‘The Drama’ Is the Date Movie from Hell

More mystery, less history.

The embattled lovers in “The Drama” should have heeded that old saw. Instead, they shared too much, threatening their nuptials and a whole lot more. 

This coal-black romance asks some challenging questions, but the answers aren’t as enlightening as necessary. It’s still rigorously told with strong performance and an alarming amount of cringe.

“The Drama” is more awkward than Larry David squirming out of a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” jam.

Charlie and Emma (Robert Pattinson, Zendaya) are putting the finishing touches on their wedding ceremony. A wine tasting here, a dance lesson there, and they’re almost ready for the biggest day of their lives.

Until said wine flows a bit too freely, and Emma confesses something dark about her past. How dark? No spoilers here, but it’s sizable enough to dominate the plot.

And then some.

Charlie is stunned by the revelation, but he’s hellbent on going through with the ceremony. Is that the best path forward, or will their circle of friends convince them to hit “pause” on their romance?

“The Drama’s” hook is undeniable, but it’s really about a couple processing each other’s past selves. We all make mistakes, but what if some are so significant that it casts a shadow on our future?

How do we judge the actions that made our partners who they are today? Can everything be forgiven? Should they be?

That sounds like an “eat your vegetables” yarn, but “The Drama” is consistently engaging and spry. We slowly get to know the characters as they stare down the crisis, and their exchanges with strangers and friends alike shed more light on their morality.

Clever use of false memories and imagery spikes the story in the early sequences. That feels unnecessary given the massive twist in play, but the visual cues still enhance the material.

Emma is the more straightforward partner, a woman who shook off an early trauma to become a formidable partner. Charlie, by comparison, is melting down in real time. Pattinson’s performance is solid but a tad showy, but that may reflect his East Coast sensibility.

He’s a beta male thrust into a crisis he never expected.

There’s an elitism baked into “The Drama,” a sense that these characters can afford to over-examine flaws that others might process and move on. That alone offers a fascinating X-ray of upper middle class privilege, to steal the Left’s verbiage.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The third act features a parade of hard-to-watch exchanges, and a few prove too precious to be believed. The film already teeters on the edge of melodrama, but these moments threaten to sink matters fast.

They don’t, ultimately, but they pave the way for a too conventional coda.

“The Drama” offer a bracing look at marriage, commitment and honesty, a tale that works best when the lovers  are interacting with their closest chums. Best friend Rachel (Alana Haim) proves the most incendiary figure, judging Emma’s revelation more harshly than anyone, including Charlie.

Her provocative take feels a tad histrionic, something writer/director Kristoffer Borgli (“Dream Scenario“) uses to his narrative advantage. We’ll swallow plenty in “The Drama,” but when the heartstrings are plucked too hard, the film’s impressive facade falters.

We’re still committed to “The Drama,” reservations and all.

HiT or Miss: “The Drama” hangs on a stark revelation, spinning into a devious tale of love, commitment and neon red warning signs.

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‘Pretty Lethal’ Blends Badass Ballet with Brain-Dead Action

Don’t mess with ballet dancers.

They suffer for their art, endure grueling regimens and punish their bodies to create works of art.

It’s a lesson “Pretty Lethal” takes to heart. The film follows five dancers forced to fight for their lives in a Budapest hotel. The central gimmick is a hoot, but the shopworn screenplay isn’t sure what to do with it. 

And wasting the great Uma Thurman in a barely-there character is a cinematic sin.

Five scrappy ballet dancers can’t wait for the gig of their young lives – a trip to Budapest to perform at a prestigious hall. Their bus breaks down en route, but they stumble into a stranger who is more than happy to help them get to the show on time.

Or so he claims.

The women end up in an expansive Budapest hotel, where they meet a litany of unsavory characters and the inscrutable owner. That’s Devora (Thurman), a former dancer who oversees this curious joint. It’s clear she can’t be trusted despite her reassuring tone.

And then the first of many people dies, and it turns out the dancers’ ballet skills might come in handy. Yes, we’re in “John Wick” territory, with elegantly choreographed action from an unlikely source.

Young, frightened women who realize if they don’t have their backs, no one will.

For a while, the film’s flimsy plot and stale dialogue don’t matter. The action is robust, and director Vicky Jewson flashes an impressive visual sense, both in the clarity of the action and the dystopian hotel where the mayhem takes place.

Plus, the film wastes little time setting the story in motion, and the simplistic character beats don’t drag the film down.

Standout Maddie Ziegler is the group’s unofficial leader, a blue-collar dancer with a chip on her shoulder. Her frenemy (Lana Condor) is the spoiled brat of the bunch, and “A Quiet Place” alum Millicent Simmonds gets a brief romantic subplot before the tutus hit the fan.

A better film would give Thurman a lip-smacking character to play. Instead, she gets lost in a larger plot about a crime kingpin and his ne’er-do-well son (Tamás Szabó Sipos).

 

 

 

 

 

 

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That storyline goes nowhere until the third act, but by then any sense of logic has long since left the building.

That’s a shame, because the female cast has good chemistry and wins our sympathies in short order. A few battle sequences are sublime without resorting to woke character tropes.

No, these slender gals aren’t duking it out with men twice their size. But if you get near them, and they insert a knife into the end of their ballet slippers, well, anything goes.

That sense of chaos spikes the film’s second act, but the screenplay decides to boost the odds against the dancers’ survival. That just makes what follows hard to believe even by B-movie terms.

Yes, the dancers in “Pretty Lethal” aren’t ready to lie down and take their punishment. Nor are they turned into Black Widow-style warriors. Still, the film’s central gimmick isn’t sustainable without a meatier script or a few clever turns of phrase.

Both, alas, are in short supply.

HiT or Miss: “Pretty Lethal” is perfect streaming fodder, the kind of action vehicle you can half-watch without missing much at all.

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‘Super Mario Galaxy Movie’ Delivers Bare Minimum Delights

Video games may pose an existential threat to film’s cultural dominance.

But if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.

The second Super Mario Bros. movie understands the shifting movie-going tastes. Down with mid-sized dramas. Up with IP-based mayhem dripping with Easter Eggs and candy-colored glee.

On that scale, “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” does what it needs to do, period. Nothing more by any stretch of the imagination.

It’s sweet, inoffensive, occasionally funny and always adorable.

The film opens with an attack on the palatial estate of Princess Rosalina (Brie Larson). It’s a brisk action sequence with surprising depth as she tries to shield her adopted kids, the Lumas, from both harm and the realization that Momma is in trouble.

The sequence sets the story in motion, but it reveals how charming the film can be when it lets the action breathe. Don’t get used to it.

Poor Rosalina is captured by the feisty son of Bowser (Jack Black), the first film’s villain. Now, it’s up to plucky plumbers Mario and Luigi (Chris Pratt, Charlie Day) and Princess Peach (Anya Taylor-Joy) to save Rosalina.

It all sounds simple, but this “Movie” boasts a frenetic pace that feels like a collection of mini-movies for microscopic attention spans. The crush of new and returning characters is another distracting element, including the Han Solo-esque Fox McCloud (Glen Powell) and the cuter-than-cute Yoshi (Donald Glover). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The awwww factor here is strong, as is the moral certitude of our titular plumbers. Except it’s barely their movie in the first place. This is an ensemble piece, with the two princesses flexing their Girl Boss-itude.

It’s never long before the charming Lumas slip into the frame. These star-like creatures aren’t impressive on the surface, but they have a singular quality that’s undeniable.

They’re not Minions.

Black’s Bowser begrudgingly joins forces with Mario and Luigi early on, but given the actor’s intensity, that bond wobbles earlier than expected.

Newcomers to either video game lore or the Super Mario Bros. saga will be lost, and attempts to dissect some story elements will come up empty.

No matter. “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is colorful and cute, a spry blast of IP wonder that will delight young audiences and make older crowds wish they had a controller in their hand. The film lovingly recreates classic Nintendo needle drops and game play moments.

Yes, a movie based on a video game must constantly remind us of the source material. As if the lines around the block didn’t tell us everything we already needed to know.

HiT or Miss: “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” will satisfy the franchise’s fan base, but they may not remember exactly why.

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Bury ‘Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice’ in Time Capsule

Time travel films can be exhausting.

The logical threads are often tough to untangle, and the gimmick gives screenwriters too many cheat codes. It’s why 1985’s “Back to the Future” remains a marvelous slice of time travel perfection.

“Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” can’t come close to that standard. It’s the opposite, a frantic attempt at dark humor laced with endless action sequences.

A very game cast takes a smart approach to the material, but the further the story goes along, the less engaging it becomes. The film should make like a tree and get out of here.

Thuggish Jimmy Boy (Jimmy Tatro) is celebrating his return from prison, and his crime boss pappy Sosa (Keith David) wants to know who framed him in the first place.

The trail leads to Mike (James Marsden), but his friend and associate Nick (Vince Vaughn) has a plan to save him from doom. Even though Nick set this dangerous game in motion by naming Mike the rat.

Our Nick stumbles upon a time machine that allows him to go back in time to prevent Mike from getting whacked and erase his mistake. Or, at least that’s the idea. Endless complications erupt, from having two Nicks bumping into one another to Mike trying to keep his affair with Nick’s wife, Alice (Elsa González), a secret.

Confused? You should be, but writer/director BenDavid Grabinski keeps things cohesive enough to follow what’s happening from scene to scene.

It’s just not worth the effort.

Let’s put aside the ugly morality behind the film. These are all criminal characters made to seem warm and fuzzy, another ethical loophole in Hollywood’s woke agenda.

(You can’t make DudeBro comedies about entitled white frat boys, but you can humanize contract killers).

Grabinski’s script is littered with pop culture references, and it takes a deft hand to weave them seamlessly into a story like this. That hand, alas, is missing.

It’s fine that the script gives quirks to key characters, minor notes that often bespeak a film’s depth. That said, each idiosyncratic tic shouts its existence.

The film’s endless needle drops can’t save the story, either, and they, too, announce themselves in crude fashion. Look, Ma, this ’90s ditty is gonna make everything in “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” better. Trust us!

Not even close.

“Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” features a few fun cameos by old pros, but their presence can’t fix the story’s sizable flaws. That goes double for the Mike-Alice love connection. That should steer the story in an even darker, more impactful direction. Instead, it’s treated with a shrug.

Sorry, mobsters aren’t this evolved in their emotional lives. 

What’s left? A story that’s cobbled together from generic blockbusters and Tarantino tics without the heart or humor to make them pop. If the film’s sequel tease holds, we’ll build a time machine to stop this misfire from happening in the first place.

HiT or Miss: “Mike & Nick & Nick & Alice” gives a game cast little to do save chase each other through some allegedly wacky paces.

The film debuts March 27 on Hulu/Hulu on Disney+

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’15 Days’ Will Makes You Furious at Teachers Unions

“15 Days” opens with a political grenade thrown by Jane Fonda.

“COVID-19 is God’s gift to the Left,” the Oscar winner says with a girlish giggle.

That she said something like that aloud is shocking, but she wasn’t alone.

The documentary, subtitled “The Real Story of America’s Pandemic School Closures,”  has more chilling sound bites, along with an army of parents who share their outrage over the lockdowns.

Most parties admit said lockdowns were a mistake in retrospect. The media eventually ‘fessed up on the subject, too, noting the educational delays sparked by the decision. It’s still vital to relive this awful chapter in U.S. history, something “15 Days” does to fine effect.

It isn’t as splashy as a typical Hollywood documentary, but the film has the facts, and outrage, on its side.

The story begins in March of 2020, a time when the first of many schools shuttered to “stop the spread.” The government told us to take a knee for two weeks, and life would return to normal.

Americans dutifully obeyed. And that’s when the madness began.

The film touches on media bias, noting how Legacy Media outlets promoted fear over facts for months on end. Meanwhile, a small group of scientists, educators and parents began questioning the efficacy of the lockdowns.

The “science” didn’t add up to them. Countering the COVID-19 narrative fueled more than just cultural blowback. You were a racist, for starters. Or simply part of the MAGA movement.

Some faced death threats for suggesting alternative points of view. And that was before Social Media, Inc. started to censor views that questioned mainstream narratives, like the Great Barrington Declaration.

That’s a story for another documentary, but “15 Days” shares enough of it to paint the bigger picture.

Obey or else.

For some parents, their red-pill makeovers began during the George Floyd riots. Wait, they collectively asked, we can’t go to church or send our kids to school, but BLM protesters could march, side by side, with the government’s approval?

Parent after parent watched as the U.S. Government gave the “all clear” sign to race-based protests while their children struggled to learn something, anything at home.

Suddenly, the science didn’t add up, and you didn’t need a master’s degree in biology to see it.

“15 Days” wears its modest budget with pride. Director Natalya Murakhver does double duty as our on-camera  guide, patiently walking through the era’s most enraging elements. She’s not flashy or charismatic, but her stoic delivery cuts to the bone.

There’s plenty to be furious about vis a vis pandemic overreach, but the film keeps the focus on children. We see some share their stories, how they missed out on athletic glory or simply wished they could learn with their friends.

The documentary doesn’t overplay this hand, but their small voices prove essential.

The long and lingering shadow of the pandemic reveals a dark truth about American education: Kids have not healed from the scars of lockdowns. NWEA, a research organization, recently issued a report based on the test scores of more than 5 million… https://t.co/VL6W1CpzFS pic.twitter.com/zvF0qLwr4m

— The Western Journal (@WesternJournalX) February 26, 2026

Fonda may be a convenient punching bag, rhetorically speaking, but the film’s true villain is Randi Weingarten. The long-running President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) helped keep kids out of school indefinitely during the COVID-19 crisis, bouncing from one softball media interview to the next.

Weingarten was the ultimate culture warrior, hoping to use the pandemic to steer even more cash to teachers unions and push her radical, far-Left agenda.

Social Justice. Environmental Justice. BLM. But what about the kids?

They got left behind, and the lack of accountability is enraging. Still.

Many teachers happily did Weingarten’s bidding. One featured in the film spoke out against in-person classes but shared her vacation snaps on social media. Others happily displayed their BLM flags in classroom Zoom sessions.

Get the picture?

“15 Days” doesn’t lean into a Left-Right narrative. Some clips of President Donald Trump in the early days of the pandemic are wince-inducing, especially as he’s flanked by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx. Still, it’s clear which party mishandled the lockdowns and weaponized them for their benefit.

Better check your blood pressure medicine before watching “15 Days.” But watch it we must.

HiT or Miss: “15 Days” shows the ghoulish choices Teachers Unions made to keep kids out of school during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

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‘A Scanner Darkly’ Predicted Our Paranoid Age

Richard Linklater’s “A Scanner Darkly” (2006) begins, “Seven years from now, Anaheim, CA.”

A rotoscoped animated film based on the 1977 sci-fi novel by Philip K. Dick, Linklater depicts the somber tale, lifted partly from Dick’s real-life experiences living with junkies, in a fitting visual tapestry that fully connects with the feeling of detachment in this environment.

The first scene sets the tone, as we witness Rory Cochrane’s character being swarmed with arachnids that he can’t wash off. Even his dog is full of these bugs, which he helpfully puts in a jar and realizes later that they are a figment of his imagination.

Watching Cochrane struggling to shower off a horde of insects is, like everything that follows, hilarious, gross and kind of sad.

Fred, played by Keanu Reeves, is a junkie who speaks in a public forum wearing a “Scramble Suit,” which makes his appearance blurry and impenetrable. Donna, Fred’s friend (Winona Ryder) brings him into a cluster of other junkies, played by Robert Downey Jr., Woody Harrelson and Cochrane. They all have something to hide but seem disinterested in the truth.

They care more about spreading conspiracy theories and staying inebriated.

What transpires is an anti-drug film that doesn’t wallow in excess nor rub our faces in melodrama. Instead, the stark honesty in the screenplay and performances make it feel immediate and unforced. The cell phones the characters use are big enough to suggest the early 2000s. Otherwise, this could be right now.

The Scramble Suits are a dazzling concept that the animation turns into a hypnotic effect. It’s hard to imagination this working as a live-action film, even with the advances in CGI.

Prior to his late-career “John Wick” career boost, Reeves floated through a series of roles that were interesting but not always a good match for him. Here, Reeves finds the pathos of the role and is every bit as good as Downey Jr. and Harrellson, whose performances are showier but no less layered.

A Scanner Darkly (2006) dir. Richard Linklaterpic.twitter.com/q1YQcyltho

— cinesthetic. (@TheCinesthetic) June 1, 2023

Rather than getting overshadowed by the animation, the film connects because the performances and the animation are working simultaneously; this is easy to understand when looking at Robin Williams’ performance in “Aladdin” (1992), for example, but it’s just as impressive here.

The animation elevates the work and the choices of actors who are committing to Dick’s harrowing sci-fi cautionary tale.

Linklater’s prior film with roto-scoped animation, “Waking Life” (2001), was a brilliantly constructed and conceived work that depicted the dream state in episodic fashion, with every segment done in a different style of animation. Here, “A Scanner Darkly” has a consistent look to the animation in every scene.

The overall result isn’t an experimental film, like “Waking Life,” but a top-to-bottom repurposing of how animation can be used to tell a narrative not intended for children.

Rather than utilize busy CGI to convey the scramble suits on live-action stars, Linklater makes it all a cartoon, which complements the performances (the characters are all spacey to begin with) and the scenario (the futuristic tech of this world doesn’t seem like an intrusion on the reality within the story).

FAST FACT: Linklater told Aint It Cool News that he wanted to ensure the source material’s comedic elements made it into his film. “…often an element that has been lost in his works that have been adapted to film is the humor. You see bits and pieces of it but that’s it.”

Linklater is one of the truly brilliant American filmmakers working today, as he finds ways to challenge himself and his audience. The let’s-take-years-to-make-this conceit of the award-winning “Boyhood” (2014) and the three-people-in-a-room drama “Tape” (2001) are just two examples of how the filmmaker takes calculated risks that work to the narrative’s benefit.

I realize I’m not doing a good job selling “A Scanner Darkly” and haven’t noted how funny, inventive and wildly entertaining it is. The final scene is a heartbreaker and fittingly sit to Thom Yorke’s great “Black Swan.”

There are scenes here that are crushing but, unlike so many cautionary tales that aim punish above all else, Linklater and his cast clearly love these characters, flaws and all.

It’s a little crazy to me that, 20 years later, “A Scanner Darkly” is an unseen, obscure masterpiece. There were many great films released in 2006 but this one was my favorite.

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‘Ready or Not 2: Here I Come’ Should Stay Hidden

Some movies don’t deserve a sequel, but the box office potential screams otherwise.

It’s hard to stare at a surprise hit like 2018’s “Ready or Not” and say, “yeah, one is enough.” That’s exactly what the team behind the film should have said.

Instead, we get “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come,” a sequel that squanders all the goodwill built up the first time around. Every last ounce of it.

Original star Samara Weaving isn’t to blame, nor is Kathryn Newton as a key addition to the saga. It’s a world-building exercise that goes nowhere, compounded by clunky dialogue and endless exploding bodies.

Yes, the latter bit is comical the first and second time, but the tenth?

The action picks up where the last film ended. Weaving’s Grace is still wearing her bloodied wedding dress, and local law enforcement thinks she may be responsible for all the dead members of the Le Domas family.

Her estranged sister Faith (Newton) visits her in the hospital where Grace, chained to the bed while recovering from her wounds, awaits the long arm of the law.

It doesn’t take long for the bigger story to emerge. Grace’s unlikely victory in the first film was just the beginning. Turns out that evil, uber-rich clan was part of a larger network of Satan-worshipping gazillionaires.

Dern that capitalism!

To be fair, the film’s satirical swipes never devolve into lectures and an early quip about geopolitical power. It’s merely the backdrop to the unfolding mayhem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Grace and Faith are quickly captured and brought to a new mansion where the various families will try to kill her. If at first, you don’t succeed, we suppose.

She’s not exactly G.I. Jane, but she is scrappy and managed to survive the first film, so…

Whoever finally kills Grace will become the most powerful person in the world, or head of the high council, or something similarly Satanic and absurd.

The story is beyond ridiculous, and attempts to expand the “Ready or Not”-iverse reminds us of the superior “John Wick” saga. Those films have star power (Keanu Reeves), expert fight choreography and a stellar sense of mayhem.

“Here I Come” has Weaving, a terrific Final Girl, and little else. The action is frantic and lackluster, while the dialogue feels like it was written by teen boys who spend every waking hour playing Fortnite. Cursing abounds, and while R-rated films aren’t delicate by any stretch, the flop sweat screenplay screams straight-to-VOD fare.

The 2019 original, while no classic, deserves better than this.

The crowded story includes Sarah Michelle Gellar and Shawn Hatosy as siblings hoping to emerge victorious, even though they’re often too busy squabbling with each other.

The various characters gunning to kill Grace and Faith aren’t exactly fearsome or memorable. The former isn’t a deal killer since comedy is allegedly part of this cinematic dish. Except the laughs are infrequent and the endless gore feels desperate, not inspired.

A running subplot concerning Grace and Faith’s strained past is meant to build up their characters, but it’s so perfunctory it merely slows the film’s admittedly kicky momentum.

The sequel isn’t dull, just stupefying.

“Here I Come” is a mess from the very first scenes, an ill-fated attempt to stretch a quirky genre hit into a franchise.

HiT or Miss: “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come” boasts a snarky title, a game lead actress and little else.

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