Maybe it’s just me, but movies like “War Machine” don’t seem to come around very often these days. There has never been a notable shortage of genre films in movie theaters, direct to video store shelves, and now via streaming. But rarely are we treated to movies from the cool military sci-fi sub-genre. I’m talking about movies in the vein of “Predator”, “Starship Troopers”, or even the lesser yet underappreciated “Battle: Los Angeles”.

Enter “War Machine”, an unashamed and unapologetic slice of military sci-fi that openly wears its influences like badges of honor. The film routinely calls back to great movies that inspired it including the aforementioned “Predator”, James Cameron’s “Aliens”, and even “Top Gun”. Director Patrick Hughes keenly and confidently corrals all of these inspirations, fusing them together with visceral action sequences and jaw-dropping set pieces.

Alan Ritchson plays a soldier who has entered the Army’s Ranger Assessment Selection Program. It’s eight weeks of arduous testing, ending with a handpicked chosen few joining the ranks of the elite Army Rangers. Designated with the number 81, becoming a Ranger has a deeply personal meaning for him. While serving in Kandahar, Afghanistan, 81 witnessed his kid brother die during a Taliban attack. Guiltridden over his inability to save his brother, 81 sets out to keep their pledge to become Rangers.

Despite the concerns of his superior officers Sheridan (Dennis Quaid) and Torres (Esai Morales), 81 makes it to the final challenge, which is a recon and rescue simulation. He and his team are dropped high in the Rocky Mountains by two Blackhawks and given 24 hours to complete their mission. If they cross the finish line in time, they will be given their Ranger scroll. 81 reluctantly takes the role of team leader and leads the soldiers towards their objective.

Their military exercise turns into a fight for survival after the squad stumbles upon a strange metal wreckage. Believing it to be part of their mission, the team investigates. But in the process they awaken a massive mechanized monstrosity that is the size of a building and is armed to the teeth with out-of-this-world weaponry. Suddenly the soldiers find themselves under attack and hunted by the killer mech with ineffective weapons, jammed comms, and compasses going haywire.

Hughes (who co-wrote the script with James Beaufort) keeps the story simple, focusing most on the team’s fight for survival. You can’t miss the steady flow of familiar tropes. But Hughes cleverly integrates them rather than rely on them. And he smartly avoids bogging his movie down in some otherworldly backstory. Instead he leaves much of the mech, its origins, and its motivations a mystery. Also, it maintains a needed human element, mostly through 81’s emotional struggles with lingering trauma.

Ultimately it’s the spectacular action that drives “War Machine”. It’s intense, visually astounding, and at times shockingly gory. The effects are an impressive mix of digital and practical, while New Zealand and Australia (filling in for the Colorado Rockies) provide a perfectly rugged setting that’s both breathtaking and treacherous. As for Ritchson, he more than holds his own. He obviously has the imposing build and raw physicality. But he commits to every scene, whether he’s squaring off against a galactic threat or quietly wrestling with painful memories.

Those hoping for a more fleshed-out science-fiction deep dive might leave “War Machine” disappointed. It’s only at the very end that we get any significant world-building. But thats not this movie’s focus. Hughes wants to put us in the soldiers’ shoes as they navigate fear, isolation, and the unknown while facing overwhelming odds. Admittedly it does leave us with several questions along the way. And we get more cornball one-liners than answers. But I never felt shortchanged, narratively or cinematically. I was having too much fun, glued to my seat and anxious to see what Hughes was going to hit us with next.

VERDICT – 4 STARS

As a kid from the 1980s, I have an undeniable soft spot for meathead action movies and buddy comedies. The 80s gave us plenty of them, sometimes in a single film. From more highly regarded features like “Lethal Weapon”, “48 Hours”, and “Midnight Run” to more forgotten flicks like “Tango & Cash”, “Red Heat”, and “The Last Boy Scout”. I admit, their quality may vary. But they still entertain me some forty years later.

Perhaps that’s why I’m a little lenient when it comes to “The Wrecking Crew”, an unabashed throwback to those 80s bangers and semi-bangers. It’s a movie littered with action-comedy clichés, silly set pieces, and generic plot twists. But it gets by on the charm and playful energy of its two beefcake leads, Jason Momoa and Dave Bautista. And it helps that the movie never takes itself too seriously.

With its big stars and genre appeal, “The Wrecking Crew” seems custom-made for the big screen. Yet it released straight to streaming, exclusively on Prime Video. It comes from director Ángel Manuel Soto (“Blue Beetle”) and screenwriter Jonathan Tropper (the upcoming “Star Wars: Starfighter”). Together they make a bombastic and proudly goofy cocktail that should be a money-maker for the streaming platform.

The premise is a simple one. After their father, a Hawaiian private investigator named Walter Hale (Brian Keaulana), is killed in a suspicious hit and run, two estranged half-brothers reluctantly reunite to determine whether it was an accident or if he was murdered. James (Bautista) is a Navy SEAL and a dedicated family man still living in Hawaii. Johnny (Momoa) is a hard-drinking and recently suspended police detective in Oklahoma.

Johnny returns home to Honolulu where he immediately clashes with James. The two haven’t spoken in ten years and old family wounds instantly begin to fester. But they’re forced to work together after evidence points to their father being targeted. The film becomes two bickering brothers working through old baggage while piecing together the mystery of Walter’s death. And of course the more they snoop, the more they become targets.

Several side characters fill out the story with varying degrees of success. Stephen Root pops up as an unhelpful police sergeant. Jacob Batalon gets another annoying foul-mouthed sidekick role. And Temuera Morrison plays the state’s Governor and an uncle to the brothers. But it’s the ladies who fare best. Roimata Fox is great as James’ firm and straight-shooting wife. Equally good is Morena Baccarin as Johnny’s fed-up girlfriend.

Much of the fun comes with the silly, over-the-top action. The fight scenes are particularly good as Bautista and Momoa are no strangers to roughhousing. There are also a couple of wild set pieces as the brothers fight off local crime syndicates and even the Yakuza. At the same time, some of the crazier action scenes are overly digitalized to the point of being obvious and gaudy.

There’s not much in “The Wrecking Crew” that will catch you by surprise. The story follows a fairly predictable trajectory, right down to the big baddie and how everything ultimately plays out. But Momoa and Bautista bring enough of their charisma and chemistry to make this by-the-book buddy action-comedy click. They even tease a possible second adventure which I would be onboard for. So in that regard, I guess this movie does its job.

VERDICT – 3 STARS

Emerald Fennell follows the empty shock value and cheap psychosexual spectacle of her previous film, “Saltburn” with an overheated and underdeveloped reimagining of a literary classic. Fennell’s new spin on “Wuthering Heights” is more in love with itself than with anything Emily Brontë put to page in her highly regarded 1847 novel. Sadly, it results in a surprisingly hollow and frustratingly scattershot exercise in overindulgence.

Fennell significantly reshapes Brontë’s story in a number of peculiar ways. So fans of the novel shouldn’t go in expecting a faithful adaptation. It starts with Fennell’s decision to transform the book’s dark, haunting, gothic tale into a soapy, sexually charged, period romance. Pseudo-eroticism is more of a focus than the raw dysfunction that Brontë explored. Also, any hint of the supernatural is erased. And main characters undergo jarring dramatic changes, often to fit within the film’s bawdy vision.

For the entirety of it unnecessarily long running time, Fennell’s story remains fixated on the relationship between Catherine (Margot Robbie) and Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi), essentially cutting out the entire second half of the novel. As a child, Catherine lived with her alcoholic and cartoonishly abusive father (Martin Clunes) in the family’s remote estate on the Yorkshire Moors. One day her father brings home an orphan boy he rescued from the street. The bossy and possessive Catherine names him Heathcliff and treats him as her pet. But over time the two children develop a close yet vaguely defined relationship.

From there the film lurches forward several years with Catherine and Heathcliff now young adults yet still playfully cavorting around the neglected estate like children. That is until Catherine lays eyes on their wealthy new neighbors, the Lintons. With her father having gambled away the family’s fortune, Catherine maneuvers herself into the arms of Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif). When he overhears her plans to marry Edgar, a heartbroken Heathcliff rides away and doesn’t return.

More years pass. Catherine is now married to Edgar and living a life of luxury at the Linton’s villa. But everything changes when Heathcliff suddenly returns, now mysteriously rich and more dapper than ever. Suddenly the emotions she never expressed come rushing to the surface and the two begin a torrid affair. But outside of rampant sex, Catherine refuses to commit to Heathcliff due to her marriage to Edgar and the child they’re expecting which she keeps a secret.

The rest of the story erratically bops from point to point, force-feeding us a wild array of emotions that always feel more contrived than organic. Following along is never easy because there’s never a steady measurement of passing time. Worse are the gaps in the story that lead to bizarre character shifts with little buildup, as well as undercooked relationships that never make sense. This is especially true for the increasingly mopey second half.

But while she leaves her characters and her stories begging for more attention, Fennell finds the time to inject her kinky fascinations, often to the detriment of her movie. Pointlessly crude flourishes are thrown in, seemingly to jolt the audience more than anything else. Meanwhile character work gets back-burnered to satisfy some lusty appetite. Take Edgar conveniently vanishing without a mention so that Catherine and Heathcliff can repeatedly and openly hook-up. As for Robbie and Elordi, they’re mostly served up as rain-soaked eye-candy, doing their best with what they’re given.

Whatever the goal, it’s hard to see 2026’s “Wuthering Heights” pleasing longtime fans of the novel or drawing new fans to it. But even if you take away its literary inspiration, Emerald Fennell’s latest even fails as a simple melodrama. The choppy storytelling impacts everything, including the characters who are left shuffling through ambiguity and absurdity. This despite the efforts of Robbie and Elordi, and great supporting turns from Alison Oliver and Hong Chau.

On a positive note, “Wuthering Heights” isn’t as galling or insufferable as “Saltburn”. And while its attempts at eroticism often feel silly and performative, the movie is visually sumptuous in ways that highlight Fennell’s impressive technical savvy. But overall it does nothing to recreate the excitement we felt with her debut film, “Promising Young Woman”. Instead it demonstrates a concerning trend where her expression is overwhelmed by excess.

VERDICT – 2 STARS

In recent years the first quarter of the movie calendar has become a favorite time to release a slew of new horror movies. Among this year’s batch is “Whistle”, the latest film from director Corin Hardy and his first since 2018’s “The Nun”. It’s a movie that’s full of potential and ripe with the kind of substance that fan’s of the horror genre look for and relish. Sadly it squanders most of that potential in several frustrating ways.

“Whistle” is written for the screen by Owen Egerton who is adapting his own short story. He pens a tale that is built upon a clever idea but is surrounded with a copy-and-paste horror veneer. The generic high‑school milieu, its coming‑of‑age shallowness, one of the most preposterous character angles I’ve seen in years – it all keeps “Whistle” from being scary, interesting, original, or at times even logical.

“Whistle” opens with a prologue where Pellington High School’s star basketball player Mason Raymore (Stephen Kalyn) is incinerated in the locker room shower after being chased by a terrifying burning figure. It’s a horrific death which is witnessed by several of Mason’s teammates. Hardy uses it to set the table and to prime his audience for what’s to come….sort of.

Six months later me meet Chrys (Dafne Keen), a quiet and reserved teen who just moved to town after a life-changing tragedy. On her first day at Pellington High her cousin Rel (Sky Yang) introduces her to his friends, Grace (Ali Skovbye), Dean (Jhaleil Swaby), and Ellie (Sophie Nelisse). The don’t remotely seem like the kind of kids who would hang out together, but they fit the common horror movie archetypes – the nerd, the blond hottie, the brain-dead jock, and the smart girl.

Everyone at school seems to have moved right on from the Mason incident. So much so that no one even thought to clean out his old locker, which is assigned to Chrys. Inside of it Chrys finds an ornate Aztecan whistle which her teacher, Mr. Craven (Nick Frost) immediately takes to study. But the whistle find its way back to the teens who can’t resist blowing it, unleashing an ancient evil entity that curses them all to death.

Basically here is how the curse works. Everyone within the piercing earshot of its sound are cursed with facing whatever future death fate has chosen for them. After they “summon” the death, it stalks them, often ending in some gloriously gruesome fashion. Thoughts of “Final Destination” are unavoidable. But Hardy and Egerton have a few of their own cards to play. Regrettably not all of them work.

While “Whistle” is plagued by several disappointing choices, its most outrageous one comes with the character Noah (Percy Hynes White), a psychotic drug-dealing youth pastor who pops up at the most random times. He’s an utterly weightless inclusion who adds nothing to the movie other than a convenient antagonist. He would be easy to laugh off if not for the decision to wedge him into the film’s climactic ending.

Sadly “Whistle” is yet another trite chiller about a generic batch of kids who pay the consequences for their own foolish curiosity. Despite the film’s efforts, the underdeveloped and weakly defined characters never register beyond surface level. So we barely feel a thing when they are offed in an array of creatively gory ways. And we feel even less during the ludicrous, scare-free big finish and the franchise-teasing mid-credits scene. No thanks. I think one blow of the whistle was enough for me.

VERDICT – 1.5 STARS

The new movie year kicks off with an unexpectedly moving feature that puts a thoughtful spin on the well-travelled zombie subgenre. Its story is no less grim, and the movie doesn’t fully forsake its horror roots. But the narrative focus is more intimate, and the emotions that surface come from a place of raw authenticity that pack a surprising punch. Those are the things that make “We Bury the Dead” more than your standard zombie fare.

“We Bury the Dead” comes from Australian writer-director Zak Hilditch whose past credits include the overlooked and underappreciated “1922” (if you haven’t seen it, add it to your Netflix queue). His latest sees him once again doing new and interesting things within an established genre. He finds the right star in Daisy Ridley who latches onto her character’s deeper emotions and conveys them with sensitivity and control. Her performance is the linchpin.

The film’s originality begins in Hilditch’s world-building. We learn that an estimated 500,000 people have been killed in Tasmania after the United States military accidental deploys an experimental weapon just off the coast. It released an electromagnetic pulse that resulted in the immediate neural failure of all living things on the island. With its capital city Hobart in flames and entire populations dead, the global community reaches out to assist in any way possible.

Among those volunteering to help is Ava (Ridley), a physical therapist who has joined a body retrieval unit. She’s partnered with the brash yet efficient Clay (Brenton Thwaites) and tasked with searching homes and bringing out the bodies of the dead to be identified. It’s grisly work and what they find ranges from heartbreaking to all-out unsettling. But what’s most alarming is a warning issued by the general in charge. He tells the volunteers that a small number of the dead are coming back “online” (aka reanimating).

The “whys“ and “hows” are never really explained, mainly because everyone at ground zero is in dark too. All that’s known is that the living dead start docile and slow-moving. But the longer they remain ‘alive’ the more aggressive they get. For that reason, the volunteers are instructed to inform their military escort who goes in and “respectfully” shoots the undead in the head. While they act differently, one thing the undead all share is the creepy way they grind their teeth. It makes an unnerving sound akin to eating glass. That sound alone leads to some truly chilling encounters.

As Ava aides this global effort, we learn its personal calamity that brought her to Tasmania. Her husband Mitch (Matt Whelan) was on a work retreat at a resort in the southern part of the island when the detonation occurred. Devastated, Ava is determined to find him, either dead or reanimated. But it’s a dangerous 200-mile trek through restricted areas with no military support. And of course there are numerous threats, both living and undead.

Ava’s journey springs from a compelling premise that plunges the audience into a bleak and forbidding world. There’s no deadly infection or fighting undead hordes. In fact, the “z” word is never once uttered. Yet there is an ever-present sense of danger as Ava is ushered from one place to the next. Despite its modest budget, Hilditch develops and maintains an impressive sense of scale. So much so that I wish he had explored more of his world and better defined its rules.

But at its thematic core, “We Bury the Dead” tells a thoughtful story about navigating grief and finding closure. The “horror” element of the movie is more of a backdrop that propels Ava into her own personal purgatory. Hilditch maintains a good grasp of his material, balancing his rich themes with his obvious love for genre. And while his world can feel too sparse, the story’s human element always finds its way to the surface. And that’s what sets the film apart from its genre counterparts.

VERDICT – 3.5 STARS

Despite making striking and subversive indies, trippy star-driven science-fiction, and a massive franchise blockbuster, writer-director Rian Johnson has found his comfort zone in the cinematic world of whodunits. His 2019 film “Knives Out” was a surprise hit, as was his 2022 sequel, “Glass Onion”. Now he’s back with a third mystery, “Wake Up Dead Man”, and it just might be the best of the bunch.

Written and directed by Johnson, “Wake Up Dead Man” follows the same basic blueprint as its predecessors. There’s a murder, an unsolvable mystery, an all-star lineup of suspects, and the return of the charismatic super sleuth, Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig). His latest case takes him to the sleepy little town of Chimney Rock in upstate New York where a controversial priest has been murdered in the middle of his church’s Good Friday service. It thrusts us and our famed detective into a religious setting that Johnson explores with earnest curiosity.

Josh O’Connor continues his remarkable year playing Rev. Jud Duplenticy, a young priest who is reassigned to a new parish after punching out one of his deacons. He’s sent to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude in Chimney Rock to assist the polarizing Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin). Rev. Jud has went from a boxer from the streets to a faithful and driven young priest. But the vain and domineering Monsignor Wicks sees Rev. Jud as a threat to his authority, setting up some early tension with lasting effects.

Making the noble Rev. Jud’s new position even more challenging is the church’s congregation – a small group of regulars who are notably bitter, self-absorbed, and fiercely loyal to Wicks. There’s the town doctor (Jeremy Renner) whose wife recently left him; a smart yet resentful attorney (Kerry Washington); a failed politician turned wannabe YouTuber (Daryl McCormack); a former cellist (Cailee Spaeny) now struggling with a crippling illness; and a once popular sci-fi writer (Andrew Scott) whose book sales have tanked.

Other significant players include Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close), Wicks’ right-hand church lady who handles the bookkeeping, plays the organ, launders the vestments, and so on. And then there is Samson Holt (Thomas Haddon Church), the church’s longtime groundskeeper who has a thing for Martha. All languish in their own personal states of misery which is only made worse by the fear-wielding Wicks.

As he’s done before, Johnson does a fine job defining his characters. While some could use a tad more depth, Johnson sets them up nicely for the story’s key event – the murder of Monsignor Wicks. It happens during the church’s Good Friday service with all of the above players in attendance. With so many suspects and no plausible explanation, the case proves to be more than the town’s police chief, Geraldine Scott (Mila Kunis) can handle.

Enter private detective Benoit Blanc, with his exaggerated Southern drawl, blaring panache, and a haughty cynicism towards religion that he quickly makes known. He waltzes in with a blasé air of case-solving self-assurance. But he’s brought down to earth with a murder that instantly leaves him stumped. Blanc’s rationalism and Rev. Jud’s spirituality leads to an amusing partnership. Johnson’s script turns the skeptic and the disciple into a Holmes and Watson of sorts, at least until the mystery takes a ‘miraculous’ turn.

As it all unfolds, Johnson keeps us routinely off balance with a steady wave of new clues, shaky alibis, and surprising revelations. There’s a mischievousness in Johnson’s storytelling which leads to some of the film’s funniest moments. But he also offers an even-handed assessment of fanaticism versus faith from a perspective that neither proselytizes nor condemns. And all through another cadre of colorful characters who feel right at home in Johnson’s latest and possible best Knives Out to date.

VERDICT – 4 STARS