Boots Riley Stays On Brand While Trying Pretty Much Everything with ‘I Love Boosters’

May 18, 2026

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Give these ladies a Boost! (CREDIT: NEON)

Starring: Keke Palmer, Naomi Ackie, Taylour Paige, Poppy Liu, Eiza González, LaKeith Stanfield, Will Poulter, Demi Moore, Don Cheadle, Jason Ritter, Kara Young, Jermaine Fowler

Director: Boots Riley

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Rating: R for Creative Nudity and Language

Release Date: May 22, 2026 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: Corvette (Keke Palmer), Sade (Naomi Ackie), and Mariah (Taylour Paige) are making ends meet in the San Francisco area by shoplifting (aka “boosting”) clothes and reselling them at a discount. But they’re aspiring to quite a bit more than that. Trouble is, though, it’s pretty much impossible to get ahead in fashion when an influential billionaire like Christie Smith (Demi Moore) steals your designs. So the boosters have revenge on their mind, and their tenacity leads them to uncover a patronizing conspiracy and some reality-altering technology. Meanwhile, Corvette might have some romance brewing with a mysterious individual played by LaKeith Stanfield, but that could be much more bizarrely troublesome than it’s worth.

What Made an Impression?: It’s a Surprise: I don’t want to spoil I Love Boosters, but even if I told you everything that happens in precisely minute detail, you still wouldn’t know anything. You must actually witness it to believe it. That’s how Boots Riley lures us in: grounding us in what initially appears to be a fairly accurate recreation of the real world, only to overturn it all with a reveal that makes you cry out, “How did I get here?!” After all, his unapologetic message of expansive workers’ rights goes down easier that way.
There’s a Lot Going On: If my previous paragraph makes it sound like Riley is employing a similar strategy as he did in his directorial debut Sorry to Bother You, that’s because he certainly is. But the key difference is that whereas StBY hinged on one major twist, I Love Boosters offers up a handful of them. The chaotically overwhelming approach of the latter is not quite as successful as the easier-to-map former. But even though the whole of ILB is tricky to handle, pretty much every individual piece sparkles, and I’m glad that it didn’t hold back any of its big swings, despite the messiness.
I’m Warped: If this all sounds way too dizzying, well, rest assured that I actually found I Love Boosters to be kind of gentle. Although maybe that’s just because I enjoy watching reality get bent more than the average comrade. I wouldn’t recommend this freakishly fascinating flick to everybody, but I would absolutely approve of its consumption for anyone with an amicably deranged sensibility. If that doesn’t describe you, it might still be worth the risk, though. After all, it’s splattered with a whole lot more primary colors than eat-the-rich fairy tales typically are.

I Love Boosters is Recommended If You Like: They Live, Skittles, Dialectics

Grade: 4 out of 5 Runways

I Saw ‘In the Grey’ … Or Did I?

May 16, 2026

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Mr. & Mr. Grey (CREDIT: Black Bear/Screenshot)

Starring: Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal, Eiza González, Kristofer Hivju, Fisher Stevens, Rosamund Pike, Emmett J. Scanlan, Kojo Attah, Jason Wong, Christian Ochoa Lavernia, Carlos Bardem

Director: Guy Ritchie

Running Time: 97 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: May 15, 2026 (Theaters)

I’m going to have to be perfectly honest here, guys. I totally nodded off at least twice during In the Grey. I wasn’t really prepared for that, as it wasn’t like I was feeling profoundly tired when I entered the theater. Although I suppose I was a little restless the night before. Anyway, it started off as a fairly promising caper, even if I didn’t fully understand everyone’s motivations. So now I would appreciate it if somebody could give me a synopsis of the middle and the very end. In the meantime, I remain very much in the grey myself!

Grade: I Guess It Lived Up to Its Title!

What to Do When ‘Ash’ Happens to You?

March 28, 2025

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Her name’s not Ash, but things are looking pretty Ash-y (CREDIT: RLJE Films & Shudder)

Starring: Eiza González, Aaron Paul, Iko Uwais, Beulah Koale, Kate Elliott, Flying Lotus

Director: Flying Lotus

Running Time: 95 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: March 21, 2025 (Theaters)

I can’t say I’d ever like to find myself in an Ash Situation. Here’s how it goes down: an astronaut named Riya (Eiza González) wakes up to fellow crew members all dead before they can terraform a distant planet, and she has no idea what happened. She gradually starts to discover that their demises were most likely at the hands (or tentacles) of a parasitic alien. But even though this doesn’t exactly sound like a vacation to aspire to, maybe it was still a good idea to see this movie so that I can be prepared in case this ever does happen to me. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Give me a trippy sci-fi outer space warning over a true crime doc any day!

Grade: 2 Parasites out of 5 Lotuses (You Want Fewer Parasites)

The Challenges of Ungentlemanly Tennis

April 29, 2024

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Ungentlemanly Warfare, huh, what is it good for? CREDIT: Metro Goldwyn Mayer Pictures/Lionsgate

Challengers

Starring: Zendaya, Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist

Director: Luca Guadagnino

Running Time: 131 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: April 26, 2024 (Theaters)

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare

Starring: Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Henry Golding, Alex Pettyfer, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Babs Olusanmokun, Cary Elwes, Til Schweiger, Henrique Zaga, Rory Kinnear, Danny Sapani, Freddie Fox

Director: Guy Ritchie

Running Time: 120 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: April 19, 2024 (Theaters)

More

Michael Bay Lets His ‘Ambulance’ Loose on an Unsuspecting Los Angeles

April 7, 2022

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Ambulance (CREDIT: Andrew Cooper/Universal Pictures)

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Eiza González, Garret Dillahunt, Keir O’Donnell, Jackson White, Olivia Stambouliah, Moses Ingram, Colin Woodell, Cedric Sanders, A Martinez, Wale Folarin, Jesse Garcia, Jose Pablo Cantillo

Director: Michael Bay

Running Time: 136 Minutes

Rating: R for Explosions Coming Out of Guns and Mouths

Release Date: April 8, 2022 (Theaters)

I’m not entirely sure what to make of my instinctive reaction to Ambulance. In short, it distressed me. But I suspect that may have been intentional. Even if it was intentional, it may have gone a little overboard. That’s hardly surprising, as going overboard is Michael Bay’s whole m.o. So of course I knew what I was in for. It’s just a matter of discerning: did we find the sweet spot, or did we tip the scales? And my verdict is: Ambulance is way too much for this viewer to handle, but I appreciate the spectacle.

The premise is tailor-made for a lean, nasty thriller. Will Sharp (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is a desperate man. Insurance won’t cover his wife’s surgery, so he turns to his adoptive brother Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal, matching Bay’s maximalism note for note), who’s about to pull off a massive bank heist. It’s supposed to be a simple in-and-out job, but a beat cop (Jackson White) just had to choose this day to ask out the bank teller he has a crush on. So Will and Danny are forced to take him hostage as they commandeer the ambulance of EMT Cam Thompson (Eiza González). If this had all been wrapped up in a cathartic hour and a half, I imagine I would have emerged from the theater reinvigorated and ready to crush everything on my bucket list. But instead, it’s a plodding 136 minutes that left me wondering if I would ever be able to feel like myself ever again.

The whole thing made me sick. Part of that has to do with the lengthy, surprisingly graphic abdominal surgery scene. Let’s just say my physiology is not optimally designed to handle the sight of that much blood. That could have been alleviated if this were a friendlier world, which it just isn’t. There are a few characters who are more or less pure, or at least gold-hearted despite their bad decisions. But every villain is surprisingly brutish, especially Danny, who’s one of the most frightening characters I’ve seen on screen in quite a while. He promises you loyalty and protection, but he’s really just an agent of chaos, much more violent and manipulative than you expect him to be.

But as distressed as I was, it’s hard to call Ambulance a failure. This is basically an extended metaphor for how L.A. traffic can turn your entire day into an Adventure Through Hell. And Bay’s clearly having himself a blast, what with the references to some of his earlier iconic films and the unbound use of drone cinematography. Oh, the drones! Have I mentioned the drones? If you need B-roll from every possible angle, there’s a new way to do it, and Ambulance works best as a how-to guide for pulling it off. Just order a drone, stick a camera on it, inject it with the mechanical equivalent of methamphetamine, and conquer the skies!

Ambulance is Recommended If You Like: Adults playing with their toys, New authority figures pulling up to take over the operation, The L.A. River

Grade: 3 out of 5 Drone Cameras

Godzilla vs. Kong vs. My Internal Composure: A Movie Review

April 19, 2021

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Godzilla vs. Kong (CREDIT: Warner Bros. Pictures/YouTube Screenshot)

Starring: Godzilla, King Kong, Alexander Skarsgård, Millie Bobby Brown, Rebecca Hall, Brian Tyree Henry, Shun Oguri, Eiza González, Julian Dennison, Lance Reddick, Kyle Chandler, Demián Bichir, Mechagodzilla

Director: Adam Wingard

Running Time: 113 Minutes

Rating: PG-13

Release Date: March 31, 2021

What if it were Godzilla vs. Kong vs. … jmunney? Does the latest no-holds cinematic brawl between these two iconic behemoths make me want to join the fight? Hey man, I’m a pacifist! But entering their domain in some capacity might be fun. They seem like good company.  Kong is certainly a clown. And sensitive, to boot! Godzilla’s harder to peg, but I’d be willing to put in the emotional groundwork to make the connection. What’s Mechagodzilla’s deal, though? He sure comes out of nowhere. Does he even have a soul?!

Grade: 5 Podcasts of 10 ASLs

‘Bloodshot’ Offers a Sort-of Fascinating Spin on a Few Common Sci-Fi Tropes

March 11, 2020

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: Sony Pictures

Starring: Vin Diesel, Guy Pearce, Eiza González, Lamorne Morris, Sam Heughan, Toby Kebbell, Talulah Riley

Director: David S.F. Wilson

Running Time: 109 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Some Bullets and Explosions Here and There

Release Date: March 13, 2020

Bloodshot strikes me as more of a cinematic experiment moreso than a narrative presentation. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. The medium of film is robust enough that it can accomodate things that aren’t exactly telling a story or not doing so straightforwardly. Bloodshot actually does have some sort of plot, but that’s not the most interesting part about it. Based on a comic book series, it stars Vin Diesel as a Marine named Ray Garrison who gets killed but then is very quickly brought back to life stronger and more deadly. You know, that old saw that we love from the likes of The Six Million Dollar Man and RoboCop. He is bent on revenge against the man who “killed” both him and his wife, although the scientist who brought him back, Dr. Emil Harting (Guy Pearce), has a few missions he would like him to go on, but perhaps their motivations align with each other … or do they?

Ray’s enhancement is fueled by microscopic technology referred to as “nanites,” a word that I will never not find hilarious as I primarily associate it with the creatures of that name from Mystery Science Theater 3000. Basically, the idea is that these little creatures, or tiny robots, or whatever they are, work at an atomic level to repair any injury that Ray sustains thoroughly and immediately. In visual practice, this means that when he gets hit with bullets or other weaponry, fields of blood-red strands shoot off from his body, as his molecules re-assemble in mid-air and then return back into him.

Working alongside that idea of reassembling on the fly, the other major idea fueling Bloodshot is the series of false memories that uploaded into Ray’s head. His revenge mission, it turns out, may just be what he’s been programmed to do. In practice, this generally means that it never feels fully clear exactly what the practical stakes are. But on the plus(-ish) side, it also means we get some visual flourishes that I’ve never quite seen in any other movie, like one moment that virtually recreates the setting that Ray has been trained to remember. It looks like a behind-the-scenes video that shows the rendering of visual effects. I’m not sure that sort of thing belongs in a finished cinematic product, but I’m fascinated by its presence there nonetheless.

That mix of fascination and uncertainty is my general overall reaction to Bloodshot. Pretty much everything about it feels like it was made up on the fly, or meant to be about making it up on the fly. How else to explain the presence of New Girl‘s Lamorne Morris as an English hacker and the fact that he’s the best part of the movie? The second part is easy enough to explain: he’s Lamorne Morris, and he’s awesome. But presumably, he would’ve been just as awesome with his normal speaking voice. Is his character unmistakably English in the comic? Do we Americans just love accents that much? Look, you get your pleasures where you can with a movie that doesn’t seem to have thought through every little detail. Or you turn your brain off and admire the pretty pictures. Or you tap into some part of your brain that you didn’t realize you’d need to access for a movie as surprisingly un-pin-down-able as this one.

Bloodshot is Recommended If You Like: Vin Diesel gradually figuring it out, Lamorne Morris as the comic relief, DVD bonus features about special effects

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Nanites

Movie Review: ‘Hobbs & Shaw’ is Surprisingly Goofy, Unsurprisingly Family-Oriented, and Annoyingly Convoluted

July 31, 2019

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

CREDIT: Frank Masi/Universal Pictures

Starring: Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby, Eddie Marsan, Eiza González, Helen Mirren

Director: David Leitch

Running Time: 136 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Big Vehicles and Big Egos Slamming Into Each Other

Release Date: August 2, 2019

Spin-offs should offer something that the original couldn’t. Hobbs & Shaw immediately feels off in that regard, considering that Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson) and Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) have already been a couple of the biggest characters in the last few Fast & Furious movies. Although, they aren’t quite members of the core family, so that leaves them enough wiggle room to break out on their own. But it can’t be too different! This franchise has a sterling stunt reputation it needs to maintain, and while director David Leitch and company do not try to be as relentlessly mind-blowing as Fast Five or Furious 7, there is at least one memorable moment when a motorcycle slinks between some truck tires.

The separation, then, mostly comes in Hobbs & Shaw being at its core an odd couple buddy comedy, and in this case, that means a few celebrity cameos who inject their own particular brands of impishness. These moments feel out of place in this world, but they might also be the best parts? Their charms cannot be denied. Honestly, though, I think we would have been better off spending more time with Hobbs’ daughter (Eliana Sua), as her scenes are both delightful AND internally consistent.

As wonderfully corny as Hobbs & Shaw is willing to be, it can’t change the fact that most of the plot is convoluted high-tech, globetrotting nonsense. Idris Elba is the cybernetically enhanced big bad, and we get a few genuinely disturbing shots of how he is becoming a superhuman or something beyond human. There is a hint of a larger conspiracy at play here, but only a hint. Meanwhile Vanessa Kirby plays Deckard’s sister Hattie, an MI6 agent who has been infected with a virus that’s going to kill her and apparently everyone around her also. The explanation for how the virus is supposed to spread is either glossed over or not emphasized enough, which is a problem because the race to cure Hattie is what drives most of the action.

Thankfully, the reward for dithering through all that is a surefire demonstration that we must, in true F&F fashion, celebrate the importance of family. It’s not as flat-out heartwarming as the series proper, but Hobbs takes us all along to Samoa to meet his mom and brothers, and Helen Mirren totally rocks her prison jumpsuit in her return as Mama Shaw. I could do without all the derivative action flick gobbledygook, but I’m grateful for the good vibes.

Hobbs & Shaw is Recommended If You Like: James Bond, but with a goofy postmodern (though not quite parody) sensibility

Grade: 3 out of 5 Friendy Insults

Movie Review: ‘Alita: Battle Angel’ Features Visionary Effects and a Convoluted Story

February 8, 2019

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: Twentieth Century Fox

Starring: Rosa Salazar, Christoph Waltz, Jennifer Connelly, Mahershala Ali, Ed Skrein, Jackie Earle Haley, Keean Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Eiza González, Lana Condor, Jorge Lendeborg Jr., Idara Victor

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Running Time: 122 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Cyborg Limbs Flying All Over the Place

Release Date: February 14, 2019

Can slightly-larger-than-normal human eyes in a motion capture performance exist anywhere other than the Uncanny Valley? That is the conundrum at the heart of Alita: Battle Angel‘s box office prospects, but from where I’m sitting, they’re clearly the best part of the film. Yeah, those peepers might be creepy, but they are also a deep wellspring of an infectious personality. Rosa Salazar may have given her performance while dressed up in a bodysuit with a camera mounted on her head, but her enthusiasm to be part of groundbreaking cinema is consistently palpable.

Based on the manga series Gunnm, Alita: Battle Angel was co-written and co-produced by James Cameron, but presumably because he’s busy with all those Avatar sequels, directing duties fell to Robert Rodriguez. This could have been a clash of auteurs, as both men are enamored with creating digitally rendered, visually rich fantasy worlds, but Rodriguez has never really worked on the same scale as Cameron. (To be fair, nobody works on quite the same scale as Cameron.) But the steampunk metropolis of Iron City in 2563 is a sight to behold, and its array of cyborg citizens are correspondingly fascinating. Rodriguez has mostly realized Cameron’s vision without putting his own unique stamp on the project, but even so, on a technical level, this is the best James Cameron movie that Cameron never directed.

Too bad the plot is incomprehensible. A bunch of sci-fi tropes about the dangers of creating and living alongside artificial life are thrown out there, but none of them amount to anything. There is some talk about how Alita resembles the deceased daughter of her scientist caretaker (Christoph Waltz), but that does not lead to any of the expected emotional confusion. Alita is also being hunted down by other cyborgs, but it is never clear what threat she actually poses to anyone. Also, she is centuries old and the last of her kind, which could mean that she is a sort of Rosetta stone to the past, and people treat her that way, but nobody ever clearly explains why that matters. With all the empty dialogue in Alita, it makes me wish that someone in 2019 would be bold enough to make a $200 million sci-fi extravaganza as a silent film.

Alita: Battle Angel is Recommended If You Like: James Cameron’s Brand of 3D Visual Effects, Overly Busy Impenetrable Screenplays

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Big Eyes

This Is a Movie Review: ‘Welcome to Marwen’ is an Odd True-Life Story Made Odder by Fitting Into Feel-Good Movie Clichés

December 20, 2018

jmunney Cinema, Movie Reviews , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

CREDIT: Ed Araquel/Universal Pictures and DreamWorks Pictures

This review was originally posted on News Cult in December 2018.

Starring: Steve Carell, Leslie Mann, Merritt Wever, Janelle Monáe, Eiza González, Gwendoline Christie, Diane Kruger, Neil Jackson

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Running Time: 116 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Bloody Doll-Based Violence, Neo-Nazi Assault Flashbacks, and a Few Unexpected Sexual References

Release Date: December 21, 2018

Welcome to Marwen is a low-key film whose gentleness belies its supreme oddity. At least it comes by its unusual nature honestly. It’s based on the 2010 documentary Marwencol, about the artist Mark Hogancamp, who was beaten nearly to death after he told a group of men that he was a cross-dresser. Then as a kind of therapy, he constructed a miniature Belgian World War II-era village and populated it with dolls representing himself and the people in his life. I haven’t seen Marwencol, so I cannot attest to any historical veracity or lack thereof, but given the premise, Welcome to Marwen was always going to be as tricky to make sense of as it turned out to be. Steve Carell, for his part, plays Hogancamp like the sort of meek, PTSD-afflicted, obsessive, highly impressive individual that corresponds with his story. But then there are ways in which Welcome to Marwen attempts to mold Hogancamp’s world into a traditional cinematic structure, and the movie itself feels like it is rebelling.

The biggest miscalculation is probably the romance storyline, which consists of a series of major miscommunications on the part of everyone involved. The doll version of Mark is typically accompanied by his female companions, and the scenarios he playacts quite clearly reveal the feelings he has for them. Figuring prominently is Mark’s new neighbor Nicol (Leslie Mann), which is pronounced just like “Nicole,” but spelled without the “e” for some inexplicable reason. She’s quite forward in her friendliness, which Mark interprets as romantic interest, which he appears to be correct about, until it is unmistakably clear that he is in fact very incorrect, rendering the audience confused by the ways in which Mark’s perspective is favored over everyone else’s.

While Welcome to Marwen has a few clear missteps, I am not sure how this story could have overall been presented much differently. One answer is that it should not have been made at all, leaving the documentary to stand on its own. But I reject that, on the basis of believing that all cinematic ventures, no matter how ill-advised, can theoretically turn out successful. However, while I am fascinated by this elaborate fantasy world created to deal with trauma and the way that director Robert Zemeckis presents it, I wouldn’t point to Marwen as the best example of this maxim.

Welcome to Marwen is Recommended If You Like: Extensive shoe collections, Romantic miscommunications, Playing with dolls and action figures at any age

Grade: 2.5 out of 5 Glamonistas

Older Entries