Category: now in theatres

Dub’s Take: Ne Zha 2 & Night of the Zoopocalypse

Two Spoiler-Free Family-Friendly Micro Movie Reviews

NE ZHA 2

3.5 out of 5

I’m a cultured guy: my favourite movie has a naked French lady in it. But “Ne Zha 2” is a movie from China, rooted in its mythology, without conceding to a global audience.

Despite every barrier to enjoyment possible (I haven’t seen the first film; super-quick & error-ridden subtitles; what I thought would be a 10 minute recap being a 30 second ‘last time on’; did I say fast subtitles?), Ne Zha 2 earned my part of its astonishing $2 billion in global profit through spectacle & gut reaction alone.

Who cares if the human characters are animated out of a PS2-era musou game, or if the whole third act reminded me of twenty seconds from “Akira”? Highlights include a scene with photorealistic gophers that almost made me throw up in the theatre; a heroic sacrifice that had me teary-eyed (only for a late twist to make me realize I didn’t actually know what was going on); and my 73-year-old father enjoying it, too.

I don’t foresee an English dub being possible without huge script revisions, and 10 minutes of Coles Notes at the beginning.

NIGHT OF THE ZOOPOCALYPSE

2.5 out of 5

Being a writer, I know what it’s like to fall in love with your words, whether those be poeticisms, a sudden revelation, or building to a literary crescendo.

“Night of the Zoopocalypse’s” scribes didn’t think objectively enough when it came to divvying traits out to its protagonists. The cinema-loving lemur Xavier won’t shut up about film theory as it pertains to every situation (like the critic from Shyamalan’s “Lady in the Water”), but capybara Frida is stuck reiterating that she doesn’t know anything because she’s “just a capybara.” Not a great start for a comedy that relies on the camaraderie of its core team.

But kids probably won’t care, so I’m trying not to, either. Zoopocalypse is a quick, cute time, most successful in its visual details than story ones. Gracie’s voice-actress Gabbi Kosmidis says in the pre-show that it’s a good entryway for young horror fans-to-be, and while that’s just a publicity quote to get butts in seats, I don’t disagree on its sanitized zombie-movie status, with enough neon colours & felty CGI fuzz to keep everyone entertained.

Some of the soundtrack was a little weird and could be triggering for kids with hearing sensitivity.

Posters sourced from impawards.com (1; 2). Are you going to see either of these? Do you agree that everything yanks something from Akira at one point or another? Let us know your impressions in the comments below!

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Dub’s Take: The Unbreakable Boy (2025)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

1 out of 5

Watching “The Unbreakable Boy” (aka. UB) reminded me of Ben Stiller’s 2008 comedy “Tropic Thunder”, and Robert Downey Jr’s immortal words: “Never go full retard.”

Vulgarity aside, RDJ’s line signified that actors playing overly-challenged characters weren’t likely to win audience recognition. In the Real World, compassion is everything.

That being said, and with all due respect to real-life autistic/brittle-bone sufferer Austin LeRette (“Auz-Man”), the lisping imitation from actor Jacob Laval is so off-putting – transcending ‘cute’ into piteousness – that I couldn’t set aside my disbelief.

‘Uplifting’ genre flicks like this inspire pre-viewing expectations: maybe some bullying; some falling down stairs (like in Shyamalan’s “Unbreakable”)… I will give it to director Jon Gunn that he knows how to film scenes of bones breaking, as my wife & I both flinched at each mini-disaster and ones in-waiting.

But the third-act bullying is where I was done, and not because it was too cruel. Whether-or-not how the sequence plays out on-screen is actually what transpired between Auz-Man’s older brother Logan & the school bully ‘who became one of his best friends,’ it is the soppiest, most untenable bit of Hallmark reality ever. Logan should have just kicked the shit out of him and been done with it.

Laval’s representation of Auz-Man is dwarfed by Zachary Levi (both “Shazam’s”) as LaRette’s father. I wondered whether Levi could carry a serious movie with a belied filmography…

And he can’t, instead playing the hollow-headed goof we’ve seen from him time-and-time again. Not only that, but watch how much difficulty he has with sincerity in his climactic apology scene! Sorry, Zach: you don’t have the sauce.

There was kerfuffle with the new Captain America that it didn’t delve deeper into the modern zeitgeist (like its triple-the-length prequel miniseries). Indeed, my wife was adamant her main takeaway from UB was to be inspired by Auz-Man and fly her own freak-flag high.

UB doesn’t have goals of being disposable entertainment: it wants to be an important movie about faith & resilience. So why doesn’t it study some of the dad’s autistic traits more? Why does it give a middle-aged man an imaginary friend, and cutaways of his OCD & restless leg, without exploring them beyond passive freakishness?

The Unbreakable Boy is too timid to answer the big questions it asks, but calculated against the viewer constituting their own empathy. Never go full retard.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Are you choked that Patricia Clarkson & Amy Acker both went underused (again)? Are you surprised the finished film went three years without a release? Do you think Zachary Levi should get another chance at a dramatic leading role? And probably the most important question of all: as a viewer, do you lose empathy for characters that demand it? Let us know in the comments below!

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Dub’s Take: Captain America: Brave New World (2025)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

4 out of 5

My wife & I were watching “FBI: Most Wanted,” and she’s a lateral thinker: why are the good guys not wearing gloves when the bad guys have sarin gas? And I said inimitably, “It’s network TV: it’s supposed to be stupid.”

While this simple oversight could amount to a mere continuity error, creatives really do appreciate it when viewers take their projects seriously – consider actor & Marvel Television alumnus Ethan Hawke’s recent call for more “offensive” art.

The general furor over “Captain America 4” (aka. “CA4”) – aside from the foreboding that delays & reshoots purport – seems to be that the filmmakers didn’t take enough thematic chances. Superhero fantasy, including comics, is one way of making sense of topical issues, but, for my money, I’d had enough thinking for the week, and wanted a big-budget spectacle with as little logicism required.

For a Marvel outsider who doesn’t let canon get in the way of a good night’s rest, CA4 serves its purpose, in the mindless way I wanted when I watched it. Audiences haven’t seen The Hulk be The Hulk on-screen in almost a decade, whether that’s Hulk or Not-Hulk, and for a treatment that amounts to “a race to stop Harrison Ford from turning into Not-Hulk,” director Julius Onah plates palatable tension, a brisk pace, coherent action, and – best of all – payoff.

Onah’s chief accomplice is “The Annihilation of Fish” composer Laura Karpman, whose dynamic soundtrack timekeeps – as opposed to handicapping – the story. The sound design is fantastic overall, and the Spanish-speaking actors (Danny Ramirez; Giancarlo Esposito) actually get to speak Spanish – always a fun surprise.

As Thaddeus Ross is such a central character here, his recasting is bittersweet: the late William Hurt didn’t live long enough to get the honour of headlining, but Grandpa Harrison is a worthy replacement, overfilling his scenes with effortless gravitas. There’s even a pleasing “Akira” visual reference, which surely adds legitimacy to anything or anyone that pulls it off, particularly a curmudgeonly senior like Ford.

Captain America 4’s advertising isn’t misrepresentational, so why project onto it? In one brief shot, Ramirez is playing a crisp-looking version of Williams’ “Defender” on an old Motorola flip phone – on a screen only double the resolution of the original monochromatic Game Boy – and he’s acting like he’s enjoying it. It’s a studio movie: it’s supposed to be stupid.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Does Anthony Mackie have what his co-stars call “the sauce?” Do you wish the film delved more into the news of the day? Esposito was a late-production addition: do you have thoughts on bringing the other actors back to reshoot scenes they had already shot, but with retooled dialogue? What do you think of the detail in Red Hulk’s nipples? Leave us a comment below!

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Dub’s Take: Flight Risk (2025)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

1 out of 5

I think it was “Plastic Bag” & “99 Homes” director Ramin Bahrani who said he hasn’t use for narrative over-explication, since audiences statistically weren’t going to show up for his movie unless they’d seen a trailer first.

With that in mind, if you’ve seen the trailer for “Flight Risk,” you don’t need to show up at all: there are no additional story twists; a sleepy soundtrack; a reliance on juvenile humour; obvious acting; and zero flair from a director I expected more from.

For the second time this year already, I ask: what the Hell happened? Mel Gibson may strike malaise in the hearts of certain cinephiles, but he’s still directed some bangers. Similar to Kevin Costner’s self-produced features, Gibson indulges in unhinged hero worship at the centre of large-scale story conflict.

Flight Risk, then, offered Mel the chance not only to follow his first female protagonist, but to attempt a ‘bottle feature:’ just a handful of actors in one location. Sadly, he doesn’t deliver on the juj Flight Risk’s predictable, placid plotting needs.

Take the reveal that Mark Wahlberg’s psychotic hitman is actually balding: rather than pay homage to Hitchcock’s “Psycho” and overplay the moment, it’s a throwaway image lacking luridness or camp. Had the production shot some alternate takes with hair so the bald head was a surprise, my reaction may have differed, but drab also sums up composer Antonio Pinto’s sparse soundtrack, which should be driving the story during the frequent moments it can’t carry itself.

Joining Mark are “Downton Abbey’s” Michelle Dockery, whose pastiche of stoic cop tropes forgets the Aviators – which she pulls out an hour too late for her arc – along with poor Topher Grace as a sharp-tongued, pushing-50 Eric Forman. Maybe Netflix audiences new to “That 70’s Show” will find his schtick appealing, but I’ve watched Topher play the same character now for almost thirty years. I’m done.

The film starts getting good in its final 10, which crams 90-minutes worth of action – that should have been evenly spaced throughout the rest of the picture – all into the climax, including one unexpectedly juicy bit of gore just because. If you fall asleep or turn it off before that, though, I won’t blame you.

Watching Flight Risk is to learn the hard way that Mel Gibson’s directorial idiom shouldn’t be through a macro lens.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Could Flight Risk’s advertising have benefitted from some Marvel Studios-style misdirection, even extending to shooting certain pivotal scenes more than once? Would the film have been more engaging had Topher Grace recycled his serial killer from 2010’s “Predators” and played the villain here instead? Will Michelle Dockery even still have a career after this, besides the recently-announced “Downton Abbey 3?” Are YOU stoked for “The Passion 2?” Let us know in the comments below!

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Dub’s Take: Wolf Man (2025)

A spoiler-free mini movie review.

1 out of 5

You can blame Film School for my objectively watching movies wondering what I’d do different: “Well, if they had moved the opening flashback to the midpoint, flash-forward to the middle for a bit, then go back, cut the next twenty minutes…” and etcetera.

However, I’m sure the only way to fix “Wolf Man” would be to start over with new hires. To quote “Family Guy,” it “insists upon itself”: it’s innately serious with its body-horror aspirations à la Cronenberg’s “The Fly”, but lacks Jeff Goldblum’s humanizing arc or, plainly, anything else of interest.

What happened? I mentioned TV’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” in my negative review for Blake Lively’s “It Ends With Us”, but actress Elisabeth Moss’ time there – particularly the long close-ups of her character’s mental atrophy – made her the perfect actress to quietly communicate the fear of an abusive partner in director Leigh Whannell’s 2020 reimagining of “The Invisible Man”. A palatable discomfort made that project borderline-unwatchable, but its potency made me excited for what Whannell did next.

Well, next is here, and Wolf Man’s casting sucks: indie-darling Christopher Abbott and “Ozark’s” Julia Garner, as a bickering couple, have zero chemistry. Despite his character’s learned sheepishness, Abbott lacks primality as a father trying to break a cycle of toxic parenting. Garner equally trifles as the shocked city-mom out of her element, emptily channelling Moss’ internal acting successes. Putting Abbott & Garner together at their most unpleasant is like banging two coconut halves together and calling it a horse.

Bad acting can be charming if the story is still engaging, but Wolf Man’s specialty is its disengagement. Abbott’s character history isn’t fleshed out, leaving his father’s notes on hunting the lycan for no one to find and a neighbourly relationship undeveloped & whitewashed, a mother MIA, and a second-act twist without emotional resonance. We spend an inordinate amount of the first act with Abbott & Garner’s marital issues, and the transformation itself doesn’t start until the halfway point, prorating the rest with Abbott barricading only one of the two entrances into the farmhouse where the family is hiding, not including the windows.

Like a puzzle, Wolf Man’s pieces are all there, but there’s no ends tying the loose, disparate bits together, and what’s left doesn’t match the picture on the box: it’s poorly acted, poorly plotted, and goes nowhere fast. Next time, just remake “Van Helsing” instead.

Poster sourced from impawards.com. What do you think? Assuming there are always bits on the cutting room floor, should the filmmakers have swapped out scene-after-scene of Garner & her movie daughter running back & forth between the farmhouse and the barn with some actual backstory about Abbott’s father’s hunt for the lycan? Is it worth hypothesizing about movie scenes not included in the final cut, even if they didn’t exist to begin with? Do you re-edit movies while you’re watching them, too? Leave a comment for us down below!

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