Overview: After decades of being blown to bits by bombs, demolished by dynamite, mangled by magnets, battered by boulders, trampled by trains, tricked by tunnels, sprung by springs, steamrolled by steamrollers, maligned by misfires, bedeviled by bungees, rattled by rockets, backstabbed by bat suits, rocked by rocket skates, upended by unicycles, quaked by quake pills, rubberized by rogue bands, and hurled headlong off every cliff in the Southwest, Wile E. Coyote (Genius) finally fights back.

Teaming up with billboard accident lawyer Kevin Avery (Will Forte), he takes on slick corporate counsel Buddy Crane (John Cena) and ACME, Inc., the profit-obsessed conglomerate behind every one of the Coyote’s chaotic catastrophes.

Verdict: In a year that’s already been pretty good for comedies, Coyote vs. Acme is a fun, clever outing that mixes slapstick antics with unexpectedly dramatic interludes. It’s family-friendly, with a bit of naughtiness—there’s a reference to Porky Pig’s proud pants-lessness—and chock-full of in-jokes for cartoonophiles.

Briskly directed by Dave Green, the live-action/animation hybrid takes a swipe at corporate callousness. There’s no little irony in the fact that corporate giant Warner Bros. cut the film loose, only for it to be picked up by a smaller distributor. But more about that later.

The Road Runner is a foil to Wile E. Coyote rather than his enemy, and he is not often seen in the movie. The spotlight is on the fallible, delusional, oft-humiliated, eminently human Wile E. The filmmakers have composed, with affection and care, an integrated world of people, animals, and cartoons.

Much of the animation was created through traditional, tangible processes, so the characters don’t have that inflated computer-graphics look. Hats off to animation supervisor Keith Roberts. The voice work was performed by established artists—Eric Bauza, Candi Milo, and Jim Cummings—who carry on the work of Warner Bros. cartoon originators such as Mel Blanc and June Foray.

Coyote vs. Acme opens with a tone of intrigue. In a corporate laboratory in the 1990s, a scientist who is a cartoon caricature of actor Peter Lorre is caught committing a transgression. Pursued by security guards—who are live actors—he falls, perhaps to his doom. The action switches to the present day, on the outskirts of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

A full-course Road Runner–Coyote cartoon chase is served up. Things go awry for Wile E., despite—or because of—the Acme products he uses: defective rocket-powered skates and a magnetic glove. What’s new is that Acme has joined the military-industrial complex, with branded fighter planes.

Wile E. retreats to his lair. As he draws up the next day’s battle plans, he notices a TV commercial in which a human personal-injury lawyer tells a cartoon clientele that victims of defective products can receive damages. The coyote resolves that Acme has let him down for the last time. The law firm, by the way, is called Avery, Jones and Maltese—a tip of the hat to legendary cartoon director Tex Avery and the aforementioned Road Runner creators.

Will Forte stars as Kevin Avery, the public face of a strip-mall law office. Lana Condor plays his niece, Paige Avery, who is interning at the firm before going to Oxford. The law student is ambitious and enthusiastic; those qualities have drained out of Kevin, who is sliding toward the demeanor of Tex Avery’s Droopy Dog.

Professionally, Kevin aims low, securing small settlements for cartoon clients who have, for example, been crushed by wrecking balls. Wile E. arrives at the office, causing a hubbub. Non-speaking, he makes his points through the rapid-fire use of picket signs or, when action speaks louder than words, explosives. With some trepidation, Kevin agrees to take on what would be a groundbreaking lawsuit against Acme.

The conference at Acme headquarters, with a pop-culture figure entering the business world, is reminiscent of Barbie. The case brings Kevin face-to-face with a former law-school classmate who has hit the big time. Acme’s chief legal counsel, Buddy Crane, wears a snappy suit and a bolo tie so large that it must imply something. Massachusetts’ own John Cena gives a gem of a comic performance in the role. In the boardroom, Buddy, calling Kevin a “billboard lawyer,” offers a settlement that makes Kevin happy and Wile E. furious. The coyote sets the document on fire. See y’all in court.

The movie’s society is like our own, but with surreal, elastic boundaries. People seem familiar with cartoons’ physical properties, but there isn’t much socializing between humans and animated characters. “My clients go boom and two seconds later they’re fine. Nobody cares,” Kevin laments as he tries to maintain momentum for the suit. The courtroom scene gives a good sense of the community’s mix. Judge Troppogrosso (Luis Guzmán) is human, but he uses his cartoon gavel for this case.

The jury is mostly human but includes the cartoon hen Miss Prissy, who finds the studly Buddy quite stimulating. Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine cartoon justice going smoothly when the bench must contend with participants such as Wile E. and Acme executive the Tasmanian Devil. Disruption is in their nature.

Dr. Lorre is out of sight but not forgotten. (Warner Bros. used Lorre’s likeness as a mad scientist in two ’40s cartoons.) He was trying to blow the whistle on an outrage perpetrated by Acme. Now another mysterious figure is dropping clues.

While Kevin is busy wrangling Wile E., Paige does some productive sleuthing. Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies pals caught up in this web include Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck—confined to a “rest home”—Tweety, Granny, Foghorn Leghorn—wouldn’t you know it, the bossy rooster is an Acme bigwig—and Senator Elmer Fudd, who holds a hearing on whether Acme products are a danger to society. Both Kevin and Buddy think the Road Runner’s testimony at the hearing—provided they can catch him and take him to D.C.—will favor their side.

The acme—meaning the highest point of achievement or development—of Green’s film is its characterization of Wile E. Coyote. Canis latrans’s body, whether in short-lived bouts of confidence or mangled defeat, assumes forms familiar from the Jones years, while the nuances of his facial expressions, especially in his big yellow eyes, are fresh and impressive.

No one hopes he will devour the Road Runner, but Wile E.’s self-imposed struggle evokes Sisyphus. As Wile E. and Kevin move from an attorney-client relationship to a friendship, the coyote reaches the end of his arsenal of signs: “Limited number of signs” means he cannot express his emotions. His vulnerability as he admits that downright put a lump in my throat.

We know that Will Forte can ace both comedy (SNL, etc.) and drama (Nebraska). His reactions to Wile E.’s impulses are priceless, and he makes Kevin—whose eyes are opened to the coyote’s virtues—a character to root for. Lana Condor’s Paige is sharp and sure-footed. The actual law-firm partners, Tone Bell as Sal Maltese and Martha Kelly as Dottie Jones, do not have much to do, although Kelly is always a welcome presence.

And oh my God, John Cena’s dressing-down of Tweety—whom he has working for him under threats to a loved one—is jaw-droppingly funny and will surely make the actor’s highlights reel. Cena also delivers a key line while on the phone with the state’s governor: “The law is on our side, because we wrote the law.” How’s that for relevance to the real world?

If I may nerd out further: Seeing Foghorn Leghorn step before a U.S. Senate committee gave me a thrill, since the rooster’s voice and attitude were lifted from the Senator Beauregard Claghorn character, played by Kenny Delmar, in the Allen’s Alley bit on Fred Allen’s comedy radio show, launched in 1942.

Screenplay and screen-story credits go to Samy Burch (May December, Late Fame), with Jeremy Slater receiving co-screen-story credit. Those who follow the movie business may have seen the film’s title crop up over the past few years. The project passed through the hands of other screenwriters before Burch’s screenplay was shot in 2022.

Overview: Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, is a riveting, epic thriller set in a world where survival is instinct, but humanity is a choice.

Scott tells the story of Hig, a young pilot who, together with a military survivalist, Bangley, has carved out an efficient but isolated homestead in a brutal post-apocalyptic world until a mysterious radio transmission spurs Hig to venture into the unknown in search of the hope and humanity he still believes exists.

Verdict: The Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana once wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Ridley Scott’s latest film attempts a more complex interrogation: what of those who do remember the past, but condemn themselves to its repetition?

Is there any salvation from that hell?

A robust survivalist drama, The Dog Stars is Scott’s best movie in several years — not to mention, his most conflicted. While it resembles the post-apocalyptic genre films Hollywood tends to make, there are no zombies or humanoid apes to be found. Rather, its characters are haunted only by their histories — personal, political, and cultural — in a film that wrestles uncomfortably with historical imagery, in its pursuit of pushing forward through impossible circumstances.

The world as we know it ceased to be, at some point, a few years ago. As burdened protagonist Hig (Jacob Elordi) patrols overhead in his Cessna light plane (alongside his loyal Belgian Shepherd Jasper), we’re introduced to the Denver of the near future, a city overrun with flora and fauna, but bereft of human life.

Frozen in time are the many fast-food joints and Coke products that no doubt paid for product placement, but these provide a sense of how, thanks to an unnamed respiratory disease — influenza in Peter Heller’s 2012 novel, but an echo of COVID in Mark L. Smith’s screenplay — a society of unchecked growth came to a screeching halt.

Hig lives on an abandoned air strip in Erie, Colorado with the grizzled, gun-toting Bangley (Josh Brolin), a paranoid father-figure whose eagerness to snipe armed travelers has kept them alive. To Bangley’s chagrin, Hig makes frequent visits to a nearby Mennonite town to provide mechanical assistance and drop off supplies to its ailing children — that is, when he isn’t covertly walking through his abandoned Denver home, where his pregnant wife Melissa (Sai Bennett) succumbed to the disease.

This painful past both urges Hig to help whoever he can, while also tempting him to leave his little patch of life behind and fly away to a rumored promised land of survivors. But when he eventually attempts this journey, he finds himself stranded in a valley where his only help is a two-person commune not dissimilar from his own, consisting of the doe-eyed, widowed doctor Cima (Margaret Qualley) and her own armed, suspicious father, “Pops” (Guy Pearce).

Built on character-centric dialogue (and equally detailed dramatic silences), all of Hig’s dilemmas, over whether to stay or leave, find him retreating into his grief for answers. This affords Elordi an anguished performance, whether carefully scrutinizing the streets, or drifting aimlessly overhead. When he’s lost in agonizing thought, you’ll think you can fix him, and so does Cima (though their romance starts out world-weary — almost ghostly).

However, while Hig’s meditative inner conflicts clash with Bangley, Cima, and Pops, owing to their respective outlooks on how to survive, and how to keep on living, there’s a thundering quality to the occasional action scenes — one of them, a chaotic night-vision stunner — wherein both strongholds find themselves under fire from hedonistic survivors.

Bangley refers to these interlopers in dehumanizing terms (“roaches,” he calls them), and although the film refutes his rugged individualism by way of Hig’s readiness to help, the camera adopts a fearful, conservative quality in its framing. Some of these wanderers are designed like tattooed Latino gangs, in the vein of modern migration fears, while others adopt the broad appearance (and the ululating) of Native American tribes.

These groups are multi-ethnic, and their assaults on white, camo-hatted heroes intent on safeguarding an idyllic pastoralism hyper-charges the film with an awkward cultural imagery it refutes in equally awkward ways. It’s by no means some hyper-right-wing screed, at least in the contemporary sense, but its backward gaze finds characters re-enacting a violent American past, from Manifest Destiny to the George W. Bush (and onward) era of immigrant distrust.

The Dog Stars builds on these ugly themes in fascinating ways, with its (admittedly rushed) left turn into territory where the dangers of nostalgia become not just rampant — by way of the late introduction of a kooky antagonist — but obvious and on-the-nose, by way of a town fashioned as a simulacrum of idyllic mid-century Americana.

It’s jaw-dropping and disconcerting, but it makes for a strangely powerful mirror to characters so burdened by pain that the mere thought of moving through time, further away from their memories of the world as it once was, feels akin to death, or a loss of identity. After all, grief and fear, no matter how misguided, are ultimately the impetus to “Make America Great Again.”

That the movie is locked in constant battle with memory is what makes it so moving. The tension between Hig and Cima — two people shackled by grief, and by a world they remember — feels downright electric, not just because these are attractive stars making eyes at one another, but for its cathartic possibilities and is deeply affecting drama.

Scott has long dealt in cynicism — a turn his movies arguably took after the death of his brother Tony in 2012 — but The Dog Stars plays like a sincere attempt to move past his cinematic misanthropy, even as the nearly 90-year-old auteur considers the end of the road.

Overview: Remember BUDDY--the bright orange unicorn and star of that classic children’s television show who brought joy and life lessons into your living room?

Inside the colorful world of It’s Buddy!, a group of children spend their days singing, dancing, and helping Buddy spread happiness.

But when one child refuses to play along, Buddy is not pleased and cracks begin to appear in this seemingly perfect world.

Verdict: If anyone knows their way around a horror pastiche of ’90s television, it’s Casper Kelly. The director of Too Many Cooks and Mandy’s Cheddar Goblin advert makes good on the promise of a full-length analog nightmare with Buddy. You know, it’s Buddy! The orange unicorn from the kids’ TV show of the same name.

Those kids are starting to catch on that something’s not quite right, though, and when Wade (Caleb Williams) starts asking too many questions, Buddy’s chums learn that their colorful unicorn pal isn’t quite so cuddly after all. Following a tense showdown at Buddy’s clubhouse, determined Freddy (Delaney Quinn) leads the charge, making a break for freedom. Freedom, not just from Buddy’s ever-watchful eye, but also the constraints of the technicolor TV nightmare in which they’re all trapped.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, mum-of-two (?) Grace (Cristin Milioti) has a few questions of her own. She’s convinced that something is missing from her life, although dismissive husband Ben (Topher Grace) is having none of it. Catching an episode of Buddy, Grace becomes convinced that the answers she seeks are hidden within.

It’s an ambitious concept, and Kelly plays it straight at first, marathoning a handful of episodes of Buddy while Wade and Freddy launch their rebellion against Buddy. It’s as keenly observed as Too Many Cooks, and instantly recognizable as something which could have played on a TV set near you in the ’90s. Keegan-Michael Key is almost unrecognizable as the voice of Buddy – and the choice to utilize a voice actor of his esteem proves a wise one.

Elsewhere, Patton Oswalt provides the voice of a backpack, while Michael Shannon makes a great double act with Clint Howard in one of the film’s most memorable scenes. All are perfectly pitched, and fit seamlessly into the world of a children’s TV show gone wrong.

In tapping into the inherent creepiness of kids’ television, Kelly finds fertile ground for fresh nightmares. It finds its scares in the subconscious of those of us who were dumped in front of a television at a young age and both hypnotized and appalled by what we found there. We all know a kid who was unreasonably terrified by the sight of the Teletubbies, or The Tweenies. And Buddy knows it too. It’s Barney the Dinosaur meets Pennywise the Dancing Clown, with a bit of Freddy Kreuger thrown in for good measure.

While one wishes it hadn’t jettisoned the episodic format so soon, Buddy is successful in finding a balance between unsettling surrealism and traditional horror scares. It’s not afraid to go dark either, featuring some truly chilling sequences of kinder-trauma between rounds of song and dance.

Overview: In MUTINY, after witnessing his billionaire boss’s murder and being framed for the crime, Cole Reed (Jason Statham) boards a cargo ship on a one-man crusade to avenge his boss’s death only to discover an international conspiracy.

Verdict: In their book The British B Film, writers Steve Chibnall and Brian McFarlane describe Bond of Fear, an underseen and worthwhile low-budget crime curio from 1956, as “moderately inventive.” It’s a somewhat backhanded compliment, particularly when placed in the context of supremely inventive achievements from the same year like The Searchers or A Man Escaped.

In 2026, though, supremely inventive (ostensibly) sets the bar for a theatrical release, and unfussy competence has been relegated to the proverbial bargain bin of the streaming world. Yet, first by air and now by sea, Jean-Francois Richet fights to keep the spirit of the moderately inventive action movie alive on the big screen.

For those who passed out on the couch to Richet’s previous effort Plane, know that Mutiny is marginally more interesting despite the fact that Richet is still grabbing from the same bag of broad tropes to set the table for another action hero rampage in an exotic location. This time, Jason Statham plays professional bodyguard Cole Reed, and he dukes it out with treacherous sailors on the high seas to avenge the assassination of his billionaire boss, Tibu.

A movie about maleficence in the international shipping industry, Mutiny docks during a particularly charged political moment: U.S. President Donald Trump is waging an unwinnable war against Iran over control of the Strait of Hormuz. But Richet (and by extension Statham, producing here under his Punch Palace Productions banner and adding fuel to the fire for the inevitable PhD candidate writing a thesis on Statham-as-auteur) very pointedly avoids politics.

In an early exposition dump, Reed plays chess with Tibu, who asks him if he misses being a police officer. “Miss the action,” Reed replies laconically, “not the politics.” It’s a missed opportunity for some good termite artist commentary, instead opting for as neutral and narrow a vision of geopolitics as possible. At least Richet seems invested behind the camera: the confined nature of the setting necessitates more invention — a moderate amount, one might say — than a run-‘n’-gunner set on an open plateau would.

Small flourishes go a long way in Mutiny — shooting otherwise banal dialogue in a car through the rearview mirror, for example, or photographing the action through portals and small crevices between shipping containers once we’re on the ship. One canted angle, shot from above, looks down on Reed as shadows spill through metal bars, resembling an old-school survival horror video game. Yet Mutiny doesn’t merely look like a video game in parts, it unfolds like one, too: advance to the next level, circle back if you need to, and retrieve this object or ring that alarm; solve this puzzle here; escort that person there.

Like many a Metroidvania, Richet contrives roadblocks to get us to different parts of the ship. It’s needlessly busy, but it also opens the movie up to explore its most interesting character: the ship itself. The KMG Artemis is so richly textured as a location, moments — albeit too brief — in between the action bring to mind the glories of Leviathan or At Sea, reminding us of the sheer magnitude of the vessel and the ocean it traverses. Richet even does the Vertigo shot from inside a ventilation shaft for no narrative-driven reason at all — it’s simply cool shit. There’s a great experimental film to be made by splicing shots of empty space here together.

The structure of Mutiny writ large is decidedly not experimental, however; it’s a death-delivery machine. Gunplay is smooth, close quarters combat is brutal, and the parkour is kindly kept to a minimum. It’s just not as efficient as it should be considering its trim 96-minute runtime. Richet takes his sweet time getting us to the boat, and there’s an unnecessary coda on dry land following the climactic fight; a little extra shimmying during the screenplay stage could’ve done away with some of the nonsense endemic to the action movie form.

Overview: It’s a BRAND NEW DAY for Peter Parker. Fighting crime full-time as Spider-Man in a world that doesn’t remember him -- and the pressure of seeing his old friends move on without him -- sparks a change in Peter he may not have the power to control.

But that transformation might also be the only thing that can stop a shocking new threat to the city and those he loves -- a powerful villain no one can even see. The world may have forgotten Peter Parker, but he hasn’t forgotten them.

Verdict: It has been five years since the last Spider-Man movie hit theaters. Spider-Man: No Way Home was one of the biggest post pandemic movies and was able to capitalize on bringing together all three live action Spider-Man actors. After taking some time off, Spider-Man is back with a new director and a new look at not just the superhero but Peter Parker himself.

Picking up right where the last movie left off, everyone has not only forgotten that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, but everyone also has forgotten Peter Parker altogether. Now, living on his own and mostly keeping to himself Peter tries to live a life without his aunt, his best friend and the love of his life. Continuing with his duties as Spider-Man, he has been collaborating with the local police to help track down any villains that try to destroy the city. He still keeps tabs on Ned and MJ as they are now attending MIT and living their life post-Peter Parker.

A new threat makes its way into the city, and it is something that Peter has never dealt with before. This new threat can take over the body of anyone that it wants to, making it even harder for Peter to take them down. While this new threat emerges, Peter deals with his own problems as his body starts to change.

His spider side is starting to take over his human side causing some side effects that make him angrier, more violent and sometimes out of control. It will take Peter everything that he’s got to try and fix his own problems while also defeating this new threat to the city that he loves.

Brand New Day is the first of the MCU Spider-Man movies that mostly focuses on Peter and his own personal journey. The other movies have a little too much involvement from Tony Stark, Happy Hogan, and previous Spider-Man heroes and villains.

That’s not to say that this movie doesn’t feature other characters and tries to expand the MCU, but its focus is set on Peter and how he must deal with being alone for the first time in his life. This adds more depth to Peter, and it finally gives him time to shine and not feel like he is being overshadowed by other characters.

Director Destin Daniel Cretton does a great job behind the camera. He has a great flair when it comes to directing the character of Spider-Man. Watching the character swing around the city and web sling from building to building has never felt more immersive. The cinematography during these scenes is some of the best in any Spider-Man movie and it really makes the audience feel closer to the character.

The rest of the visuals throughout are mostly solid. At times there is some questionable CGI, just like there is in all these movies. Thankfully, it looks better more often than it looks wonky. There are some fantastic action set pieces mixed in with some good-looking fight choreography. In the beginning of the movie, Peter is shown fighting and saving the city from a variety of different villains. The character designs look great with most of these villains looking just like they do in the comics.

After playing the character seven times already, this may very well be Tom Holland’s best performance so far. Holland dives deeper into the character than he’s done before and this bodes well as the story requires more from him than in previous movies. His chemistry with the rest of the cast is top notch.

Without much spoiling, the scenes Holland shares with Zendaya are extremely well done. Obviously, they have a lot of chemistry given that they are a real-life couple, but with MJ having her memory erased it adds a new dynamic to the characters that makes everything feel fresh. Jacob Batalon returns as Ned, and he is as good as ever. The movie allows him to be even funnier than he typically is and seeing Batalon in scenes with both Holland and Zendaya makes for a great trio. As has been revealed in the trailers there are some other heroes that make appearances. Jon Bernthal returns as Frank Castle and the story utilizes him quite well despite being an R-rated character in a PG-13 movie.

Mark Ruffalo is back once again as Bruce Banner. While he isn’t given as much to do, he does well with the time he is given. Sadie Sink adds a new element to the storyline once she is brought into the picture. Her character must remain a mystery, but she is a nice surprise and is a great addition to the cast.