‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’ is Perhaps the Most Go For Broke Cinematic Experience of the Year

September 23, 2026

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Pictured: Mahershala Ali. Not Pictured: Your Mother, Your Mother, or Your Mother. (CREDIT:: Jaclyn Martinez/© 2026 Amazon Content Services LLC. All Rights Reserved.)

Starring: Mahershala Ali, John Cho, Abubakr Ali, Laith Nakli, Tramell Tillman, Tiffany Boone, Giancarlo Esposito, Adia, Jahleel Kamara

Director: Bassam Tariq

Running Time: 111 Minutes

Rating: R for Stylish Bloody Violence Captured by Stunning Cinematography, and Some Sexual Content

Release Date: September 25, 2026 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: A Houston man named Latif (Mahershala Ali) has been able to support his family with his work as a hitman. But when his wife dies, his current situation immediately proves to be a lot more untenable than it used to be. That’s because he now actually has to be physically present for his teenage daughter Fathia (Adia), pre-teen son Kadir (Jahleel Kamara), and newborn baby, who urgently needs new breast milk as the supply that Mom left behind quickly dwindles away. He’s spiritually prepared to give up the killer-for-hire lifestyle, but his fellow mosque attendee Mike (Laith Nakli), the one who’s been giving him these deadly assignments, has another job for him, and this one is quite a doozy. The target is Pastor Hwan Yoon (John Cho), an anti-pornography crusader who is particularly offended by Mike’s influencer nephew (Abubakr Ali) and his brand of so-called “Habibi porn.” Latif isn’t really interested in any of that tangled mess, but it’s unavoidable while he’s hustling to feed his baby.

What Made an Impression?: Slicing and Dicing: If you’re still disappointed over the cancellation of the Mahershala Ali version of Blade, then Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is probably the closest we’ll ever get to that, what with a sword being Latif’s preferred weapon of choice. His combat style is so similar to that of Marvel’s Daywalker that I couldn’t help but wonder if writer-director Bassam Tariq was explicitly trying to make that connection. And then I found out that he was actually hired to direct Blade, so yeah, I imagine there was some intentionality. If you’re familiar with the Elevated Horror trend, then I guess we can call this Elevated Superheroics.
Probably Unforgettable: Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is the kind of movie that makes me go, “Is this excellent, or just unusual?” What Tariq asks of his cast requires a lot of trust, and they certainly give it to him. One character declares that he’s “Team Butt”, while John Cho sports some gold grills. I mean, can you even imagine?! I witnessed the whole thing, and I still barely can. I have to give it up for the boldness, even though I’m not entirely sure that I’m stunned for the best reasons.
He’ll Make You Believe: Let’s bring it back to Ali, because if this movie works at all, it’s thanks to his grounding central performance. That’s not to say that the veterans and newcomers surrounding him aren’t also worthy of praise, because they certainly are. But as everything in his world becomes more and more outrageous, he never lets go of making us see the recognizable human crisis that he’s enduring. That’s his acting superpower: he’s the calm in the storm that elevates it all with his steadiness.

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother is Recommended If You Like: Exploitation flicks, Religious yearning, The Righteous Gemstones

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Swords

‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Review: Always Forget, Always Remember

July 28, 2026

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…Started up a Brand New Day! (CREDIT: Marvel/Sony Pictures Entertainment)

Starring: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jacob Batalon, Jon Bernthal, Tramell Tillman, Michael Mando, Mark Ruffalo, Florence Pugh, Liza Colón-Zayas, Marvin Jones III, Zabryna Guevara

Director: Destin Daniel Cretton

Running Time: 145 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Occasionally Gnarly Action Violence, and a Little Bit of Language

Release Date: July 31, 2026 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: It’s been a lonely life for the Tom Holland version of Peter Parker ever since his last big screen adventure. He’s still Spider-Man, and New Yorkers still love their arachnid guardian, but a spell has been cast that has made everyone forget the entire existence of the human being behind the mask. He’s inching towards re-introducing himself to his former girlfriend MJ (Zendaya) and his best friend Ned (Jacob Batalon), but he’s got to be careful, since there are always new threats lurking around the corner. This time around, the primary threat is a mysterious newcomer (Sadie Sink) with the ability to jump her consciousness into other people who’s trying to expose a secret at the suspiciously friendly Department of Damage Control. Meanwhile, Peter seems to be going through a sort of second adolescence, as he develops new powers and then consults a relatively Hulk-free Dr. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) to help him get a grip on these emerging abilities.

What Made an Impression?: The Day After When?: To rewatch or not to rewatch? That’s always one of the big questions at the heart of the latest MCU release. With Brand New Day, I wondered if I ought to revisit 2021’s No Way Home to remind myself how we got to the point where nobody remembered Peter Parker anymore. But ultimately, I decided I would prefer not to and instead see how this chapter stands on its own (which is typically my prerogative in general). And I believe I made the right decision. While things started off feeling a little vague, I appreciated that this movie didn’t feel the need to recap itself to death and instead give off at least a hint of mystery.
Criss-Cross: Brand New Day reaches towards the platonic ideal of a true low-key comic book crossover sensibility. We’ve seen Peter team up with all the major Avengers already, but what about the other rando Marvel heroes and villains we’ve yet to see him interact with before? Several of them are in this movie! But not all of them, as that would be too overwhelming. Sometimes superhero flicks have multiple antagonists combined with a whole host of friendly cameos, and it ends up feeling like three or four (or a thousand) different movies smashed together. But in this case, it feels natural enough that all these folks would be interacting with each other in this series of scenarios.
They Had an Effect on Me: My biggest bummer with BND is that the visual effects are too slick in the way that our digitized and sanitized CGI era so often is. There’s just not much tactility as Spidey swings around the Big Apple. Nevertheless, there is a decent amount of emotional heft to the big set pieces. It helps when there are some close-up shots interspersed within those sequences, as Tom Holland’s eternally youthful visage immediately conveys plenty of vulnerability.
Brand New Enough Indeed: Ultimately, I’m pleased to report that I was satisfied by Brand New Day because it didn’t feel like just more of the same once again in the way that so many Marvel movies have. While it didn’t quite blow me away like the most transcendent examples of this genre, I never quite knew where we headed. The reveals are clever, the ideas are sincere, and the enthusiasm is still real.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day is Recommended If You Like: A mix of the old and the new

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Lattice Quanta

Please, One More Reckoning Before We Go! Okay, But This is ‘Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning’

May 14, 2025

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The Impossible Man (CREDIT: Paramount Pictures and Skydance)

Starring: Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell, Ving Rhames, Simon Pegg, Esai Morales, Pom Klementieff, Henry Czerny, Holt McCallany, Janet McTeer, Nick Offerman, Hannah Waddingham, Tramell Tillman, Angela Bassett, Shea Whigham, Greg Tarzan Davis, Charles Parnell, Mark Gatiss, Rolf Saxon, Lucy Tulugarjuk

Director: Christopher McQuarrie

Running Time: 169 Minutes

Rating: PG-13 for Near-Death Experiences

Release Date: May 23, 2025 (Theaters)

What’s It About?: It’s all come down to this. All those previous impossible missions that Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) pulled off over the decades? We thought they were more or less self-contained. But instead, it turns out that they were all part of a vast global conspiracy to sow widespread confusion and establish a new world order. This is set to be established by an artificial intelligence entity known as, in fact, “The Entity.” It is apparently going to accomplish this by infecting every connected device on the planet and then – as far as I can tell – launching every nuclear weapon and also just generally making everyone distrustful of everyone else. Some guy named Gabriel (Esai Morales) is trying to usher The Entity along to its destiny, while Ethan and his IMF crew attempt to do the opposite with their precision timing and the latest batch of stakes-raising, death-defying stunts.

What Made an Impression?: They’ve Got So Much to Say: The Final Reckoning definitely gives off end-of-the-series vibes, although I’m sure Cruise and the rest of the creative team are open to future installments for as long as he remains ageless. In the meantime, though, this chapter definitely closes the book on something. And it’s a big ol’ slam, clocking in at nearly three hours. Those minutes are filled with a trio of major set pieces, and plenty of talking in between about how those set pieces will be accomplished. And when I say “plenty,” I mean, “oh so very many plenty.” I really don’t think there needed to be this much dialogue for such an action-oriented flick. That’s not to say that the Mission: Impossible flicks ought to be silent (although that might be kind of cool if they were), but I personally would have advised a sleeker design.
Hey, Remember Those Times Way Back When?: When it comes to long-running action series, M:I is kind of the antithesis of Fast & Furious, insofar as the former sheds several of its supporting characters in between installments without any fanfare, whereas the latter seems to just collecting them for perpetuity until it’s bursting at the seams. To be fair, there are still a few IMF mainstays hanging around, although Ethan’s female counterparts have a tendency to disappear no matter how beloved they are by fans. The Final Reckoning takes a somewhat different approach by explicitly drawing upon some of the earlier entries in ways that would have felt impossible just a few years earlier. And that’s kind of thrilling for those of us whose favorite M:I chapters seemed like they’d been completely forgotten.
Timely Gobbledygook: Cautionary tales about artificial intelligence are so hot right now. But frankly The Entity doesn’t have anything to do with any real-life A.I. On the contrary, it’s just a profoundly vague MacGuffin. Or should I call it the villain? Can the MacGuffin be the villain? I think it is in this case. Anyway, it’s all just an excuse for the most baroque modern blockbuster action around, so whatever.

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is Recommended If You Like: Parking your butt while the obsessive man does his thing

Grade: 3.5 out of 5 Entities