Category Archives: Movie Reviews

Jul 01 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Young Washington”

Rah-rah biopic about the militia man who’d become our first president

Young Washington
Starring William Franklyn-Miller, Andy Serkis, Ben Kingsley, Mary-Louise Parker & Kelsey Grammer
Directed by Joe Erwin
Rated PG-13

In theaters Thursday, July 2, 2026

Long before he was the “father of our country,” leading the fledging continental army, George Washington was an ambitious young Virginia militia leader fighting alongside the British on the brutal colonial frontier.  

With its release date strategically timed just ahead of America’s 250th birthday, Young Washington is a historical biopic centered on Washington’s disastrous early military failure in the 1750s, one that ignited the French and Indian War—but steeled the leadership skills that would later galvanize his pivotal role in the birth of America’s rebellion against England.

London-born British actor William Franklyn-Miller, a former teen model, stars as Washington. You may have seen him previously on TV (Medici, Jack Irish) or in smallish films (Spring Breakaway, Donji Rescue). If you were a teen girl on social media a decade ago, when he was 12, you might remember that he was voted the most beautiful boy in the world after a pic of him went viral online.

His portrayal of a dashingly handsome Washington, with piercing blue eyes, a messy shock of dark hair and a chiseled jawline, certainly ranks high on the historical hunk-o-meter. He definitely creates a dishy new visage for the guy on our one-dollar bills. And he rocks that tricorn hat.

The supporting cast is rounded out by some familiar faces. Mary-Louise Parker (from Showtime’s Weeds) plays George’s mom, Mary. Kelsey Grammer (TV’s Frasier) is Lord Fairfax, an upper-class land-baron muckety-muck. Ben Kingsley (who won an Oscar for Ghandi) adds to his extensive list of character roles as Robert Dinwaddle, the governor of Virginia. And Lord of the Rings fans might recognize Andy Serkis (he was Gollum!) as Edward Braddock, a decorated British officer who leads his soldiers on a bloody battlefield charge.

Speaking of battlefields, there’s a lot of those in Young Washington. Cannonballs kaboom, bullets fly, bodies fall, blood spurts. But there are softer moments too, as when young George courts a comely socialite, Sally (Mia Rodgers, who played Taylor on HBO’s The Sex Lives of College Girls). But like Washington’s first military excursion, that romance also ends in disappointment.

Young Washington reminds viewers that America wasn’t always America. It was a wilderness patchwork of colonial settlements and British overlords, French excursionists, Native Americans holding onto what was once their land, and slaves. One soldier eyes a couple of slaves, sent to fight in the “stead” of their landowner, and wonders why the militia doesn’t give them guns, so they could help in the battle. “They might shoot us,” his fellow militiaman replies. “Wouldn’t you?”

Young Washington is the newest movie from Angel Studios and the Wonder Project, which typically focus on Christian themes. Director Jon Erwin’s previous films include House of David, I Still Believe, a miniseries about Moses, a doc on the Christian band Casting Crowns and a drama, I Can Only Imagine, based on a song by Mercy Me. There’s an undergirding of faith, divine purpose and redemption in Young Washington as well, like when Mary sends her boy off to war with a blessing and a balm; “Go, as God’s servant,” she tells him. George says he’s guided by the hand of “providence.” A group of Native American warriors, awed when he survives a vicious battlefield encounter, solemnly tells him he’s been chosen for protection “by the spirit.”

I guess the French commander chopped to pieces earlier by tomahawks wasn’t chosen. As they say in France, c’est dommage.

The movie’s messaging extends to its overriding theme that losers can become winners, failures can lead to success, and small players can become big leaders. “Even a pawn can take a king,” George’s father (John Foss) tells his young son over a game of chess.  

As the movie ends, Washington’s army is newly bedecked in the colors of America: uniforms of red, white and blue. It’s a fitting close to this rip-roaring slice of rah-rah American history carved by war, wrapped in Sunday school homilies and served up as an Independence Day appetizer for audiences primed for red-meat patriotism, rousing underdog tales and real-life heroes.

—Neil Pond

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Jun 28 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Jackass: Best & Last”

Johnny Knoxville and crew fire a final salvo of gonzo stupidity

Jackass: Best & Last
Starring Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Preston Lacy & the rest of the Jackass crew
Directed by Jeff Tremaine
Rated R

In theaters Friday, June 26

It’s so painful, you gotta laugh. The new Jackass movie—the fifth film to spin off the gonzo prank series that started two decades ago on MTV, later becoming a pop-culture franchise—is a final-bow salvo of slaps, slams and other shocks that fans of the show have come to expect.

It is—supposedly—the parting shot from creator Johnny Knoxville and his cast of Jackass collaborators, mixing new material with stunts that never aired in previous movies or on TV. And ending with a giant grocery cart, filled with the cast, rolling slo-mo through explosions, pelted by debris, and ultimately plunging over a cliff to the tune of Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.”

It’s a ballsy move to open the same weekend as Toy Story 5, but Jackass has always been ballsy—in more ways than one. Like the bit when Knoxville, in a clip from his 2013 movie Bad Grandpa, airs out his alarmingly distended (artificial) “old man” parts in a male strip club. And speaking of toys, there’s a bit from 2011 with a little toy car that becomes, ahem, lodged in the colon of Ryan Dunn, one of the show’s original collaborators.

Jackass has always courted discomfort, built on a foundation of dangerous, pointless and sometimes unhinged—and frequently scatological—setups meant to surprise, shock and awe. Like strapping Steve-O into an overly “full” porta potty and sloshing it up and down on bungee cords suspended between two massive cranes, or a group of Jackasses bottoms-upping mega-doses of laxative, then playing a game of Twister. In another moment, we watch Sean “Poopies” McInerney trying to walk on a balance beam with a shock collar attached to his, well—it’s inside his underwear.

Oh, and there’s a four-foot-tall robot, giving a rectal exam.

The barrage of self-inflicted abuses includes an early staged clip that caused MTV to temporarily cancel the show, as Knoxville, dressed in escaped-convict orange, goes into a hardware store and begs for help to saw through his handcuffs. It ends up with a confrontation by Los Angeles police.

There’s something perversely entertaining in watching other people willing to abuse themselves strictly for entertainment—especially when they look like they’re having such a great time doing it. Part of the appeal is being “in on the joke,” unlike a lot of the onlookers while they’re filming—like the customers at a L.A. food stand who watch as “guest star” Brad Pitt is whisked into a black van, apparently kidnapped. Cut to the inside of the vehicle, with Pitt and the Jackass crew laughing hysterically at the disruption they’ve just caused.

Knoxville and his cohorts (including co-creator, and longtime director Jeff Tremaine) know that their creative anarchy fills a certain niche and a need, lodged deep in our primate brains. Like Maximus (Russell Crowe) taunting the cheering arena crowd in another movie, Gladiator: “Are you not entertained?

Jackass: Best & Last opens with Knoxville, in a 1998 bit that never aired, shooting himself in the chest point-blank with a handgun and padded only with a T-shirt and a Kevlar vest. A warning comes onscreen: “Do not attempt this. It’s extra stupid and could kill you.”

Knoxville survived that early brush with danger, and death, and stunts of jaw-dropping stupidity became the show’s calling card. And Jackass became a kind of institution, a daring dose of unruly chaos to spice up the pedestrian mundanity of modern life, a vicarious way to live outside the prim and proper, watching others do what we’d never dare.

“The worse an experience is,” says Steve-O watching Knoxville get flipped into the air and knocked unconscious by a bull, “the better it looks onscreen.”

Laughter may be good for the soul, but Jackass: Best & Last gives us a final reminder that it can be hell on a body. Especially when toy cars, bulls and porta potties are involved.

—Neil Pond

Jun 25 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Romería”

Spanish coming-of-age drama follows a young orphan’s deep dive into her murky past

Romería
Starring Llúcia Garcia, Mitch Martin & Tristán Ulloa
Directed by Carla Simón
Unrated

In select cities Friday, June 26; wide release to follow

A young orphaned woman journeys to her ancestral home in Spain seeking answers about her deceased parents in this poignant coming-of-age drama about family, fate, falsehoods, memories, misinformation, deceit, shame—and the sea.

In the opening scene, as Marina (Llúcia Garcia) arrives on a boat from Barcelona, from Spain’s opposite side, she tells us—in a narrative voice-over—about the temperament of the ocean, and how it can be “calm and peaceful” or “wild and choppy.”

She finds a bit of both of those conditions as she connects with long-estranged aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. She’s trying to uncover her roots to find out why, on her father’s death certificate, she’s not listed as a descendant. And that lack of documentation makes her feel rootless and restless, and also prevents her from getting financial assistance at a university.

Marina’s quest was sparked by reading her late mother’s journals. But there are still some missing pieces of the story. What made her mother and father die so young? Why did they never come visit her as a child, after she had relocated, across the country with an adopted family? Why do her younger cousins tell her they’ve been warned to stay away from her if she starts bleeding? What about the mysterious attraction to her hunky cousin, Nuno (Mitch Martin)?

Her icy, detached grandmother (Marina Troncoso) is obsessed with dying, and with keeping her swimming pool clean of debris; she lays down a stern warning for her grandchildren to shower before jumping in.. But when it comes to family, things sometimes get messy, just like outdoor swimming pools.

The Spanish word romeria means a pilgrimage, a sacred journey, and that certainly applies to Marina’s quest as she treks into her past to retrace—and reclaim—her bloodline. The filmreminds us that she’s on hallowed ground with several scenes that feature religious iconography, including a worship service in the bay on Ria de Vigo, an estuary in the Spanish oceanside community of Galicia.

Estuaries are where freshwater from mountains and streams meet saltwater in the oceans, creating thriving biosystems. In much the same way, Marina is an outsider from afar, now come to “mix” and meet with her family, itself a teeming ecosystem of history, traditions, relations—and secrets Her cousins also tell her that for the last few years of his life, her father was “hidden” away by his parents in their home. An uncle discloses tales of drugs, needles and wild bacchanalia partying. “What didn’t they do?” he tells Marina about her mother and father. “Love and drugs aren’t a good thing.”

The film is richly autobiographical for acclaimed director Carla Simón, who lost both her parents when she was just a child, just as Marina did, and under the same circumstances. And Marina carries around a movie camera, filming everything, declaring that she wants to study cinema at college—just like the director really did. At one point, Marina even tells a boating companion, who tries to snatch her camera, “I’ll film, you sail!”

The movie’s real discovery is Llúcia Garcia as Marina. This is her first movie, but she’s a natural, perfect in the role of a girl on the cusp of womanhood and discovery, finding out who she is and how she got there. Her smallest gestures—a bashful smile, a suppressed shock—convey the surface ripples on the choppy waters Marina is navigating. It’s no surprise she’s already received a Goya Award, Spain’s equivalent of the Oscars, for Top Newcomer.

In the film’s third act, Marina leaves a local celebration to follow an alley cat down a darkened street, leading her into a surreal extended flashback in which she gets to “see” her parents before she was born, her father as a sailor, her mom a languid party girl. (In an inventive twist, shaded by subtle differences in appearance and composure, Garcia also plays Marina’s mom.) Marina finds her mom’s secret journal, one she was never supposed to read, and we discover, along with her, the connective cycle of past and present, shedding new light onto things we’ve seen and heard previously.

And finally, Marina admits, “I really like the sea here.”

Don’t be put off by the Spanish subtitles. This sweet, finely nuanced dive down into the murky past is a trip well worth taking, as young Marina embraces her roots, gets her answers and sets sail in a new, steadier and more hopeful direction.

—Neil Pond

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Jun 19 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Leviticus”

Conversion ritual has horrific consequences in this ‘queer horror’ terror tale

Leviticus
Starring Joe Bird, Stacy Clausen & Mia Wasikowska
Directed by Adrian Chiarella
Rated R

In theaters Friday, June 19, 2026

When a church tries to “pray away the gay” from two teenage boys, it unleashes a monstrous supernatural entity that terrorizes them in this masterfully grim new entry into the genre of queer horror.

Horror has deep roots in the queer experience, all the way back to the 1930s and movies like Frankenstein and Dracula, in which the “monsters” became metaphors for outsiders and other-ness, creatures who can’t help the way they are. Now, in the modern era, horror “speaks” to LGBTQ viewers in multiple ways as victims of a society that often rejects them, treats them as freakish abominations and even tries to change their sexual orientation to align with conservative religious edicts.

The movie’s title refers to an Old Testament book with a passage that condemns homosexual relations, one that many modern scholars argue has been widely—and woefully—misinterpreted.

Director Adrian Chiarella makes a most impressive feature-film debut with this effectively unsettling coming-of-age story about high schoolers Niam (Joe Bird) and Ryan(Stacy Clausen), whose roughhousing leads to more intimate encounters. When the pastor at their church—in their backwater Australian town—finds out, he hires a “deliverance healer” (Nicholas Hope) to convert them.

But the tortuous “conversion” has horrifying consequences, as Niam and Ryan each become stalked and victimized by something only visible to them, something that takes the form of what they each want most in the world—each other. And it’s trying to kill them.

That imagery sets up the story about a dreary, hopeless world that wants to destroy them, one whirring with hate and loathing. And the many shots of their drab, decaying little town—with abandoned sweatshops and factory smokestacks belching into the sky—suggest that the piety of their community church, in the shadow of shabby modernity, is similarly outdated and noxious.

Mia Wasikowska (from Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and Guillermo del Toro’s Twin Peaks)plays Niam’s stern church-going mom, who doesn’t exactly sympathize with his plight, even when she becomes aware of the curse that’s been unleashed on him. “We need fear,” she dismissively tells him. “It’s how we survive.”

Speaking of fear, there are a couple of “gotcha” jump-scare jolts and a bit of body horror, but mostly this is a movie that conveys the dread, the chill, the stifling fear of not knowing when the next attack is coming. (And that itself might be especially resonant with gay viewers who feel the same anxieties in their own lives.)

Repeated scenes of the boys throwing rocks at each other, a macho exercise in who can stand the most pain, is a reminder of the abuse that homosexuals still face around the world, where same-sex activity can be punishable by death.

The “monsters” of Leviticus might remind you of It Follows, the acclaimed 2014 horror film about a stalking menace that could look like anyone—and then tear you to pieces. But there’s a sweet intimacy too, in scenes where Niam and Ryan find their bliss, canoodling and caressing. Can they, and their relationship, survive the weight of the forces now unleashed against them?

Leviticus takes a Bible verse, guts it and spins it into a resonant, richly relevant tale of forbidden love—and a crushing indictment of weaponizing some harsh ancient words against others following what their hearts truly want.

—Neil Pond

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Jun 10 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Disclosure Day”

Director Steven Spielberg’s eye-popping new sci-fi drama about a decades-long government coverup of alien encounters

Disclosure Day
Starring Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth & Colman Domingo
Directed by Steven Spielberg
In theaters Friday, June 12

Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor take the leads in Disclosure Day, director Steven Spielberg’s new epic sci-fi thriller about the unraveling of a massive government conspiracy covering up evidence that we are not alone in the universe.

The top-notch cast also includes Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo and Wyatt Russell.

Blunt gives a performance that’s among her all-time best as Margaret Fairchild, a Kansas City meteorologist who suddenly develops amazing and alarming abilities, like speaking in foreign languages and reading minds. O’Connor is Daniel Kellner, a mathematics whiz turned whistle-blower determined to reveal what he knows about a covert global cybersecurity force that’s quashed nearly 80 years of proof about extraterrestrial “close encounters.”

They both become targets of a massive, rip-roaring manhunt to round them up and shut them down. What else do they have in common? Well, you’ll find out—but I won’t spoil it here.

Colin Firth is Noah Scanlon, the head of the coverup, convinced that the mind-blowing reality about aliens would “tip the balance” of a world already on the precipice of nuclear self-destruction. Eve Hewson (Bono’s daughter!) is Kellner’s girlfriend, a former novitiate in a monastery who plays a significant role in helping spread, well, another kind of word from on high. Colman Domingo, who makes almost every film he’s in better by just being in it, is the head of the movement to rip open decades of secrecy, to have a reckoning, a day of disclosure when the truth will be made known to everyone. Wyatt Russell is Jackson, Margaret’s romantic partner, who doesn’t understand—at least at first—what’s going on.

Spielberg, who launched the very idea of “summer blockbusters” back in 1975 with Jaws, has made some of the top-performing, most widely beloved and critically lauded movies of all time. Sometimes it feels here, with his first film in four years (since The Fablemans), that he’s looking into the skies and beyond the way he did in E.T. The Extraterrestrial and Close Encounters of the Third Kind—with awe, empathy and hope.

And the soundtrack, by his longtime collaborator John Willams, drives home the gamut of emotions. It’s no wonder Williams has received more than two dozen Grammys and five Oscars.

Disclosure Day has it all—thrills and chills, danger and derring-do, and the beating heart of a love story. It’s got a pulse-pounding train scene that can match anything Tom Cruise has done in the Mission: Impossible world, and its heady thoughts on how the existence of extraterrestrials might mesh with the Bible will certainly stir some discussion. (Plus, three main characters are named Noah, Margaret and Daniel.)  

Its suggestion that communication with aliens is closely aligned with music, mathematics and nature will likely mean you’ll never look at that bright red cardinal at your bird feeder, or on your windowsill, the same way again. It’s a movie that makes you think about what’s up here, what’s down here, and how it might all be connected. About childhood and crop circles, secrets and lies, the past and the future, and the multi-faceted experience of our very existence.

Spielberg has crafted another cinematic triumph, a moving picture that’s moving in more ways than one, one that reminds us again of the eye-popping, jaw-dropping magic and the majesty of a big story playing out on big screen, pulling us in, making us feel. Head down to the multiplex, folks, because it certainly feels like blockbuster time again.

—Neil Pond

May 28 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Pressure”

How weather forecasters aided the most famous military operation in history

Pressure
Starring Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon & Chris Messina
Directed by Anthony Maris
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday May 29, 2026

Released just ahead of the 82rd anniversary of D-Day on June 6, this riveting drama puts a spotlight on the intense behind-the-scenes preparations for the largest seaborne invasion in history, one which marked the beginning of the end of World War II.

But Pressure isn’t a war movie, as such. Instead, it’s a weather movie—about the high-stakes calculations, analytics and prognostic storms-or-shine head-butting that went into planning the 1944 invasion involving some 300,000 Allied troops, a naval armada and airborne reinforcements. It’s the true story true story behind the far-better-known story, about predicting the optimal time to slip the mission between two monstrous North Atlantic storms a-brewing, keep it a secret from the Germans, and pull off a risky North Atlantic hail Mary.

The plot centers on Group Capt. James Staggs (Andrew Scott), a no-nonsense Scot and the highest-ranking meteorologist in Great Britain’s Royal Air Force, brought aboard to head the invasion task force monitoring the weather. But he clashes with Irving Kirk (Chris Messina), a cocky military climatologist from California. And at the top of it all is Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser), the Supreme Commander of the Allied forces. 

Tempers flare as Staggs and Kirk spar over what kind of weather they think is coming to the coast of France, and when. Kirk insists the date set for the invasion will be bright and sunny. Staggs is steadfast in predicting abnormally unstable conditions with massive waves, torrential rain and near-zero visibility. Can Staggs convince the military that the invasion, as planned, will confront “the wrath of nature” and likely fail?

None of the brass assembled in England sides with Staggs, or what he tells them about the desperate need to postpone their plans. They’re all rarin’ to go, particularly Britain’s battle-hardened Field Marshall Montgomery (Damien Lewis). Only Eisenhower’s chief aide, Kay Summersby (Kerry Condon), has a sympathetic ear for Staggs, especially after he gets some devastating news about a bombing back in Scotland that hits horribly close to home.

The movie’s title is appropriate. The invasion planning is a high-pressure situation, with hundreds of thousands of lives—and even the fate of the free world—in the balance. What if Staggs steers the Allied forces wrong? But pressure also has meteorological significance, with atmospheric barometric pressure an auger of what the skies are going to do.

The cast is top-notch, all conveying the magnitude of the decisions shaping the situation as the clock ticks away and days become hours. Director Anthony Maris masterfully rachets up the tension with every scene, never letting his characters slip into simple stereotypes. Fraser in particular puts another notch in his “serious” acting belt, following up his acclaimed roles in The Whale and Rental Family. The guy who once played Tarzan and George of the Jungle makes you feel the crush and the crunch borne by the commander in chief.

The D-Day landing has been depicted in numerous movies, including Saving Private Ryan, The Longest Day and The Big Red One. This one also shows the bullets flying and bodies falling as the Allies come ashore, but that’s not its focus.

It’s a riveting backstory of weather pros and military honchos, all hunkered down behind the battle lines while orchestrating a pivotal moment that would go down in history one way or another, as a hard-won success or a cataclysmic failure. We see Eisenhower presenting two statements on the eve of the invasion, one to read if it was a success, and the other taking full responsibility if—as Field Marshall Montgomery puts it—the free world ends up overrun by goosestepping to Hitler’s drumbeat.

In Pressure, that pressure is palpable, the stakes sky-high, and the risks nothing less than global. See it and be reminded of a fraught moment in time when the winds of change, and the end of World War II, might have easily gone another way.

—Neil Pond

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Apr 22 2026
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Movie Review: “Blue Heron”

Past and present magically merge in this emotionally loaded ode to childhood memories

Blue Heron
Starring  Eylul Guven, Amy Zimmer, Edik Beddoes & Iringó Réti
Written and directed by Sophy Romvari
Rated PG-13

In limited release Friday, April 24; expanded release May 8

In mythology, the blue heron—an elegant bird that swoops gracefully into the water and then back into the sky—symbolizes a bridge between the physical and the spiritual. It’s an apt metaphor for this impressively crafted, quietly intense, emotionally charged drama seen at first though the eyes of a child, then later re-examined by the young woman she becomes.

We first meet little Sasha (Eylul Guven) when she arrives with her family for a summer retreat on Canada’s Vancouver Island in the 1990s. Sasha has three brothers, and the oldest, Jeremy (Edik Beddoes), is a young teen with some pronounced behavioral issues. He’s quiet, sullen and unresponsive, but artistically gifted. And he plays dead on the doorstep, shoplifts from stores and walks across the ridge of the rooftop like it’s a tightrope. His parents (Iringó Réti and Ádám Tompo) worry that he may harm himself, or others.

Sasha takes this all in, so do we. We watch and listen, as she does, as her parents discuss what to do with their teenage son who’s become increasingly hard to manage. Is he “just acting out,” or are there more profound developmental issues? A learning disability? Oppositional-defiant disorder? “He’s troubled,” says his mother, “but he’s not crazy.”

Canadian writer-director Sophy Romvari inventively blends past and present, memories and reality, when “adult” Sasha (Amy Zimmer) takes up the story, 20 years down the road, bothered by not knowing what was wrong, exactly, with her brother, or what eventually happened to him. Romvari has noted that Blue Heron is semi-autobiographical, inspired by her own childhood, and the film drops subtle hints at that very connection—with a shot of young Sasha holding her father’s movie camera, or later, grown-up Sasha making a documentary film about her brother. It blends the director’s memories into a movie—about a director making a movie of her memories, and filling in the gaps.

Blue Heron is rich in little details, with the sights and sounds of life. It captures the everyday rhythms of Sasha’s family, giving them calm, almost elegant portent—as the kids play and squabble, the mom peels a potato, or the dad clicks away with his camera. When Sasha and her brothers are on the bed in front of a TV, we know from the sound that they’re absorbed with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in a Looney Toons cartoon; as grown-up Sasha sits soaking in her bathtub watching an old movie, we can tell from the dialogue it’s Cary Grant’s 1940 screwball newspaper comedy His Girl Friday. Those off-camera audio clues nod to the screwed-up situation with Jeremy that taxed his parents before spiraling out of their control.

At one point, the dad shows his kids the “magic” of how a photograph he’s just taken of them becomes an 8×10 image in his basement darkroom. They watch in wonder and the image slowly materializes, revealing a scene from only moments ago. “Time is going backward,” he tells them.

Time goes backward in Blue Heron, but I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you exactly how. Let’s just say that Sasha gets to re-experience her childhood in a most unique way, one that bridges the physical and the spiritual, the real and the remembered, the mundane and the mystical. It’s about mental health, the magical moments that shape our lives, and moving on.

And like a blue heron, it will swoop into your heart before soaring toward the heavens and leaving you with a song—a very appropriate 1990s tune by Daniel Johnston called “Some Things Last a Long Time.”

Indeed, they do, like childhood memories.

—Neil Pond

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Apr 21 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “Michael”

Sanitized King of Pop biopic sidesteps the icky parts of Jackson’s troubling legacy

Michael
Starring Jaafar Jackson, Colman Domingo & Nia Long
Directed by Antoine Fuqua
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, April 24

The new musical biopic of Michael Jackson is heavy on the music but lite on the bio.

Centered on Jackson’s strained relationship with his domineering father, Joe, from the mid-1960s through the ‘80s, it sidesteps the controversies, scandals and accusations that later tarnished the superstar’s reputation.

But if you’re looking to get your groove on with Michael Jackson’s greatest hits, here you go. The film recreates more than a dozen performances, recording sessions and familiar music videos, like “Thriller” and “Beat It.” Young Juliano Valdi does a commendable job as preteen Michael, getting walloped with daddy Joe’s belt for every musical misstep he makes with his older brothers Jermaine, Marlon, Tito and Jackie. Jackson’s real-life nephew, Jaafar Jackson, steps into the role as teenage Michael. He bears some natural resemblance to his late uncle, but dress him in iconic MJ outfits, top him with a Jheri curl, and give him Michael’s evolving, ever-smaller nose, and you might forget for a few fleeting moments that you’re not seeing the real deal.

Oscar-nominated Colman Domingo keeps the plot pot astir as the temperamental Jackson patriarch, Joe, who can’t accept that Michael spreads his solo wings apart from the Jackson 5 boy band. Nia Long, best known for her role on TV’s NCIS: Los Angeles, is Joe’s long-suffering wife, Katherine, who loves cozying up with her youngest son and a tub of popcorn on the couch to laugh along to the antics of The Three Stooges and Charlie Chaplin.

As Michael’s star rises, we see other recognizable faces, including Michael Myers as the head of CBS Records, Miles Teller playing the entertainment lawyer who becomes Michael’s manager, and Black-ish star Deon Cole as boxing promoter Don King.

We watch Michael indulge his love of animals, turning his home into a menagerie with a pet rat, a snake, a llama, a giraffe and the chimp he named Bubbles. (Somewhat distractingly, Bubbles is clearly an overly cute CGI creation.) We see Michael visit hospitals and burn centers—especially after his own scalp catches fire during an ill-fated TV commercial shoot for Pepsi—to comfort sick kids.  

Director Antoine Fuqua (whose other films include Southpaw, Training Day and the 2016 remake of The Magnificent Seven) has a handle especially on the live performance scenes, which do pack a musical punch. But there’s a soft-pedal, generic feel to the drama, a paint-by-numbers path straight out of the “musical biopic” playbook. Michael Jackson might have been a lot of things, but paint-by-numbers wasn’t one of them.

There’s moonwalking, crotch-grabbing, sequined gloves and fancy footwork galore. One of Michael’s first producers, Berry Gordy (Power Book’s Larenz Tate) tells him to keep still in the recording booth, because he keeps slip-sliding in and out of range of the microphone. Michael is fascinated by Peter Pan and Never Never Land, the story’s place where children never grow up, where childhood never ends.

The movie ends with Michael taking the stage in London in 1988, just after the release of his seventh album, Bad.

But it stops short of Michael’s sad last act—overdosing on medications administered by his personal physician in 2009—after a media circus of criminal indictments, courtroom appearances and an eventual acquittal on 13 charges of child molestation. That omission might have something to do with the film being financed by Jackson’s estate, which likely wanted to steer clear of anything icky.

But it’s hard to forget all that as part of Jackson’s tarnished legacy, as this disinfected, feel-good tribute seemingly wants to do. It wants us to remember Jackson as the King of Pop, fulfilling his wish to become the biggest star in the world, but not how he lost much of his reputation in the process, alone and adrift in his own Never Never Land.  

—Neil Pond

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Apr 21 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “I Swear”

Compassionate biopic shows the humanity of Tourette’s syndrome

I Swear
Starring Robert Aramayo, Maxine Peake & Peter Mulan
Directed by Kirk Jones
Rated R

In theaters April 24

Sometimes John can’t control what he says or does. He spits food, spews obscenities, punches, jerks and slaps. He has the neurological condition known as Tourette’s syndrome, so named for the French physician who first chronicled what he called “convulsive tic disorder.”

The aptly titled I Swear is an inspiring and solidly composed biopic based on John Davidson, a real-life Scotsman who suffered most of his life with Tourette’s and later became recognized—by the Queen of England, no less!—as a crusader for people with his condition. A 1989 BBC documentary, John’s Not Mad, brought even more attention to his cause.

This film, which was released late last year in Great Britian, now comes to America. And you need to see it, I swear!

The cast is first-rate. Young Scott Ellis Watson makes a most impressive movie debut as teenage John, a soccer-playing lad whose facial tics, verbal outbursts and bodily spasms get him into trouble at school, and at home. Robert Aramayo, who played Eddard Stark in two seasons of HBO’s Game of Thrones, is nothing short of phenomenal in the leading role as grownup John. He’s already received a Best Actor trophy from the British Academy Film Awards (Britain’s Oscars). If Dustin Hoffman can get an Academy Award nomination for playing an autistic savant in Rain Main, Aramayo certainly deserves a nod for I Swear.

Maxine Peak also does an excellent job as Dottie, the sweetly sympathetic mom of one of John’s buddies, who warmly takes John into her own family when his mother (Shirley Henderson, from the movie-verses of Harry Potter and Bridget Jones) becomes exasperated with his constant flair-ups, which drive his father to leave. Peter Mullen, a prolific Scottish actor and director, plays Tommy, who becomes John’s advocate and mentor—and gives him a job—at a local community center.

John eventually starts a support group for others like him, widening the circle to their frazzled parents as well. I suspect that a lot of the onscreen extras, portraying kids and adults navigating life with Tourette’s and all its bumps, blips and bruises, are doing just that—living it, not just acting it. Kudos to I Swear for also showing the reality of Tourette’s. 

Director Kirk Jones, who also wrote the screenplay, recreates John’s world across the decades, framing it with sweetness, dabs of humor and moments of wrenching hurt. We watch as the school headmaster (Ron Donache, also a Game of Thrones alum) continually thrashes John’s upturned hand with his belt, turning his palm into a pulp; thinking John’s tics are just prankish tricks, he tries to beat his “unacceptable” behavior into submission. A soccer scout wonders aloud if John is “disabled.” We see how John’s outburst at a movie ruins his date—and his chances—with a schoolgirl pal. We see him fraught with misery, trying to take his own life. People stare, flinch or laugh when he cuts loose with a shout, a racial slur or a scatological profanity. John gets arrested when his Tourette’s takes over and lands him into a barroom brawl, and later a courtroom. A couple of guys beat him so badly he ends up in the hospital, all because he blurted out “slut” at a young woman.

It’s painful to watch, knowing that John understands what he’s doing but, despite medication to manage, he’s powerless to restrain it. Until, that is, a kindly therapist (Carolina Valdés) throws him a lifeline with a new device that helps control his uncontrollable neurological misfires. Finally, for the first time, he can have a “normal” interaction with a stranger on a train or walk into a public library without disrupting the quiet and the calm.

“The problem is not Tourette’s,” John says to a group of parents at one point. “The problem is people don’t know enough about Tourette’s.” And he set out to teach them.

This compassionate Scottish crowd pleaser about a man with an often-misunderstood neuro-motor disorder has a lot it can teach us all.

—Neil Pond  

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Apr 09 2026
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Movie Reviews

Movie Review: “You, Me & Tuscany”

Halle Bailey stars in comedic, Italian-flavored tangle of romance, food and family

Michael (Regé-Jean Page) and Anna (Halle Bailey)

You, Me & Tuscany
Starring Halle Bailey, Regé-Jean Page and Lorenzo de Moor
Directed by Kat Corio
Rated PG-13

In theaters Friday, April 10

Halle Bailey, who starred as Ariel in Disney’s 2023 live-action remake of its 1989 animated musical classic, is still longing to be “Part of Your World” as Anna, a culinary school dropout who takes a trip to Italy. Low on funds but relishing the exotic break from her life back in New York City, she crashes an empty villa and pretends to be the fiancé of its absentee owner, cooking up a comedic swirl of faked identity, a pretend engagement and accelerated wedding plans.

And a chaotic romantic triangle with two Tuscan-hunk cousins who grew up as brothers, Michael and Matteo (Lorenzo de Moor and Bridgerton’s Regé-Jean Page).

“It’s complicated, I guess,” Anna says at one point.

You, Me & Tuscany won’t win any awards, but it will likely find its target audience with movie lovers who love unpretentious, feel-good yarns, dreamy romances with photogenic stars, one-liner laughs, picture-postcard scenery and some zingy dashes of PG-13 spice—like the little mini-taxi nicknamed something that sounds like American slang for, well, you’ll know it when you hear it. And when the cousins’ boisterous, oversexed aunt holds up a vegetable when it reminds her of her ongoing “side-dish” fling with her plumber, well, you’ll get that, too.

The movie shares some cinematic roots with other sunny Mediterranean romantic romps, like Roman Holiday, Under the Tuscan Sun and A Room with a View. It also makes a nod to My Big Fat Greek Wedding with its jabbering gaggle of colorful extended-family “locals” and an early scene featuring Nia Vardalos, the star of three Big Fat flicks.  

And foodies will love the focus on Italian nourishments, from pasta to panini and wine, wine and more wine, and ripe grapes plucked right off the vine. There’s also a singing gardener (Emanuele Pacca), a wizened old aunt (Stefani Casini), a jealous ex- (Desirée Pöpper), a cute little piglet and a tour bus of wisecracking sightseers turned on seeing Anna and Michael making out, soaked to the skin from vineyard sprinklers.

Bailey, who’s also an accomplished singer (in the R&B sister duo Chloe & Bailey) even gets to croon a little bit of “Let Me Love You,” the smooooooth Grammy-nominated 2004 “oldie” from the artist known as Mario.

Will Anna get back in the kitchen, in a part of the world where “food is life”? Which delicious dude will she end up with? Who’ll win the big annual barrel race through town? And how in the world does she keep producing stylish outfits—a wardrobe’s worth of skirts, midriff tops and low-cut, cleavage-showcase blouses—from the small carry-on she brought on the trip?

As Anna says, it’s complicated. And mostly predictable, with few surprises, some laughs and tame innuendos, and a warmhearted message about family—the one you’re born with, and the one you find. If you’re not overly picky about plot points, just sit back and enjoy the sights and the scenery, the men and the menu, as Anna works her way out of a knotty Tuscan romantic tangle. Salut!

—Neil Pond

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