a lot of fun playing members of Tova’s knitting group. Sofia Black-D’Elia’s plays Avery, a paddle board shop owner who instantly catches Cameron’s attention. And of course there’s Alfred Molina, whose soothingly voiced observations range from keenly perceptive to bitingly funny.

“Remarkably Bright Creatures” is almost certain to find resistance from those with an aversion to warm and tender dramas. But for everyone else, it’s a film that will pull at your heartstrings but with an emotional honesty that is hard to deny. Yes, it tries to weave together a few too many story threads and the way things play out are…convenient. Yet Newman delivers a film adaptation that’s full of charm, warmth, and hope. And it features a delightful Sally Field performance that will bring a tear to your eye and put a smile on your face.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

Writer-director Tom Botchii serves up a genre smorgasbord with his new film, “Relentless”. It’s fun to even consider the various thrillers it qualifies as. For starters it’s an action thriller, a revenge thriller, a psychological thriller, even a home invasion thriller. It dips its toe into exploitation cinema. It sometimes plays like a bruising character study. At other times you’ll swear you’re back in the grindhouse theaters of the late 1970s.

Whatever you consider it to be, far more important is that Botchii keeps things entertaining. “Relentless” might not live up to its name, and it certainly has its flaws, some of which become noticeable early on (more on them later). But Botchii’s vision and inspiration, helped by two firmly committed lead performances, keeps the audience engaged, even as the story struggles to fill its lean 93 minutes.

“Relentless” is a tightly focused two-hander that begins with introductions to its main characters. Teddy (Jeffrey Decker) is a homeless man living out of his car. We meet him as he’s listening to old voicemails from his ex-wife before going to sleep in his cramped backseat. Elsewhere, Jun (Shuhei Kinoshita) sits in his ultra-modern two-story home, enjoying a nice meal of fine sushi. He pecks away on his laptop before climbing into his warm comfy bed for the night.

Their two paths cross the next evening when Teddy shows up at Jun’s home posing as a salesman. After Jun brushes him off, Teddy forces his way inside with a sawed-off shotgun, stalking Jun like his prey. After a brief brawl, Jun grabs his precious laptop and flees into the night with Teddy in pursuit. Jun manages to get away but loses his laptop in the process. Determined to get it back, he follows Teddy to a gas station only to be knocked unconscious and kidnapped.

Jun wakes up tied to a chair in an old abandoned house with Teddy sitting across from him. From there the two men have a verbal standoff, with Jun swearing he doesn’t know who Teddy is and Teddy insisting he does. Botchii lets the mystery linger, leaving us with a number of consequential questions. Who are these two men? What is their connection? And what’s on this laptop that both seem fixated on? It makes for an intriguing setup with Botchii maneuvering Decker and Kinoshita like chess pieces until he’s ready to reveal more.

The eventual revelations catapult the story into an ultra-violent mano-a-mano showdown that isn’t afraid to let the blood gush. At the same time, the characters are never as fully-formed as they could be. Their individual pasts are merely referenced through exposition which doesn’t allow the story’s themes to resonate as they should. And it’s attempt at social commentary is wobbly at best, with certain motivations playing like wild swings rather than meaningful considerations.

As mentioned, “Relentless” does struggle to find enough story to fill its already lean 93 minutes. Botchii eats up some of the time with stylish visual flourishes that look good but are otherwise weightless and repetitive. Still, this is a solid sophomore effort from an ambitious filmmaker with an interesting vision. Botchii may not hit all of his marks, but he squeezes everything he can out his modest budget and two sturdy lead performances. And to his credit, he’s not afraid to take chances in the process.

VERDICT – 2.5 STARS

In the aftermath of a devastating forest fire, a cowboy who lost everything rediscovers what matters most in life. That’s a fitting summary of “Rebuilding”, the sophomore effort from writer-director Max Walker-Silverman. His latest film operates on the same quiet, delicate, and soulful wavelength as his debut feature, 2022’s sublime “A Love Song”. And in doing so, Walker-Silverman tells another heartfelt story that’s deeply rooted in the human experience.

I often find myself drawn to quiet, understated, and observant dramas from filmmakers with firmly human perspectives. “Rebuilding” is every bit of that. Led by a strikingly subtle Josh O’Connor lead performance, “Rebuilding” sits us down is a distinct setting and tells a rich character-centered story. But it’s the stillness, the patience, and the unvarnished honesty that sets it apart, bringing to mind the approaches of such classic auteurs as Robert Bresson and Vittorio De Sica.

Walker-Silverman sets his film in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, beginning with a sobering opening as his camera relays the aftermath of a devastating wildfire. Underneath the thick haze of smoke is a wasteland of ash with the occasional charred tree jaggedly pointing upward like a gnarled finger. It’s there that we meet Dusty Fraser (O’Connor), a cowboy who just lost his small family ranch in the blaze. Nearly all he has left are a few head of cattle which he is forced to sell at a local auction.

Through the scruffy and subdued O’Connor, we see the different sides of Dusty, both of which play a significant role in the story. Dusty is a man of dignity who takes pride in being a rancher as his dad was before him. So losing it all has a crushing impact. But he’s also a quiet, reticent man. And while we can see the defeated look in his eyes, he keeps is emotions pent up within him. It’s an impressive performance from O’Connor who speaks volumes, often without uttering a word.

In the midst of his despair, Dusty’s road to finding hope begins when he rekindles his relationship with his ex-wife Ruby (Meghann Fahy) and their daughter Callie Rose (Lily LaTorre). The movie’s title certainly speaks to survivors rebuilding after such a destructive disaster. But at its core, it’s Dusty rebuilding his relationship with Ruby and Callie Rose that forms the beating heart of the story. It’s here that Walker-Silverman’s patience pays the biggest dividends. He smartly lets their relationships breathe, allowing ample room for reconnection and healing.

Another impactful turn in Dusty’s journey comes when he relocates to a small temporary FEMA camp on a desert plain resting between the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Dusty moves into his cramped trailer and over time begins connecting with the small group of displaced survivors taking shelter at the camp. Not only does he find a new sense of community, but through them he discovers a new sense of purpose.

“Rebuilding” is full of small moments that leave big emotional impressions. Such as when Dusty and Callie Sue park outside a rural library to borrow the only free Wi-Fi in the area. Or when Dusty pays a visit to his beloved horse who is graciously being kept by a friend. Or nearly any time we see Amy Madigan as Ruby’s mom, Bess. She’s a gentle yet wise mother and grandmother who has a special affection for Dusty. Countless moments like these are woven into the very fabric of the film.

“Rebuilding” is a beautifully measured slice-of-life drama that moves with a quiet, heartfelt rhythm which is perfectly suited for the story it tells. The wildly versatile O’Connor gives one of his best performances while being surrounded by a well-tuned supporting cast. But Walker-Silverman drives it all, using a form of minimalism that relies on meditative pacing and a unique visual language. Through it he’s able to tell an affecting and resonating story of resilience and self-discovery. It’s impossible not to be moved.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS