Film Buff Musings

A title like The Earth Dies Screaming sets expectations for something cataclysmic, a world gasping its last in fire and ruin. Terence Fisher, here more interested in creeping inevitability than grand theatrics, takes a quieter route. The world doesn’t end with a bang, or even a whimper—it just stops mid-sentence. People crumple where they stand, as if switched off. No wreckage, no carnage, just an eerie vacancy, as if humanity was an idea that never quite took. Jeff Nolan (Willard Parker), American, aviator, stiff as a tuning fork, arrives in a British village where the only signs of life are the things that shouldn’t be moving. The TV and radio offer nothing but the sound of nobody answering. A few stragglers drift in—one from a military bunker, one from a hospital oxygen room, all still breathing because they weren’t sharing the same poisoned air as the rest of the world. Whether lucky or simply overlooked by whatever did this is an open question. Clocking in at just over an hour, the film understands economy. No excess, no wasted movements, just a cool, clean setup and a slow, deliberate unraveling. The invaders—because of course, there are invaders—resemble department store mannequins given a secondhand malevolence, blank-faced sentinels of whatever force took humanity out of the equation. They don’t run, they don’t chase, they simply appear where they shouldn’t be, moving in a way that suggests efficiency rather than intent. The film isn’t frightening so much as it is patient, treating its apocalypse as something that already happened rather than something unfolding before us. It doesn’t reach for grander meaning or try to punch above its weight. It simply moves forward with the quiet confidence of a story that knows exactly how much to show and when to step aside. A relic, sure, but a pristine one—untouched, waiting to be found.

The star-studded disaster epic—that mid-’70s genre with the moral urgency of a boat show—peaked somewhere between The Towering Inferno and a promotional tie-in with emergency kits. Earthquake came barreling in with Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, George Kennedy, and enough minor celebrities to populate a casting call for a regional game show. What it lacked in drama, it made up for in headshots. Briefly. You get the usual parade: a scrappy seismologist flailing his arms at the impending collapse, a troubled marriage or two, a child in peril, and the faint hope that someone in a blazer will Look Very Concerned before a freeway folds in half. The problem isn’t just that the formula’s showing; it’s that the formula is doing all the talking. Everyone else looks vaguely bored to be alive. Walter Matthau—credited as “Walter Matuschanskayasky,” presumably out of self-preservation—sits motionless in a bar, wearing a curly black wig and a velvet hat, sipping bourbon while the building disassembles itself around him. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. He simply resists the laws of tension with sheer inertia. Eventually, Los Angeles gives out. Skyscrapers crumble, hillsides drop, roads twist into modern sculpture. The destruction is the film’s only source of conviction, and when the models start toppling, there’s something admirably mechanical about it. No mood, no irony, just crumbling buildings doing what they were paid to do. Everything else—dialogue, pacing, human behavior—feels reverse-engineered from a studio memo titled “Things Audiences Respond To.” The characters aren’t people so much as warning labels. The emotional arcs operate on rotary phone delay. Watching it is like doing laundry in real time: mildly hypnotic, then briefly chaotic, then back to waiting. It’s a film where structure gives way—literally and narratively—and the resulting mess is only occasionally entertaining. A geological morality play stuffed with polyester, cardboard, and municipal signage. By the end, the movie hasn’t earned much, but it certainly earns an ending.

James Dean doesn’t just play Caleb Trask—he flays him open. Every anguished grimace, every tangled twitch of emotion, an entire nervous system laid bare for the camera. It’s a performance that doesn’t so much demand attention as swallow it whole. But even a talent like Dean needs the right material, and Steinbeck’s tale of love withheld and wounds inherited provides plenty. Caleb is a boy wired for failure, or so he’s been told. Adam Trask (Raymond Massey), his father, a righteous man of the worst kind—unshakable, blind to his own faults—sees only one son worth loving, and it isn’t Caleb. That role belongs to Aron (Richard Davalos), the golden boy, the embodiment of every virtue Adam values. Caleb, by contrast, is restless, searching, half-feral in his attempts to please a father who meets every effort with cold detachment. Maybe it’s a fundamental difference in their natures. Maybe it’s something deeper. Maybe it’s their mother. Because she isn’t dead, as Caleb was told. She’s alive, and when he finds her, she isn’t the ghost he imagined—she’s a businesswoman, tough, bitter, hardened to the world. Jo Van Fleet plays her like a woman who’s spent a lifetime shrugging off sentiment, and when Caleb comes looking for something, anything, to fill the hollow space inside him, she offers money. A transaction, not affection, but in its own way, it’s more than he’s ever gotten from Adam. He takes the cash, makes a bet on green bean futures, and hopes, for once, to be worth something in his father’s eyes. Elia Kazan directs like he’s peeling back layers of flesh, exposing raw, pulsing emotion underneath. The story might be old as Cain and Abel, but here, it bleeds.

By 1967, the Elvis movie formula had grown as faded as the Technicolor tans that adorned its stars. Presley, still coasting on charm more than narrative utility, plays a Navy frogman who moonlights as a nightclub singer—because of course he does. The plot, such as it is, involves a quest to recover sunken treasure off the California coast, which allows for extended underwater sequences that mistake flippers for excitement. Thunderball already proved how numbing long stretches of undersea action can be, but this film doesn’t so much learn from the lesson as recycle it with cheaper gear. As usual, the storyline exists mostly to string together songs, outfits, and the occasional dance number. Presley looks every bit the rock-and-roll mannequin in his sharply pressed military garb, though it’s clear the costume department was more invested than the screenwriters. His brief naval career feels like a prop, quickly abandoned for nightclub crooning and flirty banter. Even by the standards of Elvis’s filmography, the plot is gossamer-thin—too slight for drama, too sluggish for farce. There are a few amusements. Elsa Lanchester nearly steals the show in a single scene as a daffy yoga instructor. Also, the film’s Day-Glo mid-’60s palette offers just enough retro polish to stay watchable. But the pacing is flat, the comedy uninspired, and the songs mostly forgettable. Easy Come, Easy Go is neither his worst nor his weirdest, but it’s stuck in that limbo where even the camp value doesn’t quite take. Chalk this up as a dull glint in a career that was already knee-deep in bad costume jewelry.

Rodney Dangerfield doesn’t need a script. Give him a sidewalk, a cigar, maybe a couple of wise guys to bounce insults off of, and you’ve got comedy gold. Easy Money knows this—kind of. It hands him a high-concept plot, lets him chew on it for a while, and then occasionally gets in its own way. But when it works, when Dangerfield is allowed to roam free, firing off one-liners like a man who’s never known a moment of self-restraint, it’s everything you’d want from a Rodney Dangerfield vehicle. Monty Capuletti (Dangerfield), a child portrait photographer with the warmth of a bookie and the dietary habits of a raccoon, is perfectly content in his vices. Gambling, drinking, smoking, junk food—it’s a life of excess, but one that suits him. His wife, Rose (Candice Azzara), loves him for who he is, but her mother, Kathleen (Geraldine Fitzgerald), a wealthy socialite with the patience of a guillotine, sees him as a human grease stain. When she dies, her will delivers the ultimate insult: Monty will inherit $10 million if he can give up all his bad habits for a full year. Suddenly, sobriety is the only thing standing between him and a fortune. As a premise, it’s solid enough. As a structured film, it’s a little shakier. The meat of the story—Monty white-knuckling his way through a life without vices—is amusing, but the real joy is in the detours: Dangerfield hurling insults at strangers, making kids laugh with wildly inappropriate remarks, or just looking vaguely uncomfortable in a tux. The subplot involving Monty’s newlywed daughter (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and her slimy husband (Taylor Negron) drags the film into weirdly unfunny territory, but even that can’t sink it. The jokes that land, land hard, and if Easy Money never quite lives up to its star, it at least knows enough to let him run the show.

Whoopi Goldberg plays a Knicks superfan so entrenched in the team’s orbit that local radio puts her straight on-air and the arena staff know her voice from the upper deck. She heckles with confidence, rattles off lineups like she’s reading scripture, and insists—loudly—that she could do a better job than the coaches on the floor. Then, on a whim, the team’s new owner (Frank Langella) hands her the job. It’s the kind of setup that seems built for a punchline, but the film skips it entirely. Eddie steps into the role like she’s been doing it offscreen for years—calling plays, managing egos, and giving locker room speeches without missing a beat. Goldberg keeps things moving, but the material rarely meets her halfway. She’s mostly given motivational slogans and plot glue. There are a few good lines scattered through the noise, but most of the dialogue just marks time between narrative checkpoints. The team improves. The fans come around. A late-game subplot about the Knicks being relocated to the Midwest vaguely nods at Major League, though without the teeth. The ending wraps with a tribute to civic pride and community—earnest, expected, and not especially stirring. Eddie starts with a premise that could have gone loud and weird but instead retreats to the safety of the formula. It’s not a disaster. Just a missed opportunity, played straight.

The premise is strange enough to stay buoyant, the humor lands where it should, and the aesthetic—a pastel-trimmed fairy tale with a goth heart—goes down easy. But for a film so enchanted with misfits, Edward Scissorhands plays it oddly safe, too cautious to let its themes cut deep. Its milquetoast conclusion wraps everything in an easy melancholy that feels more like an obligation than an organic end to its fable, and its central romance, meant to be tender and tragic, barely makes it past decorative. Johnny Depp plays Edward, a trembling creation of soft-spoken sadness and deadly appendages—part Frankenstein’s monster, part bewildered stray, his expression shifting between wounded animal and lost child. He lives alone in a decaying castle, its existence hanging over the nearby suburb like a forgotten dream. Enter Peg Boggs (Dianne Wiest), an Avon lady so relentlessly kind that when no one in town buys her wares, she takes her pitch to the haunted mansion on the hill. One look at Edward—pale, scarred, shears for hands—and her instinct isn’t to run but to bring him home. Her beer-sipping husband (Alan Arkin) barely reacts. It’s clearly not the first time he’s had to adjust to one of Peg’s whims. At first, Edward is a marvel—his hedge-trimming, hair-cutting, ice-sculpting genius makes him a suburban celebrity. The pastel mob embraces him as a curiosity, an amusement. But mobs change their minds. All it takes is a misunderstanding, a whiff of scandal, and the whole town turns. Winona Ryder’s Kim, the love interest, moves from terrified to infatuated without much of a middle ground, and their connection never feels earned. Visually, Edward Scissorhands is Tim Burton at his best—gothic spires against candy-colored conformity. Narratively, it hesitates where it should commit. It’s whimsical, fun, frequently moving, but also strangely weightless.

Another limp outing from Bob Hope’s twilight period, Eight on the Lam is the sort of “family comedy” that treats plausibility like a napkin to be crumpled and tossed. He waits a couple of weeks for a rightful owner to emerge, but when none do, his kids and romantic interest Ellie (Shirley Eaton) nudge him into spending it. He obliges—on a new car, a sparkly ring, and the sort of sensible splurges a middle-aged single dad might dream up. The film is feathered with comic support—some of it fouler than funny. Phyllis Diller, as the housekeeper, careens through the film with her trademark wild hair and caffeinated zaniness, but the gags are more miss than hit—stranded somewhere between screwball and head-scratch. Jonathan Winters fares better in a dual role as a bumbling detective and, inexplicably, his own mother, playing both with a straight-faced loopiness that momentarily livens the otherwise slack proceedings. The film is content to dawdle, its pacing dulled by its reluctance to commit to either real satire or pure lunacy. The central idea—what happens when a man of modest means toys with sudden wealth—never deepens beyond a few predictable hijinks and some light moralizing. Hope, once the gold standard of quip-slingers, looks a touch weary here, like a man who’s been doing this routine long enough to know when it isn’t quite clicking. The movie is harmless but also shapeless, playing like a sitcom extended past its expiration. A madcap caper that neglected to pack the laughs.

A polished, crowd-pleasing ode to rodeo legend Lane Frost, directed by Rocky’s John G. Avildsen, and wrapped in the kind of nostalgic varnish that keeps the dust from ever really settling. Luke Perry, looking more GQ than Grit, gives a respectable performance as Lane, a rider who made the sport his birthright, following in the boots of his father Clyde (James Rebhorn). The film explains the title up front—eight seconds is the length of a full bull ride—and then spends the rest of its runtime circling the same thematic corral: ambition, masculinity, and the delicate ego of a man caught between fame and fidelity. The rodeo scenes are crisply shot, the dust flies convincingly, and the audience this was made for—those already drawn to the arena—will find it comfortably affirming. But outside the ring, the drama leans hard into Lane’s strained marriage to Kellie (Cynthia Geary), returning again and again to his jealousy and unease, which the film treats as both a flaw and a byproduct of his singular focus. There’s a quick detour involving a then-unknown Renée Zellweger, and an implied double standard, but it’s brushed aside as quickly as it arrives. Ultimately, 8 Seconds functions less as an exposé of rodeo life and more as a respectful curtain call. The ending, tragic and clean, reinforces the film’s sentimental priorities. It’s respectful, engaging, and entirely uncomplicated—which might explain why it leaves only a light impression once the bull bucks and the dust settles.

What a quietly moving little film. Anne Bancroft plays Helene Hanff, a New York writer with an insatiable appetite for rare British books. She finds, through her contacts, a bookshop in London that carries many of her requests and strikes up a correspondence with Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins), the shop’s reserved and meticulous fulfillment manager. It begins as a polite exchange of invoices, but it gradually evolves into a transatlantic friendship. This film is a love letter to the lost art of epistolary relationships, when connection required thought, effort, and waiting for the mail. Bancroft, all sharp wit and warmth, gives Helene the kind of charisma that makes you want to sit across from her at a cluttered café table and listen to her talk about her beloved books. Hopkins, as Frank, counterbalances her with a quiet dignity, playing a man whose emotional reserve is chipped away letter by letter. Their performances aren’t showy—the restraint is the point. This is a film about small gestures and quiet connections and how relationships can grow in the margins of life. And yet, there are moments where the film can’t quite stay out of its own way. It lingers a bit too long on broad reflections about changing times and the passing of eras—fine sentiments, but they dilute the intimacy of the central story. Still, this is a movie difficult to resist. Ultimately, this is a gentle, nostalgic film that reminds us how even the smallest relationships can leave enduring and meaningful marks on our lives.

A scathing, painfully familiar comedy about how quickly self-righteous adults and overachieving teenagers will torch each other for the pettiest scraps of power. Reese Witherspoon is perfect as Tracy Flick, the bright-eyed, vein-throbbing nightmare every high school deserves at least once: she wants to be student body president not because it matters, but because it’s one more gold star she can staple to her permanent record. Her civics teacher, Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick, radiating flop sweat and forced gravitas), would rather eat his own tie than watch Tracy win unopposed. His brilliant fix: convince the sweet but dim football star Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) to run, not realizing Paul’s sister Tammy will jump in too—mostly to avenge her stolen girlfriend and sabotage the whole circus from the inside. Payne doesn’t spare anyone. Every character is ridiculous in a way that’s too true to life to be comforting. Tracy’s ruthlessness is equal parts raw ambition and the lonely itch that dogs every overachiever when the applause runs out. Jim is so smugly certain he’s the last moral grown-up in the building that he doesn’t notice he’s floundering in the same petty swamp as the kids he’s policing. Election turns what should be a forgettable high school vote—over and done by summer break—into a grim little diorama of American democracy: grudges, righteous tantrums, and people clawing each other to pieces for a prize no one wants once they’ve got it. Every gag tightens the knot on these people who think they’re better than the mess they’re making. Underneath the nastiness is an ugly truth: democracy sounds noble in textbooks; in practice, it’s Tracy Flick with a pen and a grudge. Still one of the most brutally honest political comedies ever made—and the only one blunt enough to admit it’s really just high school all the way down.

Will Ferrell stars as Buddy, one of Santa’s elves. Although he towers over his pint-sized peers and doesn’t have the nimble fingers his peers have to assemble plastic gadgets with any kind of efficiency, he has never questioned his place at the North Pole. That is, until one fateful day he learns the truth. Not only is the elf who raised him (a shrunken Bob Newhart) not his father at all, Buddy is—gasp!—a human. This revelation sends him on a quest to New York City to find his real father, who he learns is Walter Hobbs (James Caan), a cranky children’s book executive who, much to Buddy’s utter horror, is—even more gasp!—on the naughty list. What makes this film sparkle isn’t just its fun fish-out-of-water premise but Will Ferrell’s relentless commitment to it. He dives headfirst into the role, without even looking if he’s hurtling towards water or concrete, and his intensity pays off. Watching a fully grown man dressed as an over-enthusiastic elf spin through revolving doors like a six-year-old kid who lost their parental supervision, chug bottles of maple syrup, and scream “Santa? I know him!” when he hears that a Santa Claus will be at the mall. Anyway, Buddy eventually connects with his father, who has no idea what to make of him. Caan playing this role straight and behaving exactly as you would expect a no-nonsense business executive would when faced with a bizarre character like Buddy is equally as important as Ferrell’s performance itself—and this contrast generates so many laughs. The film more or less concludes in a way you would expect. If I was to gripe about one thing, it’s that ending comes across a little forced where Buddy and his girl-pal (Zooey Deschanel) inspire a skeptical New York crowd to believe in Santa by singing a Christmas carol. But that hardly matters when everything leading up to that is such a kooky, candy-coated delight. This is one holiday comedy that’s almost timeless and reminds us—perhaps against our better judgment—that a little optimism and a lot of maple syrup can go a long way.

Elizabethtown is the film that inadvertently gave us the term “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”—a phrase coined to describe Kirsten Dunst’s Claire, a relentlessly perky flight attendant with no discernible life of her own and a mystical knack for rescuing sad men from themselves. The archetype didn’t begin here—she’s wandered through decades of indie dramas and boy-centric coming-of-age tales—but this is the performance that drew the outline in permanent marker. It’s a shallow blueprint, and writers should know better, but it caught on for a reason: these characters can be a blast to watch. Dunst, for all the clichés the script throws her way, plays Claire with such breezy magnetism you almost forget she’s essentially a life coach in pigtails. The man in need of salvation is Drew Baylor (Orlando Bloom), a shoe designer whose radical new sneaker just cost his company nearly a billion dollars—not metaphorically, but the actual number. Fired, humiliated, and convinced he’s reached the end of the road, Drew rigs a stationary bike into a Rube Goldberg suicide machine, only to be interrupted by a phone call: his father has died. Now he’s flying to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, to retrieve the body and tie up the loose ends—one final errand before checking out for good. Enter Claire, all mile-high banter and precocious energy, practically air-dropped into the plot like a prescription. She flirts, she fixes, she makes him a mixtape. The film tosses out funny vignettes and the occasional snappy line—Crowe hasn’t lost his ear—but keeps floating toward meaning like a balloon with a slow leak. And then comes Susan Sarandon, delivering a memorial speech equal parts tap-dance (that is, a literal tap-dance) and grief fugue. At that point, you’re no longer sure if the film’s trying to move you or just lost in its own playlist. Drew finds himself, sort of. He smiles more, travels solo, looks inspired. That’s nice. But the audience is left with the stranger takeaway: if your life collapses, maybe a chipper stranger with a headset and encyclopedic knowledge of indie bands will show up and curate your spiritual rebirth. Bloom doesn’t help. He’s handsome, game, and utterly flavorless—less a character than a blank space waiting to be filled in. Still, for all its fuzziness, Elizabethtown has an easy glow. It plays like a well-produced music video with occasional interruptions for plot. You don’t walk away with much, but it goes down easy.

Burt Lancaster blazes as Elmer Gantry, a silver-tongued charlatan who stumbles upon what he believes to be the ultimate con: a traveling evangelical roadshow. Helmed by Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons)—whose saintly aura just barely disguises her sharp, pragmatic mind—the modest operation becomes a juggernaut. With Gantry’s outsized charisma, quicksilver wit, and a flair for fire-and-brimstone sermons that send docile crowds into near-ecstatic frenzies, he packs the tents night after night, the collection plates overflowing with donations. But success has its price. Their theatrical brand of religion provokes the wrath of conservative local church leaders, while Gantry’s own skeletons start rattling loudly in the closet. Chief among them is Lulu Bains (Shirley Jones), a prostitute from Gantry’s sordid past who reappears with a blackmail scheme, forcing him to reckon with the flimsy veneer of his moral duality. Jones, in a performance that shatters her girl-next-door image, is raw, bitter, and unforgettable—her Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress feeling very well deserved. Still, Lancaster dominates the film—winning an Oscar himself for Best Actor—who gives one of the finest performances of his legendary career, as a man of stunning contradictions: exploiting religion for personal gain yet unable himself to fully escape its spiritual pull. The film itself is as ambitious as its titular character. At 146 minutes, the narrative sprawls, and there were some moments I felt myself squirm a bit in my seat. But overall, this is a provocative drama that deftly explores the blurred line between sincerity and spectacle—and, sadly, it remains just as relevant today as it did the day it was released. Fantastic stuff.

Elvis Presley wasn’t a happy man, and Elvis isn’t a happy film. But it’s big, bright, and colorful—bursting with energy in true Baz Luhrmann style. Of course, the music is outstanding, as one would expect from a Presley biopic. Much of the film plays like a fever dream, swinging between the dark, dreary lows of Elvis’ life and the exciting, flashy highs of his career. Beyond its hyper-charged cinematography, dazzling set designs, and immersive soundtrack, this is a fairly straightforward biopic. For Elvis fans (but perhaps not obsessives), most of the details feel accurate, with only a few exceptions. The painstakingly recreated television appearances, concerts, and even his heart-wrenching final performance—delivered mere weeks before his death—are incredibly well executed. As someone familiar with many of these appearances, they strike me as being quite accurate. A unique narrative choice frames the story through the eyes of Elvis’ infamous manager, Col. Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), speaking from his deathbed in 1997. Parker’s perspective adds an interesting, though probably unnecessary, angle to the story, as the focus remains firmly on Elvis himself. It begins with his impoverished childhood in a predominantly Black shantytown and traces his meteoric rise as the first superstar of rock and roll, his military service, his Hollywood career, his triumphant 1968 comeback, and his slow, tragic decline from there. Austin Butler’s performance as The King embodies Elvis in a way that seems almost impossible to pull off—his portrayal captures not only the icon’s charisma but also the vulnerability and turmoil beneath the surface. Tom Hanks feels miscast as Parker, as he doesn’t seem a natural fit to portray a slimy, calculating figure, but he is reasonably convincing in the role. Luhrmann’s maximalist style might not suit everyone, but it amplifies the spectacle of Elvis’ life—the glitz, the heartbreak, the tragedy. This film about the myth and the man is extraordinary—both a celebration and a cautionary tale—and massively entertaining.

The Emerald Forest is part adventure, part parable—filmed with a grandeur that borders on reverent and a perspective that cuts deeper than expected. John Boorman takes what could have been a standard jungle rescue story and turns it into something more elegiac: a confrontation between industrial progress and the disappearing margins of the natural world. Powers Boothe plays Bill Markham, an American engineer overseeing the construction of a dam in the Amazon when his young son is taken by a remote tribe known as “The Invisible People.” Ten years pass. When Bill finally tracks him down, the boy—now Tomme (Charley Boorman)—has shed his past completely. He’s fluent in the language of the forest, both literal and cultural, and looks at his former life as a distant rumor. Boorman stages the jungle not as backdrop but as a complex organism—dense, vibrant, both beautiful and unforgiving. The film takes its time moving through this terrain, not rushing to the next set piece, but absorbing the rhythms and rituals of Tomme’s adopted world. It isn’t romanticized so much as observed, with a mix of awe and apprehension. Conflict arrives not just through nature but through other people—most brutally in the form of “The Fierce People,” a rival tribe depicted with terrifying intensity. Yet even these confrontations feel rooted in a logic outside Western frameworks. The film isn’t driven by action as much as by transformation. By the time Bill reconnects with his son, the dynamic has quietly reversed. Tomme isn’t a boy in need of saving—he’s someone who’s found a different kind of belonging. Bill, by contrast, looks like a man disoriented by the very civilization he once represented. There’s no ambiguity about what Boorman sees as the real threat. The dam, and the machinery it brings with it, is treated less like progress and more like an occupying force. What’s being erased isn’t just trees—it’s an entire way of seeing. Not everything lands cleanly. Some characters are thinly drawn, and the early portions of the film feel tentative. But when it finds its footing, The Emerald Forest builds into something striking: a mournful, vividly rendered meditation on what modernity consumes and what it leaves behind.

Aubrey Plaza dials down the deadpan and turns up the voltage in this tight, no-frills crime thriller about debt, desperation, and the kind of hustle that’s more survival instinct than ambition. She plays Emily, a former art student with a criminal record and a mountain of student loans—two strikes that guarantee every job interview ends before it starts. The opening scene lays it out: a corporate recruiter smirks through her answers, clearly wasting her time, until she calls him out mid-interview. It’s not a meltdown. It’s a controlled burn. And it sets the tone. Emily doesn’t plead for sympathy. She’s tired, boxed in, and looking for the nearest exit. Her day job is a dead-end delivery gig with no benefits, no protections, and just enough pay to keep her behind. When a co-worker connects her with a credit card fraud operation, she doesn’t hesitate. The buy-in is simple: use stolen cards to purchase high-end goods and flip them for cash. It’s illegal, yes. But it works. Fast. The operation is run by Youcef (Theo Rossi), who introduces Emily to the game with something like kindness. He offers her a way in, and she runs with it—faster, harder, and with less caution than he expects. The further she goes, the more obvious it becomes: Emily’s not playing anyone else’s game. She’s rewriting it. Ruthless when necessary, precise when possible, she adapts without flinching. Plaza is the reason the film works. She brings a coiled intensity to the role, dropping the sarcasm but keeping the glare. Her Emily doesn’t chase approval or redemption. She just wants to survive on her own terms, and she’s done asking permission. The film runs lean—smart, direct, and largely free of wasted motion. It falters slightly near the end, trading tension for resolution that doesn’t quite hit as hard as what came before. But until then, it holds. And Plaza holds it together.

A title like Eminent Domain sounds less like a movie than a housing dispute, but the premise could’ve punched holes in concrete. Donald Sutherland plays a trusted Polish official during the Cold War who discovers, in real time, how fast a system can turn on its own architects. One moment he’s shaking hands; the next, his wife’s been disappeared into a sanatorium, his daughter’s nowhere, and the party line has edited him out like a misprint. It ought to have played like a bureaucratic horror show, where the real monster is policy. But the film moves like someone’s holding the brakes—scene after scene of anxious pacing and blank-lit interiors that look borrowed from a public television drama about municipal budgets. Sutherland gives it more gravity than it deserves, floating through the wreckage with the grim expression of someone reading their own obituary in a state-run paper. You can feel the real story trying to elbow its way out—the script was based on actual events—but it keeps getting muffled by timid direction and TV-movie framing. Even the final stretch, which should sting, barely stirs the air. The ending isn’t abrupt, just quietly pointless. A government dismantles a man’s life, piece by piece, and somehow the film makes it feel like background noise. A true story told with the urgency of a filing cabinet.

Douglas McGrath’s Emma gets what most Austen adaptations miss—it plays the story straight but lets the humor rise to the surface. It’s clean, sharp, and surprisingly light on its feet for a film set in a world where every glance is a negotiation. Gwyneth Paltrow plays Emma Woodhouse, wealthy, self-assured, and convinced she’s good at controlling other people’s love lives. She isn’t. But that doesn’t stop her from treating matchmaking like a personal hobby, with Harriet Smith (Toni Collette) as her latest, most pliable project. What starts as social tinkering turns into a quiet mess, with Emma learning—slowly, reluctantly—that good intentions don’t always protect you from consequences. The film doesn’t inflate the material or try to dress it up as something more serious than it is. McGrath trims where he needs to, keeps the plot moving, and lets the dialogue do its job. The jokes don’t land with a thud—they slide in on rhythm and tone. Nothing’s overplayed. Paltrow gives Emma a measured arrogance that softens just enough by the end. She’s not out for redemption, exactly—she just grows up a little. Jeremy Northam, as Mr. Knightley, watches her from the sidelines like someone who knows how this story ends and is waiting for her to catch up. Their connection doesn’t spark—it builds. The film is easy to look at—gardens, candlelight, carefully chosen fabrics—but it doesn’t get lost in the scenery. The appeal is in how people interact within the prettiness, not the prettiness itself. McGrath knows this is a comedy of behavior, not pageantry. He also knows Austen doesn’t need to be updated to work. She just needs room to breathe. And here, she gets it.

The period at the end of the title isn’t merely a decoration—it’s a statement. Full stop. Here is Emma, as polished as a ballroom floor, dressed up in pastels and symmetrical frames, every collar pressed, every word enunciated. It’s Austen with a modern gloss: elegant, self-aware, and just a touch too curated. Anya Taylor-Joy’s Emma moves through the film like a chess master always five steps ahead—smart, entitled, and just mischievous enough to keep her watchable. She plots, she meddles, she flicks an amused glance at the less intelligent, all with the satisfaction of someone who’s never once questioned whether she’s right. Mia Goth’s Harriet Smith, wide-eyed and heartbreak-prone, is all flutter and good intentions, while Bill Nighy, as Emma’s perpetually anxious father, practically communicates in exasperated exhales. Then there’s Johnny Flynn’s Knightley—broody, tousled, more likely to look like he just stumbled out of a barn than a drawing room. A departure from the usual refined gentleman, but instead of sparking, his romance with Emma flickers—present, but faint. This Emma is playful, occasionally striking, and so careful with its aesthetics that the story itself struggles to move freely. The humor is there, but often posed rather than felt, as if the film is too aware of its need to be clever. It’s not lifeless—far from it—but it’s so preoccupied with its own prettiness that it forgets to loosen its stays and let a little spontaneity in. Austen’s sharpest work thrives on energy—conversation that leaps, emotions that sneak up before anyone can smooth them down. This one waltzes instead of running, pauses instead of pouncing. Beautifully crafted and enjoyable in parts, but more ornamental than electric.

It’s not that a movie about emojis couldn’t work. There’s a real premise to be mined—satire, maybe, or a sly commentary on digital life and the ways we flatten emotion into symbols. Even a barrage of gleeful absurdity would’ve been something. But The Emoji Movie isn’t interested in any of that. It’s not interested in anything, really, beyond slapping a plot around as many branded apps as possible. The setup is almost willfully unimaginative. Gene (voiced by T.J. Miller) is a “Meh” emoji who can’t stick to his assigned expression—he glitches, feels too much, and panics during a text, triggering a security meltdown. Maya Rudolph’s authoritarian Smiler decides he needs to be deleted, so Gene goes on the run, dragging us with him through a parade of thinly disguised product placements: Just Dance, Spotify, Dropbox, YouTube. Each stop is less a story beat than a corporate cameo. There’s nothing here that wasn’t done better in Wreck-It Ralph, Inside Out, or even your average phone ad. The characters are broad, the jokes recycled, and the animation—though polished—is devoid of charm. Even Patrick Stewart, cast as the Poop emoji (yes, really), feels like a punchline in search of a setup. The pace is frantic, the colors blinding, and yet the whole thing plays like a joyless chore. There’s no heart, no spark, no curiosity—just the hollow sound of content being packaged and pushed. For a film supposedly about expression, it offers none of its own.

Kevin Kline stands at the front of the classroom, noble, dignified, the very image of the inspirational teacher Hollywood keeps in its back pocket. He believes in the moral enrichment of young minds. He wears tweed. He is deeply, profoundly committed to the idea that learning shapes character. But the movie he’s in is less committed. The Emperor’s Club wants to be Dead Poets Society without the poetry, Mr. Holland’s Opus without the music, Goodbye, Mr. Chips without the sweeping passage of time. What it gets is a quiz bowl about ancient Rome. The setting is a prestigious East Coast prep school, the kind with old wood paneling and even older money. Kline’s character, Mr. Hundert, teaches his students not just history, but virtue. Into his well-ordered world waltzes Sedgewick Bell (Emile Hirsch), a senator’s son with a smirk and a talent for trouble. He doesn’t respect the curriculum, doesn’t see the point of all these great men and their dusty ideals. Hundert, in true inspirational-teacher fashion, believes he can change that. What follows is the expected battle of wills: the earnest professor, the cocky student, the slow shift from defiance to reluctant respect. But the film can’t quite decide what to do with this dynamic, so it pivots—halfway through, the focus shifts to a school competition, a Roman history contest that somehow carries the weight of a national crisis. There are hints of a sharper, more complex story lurking beneath the surface. The film toys with questions of privilege, corruption, the limits of education, but it never presses them hard enough to matter. Jesse Eisenberg and Paul Dano show up in early roles, bringing a little life to the supporting cast, but the movie doesn’t give them much to do. Hirsch does well as the smarmy golden boy, but his arc never quite lands. The final act jumps forward in time, trying for a wistful, full-circle moment, but it mostly reinforces the feeling that everything that came before was a little too small, a little too safe. Kline, as always, is excellent. The film around him, though, is polite, well-groomed, eager to impart wisdom but too timid to dig into anything messy. It gestures toward something profound, then settles comfortably into mild, middlebrow respectability.

The Emperor’s New Groove feels like a Disney movie that got halfway through development and decided to just call it a day. The plot is barely there, the emotional arc is mechanical at best, and everything about it seems engineered to avoid seriousness. David Spade voices Emperor Kuzco, a preening narcissist who wants to level a village to build himself a summer retreat. When he fires his advisor Yzma (Eartha Kitt), she attempts to poison him—but thanks to her thick-headed assistant Kronk (Patrick Warburton), he’s accidentally transformed into a llama instead. He’s dumped from the palace and eventually crosses paths with Pacha (John Goodman), a villager whose home was next in line for demolition. Cue the predictable road trip dynamic: they don’t get along, they bicker, they grow, they bond. You’ve seen this before. The film seems vaguely aware of how insubstantial it is, which might be why it leans so heavily on nonstop gags. Every line is either a punchline or a setup for one. That approach worked once for Aladdin, and Disney clearly took the wrong lesson from it—namely, that a wall-to-wall jokey script can replace character depth or narrative structure. It can’t. Kuzco’s transformation arc is so thin it barely qualifies as one; he’s obnoxious when the film starts and slightly less obnoxious by the end. The animation is clean, the pacing is brisk, and the cast does what it can. But none of it really sticks. The Emperor’s New Groove plays like a studio project that knew it wasn’t going to be great and settled for being watchable.

A satire without teeth, pitch, or point, Employee of the Month tries to roast the dead-eyed monotony of warehouse retail—and somehow undercooks even that. The setting is a Costco-adjacent megastore where checkout clerks are local legends and the title of “Employee of the Month” is treated like a Congressional Medal of Honor. Vince (Dax Shepard), hailed as “the fastest checker in the southwest,” has held the crown for 17 straight months. His fans—actual customers—line up to watch him scan groceries like he’s performing sleight of hand. Into this fluorescent kingdom arrives Amy (Jessica Simpson), a new hire with prosthetic teeth, cartoon ears, and a prefab sex appeal. Rumor says she’s into winners, specifically the kind with laminated plaques. So naturally, Zack (Dane Cook), a box-boy and resident slacker at the very bottom of the store’s food chain, decides it’s his turn to shine. Cook, to his credit, plays it loose and likable—though the role itself doesn’t require much beyond smirking through a character arc Xeroxed from every underdog comedy of the early 2000s. The premise might’ve worked as surrealist farce or bone-dry satire. Instead, it tiptoes between tones, never holding long enough to build a rhythm. It flirts with absurdity—Vince is basically a fascist with a name tag—but backs off every time it gets interesting. The worldbuilding is inconsistent, the tone flip-flops by the scene, and the jokes rattle out like loose change in an empty register. There’s a way to make this kind of ridiculousness feel cohesive—Strictly Ballroom did it with glitter, Edward Scissorhands with gothic fable logic—but Employee of the Month just piles on quirks and hopes it counts as style. It doesn’t. It’s sitcom energy stretched to feature length, without the discipline or the laughs. The lights are on, the registers are blinking, but there’s no spark behind the scanner.