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: Bela, an eight-year-old girl living in a home with marital problems, confronts a sinister entity that comes out of her closet. The presence, whom she calls "Other Mommy," becomes increasingly threatening to her and her family.

Verdict: IOh, god. I can’t believe what I saw after sitting through Other Mommy. I mean, the trailer looked creepy and the fact that Jessica Chastain plays a dual role as a mother and a doppelgänger piqued my interest. It’s not like Rob Savage, who did a great job in the screenlife Host and, to an extent, The Boogeyman, is completely losing his directorial flair here.

At least not from the beginning, where he skips the typical build-up commonly associated with the horror genre, and goes straight for the jugular: A pre-title cold open that introduces the adolescent Bela (Arabella Olivia Clark), who seemingly has a routine normal night with her parents Ursula (Jessica Chastain) and Russell (Jay Duplass) as they tuck her into bed.

But once they leave with the door closed, an entity appears out of her closet and instead of freaking out, Bela looks unfazed as if she has known the entity for sometimes, even calling it “Other Mommy” since she is a dead ringer for her real mother. Then comes the kitchen scene the next morning, easily the best part of the movie, which ends with Other Mommy contorting her whole body in an unnatural position. So far, so good.

But unfortunately, the rest of the movie is one chaotic mess after another, with narrative coherence thrown out the window in favor of a frenetic pace as if it were built for short attention spans. You can forget about the so-called dread and atmosphere because, apparently, Savage and editor John Cutler navigate Other Mommy like an out-of-control rollercoaster, leaving little room for natural progression.

It doesn’t help that Nathan Elston’s screenplay, adapted from Josh Malerman’s Incidents Around the House novel, comes across as a patchy job. The Other Mommy can’t stop latching onto Bela wherever she goes, no matter day or night, like how Ursula and Russell’s party to celebrate their seventh anniversary turns into a disaster. But it isn’t just the haunting, as Bela also learns that her mother is having an affair with her father’s best friend, Frank (Arian Moayed).

As the movie goes on, Savage keeps it busy with a mix of surrealistic and macabre set pieces, showcasing special effects from the Other Mommy’s face melting like wet clay to an exploding head. At one point, there’s even an elaborate ball pit sequence that turns into a bonkers nightmare straight out of A Nightmare on Elm Street. They look visually cool if you take them at face value, but these scenes barely register a creeping sense of fright other than just look-at-me, flashy visual spectacle.

The so-called jump scares, where Savage boldly claimed there are 50 of them, rely heavily on constantly loud noises and recurring camera movements that already telegraph what we would expect later. Besides, merely piling in plenty of jump scares strips away their effective jolts, especially when the movie barely cares about the cinematic power of escalation and, most importantly, the elements of surprise. These scares become physically numbing after a while, to the point that the tension deflates completely.

The second half sees Savage sinking further, even ripping off a scene from Insidious, which revolves around Ursula’s superstitious mother, Grandma Ruth (Karen Allen), seeking the help of paranormal investigators led by Lois (Dichen Lachman) in an attempt to get rid of the Other Mommy. By the time the movie reaches the third act, best described as underwhelming and anticlimactic, I already lose interest.

Overview: Estranged street fighters Ryu and Ken Masters get thrown back into combat when the mysterious Chun-Li recruits them for the next World Warrior Tournament - a brutal clash of fists, fate and fury. However, behind the battle royale lies a deadly conspiracy that forces them to face off against each other and the demons from their past.

Verdict: For a franchise built around the simple pleasure of watching colorful personalities beat the living daylights out of one another, Street Fighter demonstrates an astonishing inability to understand what makes its source material entertaining. Director Kitao Sakurai’s long-awaited adaptation arrives armed with an enormous ensemble, elaborate costumes, spectacular martial arts choreography, and decades of gaming nostalgia, only to squander almost every advantage on a screenplay of staggering ineptitude.

What should have been a gloriously ridiculous celebration of arcade combat instead becomes an exhausting procession of atrocious dialogue, childish humor, and narrative decisions that grow more bewildering with every passing minute. There are occasional flashes of genuine filmmaking prowess buried within this chaotic production, but extracting them from almost two hours of increasingly insufferable nonsense requires considerably more patience than the film deserves.

Set in 1993, the story reunites estranged martial artists Ryu (Andrew Koji) and Ken Masters (Noah Centineo), whose once-close relationship fractured following a traumatic confrontation with the formidable Akuma (Joe Anoa’i) six years earlier. Their paths converge when the mysterious M. Bison (David Dastmalchian) organizes a World Warrior tournament, attracting an assortment of fighters from across the globe.

Undercover Interpol agent Chun-Li (Callina Liang), meanwhile, is determined to expose Bison’s sinister activities and avenge her father’s death. Beneath the competition lies a scheme involving Bison’s desire to acquire Ryu’s extraordinary power, drawing the reluctant fighter into a confrontation with consequences supposedly extending far beyond the tournament itself.

It’s an uncomplicated foundation for an action film, which makes the screenplay’s determination to complicate absolutely everything all the more baffling. Rather than embracing the tournament as its narrative centerpiece, Street Fighter treats the competition as little more than an inconvenient mechanism for assembling its enormous cast. The individual matches possess precious little dramatic significance, while the larger storyline becomes increasingly preoccupied with Bison’s supernatural ambitions and Ryu’s exceptional abilities.

Character rivalries are introduced without meaningful development, anticipated confrontations are abbreviated or abandoned, and the tournament’s structure never generates the escalating excitement such a premise practically demands. The result is a film that repeatedly gestures towards its most obvious source of entertainment while stubbornly refusing to make it matter.

This fundamental misunderstanding becomes particularly frustrating when considering how straightforward an enjoyable adaptation could have been. The games have already supplied an abundance of distinctive characters, fighting styles, and rivalries, leaving the filmmakers with the comparatively manageable task of constructing a coherent narrative around them.

Instead, Sakurai and co-writer T. J. Fixman bury those possibilities beneath a convoluted collection of half-developed subplots that rarely amount to anything substantial. The screenplay seems convinced that adding more complications automatically creates greater narrative depth, when the opposite proves painfully true.

The dialogue is frequently atrocious, alternating between clumsy exposition, painfully obvious observations, and lame jokes that land with all the elegance of a missed uppercut. Characters announce their motivations with remarkable regularity, apparently concerned that audiences might forget who they are or why they’ve entered the story. Yet all this explanation produces astonishingly little meaningful character development.

Ryu remains the solemn warrior burdened by his past, Ken the swaggering counterpart whose confidence masks familiar insecurities, and Chun-Li the determined heroine pursuing revenge. These archetypes are perfectly serviceable starting points, but the screenplay barely progresses beyond them. Their emotional conflicts are presented as inherently compelling without ever being afforded the attention necessary to make them resonate.

Koji at least possesses the physical credibility and stoic presence required of Ryu, while Centineo brings an occasionally appealing swagger to Ken. Their contrasting temperaments offer the closest thing the film has to a recognizable emotional center, although the material rarely allows either performer to develop much beyond surface-level characterization.

Liang demonstrates considerable athletic ability as Chun-Li, but her dramatic contributions are undermined by particularly cumbersome dialogue and an increasingly perfunctory revenge storyline. Dastmalchian certainly understands the exaggerated theatricality required of M. Bison, yet even his commitment cannot transform the villain’s muddled ambitions into something remotely threatening. For all the talent assembled, the performances are largely stranded within a narrative that mistakes familiar character traits for actual personalities.

The supporting ensemble fares even worse. Jason Momoa’s Blanka, Cody Rhodes’ Guile, Orville Peck’s Vega, Curtis Jackson’s Balrog, and Olivier Richters’ Zangief are among the recognizable figures competing for attention, but their appearances frequently resemble elaborate introductions rather than meaningful contributions to the story. Some receive fleeting opportunities to showcase their abilities, while others seem to exist primarily so audiences can recognize another familiar name or costume.

The film becomes an increasingly overcrowded parade of characters whose inclusion rarely serves any discernible purpose. It’s an impressive achievement of sorts to assemble so many distinctive personalities and render the majority of them almost entirely forgettable. Rather than allowing its ensemble to generate excitement through competing motivations and relationships, Street Fighter reduces much of its cast to glorified background decoration.

Even more exhausting is the film’s relentless reliance on crass, juvenile humor. There’s nothing inherently wrong with embracing the ridiculousness of a franchise populated by impossibly muscular fighters, supernatural abilities, and extravagantly theatrical villains. Indeed, a healthy sense of humor should be essential to an adaptation of this material.

Unfortunately, Sakurai’s film repeatedly favors immaturity over irreverence, filling its dialogue with tiresome innuendo, obvious punchlines, and awkward comedic exchanges that become progressively more irritating. The jokes aren’t merely unsuccessful. Their sheer frequency actively undermines the film’s attempts to establish dramatic tension, ensuring that potentially meaningful moments are regularly interrupted by another desperate bid for adolescent laughter. It’s a tonal balancing act the filmmakers never come close to mastering.

Thankfully, the film possesses one undeniable strength in its impressively crafted fight choreography. When the characters finally stop talking and start throwing punches, Street Fighter briefly becomes the exhilarating action spectacle it should have been all along. The combat sequences demonstrate considerable technical precision, athletic commitment and an understanding of the exaggerated physicality associated with the games.

Distinctive fighting styles and signature abilities referenced from the games are incorporated with admirable flair, while the performers approach the demanding choreography with convincing intensity. These sequences possess a kinetic energy largely absent from the surrounding storytelling, offering fleeting reminders of the enormous entertainment potential inherent in the material. Frustratingly, their quality only makes the screenplay’s decision to marginalize the tournament feel even more inexplicable.

The film’s other genuine triumph arrives through its beautifully animated flashback sequences, overseen by animation supervisor Young Heller. Rendered in striking anime-inspired imagery, these passages possess a visual confidence, stylistic personality, and emotional immediacy that the live-action material struggles to replicate. The heightened aesthetic feels perfectly suited to the franchise’s exaggerated characters and supernatural mythology, allowing the filmmakers to embrace the source material’s distinctive sensibilities without the awkward limitations of physical realism.

They’re easily among the most visually captivating moments in the entire production, which raises an uncomfortable question about whether Street Fighter might have been considerably more successful as a full-length anime feature. Animation certainly wouldn’t have rescued such a dreadful screenplay, but these sequences suggest an artistic direction far more compelling than the confused spectacle surrounding them.

The film’s nostalgic presentation provides another curious mixture of pleasures and frustrations. Its soundtrack offers an enjoyable selection of recognizable 1990’s music, supplying occasional bursts of energy to proceedings that otherwise struggle to generate much excitement. Unfortunately, the filmmakers demonstrate a surprisingly careless relationship with their own explicitly established 1993 setting.

The inclusion of The Offspring’s “Come Out and Play”, released in 1994, is already a conspicuous chronological misstep, but the appearance of Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out”, released in 2000, as Ken’s arena entrance music is particularly bewildering. Apparently, the filmmakers were so busy remembering the 1990s that they forgot which part of the decade they were supposed to be honoring.

At almost two hours, the cumulative effect of these shortcomings becomes genuinely punishing. The pacing is particularly peculiar, devoting substantial stretches to establishing motivations and conflicts that ultimately contribute precious little to the narrative, while rushing through the confrontations that might have justified the considerable runtime. Scenes repeatedly introduce information without developing it, characters disappear for extended periods, and the supposed central competition struggles to maintain any coherent momentum.

The film isn’t necessarily lacking in incident, but activity and entertainment are hardly interchangeable. Eventually, the relentless barrage of exposition, flat humor, and narrative distractions becomes so wearying that even the prospect of another impressively choreographed fight offers diminishing relief. Rather than anticipating what might happen next, the overriding sensation becomes an increasingly desperate desire for the ordeal to conclude.

And when that conclusion finally approaches, Street Fighter somehow discovers one final opportunity to test the audience’s patience. Without revealing the specifics, the ending prioritizes the prospect of future instalments over delivering anything resembling a satisfying resolution to the film we’ve just endured. The final scene functions less as a meaningful culmination than an audacious piece of sequel bait, effectively asking audiences to invest in another chapter before demonstrating why this one deserved their attention.

It’s a particularly presumptuous decision for an adaptation that has spent almost two hours failing to establish compelling characters, coherent stakes, or a worthwhile central conflict. The suggestion that this exhausting experience might merely be the beginning is less an exciting promise than an elaborate threat.

Perhaps the most dispiriting aspect of Street Fighter is how thoroughly it squanders the considerable potential of its source material. The characters are visually distinctive, the mythology is expansive, and the fundamental concept offers almost limitless opportunities for thrilling action. Through the accomplished choreography and gorgeous animated interludes, Sakurai demonstrates that the production possesses the technical talent necessary to deliver something genuinely exciting.

Yet these isolated accomplishments are repeatedly overwhelmed by a screenplay that seems fundamentally uninterested in the very elements that make the franchise appealing. The film has all the ingredients for gloriously entertaining action escapism, but its creative decisions ensure they never come together into anything resembling a satisfying whole.

Street Fighter is a spectacularly misguided adaptation. Its impressive fight choreography and striking anime sequences offer occasional glimpses of the far more entertaining film this material might have become. Still, they’re nowhere near enough to offset the atrocious dialogue, incoherent storytelling, and exhausting lack of dramatic purpose.

Overview: Following the death of his father, Jay Gardiner goes diving off the coast of California in search of his remains. He soon finds himself in a desperate fight for survival when he’s swallowed whole by a massive whale. Trapped inside its belly, he must figure out a way to escape as his oxygen supply starts to run out.

Verdict: Like the opposing ocean tides, forces that both contrast and complement each other, 20th Century Studios’ “Whalefall” is one compelling movie with two powerful narratives. The first is the one the marketing sells hardest: one man’s race against time in a desperate fight for survival. The second is the one that will probably affect audiences most: a father-son relationship where time has already run out.

Epic and emotional, “Whalefall” adapts the titular 2023 novel by Daniel Kraus, who co-wrote the screenplay with director Brian Duffield, known for writing “Underwater” and “Love and Monsters,” and directing Hulu’s “No One Will Save You.” The film follows Jay Gardiner, played by Austin Abrams (“Resident Evil”), as he returns home to California’s Central Coast following the death of his father, Mitt, a professional diver played by Josh Brolin (“The Dog Stars”). Through flashbacks, we discover that Mitt was an overbearing, rugged man who lived his life on and in the water. Revered by his community and peers, he was far less successful at connecting with his son, whose childhood under Mitt’s tough-love approach left him carrying years of resentment.

Terminally ill and choosing to die in the water, Mitt leaves behind a body that no one can recover, forcing the family to bury an empty casket. While Jay’s mother and sisters, played by Elisabeth Shue (“Leaving Las Vegas”), Jane Levy (“Evil Dead”), and Emily Rudd (“Fear Street”), process his passing in more traditional ways, the prodigal son dives alone in search of his father’s remains. Instead of finding what he’s looking for, however, Jay finds himself swallowed by a massive sperm whale. Trapped inside its belly with only an hour of oxygen remaining, he realizes that the hard-earned lessons his father imparted may hold the key to his escape. But first, he must confront the grief and anger he has spent years avoiding.

The marketing understandably leans into selling “Whalefall” as a survival nightmare, particularly with its October theatrical release in the weeks leading up to Halloween. And it certainly delivers on that promise. Yet there’s much more going on beneath the surface.

Jay’s initial underwater encounter is intense and thrilling, placing him in the middle of a ferocious confrontation between a giant squid and the whale before the creature swallows him whole. From there, the film shifts into a nightmare of panic and claustrophobia, complete with a second encounter with the squid, now a deadly roommate.

The clock starts ticking as Jay desperately attempts to map an escape route and overcome the life-threatening obstacles separating him from freedom. Anyone familiar with the digestive process can imagine some of the perils involved, while the vastness of the deep blue sea and the surface above become increasingly tantalizing possibilities. Viewers prone to claustrophobia may find much of “Whalefall” almost unbearable. Even without that particular fear, it’s difficult not to feel overwhelmed by the ferocity and intensity of Jay’s predicament.

Readers of the novel will know that an incident involving the whale and its passengers becomes a crucial turning point, transforming the increasingly frantic escape attempt into something else entirely. Here, “Whalefall” becomes an even more affecting story about human connection and the inescapability of grief. You can bury sorrow as deep as the ocean itself, but it never truly goes away. Anyone who has lost someone they love, a soulmate of sorts, will recognize the emotional terrain. What begins as a fight for survival gradually becomes a story about life, love, and release.

Grief can feel like drowning, like being trapped with no conceivable way out, or being swallowed whole by something too enormous to comprehend. Duffield gives those feelings a startlingly literal expression, crafting one of the most gripping cinematic metaphors in recent memory. And it’s here that the film delivers its deepest emotional punch.

From the action set pieces to the intimate human drama and the fever-dream-like third act, Abrams shows exactly why he’s become such a compelling screen presence, anchoring two of the year’s best cinematic experiences. His everyman appeal and emotional authenticity, coupled with an ability to hold the audience’s attention no matter how extreme the circumstances, make for a remarkably assured performance.

Few actors are as watchable right now. His scenes with Brolin are emotional powder kegs, and their natural chemistry lets them move effortlessly between a desperate search for trust, tenderness, and connection, and confrontations as ferocious as the battle between the squid and the whale. Their father-son relationship is its own turbulent ecosystem, as unpredictable and unforgiving as the ocean itself.

It’s also hard to miss Duffield and cinematographer Aaron Morton’s striking use of eyes and extreme close-ups, which, combined with Pietro Scalia’s editing, create a sense of mania and intimacy essential to the film’s effectiveness. At times, the visual language recalls Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead” and even the heightened, nightmarish imagery of 1970s giallo cinema. Accompanied by Joseph Trapanese’s score, “Whalefall” becomes a disorienting maelstrom of shifting tones and sensations, swirling between terror and tenderness, and knowing precisely when to hit hard and when to pull back.

Overview: The most powerful man in the world embarks on a frantic mission to prove he is humanity’s savior before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything.

Verdict: A curious symptom affects Digger (2026), by Mexican Alejandro González Iñárritu. These days, there has been much more discussion about its reception by the public and critics than about the work itself. Apocalyptic fear circulated among social networks that, if Digger is a commercial failure, the beginning of the millionaire defunding of auteur cinema in Hollywood, of innovative and risky cinema, will come. Be sure of something: it is not because of the negative reviews of the critics, nor because of the audience that attends (or not) in its opening week, that the possibility of allocating gigantic budgets to films with some anomaly quota is lost. A space like the commercial billboard never belonged to the creative oddity.

Cinema is a machine of empathy, said the historic critic Roger Ebert. It does not solve the world on its own but is a conduit for what is left after the lights go out. It is in this capacity, through artistic elements, where the nobility of his existence lies. And the intriguing thing, if we really talk about Digger, if we go beyond the score and the summarize it in one sentence, is to notice the breakdowns of that machine that, between calculations and egos, tries to work. You can talk, contrast, nuance, get out of the Like/Dislike binary. If there is one thing that the marketing campaign should not have done, it is to fall into the secrecy and control of narratives that the film denounces. Let’s talk about the film, its characteristics, its meta-stories, Iñárritu’s two alter egos and the place that this occupies in the panorama.

Scientist Nirav Ganesh (Riz Ahmed) goes on a date with oil tycoon Digger Rockwell (Tom Cruise). Ganesh is his environmental adviser and has to explain to him, then to the American political leadership, and then to the European Parliament, about a glacial calving and the impending climate catastrophe caused by the Digger excavations. This last instance is the one that dr. Ganesh waits: his speech denouncing his boss’s responsibility will serve to uncover the culprits and, perhaps, make those who correspond react.

That great moment of seeing and hearing Ganesh for us, as an audience, never comes. We barely see it broadcast on a low-quality television in image and volume, while Digger waits for his turn to appear before the diplomats. Why doesn’t the camera accompany him to the room? We might think that it is because it is information already known to the public. But it is, above all, because the environmental catastrophe is not what worries the film the most.

We do follow Digger, we see him shouting all over the place. This is where the viral clip of Tom Cruise in character comes from. Without denying Ganesh’s allegations, shamelessly, he rejoices in rebuking that those who condemn him for the ecological damage want to consume gasoline at a low price, spend electricity to charge their cell phones and thus scroll through videos, they want freedom to bask in the comfort of their unsustainable lives. It’s the You can’t be a communist if you have an iPhone, elegant version. From the meta side, it is as useful as it is contradictory that what is popularized is the scene that least represents the central question of the film.

Amid applause and some fights from parliamentarians, Digger Rockwell and Iñárritu do not share the same political stance, but they do share the same emotion and intention. They are fascinated by themselves, by the power of well-intoned lyrics, by the cadence of an interpretation that is capable of making us forget the emptiness of the words spoken. The core of this film is not to report on climate change, although it uses it as context. Nor is it an invitation to community reflection. Long before the denouement, this scene condenses the scheme behind the director: this is what he was waiting for from the beginning.

The phrase popularized by Mark Fisher reappears more and more frequently, and has now been associated with Digger, immediately: It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Of course, over the years, and especially in this century, many endings have been artistically imagined while we are living our own, with two recurring elements (although not always combined): the near future instead of fantasy sci-fi, with technology and routines shared with our time; and the saturated parody of oligarchs and plutocrats. We are not saying that Iñárritu is taking these recent productions as a reference.

On the contrary, he emphatically emphasizes to the audience what his references are: he quotes Roy Andersson with his living paintings of desaturated tones and surreal elements; he quotes Kubrick in his military satire and use of wide-angle Dr. Strangelove (1964); brings Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane (1941) with the millionaire engrossed in his palace among mirrors and an object symbolic of his origin; includes a poster of John Cassavetes’ Opening Night (1977) so that it is clear to every viewer familiar with (or when the easter egg is released) that both films are a work within a work.

I wonder if Iñárritu remembers the phrase Myrtle (Gena Rowlands) says to herself: We must never forget that this is just a play. Everything indicates the opposite. There’s something of A Matter of Honor (1992)—and it’s not just Tom Cruise—in Digger’s speech in parliament, and there’s some exploitation of the Fellinian grotesque. Digger is a devoted potpourri of a cinema that knew how to talk about issues that Iñárritu himself seems to have a hard time tackling on his own.<> If anything marked the trend towards dystopias set in the near future, although it did so from the drama, it was the premiere fifteen years ago of the British anthology series Black Mirror. Its initial episodes, The National Anthem (2011) and Fifteen Million Merits (2011), pointed out with visual crudeness the manipulation of narratives, the capitalization of social discontent and the false freedom of choice that The Matrix (1999) had represented in the framework of its time. We are 25 years into the future that is the twenty-first century and each new summer is the hottest in history; each technological novelty, an extra way of violating dignity; each conservative leader, a new villain who disguises his meanness with more and more exaggeration, until he himself seems to be an interpreter of a hypergestural self-parody.

The revelation arises in Digger that we are watching the rehearsal of a play called Fossil Fools (in a play on words with fuels, fuel in English). To differentiate the play from the reality behind the scenes, they use the change of aspect ratio, the contrast between the make-up and set desaturated in color (a pallor that is not an invention of theirs, but a direct reference to Andersson). So, Iñárritu and company seem to want to say that what we saw, that increasingly overloaded farce, is part of what is customary to do from art in all times, over and over again.

Why is hypercartoonish comedy often used? As mentioned before, we can remember several recent releases that resort to ultraparody for this: Don’t Look Up (2021) by Adam McKay, Mickey 17 (2025) by Bong Joon-ho, or also, without being about the end of the world but about capitalist voracity, No Other Choice (2025) by Park Chan-wook. Obviously, none of them seeks to work with subtleties. Since we mentioned Fisher, Alfonso Cuarón contributed his quota to the discussion with the drama Children of Men (2006) — set in 2027, by the way — a film that Fisher analyzed in the first pages of his book Capitalist Realism. Is There No Alternative? (2009).

In another route of satire of the rich, there is the one recently taken by Karim Aïnouz with Rosebush Pruning (2026) (with many weak points), in which making the viewer uncomfortable with the scatological and paraphilia is an objective rather than a narrative means: this is the path marked by Ruben Östlund and, with a little more success, Yorgos Lanthimos, with whom Iñárritu and cinematographer Emmanuel El Chivo Lubezki share the use of wide-angles to deform faces and spaces, and accentuate the immersive effect.

Yes, movies no longer tell us anything we don’t know about the practices of these megalomaniacal subjects, but it’s not just about what they say, but how and why they say it. Elon Musk seeks to establish a colony on Mars and the Moon; Javier Milei gives a rock concert, clones his deceased dog and hires an interspecies medium to communicate with him; Donald Trump says climate change is a Chinese invention that hurts trade competition while the YCMA dances. Exaggeration and farce, once a way to diminish the image of the powerful to make it laughable, uncover their nonsense and lose their fear of their authoritarianism (especially when there is censorship), is no longer a tool for ridicule: you can no longer ridicule what is already absurd.

But cinema, as we said remembering Ebert, is a machine for generating empathy and we can try to see where it is headed. Iñárritu seems ready to speak, then, of the real dimension that leads to the creation of these farces, of the impact they have. Later, it seems not, and he becomes more interested in the conflict of the actor, Curtis Markson, who carries the weight of an egomaniacal character clinging to keeping his decomposing cat alive more than the planet itself (a very simple metaphor, without much complexity).

During the rehearsals, in which we can barely know anything about Curtis, a problem arises regarding the location of his daughter, who would have taken a flight affected by a storm. In the midst of all this, Kenny (Jesse Plemons) is lurking, a young man of whom we are told absolutely nothing, and at the same time everything is revealed to us when the rehearsals of Fossil Fools continue: a boy identical to him, with exactly the same characteristics as Kenny, plays in the living room of Digger’s mansion. He is the nephew of Digger, son of Emma Rockwell (Sandra Hüller). Kenny congratulates Curtis on his work and offers to help him locate his daughter. Only someone with immense power could offer something like that, unless it’s a bluff. This character is more transcendent than it seems, and not because of the information he gets for Curtis.

Iñárritu usually has an alter ego in his films. In this one, he has two: one is the hyperbolic Digger Rockwell. Before we talk about the second alter ego, let’s note how we will arrive at it. At a critical point in the rehearsals, Curtis gets out of character, interrupts the pass and claims to the team that they need more truth, less fantasy, because the real Digger Rockwell was never so excessive. From here, what was discovered thanks to the images is explained and even overexplained by Digger’s script to us, his real audience, as the film’s marketing strategy says.

The play’s director, Hannah (Sophie Wilde), argues with Curtis and gives him a summary of everything that has happened in the last twenty years: we are not facing a future environmental collapse, because this has already happened, and the Judy and Kimberly ice blocks—referred to as Kremlin Nova in an attempt by the authorities to redirect hatred of Russians—ran their course. It is understood that the objective is to inform us of the context to reveal the final twist of the plot. But Curtis, on the other hand, didn’t need to be given this news account. He is already informed, even if his position on what should be done on a dramatic level differs from that of his director.

Hannah goes on to say that the families of those who work on the work are also relatives of climate breakdown, that farces are like that, that there is no need for more realism or humanizing a subject like that. Iñárritu begins to explain the meaning of his decisions in Digger, of his excesses, of how farces are still created and watched, of everything we had already realized. These lines of Hannah’s fulfill a double function: the explanatory, so that the audience has no doubts; and the justification (or self-justification) before those who might criticize him, so that, just in case, they will not dismiss him, so that they are convinced that anything that seems like a mistake is something he had planned from the beginning. Iñárritu takes risks and retreats. He says he doesn’t care about the rest, but he does care. But let’s move on to her second alter ego which, of course, is not Hannah.

Kenny is the second Iñárritu. With a communicational style totally opposite to the Digger played by Curtis, Kenny is cordial, courteous, measured, even reveals how he financed the restoration of the theater in which they will premiere Fossil Fools now that it has become a cult classic. In a parallel with Digger himself, Kenny gives a speech by interrupting the argument between Curtis and Hannah. He says that he saw the play fifteen years earlier in a tiny London theater, that he observed all the reactions of mockery and applause of celebration of failure towards his family, interpreted with an exaggeration that they did not have.

He clarifies that this did not make him feel ashamed or humiliated, quite the opposite. He accepts all the allegations about his relatives, agrees with Curtis that his uncle was, indeed, a man of measured, serene behavior, nothing like the farcical characterization of the play, but he was also narcissistic, in bad taste, ridiculous in his ignorance, as the play’s script emphasizes. Both are right. Satire, farce, drama, tragedy, it doesn’t matter. That’s where the detail comes.

It had to be larger than life: Kenny insists that if he has invested his money in buying the rights to the work and now staging it in the most spectacular, most excessive way and with the largest possible economic budget, it is because he has to give people a solid foundation to cross the city to see a work created by people, and give them the opportunity to meet. Indeed, I agree on the innermost essence of this principle. Theater, cinema, recitals, are meeting spaces that make us notice that there are more people looking to enjoy emotions.

It is also of interest to question the usefulness and limitations of what we do from art. What I think is still a problem is the need for the filmmaker to be the one who says everything himself. Iñárritu is not waiting for us to interpret why he has created Digger. He had just been self-explanatory and a few minutes later he is again. To each thought that arises from his viewers, he imprints (unnecessarily) his own verbalization and his signature.

Where is the empathy machine that is cinema, of which Roger Ebert spoke, headed? Up to this point, we felt that we have reached the climax, which is when the story is usually given a close soon. This does not happen. There is something else to do. Iñárritu has more to show, he has one more exercise to propose while he immediately shows us the solution of the book. We have another to-and-fro between the play and its reality. For several minutes, the film extends to show us the last scenes of Fossil Fools, already released to the public. Here, is where something happens that blurs a valuable argument of Digger’s.

The audience of the opening night is shown to us on screen in a way that is far removed from the poetic and closer to the exhibition of video reactions. We see the catharsis of an audience that celebrates what fictionally happens at the end to Digger Rockwell. They are happy to have seen the mocking depiction of an evil ultra-rich, produced by the heir of that ultra-rich. They are watching The Boys produced by Prime Video; they are watching any of the films produced by Megan Ellison, the progressive daughter of the Ellisons, owners of Paramount. It is not a lie that we are surrounded by mega-productions that are presented as criticisms of the system, from which the system itself wins. What detracts from the power is that, once again, he wants to tell us, with a didacticism that is not bad in itself, but he does it with the conviction that he is doing experimental philosophy.

The viewer is not someone with whom Iñárritu identifies. From his omniscient gaze, he sees him laugh contentedly and commiserates his limitation by sitting there, watching Digger while nothing changes. At the same time, ask that you don’t forget that he realized everything (especially if they are Oscar voters). His empathy machine pushes us to empathize with him, the creator of the catharsis that makes us leave the cinema falsely liberated. I go back to Ebert, remembering that he said he looked for films that feel affection for his characters. This becomes more complex if the spectators themselves are among their characters. Does Kenny do all of this with good intentions? The same question can be addressed to the filmmaker and his producers. Let the answer to this question emerge from the conversations. We can’t say so based on his serenity, because we already know that his uncle wasn’t really a second Donald Trump. Villains have a thousand forms. It can be helpful to look at the expectations each of them has about their public image. Farce is not the only method to apply to make people uncomfortable. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, commented on the trailer for Luca Guadagnino’s Artificial (2026), and commented that it looks like an awful movie, but that he appreciates people’s creativity.

Mark Zuckerberg is bothered by The Social Network (2010), directed by David Fincher and written by Aaron Sorkin, because it makes him look like a socially awkward man, a traitor in search of validation. However, Jesse Eisenberg told Sorkin of the anguish he felt at the thought that there are those who see the Zuckerberg he played as a hero, this after being intercepted on the street several times by young men who ask him to sign business cards that say: I’m CEO, bitch, just like those of his character. Representation can be useful in some instances, although it does not lead to social mobilization.

I can’t help but regret that the initial conversation about Digger on the internet is based on rivalries between audiences according to their perception of the film. This was painfully fueled by their marketing team. They created a vain dichotomy fed by Iñárritu’s own allies between the real audiences — who, coincidentally, did like it — and those who are not, where they throw bots, critics and ordinary people into the same bag who they assume must be pro-fascist for not applauding them. This is the last thing we need in times when, as Digger seemed to want to say, only the human encounter remains.

That’s where, I believe, one of the great contradictions of the film arises in its social place and with respect to the very harsh cultural panorama. Warner Bros. was eventually absorbed by Paramount Skydance, following a trade war and an underlying interest in control of CNN by the Trumpists of the Ellison family. It is likely that this purchase will have repercussions on the diversity of cinematographic proposals.

Digger proposed that in difficult times distractions appear that stun us and make us point the finger of accuse, and this is what his marketing strategy has ended up doing. That they themselves are disqualifying the public or a certain film press that does not consider it a masterpiece upwards, with all its advertising budget not used before to dedicate it after the premiere to put all this together, produced a distraction for the audiences about those responsible for the maximum problem.

Little commented on, Riz Ahmed’s work is the one to which I find a remarkable value, like that of a false 9 in a football team. His notorious deadpan humor ability in The Phoenician Scheme (2025) has made it easier for him to dose his interpretation in the disproportion of farce. The same can be said of John Goodman as the gringo president in Fossil Fools. In part, they are less talked about because of the focus on something more tangential, such as the Oscar race.

In the face of this, Iñárritu’s choice of the theme and main actor has been well calculated, with all the technical elements correctly worked to win, not only to be nominated, because that for the Mexican is usually something assured. Iñárritu is not an emerging filmmaker whom reviews can insulate from his chances of being celebrated by Academy members.

The presence of Tom Cruise, with the display of his body control with the same solvency with which he hangs from a plane in the Mission Impossible saga, is effective artistically and for the campaign narrative: he is the American icon who returns to auteur cinema to finally win the Oscar for best actor (since Cruise already has an honorary one). Digger has three key elements that tend to easily attract the votes of the Academy: the physical transformation of its lead actor, usually a celebrity, because only a celebrity present in our imagination can surprise by being unrecognizable thanks to makeup, like Gary Oldman in The Darkest Hours (2017); the connection with a real socio-political panorama (remember that if it were pure science fiction, its opportunities would be totally diminished); and the meta-story, which fascinates the American audiovisual sphere. Added to this is the exhibition of audiovisual skill, filming in VistaVision instead of the digital format and a cast crammed with international talents, in which Sandra Hüller is the one who does not lose stage presence, but appears more pale than she usually does (affected by the script, or by the direction).

It has been said that Digger does not offer new commentary on the global crisis. Its objective is more about art in critical times, and it is on this point that I consider that it does not offer something innovative. While all this competition is going on, the millionaires remain rich, with or without the catharsis, with or without the nominations. Some try to offer gestures of reparation, like Kenny with the blockbuster Fossil Fools, just as his mother Emma wanted to do with the Verdant company. After all, even the Roys had Shiv in Succession, inspired by the Murdoch family, owners of Fox News and Fox Corporation. Greenwashing and artwashing exist and will continue to exist. Narrative is a resource whose handling is coveted. The premiere that aims to talk about the power of media narrative and artistic catharsis, is more interested in admiring its own potential within the game. Another contradiction. It’s important for a film to know that there are things more important than itself.

We are standing before the fragments that survive of the world between artifices. At the end of August 2026, we saw how an immense block of glacier broke off in Nepal, which so far has caused more than a thousand deaths and nearly 5000 missing. And let’s not just think about environmental damage. Once, someone told me in a talk about the government’s censorship of Peruvian cinema, that this is a good thing, because from the repression good films will come out, like in Iran. With or without repression, films are made, but repression also results in deaths that no art, no matter how beautiful, deserves it.

Is Digger a simile to the romantic figure of the musicians on the Titanic? Or is that perhaps his message? Although he seems to try to do so, he contradicts himself. The music of that orchestra was not about the desperation of the sinking of the liner, thinking of instructing the passengers in an overwhelming truth. Where we find a simile is in each critically created work, with regrets but with admiration for life, for the cracks of love that surround us.